I got it when it came out, I tried it… I didn’t like it. Or at least, I didn’t see any improvement that would cause me to re-buy my thousands of dollars in PF1e gear (I was a superscriber from day 1). “The same, but different” didn’t keep my wallet opened up.
I tried picking it up again lately. I still like their adventures and Golarion content and would use the newer stuff if I could (lore books – kinda can, APs – kinda can’t, at least without 6 man-months of conversion time for each one). I ran across pathbuilder2e and wanderersguide and thought “well hey let me try it with a character generator” and I liked it even less, but I think I understand why now.
It reminded me of the experience I had with the Spycraft game from the 3e era. Spycraft was fun! D&D rules for James Bond stuff! Spycraft 2e came out! I hated it!
The newer version wasn’t even that different – it was that the new implementation of the rules was just… charmless. Everything was a technical term that was a reference to 3 other technical terms and so on.
And that’s my problem with PF2e. No hate if it speaks to you. But when I read through it and it’s all keywords and jargon – and sure, any RPG has some of that, but there are many levels of fiddly – it leaves me completely cold. It’s the difference between a book that teaches you physics in an accessible way (Hi, Isaac Asimov!) and a textbook.
And if the “keyword” approach actually brought brevity to the rules, turned the PHB into 96 pages… ok maybe… But no, just like Spycraft 2e, PF2e is giant. Those ‘simple’ keyword bones actually become more complex when there’s too many of them.
I prefer having a tool to run high level PF1e… But I can’t imagine running any level PF2e without it.
Want a character with these 3 skills? Oh sorry you can’t just choose skills, you have to pick an ancestry that gives you one and a background or whatever they call it that gives you another and then a class and a heritage and and…
Stats? Can’t just roll or buy them, no no, you need to cobble together ancestry boosts and background boosts and class boosts and free boosts…
I stuck through it until I tried to get equipment and then the keyword slush just overwhelmed me. Then “special action icons” time came and I was out, I hated that in D&D 4e and I hate it now.
Every Archives of Nethys page gives me a headache. Everything is so goddamn long. Picking a random monster… Chimera! 3.5e: 391 words. PF1e on Nethys: 537 words. PF2e on Nethys: 1192 words. Fuuuuck me. I mean, I get it has more options and stuff. But… do I need that? Do I need 1000 words on every single one of 1000 monsters? This is why people are giving up and training LLMs instead of trying to keep up with the diarrhea of content in every field.
I am sure I could figure it out if I stuck to it. But it’s just not… Fun. I’m not sure why I should.
Most of the arguments I see about why to (besides “3 actions in a round, woo”) are “well if your friends do” or “well if the only tables around are” or “if you want to buy stuff now you have to” but these are all just like the reasons to go cow tipping and get pregnant early from my youth.
It makes me sad, because with PF2.5e (whatever they call it- “Remastered?”) out, I feel like I’ve lost my chance to get back on board. By all accounts it’s even more “like that” than 2e and now bunches of 2e things are incompatible. I like the sound of their new Azlanti islands AP coming out but I fear trying to convert it back to 1e. “You missed that there were TWO DOTS next to the person’s name that means they have SOMETHING SOMETHING!!!” Without being an expert in it, it’s inaccessible.
I’m playing DCC now, and most of the OSR stuff has too *little* rules texture and options for me compared to 2e/3e times. But if my only other options are BehemothLand, what’s someone who wants moderate crunch to do?!?
Geek Related 
I completely agree and it’s a real shame but we (my group) have absolutely no click with PF2 while really loving Golarion. I bought the first few books, we slogged through character creation, tried to play a little and went back to PF1 and the occasional 3.5.
I was also a superscriber then cut back to just the APs and finally stopped them as I didn’t even like reading through them any more.
I’ve also listened to the Glass Cannon Podcast for the last year and a half and they’ve just jumped from PF1 to PF2 and it’s just not the same. Too… gamey. It’s all Frightened 2 and Slowed 1 and needing to roll 10 higher than the DC to do anything useful. One character needed to get a 35 to knock a hat off an enemy’s head, otherwise they just had a +2 on a future attempt. For one round Just weird and it doesn’t sound fun to me at all. It’s a shame.
Yeah, it seems like a system designed to be turned into a computer game. Tracking “how much you roll over by” is fiddly stuff that might be OK in special circumstances but not an “every attack roll” thing, way too much overhead for 80% of real players.
TBH PF1e is a little too complicated with status effects too, I think a smaller set would do it.
True. The next time someone is sick/ on holiday In going to suggest Mörk Borg or some other rules-light game. Your Blades in the Dark campaign sounds like fun, is it suitable for one-shots?
Good question… Blades in the Dark doesn’t shine as a one-shot because of both the long term attrition and long term project systems that are pretty integral to the experience, but it works OK. You can search up folks who’ve made variations to make it show up better as a one shot.
I’d tend to use a more traditional PbtA like Dungeon World or any of the OSR-ish things including the Borgs for a one-shot in that arena.
Though if you want to do a “three-shot” you’d get a lot of the Dark goodness in, IMO!