Having played a few sessions and gotten into a couple combats, I can better define the appeal of this game for me:
Roll results -- any time you do anything, it is d20 + modifiers compared to a DC. Familiar stuff. Meet or exceed the DC, success. Lower and you fail. If you exceed the DC by 10 or more, Critical Success! Fall 10 or more short, Critical Failure. But then the kicker... nat 20 increases your success level by 1. Nat 1 decreases it by 1. So in general, a natural 20 is always a crit, unless the target DC is so high that you can only hit on a 20. One roll... results. It simplifies stuff.
Then, most actions and saves have results for each of the four levels of success. So crit success on a save means no damage or no effect. Success on a save means half damage or minor temporary effect. Failure means full effect. Crit fail is double damage or increased effect.
The upshot of this is that spells aren't completely wasted when the opponent gets some lucky saves. For example, the spell Blindness:
Crit success - no effect
Success - blind for 1 round
Failure - blind for 10 minutes
Crit failure - blind permanently
So for Aidan, even when the gnoll successfully saved vs Goblin Pox, it was still sickened and retching for a round, so at least there was some benefit. It does away with the all-or-nothing problem with most spells.
Speaking of spells... where appropriate, spells have the "heighten" option. This means you can choose to cast a spell using a higher level spell slot and its effects will increase accordingly. So now instead of Fireball being a 3rd level spell slot that does 15d6 damage in the hands of a 15th level wizard, it is now a 3rd level spell that does 6d6 damage, and you can add 2d6 for every increase in spell slot. So that 15th level wizard could choose to cast it with an 8th level spell slot, doing 16d6 damage. But if you want greater effects, you have to use the higher slot.
Similarly, no more having to learn a bunch of different healing spells. Now you just have the level 1 spell Heal. It heals 1d8. For every level you heighten it, add another d8. But... you get 3 actions each round. If you just take 1 action to Heal, it's 1d8 per level. If you take 2 actions, it's 1d8+8 per level. All 3 actions, then it's 1d8 per level for everyone within 30 feet. All of that, and you just need the one spell.
At first, I was thinking all of this is too complicated. But it turns out that most stuff follows the same basic patterns and formats, and it's really no more complicated that P1 (less even, I think). It's just that it's unfamiliar , and there's a learning curve.
Like Starfinder, P2 characters start out with enough HP to not break right away. 20+ for most characters. Everyone appreciates that.
I don't know... it feels like my players are just being more creative with the system. I don't know if that's an artifact of how the rules work or if it's just excitement at a new campaign and unfamiliar experiences. Either way, we're having a blast.
I'll share more as it comes to me.Statistics: Posted by Mike — Wed Jun 24, 2020 9:23 pm
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