Pathfinder 2e

[obryn]

Hey y'all.

It's time.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderplaytest

I expect it'll still just be a rehash of the same game with zero Innovation or quality rules improvements, but on the plus side you'll get to throw more money at Paizo and the game will be less cluttered for a few months.

[exelsisxax]

Dear god.

https://media.giphy.com/media/rl0FOxdz7CcxO/giphy.gif

[Rynjin]

I'll observe from the sidelines. All of my bans on Paizo have come from daring to imply playtest material isn't perfect and needs work, so I have little doubt that it's just going to be a big dumb echo chamber like all their playtests, with a couple of reasonable devs (like Mark Seifter and Owen KC Stepehens) being forced onto the company line by Jason Buhlman whenever they start agreeing with public sentiment.

Still, them having the playtest is always SLIGHTLY better than not having one (as big a ****show as the ACG playtest was, at least none of the classes turned out as horrifyingly crippled as the Shifter), so maybe the final product will be ever so slightly better for it.

[Andor13]

Production values are a feature?

Full bound hardcover editions of the playtest books. Because why not let people pay us for playtesting?

That said, I hope it's a dazzling success. More games are good. Better games are good.

[Kurald Galain]

"Gone are the confusing action types like move, standard, swift, and immediate, instead replaced with a simple system of three actions and one reaction each round. All of the varied systems and formulas for determining your character's bonuses and statistics, like saving throws, attack bonuses, and skills, have been unified in a single, easy-to-use proficiency system based on your choices and your character's level. You no longer need to collect a specific set of magic items to be a balanced character, relying on specific magical statistic bonuses. Instead, you get all of the bonuses you need from your regular armor and weapons, allowing the rest of your items to be truly wondrous."

Those are nice words, but it remains to be seen what they mean in practice.

I've always said that marketing-wise, it would be very bad move for Paizo to break backwards compatibility.

[Rynjin]

Production values are a feature?

I think so, yeah. From what I remember of the initial Pathfinder launch it was pretty rushed and Paizo wasn't exactly a huge conglomerate at the time, being essentially glorified 3rd Party Publishers for D&D 3e/3.5.

It led to a LOT of legacy issues from 3.5 with its own batch of inconsistencies, typos, and other editing problems that still weren't entirely fixed over 5 reprints.

A higher production value can be nothing but a good thing, I have no issue with them listing it as a feature.


Full bound hardcover editions of the playtest books. Because why not let people pay us for playtesting?

It's pretty sketchy, but when you have a customer base so loyal that they'll gladly advance pre-order products that haven't even been announced yet, admit in droves that they haven't liked any of the releases for over a year, but still subscribe "to help the company", you need to milk that for all its worth. If people are willing to pay to suck your ****, you'd be a fool not to take advantage of it.


That said, I hope it's a dazzling success. More games are good. Better games are good.

I hope the final product will be pretty solid (though will have a lot of problems still, I'm sure), and I like a lot of what I read on the page, but I just can't get hyped for Paizo playtests any more. They use them as not-so-stealth marketing rather than a real opportunity to make a better game.


"Gone are the confusing action types like move, standard, swift, and immediate, instead replaced with a simple system of three actions and one reaction each round. All of the varied systems and formulas for determining your character's bonuses and statistics, like saving throws, attack bonuses, and skills, have been unified in a single, easy-to-use proficiency system based on your choices and your character's level. You no longer need to collect a specific set of magic items to be a balanced character, relying on specific magical statistic bonuses. Instead, you get all of the bonuses you need from your regular armor and weapons, allowing the rest of your items to be truly wondrous."

Those are nice words, but it remains to be seen what they mean in practice.

I've always said that marketing-wise, it would be very bad move for Paizo to break backwards compatibility.

Just at a glance, it seems to mean it's going to be some kind of bastard hybrid between 5e and Savage Worlds with Automatic Bonus Progression rules thrown in as a core feature.

[Palanan]

Huh. Maybe now, finally, the prices will drop on the Ultimate hardbacks.

Otherwise, I’m not impressed. I’m not remotely excited about having an iconic goblin character, or new rulers in a game world I’ve never used. Much less the opportunity for “changing a few numbers and rebalancing some of the mechanics.”

And it really is a new level of chutzpah to ask players to pay for a hardbound playtest rulebook--plus a whole playtest product line.

Sorry, but I’m not feeling it.

[obryn]

And it really is a new level of chutzpah to ask players to pay for a hardbound playtest rulebook--plus a whole playtest product line.

Sorry, but I’m not feeling it.
It's the same as with Pathfinder Online.

Paizo knows a whole lot of their fans are suckers who will buy anything with the Pathfinder name on it.

[Morty]

Hey y'all.

It's time.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderplaytest

I expect it'll still just be a rehash of the same game with zero Innovation or quality rules improvements, but on the plus side you'll get to throw more money at Paizo and the game will be less cluttered for a few months.

That's probably what's going to happen.

[Pex]

"Gone are the confusing action types like move, standard, swift, and immediate, instead replaced with a simple system of three actions and one reaction each round. All of the varied systems and formulas for determining your character's bonuses and statistics, like saving throws, attack bonuses, and skills, have been unified in a single, easy-to-use proficiency system based on your choices and your character's level. You no longer need to collect a specific set of magic items to be a balanced character, relying on specific magical statistic bonuses. Instead, you get all of the bonuses you need from your regular armor and weapons, allowing the rest of your items to be truly wondrous."

Those are nice words, but it remains to be seen what they mean in practice.

I've always said that marketing-wise, it would be very bad move for Paizo to break backwards compatibility.

Honest True question from me.

Are you being serious or sarcastic, because you just described 5E.

Presuming serious, it would be interesting and ironic for Paizo to cave in, so to speak, to the 5E model. Perhaps they'd be "borrowing" ideas from 5E and incorporate them into the 3E/Pathfinder paradigm. They'll have to keep the fiddly bits of +# bonuses and -# penalties. If they use Advantage/Disadvantage or some other terminology that's the same thing, game over.

[killem2]

I supported Paizo when we left 3.5 because I wanted at least a solid support channel. Too bad really. They won't get a cent from me anymore.

It's a terrible move. But at least they will leave pathfinder 1e in tact mostly before destroying it for money. Grass ain't greener.

[MeeposFire]

"Gone are the confusing action types like move, standard, swift, and immediate, instead replaced with a simple system of three actions and one reaction each round. All of the varied systems and formulas for determining your character's bonuses and statistics, like saving throws, attack bonuses, and skills, have been unified in a single, easy-to-use proficiency system based on your choices and your character's level. You no longer need to collect a specific set of magic items to be a balanced character, relying on specific magical statistic bonuses. Instead, you get all of the bonuses you need from your regular armor and weapons, allowing the rest of your items to be truly wondrous."

Those are nice words, but it remains to be seen what they mean in practice.

I've always said that marketing-wise, it would be very bad move for Paizo to break backwards compatibility.

Reducing action types, unifying bonuses to most attributes to one number, and reducing dependency on magic items sounds like they are taking from 5e.

I agree with you about breaking backwards compatibility and they are taking a gamble that those who like pathfinder want anything from 5e D&D. Frankly as much as I do not like it I do think there are a number of PF players that like having all sorts of different numbers, tables, etc for everything and will see this as a problem.

[SpamCreateWater]

... you just described 5E.

Exactly my thoughts when I read that :smallconfused:

I did enjoy the taking out standard, move, swift, and immediate (ostensibly 3 actions and 1 reaction) and then replacing it with 3 actions and 1 reaction.

[Tuvarkz]

5E mechanics? 10th-tier spells? Denying the fun of numbercrunching and looking around for cool magic items (or ones with neat bonuses to various things)?
Paizo, stahp.

[Florian]

Are you being serious or sarcastic, because you just described 5E.

Starfinder, actually.

[MeeposFire]

Starfinder, actually.

I have not read it enough to get a full grasp yet but to me Starfinder seems to be taking a lot from ideas used in Star Wars Saga edition to me. Granted that was used to test some ideas that eventually went into 4e and a lot of that went into 5e so both can be true.

Not going too quickly no it though sadly (though the library does give me 3 weeks before I need to renew it so I do have time) since so far all I keep thinking is "wow it is like they are trying to make a lot of this stuff more complicated than I feel it needs to be".

[Florian]

I have not read it enough to get a full grasp yet but to me Starfinder seems to be taking a lot from ideas used in Star Wars Saga edition to me. Granted that was used to test some ideas that eventually went into 4e and a lot of that went into 5e so both can be true.

Not going too quickly no it though sadly (though the library does give me 3 weeks before I need to renew it so I do have time) since so far all I keep thinking is "wow it is like they are trying to make a lot of this stuff more complicated than I feel it needs to be".

Nah. We have PF Unchained now long enough to know what of it went into SF, the rest of the stuff sounds like we´ll see it and the SF changes in PF 2.0.

[killem2]

I think we'll see pretty quickly when they release the playtest material if the conversion rules that they give us are robust and allow for back and forth play that will tell you just how much they care about the first edition loyalty.


If it's half as bad as it was for 3.5 to 4th edition that's your answer as to whether or not they will ever give a crap about your dedication.

[Morty]

After reading a bit more about it, the class list being the same + alchemist does not sound promising. The D&D 3E/PF class list needs some reworking, and you'd think a new edition would be an opportunity for it...

[MeeposFire]

After reading a bit more about it, the class list being the same + alchemist does not sound promising. The D&D 3E/PF class list needs some reworking, and you'd think a new edition would be an opportunity for it...

There are a LOT of things that you can argue really need to be changed but Paizo should know at this point you cannot make all those changes because you have a high risk of losing the base so you have to pick and choose what things you think you can change and what you think you can't without losing people. The class list might be one of those things.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Morty
The D&D 3E/PF class list needs some reworking, and you'd think a new edition would be an opportunity for it...

What kind of reworking do you mean?

[venturer]

It will be interesting to see how they will handle magic with level 10 spells

[Florian]

After reading a bit more about it, the class list being the same + alchemist does not sound promising. The D&D 3E/PF class list needs some reworking, and you'd think a new edition would be an opportunity for it...

Again, SF and also the mention that there's only 4 spell lists around. SF already trimmed the casting classes down to just to base classes (arcane/divine) and made the regular classes (like cleric, oracle, droid) into a sub-class of the one base class. My guess is we´ll four "framework" caster classes (alchemy, song, divine, arcane) with the regular known classes like wiz, sorc and magus au sub-classes. Keep in mind that SF handles "archetypes" based on the VMC framework, not the way PF does it.

[Mike Miller]

They should just call it Pathfinder 5th edition and be done with it

[Caelestion]

"A unified mechanic" could simply be "add half your level to attacks, saves and skill checks", which is nothing like 5E's bounded accuracy.

I am certainly interested in what's to come, but then I've always liked reading RPGs, even if I have no intention of ever playing them.

[MeeposFire]

"A unified mechanic" could simply be "add half your level to attacks, saves and skill checks", which is nothing like 5E's noun dedicated accuracy.

I am certainty interested in what's to come, but then I've always liked reading RPG, even if I have no intention of ever playing them.


Just so you know that is what 4e D&D used.

[obryn]

After reading a bit more about it, the class list being the same + alchemist does not sound promising. The D&D 3E/PF class list needs some reworking, and you'd think a new edition would be an opportunity for it...
Never bet against the fundamental elfgame-rules conservatism of Paizo's fanbase.

And it's true that this will have mechanics from Starfinder - because Paizo cribbed off of 5e for Starfinder.

[Sir Chuckles]

Honest True question from me.

Are you being serious or sarcastic, because you just described 5E.

Presuming serious, it would be interesting and ironic for Paizo to cave in, so to speak, to the 5E model. Perhaps they'd be "borrowing" ideas from 5E and incorporate them into the 3E/Pathfinder paradigm. They'll have to keep the fiddly bits of +# bonuses and -# penalties. If they use Advantage/Disadvantage or some other terminology that's the same thing, game over.

Mostly Starfinder, really. I think a few people on this forum have said that they felt that Starfinder was their underhanded method of playtesting PF2.0. It's mostly the equipment bit that's Starfinder. The rest of it feels like a step towards 5e, and the unified actions and bonuses is the continuation of that direction.

I actually really hope that it doesn't use Starfinder's equipment system. I like 5e's less granular weapon system, where a short sword is a gladius is a spatha, but hate Starfinder's leveled equipment.

[Morty]

What kind of reworking do you mean?

Mostly it's nailing down what a class actually is and working from there. The current list is a weird outgrowth from the time it was just the fighter/magic-user/cleric/thief + non-humans set, with stuff being bolted on but never really changed.


Again, SF and also the mention that there's only 4 spell lists around. SF already trimmed the casting classes down to just to base classes (arcane/divine) and made the regular classes (like cleric, oracle, droid) into a sub-class of the one base class. My guess is we´ll four "framework" caster classes (alchemy, song, divine, arcane) with the regular known classes like wiz, sorc and magus au sub-classes. Keep in mind that SF handles "archetypes" based on the VMC framework, not the way PF does it.

The FAQ seems to imply the basic classes will consist of the core 11 + alchemist.


You still decide on your class—the rulebook includes all of the core classes from the First Edition Core Rulebook, plus the alchemist.


Never bet against the fundamental elfgame-rules conservatism of Paizo's fanbase.

And it's true that this will have mechanics from Starfinder - because Paizo cribbed off of 5e for Starfinder.

Once again, that is what will likely happen. But I amuse myself by speculation.

[Caelestion]

Just so you know that is what 4e D&D used.

It's what Star Wars Saga used as well. That doesn't mean it's an inherently bad idea.

[MeeposFire]

It's what Star Wars Saga used as well. That doesn't mean it's an inherently bad idea.

No indeed especially since I like 4e but I think it bears mentioning since there are people that play PF that really do not like anything that is related to that edition and so it becomes pertinent if a mechanic is something used in 4e.

[johnbragg]

Just so you know that is what 4e D&D used.

It's what Star Wars Saga used as well. That doesn't mean it's an inherently bad idea.

It kind of is, though. One of the biggest criticisms of 4E was that the classes all felt the same. Copying a mechanic that makes the average 10th level fighter, mage, cleric and thief all pretty much equally good at climbing a wall or riding a horse or painting a fence means a high risk of having the same problems as 4E.

I haven't seen the FFG Star Wars games, but if most of the characters are Jedi, it makes at least some sense that two Jedi of roughly equal power would have equal skill at riding a tauntaun, winning a bet on a podrace, negotiating a commerical treaty or whatever else--they're both Jedis of whatever rank, so they can both bring the same amount of Force magic/narrativium to bear on whatever situation. "Use the Force" is a powerful spackle that can cover up a lot of holes in a plot-wall.

It's less good when the smuggler or bounty hunter or droid is also randomly good at things he or she has never seen or done before.

[MeeposFire]

It kind of is, though. One of the biggest criticisms of 4E was that the classes all felt the same. Copying a mechanic that makes the average 10th level fighter, mage, cleric and thief all pretty much equally good at climbing a wall or riding a horse or painting a fence means a high risk of having the same problems as 4E.

I haven't seen the FFG Star Wars games, but if most of the characters are Jedi, it makes at least some sense that two Jedi of roughly equal power would have equal skill at riding a tauntaun, winning a bet on a podrace, negotiating a commerical treaty or whatever else--they're both Jedis of whatever rank, so they can both bring the same amount of Force magic/narrativium to bear on whatever situation. "Use the Force" is a powerful spackle that can cover up a lot of holes in a plot-wall.

It's less good when the smuggler or bounty hunter or droid is also randomly good at things he or she has never seen or done before.

While I do think some people would argue about the truth of how similar or not various classes in 4e play as (for the record we should probably avoid arguing about that as it really is not pertinent here) the reaction to such and the argument of that is important because that has been a common complaint from numerous PF players about 4e and 5e D&D.

For example I have seen PF players not liking the 5e prof system because a wizard gets the same bonus as a fighter of the same level. NOw the 5e player will tell you that a typcial wizard wielding a weapon is not anything like a fighter wielding the same weapon at all but that does not matter to some people they just do not like having the wizard and fighter getting the same bonus.

[Caelestion]

I don't like Saga's skill system because it's highly front-loaded and is otherwise *only* said level bonus. I am prepared to trust that Paizo will not make the same mistake.

[CockroachTeaParty]

From what I've read/heard so far, it sounds like if you own Pathfinder Unchained you already own 75% of 2e.

[MeeposFire]

From what I've read/heard so far, it sounds like if you own Pathfinder Unchained you already own 75% of 2e.

How well received was that and how do you think things will change if it is not optional and is the full system instead?

[zimmerwald1915]

Litmus test: are player characters, nonplayer characters, and monsters built the same way?

Litmus test 2: OGL?

[Drelua]

Well, looks like I might be officially quitting PFS soon. I'll have to read up on how PF 2e is going to change PFS, I guess they can't really make it compatible with already-published scenarios but if they stop making scenarios for 1e that will be pretty bad for turn-out. They'll have to allow more replays, 'cause I can't see a lot of the people I know from Toronto's PFS community shelling out 50 bucks for another core book. They'll probably get more sales on pdfs.

It's not something I'll follow too closely, I don't have enough respect for Paizo as a company to buy a new system. And I'm talking about their skill as game designers as well as their shamelessly selling a hardcover playtest. Far as I'm concerned, the only reason they made a good game in the first place is because WotC did upwards of 85% of the work.

I guess I'll take a closer look at it if Dreamscarred Press does something interesting, or one of the other 3PPs that know Paizo's system better than they do.

[Andor13]

The whole reason Pathfinder exists as a viable product is that a whole swath of 3.5 players could not stand 4e. They obviously cannot drift too much in that direction, and I think they know it. Hell they'd be better off drifting towards Hackmaster.

[Epic Legand]

Paizo picked up the ball when D&D tossed out their player base. D&D watched as everyone hated 4th edition. They then followed the business model of Paizo and did playtests before launching 5th. Now 5th is doing great( better sales then 3.0/3.5 or 4th I believe). So of course Paizo is going to look closely at 5th.

That being said, I have zero interest in playing a simpler, easier game. I would prefer more balance between the core classes, but not at the cost of character diversity. The diverse range of choices is what I feel is best about PF. I also tend to prefer the features introduced at the end of the RPG's life. I loved the warlock in 3.5, same as Psionics, and Tome of battle. Hated Wizards, Clerics, Druids ect. In PF, I find the same thing is true. All the later material is better balanced and more fun. I know they will have to cater to what they think the masses want, if not, they face failure as a company. That means I will not likely see classes I like for PF2 for some long time after it is released.

I also still love and use my 3.5 books, and we use them at our PF table a fair amount. PF2 will clearly break from that, an additional cost/loss to the change.

The removal of most magic items will clearly be following the Automatic Bonus Progression , something I played with for about 10 months, and hated every step of the way. Now the martial and the spell guy both do not need a ring of protection....and the spell guy still gets feather fall at a low opportunity cost while the martial has even less wealth to select non priority items. I also love the many types of bonues one can get. If they remain to focused on balance, then everyone is the same.

I like PF, and I gave my loyalty to them after I felt betrayed by D&D, so I will look hard at the new system. But if its just the PF version of 5th, why would I buy that instead of just buying 5th? Which will be better developed by the same timeframe, and played by more people ( and more likely to cover my oddball class choices). I am going to be hoping for the best, but also that they remember, people who play PF are the people who hated 4th edition.

[Ssalarn]

Full bound hardcover editions of the playtest books. Because why not let people pay us for playtesting?


The playtest .pdf will actually be free, but it's a big playtest book that some people might want to get their hands on, and printing and distribution are expensive.

[NomGarret]

It kind of is, though. One of the biggest criticisms of 4E was that the classes all felt the same. Copying a mechanic that makes the average 10th level fighter, mage, cleric and thief all pretty much equally good at climbing a wall or riding a horse or painting a fence means a high risk of having the same problems as 4E.

Let’s be fair, it doesn’t make everyone equally good, it just means the gap between characters of similar level grows slowly. The mage will always be better than the Barbarian at arcana because they have better Int which they will increase and a training bump. It just means that over the years of experience reaching max level the Barbarian learned enough to pass a level 1 wizard academy test. Compare to 5e, where the mage never gets better at climbing no matter how powerful they are.

[Psyren]

The FAQ is threadbare and I'm leery about the unified proficiency bonus. But simplifying actions and chopping down the mandatory magic item christmas tree are good things. I liked most of what I saw with Starfinder so I'm leaning towards giving this the benefit of the doubt, and will be reading more as it is released.

[DMVerdandi]

I think I will be sticking with regular pathfinder for some years unless there is some breakthrough that somehow makes it better than 5e, which I am already not into.

As others have said, it's the wealth of options and customization that you have access to, as well as dope 3rd party stuff that paizo decided to NOT capitalize on, yet was the best part of 3.5 [I see you dreamscared press. You da best].

Starting over from scratch while keeping the same sacred cows is just going to create the same mistakes.

As another poster stated, this was a time for them to adjust many of the fundamental problems with the classes themselves which cause the repeated problems that never get fixed.


Every time you differentiate fighter from rogue, you are going to have big galoof who is loud and fails stealth checks, and causes the dogs to come out.
so on with paladin/cleric as well as druid/ranger
Sorcerer/Wizard.

The REAL bloat is in the initial classes and to have 11+ Alchemist, which If that is going to take over the artificer's role instead of the Jekyll and Hyde expy is is, then that again is just causing one more unnecessary role.


In fact, there really shouldn't be "roles" that are so solid that they cannot be picked up by others, A profession, sure, but if we are being clear each party member IS a paramilitary operator, and should have some degree of cross training.

They are coming closer and closer to 2e classes and kits, and ultimately that's where it needs to go. Each new class should merely be an expression of a source of power, rather than just grandfathered classes.

Paladin can just be the fighter archetype, cleric can just be the mage archetype, So forth so on.

[Kurald Galain]

I wonder if a "unified" progression system is even necessary. Sure, skill points are fiddly and I could get behind changing that, but does anyone seriously have a problem with BAB/Saves progression? It's not like that's hard or anything.

[QuackParker]

I think I will be sticking with regular pathfinder for some years unless there is some breakthrough that somehow makes it better than 5e, which I am already not into.

As others have said, it's the wealth of options and customization that you have access to, as well as dope 3rd party stuff that paizo decided to NOT capitalize on, yet was the best part of 3.5 [I see you dreamscared press. You da best].

Starting over from scratch while keeping the same sacred cows is just going to create the same mistakes.

As another poster stated, this was a time for them to adjust many of the fundamental problems with the classes themselves which cause the repeated problems that never get fixed.


Every time you differentiate fighter from rogue, you are going to have big galoof who is loud and fails stealth checks, and causes the dogs to come out.
so on with paladin/cleric as well as druid/ranger
Sorcerer/Wizard.

The REAL bloat is in the initial classes and to have 11+ Alchemist, which If that is going to take over the artificer's role instead of the Jekyll and Hyde expy is is, then that again is just causing one more unnecessary role.


In fact, there really shouldn't be "roles" that are so solid that they cannot be picked up by others, A profession, sure, but if we are being clear each party member IS a paramilitary operator, and should have some degree of cross training.

They are coming closer and closer to 2e classes and kits, and ultimately that's where it needs to go. Each new class should merely be an expression of a source of power, rather than just grandfathered classes.

Paladin can just be the fighter archetype, cleric can just be the mage archetype, So forth so on.

Dreamscarred Press really is the best. Despite turning our games into JRPGs, Path of War has made playing melee classes a lot more fun for me for sure.

[Florian]

How well received was that and how do you think things will change if it is not optional and is the full system instead?

A lot of the stuff in PFU was pretty well received, as it seems. Discussion threads on them were mostly pretty short and in the style of "tested it, is good. Options?" - "me too" - "right" .. and so on.
Some of the stuff, like the scaling items, background skill system and variant item creation (that's closer to Earthdawn) is still more advanced than what we have in Starfinder right now.

One of the better changes is removing Iterative Attacks from BAB. Attacking is now always a standard action and you'll later get the option to attack twice (at -2) or thrice (at -6) instead (plus TWF and the whole stuff). Works very well with regular martial builds, the only people I see that were a bit miffed about it were the ones focusing on gaining natural attacks faster than BAB scales, and so on.

Automatic Bonus Progression works very well, too. Cuts the need for bland but necessary cooky cutter items, scales in a way that interfaces well with buff spells at the same level (with the spell always boosting). I'm now playing my third AP using it and I don't want to miss it anymore. Only people I've seen so far that dislike it, are the ones that´re actually using extreme cost-benefit-rations for their builds, like Wizard that never bought or upgraded their Bracers of Armor and instead chewed thru Wand of Mage Armor instead, such things.

Scaling Items are pretty cool, especially since they don't come with the Weapons of Legacy BS attached to them. As usual, there's just too few of them and while there's very functional creation rules attached, I never had the nerve to sit down with one of my players and create one, or even a set, although that would make playing some AP so extremely easy, especially when also using the ABP - remove all loot beyond expendable and never worry about it again.

[Zardnaar]

Class list is the same as 5E except swap warlock for alchemist.

[Scots Dragon]

Having been burned by edition-changes before, I feel great trepidation with this. I wonder if we'll wind up with a Pathfinder 1.5E spin-off, probably produced by the already well-loved Dreamscarred Press.


Class list is the same as 5E except swap warlock for alchemist.

To be fair, the class list for D&D 5E is identical to Pathfinder and D&D 3E except add the warlock.

[Arutema]

Litmus test: are player characters, nonplayer characters, and monsters built the same way?

Nope


Litmus test 2: OGL?
Yes.

Source: dev posts in a very long forum thread on Paizo.

[Ignimortis]

I'm quite interested in this...mostly because if Paizo won't do things right, I won't care, and if they do, everyone wins. They have lots of examples of "how not to do things", including most of D&D 4e, almost all of 5e, some parts of 3.5/PF 1e, and most of Starfinder. So...maybe third time (for Paizo) is the charm?

[atemu1234]

I'm worried, but I'm not going to run around like the sky is falling. We know next to nothing about the system, but that, in and of itself, is telling.

[Caelestion]

The only thing that is "telling" about that is that it was announced yesterday.

[Florian]

The only thing that is "telling" about that is that it was announced yesterday.

Explain? February 6th is nothing real special?

[Mordaedil]

Explain? February 6th is nothing real special?

The point is that we don't know a whole lot and the announcement is the most special thing we know.

[Morty]

The universal level-based bonus feels like a patch-job for D&D's massive, systemic problem with scaling. Just as it was in 4E. It might work as that, but it'd be better to, you know, make sure the numbers don't get out of control so much.

[Caelestion]

That's what 5E tried to do with bounded accuracy. I'm not a massive fan of that, it has to be said.

[Pex]

The universal level-based bonus feels like a patch-job for D&D's massive, systemic problem with scaling. Just as it was in 4E. It might work as that, but it'd be better to, you know, make sure the numbers don't get out of control so much.


That's what 5E tried to do with bounded accuracy. I'm not a massive fan of that, it has to be said.

Maybe something in between. The numbers will scale at a slower pace than original Pathfinder but there would not be a set limit "you shall not pass" as in Bounded Accuracy. AC thirty something is reached at level 15 instead of 9, as an example for demonstration.

[Hunter Noventa]

Litmus test: are player characters, nonplayer characters, and monsters built the same way?

Litmus test 2: OGL?

The announcement already said there's a whole new system for building monsters, so no.

[Eldariel]

The announcement already said there's a whole new system for building monsters, so no.

As long as it were just used for designing base monsters and they still retained PC-like characteristics and monsters remained easily playable and NPCs were built like PCs, that'd still be fine but somehow I'm a bit doubtful...

[QuadraticGish]

I'm hoping(probably won't happen) that the classes will be balanced around where T1 and T2 classes operated in PF 1e.

[Yondu]

I'm hoping(probably won't happen) that the classes will be balanced around where T1 and T2 classes operated in PF 1e.
to be honest I don't think we have a "balance" in PF... even in Second edition, D20 system is for me completelly imbalanced between martials and casters, the action system is for me too tricky and penalize too much the players, the skill system killed the roleplaying in lots of game sessions, and openly give the opportunity power gamers and law-rulers to be happy with a game.
Without a lot of house rules, d20 system is unplayable, I came to regret the freedom we had playing AD&D... but that's only my opinion, I will not play PF 2e in any manner as I do not play 4th and 5th editions of D&D... maybe I'm getting to "old for this s***" as Murthaugh says...

[Morty]

That's what 5E tried to do with bounded accuracy. I'm not a massive fan of that, it has to be said.


Maybe something in between. The numbers will scale at a slower pace than original Pathfinder but there would not be a set limit "you shall not pass" as in Bounded Accuracy. AC thirty something is reached at level 15 instead of 9, as an example for demonstration.

Anything is going to be better than the chaotic and pace-less growth of 3E/PF. But 4E has a problem with numbers for numbers' sake, and PF 2E might stumble into it too.

Also, the FAQ mentions the iconic ranger appearing with two weapons more often... I guess that means rangers still get dual-wielding as a class feature. Even 5E designers have figured out it's a bad idea by now, people.

[Psyren]

There's a bit more info in the announcement video:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlBP0lEQ1Qo



Paladin can just be the fighter archetype, cleric can just be the mage archetype, So forth so on.

I would amend this to say "Ranger and Paladin can be Fighter archetypes, Druid should be a Cleric archetype." Priest has largely joined Fighter/Mage/Thief to be the Big 4.

Given that they're keeping all the core classes though, they should really make Oracle a core class too so that there is a spontaneous divine option. Not that I expect them to actually keep Vancian, but if they're keeping both Wizard and Sorcerer there's bound to be some difference between the two's casting.


I wonder if a "unified" progression system is even necessary. Sure, skill points are fiddly and I could get behind changing that, but does anyone seriously have a problem with BAB/Saves progression? It's not like that's hard or anything.

I think one save progression and then each class getting a flat bonus to specific ones would be fundamentally identical to what we have now without needing a table to refresh your memory, so I can see the value there.


The universal level-based bonus feels like a patch-job for D&D's massive, systemic problem with scaling. Just as it was in 4E. It might work as that, but it'd be better to, you know, make sure the numbers don't get out of control so much.

That sounds great on paper, but the problem is that the game is always going to be a journey from fighting kobolds to fighting dragons. You can only crunch down those kinds of numbers so far, and attempting to do so is where every edition of the game has stumbled (though I acknowledge that fans of the latest attempt, "bounded accuracy", wouldn't see that as a stumble.)

[Caelestion]

One thing I liked about Star Wars Saga Edition was the unified save mechanic - +1/2 your level to all saves, with a flat class bonus to specific saves. It was just a shame that saves were mostly useless against anyone of the same level who was using a class skill against them.

[johnbragg]

One thing I liked about Star Wars Saga Edition was the unified save mechanic - +1/2 your level to all saves, with a flat class bonus to specific saves. It was just a shame that saves were mostly useless against anyone of the same level who was using a class skill against them.

Doesn't that spring directly from the math? I haven't played SWSE, but if your Save bonus is 1/2 CL, and your Skill is CL, Skill is going to beat Save regularly. And that's more pronounced the more your skill matters and the less the dice matter. (d20+5 vs d20+10 is a 25% disadvantage vs 50-50, 3d6+5 vs 3d6+10 is almost automatic failure. And doesn't SWSE use a count-the-successes mechanic, so the bonus is even more important vs the die roll?)

[Caelestion]

SWSE didn't use "count the successes" that I know of, but yes, characters could easily be extremely front-loaded and only advanced incrementally.

[obryn]

Doesn't that spring directly from the math? I haven't played SWSE, but if your Save bonus is 1/2 CL, and your Skill is CL, Skill is going to beat Save regularly. And that's more pronounced the more your skill matters and the less the dice matter. (d20+5 vs d20+10 is a 25% disadvantage vs 50-50, 3d6+5 vs 3d6+10 is almost automatic failure. And doesn't SWSE use a count-the-successes mechanic, so the bonus is even more important vs the die roll?)
It doesn't use a count-the-successes mechanic.

But congratulations, you've just spelled out a major flaw in how SWSE works. Low-level Jedi who "attack" with Use the Force start out with crazy good attack bonuses, which only catch up to defenses at endgame. So, just like in the movies ... (checks notes) ... your um ... padawans attack everything with force push and choke out rancors, while everyone avoids lightsabers until they are jedi masters. You know. Like ... like in the star war? Um.

[Morphic tide]

My greatest wish is that the "Iron Magic" thing becomes part of core as part of how Martial/Caster parity is done, because it gives an in for making more Wondrous magic items become ever more Wondrous in the hands of the gear-dependant classes.

And yes, this basically means Exalted 3e Evocations, but transferable between items of similar kind. Is there a problem with this?

[D-naras]

Doesn't SWSE add your entire level to all your defenses? There aren't any saves either. Characters just roll vs defense instead of forcing saves

[Mithril Leaf]

Doesn't SWSE add your entire level to all your defenses? There aren't any saves either. Characters just roll vs defense instead of forcing saves

Defenses scale at full level, while skills scale at half, but everyone competent has a +10 bonus from a feat and class skill by level 3 or so. It's actually a horribly front loaded system.

[Elkad]

...Not that I expect them to actually keep Vancian, but if they're keeping both Wizard and Sorcerer there's bound to be some difference between the two's casting.

If they ditch Vancian, that'll be enough for me to say "no thanks" on it's own, even if the rest is the best system ever.

No way do I want to be stuck in the box of fixed-list casters, or "pick your 1-2 favorite spells each level" casters.

[Mehangel]

If they ditch Vancian, that'll be enough for me to say "no thanks" on it's own, even if the rest is the best system ever.

No way do I want to be stuck in the box of fixed-list casters, or "pick your 1-2 favorite spells each level" casters.

I am in the opposite boat, I am quite sick of the whole vancian spellcasting system, and would rather see something different. However, after listening to today's podcast I realize that my hopes of such have been dashed.

[Hunter Noventa]

I am in the opposite boat, I am quite sick of the whole vancian spellcasting system, and would rather see something different. However, after listening to today's podcast I realize that my hopes of such have been dashed.

I am of mixed feelings about Vancian casting. It's not the worst system, but it shouldn't be the default for every casting class.

[atemu1234]

Frankly, I find it odd that a system built on nostalgia for an older edition of D&D decided to break the base in the same way that created them. What if someone becomes to Paizo what Paizo is/was to WoTC?

[Segev]

Frankly, I find it odd that a system built on nostalgia for an older edition of D&D decided to break the base in the same way that created them. What if someone becomes to Paizo what Paizo is/was to WoTC?

Assuming all the doom and gloom readings are right, this is what I expect will happen.


Now, to be fair to 4e D&D? If they'd just unified things in the CORE mechanics, but kept CLASS mechanics more like 3e or 5e (either of them!), they'd probably never have had Paizo rise to consume half to 3/4 their playerbase.

The CORE RULES changes were not bad. Some were quite good. If Paizo does core rule changes but keeps classes unique and, importantly, feeling like D&D classes rather than like copies of one "well-balanced" class mechanic copy-pasted over and over again, they might make this work.

We'll see.

[Morty]

I would amend this to say "Ranger and Paladin can be Fighter archetypes, Druid should be a Cleric archetype." Priest has largely joined Fighter/Mage/Thief to be the Big 4.

Given that they're keeping all the core classes though, they should really make Oracle a core class too so that there is a spontaneous divine option. Not that I expect them to actually keep Vancian, but if they're keeping both Wizard and Sorcerer there's bound to be some difference between the two's casting.

I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but keeping the old class list is just... not a good idea. They've got an opportunity to solve many problems plaguing PF's classes and just throwing it away to appease the conservative players. It feels like straddling the fence. 4E did something similar when it squeezed the old class list (well, most of it) into the Source/Role paradigm.


That sounds great on paper, but the problem is that the game is always going to be a journey from fighting kobolds to fighting dragons. You can only crunch down those kinds of numbers so far, and attempting to do so is where every edition of the game has stumbled (though I acknowledge that fans of the latest attempt, "bounded accuracy", wouldn't see that as a stumble.)

You might be right. To be fair, though, D&D's unique power curve is something every edition has struggled with. 4E has a problem with higher levels feeling like the lower ones, except with numbers going up. Anyone serious about creating a new edition of Pathfinder needs to think about how to handle it.

[Rynjin]

I don't personally see any major issue with the class list being the same.

The only major change I'd make is making Sorcerer and Oracle archetypes of Wizard and Cleric respectively (since archetypes are core rules in PF 2e), and doing the same for many other "classes" (Gunslinger, Brawler, Slayer, and Cavalier as Fighter archetypes, Warpriest as a Cleric archetype, etc.), then fill that last slot with something interesting (like a not ****ty version of the Shifter).

[Scowling Dragon]

I'm not seeing a single thing offered in the whole playtest that does better than the first initial book of the Spheres of Power.
And from the ideas listed it already sounds terrible:

"On a sneaky attack roll stealth for initiative." :smallsigh:

This is the OPPOSITE of streamlining Paizo. OPPOSITE. This is EXACTLY the sort of fiddly grunt inducing nightmare that really bogs down the game.

In my mind, there are tons of ways to Streamline the game without becoming D&D 5e or 4e. But Paizo just is really sucking at mechanics recently so I just don't care.

Streamlining is something like cleaning up the difference between a Concentration Check and a Caster Level Check, between DR and Energy Resistance.

[Segev]

Streamlining is something like cleaning up the difference between a Concentration Check and a Caster Level Check, between DR and Energy Resistance.

When Pathfinder combined all the fiddly rules for grapple, trip, and anything else that was something other than "hit them with attack for damage" into CMB and CMD, that was streamlining.

When 4e made 3e's saves into "defenses," and reduced the number of AC types to AC and the 3 defenses by rolling touch AC into Reflex Defense, that was streamlining.

To be fair, you don't WANT to streamline class abilities to use the same mechanics as other things; that way lies making every class a martial adept. But you do want to be careful about randomly changing how you roll initiative (a core rules of combat thing) in an moderately unrelated special circumstance (when making sneak attacks).



Frankly, what I'm hearing here doesn't sound like Paizo knows why they're making a new edition. The reason to make a new edition is, generally, to shake off cruft of added rules as the game's been tweaked and customized, combine in the best of new ideas that have come up by merging them more cleanly into the core rules, and to allow for a clean start on inventing NEW new rules.

It can, alternatively, be to make a more approachable game for new players. (This is 5e's strongest suit, I think.)

Finally, it can be because your rules have gotten clearly old and stale compared to new systems which have new rules technologies you think would make your game more robust or faster to play or better represent what you're trying to achieve, so now you want to restructure the core system to incorporate that new technology.

It feels like Paizo is just looking at a calendar and saying, "Huh, we've been doing this for a while. About time we made a new edition, I guess."

[MeeposFire]

I wonder if they are really up for this because honestly the first time they were not though to be fair I am not sure they would have succeeded as much as they did if they did manage to make the needed changes to the system.

When 3e was initially designed you can tell they were trying to keep mostly what was already their and make a bunch of changes to how things were presented and used. In many cases these were good ideas such as creating actual action types to tell you better what you can do in a round and using a more unified rolling system. However it is also clear that they had no grasp on how the game interacted with itself for instance yes in many ways it was more fun to make the changes to magic that you did but you did not account for how it made casting more powerful. Yes action types were useful but you also mange to make weapon users less mobile than casters which of course is backwards from how the game used to be played. Yes the saving throws were simpler and worked like everything else but now fighters went from having among the best saves to one of the worst and at high levels went from almost always saving (which made SoD and other high level magic less effective) to potentially being almost unable to make the saves which really hurt their durability. BAB is easier to use but iteritive attacks and the full attack action are a mess that kills the weapon user over time compared to previous and later weapon users from other editions (3e has the only fighter who cannot really move and attack fully in D&D).

The list goes on.

When you use a previous system very heavily and then make a number of changes to it you get the advantage of not starting from scratch but you also run into the problem if you really do not understand the full implications of what you are changing then you may make changes you were not intending. 3e was full of that and late 3e tried to essentially patch the game with alternate classes to try to fix some of these things and oddly while PF tried to fix some things it actually went backwards in others (though some 3rd party creators tried to continue the patches that were introduced such as those found in ToB).

Paizo is realizing the same problem that WotC did which is can you make the needed changes to make the game work better in the ways you want while still keeping enough players happy? This is made even harder because a very solid portion of their fan base is made up of a mindset of wanting to keep to 3e as much as possible which may make it hard to please them if you make changes but if you don't will you stagnate? These players have already shown they are willing to walk if it does not meet those specifications and if you lose them what will Piazo have left and will those people be as dedicated or will they be just as willing to play something like 5e D&D?

Paizo knows they cannot keep the status quo and have known that for a while you can only keep putting forth their kind of content before it gets stale to the gaming community at large.

[Scowling Dragon]

When Pathfinder combined all the fiddly rules for grapple, trip, and anything else that was something other than "hit them with attack for damage" into CMB and CMD, that was streamlining.

When 4e made 3e's saves into "defenses," and reduced the number of AC types to AC and the 3 defenses by rolling touch AC into Reflex Defense, that was streamlining.

To be fair, you don't WANT to streamline class abilities to use the same mechanics as other things; that way lies making every class a martial adept. But you do want to be careful about randomly changing how you roll initiative (a core rules of combat thing) in an moderately unrelated special circumstance (when making sneak attacks).
I agree for sure, but I feel like whats possible to cleanup and what isn't is much less of a grey area then people think.

Its Like Paizo is starting with the Laundry first, and the housefire second.


It feels like Paizo is just looking at a calendar and saying, "Huh, we've been doing this for a while. About time we made a new edition, I guess."

Yup. Despite reall if they looked and worked with their major third party stars (Dreamscarred Press, Drop Dead Studious, Rite Publishing), they would really benefit from a much better core game.

[Ualaa]

Our group has the option of Vancian or Spheres of Power for casting, and in the last year or more... not a single player has gone with the Vancian system. It helps that there's archetypes for most of the Paizo classes, to be sphere casters.

Similarly, most of the martials are using Path of War (and Expanded).

The odd character uses Ultimate Psionics, here and there, but that's a lot less common than the previous two.

Not many play the actual Paizo classes, aside from dips here and there. Monk one, for WIS to AC or Rogue for trapfinding, or Paladin two for CHA to saves on a Cha build.
No one really plays the Paizo classes from 1st to 20th, at least in our group.

[Morty]

I don't personally see any major issue with the class list being the same.

The only major change I'd make is making Sorcerer and Oracle archetypes of Wizard and Cleric respectively (since archetypes are core rules in PF 2e), and doing the same for many other "classes" (Gunslinger, Brawler, Slayer, and Cavalier as Fighter archetypes, Warpriest as a Cleric archetype, etc.), then fill that last slot with something interesting (like a not ****ty version of the Shifter).

The class list is not good. It's an awkward outgrowth from the original four classes, with things added and patched on to it but never changed or removed. Some classes are too broad (rogue, fighter), some far too narrow (barbarian), others have a very unclear identity (ranger, sorcerer). I'm not demanding a complete overhaul here, although it really could use one. But some changes are in order when you make a new edition. And that they're not willing to touch them at all... doesn't bode well.

[Andor13]

Hmm. The video seems to state that some version of the downtime rules system will be core. Hopefully that means they will integrate the craft system into it and fix the current ... issues.

[obryn]

The class list is not good. It's an awkward outgrowth from the original four classes, with things added and patched on to it but never changed or removed. Some classes are too broad (rogue, fighter), some far too narrow (barbarian), others have a very unclear identity (ranger, sorcerer). I'm not demanding a complete overhaul here, although it really could use one. But some changes are in order when you make a new edition. And that they're not willing to touch them at all... doesn't bode well.
Yep, absolutely. There is no way in which 'Ranger' or 'Monk' are as broad archetypes as the 4 main classes. Everything else is an outgrowth of those. (Heck, you could reduce it back to the OD&D 3 if you were feeling particularly minimalist.)

But this is Pathfinder. Removing any core classes is about as big a third rail as I can imagine.

[Kurald Galain]

I agree for sure, but I feel like whats possible to cleanup and what isn't is much less of a grey area then people think.
I'd say the opposite, rather. Just on the three pages of this thread, it's pretty obvious that many people have their own personal pet peeve that they insist MUST be solved by any future edition, and that pretty much nobody else cares about. :smallamused:

[MeeposFire]

I'd say the opposite, rather. Just on the three pages of this thread, it's pretty obvious that many people have their own personal pet peeve that they insist MUST be solved by any future edition, and that pretty much nobody else cares about. :smallamused:

More importantly what some people want to fix others will decry as ruining the game and vice versa. And while this happens every time they consider making a new edition of a game where a new edition can mean significant changes in this case I think this issue hits stronger since this particular version of a game was born and made popular at being a "minimal" change from a previous game and so making too big of change I can see being easily seen as a betrayal of what they see the game supposed to be.

[Kurald Galain]

More importantly what some people want to fix others will decry as ruining the game and vice versa. And while this happens every time they consider making a new edition of a game where a new edition can mean significant changes in this case I think this issue hits stronger since this particular version of a game was born and made popular at being a "minimal" change from a previous game and so making too big of change I can see being easily seen as a betrayal of what they see the game supposed to be.

That's right. The original PF is already too big a chance for some, too little for others. People simultaneously decry that how dare they use a unified maneuver system instead of touch-attack-followed-by-opposed-ability-check, and also how dare they not fix one obscure combo at level eighteen that nobody outside these forums has heard of.

As a game designer, it's pretty hard to get useful information from forums in general.

[Calthropstu]

Personally, I see zero need for a pathfinder 2e. PF is a great solid game that has stood for many years and, if supported, would stand for many many more.

[Mordaedil]

I would buy helpful guides just for converting 3.5 stuff to Pathfinder, honestly.

[Scots Dragon]

Some stuff on the new action economy system. (http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lklh?All-About-Actions)

I have to admit it looks kinda interesting.


I would buy helpful guides just for converting 3.5 stuff to Pathfinder, honestly.

They've had a free conversion guide available on the site for years. (http://paizo.com/products/btpy89m6?Pathfinder-Roleplaying-Game-Conversion-Guide)

[Andor13]

It does, although I see they are already breaking there own precept. Everything takes an action, unless it doesn't. Some things take two (casting most spells), some take an action and a reaction (readying an action, unless I misread that), some take a nebulous amount (maintaining concentration on a spell apparently takes 1 action per round.)

I'm not saying it's bad, in fact I like that they seem to have deliberately shifted the action economy to favor mobile fighters and turreted mages, I am saying they need a way to write that up that doesn't sound self-contradictory. :D

[Ninjaxenomorph]

While I'm as filled with trepidation as most of you, honestly the new actions system sounds fun. I'm side-eying Reactions a little, because while the idea sounds fun, and I definitely like that everyone gets a unique one for their class, something I read implied that attacks of opportunity will be a fighter (and monster) only thing. Which I don't know how to feel about.

[Scowling Dragon]

Again solid ideas (Taken from Trailblazer mostly), its just Paizo has a fantastic way of overcomplicating things FAST.

Keep complexity at the CLASS level. Classes and side mechanics should be as complicated as you need, but the core mechanics need to be prim and trim.

[Kurald Galain]

Ok, I'll tentatively say that I like the new action system.

Consider that both 3E and 4E have way too many action types that are confusingly similar and can be used in some combinations but not others (3E gets standard, move, 5' step, swift, immediate, full round, one round, free, free-as-part-of-a-move, and opportunity; whereas 4E gives us standard, move, minor, immediate-reaction, immediate-interrupt, opportunity-action, opportunity-attack, free, free-action-attack, and not-an-action). 5E does a decent job at clearing this up with standard, move, interact-with-object, bonus, reaction; but this pushes you towards doing the same thing every turn, since the actions aren't interchangeable, and it negates most movement-related tactics.

And now P2 says you just get three actions and can use them in any way you like (plus an out-of-turn reaction). That does sound like it makes for diverse and interesting combats. Move-move-attack. Withdraw, get potion, feed it to your ally. Attack three times in a row. Move, attack, 5' back. It's pretty elegant and there are a lot of options here, plus they seem to be aiming for giving monsters unique reaction-based defenses.

Of course there's much more to the game than this. But this part, at least, looks solid so far.

[Hunter Noventa]

"The fighter, for example, has a feat that you can select called Sudden Charge, which costs two actions but lets you to move twice your speed and attack once, allowing fighters to get right into the fray!"

So...they have to spend a feat to do something they can already do now without spending one? I wish I could say I hope that doesn't survive playtesting, but I don't exactly have high hopes.

I like the reactions they outline at least, and some streamlining of actions is nice, but I'm still not convinced without seeing the actual rules.

[Kurald Galain]

So...they have to spend a feat to do something they can already do now without spending one?
No. Without the feat, move-move-attack is three actions. With the feat, it is now two actions, leaving the third for something else.

[Scots Dragon]

So...they have to spend a feat to do something they can already do now without spending one? I wish I could say I hope that doesn't survive playtesting, but I don't exactly have high hopes.

They can already do the action without the feat, they just get a discount on the action economy so that they can use the third action to do something else. Say... sudden charge to move-move-attack... and then use the third free action to attack again, or to withdraw to a safer distance i.e. spring attack.

EDIT: Swordsage'd

[zimmerwald1915]

Nope
Oh well. Guess I won't be spending any money on this product or on adventures that are built in it.

[stack]

Wonder what they will do with CMB/MD scaling? Hopefully they can make that all work better without devoting an entire build and half your wealth to one maneuver. Its a known issue, so I could be addressed.

[Psyren]

Personally, I see zero need for a pathfinder 2e. PF is a great solid game that has stood for many years and, if supported, would stand for many many more.

The counterpoint though is that they have to weigh the energy and resources they would expend on disentangling existing snarls and contributing to existing bloat, vs that same energy being spent on developing something new and more accessible. Which one will better ensure the long-term health of their company and those depending on them for employment?

What I would like to see them do for PF going forward is legitimizing more of the higher-quality 3PP, like publishing APs containing Spheres or Pact Magic NPCs, similar to what they did with a psionics-user in Dragon's Demand. Then those 3PP will have a better chance of keeping the torch going while we wait for more P2 content.


Ok, I'll tentatively say that I like the new action system.

Consider that both 3E and 4E have way too many action types that are confusingly similar and can be used in some combinations but not others (3E gets standard, move, 5' step, swift, immediate, full round, one round, free, free-as-part-of-a-move, and opportunity; whereas 4E gives us standard, move, minor, immediate-reaction, immediate-interrupt, opportunity-action, opportunity-attack, free, free-action-attack, and not-an-action). 5E does a decent job at clearing this up with standard, move, interact-with-object, bonus, reaction; but this pushes you towards doing the same thing every turn, since the actions aren't interchangeable, and it negates most movement-related tactics.

And now P2 says you just get three actions and can use them in any way you like (plus an out-of-turn reaction). That does sound like it makes for diverse and interesting combats. Move-move-attack. Withdraw, get potion, feed it to your ally. Attack three times in a row. Move, attack, 5' back. It's pretty elegant and there are a lot of options here, plus they seem to be aiming for giving monsters unique reaction-based defenses.

Of course there's much more to the game than this. But this part, at least, looks solid so far.

I agree completely, and always had a feeling that aspect of Unchained was a pilot for something. I was a little surprised when Starfinder didn't use it right out of the gate, though it did some action-trimming of its own at least.

[Morty]

Yep, absolutely. There is no way in which 'Ranger' or 'Monk' are as broad archetypes as the 4 main classes. Everything else is an outgrowth of those. (Heck, you could reduce it back to the OD&D 3 if you were feeling particularly minimalist.)

But this is Pathfinder. Removing any core classes is about as big a third rail as I can imagine.

I feel like rangers and paladins are a good example. They started out as fighters who got extra powers for obeying a code of conduct. Then they became full classes, but not much has changed in their relation to the fighter class. Ever since, different designers have been trying to somehow make it work.

I'm not going to pretend like I know exactly what needs to be done about it, but completely abandoning any consideration of dropping and adding classes, beyond adding what's effectively another spellcaster, is a giant handicap on the outset.

[CharonsHelper]

Keep complexity at the CLASS level. Classes and side mechanics should be as complicated as you need, but the core mechanics need to be prim and trim.

I'll +1 this.

It's one of the main reasons that I'm a huge fan of class/level systems - it gates most of the complexity so that you don't need to know it when you start.

The way I figure it, there are 3 types of complexity.

1. Up-front

2. Gated

3. Emergent

In generally - the less of #1 and the more of #3 you can get the better. #2 still isn't a good thing, but it makes the game far more approachable if you can shift a lot of #1 to #2.

[Taelas]

What I would like to see them do for PF going forward is legitimizing more of the higher-quality 3PP, like publishing APs containing Spheres or Pact Magic NPCs, similar to what they did with a psionics-user in Dragon's Demand. Then those 3PP will have a better chance of keeping the torch going while we wait for more P2 content.

I can't see 3PP continuing to produce PF content if PF2E is out. There needs to be some kind of ongoing support. That's why they published Pathfinder in the first place, after all.

[Rhedyn]

The new action system is from Unchained. It is full, but the downside was that the system wasn't built around it so it felt weird at times.

[stack]

I can't see 3PP continuing to produce PF content if PF2E is out. There needs to be some kind of ongoing support. That's why they published Pathfinder in the first place, after all.

It is my understanding that 3PP sales for PF are already down, lagging well behind those for 5E and Starfinder. I don't have numbers; this is just what I have gathered in the 3PP world. I expect that the 3PP push into PF2 upon release will be aggressive and PF1 support will largely dry up outside of multi-platform products that can be easily adapted (settings, adventures, and misc supplements (village of..., 100 x in x, etc.). Even those will likely trickle down to nothing over the first few years.

[Scowling Dragon]

Like the action thing sounds good, but Paizo just can never stop fidgeting with mechanics like a child with too much sugar:


Let's say you're playing a paladin with a shield and you have spent an action to defend yourself with that shield. Not only does this boost your Armor Class; it also allows you to take a special reaction if you are hit by an attack. This shield block reduces the damage taken by an amount up to the shield's hardness!

You don't get a flat simple reaction to reduce damage. No you have to do an action, which gives a special triggered reaction which is dependant on your shields goddam hardness.

Not its AC Bonus (Or Scale it with level if NEED be), no hardness. Another number your gonna be forced to keep track of. I apreciate HP stats for items, but I hate how needless it is.

[Hunter Noventa]

No. Without the feat, move-move-attack is three actions. With the feat, it is now two actions, leaving the third for something else.

Ah, I miss understood I guess. Still on the fence about it. It's a hard sell with all the effort my groups have already put into PF1

[Felhammer]

I like the new shield rules, especially in conjunction with the new critical rules. It really makes

For those that missed it, your shield no longer provides a static bonus to your AC. Instead you must expend an action to hold the shield up. This will give you a +2 to AC. It will also give you access to a reaction that can apply a penalty to one incoming attack equal to the hardness of the shield. In the context of PF 1.0, this sounds like a lame/mediocre ability since you are giving up on an extra attack, that could potentially murder your enemy (and therefore, prevent them from hitting you back).

However, the new critical rule means that any attack that is 10 or more points above your AC deals double damage. So a +2 bonus, although minor, could mean the difference between taking normal damage and double damage. The reaction you gain access to means you can easily turn a double damage hit into a normal damage hit (or even a miss, if you are lucky).

What I like about this is that it makes shields feel relevant and interesting in a way they have not really been, since the early days of D&D 3.0. It also means more choices in combat, other than swing, swing, swing, which is great for everyone at the table.

[NomGarret]

That's the thing. Even if it's great, will I feel compelled to switch? Either it's a set of such small changes that you can port things over as easily as you could from 3.5 to Pf1, sort of an Unchained on steroids, which it looks like it won't be; or it's a significant enough change that the new things it introduces are so cool and different it's worth starting over. This means what can I do that I can't do in some other game I own, or what plays so much better in this version that I wouldn't play in another game I own?

If it's anywhere in the middle, I like to think I'll appreciate it but won't be compelled to switch. If I'm switching from the vast bulk of material available in my current game catalog to Human Fighter and Elf Wizard, those better be a lot more fun to play than the Human Fighter and Elf Wizard I'm playing now.

[Psyren]

I can't see 3PP continuing to produce PF content if PF2E is out. There needs to be some kind of ongoing support. That's why they published Pathfinder in the first place, after all.

I'm aware, it was just an idle thought really. The 3PP will go where the fanbase does.


I feel like rangers and paladins are a good example. They started out as fighters who got extra powers for obeying a code of conduct. Then they became full classes, but not much has changed in their relation to the fighter class. Ever since, different designers have been trying to somehow make it work.

I'm not going to pretend like I know exactly what needs to be done about it, but completely abandoning any consideration of dropping and adding classes, beyond adding what's effectively another spellcaster, is a giant handicap on the outset.

I'm a bit torn on this. On one hand, I absolutely agree that Monk, Ranger, Paladin and Barbarian could just be Fighter archetypes - specific applications of the fighter's more "martial generalist" model. On the other, I look at the sheer breadth of archetypes for all of those classes and I can see the value in avoiding piling all of those onto a single base. Looking only at Ranger being a Fighter archetype for instance, you now get the martial trapper, the druid-lite magical ranger/hunter, the aspect/shapeshifter archetype, the {specialized hunter of specific monster} archetype, the {specialized partner of specific companion} archetype, and the {specialized tracker in specific environment} archetype, all on top of the various archetypes that Fighters already have. What you'd gain in simplicity for having fewer base classes, you would lose in the complexity of each of those classes having 2x-3x as many archetypes as before.

At the very least I think all the hybrid classes can be made archetypes though. Cavalier and Brawler can be Fighter offshoots, Bloodrager can be a Barbarian offshoot, Slayer can be a Rogue or Ranger offshoot, and so on.

[atemu1234]

Pathfinder's entire claim to fame is based on nostalgia for 3.5, and not wanting to switch over to a new system. If they think that making a new system is what people want, clearly they haven't been paying attantion.

[Felhammer]

That's the thing. Even if it's great, will I feel compelled to switch? Either it's a set of such small changes that you can port things over as easily as you could from 3.5 to Pf1, sort of an Unchained on steroids, which it looks like it won't be; or it's a significant enough change that the new things it introduces are so cool and different it's worth starting over. This means what can I do that I can't do in some other game I own, or what plays so much better in this version that I wouldn't play in another game I own?

If it's anywhere in the middle, I like to think I'll appreciate it but won't be compelled to switch. If I'm switching from the vast bulk of material available in my current game catalog to Human Fighter and Elf Wizard, those better be a lot more fun to play than the Human Fighter and Elf Wizard I'm playing now.

By that logic, people should have never switched from 1st edition D&D.

[Psyren]

Pathfinder's entire claim to fame is based on nostalgia for 3.5, and not wanting to switch over to a new system. If they think that making a new system is what people want, clearly they haven't been paying attantion.

That's how it started, sure, but they've been coasting on that nostalgia for 10 years. If you think that train runs indefinitely and that people don't increasingly want something more accessible, you haven't been paying attention. (Specifically, to 5e and Starfinder's receptions.)

[Morty]

I'm a bit torn on this. On one hand, I absolutely agree that Monk, Ranger, Paladin and Barbarian could just be Fighter archetypes - specific applications of the fighter's more "martial generalist" model. On the other, I look at the sheer breadth of archetypes for all of those classes and I can see the value in avoiding piling all of those onto a single base. Looking only at Ranger being a Fighter archetype for instance, you now get the martial trapper, the druid-lite magical ranger/hunter, the aspect/shapeshifter archetype, the {specialized hunter of specific monster} archetype, the {specialized partner of specific companion} archetype, and the {specialized tracker in specific environment} archetype, all on top of the various archetypes that Fighters already have. What you'd gain in simplicity for having fewer base classes, you would lose in the complexity of each of those classes having 2x-3x as many archetypes as before.

At the very least I think all the hybrid classes can be made archetypes though. Cavalier and Brawler can be Fighter offshoots, Bloodrager can be a Barbarian offshoot, Slayer can be a Rogue or Ranger offshoot, and so on.

Fair point... which is why I don't think they should all be Fighter archetypes. First off, I don't think Fighter has been a useful class for a while now, except for the 4E fighter. Precisely because it's a "martial generalist" class that has to shoulder representing every concept that fights without weapons and relatively little or no magic.

Assuming we've got 12 classes to work with, having three or four martial classes along the lines of ToB, PoW or 4E might work much better. That still leaves us plenty of room for casters, hybrids or skill-monkeys. Of which there should hopefully be more than one.

Second, it's arguable how much of any given class needs to be an archetype. The only element of ranger that might deserve its own class or archetype is the animal companion. Maybe the "slayer of monsters" part, as well. Some of the others... honestly don't even need an archetype. Being a tracker, monster-slayer or survivalist can be, and should be, handled by skills and feats. "Can survive in the wilds and track well" just isn't enough for a class that goes from level 1 to level 20. One of the problems with non-magical characters in D&D has always been that you need a whole new class, PrC or archetype to do something new with them. Whereas a magic-user can become someone else just by picking different spells... just like a Warblade can be a canny duellist or raging berserker by focusing on different schools.

Finally, all those different classes, subclasses and archetypes have grown on Pathfinder over hears. A new edition is going to have to shed some of those at first, there's no way around it.

[Taelas]

That's how it started, sure, but they've been coasting on that nostalgia for 10 years. If you think that train runs indefinitely and that people don't increasingly want something more accessible, you haven't been paying attention. (Specifically, to 5e and Starfinder's receptions.)

Why would you want a Pathfinder that is "more accessible" when you could just use 5E? Most of these changes that I've seen seems aimed at more or less making Pathfinder more like 5E.

Pathfinder came out to fill a niche in the market, namely providing ongoing support for a 3.5E analogue. There's really no need for a 5E analogue -- 5E is still receiving support.

[Segev]

If PF2e manages to keep its niche of being the crunchy D&D game with well-defined rules (however well or poorly you may think they actually do at that), it probably will hold on to its fanbase. But it's going to need to be careful to be tightening their core rules and rebuilding classes to work with them, not to be redesigning classes in a whole new paradigm of class design nor creating complexity for the sake of complexity in the core system.

[oxybe]

I'm on a "I'll wait for the playtest to be in my hands before making a call"

When PF came out, I was in a hoping for the best but expecting the worst mode, hoping for a solution to problems I had with 3rd ed, but instead it was largely a continuation. Not particularly surprising, but still a bit disappointed. the PF core book was the single RPG book I ever bought & eventually sold back to the FLGS. Never bought another PF thing since then.

Now that they're making a 2nd ed, I'm a little bit more on the fence then before since they seem to be going into it with a "let's take this and make it better/more streamlined" mindset and I may finally get my "3.5, only better" but honestly?

PF is a game who's core idea was "3.5 needs to continue". That's where there fanbase came from. I'm more curious to know how far they're willing to go then anything else at this point and if their current fans will continue with them or jump ship to another 3.5 holdout/stay with PF 1st ed (knowing that all their OGL content is technically out there for use).

Maybe some other company will pull a PF and go "Pathfinder LIVES... IN ROADSEARCHER!".

[CharonsHelper]

However, the new critical rule means that any attack that is 10 or more points above your AC deals double damage.

I'm glad to hear that. It sounds like that will fill the gap that iterative attacks used to - making AC matter on more of a sliding scale. Without it AC would pretty much be an all or nothing investment. (Frankly - for normal Pathfinder it's too much that way since a lot of what you fight are monsters with natural attacks - which don't have iterative attacks.)

[NomGarret]

By that logic, people should have never switched from 1st edition D&D.

Maybe not immediately, but by the time the era of Incarnum, Tome of Battle, and Tome of Magic roll around, yeah there's plenty of new stuff to switch for.

[Starbuck_II]

However, the new critical rule means that any attack that is 10 or more points above your AC deals double damage. So a +2 bonus, although minor, could mean the difference between taking normal damage and double damage. The reaction you gain access to means you can easily turn a double damage hit into a normal damage hit (or even a miss, if you are lucky).


Huh, if all crits do this, what separates longsword from battleaxe I wonder?

[Segev]

PF is a game who's core idea was "3.5 needs to continue".

I'm not sure I agree. Yes, there's a part of that, but if that were all it took, a 2e spinoff would have sprung up to gobble up half or more of the D&D fanbase when 3e came out.

PF's success is due to the idea that "D&D needs to continue to be D&D," coupled with the fact that, for many, 4e no longer felt like D&D. A friend put it best, I think: "4e is a perfectly fine fantasy combat simulator that is almost, but not entirely, unlike D&D."

Were 4e more like 5e is, I suspect that PF never would have gained the ground it did.

[Morty]

Huh, if all crits do this, what separates longsword from battleaxe I wonder?

One hopes that they'll follow the example of the only edition where there was an actual difference between those, and give swords, axes et cetera different combat actions. Given what they're doing with shields, this might actually happen.

[stack]

Huh, if all crits do this, what separates longsword from battleaxe I wonder?

Hopefully nothing. Battleaxes are less useful than longswords in PF. The weapon tables are full of mechanically inferior options that exist because every name had to have stats regardless of mechanically necessity.

[oxybe]

I'm not sure I agree. Yes, there's a part of that, but if that were all it took, a 2e spinoff would have sprung up to gobble up half or more of the D&D fanbase when 3e came out.

PF's success is due to the idea that "D&D needs to continue to be D&D," coupled with the fact that, for many, 4e no longer felt like D&D. A friend put it best, I think: "4e is a perfectly fine fantasy combat simulator that is almost, but not entirely, unlike D&D."

Were 4e more like 5e is, I suspect that PF never would have gained the ground it did.

Agree to disagree. Lots of circumstances were different between 2nd to 3rd and 3rd to 4th.

2nd ed didn't have the OGL, known 3rd parties already making products for it (lord knows TSR nipped that one in the bud when it was around) and as strong an online community as we did back when PF came out.

Plus it wasn't like 3rd ed was universally loved online, even so far as when the preview stuff was released (http://www.gamegrene.com/node/20). If that post didn't have a familiar taste of 3rd to 4th Edition wars I don't know what to say other then edition wars were, and still are silly.

But gosh dang do we gamers still love to have them.

Your friend's not-D&D is 4th ed, but to Rabbitman in that article I posted, that not-D&D was 3rd ed. 4th ed was successful in bringing a lot of new blood into the game, it just didn't get a lot of the old blood. To me, as someone who grew on 2nd ed, 4th ed was exactly what I wanted: a good, pulpy game about adventurers adventuring. It did exactly what I always hoped D&D would do.

Did I care about it's D&Dness? Yes because 4th ed did exactly what I wanted out of D&D better then the previous 2 editions I had on my shelf.

Paizo had initially been on board to make 4th ed stuff, they just weren't willing to sit around while WotC kept ironing out a new OGL (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2hnth?40-PAIZO-IS-STILL-UNDECIDED#1), something WotC struggled with, as their old OGL allowed someone to basically resell their PHB (https://www.amazon.com/Mongoose-Pocket-Players-Handbook/dp/1904577660).

Paizo had built up some fan trust with the Dungeons & Dragon magazines at the time, as well as their own 3rd party modules. But they were a business and at the end of the day, they had to pay their bills and they pushed the angle: 3.5 thrives (http://dx685tpqqawuk.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/130924_foc_pathfinder_35thrives.jpg).

They sold PF to the masses on the idea that they were continuing that line of the game.

Not that 4th ed was not "real D&D" but specifically "3.5 thrives" and they could convert their old stuff.

That's the line I kept hearing about PF: they were fixing issues with 3.5 and releasing their own take on it.

Would 4th ed have done better if it was released as 5th ed?

Can't say. Lots of circumstances we just can't account for outside the quality of the game. The OGL, the lateness in the online/offline tools, the preview articles (which while I loved how it showed the direction the game was going, did have a "no, you're doing it wrong" vibe to it in regards to how 3rd ed was doing things), the constant staff rollover and change of direction at times, etc...

It was interesting times, at least.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

In regards to the difference between battleaxes and longswords, I will be very, very happy if they fix weapons. You know, so it's a broadsword that's the one-handed sword, swords can deal piercing or slashing damage, falchions are one-handed weapons, rapiers being able to slash and pierce... Honestly, it's one of the artifacts of 3.5 I'm hoping they finally give the boot.

[Segev]

All I can say is that 4e didn't "feel" like D&D the way 3e retained the feel of 1e and 2e, to me. And the major sin of it (again, to me) was in the class design. A 4e wizard was a 4e fighter was a rogue was a 3.5e martial adept. They might have had some differences in what the powers' end effects were, but they all played more or less the same. It was more Gauntlet than D&D: the characters all had the same mechanics, with mostly cosmetic shifts and a few sliders to emphasize one aspect of mechanics more than others.

It was GREAT as a combat simulator. I think the board games that came out using very similar mechanics are a lot of fun...as board games. Not as D&D, though.

5e recaptured the distinct feel of different mechanics.

We'll see how Paizo does, here, with their 2e. If it still behaves sufficiently like D&D, I have some homebrew I was working on a few years ago that I might pull back out and try to finish.

[johnbragg]

By that logic, people should have never switched from 1st edition D&D.

Plenty of tables didn't switch from 1st to 2nd. 2nd to 3rd, you had a massive, obvious upgrade--feats, skills, level-by-level multiclassing, the unified d20 mechanic.

3rd to 4th wasn't an obvious upgrade. And you saw what happened.

5th edition has a selling point--the unified advantage/disadvantage mechanic. Obviously that's not enough for everybody, or Pathfinder wouldn't still be selling product. (On the other hand, maybe 5th has cut into Pathfinder's market share enough that they feel forced to take a risk with Pathfinder 2E.)

Will Pathfinder 2E have a big selling point upgrade over 3X? Something as big as feats/skills/multiclassing, or advantage/disadvantage? Or will it be more on the scale of upgrades like CMB/CMD--quality hacks, but not paradigm shifters?

[stack]

rappers being able to slash and pierce...

Maybe a bard archetype?
:biggrin:

[CharonsHelper]

By that logic, people should have never switched from 1st edition D&D.

The OSR is a thing. (And from what I understand - they consulted some of its proponents when making 5e to try to give it some of the old school vibe.)

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Maybe a bard archetype?
:biggrin:

I'm on mobile since my computer died, autocorrect is a fickle mistress.

I'm also liking the changes to critical hits as a simplification from 3.5's version. But, I wonder what natural 20s and natural 1s are going to do. Part of the RPG branding is critically hitting or failing, for better or worse.

... Oh dear lord, I really hope they keep those restricted to combat. I hate the idea that rolling a 1 on a skill check fails and the GM is entitled to describe how inept your character is.

[killem2]

The only way paizo is getting my money now is if they bring PF1E to roll 20 as part of the partnership.

[Psyren]

Why would you want a Pathfinder that is "more accessible" when you could just use 5E? Most of these changes that I've seen seems aimed at more or less making Pathfinder more like 5E.

Pathfinder came out to fill a niche in the market, namely providing ongoing support for a 3.5E analogue. There's really no need for a 5E analogue -- 5E is still receiving support.

You can have a game that's more streamlined/accessible than Pathfinder, with fewer sacred cows, that is still rules-heavier than 5th. Like, you know, Starfinder did.


Fair point... which is why I don't think they should all be Fighter archetypes. First off, I don't think Fighter has been a useful class for a while now, except for the 4E fighter. Precisely because it's a "martial generalist" class that has to shoulder representing every concept that fights without weapons and relatively little or no magic.

I think there is a way to do "martial generalist" well. Fighter with no less than 4+Int, the Brawler's Martial Flexibility, and all the Advanced Weapon and Armor Training options baseline would be a good start that would still feel like a Fighter.


Second, it's arguable how much of any given class needs to be an archetype. The only element of ranger that might deserve its own class or archetype is the animal companion. Maybe the "slayer of monsters" part, as well. Some of the others... honestly don't even need an archetype. Being a tracker, monster-slayer or survivalist can be, and should be, handled by skills and feats. "Can survive in the wilds and track well" just isn't enough for a class that goes from level 1 to level 20. One of the problems with non-magical characters in D&D has always been that you need a whole new class, PrC or archetype to do something new with them. Whereas a magic-user can become someone else just by picking different spells... just like a Warblade can be a canny duellist or raging berserker by focusing on different schools.

I think "can survive in the wilds and track well" can indeed be part of a 1 to 20 archetype, if you define your "the wilds" career as starting in a forest and ending on Baator. I don't disagree that you could manage that with just a skills system though.

[stack]

I'm on mobile since my computer died, autocorrect is a fickle mistress.

Yeah. I've had much worse.

My favorite weapon system was from Rule of Cool's Legend system, but I hold no hope for anything of that nature in PF2.

[Milo v3]

I really hope that with the increased focus on the different types of play: "Combat", "Exploration/Investigation", and "Downtime" that every character type has options for all three rather than it being "Martials get only combat", "Skill Monkeys get Combat and Exploration/Investigation", and "Spellcasters get all three".

[Rynjin]

You can have a game that's more streamlined/accessible than Pathfinder, with fewer sacred cows, that is still rules-heavier than 5th. Like, you know, Starfinder did.

If PF 2e ends up like a more polished Starfinder, i'd be pretty happy. There's a lot to like about Starfinder, it's just a lot of the math simply didn't function as intended.

[Togath]

So... haven't read through the thread yet, but WHAT THE FISH!?!?!
Why is 2e Pathfinder a thing? The whole reason for Pathfinder's existence was for fans of 3.5/3e DnD.
Hopefully there's still time for the fan reaction to stop this before it happens.

[Scowling Dragon]

So... haven't read through the thread yet, but WHAT THE FISH!?!?!
Why is 2e Pathfinder a thing? The whole reason for Pathfinder's existence was for fans of 3.5/3e DnD.
Hopefully there's still time for the fan reaction to stop this before it happens.

If the fan reaction of Pathfinder Players was enough to "Stop" it it would also be enough for them not to need something like this in the first place.

[Felhammer]

The OSR is a thing. (And from what I understand - they consulted some of its proponents when making 5e to try to give it some of the old school vibe.)

OSR is a recreation of a bygone era.

You can do the same thing by playing the first edition of Pathfinder. In fact, you don't even need to wait for a retro clone. You can just play with the books you already own! :)


So... haven't read through the thread yet, but WHAT THE FISH!?!?!
Why is 2e Pathfinder a thing? The whole reason for Pathfinder's existence was for fans of 3.5/3e DnD.
Hopefully there's still time for the fan reaction to stop this before it happens.

You cannot seriously believe a second edition of Pathfinder would never happen.

The game is collapsing under the weight of its bloat. The house needs to be demolished and rebuilt, stronger and better than it was before.


Plenty of tables didn't switch from 1st to 2nd. 2nd to 3rd, you had a massive, obvious upgrade--feats, skills, level-by-level multiclassing, the unified d20 mechanic.

3rd to 4th wasn't an obvious upgrade. And you saw what happened.

5th edition has a selling point--the unified advantage/disadvantage mechanic. Obviously that's not enough for everybody, or Pathfinder wouldn't still be selling product. (On the other hand, maybe 5th has cut into Pathfinder's market share enough that they feel forced to take a risk with Pathfinder 2E.)

Will Pathfinder 2E have a big selling point upgrade over 3X? Something as big as feats/skills/multiclassing, or advantage/disadvantage? Or will it be more on the scale of upgrades like CMB/CMD--quality hacks, but not paradigm shifters?

3.0, 3.5 and PF 1 are all the same system. Each is just a refinement of the previous iteration. PF 2 just needs to continue that refinement trend in order to be successful and profitable.

Even if all PF 2 does is rework and simplify the action economy and, overhaul the base classes so they all work properly, easily and predictably with archetypes, then PF 2 will be a big upgrade over the current system (which feels like it is being held together with duct tape and hope).

Will it be enough to get people to jump to the new system? I do not know. The foundations on which Paizo's success were built are shaky, at best. A significant portion of their audience were fair weather friends, only stopping in the port of Pathfinder while they waited for the 4E storm to blow over. Once it had passed, they all jumped ship to 5E. This can easily be seen with the sudden and marked shift in the market from Paizo being King, to suddenly WotC being King again.

Many of the people who jumped to Pathfinder, did so because they did not want to change. Fair enough, when you like a system, why change to something to may not like? The funny thing about these players is that they DEMANDED a conversion guide from 3.5 to PF. After a few years, the vast majority of PF games I have played in and seen are PF only (which is why I roll my eyes at people who are demanding a conversion guide from PF 1 to PF 2 (after a while, you will either not be playing PF 2 or you will so like PF 2 that you won't want PF 1 rules added to your game)).

I, personally, am looking forward to the new edition. I think PF 1 is pretty bloated and hodge podge. Drilling down and giving the system a better foundation seems like a big win in my book.

I still play 2E, 3.5, 4E, so I am sure I will still play PF 1. So a change does nothing but give me more options. Which, honestly, I like.


All I can say is that 4e didn't "feel" like D&D the way 3e retained the feel of 1e and 2e, to me. And the major sin of it (again, to me) was in the class design. A 4e wizard was a 4e fighter was a rogue was a 3.5e martial adept. They might have had some differences in what the powers' end effects were, but they all played more or less the same. It was more Gauntlet than D&D: the characters all had the same mechanics, with mostly cosmetic shifts and a few sliders to emphasize one aspect of mechanics more than others.

It was GREAT as a combat simulator. I think the board games that came out using very similar mechanics are a lot of fun...as board games. Not as D&D, though.

5e recaptured the distinct feel of different mechanics.

We'll see how Paizo does, here, with their 2e. If it still behaves sufficiently like D&D, I have some homebrew I was working on a few years ago that I might pull back out and try to finish.

I think WotC brought "the magic" back with D&D Essentials but by then it was too late. They really should have lead off with the Essential Classes then created the PHB 1 & 2 Classes as optional additions. I think 4E would have faced far less resistance if they had done that.


Huh, if all crits do this, what separates longsword from battleaxe I wonder?

No idea. I imagine we will learn more as the days go by :)

Off the top of my head, I imagine some weapons will have a lower threshold to hit (like say being 8 over rather than 10) and some may deal triple damage (like axes do currently).



I'm glad to hear that. It sounds like that will fill the gap that iterative attacks used to - making AC matter on more of a sliding scale. Without it AC would pretty much be an all or nothing investment. (Frankly - for normal Pathfinder it's too much that way since a lot of what you fight are monsters with natural attacks - which don't have iterative attacks.)

We are on the same wavelength here.

I think it is an elegant concept.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

5E is still receiving support.That support is so minimal and glacially paced you might as well treat it as being an abandoned edition. If Paizo did just copy 5e they would offer more thorough support than WotC on day one and more content within a year.

[Morty]

I think there is a way to do "martial generalist" well. Fighter with no less than 4+Int, the Brawler's Martial Flexibility, and all the Advanced Weapon and Armor Training options baseline would be a good start that would still feel like a Fighter.

Maybe, but do we want to? Is it really a good thing to have a class whose defining feature is that there's nothing terribly special about it? D&D is a class-based system; that much is non-negotiable. So the system needs to leverage it, and a "martial generalist" class looks suspiciously like a point-buy system with extra steps.

That being said, perhaps such a class could work if the other alternatives weren't paladin, ranger and barbarian. Because as things stand, someone making a martial character has the choice of either subscribing to their very specific baggage, or the fighter's blandness with a sprinkling of their chosen combat style if there happen to be feats/archetypes that support it.


I think "can survive in the wilds and track well" can indeed be part of a 1 to 20 archetype, if you define your "the wilds" career as starting in a forest and ending on Baator. I don't disagree that you could manage that with just a skills system though.

You could, and I'll argue you should. Not everything needs to be a class feature or archetype. Skills and feats are there for a reason. I'd argue that the ranger is one of the reasons the fighter class tends to have such a dearth of non-combat abilities in most editions. Because when you make a skilful fighter, someone will ask "wait, isn't that the ranger's job?". Particularly if those skills happen to be survival-oriented.

[CharonsHelper]

We are on the same wavelength here.

I think it is an elegant concept.

I totally agree. I even use the same basic premise in the system that I'm working on (and came up with it over 2 years ago :P). Wait... they stole my idea!! :smallfurious:

It's not actually a super innovative idea - but it works. (And in practice - it feels very different in my system due to it being a Vitality/Wound system & rolls being on a bell curve.)

[RedWarlock]

Yeah, it’s not an uncommon idea. I have something similar in MY system, too, though I do it as a function of armor rather than weapon. (Think of it more like the difference between touch and regular AC. Hit touch, damage is halved. Hit full AC, damage goes through unreduced.)

As for PF 2e, I’m hopeful, but concerned. I think the more-crunchy route is their niche, and they’d be foolish to abandon it for 5e-style simplicity.

[Kurald Galain]

Well let's face it, shields are almost completely irrelevant and a poor build choice in all of 2E, 3E, 4E, PF, and 5E; so anything P2 does to make them more interesting is welcome.

[Togath]

Calmer now... though...
I still hope maybe Paizo will at least consider making both 1e and 2e pathfinder, rather than cutting off all 1e content entirely.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

The mentioning of stamina and vitality reminded me, anyone wondering if they will go with Starfinder's HP/Stamina system? I don't have play experience with Starfinder, but I thought it was an interesting idea. Though it might be more suited to a sci-fi game.

[Segev]

Well let's face it, shields are almost completely irrelevant and a poor build choice in all of 2E, 3E, 4E, PF, and 5E; so anything P2 does to make them more interesting is welcome.

If shields could be used for AC and for an off-hand weapon in the same round, they'd be a lot more useful in 3e.

[Florian]

If shields could be used for AC and for an off-hand weapon in the same round, they'd be a lot more useful in 3e.

Hm. I'm looking at my regular Fighter build that does exactly that, and uses it to get some free maneuvers as riders... hm... dunno, doesn't seem to exist.

[Togath]

So... how different is 2e looking from 1e right now?
Is it just a 3.0e to 3.5e dnd level of changes? Or bigger differences?

[137beth]

It's pretty sketchy, but when you have a customer base so loyal that they'll gladly advance pre-order products that haven't even been announced yet, admit in droves that they haven't liked any of the releases for over a year, but still subscribe "to help the company", you need to milk that for all its worth. If people are willing to pay to suck your ****, you'd be a fool not to take advantage of it.

My favorite part of this whole process is watching how quickly some of the people who think everything Paizo does is right by virtue of it being Paizo have changed there tune on Pathfinder 2. There are people who, less than a week ago, were saying that anyone who so much as considers the possibility of a Pathfinder 2e is clearly an idiot, because the Holy Paizo Gods descended from Heaven and bequethed unto us mere mortals a Perfect Divine Game in the form of Pathfinder (1e).

Now? Many of those same people are applauding the announcement of Pathfinder 2, because Paizo announced it and so it must be good.



Hmm. The video seems to state that some version of the downtime rules system will be core. Hopefully that means they will integrate the craft system into it and fix the current ... issues.
This definitely makes me happy to hear. The Downtime system was by far my favorite thing Paizo produced (not counting stuff Paizo copied and pasted from non-Paizo products while adding more editing errors),



Nope


Yes.

Source: dev posts in a very long forum thread on Paizo.

Well that doesn't make me happy. While downtime is my favorite thing Paizo produced, my favorite thing that was actually in a Paizo product is the ability to build NPCs using the same rules as PCs. If that's gone, I'm not sure if there would be enough in the game to keep me interested.

[Lucas Yew]

Well that doesn't make me happy. While downtime is my favorite thing Paizo produced, my favorite thing that was actually in a Paizo product is the ability to build NPCs using the same rules as PCs. If that's gone, I'm not sure if there would be enough in the game to keep me interested.

Seconded. As they said on their Q&A that they now officially acknowledge LFQW and intend to fix it, my own litmus test for PF2 is mostly about PC-NPC transparency (which two other OGL games, 5E and Starfinder, failed badly).

Plus concrete DCs for skills (another major weakness of 5E, in my opinion), too.

[Cosi]

Seconded. As they said on their Q&A that they now officially acknowledge LFQW and intend to fix it, my own litmus test for PF2 is mostly about PC-NPC transparency (which two other OGL games, 5E and Starfinder, failed badly).

I really hope that with the increased focus on the different types of play: "Combat", "Exploration/Investigation", and "Downtime" that every character type has options for all three rather than it being "Martials get only combat", "Skill Monkeys get Combat and Exploration/Investigation", and "Spellcasters get all three".

The fundamental problem that D&D has is that Fighters and Wizards are playing different games. Not that Wizards are better than Fighters (although to be clear, that is true). That Wizards are different than Fighters. As a Wizard levels up, she gains access to new and subtle magics that allow her to overcome challenges that are entirely different from the ones she could defeat at low level, and to trivialize those low level challenges. As a Fighter levels up, he gets slightly bigger numbers on the abilities he had at first level. Consider what the Wizard gets at 9th level (teleport, lesser planar binding, fabricate) versus what the Fighter gets at 9th level (Weapon Training or Advanced Weapon Training). The Wizard gets abilities that allow her to take strategic-level actions that could alter the fate of an entire kingdom. The Fighter gets better at stabbing enemies he can personally reach.

Unless you fix that, your game isn't going to be good, and I see no sign Paizo has figured out how to fix that. They're not even shooting near the mark with suggestions like "maybe you could change the action economy" or "maybe people get to add half their level to things". The problem is that the game does not have a defined paradigm for play and advancement, and the solution to that problem is to define one. What is a 20th level adventure like? How is it different from a 12th level adventure? What challenges do 8th level characters need to be prepared for? What level is it appropriate to start flying around? How long should "the place you need to be is very far away" be a serious challenge?

Until the answers to those questions are set in stone, poking around with the action economy isn't going to do anything useful. It's just going to produce things like the 3e Monk.


Huh, if all crits do this, what separates longsword from battleaxe I wonder?

Who the hell cares? I can't wrap my head around a mindset where it is a problem that longswords are inferior to (or superior to) battleaxes. It's a weapon. If the most important thing about your weapon is whether it is an axe or a sword, that's a problem. The reason you care about a flaming sword is because it is flaming not because it is a sword.


I think there is a way to do "martial generalist" well. Fighter with no less than 4+Int, the Brawler's Martial Flexibility, and all the Advanced Weapon and Armor Training options baseline would be a good start that would still feel like a Fighter.

Maybe, but do we want to? Is it really a good thing to have a class whose defining feature is that there's nothing terribly special about it? D&D is a class-based system; that much is non-negotiable. So the system needs to leverage it, and a "martial generalist" class looks suspiciously like a point-buy system with extra steps.

There's no way to do "Fighter" well because "Fighter" is a stupid concept. The game is about going into dungeons and. well, fighting the inhabitants. You can't have a class that is defined by fighting, because fighting is a thing that everyone does. It's like an intrigue game with a Negotiator class. The Fighter class should be scrapped and replaced with classes with concepts that you might actually care about (like Champion or Warlord).


If PF 2e ends up like a more polished Starfinder, i'd be pretty happy. There's a lot to like about Starfinder, it's just a lot of the math simply didn't function as intended.

You mean Starfinder had good design goals? Because yes, most games do. The hard part of game design is producing a product where the math works and mechanics hit the targets you want, not standing those targets up in the first place.

[MeeposFire]

I'm not sure I agree. Yes, there's a part of that, but if that were all it took, a 2e spinoff would have sprung up to gobble up half or more of the D&D fanbase when 3e came out.

PF's success is due to the idea that "D&D needs to continue to be D&D," coupled with the fact that, for many, 4e no longer felt like D&D. A friend put it best, I think: "4e is a perfectly fine fantasy combat simulator that is almost, but not entirely, unlike D&D."

Were 4e more like 5e is, I suspect that PF never would have gained the ground it did.

Actually there are spin offs for about every version of D&D some of the big differences between here and now and back then have already been said (one of which is being able to directly use the D&D mechanics which no other retro clone has ever gotten to do) but one big one not said is that the differences between when 3e switched to 4e and all the editions and 3e was time. AD&D had relatively few changes between 1e and 2e and both of those were extremely similar in many ways to D&D which had been going on for well over 20+ years when 3e came out. D&D was in trouble at the time because it was the the stale RPG system on the market, still the most well known, but very stale. 3e felt like a big change at that point and one that was felt to be LONG overdue. Contrast that to when 4e came out and even before you know anything about the mechanics (just to keep the arguments over edition wars out of this) you had plenty of people saying they were not ready or a change because it had not been that long, relative to what D&D at that point was used to, between the last change and 4e.

The market was begging for change when 3e came out it was more wait and see when 4e came out.




So... how different is 2e looking from 1e right now?
Is it just a 3.0e to 3.5e dnd level of changes? Or bigger differences?

On the whole more 3.0 to 3.5 than say 2e-3e, 3e-4e, or 4e-5e. They are similar enough that I have played 1e characters in 2e adventures and vice versa. The same is mostly true for older D&D (Rulescyclopedia type) where once I DMed a whole D&D adventure for a group playing 2e AD&D and did not know it until years later when I got the RUlescyclopedia and little things like "class: elf" all of a sudden made sense (at the time I thought they were short handing something in a monster manual I did not own and I also thought that they were just simplifying the stat block for fighter/mage and that every elf just happened to be one). Suffice to say from the start of D&D until 3e the differences are there but you easily mix and match stuff from each with a little bit of homebrew (and sometimes none at all).


If the fan reaction of Pathfinder Players was enough to "Stop" it it would also be enough for them not to need something like this in the first place.

Yeah what is hard to get across sometimes is that if you only keep tweaking the game you will keep the hard core fans but you will keep losing people slowly due to people losing interest and it will become harder and harder to attract new people. WotC saw that when they bought TSR which is one reason why 3e is quite a bit different from previous editions and that created some excitement. Yes they do risk losing that hard core base (which I admit for PF is a big risk considering its history and I do think just dismissing that concern is a mistake because even here you have PF fans making snide comments about what they think of Paizo's design chops so if they do not trust them to really design stuff that is going to make this even harder) but if they do not do something they will commit to the long loss of market share and importance. Long running game companies know this you must inovate or lose (though the tricky part with these kind of games is innovating enough to keep things fresh while keeping as much of the older fans as possible).

[Milo v3]

Until the answers to those questions are set in stone, poking around with the action economy isn't going to do anything useful. It's just going to produce things like the 3e Monk.
I don't know why you quoted me on that reply considering I wasn't talking about action economy or combat changes and was specifically saying how non-casters need things to do in the 3 out of 3 different phases of the game rather than only being combat related.... I'm specifically saying they need out of combat utility abilities, especially when the game is going out of it's way to have separate mechanical phases for "Combat"/"Exploration"/"Downtime".

[Cosi]

I don't know why you quoted me on that reply considering I wasn't talking about action economy or combat changes and was specifically saying how non-casters need things to do in the 3 out of 3 different phases of the game rather than only being combat related.... I'm specifically saying they need out of combat utility abilities, especially when the game is going out of it's way to have separate mechanical phases for "Combat"/"Exploration"/"Downtime".

I quoted you because you were on the thread of conversation I was commenting on. I didn't quote someone talking about action economy because I think that line of conversation is stupid and unhelpful and my point was about why it's stupid and unhelpful.

[Rynjin]

Well let's face it, shields are almost completely irrelevant and a poor build choice in all of 2E, 3E, 4E, PF, and 5E; so anything P2 does to make them more interesting is welcome.

?

Sword and board is probably the best TWFing style (which makes it about the 3rd best fighting style after 2H weapons and archery; 4th if you count Board and Board) in Pathfinder.

[CharonsHelper]

?

Sword and board is probably the best TWFing style (which makes it about the 3rd best fighting style after 2H weapons and archery; 4th if you count Board and Board) in Pathfinder.

Not to mention being great for all of the secondary combatants. (Clerics/bards/inquisitors etc.)

But really - at high levels when PA isn't very good anymore (through a combination of how much other static damage you get and your 2nd & 3rd iterative attacks) two-handed combat isn't all that great by then, while +6-7 AC can be very nice.

[Slithery D]

As far as sword vs. battleaxe, I think I saw a claim that some weapons will have an agile quality that gives them less of a penalty on iterative attacks. So a dagger might be 0/-2/-4 if you triple attack, a greatsword the standard 0/-5/-10. If that's so, other weapons could have values in the middle.

[Morphic tide]

Honestly, thinking back on things, I'm wanting more old school mechanics brought in, like how Archetypes are a recreation of Kits. Spells having multiple list types for different casting organizations, letting Wizard and Sorcerer be more different due to the shared list being accessed in different ways. Spell Schools being an academic and methodological categorization, while Spheres (the 2e Cleric/Druid kind) are a thematic or tradition based listing method. Thus Necromancy is turned into a Sphere of magic from a School, as the spells in it are linked thematically rather than mechanically. Fear effects return to being all-Enchantment, but the "taboo" retains mechanical representation by way of a spell categorization that specifically covers the taboo of "dark" magic as it relates to death.

Making Ranger, Paladin and Fighter properly distinct has been mentioned as a problem already, and I'm excited for the possibility of Iron Magic making it into core as Fighter's "thing" for utility effects. Drawing on the magical properties of your items, even if they aren't actively magically enhanced, could give Fighter the leg up it needs to make it to t3, or borderline t4. Ranger being made more distinct from Fighter to give room for skilled Fighters starts with killing utility niche protection as a concept. As such, the Rogue's skillmonkey position comes more from extra bonus to skills than being the only one who has decent skill capacity of the relevant kind, much like how Starfinder handled it.

[Togath]

On the whole more 3.0 to 3.5 than say 2e-3e, 3e-4e, or 4e-5e. They are similar enough that I have played 1e characters in 2e adventures and vice versa. The same is mostly true for older D&D (Rulescyclopedia type) where once I DMed a whole D&D adventure for a group playing 2e AD&D and did not know it until years later when I got the RUlescyclopedia and little things like "class: elf" all of a sudden made sense (at the time I thought they were short handing something in a monster manual I did not own and I also thought that they were just simplifying the stat block for fighter/mage and that every elf just happened to be one). Suffice to say from the start of D&D until 3e the differences are there but you easily mix and match stuff from each with a little bit of homebrew (and sometimes none at all).

Err, I probably should've been clearer, I meant the differences between 1e Pathfinder and 2e Pathfinder.

[MeeposFire]

?

Sword and board is probably the best TWFing style (which makes it about the 3rd best fighting style after 2H weapons and archery; 4th if you count Board and Board) in Pathfinder.

I was thinking about saying how in 2e, 4e, and certainly 5e sword and board was pretty good to great but I thought it would potentially grind the thread to a halt on something not really important so I actually deleted the whole thing.

Suffice to say though while I think in those editions it could be good I would not say they are dynamic in any way.

[atemu1234]

The fundamental problem that D&D has is that Fighters and Wizards are playing different games..

Fighters are playing Dark Souls, while Wizards are playing Skyrim. Basically, for a fighter, death is a reasonable expectation of an on-level encounter, moreso than a wizard, who can choose to flee if need be.

[MeeposFire]

Meh the dynamic between warrior types and caster types was always the most strained in 3e type games. The many small changes made from AD&D to 3e made magic easier to use, less restricted, and gave casters more endurance while the warrior types were made on the whole weaker and less able to do their jobs. One of the biggest problems is the action economy so I wholeheartedly disagree with those who say that fixing the action economy for warriors is not important it is one of the most important changes needed in the game.

Consider that 3e is the only edition where a warrior cannot move (at least half as rounds speed) and make his normal number of attacks. It makes a big difference if you play somebody with a weapon and you no longer have to play the game of "how can I make sure I can get full attacks without getting screwed over by simple tactics".

[Eldariel]

Meh the dynamic between warrior types and caster types was always the most strained in 3e type games. The many small changes made from AD&D to 3e made magic easier to use, less restricted, and gave casters more endurance while the warrior types were made on the whole weaker and less able to do their jobs. One of the biggest problems is the action economy so I wholeheartedly disagree with those who say that fixing the action economy for warriors is not important it is one of the most important changes needed in the game.

Consider that 3e is the only edition where a warrior cannot move (at least half as rounds speed) and make his normal number of attacks. It makes a big difference if you play somebody with a weapon and you no longer have to play the game of "how can I make sure I can get full attacks without getting screwed over by simple tactics".

It also leads to the bizarre and unintuitive situations where it's optimal to take a move action and eat up attack of opportunity and let the opponent move and attack instead of full attacking. In practice that would mean you're neck to neck with the enemy attacking you and you ignoring it at all times but somehow the enemy is less able to hurt you this way than while you're defending yourself. It also ****s up class balance some more; casters can move and get 100% efficiency, why can't mundanes? It should be the other way around since caster actions are more powerful IMHO. This way casters would actually benefit of a mundane protecting them while they do their reality boning thing (and gishes would have an edge over straight casters in better being able to use their magic in combat and being able to defend themselves even when enemy closes in; you don't see Gandalf using magic when in melee either). Reality boning is still more powerful but at least mundanes would have a role in enabling it to a degree.

Casters should have 1 round casting times by default with only particular interrupt/fast free spells as 1 standard action or faster and mundanes should be able to do their thing as a standard action while moving (and ready move actions to follow/block enemies to do away with the ridiculous "walk past the guy with the sword because he's frozen while I move"-mechanic), and since they focus on physical development and reactions, one of the most logical and powerful things to give warriors as they level up would be extra actions in a turn. This would also give warrior/caster multiclass builds some actual benefits compared to casters for taking warrior levels; lightning-fast movements and reflexes allow them to act more efficiently and thus take more immediate/swift/standard/move actions each turn.

[Yondu]

It also leads to the bizarre and unintuitive situations where it's optimal to take a move action and eat up attack of opportunity and let the opponent move and attack instead of full attacking. In practice that would mean you're neck to neck with the enemy attacking you and you ignoring it at all times but somehow the enemy is less able to hurt you this way than while you're defending yourself. It also ****s up class balance some more; casters can move and get 100% efficiency, why can't mundanes? It should be the other way around since caster actions are more powerful IMHO. This way casters would actually benefit of a mundane protecting them while they do their reality boning thing (and gishes would have an edge over straight casters in better being able to use their magic in combat and being able to defend themselves even when enemy closes in; you don't see Gandalf using magic when in melee either). Reality boning is still more powerful but at least mundanes would have a role in enabling it to a degree.

Casters should have 1 round casting times by default with only particular interrupt/fast free spells as 1 standard action or faster and mundanes should be able to do their thing as a standard action while moving (and ready move actions to follow/block enemies to do away with the ridiculous "walk past the guy with the sword because he's frozen while I move"-mechanic), and since they focus on physical development and reactions, one of the most logical and powerful things to give warriors as they level up would be extra actions in a turn. This would also give warrior/caster multiclass builds some actual benefits compared to casters for taking warrior levels; lightning-fast movements and reflexes allow them to act more efficiently and thus take more immediate/swift/standard/move actions each turn.
You point the real issue here, the action economy, because not only it impede the melee character to act as it should do, it overly advantage the caster by making them more mobile...
I've tryed to implement the full round casting time for casters, I does not work very well because it implies a lot of rework especially if the caster rely on invocations (that are clearly OP on my point of view), maybe a complex action to cast a spell is more viable... also, the fact that some spells are non-defendable by the target is also an issue, Mundanes does not have this possibility.
A big issue for me was also the initiative system in D20, whenever you cast a groundbreakin' spell, swing a enormous sword or flashing a rapier, you act at the same moment, without penalties or slowing.... PF bring a lot in the D20 game especially for the non-caster ( a lot of new options, possibilities ...), I recognize it, but the legacy of D&D 3.x is a heavy weight.

[MeeposFire]

You point the real issue here, the action economy, because not only it impede the melee character to act as it should do, it overly advantage the caster by making them more mobile...
I've tryed to implement the full round casting time for casters, I does not work very well because it implies a lot of rework especially if the caster rely on invocations (that are clearly OP on my point of view), maybe a complex action to cast a spell is more viable... also, the fact that some spells are non-defendable by the target is also an issue, Mundanes does not have this possibility.
A big issue for me was also the initiative system in D20, whenever you cast a groundbreakin' spell, swing a enormous sword or flashing a rapier, you act at the same moment, without penalties or slowing.... PF bring a lot in the D20 game especially for the non-caster ( a lot of new options, possibilities ...), I recognize it, but the legacy of D&D 3.x is a heavy weight.

Casters being unable to move on a round they cast actually used to be a rule in various forms of older D&D and that did affect them quite a bit and that was one of the many minor seeming changes from AD&D 2e and 3e that actually affects more than they thought.

If doing a 3e game and you do want to bring that back to a degree you could make it the full attack action for many spells which allows you to still use swift actions and allow spell affects to actually take affect the round you cast.

The one big exception I would make would be damage dealing spells. Keep those as standard actions and it makes those spells slightly better to the competition.

[Cosi]

As far as sword vs. battleaxe, I think I saw a claim that some weapons will have an agile quality that gives them less of a penalty on iterative attacks. So a dagger might be 0/-2/-4 if you triple attack, a greatsword the standard 0/-5/-10. If that's so, other weapons could have values in the middle.

Why. Why would you want to track that. Why would you want to require me to recheck a character's attack bonuses every time they pick up another weapon. Just let axes be better than swords. Or use the old crit mechanics, which were fine.


Fighters are playing Dark Souls, while Wizards are playing Skyrim. Basically, for a fighter, death is a reasonable expectation of an on-level encounter, moreso than a wizard, who can choose to flee if need be.

No. The problem isn't that the Fighter loses a lot in combat (I mean, that is a problem, but it's not the hard problem). To use your analogy the problem isn't that the Fighter is playing Dark Souls while the Wizard is playing Skyrim. It's that the Fighter is playing Dark Souls while the Wizard is playing Dominions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominions_3:_The_Awakening). If the Wizard is still getting planar binding while the Fighter is getting Advanced Weapon Training, the game is broken even if the Fighter is good enough at stabbing individual enemies they can personally reach.


Casters should have 1 round casting times by default with only particular interrupt/fast free spells as 1 standard action or faster and mundanes should be able to do their thing as a standard action while moving (and ready move actions to follow/block enemies to do away with the ridiculous "walk past the guy with the sword because he's frozen while I move"-mechanic), and since they focus on physical development and reactions, one of the most logical and powerful things to give warriors as they level up would be extra actions in a turn. This would also give warrior/caster multiclass builds some actual benefits compared to casters for taking warrior levels; lightning-fast movements and reflexes allow them to act more efficiently and thus take more immediate/swift/standard/move actions each turn.

I agree that spells and attacks should be the same action, but I think that action type should obviously be standard, because if you are going to go to the effort of having a tactical grid with terrain effects on individual squares, you should obviously be having people move around.

Also, doing anything "because it would make multiclass builds good" is dead in the water because open multiclassing doesn't work and isn't necessary.

[CharonsHelper]

Casters being unable to move on a round they cast actually used to be a rule in various forms of older D&D and that did affect them quite a bit and that was one of the many minor seeming changes from AD&D 2e and 3e that actually affects more than they thought.

If doing a 3e game and you do want to bring that back to a degree you could make it the full attack action for many spells which allows you to still use swift actions and allow spell affects to actually take affect the round you cast.

The one big exception I would make would be damage dealing spells. Keep those as standard actions and it makes those spells slightly better to the competition.

I think that the action length of spells should just vary a lot more. It's a balancing/variety factor which is surprisingly underused.

You could easily have a 3rd, 5th, & 7th level spells do very similar things, but if the 3rd level one is a full round action while the 5th level spell is a standard action, and the 7th level is a swift action, they might all be worth taking. (Especially if they cut back on the quadratic wizard - which both Starfinder & the teasers of PF2e seem to imply is a goal.)

But yes - I do agree that the default should be that a spell is either a full attack or maybe even a full round.

[Cosi]

Having your prize for hitting 13th level be "you can do that thing you could do at 5th level, but three times a round" sounds like the stupidest design decision I can imagine. As a result, I assume it will be exactly what the designers choose to do for PF 2e.

[CharonsHelper]

Having your prize for hitting 13th level be "you can do that thing you could do at 5th level, but three times a round" sounds like the stupidest design decision I can imagine. As a result, I assume it will be exactly what the designers choose to do for PF 2e.

Considering that your idea of good balance for a wizard being 10x more powerful than everyone else - I'm taking that with a big grain of salt.

It would give them tactical options. And if single spells aren't enough to win fights (they shouldn't be) then they would be able to throw out combinations in a single round.

And I didn't say that should be all 7th level spells are. You would of course be able to take more powerful spells which take longer to cast than a swift action.

Heck - in Pathfinder adding Quicken metamagic to a spell already adds +4 to the spell level, and that's only from standard to swift. (which is what I ball-parked the difference off of - though I'm just spit-balling)

Plus - I'm going to guess that they're flattening character progression a bit.

[Cosi]

Considering that your idea of good balance for a wizard being 10x more powerful than everyone else - I'm taking that with a big grain of salt.

No, that is wrong. That is obviously wrong, and I have called it out as wrong and explained why it is wrong every time someone has said it. But people keep saying it. I assume this is because people don't understand what "balance point" actually means.

I believe that the Wizard is (closer to) an appropriate balance point than the Fighter. That means that everyone should be at the power level the Wizard is at (give or take things like planar binding or polymorph cheese).

Do you see the difference between that and "the Wizard should be 10x more powerful than everyone else"?

[Morphic tide]

No, that is wrong. That is obviously wrong, and I have called it out as wrong and explained why it is wrong every time someone has said it. But people keep saying it. I assume this is because people don't understand what "balance point" actually means.

I believe that the Wizard is (closer to) an appropriate balance point than the Fighter. That means that everyone should be at the power level the Wizard is at (give or take things like planar binding or polymorph cheese).

Do you see the difference between that and "the Wizard should be 10x more powerful than everyone else"?

It's probably that you've opposed the measures needed to bring other classes up to the Wizard's level (weren't you one of those Guy At The Gym fallacy people in the Fighter-boosting discussion threads?), while also being extremely opposed to any serious nerfing of the fundamentally problematic spellcasters.

[Rhedyn]

I doubt Paizo can get good feedback. The moderation on their forums is anti-negativity and let's anyone who is positive be as hateful to decenters as they want. neogaf-lite

The forum is basically ran by concern trolls who found out that they can just whine about tone to get a mod to win the argument for them.

It's like most of the posters are made of glass and can only handle criticism if it's phrased like a compliment.

[Cosi]

(weren't you one of those Guy At The Gym fallacy people in the Fighter-boosting discussion threads?),

Again, misrepresenting my position. I think that "mundane dude" is never going to be equal to "magic dude" at high levels, because "mundane dude" is a concept defined by what it can't do (anything magical) and "magic dude" is a concept defined by what it can do (magic). As a result, for Fighters to not suck at high (power) levels they need to get magic, either as a result of pivoting from classes like Fighter to classes like Champion or as a result of forcing people to PrC or both.


while also being extremely opposed to any serious nerfing of the fundamentally problematic spellcasters.

There aren't any fundamentally problematic spellcasters. There are like three kinds of abilities that need nerfs from power perspectives (minionmancy, polymorphing, action economy manipulation)*, maybe that many that could go down for complexity reasons (spells that cite to other spells, polymorph again), and some non-balance arguments for structuring casters differently (people like thematic casters, so we should make casters more thematically focused).

*: And even these are implementation issues. Ironically the most problematic one from a design perspective is probably action economy manipulating abilities.

[Morty]

Here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?5039-Here-s-a-TON-of-Pathfinder-2-Info-from-the-Know-Direction-Podcast) is a bunch of information. It appears that the gap between casters and non-casters is still there and still intentional... just not as drastic. Good to have that cleared up.

They're keeping the old 11 classes because "people would freak out without them" and "it's never a good idea to take things from them". That... really tells me volumes about their priorities. I'm really not sure how having a list of 12 classes that doesn't exactly line up with what PF 1E had is taking anything away, but... okay.

[stack]

A podcast interview apparently states that spells won't auto-scale, instead they have to be upcast like in 5E. thread (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2uynb?Know-Directions-Massive-Interview-with-Erik)

Well, I can't agree to that decision.

[CharonsHelper]

They're keeping the old 11 classes because "people would freak out without them" and "it's never a good idea to take things from them". That... really tells me volumes about their priorities. I'm really not sure how having a list of 12 classes that doesn't exactly line up with what PF 1E had is taking anything away, but... okay.

To not lose their customers and hopefully sell more books? Shocking priorities for a business. :smallbiggrin:

[Eldariel]

I agree that spells and attacks should be the same action, but I think that action type should obviously be standard, because if you are going to go to the effort of having a tactical grid with terrain effects on individual squares, you should obviously be having people move around.

Also, doing anything "because it would make multiclass builds good" is dead in the water because open multiclassing doesn't work and isn't necessary.

I think spells should keep variable actions to maintain another balancing angle but the vast majority should trend towards 1 round to make the "Protect the caster who does big boom"-minigame relevant and to enable casters to have more powerful effects with relevant but manageable costs.


The latter...eh, you couls make it work if you wanted. AD&D Human Dual Classing was fine if not consistent powerwise (very low initial power but considerable payoffs). There are many angles even in 3.5 (Ardent, ToB) that enable it let alone all the infinite unexplored options.

Yeah, not necessary, but basically the ultimate in terms of character creation freedom in a classbased system.

[Cosi]

I think that in terms of classes the only thing that really matters is the number (and concept coverage). People were pissed off that 4e went from 11 classes in the PHB to 8. They didn't seem terribly upset about replacing the Sorcerer with the Warlock.

The fact that Paizo is still embracing intentional imbalance is disappointing, but not surprising. Honestly, none of the stuff they've announced really seems to merit an edition change. They're adjusting power levels slightly, and making the Alchemist more important. Couldn't you accomplish that by printing some power-creep options and producing more content aimed at Alchemists?

[Pex]

My favorite part of this whole process is watching how quickly some of the people who think everything Paizo does is right by virtue of it being Paizo have changed there tune on Pathfinder 2. There are people who, less than a week ago, were saying that anyone who so much as considers the possibility of a Pathfinder 2e is clearly an idiot, because the Holy Paizo Gods descended from Heaven and bequethed unto us mere mortals a Perfect Divine Game in the form of Pathfinder (1e).

Now? Many of those same people are applauding the announcement of Pathfinder 2, because Paizo announced it and so it must be good.



I'm disappointed my Pathfinder books would become obsolete, not that I'd be forbidden from using them. I felt the same way from 3.0 -> 3.5, but at least it's been a good number of years between them* it's not upsetting. There is a logical sense to update the game given the years of experience to know what works and what is not working. If Unchained is any indication, barbarians will no longer risk dying when their iconic class feature ends and monks will be comparable warriors.

Those of us who were happy with 3E and never wanted 4E became happier with Pathfinder. There's no shame or nyah nyah to say those who are happy with Pathfinder could become happier with refined rules. To be perfect doesn't have to be so literal it couldn't become more perfect.

*"Them" meaning Pathfinder editions. 3.0 -> 3.5 was too soon and upset a lot of people at the time.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by stack
A podcast interview apparently states that spells won't auto-scale, instead they have to be upcast like in 5E.

I've never read through 5E, so I’m not even sure what "upcast" means. I still can’t quite get the idea behind undercasting.


Originally Posted by CharonsHelper
To not lose their customers and hopefully sell more books? Shocking priorities for a business.

They’ve already pre-lost me as a customer by advertising this, and I have to wonder what percentage of the market will be in a similar mind.

One of the Paizo higher-ups mentioned 100,000 copies as a print run for one of the hardbacks, and even if that’s not a precise figure, it’s probably enough of a ballpark to give a sense of scale. Someone in this thread mentioned that 500 copies is a good run for a 3PP title.

So my question is, will Paizo be printing hundreds of thousands of copies of P2E, banking on the support of a large portion of their current base? Will most of their base support them, or will Paizo overextend, and send more business to the 3PPs?

[Scowling Dragon]

The Gnome was like 2 pages worth of content. People freaked out when it was taken away from them, but its really just a footnote on the rules.
Yeah the priorities here are flabby and more token then anything else.
This isn't change. Its just some jiggery pokery.

This is the exact same of flabby design that made me dislike 5e. Not enough strong fundemental design decisions.

[Kurald Galain]

A podcast interview apparently states that spells won't auto-scale, instead they have to be upcast like in 5E. thread (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2uynb?Know-Directions-Massive-Interview-with-Erik)
Spells auto-scaling is literally the concept of Linear Warrios Quadratic Wizards that they want to get rid of.


They're keeping the old 11 classes because "people would freak out without them" and "it's never a good idea to take things from them". That... really tells me volumes about their priorities. I'm really not sure how having a list of 12 classes that doesn't exactly line up with what PF 1E had is taking anything away, but... okay.
Well obviously they are going to take the classes that are most popular with the current players, and most commonly represented in popular fiction. If you'd publish a game whose "core" classes are e.g. the occultist, skald, vigilante, and samurai, then most players are just going "huh WTF is that?", shrug, and play something else.

Same with races. Of course the most popular races are going to be printed first.

[Kurald Galain]

The Gnome was like 2 pages worth of content. People freaked out when it was taken away from them, but its really just a footnote on the rules.
I suspect many objections to this were really because of WOTC's marketing campaign of "hey, you know those gnomes? They SUCK!!! You know, that thing you've enjoyed playing? IT SUCKS!!!! You know what doesn't suck? Tieflings! They're emo and stuff! With dark hair and morbid poetry and such. TIEFLING!" :smallamused:

[stack]

In 5E, burning hands is a first level spell that does 3d6 fire damage in a 15 ft. cone. Cast it from a 2nd level slot, it does 4d6. So you can spend a 9th level slot to deal an amazing* 11d6 damage. Note that prepared casters work like the 3.5 spirit shaman/PF arcanist, but can freely upcast lower level spells as long as they have the higher level slots.

*read: depressing

[Cosi]

I think spells should keep variable actions to maintain another balancing angle but the vast majority should trend towards 1 round to make the "Protect the caster who does big boom"-minigame relevant and to enable casters to have more powerful effects with relevant but manageable costs.

Eh. I don't think that game is very interesting, and that kind of tactical role enforcement generally makes options like "all-caster party" and "no caster party" less good for no real reason. I can see the justification for having some characters who want to sit in one place and blast crap (for example, Beholders), but I don't think that needs to be "all Wizards", let alone "all casters". I just think that if you're going to support the level of tactical detail D&D games generally do, you should be encouraging people to move instead of sit still.

More viable ways of doing things is better than less. The game is more interesting if there are characters who want to move and characters who want to stand still, and it is more interesting still if there are characters who want to move and do magic and characters who want to move and stab enemies in the face.


The latter...eh, you couls make it work if you wanted. AD&D Human Dual Classing was fine if not consistent powerwise (very low initial power but considerable payoffs). There are many angles even in 3.5 (Ardent, ToB) that enable it let alone all the infinite unexplored options.

The problem I have with multi-classing is that there's no reason for it to work like 3e multi-classing. As I see it, there are three themes that dominate multi-classed characters in 3e:

1. Builds that dip another class to get skills or low level powers they want.
2. Builds that combine a bunch of martial classes.
3. Builds that theurge together two classes.

1 seems like it would be solved fairly directly by adding more background or feat options. 2 seems like an obvious result of martial classes not being very good. 3 require some kind of multi-classing system (though for some concepts like Wizard/Fighter there should just be a base class), but I don't see why it requires you to allow people to be Dread Necromancer 3/Ranger 5s. Just let people take a subclass (this also allows easier support for character concepts like "is a giant").

On the other hand, even with things like ToB that reduce the disparity, open multi-classing still produces enormous power discrepancies once you start actually exploring a non-trivial portion of the options it gives you. I suspect a Class/Subclass system would probably produce a greater variety of viable characters than open multi-classing ever could (and would certainly produce a greater percentage of viable characters).

[stack]

Spells auto-scaling is literally the concept of Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards that they want to get rid of.


The disparity should be addressed; I don't agree with that being a good solution.

[Felhammer]

Here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?5039-Here-s-a-TON-of-Pathfinder-2-Info-from-the-Know-Direction-Podcast) is a bunch of information. It appears that the gap between casters and non-casters is still there and still intentional... just not as drastic. Good to have that cleared up.

They're keeping the old 11 classes because "people would freak out without them" and "it's never a good idea to take things from them". That... really tells me volumes about their priorities. I'm really not sure how having a list of 12 classes that doesn't exactly line up with what PF 1E had is taking anything away, but... okay.

You would be surprised how attached people are to those classes. Its just one of those things where you don't want to rock the boat when you are changing lots of other things.


A podcast interview apparently states that spells won't auto-scale, instead they have to be upcast like in 5E. thread (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2uynb?Know-Directions-Massive-Interview-with-Erik)

Well, I can't agree to that decision.

It helps curb the exponential growth of casters relative to the more linear growth of non-casters. This is a good thing.

[Cosi]

Spells not auto-scaling would be dumb. If you are going to continue to have the option to cast burning hands at 20th level, it should be something that is at least theoretically worth doing on occasion. Otherwise why is it taking up space on your character sheet?

[Morty]

To not lose their customers and hopefully sell more books? Shocking priorities for a business. :smallbiggrin:

Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I would hope that a significant part of their customer base understands that classes are just metagame constructs that serve a purpose. And won't freak out if the list doesn't line up. There's certain concepts that must stay. But there's a lot of ways to express them. The amount of official and third-party classes beyond the core for Pantherine kind of proves that.


I think that in terms of classes the only thing that really matters is the number (and concept coverage). People were pissed off that 4e went from 11 classes in the PHB to 8. They didn't seem terribly upset about replacing the Sorcerer with the Warlock.

Honestly, the inclusion of the warlock was one of the least controversial parts of 4E. There's a reason it stuck around in 5E, even as 4E influence was otherwise removed with prejudice. Ditto for Warlord. It didn't make it to 5E, but it was popular.

[stack]

Does it really curb exponential growth? Seems to me it just makes a class of spells age into uselessness, freeing up more slots for situational and utility spells. The kinds of spells that let casters do everything other than damage.

[Felhammer]

Spells not auto-scaling would be dumb. If you are going to continue to have the option to cast burning hands at 20th level, it should be something that is at least theoretically worth doing on occasion. Otherwise why is it taking up space on your character sheet?

Spells do not automatically scale but you have the option to cast the spell using a higher level spell slot.

[Jormengand]

Spells do not automatically scale but you have the option to cast the spell using a higher level spell slot.

This is fine if it's actually worth doing that - if an upcast-to-third burning hands does the same amount of damage as a fireball but in a different, but potentially useful, area - and not if it's not

Upcasting also just feels bad as a mechanic because lack of scaling on first-level slots means that first-level slots become useless for damaging spells, which are already the worst kinds of spells. It's a lesson Wizards and Paizo should have already learned from psionic augmentation - if the choice is between doing an amount of damage that was relevant ten levels ago and providing a utility function that was relevant ten levels ago, chances are the utility function is more likely to stay relevant now. That's actually why damaging spells scale but +skillmod and +savemod spells tend not to: +2 is always a 10% chance that you pass due to the spell's effect when you would otherwise have failed. No surprise, then, that the low-level powers that actually get manifested for low amounts of power are usually the unaugmentable ones.

Upcasting is a mechanic that makes your low-level slots feel like crossbow bolts, basically.

[Kurald Galain]

Does it really curb exponential growth? Seems to me it just makes a class of spells age into uselessness, freeing up more slots for situational and utility spells. The kinds of spells that let casters do everything other than damage.

You... do know what "exponential" means, right?

[Psyren]

Here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?5039-Here-s-a-TON-of-Pathfinder-2-Info-from-the-Know-Direction-Podcast) is a bunch of information. It appears that the gap between casters and non-casters is still there and still intentional... just not as drastic. Good to have that cleared up.

I'm glad they've codified "magic should be (at least somewhat) superior to not-magic" as an explicit design principle so people stop complaining that they were lied to just because every class happens to have 20 levels. For the rest:

1) Agree with all of Erik's pet peeves. Especially glad they agree how good (and therefore dumb) the Wand of Cure Light was at invalidating most other sources of healing.
2) I'm very interested in what they come up with for Ancestry, particularly the part about revisiting it as you go.
3) I don't believe for a second Mark Seifter didn't crib the spell advancement mechanic from 5e, but we'll go with it.
4) Making alchemy (not just the Alchemist) a core part of the game and accessible to most classes is fantastic, and can be a big help to all those folks who constantly post wanting to run low-magic games.
5) I'm one of the folks happy that guns aren't core.
6) I've expressed my approval for the new action economy previously.

[Cosi]

Spells do not automatically scale but you have the option to cast the spell using a higher level spell slot.

That's not a rebuttal. It just means instead of applying to burning hands, my argument now applies to all your 1st level spell slots. If they are not supposed to do level appropriate things, why do you have them? Why not just give people X generic spell slots that they can put whatever scaling effect they want it?

Also, as pointed out, there will inevitably be spells that don't care about the level scaling (for example, silent image does its thing about as well at 20th level as at 1st), and Wizards will simply load up on those. This means that Wizards will tend to be more homogeneous, but not substantively less powerful. That's bad.

Finally, if it is ever a good idea to cast a 1st level combat spell out of a 9th level slot, your game has failed. High level cannot simply be low level with bigger numbers. It should offer substantive changes to your character's abilities, including combat options that operate in different paradigms than you did at first level. As an example, no number of bonus dice is going to let burning hands compete with wail of the banshee. And that is as it should be. At 20th level, burning hands should be a situational option you use because it costs less and might do the job against weak (or weakened) opposition. If it costs as much as a big boy combat spell like meteor swarm or weird, you will not use it.

[upho]

I actually kinda like the new action system baseline. My only worry is that the PDT will cling to closely to it when designing specific abilities, which for example may very well result in true "tank"/defender/melee control builds being impossible, just like they were in PF1 for a very long time. In short, I'd like to see abilities that for example allow you to turn the base system on its head, giving you a single action during your turn and three or more outside of it.

I really hope we actually get to see melee abilities/classes able to do something else than good single-target damage and to put their personal durability to some good use. The PF1 full-bab classes could definitely use more differentiation between their combat abilities as well as more tactical and versatile truly effective combat options, on top of more out-of-combat utility.


Well let's face it, shields are almost completely irrelevant and a poor build choice in all of 2E, 3E, 4E, PF, and 5E; so anything P2 does to make them more interesting is welcome.Seems you haven't seen much in the way of sword 'n' board builds in your games? They can be very effective, as other posters have said. Not to mention "board 'n' board" builds, or simply "board" builds...

I mean, the light and heavy shields are arguably the most versatile and cost-effective weapons available in PF, and they come with some very significant unique advantages. But of course they're not very great if you choose to forget about stuff like throwing shield, Maelstrom Shield, Tempest Shield, Siegebreaker fighter, Shield Master, Shield Champion brawler, etc.


All I can say is that 4e didn't "feel" like D&D the way 3e retained the feel of 1e and 2e, to me. And the major sin of it (again, to me) was in the class design. A 4e wizard was a 4e fighter was a rogue was a 3.5e martial adept. They might have had some differences in what the powers' end effects were, but they all played more or less the same. It was more Gauntlet than D&D: the characters all had the same mechanics, with mostly cosmetic shifts and a few sliders to emphasize one aspect of mechanics more than others.Uhh... I'd say for example the 4e fighter, pally, ranger, swordmage and rogue actually had a lot more distinct and unique mechanics than any D&D/PF counterparts has ever had (although the magus does come very close). I'd even say the 4e versions of all full-bab PF classes, with the exception of the PF barbarian, differed significantly more between their respective playstyles.

In fact, I really hope PF2 at least take some inspiration from the more interesting and distinct defender/"tank"/melee control concepts and mechanics in 4e. Those, as well as some of the "leader" role mechanics were truly great fun IMO.

But I do agree for example many of the striker classes were too similar.


It was GREAT as a combat simulator. I think the board games that came out using very similar mechanics are a lot of fun...as board games. Not as D&D, though.

5e recaptured the distinct feel of different mechanics. I think 4e primarily had presentation problems, more than actual issues with the mechanics. At least once the edition had matured and come into its own.

[stack]

One thing that this discussion hinges heavily on that we don't know is expected enemy scaling. In 5E, with bounded accuracy, lower CR enemies can still be somewhat threatening in a way they aren't in 3.PF. A 20th level wizard casting a fireball from a 5th level slot for its base damage can be an efficient use of the slot in that situation, since it can clear out weak but non-trivial enemies.

[Morty]

Uhh... I'd say for example the 4e fighter, pally, ranger, swordmage and rogue actually had a lot more distinct and unique mechanics than any D&D/PF counterparts has ever had (although the magus does come very close). I'd even say the 4e versions of all full-bab PF classes, with the exception of the PF barbarian, differed significantly more between their respective playstyles.

In fact, I really hope PF2 at least take some inspiration from the more interesting and distinct defender/"tank"/melee control concepts and mechanics in 4e. Those, as well as some of the "leader" role mechanics were truly great fun IMO.

But I do agree for example many of the striker classes were too similar.

They mentioned "combat maneuvers that rock", but in that ENworld interview they mostly talk about fighters in terms of how often and how accurately they hit so... I wouldn't hold my breath here.

4E fighter is the best incarnation of the class D&D has ever had, and the warlord fills an otherwise absent niche. But the rogue and ranger are mostly there because they had to be, since for all the crap 4E gets for killing sacred cows, it kept a lot of them. So the martial striker niche is lacking somewhat.

[Felhammer]

That's not a rebuttal. It just means instead of applying to burning hands, my argument now applies to all your 1st level spell slots. If they are not supposed to do level appropriate things, why do you have them? Why not just give people X generic spell slots that they can put whatever scaling effect they want it?

Also, as pointed out, there will inevitably be spells that don't care about the level scaling (for example, silent image does its thing about as well at 20th level as at 1st), and Wizards will simply load up on those. This means that Wizards will tend to be more homogeneous, but not substantively less powerful. That's bad.

Finally, if it is ever a good idea to cast a 1st level combat spell out of a 9th level slot, your game has failed. High level cannot simply be low level with bigger numbers. It should offer substantive changes to your character's abilities, including combat options that operate in different paradigms than you did at first level. As an example, no number of bonus dice is going to let burning hands compete with wail of the banshee. And that is as it should be. At 20th level, burning hands should be a situational option you use because it costs less and might do the job against weak (or weakened) opposition. If it costs as much as a big boy combat spell like meteor swarm or weird, you will not use it.

I feel like you are approaching this from a PF 1E perspective, where each spell level has - essentially - a better version of a previous level's spell. If each spell can scale up, then you can eliminate a lot of those redundant spells that eat up whole pages in the core rule book. With all that extra space, the designers can craft more interesting and unique spells.

I honestly do not think it is worth thinking about what X, Y or Z will do at 20th level simply because there has never really been an edition of D&D or Pathfinder that has balanced high level play to any reasonable degree. It is a gigantic mess and pretty much everyone freely admits it.

Compare something like an upscaled Burning Hands to a Fireball. The Fireball will do more damage but is also indiscriminately bombs a 20 foot radius area. Compare that with an upscaled Burning Hands. It might do a bit less damage but you have far more control over who it hits. That provides a meaningful decision point for the Wizard (assuming an upscaled Burning Hands' damage and Fireball's damage are similar-ish).

I think Cure spells are one of the best examples of why upscaling is good. Instead of having 4 separate spells that eat up a huge part of a page in the rule book, would just just condense it down to a single spell that scales depending on which spell slot you cast it with.

Also, not every spell needs to be upscalable. Some spells can just have an effect. I think the whole point is to create more space for more, interesting things.

High level spells do not need to replicate lower level spells. Higher levels spells should be doing fun and exciting things you may not have been able to do at lower levels. By including upscaling spells, however, you are giving Casters more choices for things they may want to do in certain situations. Literally pausing time and casting Burning Hands cast as a 10th level spell are not comparable but they are both useful, in different situations.

[Cosi]

I feel like you are approaching this from a PF 1E perspective, where each spell level has - essentially - a better version of a previous level's spell. If each spell can scale up, then you can eliminate a lot of those redundant spells that eat up whole pages in the core rule book. With all that extra space, the designers can craft more interesting and unique spells.

Except the number of spells that are "better versions of a previous's level's spells" along purely numeric axes are fairly small, and limited almost entirely to evocation. What exactly is the 1st level version of prismatic sphere, teleport circle, power word kill, ride the lightning, weird, wail of the banshee, or time stop?


I honestly do not think it is worth thinking about what X, Y or Z will do at 20th level simply because there has never really been an edition of D&D or Pathfinder that has balanced high level play to any reasonable degree. It is a gigantic mess and pretty much everyone freely admits it.

I want you to think about what you're saying here until you realize how obviously self-fulfilling your prophecy is. Then I want you to stop saying "well obviously you don't need to work on it because it hasn't worked before". Because that argument is very very bad.

[Kurald Galain]

I honestly do not think it is worth thinking about what X, Y or Z will do at 20th level simply because there has never really been an edition of D&D or Pathfinder that has balanced high level play to any reasonable degree. It is a gigantic mess and pretty much everyone freely admits it.
True. The common forum-based claims that "they MUST fix this-and-that level-18 issue" are a red herring.

[upho]

They mentioned "combat maneuvers that rock", but in that ENworld interview they mostly talk about fighters in terms of how often and how accurately they hit so... I wouldn't hold my breath here.Yeah, I noticed the same thing. I hope the omission was mostly an oversight because the question didn't naturally come up or something, considering they've put up the "combat maneuvers that rock" line as one of the 24 USPs on the playtest page. But regardless, it seems there's probably not much of a chance we'll get to see non-caster classes who can be truly good at something other than dealing damage, unfortunately. Especially considering their comments on the C/MD issue.

And speaking of the fighter accuracy comments, they made me laugh and wonder if they realize it makes them look as if they don't know their own game. I really hope they don't actually believe this to be a thing in PF1. It sounded as if they've never analyzed the to-hit math of - let alone actually played - for example a barbarian or a bloodrager. Not to mention typically or potentially melee oriented casters like the cleric, magus, hunter, warpriest, melee alchemist or WS druid. Hitting is IME very rarely more of a problem for these classes than it is for the fighter, and for those having medium BAB and 6/9 or full casting it's often less so.


4E fighter is the best incarnation of the class D&D has ever had, and the warlord fills an otherwise absent niche. But the rogue and ranger are mostly there because they had to be, since for all the crap 4E gets for killing sacred cows, it kept a lot of them. So the martial striker niche is lacking somewhat.Totally agree.

[CharonsHelper]

I'm glad they've codified "magic should be (at least somewhat) superior to not-magic" as an explicit design principle so people stop complaining that they were lied to just because every class happens to have 20 levels.

That wasn't the way that I read that bit. It seemed that they were talking about character aspects being closer, like wizards not being as far behind in AC in comparison to fighters as they were (not that they actually were if you cast the right spells... but baseline they were low), and the other way around on offense.

[upho]

True. The common forum-based claims that "they MUST fix this-and-that level-18 issue" are a red herring.Well, one the USPs they've put up is "Designed for All Levels of Play".

I surely wouldn't mind seeing that actually happening, even if they only succeed to a limited extent. In the current game, it truly is a mess unless you houserule quite a lot of stuff. (And just in case anyone wonders, I've rarely played campaigns which end before 14th level, and several ones which end at 18th or later. Yeah, I like the long haul, all the way from nerf-herder to demigod...)

[Morty]

Yeah, I noticed the same thing. I hope the omission was mostly an oversight because the question didn't naturally come up or something, considering they've put up the "combat maneuvers that rock" line as one of the 24 USPs on the playtest page. But regardless, it seems there's probably not much of a chance we'll get to see non-caster classes who can be truly good at something other than dealing damage, unfortunately. Especially considering their comments on the C/MD issue.

The real question is whether they're willing to give them some sort of resource mechanic, even in the form of the stamina subsystem Unchained had. If they just have a list of feats that are passive, random or need to be balanced around at-will usage, we shouldn't expect much.


And speaking of the fighter accuracy comments, they made me laugh and wonder if they realize it makes them look as if they don't know their own game. I really hope they don't actually believe this to be a thing in PF1. It sounded as if they've never analyzed the to-hit math of - let alone actually played - for example a barbarian or a bloodrager. Not to mention typically or potentially melee oriented casters like the cleric, magus, hunter, warpriest, melee alchemist or WS druid. Hitting is IME very rarely more of a problem for these classes than it is for the fighter, and for those having medium BAB and 6/9 or full casting it's often less so.

The fact that they're talking about accuracy, as if it was the big and important issue with the fighter class, is in itself pretty telling.


Well, one the USPs they've put up is "Designed for All Levels of Play".

I surely wouldn't mind seeing that actually happening, even if they only succeed to a limited extent. In the current game, it truly is a mess unless you houserule quite a lot of stuff. (And just in case anyone wonders, I've rarely played campaigns which end before 14th level, and several ones which end at 18th or later. Yeah, I like the long haul, all the way from nerf-herder to demigod...)

If high levels don't work, it's a call to fix them or remove them. Since if they're just there as decoration, they're taking up valuable space that could be used for... just about anything else. That being said, I'm not sure if they're willing to make the level of changes that'd be necessary to fix them.

[Kurald Galain]

Well, one the USPs they've put up is "Designed for All Levels of Play".
Regardless of what they claim, that's not a USP. Every single level-based RPG claims to be designed for all levels of play. And every single one of them focuses most of the designer effort on the lower levels, because those are played way more often.

[upho]

I'm glad they've codified "magic should be (at least somewhat) superior to not-magic" as an explicit design principle so people stop complaining that they were lied to just because every class happens to have 20 levels.
That wasn't the way that I read that bit. It seemed that they were talking about character aspects being closer, like wizards not being as far behind in AC in comparison to fighters as they were (not that they actually were if you cast the right spells... but baseline they were low), and the other way around on offense.I also read it more as CharonsHelper did. Which may actually be a greater concern, because it implies they're not aware that the difference between for example a fighter's and a wizard's AC is largely irrelevant in PF1; the wizard is still typically a lot more durable than the fighter.

Let's hope they also intend to seriously nerf/remove spells such as invisibility, mirror image, blur, ironskin, shield, blink etc so that the lessened AC gap actually matters...


For the rest:1) Agree with all of Erik's pet peeves. Especially glad they agree how good (and therefore dumb) the Wand of Cure Light was at invalidating most other sources of healing.
2) I'm very interested in what they come up with for Ancestry, particularly the part about revisiting it as you go.
3) I don't believe for a second Mark Seifter didn't crib the spell advancement mechanic from 5e, but we'll go with it.
4) Making alchemy (not just the Alchemist) a core part of the game and accessible to most classes is fantastic, and can be a big help to all those folks who constantly post wanting to run low-magic games.
5) I'm one of the folks happy that guns aren't core.
6) I've expressed my approval for the new action economy previously.
1) Agreed. Hopefully this will also have them design some actually effective in-combat healing options.
2) Really like the ancestry thing (actually use a very limited homebrew version of that in my current PF game).
3) Most def. And it's probably just one of those things he's not allowed to admit publicly, even if he wanted to.
4) I really like the alchemist, and if they can make it as well-designed as the current version is, it seems like a good class to include due to its many rather unique characteristics.
5) Agreed. And considering the PDT's rather poor track record when it comes to rules designs for guns, they really should stay away until they've come up with much clearer mechanical objectives.
6) Yeah, the new action economy has some serious potential (though my worries about them sticking too closely to the baseline of it when designing abilities definitely remain).

[Felhammer]

Except the number of spells that are "better versions of a previous's level's spells" along purely numeric axes are fairly small, and limited almost entirely to evocation. What exactly is the 1st level version of prismatic sphere, teleport circle, power word kill, ride the lightning, weird, wail of the banshee, or time stop?

I am not following. I said higher level spells should do things above and beyond what you can do in lower level spells but that lower levels spells - where applicable - should be able to grow with you.



I want you to think about what you're saying here until you realize how obviously self-fulfilling your prophecy is. Then I want you to stop saying "well obviously you don't need to work on it because it hasn't worked before". Because that argument is very very bad.

I am not saying they should not work on it or try to figure it out. I am simply saying that it does not work in any edition of D&D or Pathfinder (even though they tried quite valiantly to make it work (especially in 4th)), so any discussion of balancing low level spells off against high level spells in PF 1 is a non-starter because they were not designed to be (from a mechanical or thematic standpoint).

Also, I feel like you are being incredibly aggressive towards me for no real reason.


Regardless of what they claim, that's not a USP. Every single level-based RPG claims to be designed for all levels of play. And every single one of them focuses most of the designer effort on the lower levels, because those are played way more often.

Indeed. Making the bottom half work is way more important than the top half - since the vast majority of campaigns start low and, unfortunately, end long before they hit the top half.

[Pex]

I feel like you are approaching this from a PF 1E perspective, where each spell level has - essentially - a better version of a previous level's spell. If each spell can scale up, then you can eliminate a lot of those redundant spells that eat up whole pages in the core rule book. With all that extra space, the designers can craft more interesting and unique spells.

I honestly do not think it is worth thinking about what X, Y or Z will do at 20th level simply because there has never really been an edition of D&D or Pathfinder that has balanced high level play to any reasonable degree. It is a gigantic mess and pretty much everyone freely admits it.

Compare something like an upscaled Burning Hands to a Fireball. The Fireball will do more damage but is also indiscriminately bombs a 20 foot radius area. Compare that with an upscaled Burning Hands. It might do a bit less damage but you have far more control over who it hits. That provides a meaningful decision point for the Wizard (assuming an upscaled Burning Hands' damage and Fireball's damage are similar-ish).

I think Cure spells are one of the best examples of why upscaling is good. Instead of having 4 separate spells that eat up a huge part of a page in the rule book, would just just condense it down to a single spell that scales depending on which spell slot you cast it with.

Also, not every spell needs to be upscalable. Some spells can just have an effect. I think the whole point is to create more space for more, interesting things.

High level spells do not need to replicate lower level spells. Higher levels spells should be doing fun and exciting things you may not have been able to do at lower levels. By including upscaling spells, however, you are giving Casters more choices for things they may want to do in certain situations. Literally pausing time and casting Burning Hands cast as a 10th level spell are not comparable but they are both useful, in different situations.

Perhaps Burning Hands cast in a 3rd level slot becomes Fireball. There's only one official spell, a Fire Blast spell, that has various effects depending on the spell slot used. Similarly, Charm Person -> Charm Monster -> Dominate Person -> Dominate Monster.

[upho]

The real question is whether they're willing to give them some sort of resource mechanic, even in the form of the stamina subsystem Unchained had. If they just have a list of feats that are passive, random or need to be balanced around at-will usage, we shouldn't expect much.So true. Especially when it comes to non-damage stuff, considering that the most viable martial non-damage combos in PF1 are most likely only possible due to largely unintended rules interactions, and they're at-will and can be way more powerful than anything enabled by combat stamina options.


The fact that they're talking about accuracy, as if it was the big and important issue with the fighter class, is in itself pretty telling.Yeah, but I was giving them some leeway because of the context. I mean their intent may have been to use the fighter and wizard as purely theoretical number examples in a vacuum, not as actual references to how they work in practice in the existing game.


If high levels don't work, it's a call to fix them or remove them. Since if they're just there as decoration, they're taking up valuable space that could be used for... just about anything else. That being said, I'm not sure if they're willing to make the level of changes that'd be necessary to fix them.Agreed. I'm just thankful they've at least seemingly recognized the issue and stated their intention to address it, because they'll obviously not cut the number of levels in half. Meaning if they're going to do high levels anyways, they might as well at least try to reduce some of the mess of the current edition.

[upho]

Regardless of what they claim, that's not a USP. Every single level-based RPG claims to be designed for all levels of play. And every single one of them focuses most of the designer effort on the lower levels, because those are played way more often.Certainly. But I do think this is different than the usual claim, because the whole list is based off of what Paizo believes is going to make PF2 different from, and better than, PF1. Ergo, they are saying "higher levels of play should/will work better than in PF1". And I believe the interview largely confirms this, by the way.

[Pex]

Except the number of spells that are "better versions of a previous's level's spells" along purely numeric axes are fairly small, and limited almost entirely to evocation. What exactly is the 1st level version of prismatic sphere, teleport circle, power word kill, ride the lightning, weird, wail of the banshee, or time stop?



I want you to think about what you're saying here until you realize how obviously self-fulfilling your prophecy is. Then I want you to stop saying "well obviously you don't need to work on it because it hasn't worked before". Because that argument is very very bad.

Color Spray -> Hypnotic Pattern -> Rainbow Pattern -> Prismatic Ray -> Prismatic Spray -> Scintillating Pattern -> Prismatic Wall/Sphere

Silent Image -> Minor Image -> Major Image -> Phantasmal Killer -> Programmed Illusion -> Permanent Illusion -> Weird

Ghost Sound -> Shout -> Greater Shout -> Wail of the Banshee

[Rynjin]

Here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?5039-Here-s-a-TON-of-Pathfinder-2-Info-from-the-Know-Direction-Podcast) is a bunch of information. It appears that the gap between casters and non-casters is still there and still intentional.

So they've finally given up on berating people with "the caster-martial disparity is a myth propagated by people with agendas" and admit it exists?

Points for progress, at least.

[kyoryu]

It's an interesting decision, to say the least. The whole success of Pathfinder was basically built on *not changing*.

Making a new, incompatible version, turns this on its head, and opens them up to cannibalization from 5e. The worst case scenario is that they split their user base and grant 5e even greater network effect than it currently has.

My only guess is that 5e is hurting them and they have to do *something*. This seems super risky.

[Cosi]

Regardless of what they claim, that's not a USP. Every single level-based RPG claims to be designed for all levels of play. And every single one of them focuses most of the designer effort on the lower levels, because those are played way more often.

So the design goals you don't like aren't actually design goals? That seems kind of stupid. If they didn't actually mean it, they wouldn't say they meant it. If "not doing the things you said you were going to try to do" isn't a failure of game design, I don't know what else could possibly be one.


I am not following. I said higher level spells should do things above and beyond what you can do in lower level spells but that lower levels spells - where applicable - should be able to grow with you.

Which is exactly what the current system accomplishes. So we're in agreement that this change is unnecessary?


I am not saying they should not work on it or try to figure it out. I am simply saying that it does not work in any edition of D&D or Pathfinder (even though they tried quite valiantly to make it work (especially in 4th)), so any discussion of balancing low level spells off against high level spells in PF 1 is a non-starter because they were not designed to be (from a mechanical or thematic standpoint).

I didn't sound like you were saying that in your original post:


I honestly do not think it is worth thinking about what X, Y or Z will do at 20th level

That suggested to me that you were saying the game shouldn't concern itself with high level balance.


Also, I feel like you are being incredibly aggressive towards me for no real reason.

I'm being dismissive of your idea because it is a bad idea. That's how you get good ideas -- by criticizing bad ones.


Color Spray -> Hypnotic Pattern -> Rainbow Pattern -> Prismatic Ray -> Prismatic Spray -> Scintillating Pattern -> Prismatic Wall/Sphere

Silent Image -> Minor Image -> Major Image -> Phantasmal Killer -> Programmed Illusion -> Permanent Illusion -> Weird

Ghost Sound -> Shout -> Greater Shout -> Wail of the Banshee

I agree that those are thematically linked, and if the proposal was that people got Spheres or Domains that had themes like "lazer light show" or "illusions" they would work fine. But the suggestion is that you save space by having a single spell effect scale by slot, and none of those do that terribly well. The color spray line goes from "instantaneous close AoE stun" to "long duration BFC that does a big pile of damage". I just don't see you saving very much space by having those be one spell -- I think over the course of that progression you change literally every single aspect of the spell's description. The Illusions one works if you drop it down to just the image line, and that is actually a use case I could see for this -- for spells like minor image where the higher level versions are just the lower level version with less restrictions, this could be reasonable. But there's honestly not a lot that works for that isn't minor image or the summon monster line of spells, and those are already handled fairly well with the inheritance set up that's currently used.

[SimonMoon6]

So spell-like abilities are spells accessed in a special way, not a separate thing. Things that are kind of like spells are spells. (Bonner)


This worries me and I'm not sure why.

I'm not sure that I like the idea that a creature that has superpowers instead has to cast a spell in order to make that power work.

[Pex]

This worries me and I'm not sure why.

I'm not sure that I like the idea that a creature that has superpowers instead has to cast a spell in order to make that power work.

It probably means that there's no such thing as a supernatural ability separate from a spell-like ability anymore where certain game effects affect one but not the other, such as provoking an AoO, can be dispelled, can be counterspelled, etc.

[upho]

This worries me and I'm not sure why.

I'm not sure that I like the idea that a creature that has superpowers instead has to cast a spell in order to make that power work.AFAICT, SLAs aren't actually being removed, they're just treated as spells all the way. If a monster has superpowers that aren't spells, I'd assume those are going to be (Su) abilities rather than (Sp) (or whatever the equivalent will be called), just as in the current edition. Seriously, getting rid of the somewhat fuzzy and needlessly complex distinctions between spells and SLAs is a good idea. This goes for at lot of other similar stuff as well. And now when I've actually listened to the majority of the podcast, I can say Bonner made it very clear that they'll do their best to remove this kind of ambiguity as far as possible, without making the game less interesting mechanics-wise.

And this really does sound great IMO, as one of the more annoying things with 3e/PF is IMO the patchwork of "tag-along" stuff which say "as if X, except in case A, B and maybe C, no clue in case D". This also goes for things like different bonus types; they never stack, no exceptions to keep track of, full stop. Less special snowflakes in the base mechanics is a good thing, as special snowflakes just steal playtime without giving anything of real value back. The special snowflake stuff belongs in specific abilities, and those don't require the base mechanics to include tons of minute exceptions in order to be made special.

[Andor13]

I'm being dismissive of your idea because it is a bad idea. That's how you get good ideas -- by criticizing bad ones.

No. You get good ideas by proposing good ideas. You get great ideas by offering constructive criticism to good ideas. Yelling "Your idea is bad and you should feel bad." just makes you Zoidberg, not useful.

[Cosi]

No. You get good ideas by proposing good ideas. You get great ideas by offering constructive criticism to good ideas. Yelling "Your idea is bad and you should feel bad." just makes you Zoidberg, not useful.

Regardless of whether the principle holds in general, it is clearly sufficient when the idea in question is "why don't we do this thing that's worse than the thing we are currently doing". Having spells scale with slot (the thing being proposed) is worse than having them scale with caster level* (the thing we already have). Sometimes your idea is bad and you should feel bad.

*: With the possible exception of silent image and other closely similar spells.

[CharonsHelper]

Regardless of whether the principle holds in general, it is clearly sufficient when the idea in question is "why don't we do this thing that's worse than the thing we are currently doing". Having spells scale with slot (the thing being proposed) is worse than having them scale with caster level* (the thing we already have). Sometimes your idea is bad and you should feel bad.

*: With the possible exception of silent image and other closely similar spells.

Right - and you're the only one who gets to decide that. *nods knowingly*

[Baroncognito]

Why not just give people X generic spell slots that they can put whatever scaling effect they want it?

That was something they did in Unchained. You had your top 3 tiers at spells per day, but all your spells under that just used a common pool. So an 11th level cleric (not counting domain spells or spell casting stat bonuses) would get three fourth level spells, two fifth level spells, one sixth level spell, and two pool spells that can be used to cast third, second, and first level spells. So you get fewer spells, but you stop having to prepare them at the beginning of the day (if they're pool spells).

[MeeposFire]

That's not a rebuttal. It just means instead of applying to burning hands, my argument now applies to all your 1st level spell slots. If they are not supposed to do level appropriate things, why do you have them? Why not just give people X generic spell slots that they can put whatever scaling effect they want it?

Also, as pointed out, there will inevitably be spells that don't care about the level scaling (for example, silent image does its thing about as well at 20th level as at 1st), and Wizards will simply load up on those. This means that Wizards will tend to be more homogeneous, but not substantively less powerful. That's bad.

Finally, if it is ever a good idea to cast a 1st level combat spell out of a 9th level slot, your game has failed. High level cannot simply be low level with bigger numbers. It should offer substantive changes to your character's abilities, including combat options that operate in different paradigms than you did at first level. As an example, no number of bonus dice is going to let burning hands compete with wail of the banshee. And that is as it should be. At 20th level, burning hands should be a situational option you use because it costs less and might do the job against weak (or weakened) opposition. If it costs as much as a big boy combat spell like meteor swarm or weird, you will not use it.

There is already an example of upcasting in 3e and it is psionics in 3.5. 5e basically took the 3.5 psionics and then let prepared casters switch spells every day while using spell slots rather than power points (which in 5e if you want power points you use the spell point variant). In 3.5 a psion had a number of powers that they know and they typically do NOT autoscale but tended to scale by using more power points (higher spell slots).

So really it is not that new of a concept that they used in 5e but is slightly odd in PF considering how the actual PF designers seem to dislike psionic rules from 3e (which is why those sort of psionics were done by a 3rd party it seems).

Also just like psionics some do not scale and higher level powers/spells can have more powerful effects than a lower level spell upcast in the same slot.

One nice side benefit of the upcasting is that it helps multiclass casters in 5e since they combine their casting class levels to determine their spells per day and the upcasting lets them better use those higher level slots.

[Cosi]

Right - and you're the only one who gets to decide that. *nods knowingly*

Yes, it was wrong of me to say mechanics are bad. All mechanics are good, and whichever mechanics I have been most recently asked to give people my money for are better than ones I was asked to exchange currency for less recently.


That was something they did in Unchained. You had your top 3 tiers at spells per day, but all your spells under that just used a common pool. So an 11th level cleric (not counting domain spells or spell casting stat bonuses) would get three fourth level spells, two fifth level spells, one sixth level spell, and two pool spells that can be used to cast third, second, and first level spells. So you get fewer spells, but you stop having to prepare them at the beginning of the day (if they're pool spells).

I actually think that having a pool mechanic like that is a step backwards. I think having the filter of prepared spells is excellent at avoiding option paralysis (particularly at avoiding it during play when time is critical). As such, I think opening up things to "pick any 3rd level or lower spell twice a day" would be a headache at the table, particularly as the number of available sources expands. I do think that figuring out a way to reduce the complexity of preparing a loadout for a mid or high level prepared caster needs to be simplified, but this particular implementation seems problematic (unless there's something you've skipped that avoids the issue).

[Baroncognito]

I actually think that having a pool mechanic like that is a step backwards. I think having the filter of prepared spells is excellent at avoiding option paralysis (particularly at avoiding it during play when time is critical). As such, I think opening up things to "pick any 3rd level or lower spell twice a day" would be a headache at the table, particularly as the number of available sources expands. I do think that figuring out a way to reduce the complexity of preparing a loadout for a mid or high level prepared caster needs to be simplified, but this particular implementation seems problematic (unless there's something you've skipped that avoids the issue).

Well, it still needs to be on your spell list and/or spellbook, so it's better for Clerics than Wizards (but also more paralyzing).

Largely I agree with you. If a prepared doesn't have a plan as to what to cast during a round of combat and starts looking through all their options, that could definitely slow things down.

Looking at the book again, I also find "Limited Magic"


As a character gains caster levels under the normal magic system, the efficacy of her spells can swing wildly, necessitating a constant reevaluation of each spell's utility. The limited magic rules are meant to keep spells' power more tightly tiered by spell level and reduce the amount by which a caster's power level escalates.

When using limited magic rules, all spells are cast at the minimum caster level and with the minimum required ability score.



Spell level
Full caster
2/3rds caster
1/3rd caster
Ability Score
DC


0
1
1
-
10
10


1
1
1
4
11
11


2
3
4
7
12
13


3
5
7
10
13
14


4
7
10
13
14
16


5
9
13
-
15
17


6
11
16
-
16
19


7
13
-
-
17
20


8
15
-
-
18
22


9
17
-
-
19
23



And if they're taking away spell scaling, that seems like it might be relevant.

[upho]

Regarding high-level play, the martial/caster disparity issue and our previous attempts at interpreting the AC and to-hit fighter/wizard comparisons, I think "Morrus" who posted info from the Know Direction podcast on ENworld unfortunately got some details wrong, making his conclusion misleading.

AFAICT after having listened to it, I also believe Psyren's conclusion seems to be incorrect (thankfully):
I'm glad they've codified "magic should be (at least somewhat) superior to not-magic" as an explicit design principle so people stop complaining that they were lied to just because every class happens to have 20 levels.The things Logan Bonner said which relates to this is that the high level game has less rocket-tag and "a lot better balance in the high level spells, and things that just end encounters are not happening as often", and "there's still serious stuff, like a disintegration that's successful is still going to take something out".

Regarding the math of higher level games, Bonner says they have indeed looked specifically at the math also at higher levels and tightened up the scaling to make it work, which AFAICT means they've at least made the differences between base numbers (bab, save bonuses etc) less dramatic. Specifically, here's some of the most relevant stuff he says about this from a GM perspective and the part of the playtest which is at 17th level, which he has also playtested as a GM (I've tried to make this exactly word for word):

"What you'll see is like, a fighter is still going to hit more often as they go up in level, their chance to hit is going to be really high, a paladin's defense is going to be really high - and I can speak for my poor rune giants that the paladin's AC is really high! But the gap between them and the wizard isn't going to be so great that everybody just says: 'Well, this is pointless, squash the wizard!', 'cause that's the only way to do it. And then the wizard just says 'All my spells invalidate everything you've done!'

It's an expanding gap as you go up in levels, but it's not as drastic. And we usually try to set things so that, rather than saying: 'the fighter is only one who has a chance to hit', we've said that 'the fighter hits even more often than he was before'. But we're setting kinda the monster baseline numbers so that the other classes are not falling all the way behind anymore."

So it seems to me he is primarily talking about base numbers such as AC and bab here, not primarily about C/MD or the fact that spells make the wizard's AC irrelevant. And I'm uncertain whether he and the other devs actually think fighters are the masters of hitting in PF1, or whether he's simply using the term 'fighter' loosely to refer to full-bab classes with native attack bonuses, and that "other classes" primarily refers to CRB staples like monks and rogues who are dependent on hitting but don't have spells or full bab in PF1. I'm leaning towards the latter, as it does make a lot more sense and it seems more consistent with what he says about related things IMO.

The bit about the wizard's spells invalidating the monster's (GM's) actions is kinda mentioned in passing, although when put together with what he said earlier about improved higher level spell balance, I think it does very much sound like he and the rest of the dev team are fully aware that this what spells do in 17th level PF1 games, and that they've intentionally tried to make it so that this is no longer the case in PF2 games.

And it appears they're definitely serious about making higher level play work.

All things considered, I found this a lot more reassuring than what I read between the lines in the post about the podcast.

The relevant part of the podcast for all these questions, including the above quotes, starts here (https://youtu.be/EKRZ1yHiUDY?t=5660) and is less than 3 minutes long.

[Rogue Eidolon]

3) I don't believe for a second Mark Seifter didn't crib the spell advancement mechanic from 5e, but we'll go with it.


3) I won't shy away from giving inspirational credit where it's due; this isn't the first time anyone's made a system with greater effects the more oomph you put into a spell, after all. The main inspirations were undercasting from Occult Adventures and various heightening and augmenting casting systems I've played through the years in various systems, including some of the 3.0/3.5 style ones in UA and XPH. But not 5e. This is because 5e wasn't out yet at the time I first designed that part of the system.

[Scowling Dragon]

Yeah, not a big fan of upscaling unless they downright REDESIGN THE GAME around them. 5e does Upscaling but its very half-assed in my mind.
Still a bunch of redundant time and space wasting spells. Your still going to want to cast Firball and not Burning hands (Bigger area of effect and more damage).
And if your redesigning the game around Upscaling may as well just use spell points.
Thats whats bothering me. The design direction is TEPID.

This is Pathfinder: Remastering

Where is the boldness? Where is the drive? Its been a decade and I have seen at least 3 3rd party systems bust out stuff WAY more Creative then paizo.

Il give Credit to Wizard that 5e as unfinished and rickety as it was was still more risk and more mechanical departure. 80% of it didn't work for anybody in our group, but that was at least something!

Edit:

Also Sweet Petunia Perception isn't a skill now and scales depending on class. THIS IS THE OPPOSITE OF STREAMLINING PAIZO. THIS IS THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF THIS! :smallfurious:

[Starbuck_II]

Why. Why would you want to track that. Why would you want to require me to recheck a character's attack bonuses every time they pick up another weapon. Just let axes be better than swords. Or use the old crit mechanics, which were fine.


Sadly he was right.

Daggers, Claws, etc all have agile property means 0/-4/-8 for attacks.

Ooh, this means they can have highly damaging property that uses 0/-6/-12 for attacks. Like Greataxe uses 2d8 for damage but 0/-6/-12 for attacks. Not good for multi-attacking, but good for 1 for one each round.

They are using Resistance and Weakness properties instead of DR and Vulnerablities. Skeletons have resistance 5 weapons, but Weakness 5 Blunt weapons. So Blunt does normal. Skeletons have Resistance Fire 5.

Perception like Concentration is innate not a skill now.

[upho]

3) I won't shy away from giving inspirational credit where it's due; this isn't the first time anyone's made a system with greater effects the more oomph you put into a spell, after all. The main inspirations were undercasting from Occult Adventures and various heightening and augmenting casting systems I've played through the years in various systems, including some of the 3.0/3.5 style ones in UA and XPH. But not 5e. This is because 5e wasn't out yet at the time I first designed that part of the system.Hey, nice to see you popping in!

And of course we're going to assume the least flattering alternative when it comes to commenting stuff which happens to look similar to whatever appears to be the latest fad... I can't speak for Psyren, but in my case it's because I'm an EVILTM little creature... :smalltongue:

Seriously though, I like the concept regardless of where the inspiration comes from. Especially since my experience has been that augmentation-based scaling has generally worked better in 3e/PF than the traditional vancian casting mechanics, keeping the power of magic somewhat more grounded also in higher levels.

And since you happen to be here, can you please tell us whether we get to see a resource system for non-casters to allow them to step up their game, increased combat versatility and meaningful tactical options?

And maybe whether we also finally get to see non-casters who are truly great combatants through methods other than dealing damage (like control, debuff, defense etc)?

I'd love to hear whatever you can tell us!

[Rogue Eidolon]

Hey, nice to see you popping in!

And of course we're going to assume the least flattering alternative when it comes to commenting stuff which happens to look similar to whatever appears to be the latest fad... I can't speak for Psyren, but in my case it's because I'm an EVILTM little creature... :smalltongue:

Seriously though, I like the concept regardless of where the inspiration comes from. Especially since my experience has been that augmentation-based scaling has generally worked better in 3e/PF than the traditional vancian casting mechanics, keeping the power of magic somewhat more grounded also in higher levels.

And since you happen to be here, can you please tell us whether we get to see a resource system for non-casters to allow them to step up their game, increased combat versatility and meaningful tactical options?

And maybe whether we also finally get to see non-casters who are truly great combatants through methods other than dealing damage (like control, debuff, defense etc)?

I'd love to hear whatever you can tell us!

Well here's one thing: It's a fundamental design goal that someone with enough martial prowess, especially if they're legendary (but not precluding those who are not) can do unbelievable and completely unrealistic-in-the-real-world things. So much so that down the line we've gotten questions back from edit about some of the more powerful skill feats "Can you really do Extreme-Thing-X just because you're that good at the skill?" Yes. Yes you can.

[upho]

Yeah, not a big fan of upscaling unless they downright REDESIGN THE GAME around them. 5e does Upscaling but its very half-assed in my mind.
Still a bunch of redundant time and space wasting spells. Your still going to want to cast Firball and not Burning hands (Bigger area of effect and more damage).
And if your redesigning the game around Upscaling may as well just use spell points.Well, if you've got a lot of conservative fans who are at least as concerned with form as they are with function, it may be a good idea to keep up appearances...



Thats whats bothering me. The design direction is TEPID.

This is Pathfinder: Remastering

Where is the boldness? Where is the drive? Its been a decade and I have seen at least 3 3rd party systems bust out stuff WAY more Creative then paizo.

Il give Credit to Wizard that 5e as unfinished and rickety as it was was still more risk and more mechanical departure. 80% of it didn't work for anybody in our group, but that was at least something!Again, is this really a surprise? I mean, a large part of the PF1 concept was to please a group of players less eager to see radical new mechanics and takes on the game they're familiar with. I can understand why Paizo is cautious about making more drastic changes, especially since they also obviously think the existing system is good enough to be improved rather than completely reinvented.


Also Sweet Petunia Perception isn't a skill now and scales depending on class. THIS IS THE OPPOSITE OF STREAMLINING PAIZO. THIS IS THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF THIS! :smallfurious:Well, at least that seemed bold enough for you... :smallwink:

But yeah, if this is correct, it doesn't exactly make their sales pitch of streamlining more believable. Not to mention that of increased character build flexibility.


Sadly he was right.

Daggers, Claws, etc all have agile property means 0/-4/-8 for attacks.

Ooh, this means they can have highly damaging property that uses 0/-6/-12 for attacks. Like Greataxe uses 2d8 for damage but 0/-6/-12 for attacks. Not good for multi-attacking, but good for 1 for one each round.

They are using Resistance and Weakness properties instead of DR and Vulnerablities. Skeletons have resistance 5 weapons, but Weakness 5 Blunt weapons. So Blunt does normal. Skeletons have Resistance Fire 5.I can see how this can be made to work just fine, if not great. Need more specifics to really have an opinion though.

What I can say is that I'm not the slightest worried about the numbers changing when you pick up another weapon. Because seriously, how often do you use more than maybe two or three different weapons regularly in 3e/PF, and how often do you NOT have several other options tying you to one or two specific weapons anyways?

[Kurald Galain]

But yeah, if this is correct, it doesn't exactly make their sales pitch of streamlining more believable. Not to mention that of increased character build flexibility.
It's a point though. Perception in P1 is a skill that everybody wants to max out all the time; it's the only skill that is commonly considered a "skill tax". So it makes sense to have this use the rules from, say, BAB and saving throws intead, so that people get it automatically and don't have to worry about it. Perception wasn't a skill back in 2E, either.

Making a whole new system for perception (e.g. you'd have to roll low on 1d12) is the opposite of streamlining. Having perception use one existing subsystem instead of another existing subsystem doesn't strike me as problematic.

[upho]

Well here's one thing: It's a fundamental design goal that someone with enough martial prowess, especially if they're legendary (but not precluding those who are not) can do unbelievable and completely unrealistic-in-the-real-world things. So much so that down the line we've gotten questions back from edit about some of the more powerful skill feats "Can you really do Extreme-Thing-X just because you're that good at the skill?" Yes. Yes you can.Seems the muscle guy has finally left the gym and managed to find his way into the world of high fantasy. :smallbiggrin:

This sounds great.

Will there be anything similar to for example the Combat Stamina system, ToB/PoW maneuvers and/or some of the more powerful and unique rage powers (like savage dirty trick, come and get me, spell sunder etc), meaning stuff with higher costs/limited use which is more powerful than things you can do at will?

[Rogue Eidolon]

Seems the muscle guy has finally left the gym and managed to find his way into the world of high fantasy. :smallbiggrin:

This sounds great.

Will there be anything similar to for example the Combat Stamina system, ToB/PoW maneuvers and/or some of the more powerful and unique rage powers (like savage dirty trick, come and get me, spell sunder etc), meaning stuff with higher costs/limited use which is more powerful than things you can do at will?

There's some pretty cool abilities, but they usually involve limitations more tactically interesting than a set number of uses per day (which could potentially lead to either hoarding or spamming and then demanding to rest after a short adventuring day), and they often depend on the class.

[Kurald Galain]

It's a fundamental design goal that someone with enough martial prowess, especially if they're legendary (but not precluding those who are not) can do unbelievable and completely unrealistic-in-the-real-world things. So much so that down the line we've gotten questions back from edit about some of the more powerful skill feats "Can you really do Extreme-Thing-X just because you're that good at the skill?" Yes. Yes you can.
I really like this approach.


3) I won't shy away from giving inspirational credit where it's due; this isn't the first time anyone's made a system with greater effects the more oomph you put into a spell, after all. The main inspirations were undercasting from Occult Adventures and various heightening and augmenting casting systems I've played through the years in various systems, including some of the 3.0/3.5 style ones in UA and XPH. But not 5e. This is because 5e wasn't out yet at the time I first designed that part of the system.
And it's probably true that all mechanics in 5E were first seen in an earlier game. That's not a dig at 5E, it's just that there's been SO much 3PP and homebrew for earlier editions that pretty much every conceivable mechanic already exists somewhere.


Seems you haven't seen much in the way of sword 'n' board builds in your games? They can be very effective, as other posters have said. Not to mention "board 'n' board" builds, or simply "board" builds...
Here's the thing: certain rarely-seen feats or class abilities can be very effective, and they happen to require a shield. A shield just on its own, yeah, that's just going to give you a marginal AC bonus while preventing you from using the better weapons in the game.

[upho]

It's a point though. Perception in P1 is a skill that everybody wants to max out all the time; it's the only skill that is commonly considered a "skill tax". So it makes sense to have this use the rules from, say, BAB and saving throws intead, so that people get it automatically and don't have to worry about it. Perception wasn't a skill back in 2E, either.

Making a whole new system for perception (e.g. you'd have to roll low on 1d12) is the opposite of streamlining. Having perception use one existing subsystem instead of another existing subsystem doesn't strike me as problematic.Oh, I'm not necessarily against the concept per se, and I can definitely see good reasons for it. My point was more that it does go against the goal of increased build flexibility (and somewhat against the goal of streamlining).

But anyways, I can't really see any reason for Paizo not complementing this solution with some reasonably cost-effective options allowing you to boost your Perception, should you want to play a perceptive character of a class that gives you a very slow bonus progression. Which kinda gives the game the best of both worlds, as far as it's possible. So let's hope that's what will happen!

[upho]

Here's the thing: certain rarely-seen feats or class abilities can be very effective, and they happen to require a shield. A shield just on its own, yeah, that's just going to give you a marginal AC bonus while preventing you from using the better weapons in the game.Is Shield Master rarely-seen? That's actually not my impression, but YMMV so whatever. More to the point, what you're saying is that actually getting worthwhile benefits out of carrying a shield requires investments? If so, it seems very similar to the PF2 shield concept IMO. The only difference so far being that you pay with an action (like an attack) rather than with a feat slot.

However, I do think the PF2 mechanics seem more innately and intuitively "shield-y" than PF1's highly offensively focused shield use (and boring passive defense bonuses). So I'm certainly not complaining.

[Kurald Galain]

However, I do think the PF2 mechanics seem more innately and intuitively "shield-y" than PF1's highly offensively focused shield use (and boring passive defense bonuses). So I'm certainly not complaining.
Yes, that. And I'm saying that in older systems, the default defensive bonus for a shield is just too low (meaning, again, it doesn't feel very "shield-y"). Shield Master is a rarity in my area because most characters would have to be level 15+ to take it, and we very rarely play at that level.

Speaking of shields, I note from the podcast that wizards get an at-will Shield spell now; that sounds like fun. Also, most spells require two actions BECAUSE they have a verbal and a somatic component. That's a nice tie-in between flavor and mechanics. It also appears they've (finally) gotten rid of the groan-inducingly bad puns that were the material components for common spells.

It seems there are more tie-ins with skills in that characters get a "skill feat" at level two, and maneuvers tie into the skill system. There's also something about the higher your proficiency, the higher the quality of the items that you can craft. It turns out to use something resembling Starfinder's bulk system for encumbrance. And it appears that perception basically works like a saving throw now, instead of a skill.

Overall I'm perceiving a lot of worry from the community, which is entirely understandable given the awful design of recent P1 classes like the shifter and the kinny. But what I'm seeing so far in terms of P2 rules doesn't have any obvious headdesk material in it. So far I'm cautiously optimistic about this.

[Morty]

There's some pretty cool abilities, but they usually involve limitations more tactically interesting than a set number of uses per day (which could potentially lead to either hoarding or spamming and then demanding to rest after a short adventuring day), and they often depend on the class.

If hoarding is a problem, I question the logic of sticking to the pseudo-vancian per-rest spells. "Tactically interesting limitations" sound promising, but they might also be an effort to avoid upsetting players who find resource mechanics for non-magical characters "unrealistic". We'll see.


Is Shield Master rarely-seen? That's actually not my impression, but YMMV so whatever. More to the point, what you're saying is that actually getting worthwhile benefits out of carrying a shield requires investments? If so, it seems very similar to the PF2 shield concept IMO. The only difference so far being that you pay with an action (like an attack) rather than with a feat slot.

However, I do think the PF2 mechanics seem more innately and intuitively "shield-y" than PF1's highly offensively focused shield use (and boring passive defense bonuses). So I'm certainly not complaining.

I agree. The problem I've always had with all the "shield bash" tricks in various editions is that they... just deal damage. Not much different from any other set of sticks a martial character can have. Active shield use that's actually defensive is a major step up.

[Scots Dragon]

But the rogue and ranger are mostly there because they had to be, since for all the crap 4E gets for killing sacred cows, it kept a lot of them. So the martial striker niche is lacking somewhat.

Yeah, keeping around two of the most famous iconic fantasy archetypes to the point that they form the basis of primary characters in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings is just kowtowing to stuff they 'have' to keep in and a completely irrelevant sacred cow.

Also if they try and model the game around strictly-defined damage-per-round/healbot/crowd-control/tank roles like D&D 4E did, I'm writing the whole thing off.

[Morphic tide]

>upcasting-only scaling

They need to be very careful and spend a lot of time comparing and contrasting the caster and martial options, because spells per day are far too limited a resource to allow directly similar damage per turn. Part of the reason for CR scaling's existence is that it does a lot to properly compensate for the resource usage different. Simply put, Evocation has to hugely outclass martials in damage output because you otherwise suffer hard from resource shortages. This is one of the problems with 5e, as the casters almost instantly fall apart when you break with the expected rest to encounter ratio.

This also means that martials need massive nerfs in damage output, or the upcasting needs to be structured very differently from 5e, in order to have casters be relevant without abuse of stuff like summoning or shapeshifting.

>Alchemists being a good class design that deserves to be in core

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, no. They have three completely separate segments to their class features (bombs and extracts overlap only in that both are improved by Discoveries. There are no Extracts to improve Bombs, nor are there Bomb options to improve Extracts. Poisons are just kinda there), with one of them being almost completely ignored because it's doing a skill better.

As for deserving to be in core, that depends on if they make it interact with more default mechanics. If it makes use of more advanced crafting rules and actually has bonuses for such rules, then it'll work for a core class. Even if the crafting is largely made part of the archetypes, having those archetypes be baseline is darn useful. Having some of the Discoveries for Bombs be turned into Extracts, such that you're using Extracts as a pseudo-metamagic for the bombs, could better unify the class into a coherent whole.

[Scowling Dragon]

Again, is this really a surprise?

Shockingly yes. Because what they are doing now is already pissing people off. These design decisions are already radical and depth reaching.
If your already gonna piss people off, then you might as well do it in such a way that actually would attract new people.

Currently they dominate more and more of a shrinking pie, well you can't attract new people by making a product that still primarily apeals to your old demographic.
Im not saying annoy them, or piss them off, but this fence straddling will get them hit in the balls by the end of it.

[johnbragg]

Yeah, not a big fan of upscaling unless they downright REDESIGN THE GAME around them. 5e does Upscaling but its very half-assed in my mind.
Still a bunch of redundant time and space wasting spells. Your still going to want to cast Firball and not Burning hands (Bigger area of effect and more damage).
And if your redesigning the game around Upscaling may as well just use spell points.
Thats whats bothering me. The design direction is TEPID.

This is Pathfinder: Remastering

[quote]Where is the boldness? Where is the drive?

I give credit for the "3 actions in a round" paradigm replacing standard/move-equivalent/miscellaneous.

I speculate that spell scaling may be a misguided concession to LFQW
"Look, we're nerfing wizards!"
"The problem with wizards is not that 1st level blasting spells scale too well"
"Look, we're nerfing wizards!"

More seriously, I think the change to blast-scaling is a sop to short-list spontaneous casters. "Fireball" still beats "Burning Hands III", but "Burning HAnds III" may be good enough that you don't need to pick up "Fireball" and can use that spot on your list for "HAste" or "Fly". (IOW what metamagic was supposed to do in the first place)


Its been a decade and I have seen at least 3 3rd party systems bust out stuff WAY more Creative then paizo.

Paizo has some constraints based on what their vocal (militant?) player base wants. If they get too creative, they have "Pathfinder 4E" because the reskinned Warblade, Spherecaster, Warlock, Factotum don't "feel" enough like "fighter mage cleric thief." They're also committed to a 700-800 500-600 page Core Rulebook, so a stripped-down BX/BECMI version of modern 3X/PF (4-6 classes and races, 4-5 spell levels, half a bestiary, a dozen templates and a 30-50 page conversion guide to DIY the rest of their product line if and when you want to) isn't an option for them.


Il give Credit to Wizard that 5e as unfinished and rickety as it was was still more risk and more mechanical departure. 80% of it didn't work for anybody in our group, but that was at least something!

WOTC/Hasbro can get away with that because they have a 40 year old brand name. New customers drift in via the Dungeons and Dragons gate. I don't think PAthfinder can afford a radical departure--a 4E might kill the company.


Also Sweet Petunia Perception isn't a skill now and scales depending on class. THIS IS THE OPPOSITE OF STREAMLINING PAIZO. THIS IS THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF THIS! :smallfurious:

So they need to be bold and take risks, but not change things that will trigger :smallfurious:

Do you see the narrow path they're walking?

Me, I think they made a mistake calling this PAthfinder 2E. All we have is a podcast and a couple of pages of fact sheet, and the Edition War has already started.

[Scowling Dragon]

More seriously, I think the change to blast-scaling is a sop to short-list spontaneous casters. "Fireball" still beats "Burning Hands III", but "Burning HAnds III" may be good enough that you don't need to pick up "Fireball" and can use that spot on your list for "HAste" or "Fly". (IOW what metamagic was supposed to do in the first place)

Then you have the worst of both worlds. Your wasting space with spells but then you still have fenagling over which ones to pick (And each spell ends up taking up even MORE space because each one needs information as to what happens when its upscaled). Having played 5e (With a Sorcerer), this definetly doesn't end up working out.

Paizo has some constraints based on what their vocal (militant?) player base wants.
So they resign yourself to shrinking sales and eventual irrelevance. This is a reason yes, but its a bad reason.

I don't think PAthfinder can afford a radical departure--a 4E might kill the company.
Im not saying radical Im saying SMART.

So they need to be bold and take risks, but not change things that will trigger :smallfurious:
Do you see the narrow path they're walking?
No Im saying thats a STUPID change. You can boldy construct an orbital space satelite, but if your also boldly constructing it out of banana skins Im in the right mind to call it stupid.
My point is that there is no underlying guiding philosophy behind any of these changes outside of just sort of messing around with stuff they think is a good idea.
So the end result is that certain core or non-core things end up being fiddled with on a whim with no consistency.

Psionics Guiding Priciple is making Spellcasting smoother.
Path of War Guiding Principle is more stuff for martials to do in combat.
Spheres of Power is about making casting more thematic and limited.
Spheres of Might is about giving non-magicals more things to do in and out of combat.

But this is just...fenagling about. Its WORST of both worlds.

On one end their doing radical changes that also add new mechanical systems (Class based Perception, Scaling, Combat maneuvers based on varied skills, new action system), but then instantly begining to overload them with complexity, and not really giving a reason to grab this.

Who is this for. What demographic are they courting here? Becsause from the looks of it it seems to be for the people who simply buy every single pathfinder product

[Pex]

Fortunately for everyone they're doing a playtest. If you don't like something during the playtest tell them. If enough people agree with you a particular change is The Suck How Dare They Those Idiots they won't do it.

[Scowling Dragon]

Fortunately for everyone they're doing a playtest. If you don't like something during the playtest tell them. If enough people agree with you a particular change is The Suck How Dare They Those Idiots they won't do it.

I want to know what the fundamentally want out of this change. If I don't know what they want, how can I help them?
Am I their demo? Or would they not mind loosing me?

I have participated in Game playtests before, and without direction, the thing will devolve into who can yell the loudest which is their pre-established fans already.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by johnbragg
They're also committed to a 700-800 page Core Rulebook....

Did they mention that in the podcast?

The current CRB is 576 pages. If they're going to inflate that by 30-50%, then I'm seeing a $60-$70 cover price, which is one more massive disincentive. Maybe their hardcore base will pay that much, but that price point is not an option for a lot of other people.

.