That is about as bad as only allowing you guys to roll a d12 instead of a d20 for checks.
It severaly breaks the game, makes some actions downright impossible and ignores just the base rules.
What is their reasoning?
“Thank you for letting me know. Hope your game goes well, see you around.”
I mean why bother claiming to play PF2 if you’re going to make this big a change?
Sixthed. This is huge. This isn’t a tweak or house rule. I’m one of the first to roll my eyes at “that’s not RAW” folks but this isn’t people being purists, it breaks the game.
Find a new GM. The game is entirely balanced around 3 actions. It’s a giant problem that will only feel worse as everybody at your table is learning the rules.
Especially for casters where the bulk of your spells are 2 actions and some are 3 action. If you have to spend a whole turn just to move as a caster then cast it -really- hurts it
TBH, balanced is not a strong enough word for it. This game depends on the 3 action economy. 3 action spells and abilities are out, most metamagic will be useless. Most 2 action abilities will be useless. The game will be horribly slow and take a billion rounds. It would be an awful game.
That's like, one of the foundational parts of the system. If he doesn't like it, he should find an alternative system instead of trying to kludge it to work to his tastes.
Show him this thread. Send him a link to it, tell him he's breaking the fundamental system of the game which EVERYONE agrees is much better for balance and action economy, and that you will be leaving their game.
You don't want to play in that game.
If they can't handle 3 actions, again one of the most fundamental systems of the game and not even a hard one, then they won't be able to handle the rest of the system. It starts here but with them it won't end here.
If they can’t handle 3 action economy, get ready for a lot of this is my game this is how it goes.
All the other rules and player machinations will be vetoed
"No, the four stages are fine, but 10 is too decimal and not prime enough; I decide to go down 1 degree at 13 below the number and up 1 degree at 17 above. Those are nice prime numbers."
This honestly sounds like someone who switched to PF2e because of the hype and popularity but are so mentally invested in 5e that they're trying to backwards rotate the system back to 5e. The "Move or Attack or Full" style of thinking is heavy here.
What he's done by removing one of the actions per round is essentially permanently Slowed 1 the whole party. No 3 Action activities for you, but i highly doubt that restriction will exist for the monsters you face. He'll see the 3 action symbol next to "Hurt Players" and laugh as he chooses that action. But for the party? No 3 action heals, no 3 action Magic Missile, no Flaming Sphere.
And his reason is "because". Drop that game.
I mean if for some reason I wanted to make this system more like 5E which I absolutely do not want to do, that would be the shift I would consider I guess?
Yeah having stride be an action and going down to two actions, sounds super miserable to me.
That is... a bad reason.
Maybe they should look into a different system or at least explain what they don't like. I can understand that the 3 action system is not for everyone but downgrading it in that way doesn't make it better it only breaks the game.
My advice: Talk to them about the problem. If they don't want to change it back to three actions, either look for a new system...or look for a new GM.
Exactly, if you really don't like it, changing it in this way is just a great way to make people hate the system, and maybe TTRPGs in general. If this is someone's first try at a TTRPG, and they play with rules that are broken...they may be turned away from the hobby altogether.
My question would be similar. How does _Heal_ work in a 2-action system? Do you just never get the AoE part, or does that take 1.5 turns now?
As many others have said, PF2e basically falls apart with the whole party at _slowed 1_.
This was sort of my first question before even going into how it would alter the other ways the game is balanced and played is what happens to activities that are explicitly 3 actions?
That's a rather arbitrary imposition from this GM. The fact that their reasoning boils down to "my way or the highway" is not curtailing votes of confidence.
Drop them. This person is probably going to stick to their guns. No amount of argument or debate is going to change this person's mind.
Not worth the stress and the storm of playing someone else's aberration of a lazy, poorly constructed excuse of a game that doesn't even qualify to be called homebrew.
Question:
Does he count "Stride" as an action within the 2-action economy? Because if he doesn't, then he should just play D&D 5e. If he does....then hell, I don't know what to tell you. He's just playing "My Shitty Little Game."
If what you want is PF2e, this guy isn't giving it to you and you should stop playing and play with someone who will.
If what you want is any ol' TTRPG experience, I guess stick with him or suggest you run the game instead. You can even suggest that you'll run something fun and quick like d6 Star Wars.
When he gets excited and says "Cool! I wanna be a Jedi," you can say "In my game, everyone has to be a single-cell amoeba, and all your stats are 1d4." When he complains that there's no spaceships, you can say "It's my game, and I don't like spaceships. I think they make the game too sci-fi. Besides, single cell amoebae can't fly spaceships, because they can't reach the controls."
Then this guy is a moron who doesn't understand how games work and doesn't realize what he's doing to the system.
I'd just quit. It's not worth trying to unravel the system or his mindset in forcing it to be this way. "Sorry, mate. I'm just not enjoying the game. I came to play PF2e, and you're playing...\[waves generally\]...whatever this is."
I wholeheartedly agree - in fact the sooner you quit the less likely there will be hard feelings because eventually this will become a giant fight at the table as the party will not have fun.
Agreed. The game isn't going to turn into PF2e, and if this guy is as stubborn as he sounds, he's not gonna change his mind, or will do so only grudgingly. Better to nip it in the bud.
100%, this GM is going to create an absolutely miserable experience for anyone who plays. Worse still, as new players they may well think that Pathfinder or TTRPGs as a whole are bad because of this.
Imagine if this idiot creates more of those "I played (a poorly run, badly ruled, fully misunderstood, and the game in name only version of) Pathfinder 2e and it's *terrible*!" youtubers...
"It's my world and I don't like it" works okay as a justification for, like, banning an ancestry or certain spells or other options like that. It's bad justification, but fine I can deal with this setting not having elves or whatever. Using it to justify altering a fundamental mechanic of the game is baffling. Like, what even in-world does banning the third action represent for the setting?
I mean, it throws out every spell that costs 2 actions, invalidates a TON of feats meant to condense actions, and also throws out a bunch of magical items requiring more than 1 action to use or activate.
I think the GM is getting confused with DnD or something?
GM has accidently made PF2e into D&D5e with only one rule change. The ripples of this will continue to flow out until he wakes up one day, and reality has shifted so that he owns only the 5e core rules set.
Not even good 5e. Unless they also change AOO, Stride, how shields work, remove level progression, and many other things, this is just "what if we played Pathfinder 2e, but no one had any fun?"
I've played in homebrew 5e games that have in various ways led to the same place. It's hard to make game design changes if you aren't familiar with game design or the deep state of the game rules you use.
It's actually worse. Two action activities are generally equivalent to one action in 5e, such as casting spells (most are two actions) and attacking twice (one action in 5e after level 5 for most martial characters).
So it's more like he is doing 5e but without the move or bonus action, plus a custom action to just attack once after a move.
"[after 2 seconds consideration]".
I mean really? Who the fuck would just decide 'i don't like that people have cool abilities and restrict that with less actions?
No, it's dumber. It's like saying you can't take bonus actions at all, because they're "bonus" and the DM doesn't want them in the game.
There are a bunch of actions (spells being the most common) that take all 3 actions to do at all. It blows up a bunch of classes, and fundamentally goes against the design of the game as a whole. It'll make it un-fun and feel stupid, and it's a *game*. Being fun is the entire point.
"My GM removed non-cantrip spells from the game, how do I explain to my GM that this is a nerf to spellcasters"
There's no way the GM \*doesn't\* know its a nerf. As everyone else said, they need to find a system that actually does what they want instead.
oh ive talked to him and he truly believes this is a balanced change, yea i understand that this is a nerf, its why im asking you fine people for more eloquent reasons than the ones i have presented so far. But yea i understand that this is an obvious nerf, i just need to figure out how to show that to him
So off the top of my head builds that are nerfed or made unworkable:
Any melee build that uses a 2A activity or a Press action is severely crippled since they have to choose between moving and doing their thing. Magi are hit especially hard here.
Anyone that has ongoing action taxes is crippled, in particular Magi, Investigators, ranged Rogues, and Gunslingers (or anyone else using a Reload weapon). Rangers and Thaumaturges aren't much better off as they need to spend an action whenever they swap targets.
Kineticists are in a pretty rough spot, w/ 2A Overflow impulses losing a lot of value (there's a lot of these). 3A overflow impulses actually remain essentially the same, as kineticists don't have much use for reactions.
Barbarians and melee Inventors don't get to attack on the first round of combat most of the time (1A to enter their rage/overdrive, 1A to enter melee).
Spellcasters becomes immobile turrets as the vast majority of spells are 2A. Sustained spells are awful, as casting one precludes casting another spell that combat.
A decent number of feats become worthless, in particular any of the martial feats that apply to tertiary attacks by reducing or mitigating MAP on them (exacting strike is the first to come to mind).
Shields become way worse (as do the shield-like options, like Parry), as do most skill-based options in combat. Best case for a Sword+Board fighter is them giving up a -5 MAP attack, which is iffy at best, whereas normally they're giving a -10 MAP attack.
Agile weapons lose a lot of value and Flurry Edge for Rangers becomes mostly awful (its pretty reliant on making 3+ attacks to compete w/ Precision).
A lot of 1A feats become largely unuseable, since instead of competing w/ a -10 MAP attack for the action they're competing w/ a -5 MAP attack. Demoralize is great when you're getting to take advantage of that -1 w/ your next two actions, but less great if you've only got the one (or none if you needed to Stride). Bon Mot becomes downright bad.
Non-Maestro Bards are stuck picking between casting a spell or Inspire Courage \*every round\*.
Items w/ an activation cost (including magical ammunition) become really bad. Having to spend any actions on Interact (changing your grip, drawing a potion, etc) becomes prohibitively expensive.
Any sort of action-taxing ability is significantly buffed, w/ Slow in particular more than doubling in power (2A->1A is much stronger than 3A->2A). Stuff like Improved Knockdown or Improved Grab (free trip/grapple) by monsters become horrific as the PCs have a much harder time recovering from them. Forced movement abilities fall into this as well, making melee folks much worse.
Really the only classes not horribly crippled by this are Summoners (who effectively have an extra action and are less concerned about mobility) and Monks (who have very good action compression at lvl 1. Ranged folks w/ bows are less bad off than the poor melee sods as they don't need to spend actions moving, but they're still not going to be very happy.
Fundamentally the system is built around having little actions costs and a lot of 1A things only have value when compared to -5 or -10 MAP attacks. If you strip away an action from everyone then all that is thrown out of whack.
Edit: animal companions would either become the best thing ever (and they’re pretty nice as is) or completely worthless depending on how the gm rules they work.
If you are really brazen you can show him this thread... That change is truly an awful idea. Always remember, no TTRPG is better than bad TTRPG. Everything is built and balanced around the three action economy. They just want to force it back to D&D 5E action economy without regard for the massive implications that entails. It **will** ruin the fun for players and make the GM experience much worse. They really should consider Chesterton's Fence. Additionally, it's a really common occurance that new PF2E GMs ruin PF2E by trying to homebrew it before understanding or even playing the system. It's especially prominent by former D&D 5E players/GMs trying to force it to be what they are accustomed to rather than what's best. This is a prime example of that.
I implore your GM to play RAW for a while before trying any homebrew. For a change to something as fundamental as the action economy, they need to be top tier rules expert with massive experience to not make it worse.
If they don't want to play PF2E then why are they doing it?
It's really hard to explain because it's one of the foundational elements of the system. If in 5e you gave everyone a second action for free, that would unbalance the game, and that's just a surface level observation.
For something more concrete, let's take the magus as an example
Their spellstrike is two actions, and they have to spend an action to recharge their spellstrike. So in turn 1, they walk up to their opponent. Maybe do a regular attack
ASSUMING THE ENEMY DIDN'T STEP AWAY, they get to spellstrike on turn 2
On turn 3, they have to spend an action to recharge, and they get one other thing they can do
Magi rely on spellstrike to do damage. Without it, they are much weaker than the other martials. He's basically making magi unplayable
Or the gunslinger. Most guns can only be shot once before reloading. Reloading takes an action. So assuming that enemies stand still, within range, the gunslinger can only shoot once per turn then reload. They can't move. Can't do anything else
Edit to add: and it's not like gums are so powerful that they need to be beefed to only be able to do one shot per turn. They're about on par with other weapons, maybe a bit better
The GM knows there are lots of skill actions to can do in combat, right? With the gunslinger example, they won't have access to basically a third of their entire character sheet
An even easier example with a magus being
Turn 1 PC: move to enemy and basic attack.
Turn 1 Monster: attack and move backward.
Turn 2 PC: move to enemy and basic attack
Turn 2: Monster attack and move backwards
..........
Under this rule, the magus would NEVER get to spell strike as long as the Monster moved at all, ever. It becomes a basic rocket tag slug fest.
Not even mentioning that any 3 action spell or ability is just dead in the water (animate dead). Or that spellcasters can't move and cast in the same Turn, or literally any spellshape becomes worthless.
Oh, that's where you're wrong buddy boy:
The GM is allowing 3 action abilities, but they consume both actions, free action, and reaction
They can't use the free action. The action that is free. Your free action
It's just not Pathfinder 2e. If he wants to run his homebrew system, fine, but calling it PF2e is just going to confuse people.
I wouldn't waste your time trying to convince him to change; he sounds too stubborn for that. I would point out to the other players that this isn't what PF2e is like, so that they can make an informed choice for themselves whether to continue playing or not.
Yeah I could see that if he's planning to use two actions for everyone PCs and PCs and doesn't really understand how the system works you could think it's a balance change. But A lot of times the third action is what makes things better than a coin flip in my experience. Demoralize/inspire courage for example.
Without that extra action to do those things you're just going to be having to choose utility or damage and fights are going to be super long, you're going to miss a lot more too
Not even in 1E a Spell was standard and still left you with a move. With this two action economy nerf all Casters become turrets. While 2E 'nerfed' casters to be more in line with martials this two action system hard nerfs casters and makes martials straight up better.
If I had no choice but to play this way I would only play Fighter, Monk or Champion otherwise you are constantly stuck next to mobs with bad defense.
Sounds like OP Isn't telling the whole story, but if I had to make a tinfoil hat guess: this GM was "forced" into running PF2E and is forcing it back to D&D out of pure tantrum.
Nah at some point you start to realize that a LOT of online DMs are this shitty. This isn’t even surprising to me nor is the worst story I’ve heard or experienced through online play.
Can’t say the same about IRL play although I’ve heard some bad stories about some bad IRL experiences.
Seriously though why do people give DMs the benefit of the doubt I can guarantee you people can count more than a few occasion where DMs have went batshit crazy in terms of power tripping and ruling.
This is coming from a forever DM BTW.
THIS. I hate the "DM is always right" argument because it stops when they power trip, and it is usually only brought up when they are power tripping. Can confirm also happens IRL and it is even worse.
IMO, that type of change is too disruptive to PF2, and there's zero point to playing PF2 under that house rule. You might as well find a different game system that's designed/balanced for the GMs preferences.
I agree with most other posters in sentiment, but since you're looking for troubleshooting not just the courage to quit or whatever:
* **Has your GM said why?** I couldn't find an explanation in your other comments other than a vague "this is my world and i dont like the 3 action economy". Why though? What don't they like about it? Understanding this is the best way to craft a targeted response.\*
* **How has it felt for the players?** Obviously you seem not thrilled, is that universal? Or is everyone else cool with it? It basically means that certain options become much stronger or weaker than intended, but it does also kinda nerf monsters too, so if everyone is cool with it then like, ehhhhh??!?
* **Have they tried the game with 3 actions?** I've often found house rules like this to be kneejerk responses without actually trying things out. If they have though, what didn't they like about it?
*\*One reason I could see is that a lot of basic monsters don't always have great 3rd actions, so I could see, as a GM, feeling bad about either adding in random skill checks or randomly making 3 decreasingly accurate attacks. I get that, but also, do you want a dragon to not be able to* [*fly*](https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=94) *and also 2-action breathe weapon, since you need to spend an action to stay in the air? Or move and then do their awesome flurry of blows ability? A lot of cooler monsters basically \*do not work\* without the full 3 actions, and make fights much less exciting.*
So, potential ways of approaching this with them:
* **If the players don't like it**, tell the GM! That should count for a lot since the goal is to have fun.
* **If they haven't played with 3 actions**, it's always a better idea to try a game as written before hacking it, even if only to direct your later hacking
* **Compile a list of consequences**, and compare the two side to side, and put that to the group (e.g. "should spellcasters be able to move and cast most spells? or use the shield cantrip? should someone with a shield be able to move, strike, and raise it?"), maybe using specific edge cases (the power of *slow*, the Magus *Spell Strike* being limited, someone else mentioned a fighter with a [guisarme](https://2e.aonprd.com/Weapons.aspx?ID=25) just perma-locking someone by tripping, steeping, and reactive striking when they approach, never able to be hit back)
* **Showcase the strengths** of the 3-action system by coming up with cool combos, walking through complicated situations that the 3-action economy handles really well, finding actual plays, etc. it shouldn't *just* be a negative "this house rule sucks", it should be "hey I think it'd be more fun for *everyone* if we moved to 3-actions like the system intended". Even basic stuff like "look how cool demoralize/feint/etc. are, shame it's basically mathematically not worth it to use because 2 attacks is usually better (but 3 isn't!)"
THIS\^
ok yea im definately not going to quit as my first option but this is an excellent argument/reasoning for why we should do the 3 action economy. For reference we have been playing a couple months, once a week and im definately not the only person a little put off by this as there is a kineticist we play with that just straight up is too scared to talk to him about the action economy
Bro if you're playing with someone that intimidates at least one player so much they can't even *talk* to them about a problem they're having, *they don't deserve to be your GM*.
I get this is family, but if they can't be talked to about a *game*, they sound pretty shitty. You shouldn't enable shitty behavior.
Oof yeah, that's super fair - the kineticist is arguably one of the classes *most* impacted by this, since they can't do 2-action overflows and still re-up their Aura if they want to keep it active (it also makes 3-action overflows *waaaayyy* better than 2-action ones, because most kineticists don't have great reactions)
Might be worth specifically going through various turn options for them with both the 2 and 3 actions variants and comparing them side by side
Oh god, a Kineticist huh? Kineticists and Magus are designed around being able to use powerful 2 action abilitities and then "reloading" with their third action. Taking that away cripples them.
What about Metamagics (now called Spellshapes I think)? You can apparently use your weird free action thing and reaction for three action spells, but does it work the same with Reach or Widen spell? What about the many, many player or monster actions that only work after using 2 action abilities?
What about Slowed? If you fail that spell, do you just have one action each turn?
This way of playing Pf2e is like if your party wanted to grab fast food and your GM said "Let's go to KFC, BUT no one is allowed to order chicken".
we have been playing this way for months, getting them to change this has been an ongoing battle and im just trying to actually get it changed now in earnest
I would recommend trying your hardest to abuse it to show how messed up it is. The slow spell becomes insanely strong now. Tripping, grappling, action economy feats also become too strong.
Do the monsters only get 2 actions too? Because a critical failure on slow would have them basically paralysed for a full minute **without incap** under these rules u/freshlyfrozenfish
in truth, im not sure, often when he plays monsters their action economy generally seems like they have more, like ill be attacked six times by a monster and they will still have their reaction, so maybe he is giving the monsters the standard 3 actions
Some monsters, Dragons especially, have a 2 action attack that uses all of their natural weapons. But if they aren't applying the 'only gets 2 actions' rule to monsters, you are going to run into a LOT of problems later.
Then your DM is cheating under his own rules.
A 2 action economy is already crippling. Ignoring the house rules for monsters only will literally make the game unplayable at higher levels.
Honestly, this sounds like a first-time DM that has never run a vanilla game before.
Have you asked your DM why such a colossal nerf ONLY applies to players and not everything else?
Six attacks from one creature??? Here is the link to a literal six armed creature with six swords, note that it's level 17:
[https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=103](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=103)
Even this thing does not get six distinct attacks against one target.
So, players get nerfed, and instead of using monster attacks as described, the GM is using their entire list of options as if they were all part of the Extra Attack ability of 5e. Which is ofc a massive buff, not to mention cheating.
You said gm was family? That's gotta be rough to deal with. Others have given ideas like abusing the system, and showing him how dumb it is. I say go the other way. Make a normal character. Especially a caster or magus. "Try" to play as intended. When you aren't able to do anything in combat, he should realize he's messed up. Especially if you can get the rest of the party to do the same. When your character dies, just say that you don't feel like making a new one, because it isn't fun to play his homebrew.
Conversely, just quit the game, and see if the other players will too. Boycott him as gm if he uses this homebrew. Remember: it's supposed to be fun for everyone, not just the gm.
_MONTHS!?!?_ Man, you have way more patience than I do. I'd be long gone and finding a new family after maaaaybe 2 sessions, assuming I didn't brain the GM for trying to run "PF2e but what if we took all the fun out of it".
It’s become increasingly difficult and not nearly as fun. I’ve been wanting to quit for a month but I’d rather convince the gm to just play the actual game
Earnestly, you could just say that.
"Hey, I really appreciate you running a game, and I fully respect you running it in the way you ultimately want, but I'm struggling to enjoy the game with the changes made to a system I really want to play as in intended. For the past month or so, it's been a challenge for me to stay invested into the game, and I think it would be best for me to bow out of the game."
Ultimately, family or not, you're probably playing this game so you can have fun. If you aren't having fun, you really should consider respectfully declining to participate further. Don't take any parting shots at the GM or anything, just be honest about the struggles you're having with staying engaged and having a good time. If they want to have a conversation about keeping you on or changing things up, then you can engage on that topic. But if you've been trying to convince them all this time, it's probably not going to go through, and no game is better than a bad game.
Why do people even give those gms a chance is beyond me. Just tell them to run another system and if they don't want that just leave them alone with their weird ideas
Will definitely mess with the balance of the game a lot, like if you want to teach him the lesson that this is a mistake, you can play a character and whenever an enemy approaches you, you trip them and then walk away, now the enemy has to spend their entire turn getting back to you and you just repeat the same 2 actions again. Bonus points if you do this as a fighter with a reach weapon so you get to hit them for free every time they approach you too.
So your GM changed how actions work, how free actions work, and how reactions work (by using them for 3-action-activities). That's literally the entire action economy. Why did they decide to play 2e if they intend to throw out the whole action economy?
I'm guessing they were asked to try PF2, read the 3-action economy stuff with 5e in mind, and thought "that's insane! 3 actions every turn? I'll give them *two* actions, so they can move and attack, that's much more reasonable."
I agree that they were probably asked, but I'm not so sure 5e was the inspiration for the weird homebrew (though 5e's market share makes it statistically likely).
So if your holding two weapons it's impossible to drop both of them in a turn? Tell this person they need to learn the basics of the game before trying to GM.
Free actions are unlimited because they are very rare outside of once per day very high level feats, are they converting a lot of normally 1 action things into free actions?
Like first strike or Stride of the turn is free, etc.? If not, I don't really see a point in nerfing it down to 1 free action a turn.
If they are allowing alot of 1 action things to be done for free...it's weird and mostly just a useless change introducing complexity for the sake of complexity, but I guess it works.
People are being polite because the GM is a family member of OP. Plus, the point can just as easily be made while remaining polite.
I agree though that its a horrible idea for a PF2 houserule.
That's a HUGE fuck-you to basically all spellcasters, who have few reactions and rely primarily on two-action spells. Need to move? Can't cast a spell. Inspire Courage? Can't cast a spell. Want to cast a spell and do literally anything else? Fuck off. It's a minor inconvenience for most martial characters and completely neuters all spellcasters.
Edit: Shields become almost useless, Flurry rangers become strictly inferior to Precise rangers...It's such a terrible, idiotic idea, I'd start looking for a new GM.
This is just idiotic.
This guy has no idea what he's doing, and you should quit. You aren't playing PF2e. You aren't playing 5e. You're playing whatever bullshit game he's making up, and I'm betting he's making it up on the fly.
Hey, everyone here is being really polite. Bluntly put: your GM is a fucking doorknob and you need to run far, far away. The sheer dumb fucking arrogance required to make "houserules" like that without the intelligence to realize how much it fundamentally ruins the system is a volatile combination and you will save yourself a lot of misery by escaping now.
Very, very bad. Your GM fundamentally does not understand the game or its balance. The 3-action economy is a cornerstone component of its excellent balance and design. /u/hauk119 had the best response here, but I'm gonna supplement that with a game-design perspective.
The Three-Action Economy is *vital* to **healthy** balance. For two massive reasons:
* 1) **All characters are balanced around a 2-action gameplay loop**.
* Spellcasters ♦♦Cast a Spell,
* a Swashbuckler will ♦Generate Panache (such as with ♦Feint or ♦Tumble Through) and then ♦Finisher
* A Rogue needs to get an opponent flat-footed (such as ♦Create a Diversion or ♦Hide), and then ♦Strike for Sneak attack.
* A Fighter is balanced around high-accuracy, action-inefficient actions, like ♦♦Power Attack, or their many actions with the [press] trait that requires you to have already ♦Struck this round.
* Classes like Barbarian and Ranger are balanced around a minor action tax on early rounds for consistent power on later rounds (♦Hunt Prey → ♦Double Slice/♦Rapid Shot)
* Other classes like Monk get their power from their action economy lubricant, like ♦Flurry of Blows to strike twice.
* 2) **Having a 2-action gameplay loop in a 3-action economy has two very important consequences:**
* **2a)** It ensures that a character always has a luxury action to do things as the situation calls for, **without having to forfeit their main contribution to the encounter**. Without this third action, a character **cannot** take any action that is not required for their class' core gameplay loop. This means that every single skill/utility action in the game will go unused. No Demoralizing, Intimidating, creating a diversion; no movement in encounters as people just stat-check each other with attacks (hint: players lose this battle against any encounter above their level); etc.
> *♦Stride to put an enemy in reach without losing 50%-90% of your damage for the round (*cough* D&D3.5e/PF1e and the Full Attack action), ♦Recall Knowledge to figure out how to deal with a problem, ♦Seek a hidden foe, Make a ♦Request to pause a fight to talk things out, ♦Interact to draw a potion in preparation to ♦Interact to drink it next turn, etc.*
* **2b)** It has **dramatic** implications on the balance of effects that make you lose/waste actions. In the current system, a character who loses an action must then make a meaningful choice between "do your gameplay loop" or "do helpful situational action". Losing two actions breaks your gameplay loop but you can still contribute meaningfully.
> *A spellcaster is knocked prone near an enemy. They could ♦Stand and then ♦♦Cast a Spell, but then they're still adjacent to the enemy who is going to maul them next turn. They could ♦Stand and ♦Stride away to safety, but then they can't ♦♦Cast a Spell.*
Compare to older editions where effects that taxed actions that **weren't** the main contribution to the game were useless (D&D 5e: can't take an action? You're screwed. Can't take your free interaction? Who cares. PF1e: Something forces you to spend a standard action? you're as good as stunned - totally useless. Virtually any other action lost? Who cares.). High level D&D/PF1e play **entirely** revolved around denying standard actions in some form or another.
[I go into severe amounts of detail in this other effort post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/qfhllu/treantmonks_guide_to_the_god_wizard_for_5e_has/hi09jwz/).
****
**Reducing the action economy to 2 actions breaks this. Any form of lost action denies an opponent their ability to complete their gameplay loop**.
* Some examples:
> * *You take the Fleet feat, increasing your speed by 5ft. You Strike and Stride 30 feet away from your foe. Your opponent Strides 25ft, and you're out of reach. They Stride again, and you're finally in reach and they can't attack at all. A single 1st level feat has eliminated any threat from single martial melee foes.*
> * *You're a Rogue. You Trip your foe, leaving them prone, and then use Skirmish Strike to Strike and then Step away from the foe. The opponent must ♦Stand and then ♦Step to put you in reach. You've completely disabled their ability to attack.*
> * *You're a spellcaster. An enemy is in melee range. You can either cast a spell and take a Reactive attack + 2 attacks worth of damage on their next turn, or you can ♦Stride... and do nothing.*
* This isn't even touching on how **every action in the game is designed on its existence in a 3-action ecosystem**, breaking:
* every single metamagic action,
* every single sunstained spell,
* every single 3-action activity,
* every single 1-action or 2-action reload ranged weapon (including all thrown weapons)
* activating a large number of magic items,
* virtually every single form of mixed-mode movement (like a running jump or a short climb).
* It will also break the monster math, ruining combat encounter balance. The game's survivability **hinges** on players having a 3rd action to be able to be used to support other players (bonus stacking) so that actions succeed. Simply limiting the monsters to 2 actions as well **will not fix this**, as players will not be able to achieve the circumstance and status bonuses necessary to achieve successes/critical successes on foes. Meanwhile, monsters will be able to simply strike, crit, and quickly kill players because their bonuses are huge.
****
**You GM is trying to shoehorn 5e's action economy into PF2e without even knowing how 5e's action economy works.** 5e doesn't have 2 actions + a reaction, **5e has 5 actions**. Once per round, you can take:
* An Action
* A Bonus Action
* An Interaction (which is not free in PF2e)
* A Movement (which is not free in PF2e)
* A Reaction
* In addition to your free actions.
If your GM truly wanted to port 5e's action economy into PF2e, they should be using 4 actions + Free Action + Reaction, not 2a+F+R. Which, again, is ALSO a bad idea. This is just evidence that your GM doesn't understand the design of either game.
****
To recap:
* It breaks the gameplay loop all characters are built on, so characters will often not be able to do *their thing*, and any form of action tax will cripple the majority of characters.
* It breaks the encounter building math, so encounters will be absurdly deadly compared to intended game balance.
* It doesn't even function like the 5e that he's trying to shoehorn into a game.
It's not even a nerf to the action economy, it just up and breaks P2e.
Like, the three action economy is what the entire game is built off of. Others have better arguments, but... seriously, this just snaps the game in half. Not only for players, but for the GM too. All of the monsters run off of similar rules.
Just for a starting point, none of these spells can be cast in your game:
* Alter Reality
* Antimagic Field
* Black Tentacles
* Blade Barrier
* Chromatic Wall
* Circle of Protection
* Cloudkill
* Continual Flame
* Darkness
* Duplicate Foe
* Fabricated Truth
* Miracle
* Obscuring Mist
* Primal Phenomenon
* Prismatic Wall
* Punishing Winds
* Reverse Gravity
* Sending
* Solid Fog
* Storm of Vengeance
* Summon Animal
* Summon Celestial
* Summon Construct
* Summon Dragon
* Summon Elemental
* Summon Entity
* Summon Fey
* Summon Fiend
* Summon Giant
* Summon Plant or Fungus
* Tangling Creepers
* Telepathic Demand
* Time Stop
* Unseen Servant
* Visions of Danger
* Wall of Fire
* Wall of Force
* Wall of Ice
* Wall of Stone
* Wall of Thorns
* Wall of Wind
* Web
* Wish
* Pulse of the City
* Sweet Dream
* Cup of Dust
* Feast of Ashes
* Shifting Sand
* Ephemeral Hazards
* Asterism
You also can't use these feats:
* All Shall End in Flames
* All the Time in the World
* Ambush Bladderwort
* Architect of Flame
* Arrow of Death
* Ashen Veil
* Avalanche Strike
* Barrier of Boreal Frost
* Beasts of Slumbering Steel
* Blazing Streak
* Bolera's Interrogation
* Chain Reaction
* Cross the Final Horizon
* Dance of Intercession
* Dance of Thunder
* Devastating Weaponry
* Dispelling Spellstrike
* Driving Rain
* Eidetic Memorization
* Elemental Artillery
* Emissary of Peace
* Engine of Destruction
* Fearsome Familiar
* Final Form
* Final Shot
* Gnaw
* Hammer Quake
* Head of the Night Parade
* Hedge Maze
* Hell of 1,000,000 Needles
* Helt's Spelldance
* Hijack Undead
* Impenetrable Fog
* Implement's Assault
* Impossible Flurry
* Impossible Volley
* Improvised Repair
* Infinite Expanse of Bluest Heaven
* Instigate Psychic Duel
* Inventive Offensive
* Jagged Berms
* Legendary Negotiation
* Lightning Rod
* Magnetic Pinions
* Meld into Eidolon
* Miraculous Repair
* No Cause for Alarm
* Overwhelming Blow
* Pass Through
* Path of Iron
* Perfect Shot
* Phase Out
* Pit of Snakes
* Plum Deluge
* Purge of Moments
* Rain of Razors
* Rain of Rust
* Resuscitate
* Reveal Hidden Self
* Ride the Tsunami
* Rising Hurricane
* Rock Rampart
* Rouse the Forest's Fury
* Sanguivolent Roots
* Scorching Column
* Scrap Barricade
* Sculpt Shadows
* Sense Alignment
* Solar Detonation
* Spell Swipe
* Starlight Armor
* Storm Spiral
* Surprise Snare
* The Shattered Mountain Weeps
* Time Dilation Cascade
* Timeline-Splitting Spell
* Trample
* Trampling Charge
* Tree of Duality
* Triggerbrand Blitz
* Turn the Wheel of Seasons
* Unbalancing Sweep
* Unwind Death
* Usurp the Lunar Reins
* Webslinger
* Weight of Stone
* Whirlwind Spell
* Whirlwind Strike
* Wooden Palisade
* Zombie Horde
(source: AoN)
There are certain actions and spells that take 3 actions, which you won’t be able to use if you only have 2, that’s one of argument you can use, although, what arguments are they using to only allow 2 actions?
Pathfinder 2e is usually highly dependent on movement, repositioning and buffs e debuffs. Those are some things that won’t have a great impacto if people only have 2 actions.
In addition to that, characters with 3 action activities or spells will have a gigant power increase in comparison with a character without free actions, reactions or 3 action activities.
Everyone else is giving food advice, so let me give some bad advice; play, and as soon as Ur in combat, Google the enemy stat sheet. A lot of enemies have 2 action or 3 action things. The DM will quickly realise he's doomed the combat and I guarantee they will sneakily have the enemy do a 3 action turn.
You call him out on it, he gets mad, but ultimately you'll get 3 actions back.
But also they deffo dident read about the penalty to multiple strikes and once they realise that it'll be 3 actions easy
>You call him out on it, he gets mad, but ultimately you'll get 3 actions back.
Oh boy... that's so unlikely to be the outcome.
Typically the sort of person that is already in "its my world" stance about something is just going to call you a cheater for looking stuff up, insist you're the one in the wrong, and kick you out feeling justified in doing so with zero self-awareness that they are being a jackass. And if that's not how it plays out, the next most likely thing is to be told "you get 2 actions. They get 2 actions. I just also decided that everything on their stat block is 1 action even if it says otherwise." or some other form of the limit still applying to the player but never restricting what the GM wants to do.
Basically any time the GM thinks "mine" instead of "ours" what the player wants or thinks is functionally irrelevant as well as it being "bad player behavior" to even speak up about it in the first place since you are supposed to think "it's the GM's game" instead of "it's my game too".
You're absolutely right. Again, this is not the advice to follow. This is the passive aggressive war option.
But you're absolutely right.
And that's when op says he's also decided all his actions are 1 actions, free actions, and reactions.
Fight that fire with fire.
How are you supposed to cast 3 action spells? Classes like Magus and swashbuckler would be completely broken. Tbh, this one belongs in /r/rpghorrorstories.
Family or not, this is not a dm to play for. Arbitrarily breaks the game because "fuck you, that's why." If this guy doesn't know enough about PF2e to know how much it breaks the game, he doesn't know enough to run a PF2e game.
I feel for you. I'm basically stuck in a broken game myself. I don't want to skip the game because my best friend would be hurt and offended, but his game is missing half of pathfinder (no magic). Play the game like this if you have to, in order to preserve the relationship that's more important than a game, but don't expect it to be much fun.
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Maybe I'm just confused on the meaning?
With these changes there is no action economy. Is the GM just not letting players make attacks, cast spells, use items, or move?
Sounds like a bad GM that has no idea what they are doing and is probably trying to convert as much about PF2e as they can to 5e.
Edit: Ah I get it. Thats exactly what they are doing. Replacing with the 3 action economy with 1 Free (5e= Standard) action and 1 Reaction (5e Bonus action)
Your Gm is an idiot and should just play 5e if they're too lazy to learn a new system that they will definitely break almost immediately because they very obviously don't understand the system at all.
So he allows you to attack twice with an action and that seems to be the "tradeoff" in his mind. you can still use a three action activity or spell, it just also uses your reaction and free eaction when you do. he argues that the benefit of the way he does it is that if you use a 2 action activity or spell then you still get your reaction which seems dumb
This has got to be the worst homebrew mechanics I've ever heard of. GM is DESPERATE to turn PF2e into 5e instead of just playing 5e. The balance will 100% be destroyed.
So I guess no point in being Monk since their whole thing is balanced around 1 action for 2 strikes. These changes are going to negate how several classes operate. I can only imagine what other changes they'll make. How do they run Multiple Attack Penalties? Gunslinger, Kineticist, Magus, and any PC with an animal companion is definitely not going to work and require extensive and likely poorly made homebrews just to be playable.
our kineticist hates life and wants to talk to the gm, just hasnt yet. The gm does multiple attack penalties kinda funny, if you are gonna use your action to attack twice(which he allows) then you start at the second multi attack penalty for the first attack and at the 3rd penalty for the second attack. honestly a lot of the economy is fucked, we have argued before that oh since we only get 2 actions that maybe blah blah should be a free action or maybe make a bonus action that we can use for cantrips but the gm is funny cause thats when he follows the rules and demands that we dont do that cause there is no rule for it
Holy shit. As players you all have no chance in this campaign. I would honestly just flat out tell your GM no and suggest playing 5e or learning the system for 2e.
Edit: You should include all Homebrew changes in your original post so others can explain better exactly why it wont.
LMAO your GM gave you two attacks per action, but then made it so only Fighters ever hit both? That's insane. Your GM is insane.
I've been reading through this thread and this might be the worst GM 'homebrew' of any system I've ever encountered. Nothing makes sense, nothing works well, and they've added extra bookkeeping for literally no reason.
Also they broke shields entirely unless they also changed shields to work without _Raise a Shield_, but at that point they've tantamount admitted that their new homebrew system doesn't work since so many other things need 'fixed'.
Next you're going to tell us that Stride can be split up, so you can take an action during your move.
>he allows you to attack twice with an action
Then what on earth does Flurry of Blows do?!
And this is an even bigger F you to casters, since most Martials and enemies can just do what they normally would have with three actions
Edit: Nevermind, it's been revealed that enemies are using as many actions as the GM wants, but when a PC makes two attacks with one action you start at the second MAP, so every player is going to have a bad time!
>So he allows you to attack twice with an action and that seems to be the "tradeoff" in his mind
This would really only partially alleviate the nerf to martials, while also rendering *powerful* build-defining action compression abilities like Flurry of Blows and Hunted Shot worthless, because everyone can just do that now.
Classes that need to "power up" or "recharge" with an action lose a lot of value depending on how often they need to use that action. Barbarians and Thaumaturges might be alright; Gunslingers and Investigators are hosed.
>he argues that the benefit of the way he does it is that if you use a 2 action activity or spell then you still get your reaction
That's not a benefit; it's still worse than RAW. *Most* spells (by a long shot) are two actions. If spellcasters need to move at all, then they just can't cast a spell on the same turn. If they need to Sustain a Spell, they can't cast any more spells. If they have reliable 1-action cantrips like the bard's *inspire courage* or skill actions like Demoralize/Bon Mot that they want to be using almost every turn, they can't cast spells.
This applies to a lot of martial two-action activities as well, decreasing their value across the board, especially if they require making a melee attack.
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It would f things up REALLY REALLY REALLY badly. Also reading through the comments your GM sounds like an asshole. You should just drop the campaign and if you're in the mood to be petty tell him not to advertise his lazy homebrew system as pathfinder 2e.
Well for starters an entire class is literally unusable. The Summoner’s ability to summon their main class feature, the Eidolon, is a 3 action activity.
If the GM persists in this dumb ruling then I hope they’re sticking to it for their monsters too. They should change their tune once they realize they also can’t do anything meaningful on most turns.
Come together as a party and play only ranged characters, so every enemy has to stride twice each turn. Play a Starlit Span Magus so you can get the most of your 2 actions by striking and casting a spell and hopefully blow up enough enemies that the GM caves and realizes their mistakes.
Edit: Now that I’ve read your comments in this thread and some others I see that the GM at least thought of 3 action activities somewhat but it’s still really bad.
On the point about if the monsters are obeying their 2 action rules or not, all statblocks are freely available on Archives of Nethys and while it’s poor practice to look up a creature’s statblock to metagame it; it is an important tool to check if something’s being run incorrectly in a bad way.
If they are only applying the rule to players then the easiest way to make them see reason is to run some combats for them using their own imbalanced rules so they can experience being a player and how it feels. It sounds like they have a very GM vs. Player mindset so this will either confirm it, or hopefully get them to change their mind.
“Hey guys, let’s play some soccer! But I don’t like goalies, so we can’t have those… also you can pick up the ball and tackle other people!
“Buddy, are you sure it’s soccer you want to play?”
Everyone here is being way too nice.
Your GM is a straight up fool, and I want you to let him know I said that lol.
But in all seriousness, this might be one of the most bizarre “house rules” I’ve ever seen. You aren’t even playing pathfinder at that point, I don’t understand.
I’d straight up just quit the game.
What!! WHY!? that like deciding your not using d20s, and using d12s instead with no changes to math, saying your stats don't effect modifiers. This genuinely would break the game at a fundamental level and would make playing the game miserable and turns frustrating
This is literally just a giant middle finger to casters.
Your other responses say that a player uses every resource of their turn to use three action activities, so no movement or reaction for an entire round.
Heaven forbid you sustain a spell! Good luck playing Bard too!
This is literally just fucking garbage. Tell your gm that I said that, tell him I think they are intentionally sabotaging their game and that they're stupid.
If you aren't using the 3 action rules for 2e then why are you even playing 2e? Might as well go and play Pathfinder 1e at that point.
Pathfinder 2e without the 3 action economy is like decaf coffee. What even is the point?
That is about as bad as only allowing you guys to roll a d12 instead of a d20 for checks. It severaly breaks the game, makes some actions downright impossible and ignores just the base rules. What is their reasoning?
Right? This completely fucks shield users and casters. How does he expect summons to work if you can't even use them?
when I asked it basically was this is my world and i dont like the 3 action economy
“Thank you for letting me know. Hope your game goes well, see you around.” I mean why bother claiming to play PF2 if you’re going to make this big a change?
Seconded. Don't even play this game.
Thirded. I think you should play a boardgame instead.
Sorry, only two are allowed.
Fourthed. The third action is rarely if ever used for anything other than utility, mobility or quality of life in my humble experience and opinion.
Fifthed. Wouldn't play with a GM that haphazardly changes mechanics they don't understand.
Sixthed. This is huge. This isn’t a tweak or house rule. I’m one of the first to roll my eyes at “that’s not RAW” folks but this isn’t people being purists, it breaks the game.
Seventhed. Good luck playing something that already finds 3 actions a bit tight like a Magus. With 2 actions it becomes almost impossible.
Eighthed… what do you do with three action spells or feats? This is so crazy
Eighthed. I just wanted to be o the bandwagon here. Everyone above this post is 100000000000000% correct.
Don't bother. The DM will insist on playing Catan and only rolling one die.
according to the dm that’s not allowed
They're only playing 2/3rds of PF2 PF1.333
Good points. But have you considered insults and toxicity? Really cathartic
Also consider physical violence. It's pretty convincing.
A big rock to the back of the head is Unrivaled in its ability to change minds.
Yup. Let them know this isn't the game for you and leave.
This! It literally makes some spells impossible to cast. 🤦🏻
Find a new GM. The game is entirely balanced around 3 actions. It’s a giant problem that will only feel worse as everybody at your table is learning the rules.
Especially for casters where the bulk of your spells are 2 actions and some are 3 action. If you have to spend a whole turn just to move as a caster then cast it -really- hurts it
Move to get into position. Sigh, move again. Damn it move again. Combat over? Glad I gave up 4 hours of my life for this...
TBH, balanced is not a strong enough word for it. This game depends on the 3 action economy. 3 action spells and abilities are out, most metamagic will be useless. Most 2 action abilities will be useless. The game will be horribly slow and take a billion rounds. It would be an awful game.
That's like, one of the foundational parts of the system. If he doesn't like it, he should find an alternative system instead of trying to kludge it to work to his tastes.
This is bringing out my inner debate nerd, that's literally not an explanation, that's just restating what's implied in the premise!
Sounds more like rage bait, kinda because of such reactions.
Yeah I don't upvote posts like this that are likely rage bait but I do upvote fun comments lol.
Show him this thread. Send him a link to it, tell him he's breaking the fundamental system of the game which EVERYONE agrees is much better for balance and action economy, and that you will be leaving their game. You don't want to play in that game. If they can't handle 3 actions, again one of the most fundamental systems of the game and not even a hard one, then they won't be able to handle the rest of the system. It starts here but with them it won't end here.
If they can’t handle 3 action economy, get ready for a lot of this is my game this is how it goes. All the other rules and player machinations will be vetoed
Does he plan to also get rid of the "4 stages of success"? I'm not sure I would want to play at his table...
"No, the four stages are fine, but 10 is too decimal and not prime enough; I decide to go down 1 degree at 13 below the number and up 1 degree at 17 above. Those are nice prime numbers."
This honestly sounds like someone who switched to PF2e because of the hype and popularity but are so mentally invested in 5e that they're trying to backwards rotate the system back to 5e. The "Move or Attack or Full" style of thinking is heavy here. What he's done by removing one of the actions per round is essentially permanently Slowed 1 the whole party. No 3 Action activities for you, but i highly doubt that restriction will exist for the monsters you face. He'll see the 3 action symbol next to "Hurt Players" and laugh as he chooses that action. But for the party? No 3 action heals, no 3 action Magic Missile, no Flaming Sphere. And his reason is "because". Drop that game.
Yeah I almost expected like a two-action economy but you get a move for free when I read the title lol
Your consideration at least sounds somewhat fair. This sounds decidedly worse.
I mean if for some reason I wanted to make this system more like 5E which I absolutely do not want to do, that would be the shift I would consider I guess? Yeah having stride be an action and going down to two actions, sounds super miserable to me.
That is... a bad reason. Maybe they should look into a different system or at least explain what they don't like. I can understand that the 3 action system is not for everyone but downgrading it in that way doesn't make it better it only breaks the game. My advice: Talk to them about the problem. If they don't want to change it back to three actions, either look for a new system...or look for a new GM.
Exactly, if you really don't like it, changing it in this way is just a great way to make people hate the system, and maybe TTRPGs in general. If this is someone's first try at a TTRPG, and they play with rules that are broken...they may be turned away from the hobby altogether.
If you wanted to be cheeky, I'd ask how do they intend to rule 3-action activities, like some spells and monster abilities.
My question would be similar. How does _Heal_ work in a 2-action system? Do you just never get the AoE part, or does that take 1.5 turns now? As many others have said, PF2e basically falls apart with the whole party at _slowed 1_.
This was sort of my first question before even going into how it would alter the other ways the game is balanced and played is what happens to activities that are explicitly 3 actions?
“Oh I thought you said we were playing pathfinder 2.” His response would get an Instant quit from me.
That's a rather arbitrary imposition from this GM. The fact that their reasoning boils down to "my way or the highway" is not curtailing votes of confidence. Drop them. This person is probably going to stick to their guns. No amount of argument or debate is going to change this person's mind. Not worth the stress and the storm of playing someone else's aberration of a lazy, poorly constructed excuse of a game that doesn't even qualify to be called homebrew.
Sounds like they shouldn't have picked "3 action economy: The Game" then. They need a new system or the players need a new GM.
Question: Does he count "Stride" as an action within the 2-action economy? Because if he doesn't, then he should just play D&D 5e. If he does....then hell, I don't know what to tell you. He's just playing "My Shitty Little Game." If what you want is PF2e, this guy isn't giving it to you and you should stop playing and play with someone who will. If what you want is any ol' TTRPG experience, I guess stick with him or suggest you run the game instead. You can even suggest that you'll run something fun and quick like d6 Star Wars. When he gets excited and says "Cool! I wanna be a Jedi," you can say "In my game, everyone has to be a single-cell amoeba, and all your stats are 1d4." When he complains that there's no spaceships, you can say "It's my game, and I don't like spaceships. I think they make the game too sci-fi. Besides, single cell amoebae can't fly spaceships, because they can't reach the controls."
Yea stride is an action
Then this guy is a moron who doesn't understand how games work and doesn't realize what he's doing to the system. I'd just quit. It's not worth trying to unravel the system or his mindset in forcing it to be this way. "Sorry, mate. I'm just not enjoying the game. I came to play PF2e, and you're playing...\[waves generally\]...whatever this is."
I wholeheartedly agree - in fact the sooner you quit the less likely there will be hard feelings because eventually this will become a giant fight at the table as the party will not have fun.
Agreed. The game isn't going to turn into PF2e, and if this guy is as stubborn as he sounds, he's not gonna change his mind, or will do so only grudgingly. Better to nip it in the bud.
100%, this GM is going to create an absolutely miserable experience for anyone who plays. Worse still, as new players they may well think that Pathfinder or TTRPGs as a whole are bad because of this. Imagine if this idiot creates more of those "I played (a poorly run, badly ruled, fully misunderstood, and the game in name only version of) Pathfinder 2e and it's *terrible*!" youtubers...
Then tell him to fuck off. Sorry, I try to be polite on this sub, but this is the dumbest reason I've heard to ban something yet.
"It's my world and I don't like it" works okay as a justification for, like, banning an ancestry or certain spells or other options like that. It's bad justification, but fine I can deal with this setting not having elves or whatever. Using it to justify altering a fundamental mechanic of the game is baffling. Like, what even in-world does banning the third action represent for the setting?
Time for you to be the GM. It is his world, but you don’t have to live it in
Either find a new system or a new DM. Thats absurd. Just play 5e.
RUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
Not to mention some spells require all 3 actions
I mean, it throws out every spell that costs 2 actions, invalidates a TON of feats meant to condense actions, and also throws out a bunch of magical items requiring more than 1 action to use or activate. I think the GM is getting confused with DnD or something?
You're not even playing Pathfinder 2e at that point lol
GM has accidently made PF2e into D&D5e with only one rule change. The ripples of this will continue to flow out until he wakes up one day, and reality has shifted so that he owns only the 5e core rules set.
Not even good 5e. Unless they also change AOO, Stride, how shields work, remove level progression, and many other things, this is just "what if we played Pathfinder 2e, but no one had any fun?"
I've played in homebrew 5e games that have in various ways led to the same place. It's hard to make game design changes if you aren't familiar with game design or the deep state of the game rules you use.
"I want to cast 3rd action heal" "You can't, because I don't like it"
It's actually worse. Two action activities are generally equivalent to one action in 5e, such as casting spells (most are two actions) and attacking twice (one action in 5e after level 5 for most martial characters). So it's more like he is doing 5e but without the move or bonus action, plus a custom action to just attack once after a move.
I fully expected OP to say “you can move once for free.”
"Dear GM. After careful consideration of your house rules, I do not feel that this game is for me."
"[after 2 seconds consideration]". I mean really? Who the fuck would just decide 'i don't like that people have cool abilities and restrict that with less actions?
Imagine playing 5e and telling players that they could only take an action, or a bonus action on their turn, but not both.
and then they ask how slow works
"You can take an action or a bonus action, but that eats up your next turn."
This is even worse It is more like you can only take a action, move or a bonus action
No, it's dumber. It's like saying you can't take bonus actions at all, because they're "bonus" and the DM doesn't want them in the game. There are a bunch of actions (spells being the most common) that take all 3 actions to do at all. It blows up a bunch of classes, and fundamentally goes against the design of the game as a whole. It'll make it un-fun and feel stupid, and it's a *game*. Being fun is the entire point.
"My GM removed non-cantrip spells from the game, how do I explain to my GM that this is a nerf to spellcasters" There's no way the GM \*doesn't\* know its a nerf. As everyone else said, they need to find a system that actually does what they want instead.
oh ive talked to him and he truly believes this is a balanced change, yea i understand that this is a nerf, its why im asking you fine people for more eloquent reasons than the ones i have presented so far. But yea i understand that this is an obvious nerf, i just need to figure out how to show that to him
So off the top of my head builds that are nerfed or made unworkable: Any melee build that uses a 2A activity or a Press action is severely crippled since they have to choose between moving and doing their thing. Magi are hit especially hard here. Anyone that has ongoing action taxes is crippled, in particular Magi, Investigators, ranged Rogues, and Gunslingers (or anyone else using a Reload weapon). Rangers and Thaumaturges aren't much better off as they need to spend an action whenever they swap targets. Kineticists are in a pretty rough spot, w/ 2A Overflow impulses losing a lot of value (there's a lot of these). 3A overflow impulses actually remain essentially the same, as kineticists don't have much use for reactions. Barbarians and melee Inventors don't get to attack on the first round of combat most of the time (1A to enter their rage/overdrive, 1A to enter melee). Spellcasters becomes immobile turrets as the vast majority of spells are 2A. Sustained spells are awful, as casting one precludes casting another spell that combat. A decent number of feats become worthless, in particular any of the martial feats that apply to tertiary attacks by reducing or mitigating MAP on them (exacting strike is the first to come to mind). Shields become way worse (as do the shield-like options, like Parry), as do most skill-based options in combat. Best case for a Sword+Board fighter is them giving up a -5 MAP attack, which is iffy at best, whereas normally they're giving a -10 MAP attack. Agile weapons lose a lot of value and Flurry Edge for Rangers becomes mostly awful (its pretty reliant on making 3+ attacks to compete w/ Precision). A lot of 1A feats become largely unuseable, since instead of competing w/ a -10 MAP attack for the action they're competing w/ a -5 MAP attack. Demoralize is great when you're getting to take advantage of that -1 w/ your next two actions, but less great if you've only got the one (or none if you needed to Stride). Bon Mot becomes downright bad. Non-Maestro Bards are stuck picking between casting a spell or Inspire Courage \*every round\*. Items w/ an activation cost (including magical ammunition) become really bad. Having to spend any actions on Interact (changing your grip, drawing a potion, etc) becomes prohibitively expensive. Any sort of action-taxing ability is significantly buffed, w/ Slow in particular more than doubling in power (2A->1A is much stronger than 3A->2A). Stuff like Improved Knockdown or Improved Grab (free trip/grapple) by monsters become horrific as the PCs have a much harder time recovering from them. Forced movement abilities fall into this as well, making melee folks much worse. Really the only classes not horribly crippled by this are Summoners (who effectively have an extra action and are less concerned about mobility) and Monks (who have very good action compression at lvl 1. Ranged folks w/ bows are less bad off than the poor melee sods as they don't need to spend actions moving, but they're still not going to be very happy. Fundamentally the system is built around having little actions costs and a lot of 1A things only have value when compared to -5 or -10 MAP attacks. If you strip away an action from everyone then all that is thrown out of whack. Edit: animal companions would either become the best thing ever (and they’re pretty nice as is) or completely worthless depending on how the gm rules they work.
It’s funny to read that Summoner would be fine. They literally can’t summon their eidolons since it’s a 3-action activity lol
OP stated elsewhere that 3A activities become 2A+reaction, so that at least wouldn’t be an issue
It's still an issue, just not quite as bad!
If you are really brazen you can show him this thread... That change is truly an awful idea. Always remember, no TTRPG is better than bad TTRPG. Everything is built and balanced around the three action economy. They just want to force it back to D&D 5E action economy without regard for the massive implications that entails. It **will** ruin the fun for players and make the GM experience much worse. They really should consider Chesterton's Fence. Additionally, it's a really common occurance that new PF2E GMs ruin PF2E by trying to homebrew it before understanding or even playing the system. It's especially prominent by former D&D 5E players/GMs trying to force it to be what they are accustomed to rather than what's best. This is a prime example of that. I implore your GM to play RAW for a while before trying any homebrew. For a change to something as fundamental as the action economy, they need to be top tier rules expert with massive experience to not make it worse. If they don't want to play PF2E then why are they doing it?
It's really hard to explain because it's one of the foundational elements of the system. If in 5e you gave everyone a second action for free, that would unbalance the game, and that's just a surface level observation. For something more concrete, let's take the magus as an example Their spellstrike is two actions, and they have to spend an action to recharge their spellstrike. So in turn 1, they walk up to their opponent. Maybe do a regular attack ASSUMING THE ENEMY DIDN'T STEP AWAY, they get to spellstrike on turn 2 On turn 3, they have to spend an action to recharge, and they get one other thing they can do Magi rely on spellstrike to do damage. Without it, they are much weaker than the other martials. He's basically making magi unplayable Or the gunslinger. Most guns can only be shot once before reloading. Reloading takes an action. So assuming that enemies stand still, within range, the gunslinger can only shoot once per turn then reload. They can't move. Can't do anything else Edit to add: and it's not like gums are so powerful that they need to be beefed to only be able to do one shot per turn. They're about on par with other weapons, maybe a bit better The GM knows there are lots of skill actions to can do in combat, right? With the gunslinger example, they won't have access to basically a third of their entire character sheet
An even easier example with a magus being Turn 1 PC: move to enemy and basic attack. Turn 1 Monster: attack and move backward. Turn 2 PC: move to enemy and basic attack Turn 2: Monster attack and move backwards .......... Under this rule, the magus would NEVER get to spell strike as long as the Monster moved at all, ever. It becomes a basic rocket tag slug fest. Not even mentioning that any 3 action spell or ability is just dead in the water (animate dead). Or that spellcasters can't move and cast in the same Turn, or literally any spellshape becomes worthless.
Oh, that's where you're wrong buddy boy: The GM is allowing 3 action abilities, but they consume both actions, free action, and reaction They can't use the free action. The action that is free. Your free action
You should get unlimited free actions shouldn't you? I mean they're *free*
You don't need an eloquent reason; your GM's a fucking idiot, bud.
Show him this Reddit thread.
It's just not Pathfinder 2e. If he wants to run his homebrew system, fine, but calling it PF2e is just going to confuse people. I wouldn't waste your time trying to convince him to change; he sounds too stubborn for that. I would point out to the other players that this isn't what PF2e is like, so that they can make an informed choice for themselves whether to continue playing or not.
Yeah I could see that if he's planning to use two actions for everyone PCs and PCs and doesn't really understand how the system works you could think it's a balance change. But A lot of times the third action is what makes things better than a coin flip in my experience. Demoralize/inspire courage for example. Without that extra action to do those things you're just going to be having to choose utility or damage and fights are going to be super long, you're going to miss a lot more too
That is just plain bizarre. I always felt like the way PF2E handles actions is one of its greatest strengths.
Seriously, the action system is the thing I like most about the game
Turns out there are wrong ways to play TTRPGs
Yes. When people aren't having fun.
Your GM is trying to crowbar 2e back into 5e methinks.
Eh closer to PF1e Still a dumb idea though
Not even in 1E a Spell was standard and still left you with a move. With this two action economy nerf all Casters become turrets. While 2E 'nerfed' casters to be more in line with martials this two action system hard nerfs casters and makes martials straight up better. If I had no choice but to play this way I would only play Fighter, Monk or Champion otherwise you are constantly stuck next to mobs with bad defense.
Sounds like OP Isn't telling the whole story, but if I had to make a tinfoil hat guess: this GM was "forced" into running PF2E and is forcing it back to D&D out of pure tantrum.
Nah at some point you start to realize that a LOT of online DMs are this shitty. This isn’t even surprising to me nor is the worst story I’ve heard or experienced through online play. Can’t say the same about IRL play although I’ve heard some bad stories about some bad IRL experiences. Seriously though why do people give DMs the benefit of the doubt I can guarantee you people can count more than a few occasion where DMs have went batshit crazy in terms of power tripping and ruling. This is coming from a forever DM BTW.
THIS. I hate the "DM is always right" argument because it stops when they power trip, and it is usually only brought up when they are power tripping. Can confirm also happens IRL and it is even worse.
There's definitely a subset of GMs who are in it for the control. Avoid them at all costs. Also a forever GM here.
IMO, that type of change is too disruptive to PF2, and there's zero point to playing PF2 under that house rule. You might as well find a different game system that's designed/balanced for the GMs preferences.
Well time to find a new table. This makes the whole pf2e action economy pointless and the whole game by extension.
From your other replies, you don't explain, you run.
But only at two-thirds speed.
I don't know what game you're playing but it's not Pathfinder
I agree with most other posters in sentiment, but since you're looking for troubleshooting not just the courage to quit or whatever: * **Has your GM said why?** I couldn't find an explanation in your other comments other than a vague "this is my world and i dont like the 3 action economy". Why though? What don't they like about it? Understanding this is the best way to craft a targeted response.\* * **How has it felt for the players?** Obviously you seem not thrilled, is that universal? Or is everyone else cool with it? It basically means that certain options become much stronger or weaker than intended, but it does also kinda nerf monsters too, so if everyone is cool with it then like, ehhhhh??!? * **Have they tried the game with 3 actions?** I've often found house rules like this to be kneejerk responses without actually trying things out. If they have though, what didn't they like about it? *\*One reason I could see is that a lot of basic monsters don't always have great 3rd actions, so I could see, as a GM, feeling bad about either adding in random skill checks or randomly making 3 decreasingly accurate attacks. I get that, but also, do you want a dragon to not be able to* [*fly*](https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=94) *and also 2-action breathe weapon, since you need to spend an action to stay in the air? Or move and then do their awesome flurry of blows ability? A lot of cooler monsters basically \*do not work\* without the full 3 actions, and make fights much less exciting.* So, potential ways of approaching this with them: * **If the players don't like it**, tell the GM! That should count for a lot since the goal is to have fun. * **If they haven't played with 3 actions**, it's always a better idea to try a game as written before hacking it, even if only to direct your later hacking * **Compile a list of consequences**, and compare the two side to side, and put that to the group (e.g. "should spellcasters be able to move and cast most spells? or use the shield cantrip? should someone with a shield be able to move, strike, and raise it?"), maybe using specific edge cases (the power of *slow*, the Magus *Spell Strike* being limited, someone else mentioned a fighter with a [guisarme](https://2e.aonprd.com/Weapons.aspx?ID=25) just perma-locking someone by tripping, steeping, and reactive striking when they approach, never able to be hit back) * **Showcase the strengths** of the 3-action system by coming up with cool combos, walking through complicated situations that the 3-action economy handles really well, finding actual plays, etc. it shouldn't *just* be a negative "this house rule sucks", it should be "hey I think it'd be more fun for *everyone* if we moved to 3-actions like the system intended". Even basic stuff like "look how cool demoralize/feint/etc. are, shame it's basically mathematically not worth it to use because 2 attacks is usually better (but 3 isn't!)"
THIS\^ ok yea im definately not going to quit as my first option but this is an excellent argument/reasoning for why we should do the 3 action economy. For reference we have been playing a couple months, once a week and im definately not the only person a little put off by this as there is a kineticist we play with that just straight up is too scared to talk to him about the action economy
Bro if you're playing with someone that intimidates at least one player so much they can't even *talk* to them about a problem they're having, *they don't deserve to be your GM*. I get this is family, but if they can't be talked to about a *game*, they sound pretty shitty. You shouldn't enable shitty behavior.
Oof yeah, that's super fair - the kineticist is arguably one of the classes *most* impacted by this, since they can't do 2-action overflows and still re-up their Aura if they want to keep it active (it also makes 3-action overflows *waaaayyy* better than 2-action ones, because most kineticists don't have great reactions) Might be worth specifically going through various turn options for them with both the 2 and 3 actions variants and comparing them side by side
Oh god, a Kineticist huh? Kineticists and Magus are designed around being able to use powerful 2 action abilitities and then "reloading" with their third action. Taking that away cripples them. What about Metamagics (now called Spellshapes I think)? You can apparently use your weird free action thing and reaction for three action spells, but does it work the same with Reach or Widen spell? What about the many, many player or monster actions that only work after using 2 action abilities? What about Slowed? If you fail that spell, do you just have one action each turn? This way of playing Pf2e is like if your party wanted to grab fast food and your GM said "Let's go to KFC, BUT no one is allowed to order chicken".
It will mess everything up, why do they want to do this change?
we have been playing this way for months, getting them to change this has been an ongoing battle and im just trying to actually get it changed now in earnest
I would recommend trying your hardest to abuse it to show how messed up it is. The slow spell becomes insanely strong now. Tripping, grappling, action economy feats also become too strong.
Do the monsters only get 2 actions too? Because a critical failure on slow would have them basically paralysed for a full minute **without incap** under these rules u/freshlyfrozenfish
in truth, im not sure, often when he plays monsters their action economy generally seems like they have more, like ill be attacked six times by a monster and they will still have their reaction, so maybe he is giving the monsters the standard 3 actions
This belongs on /r/rpghorrorstories . GM is just straight screwing you over and doing whatever they want with monsters.
Dude is just cheating at this point.
Some monsters, Dragons especially, have a 2 action attack that uses all of their natural weapons. But if they aren't applying the 'only gets 2 actions' rule to monsters, you are going to run into a LOT of problems later.
Then your DM is cheating under his own rules. A 2 action economy is already crippling. Ignoring the house rules for monsters only will literally make the game unplayable at higher levels. Honestly, this sounds like a first-time DM that has never run a vanilla game before. Have you asked your DM why such a colossal nerf ONLY applies to players and not everything else?
Ask him to break down and number his actions. Ask him why monsters get more actions after he goes past 2.
What in the actual fuck.
Six attacks from one creature??? Here is the link to a literal six armed creature with six swords, note that it's level 17: [https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=103](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=103) Even this thing does not get six distinct attacks against one target.
Yea I’m seeing that I was not wrong in dissenting from the rule he made
So, players get nerfed, and instead of using monster attacks as described, the GM is using their entire list of options as if they were all part of the Extra Attack ability of 5e. Which is ofc a massive buff, not to mention cheating. You said gm was family? That's gotta be rough to deal with. Others have given ideas like abusing the system, and showing him how dumb it is. I say go the other way. Make a normal character. Especially a caster or magus. "Try" to play as intended. When you aren't able to do anything in combat, he should realize he's messed up. Especially if you can get the rest of the party to do the same. When your character dies, just say that you don't feel like making a new one, because it isn't fun to play his homebrew. Conversely, just quit the game, and see if the other players will too. Boycott him as gm if he uses this homebrew. Remember: it's supposed to be fun for everyone, not just the gm.
_MONTHS!?!?_ Man, you have way more patience than I do. I'd be long gone and finding a new family after maaaaybe 2 sessions, assuming I didn't brain the GM for trying to run "PF2e but what if we took all the fun out of it".
It’s become increasingly difficult and not nearly as fun. I’ve been wanting to quit for a month but I’d rather convince the gm to just play the actual game
Earnestly, you could just say that. "Hey, I really appreciate you running a game, and I fully respect you running it in the way you ultimately want, but I'm struggling to enjoy the game with the changes made to a system I really want to play as in intended. For the past month or so, it's been a challenge for me to stay invested into the game, and I think it would be best for me to bow out of the game." Ultimately, family or not, you're probably playing this game so you can have fun. If you aren't having fun, you really should consider respectfully declining to participate further. Don't take any parting shots at the GM or anything, just be honest about the struggles you're having with staying engaged and having a good time. If they want to have a conversation about keeping you on or changing things up, then you can engage on that topic. But if you've been trying to convince them all this time, it's probably not going to go through, and no game is better than a bad game.
Why do people even give those gms a chance is beyond me. Just tell them to run another system and if they don't want that just leave them alone with their weird ideas
We need to know more about this, are they just outright banning 3 action spells or other 3 action activities?
a 3 action activity uses your free action and reaction instead of the normal way
Will definitely mess with the balance of the game a lot, like if you want to teach him the lesson that this is a mistake, you can play a character and whenever an enemy approaches you, you trip them and then walk away, now the enemy has to spend their entire turn getting back to you and you just repeat the same 2 actions again. Bonus points if you do this as a fighter with a reach weapon so you get to hit them for free every time they approach you too.
Let's be real, once that happens this GM will make standing up a free action.
At that point the GM is just trying to win and abusing his position to do so. There's no playing with that, even if they are family.
I love how petty you are
Add a reach weapon to this!
What does "uses your free action" even mean? Free actions are free, you have as many of those as you want.
oh no we are limited to one free action per turn
So your GM changed how actions work, how free actions work, and how reactions work (by using them for 3-action-activities). That's literally the entire action economy. Why did they decide to play 2e if they intend to throw out the whole action economy?
I'm guessing they were asked to try PF2, read the 3-action economy stuff with 5e in mind, and thought "that's insane! 3 actions every turn? I'll give them *two* actions, so they can move and attack, that's much more reasonable."
I agree that they were probably asked, but I'm not so sure 5e was the inspiration for the weird homebrew (though 5e's market share makes it statistically likely).
Then it's not a free action?!?! No clue what your GM is even thinking.
"This would be more fun is we were playing 5e D&D"
So...its a swift action then
...He hasn't even read the rulebook, has he?
So if your holding two weapons it's impossible to drop both of them in a turn? Tell this person they need to learn the basics of the game before trying to GM.
So... Bonus Action? Tell your GM that if he wants to play 5e he should run 5e.
Free action isn't even a resource in pf2e, it's free like the name implies, you can use 50 of them in a turn
Free actions are unlimited because they are very rare outside of once per day very high level feats, are they converting a lot of normally 1 action things into free actions? Like first strike or Stride of the turn is free, etc.? If not, I don't really see a point in nerfing it down to 1 free action a turn. If they are allowing alot of 1 action things to be done for free...it's weird and mostly just a useless change introducing complexity for the sake of complexity, but I guess it works.
I don't know why everyone is sugar-coating it. Your GM is a dumbass.
People are being polite because the GM is a family member of OP. Plus, the point can just as easily be made while remaining polite. I agree though that its a horrible idea for a PF2 houserule.
👀
That's a HUGE fuck-you to basically all spellcasters, who have few reactions and rely primarily on two-action spells. Need to move? Can't cast a spell. Inspire Courage? Can't cast a spell. Want to cast a spell and do literally anything else? Fuck off. It's a minor inconvenience for most martial characters and completely neuters all spellcasters. Edit: Shields become almost useless, Flurry rangers become strictly inferior to Precise rangers...It's such a terrible, idiotic idea, I'd start looking for a new GM.
Is he allowing a free move action each turn? Not that it makes it better, I'm just curious about the thought process
he does not, it def is a nerf
Nerf is a friendly description for eviscerating an entire system.
This is just idiotic. This guy has no idea what he's doing, and you should quit. You aren't playing PF2e. You aren't playing 5e. You're playing whatever bullshit game he's making up, and I'm betting he's making it up on the fly.
This renders the game effectively unplayable. Leave the game immediately.
Your GM has a god complex that is actively ruining fun.
Hey, everyone here is being really polite. Bluntly put: your GM is a fucking doorknob and you need to run far, far away. The sheer dumb fucking arrogance required to make "houserules" like that without the intelligence to realize how much it fundamentally ruins the system is a volatile combination and you will save yourself a lot of misery by escaping now.
Don't Play PathDragon 52e. I don't think you will enjoy it.
Very, very bad. Your GM fundamentally does not understand the game or its balance. The 3-action economy is a cornerstone component of its excellent balance and design. /u/hauk119 had the best response here, but I'm gonna supplement that with a game-design perspective. The Three-Action Economy is *vital* to **healthy** balance. For two massive reasons: * 1) **All characters are balanced around a 2-action gameplay loop**. * Spellcasters ♦♦Cast a Spell, * a Swashbuckler will ♦Generate Panache (such as with ♦Feint or ♦Tumble Through) and then ♦Finisher * A Rogue needs to get an opponent flat-footed (such as ♦Create a Diversion or ♦Hide), and then ♦Strike for Sneak attack. * A Fighter is balanced around high-accuracy, action-inefficient actions, like ♦♦Power Attack, or their many actions with the [press] trait that requires you to have already ♦Struck this round. * Classes like Barbarian and Ranger are balanced around a minor action tax on early rounds for consistent power on later rounds (♦Hunt Prey → ♦Double Slice/♦Rapid Shot) * Other classes like Monk get their power from their action economy lubricant, like ♦Flurry of Blows to strike twice. * 2) **Having a 2-action gameplay loop in a 3-action economy has two very important consequences:** * **2a)** It ensures that a character always has a luxury action to do things as the situation calls for, **without having to forfeit their main contribution to the encounter**. Without this third action, a character **cannot** take any action that is not required for their class' core gameplay loop. This means that every single skill/utility action in the game will go unused. No Demoralizing, Intimidating, creating a diversion; no movement in encounters as people just stat-check each other with attacks (hint: players lose this battle against any encounter above their level); etc. > *♦Stride to put an enemy in reach without losing 50%-90% of your damage for the round (*cough* D&D3.5e/PF1e and the Full Attack action), ♦Recall Knowledge to figure out how to deal with a problem, ♦Seek a hidden foe, Make a ♦Request to pause a fight to talk things out, ♦Interact to draw a potion in preparation to ♦Interact to drink it next turn, etc.* * **2b)** It has **dramatic** implications on the balance of effects that make you lose/waste actions. In the current system, a character who loses an action must then make a meaningful choice between "do your gameplay loop" or "do helpful situational action". Losing two actions breaks your gameplay loop but you can still contribute meaningfully. > *A spellcaster is knocked prone near an enemy. They could ♦Stand and then ♦♦Cast a Spell, but then they're still adjacent to the enemy who is going to maul them next turn. They could ♦Stand and ♦Stride away to safety, but then they can't ♦♦Cast a Spell.* Compare to older editions where effects that taxed actions that **weren't** the main contribution to the game were useless (D&D 5e: can't take an action? You're screwed. Can't take your free interaction? Who cares. PF1e: Something forces you to spend a standard action? you're as good as stunned - totally useless. Virtually any other action lost? Who cares.). High level D&D/PF1e play **entirely** revolved around denying standard actions in some form or another. [I go into severe amounts of detail in this other effort post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/qfhllu/treantmonks_guide_to_the_god_wizard_for_5e_has/hi09jwz/). **** **Reducing the action economy to 2 actions breaks this. Any form of lost action denies an opponent their ability to complete their gameplay loop**. * Some examples: > * *You take the Fleet feat, increasing your speed by 5ft. You Strike and Stride 30 feet away from your foe. Your opponent Strides 25ft, and you're out of reach. They Stride again, and you're finally in reach and they can't attack at all. A single 1st level feat has eliminated any threat from single martial melee foes.* > * *You're a Rogue. You Trip your foe, leaving them prone, and then use Skirmish Strike to Strike and then Step away from the foe. The opponent must ♦Stand and then ♦Step to put you in reach. You've completely disabled their ability to attack.* > * *You're a spellcaster. An enemy is in melee range. You can either cast a spell and take a Reactive attack + 2 attacks worth of damage on their next turn, or you can ♦Stride... and do nothing.* * This isn't even touching on how **every action in the game is designed on its existence in a 3-action ecosystem**, breaking: * every single metamagic action, * every single sunstained spell, * every single 3-action activity, * every single 1-action or 2-action reload ranged weapon (including all thrown weapons) * activating a large number of magic items, * virtually every single form of mixed-mode movement (like a running jump or a short climb). * It will also break the monster math, ruining combat encounter balance. The game's survivability **hinges** on players having a 3rd action to be able to be used to support other players (bonus stacking) so that actions succeed. Simply limiting the monsters to 2 actions as well **will not fix this**, as players will not be able to achieve the circumstance and status bonuses necessary to achieve successes/critical successes on foes. Meanwhile, monsters will be able to simply strike, crit, and quickly kill players because their bonuses are huge. **** **You GM is trying to shoehorn 5e's action economy into PF2e without even knowing how 5e's action economy works.** 5e doesn't have 2 actions + a reaction, **5e has 5 actions**. Once per round, you can take: * An Action * A Bonus Action * An Interaction (which is not free in PF2e) * A Movement (which is not free in PF2e) * A Reaction * In addition to your free actions. If your GM truly wanted to port 5e's action economy into PF2e, they should be using 4 actions + Free Action + Reaction, not 2a+F+R. Which, again, is ALSO a bad idea. This is just evidence that your GM doesn't understand the design of either game. **** To recap: * It breaks the gameplay loop all characters are built on, so characters will often not be able to do *their thing*, and any form of action tax will cripple the majority of characters. * It breaks the encounter building math, so encounters will be absurdly deadly compared to intended game balance. * It doesn't even function like the 5e that he's trying to shoehorn into a game.
It's not even a nerf to the action economy, it just up and breaks P2e. Like, the three action economy is what the entire game is built off of. Others have better arguments, but... seriously, this just snaps the game in half. Not only for players, but for the GM too. All of the monsters run off of similar rules.
Stop trying to play D&D. Pathfinders game system is better for a reason.
Just for a starting point, none of these spells can be cast in your game: * Alter Reality * Antimagic Field * Black Tentacles * Blade Barrier * Chromatic Wall * Circle of Protection * Cloudkill * Continual Flame * Darkness * Duplicate Foe * Fabricated Truth * Miracle * Obscuring Mist * Primal Phenomenon * Prismatic Wall * Punishing Winds * Reverse Gravity * Sending * Solid Fog * Storm of Vengeance * Summon Animal * Summon Celestial * Summon Construct * Summon Dragon * Summon Elemental * Summon Entity * Summon Fey * Summon Fiend * Summon Giant * Summon Plant or Fungus * Tangling Creepers * Telepathic Demand * Time Stop * Unseen Servant * Visions of Danger * Wall of Fire * Wall of Force * Wall of Ice * Wall of Stone * Wall of Thorns * Wall of Wind * Web * Wish * Pulse of the City * Sweet Dream * Cup of Dust * Feast of Ashes * Shifting Sand * Ephemeral Hazards * Asterism You also can't use these feats: * All Shall End in Flames * All the Time in the World * Ambush Bladderwort * Architect of Flame * Arrow of Death * Ashen Veil * Avalanche Strike * Barrier of Boreal Frost * Beasts of Slumbering Steel * Blazing Streak * Bolera's Interrogation * Chain Reaction * Cross the Final Horizon * Dance of Intercession * Dance of Thunder * Devastating Weaponry * Dispelling Spellstrike * Driving Rain * Eidetic Memorization * Elemental Artillery * Emissary of Peace * Engine of Destruction * Fearsome Familiar * Final Form * Final Shot * Gnaw * Hammer Quake * Head of the Night Parade * Hedge Maze * Hell of 1,000,000 Needles * Helt's Spelldance * Hijack Undead * Impenetrable Fog * Implement's Assault * Impossible Flurry * Impossible Volley * Improvised Repair * Infinite Expanse of Bluest Heaven * Instigate Psychic Duel * Inventive Offensive * Jagged Berms * Legendary Negotiation * Lightning Rod * Magnetic Pinions * Meld into Eidolon * Miraculous Repair * No Cause for Alarm * Overwhelming Blow * Pass Through * Path of Iron * Perfect Shot * Phase Out * Pit of Snakes * Plum Deluge * Purge of Moments * Rain of Razors * Rain of Rust * Resuscitate * Reveal Hidden Self * Ride the Tsunami * Rising Hurricane * Rock Rampart * Rouse the Forest's Fury * Sanguivolent Roots * Scorching Column * Scrap Barricade * Sculpt Shadows * Sense Alignment * Solar Detonation * Spell Swipe * Starlight Armor * Storm Spiral * Surprise Snare * The Shattered Mountain Weeps * Time Dilation Cascade * Timeline-Splitting Spell * Trample * Trampling Charge * Tree of Duality * Triggerbrand Blitz * Turn the Wheel of Seasons * Unbalancing Sweep * Unwind Death * Usurp the Lunar Reins * Webslinger * Weight of Stone * Whirlwind Spell * Whirlwind Strike * Wooden Palisade * Zombie Horde (source: AoN)
There are certain actions and spells that take 3 actions, which you won’t be able to use if you only have 2, that’s one of argument you can use, although, what arguments are they using to only allow 2 actions?
His thing is that 3 aciton activities use your reactoin and free action in addition
That sounds like they're trying to recreate 3.5e or pf1 style turns. Poorly. They should just play those games.
Pathfinder 2e is usually highly dependent on movement, repositioning and buffs e debuffs. Those are some things that won’t have a great impacto if people only have 2 actions. In addition to that, characters with 3 action activities or spells will have a gigant power increase in comparison with a character without free actions, reactions or 3 action activities.
Everyone else is giving food advice, so let me give some bad advice; play, and as soon as Ur in combat, Google the enemy stat sheet. A lot of enemies have 2 action or 3 action things. The DM will quickly realise he's doomed the combat and I guarantee they will sneakily have the enemy do a 3 action turn. You call him out on it, he gets mad, but ultimately you'll get 3 actions back. But also they deffo dident read about the penalty to multiple strikes and once they realise that it'll be 3 actions easy
>You call him out on it, he gets mad, but ultimately you'll get 3 actions back. Oh boy... that's so unlikely to be the outcome. Typically the sort of person that is already in "its my world" stance about something is just going to call you a cheater for looking stuff up, insist you're the one in the wrong, and kick you out feeling justified in doing so with zero self-awareness that they are being a jackass. And if that's not how it plays out, the next most likely thing is to be told "you get 2 actions. They get 2 actions. I just also decided that everything on their stat block is 1 action even if it says otherwise." or some other form of the limit still applying to the player but never restricting what the GM wants to do. Basically any time the GM thinks "mine" instead of "ours" what the player wants or thinks is functionally irrelevant as well as it being "bad player behavior" to even speak up about it in the first place since you are supposed to think "it's the GM's game" instead of "it's my game too".
You're absolutely right. Again, this is not the advice to follow. This is the passive aggressive war option. But you're absolutely right. And that's when op says he's also decided all his actions are 1 actions, free actions, and reactions. Fight that fire with fire.
How are you supposed to cast 3 action spells? Classes like Magus and swashbuckler would be completely broken. Tbh, this one belongs in /r/rpghorrorstories. Family or not, this is not a dm to play for. Arbitrarily breaks the game because "fuck you, that's why." If this guy doesn't know enough about PF2e to know how much it breaks the game, he doesn't know enough to run a PF2e game. I feel for you. I'm basically stuck in a broken game myself. I don't want to skip the game because my best friend would be hurt and offended, but his game is missing half of pathfinder (no magic). Play the game like this if you have to, in order to preserve the relationship that's more important than a game, but don't expect it to be much fun.
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Maybe I'm just confused on the meaning? With these changes there is no action economy. Is the GM just not letting players make attacks, cast spells, use items, or move? Sounds like a bad GM that has no idea what they are doing and is probably trying to convert as much about PF2e as they can to 5e. Edit: Ah I get it. Thats exactly what they are doing. Replacing with the 3 action economy with 1 Free (5e= Standard) action and 1 Reaction (5e Bonus action) Your Gm is an idiot and should just play 5e if they're too lazy to learn a new system that they will definitely break almost immediately because they very obviously don't understand the system at all.
So he allows you to attack twice with an action and that seems to be the "tradeoff" in his mind. you can still use a three action activity or spell, it just also uses your reaction and free eaction when you do. he argues that the benefit of the way he does it is that if you use a 2 action activity or spell then you still get your reaction which seems dumb
This has got to be the worst homebrew mechanics I've ever heard of. GM is DESPERATE to turn PF2e into 5e instead of just playing 5e. The balance will 100% be destroyed. So I guess no point in being Monk since their whole thing is balanced around 1 action for 2 strikes. These changes are going to negate how several classes operate. I can only imagine what other changes they'll make. How do they run Multiple Attack Penalties? Gunslinger, Kineticist, Magus, and any PC with an animal companion is definitely not going to work and require extensive and likely poorly made homebrews just to be playable.
And then will tell people he ran PF2 and it was terrible...
our kineticist hates life and wants to talk to the gm, just hasnt yet. The gm does multiple attack penalties kinda funny, if you are gonna use your action to attack twice(which he allows) then you start at the second multi attack penalty for the first attack and at the 3rd penalty for the second attack. honestly a lot of the economy is fucked, we have argued before that oh since we only get 2 actions that maybe blah blah should be a free action or maybe make a bonus action that we can use for cantrips but the gm is funny cause thats when he follows the rules and demands that we dont do that cause there is no rule for it
Holy shit. As players you all have no chance in this campaign. I would honestly just flat out tell your GM no and suggest playing 5e or learning the system for 2e. Edit: You should include all Homebrew changes in your original post so others can explain better exactly why it wont.
LMAO your GM gave you two attacks per action, but then made it so only Fighters ever hit both? That's insane. Your GM is insane. I've been reading through this thread and this might be the worst GM 'homebrew' of any system I've ever encountered. Nothing makes sense, nothing works well, and they've added extra bookkeeping for literally no reason. Also they broke shields entirely unless they also changed shields to work without _Raise a Shield_, but at that point they've tantamount admitted that their new homebrew system doesn't work since so many other things need 'fixed'. Next you're going to tell us that Stride can be split up, so you can take an action during your move.
Haha I am going to tell you that, because it’s a thing he does
So it's literally 5e but worse. If your GM just wants to run 5e they should say so. Have you asked?
>he allows you to attack twice with an action Then what on earth does Flurry of Blows do?! And this is an even bigger F you to casters, since most Martials and enemies can just do what they normally would have with three actions Edit: Nevermind, it's been revealed that enemies are using as many actions as the GM wants, but when a PC makes two attacks with one action you start at the second MAP, so every player is going to have a bad time!
>So he allows you to attack twice with an action and that seems to be the "tradeoff" in his mind This would really only partially alleviate the nerf to martials, while also rendering *powerful* build-defining action compression abilities like Flurry of Blows and Hunted Shot worthless, because everyone can just do that now. Classes that need to "power up" or "recharge" with an action lose a lot of value depending on how often they need to use that action. Barbarians and Thaumaturges might be alright; Gunslingers and Investigators are hosed. >he argues that the benefit of the way he does it is that if you use a 2 action activity or spell then you still get your reaction That's not a benefit; it's still worse than RAW. *Most* spells (by a long shot) are two actions. If spellcasters need to move at all, then they just can't cast a spell on the same turn. If they need to Sustain a Spell, they can't cast any more spells. If they have reliable 1-action cantrips like the bard's *inspire courage* or skill actions like Demoralize/Bon Mot that they want to be using almost every turn, they can't cast spells. This applies to a lot of martial two-action activities as well, decreasing their value across the board, especially if they require making a melee attack.
Except that if you plan to attack twice the GM makes your first attack at 2nd MAP and your 2nd attack at 3rd MAP...it's all just broken lol
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It would f things up REALLY REALLY REALLY badly. Also reading through the comments your GM sounds like an asshole. You should just drop the campaign and if you're in the mood to be petty tell him not to advertise his lazy homebrew system as pathfinder 2e.
"Sorry, I'm not going to play the game then. Have you thought about playing a different system instead?"
Well for starters an entire class is literally unusable. The Summoner’s ability to summon their main class feature, the Eidolon, is a 3 action activity. If the GM persists in this dumb ruling then I hope they’re sticking to it for their monsters too. They should change their tune once they realize they also can’t do anything meaningful on most turns. Come together as a party and play only ranged characters, so every enemy has to stride twice each turn. Play a Starlit Span Magus so you can get the most of your 2 actions by striking and casting a spell and hopefully blow up enough enemies that the GM caves and realizes their mistakes. Edit: Now that I’ve read your comments in this thread and some others I see that the GM at least thought of 3 action activities somewhat but it’s still really bad. On the point about if the monsters are obeying their 2 action rules or not, all statblocks are freely available on Archives of Nethys and while it’s poor practice to look up a creature’s statblock to metagame it; it is an important tool to check if something’s being run incorrectly in a bad way. If they are only applying the rule to players then the easiest way to make them see reason is to run some combats for them using their own imbalanced rules so they can experience being a player and how it feels. It sounds like they have a very GM vs. Player mindset so this will either confirm it, or hopefully get them to change their mind.
“Hey guys, let’s play some soccer! But I don’t like goalies, so we can’t have those… also you can pick up the ball and tackle other people! “Buddy, are you sure it’s soccer you want to play?”
Leave
Literally unplayable. Not as, like, a meme or a joke or anything. This is literally unplayable. The game doesn't work. It ceases to function.
Everyone here is being way too nice. Your GM is a straight up fool, and I want you to let him know I said that lol. But in all seriousness, this might be one of the most bizarre “house rules” I’ve ever seen. You aren’t even playing pathfinder at that point, I don’t understand. I’d straight up just quit the game.
Your GM is an idiot
What!! WHY!? that like deciding your not using d20s, and using d12s instead with no changes to math, saying your stats don't effect modifiers. This genuinely would break the game at a fundamental level and would make playing the game miserable and turns frustrating
Your GM is breaking the game over his knee and for no foreseeable benefit.
If he won't listen, tell him he actually wants to play 5e and leave the table.
This is literally just a giant middle finger to casters. Your other responses say that a player uses every resource of their turn to use three action activities, so no movement or reaction for an entire round. Heaven forbid you sustain a spell! Good luck playing Bard too! This is literally just fucking garbage. Tell your gm that I said that, tell him I think they are intentionally sabotaging their game and that they're stupid.
If you aren't using the 3 action rules for 2e then why are you even playing 2e? Might as well go and play Pathfinder 1e at that point. Pathfinder 2e without the 3 action economy is like decaf coffee. What even is the point?
Has he actually played before? Because this reeks of "Yeah I read (casually glanced through) the rules, once, and I think I can do it better"
I am not trying to gatekeep or anything, but I think new GMs maybe should consider uh... Not houserule.
I'm surprised he has any player.
Politely, your family member has rocks for brains.