First Look at the Pathfinder Playtest

Gut says around 30%.

Fighter hits 70% of the time and crits 20%(17-20).

Mwizard hits 55% of the time and crits 5% (20).

All else being equal,the average damage difference is 33%((55+5)/(70+20))

This is also correct! It's 50% more than the (super muscle, Strength higher than Int, money funneled into sword) wizard for the fighter, or 33% less than the fighter for the wizard.

MusicAddict wrote:

Gut says around 30%.

Fighter hits 70% of the time and crits 20%(17-20).

Mwizard hits 55% of the time and crits 5% (20).

All else being equal,the average damage difference is 33%((55+5)/(70+20))

This is also correct! It's 50% more than the (super muscle, Strength higher than Int, money funneled into sword) wizard for the fighter, or 33% less than the fighter for the wizard.

So does that mean that a Muscle Wizard will be weaker than both a normal wizard and a fighter at magic and fighting respectively and thus reduce a party's effectiveness?

Mark Seifter wrote:

MusicAddict wrote:

Gut says around 30%.

Fighter hits 70% of the time and crits 20%(17-20).

Mwizard hits 55% of the time and crits 5% (20).

All else being equal,the average damage difference is 33%((55+5)/(70+20))

This is also correct! It's 50% more than the (super muscle, Strength higher than Int, money funneled into sword) wizard for the fighter, or 33% less than the fighter for the wizard.

So does that mean that a Muscle Wizard will be weaker than both a normal wizard and a fighter at magic and fighting respectively and thus reduce a party's effectiveness?

Well that depends. Certainly it will be drastically better of a percentage of a fighter's output without dropping spells and actions on buffing yourself than a sword-swinging wizard would be in PF1. But the question is: Would your group benefit from having a character that can melee a respectable but still diminished percentage of a fighter while also casting not quite as well (but still with full spell level access) as a casty wizard? That's going to depend on the group. I think that character is obviously not going to be any sort of deadweight, though, even if maybe your group composition would have worked better with a full specialist than a hybrid character.

This fun math excercise from Mark showed us a few things:

They are working at the math.
The math is tight.
That >10< rule they are working on is pretty cool. It allows for some kind of "bounded accuracy" (ie: the difference in to hit is not very big, so the weaker character HAS hope to hit a monster with an AC targeted to the stronger character), but it still gives the character with slightly better accuracy a big boost (basically because the accuracy bonus is effectively doubled, as his crit chance increases accordingly.

The >10< rule is a great, elegant solution.

This fun math excercise from Mark showed us a few things:

They are working at the math.
The math is tight.
That >10< rule they are working on is pretty cool. It allows for some kind of "bounded accuracy" (ie: the difference in to hit is not very big, so the weaker character HAS hope to hit a monster with an AC targeted to the stronger character), but it still gives the character with slightly better accuracy a big boost (basically because the accuracy bonus is effectively doubled, as his crit chance increases accordingly.

The >10< rule is a great, elegant solution.

Glad you like! Incidentally, the reverse is also true for AC: the bonus to AC from shields is very nifty. In a similar situation (enemy hits on an 8 without shield, on a 10 with shield), the AC alone is going to net you 25% less damage (much of which comes from avoiding big bursty crits that you really want to avoid), not even counting that you could do a shield block.

The more I read into the changes with the new edition, the more excited about it I'm becoming. I think a lot of the reason why I started off cautious in my reactions were because of the use of terms that have the association built up with how they get applied to the 5th Edition rule set. But after reading the blogs available and (especially) listening to the podcast parts available, I've been able to put those terms into better context in my own mind.

The biggest example of this, in my mind, is the use of terms like "simplified" or "streamlined," and the way they were allowed to be associated with my feeling of "dumbed down-ness" with respect to 5e. But, just a few minutes ago as I was thinking about the content of the podcast, and reading some of the other comments people have had in this sub-forum, it finally occurred to me that the word association should instead point to "more intuitive" in this case.

Examples of this include things like shields becoming an active defense tool instead of a passive one (In my Mummy's Mask campaign I had a player who forgot that their character wore a buckler for most of the game), or your spell components really mattering more than just the consideration of spell failure chances.

I'm also really encouraged by the fact that it appears to be similarly intuitive with regards to converting older adventure material into the new rule set. It also makes me hopeful that it won't take too much extra work to also convert some of the other, non-core-type options (like Occult) that my players and I love to use.

So far things seem like they're going in a great direction. I'm super stoked and can't wait to take a look at the full document when it becomes available. In the mean time I'm going to keep eagerly soaking up every scrap of a detail that I can get. I haven't been this excited by an announcement since Strange Aeons! :D

Splendid news, that you can now enjoy crazy mind games whether or not to raise your shield each turn.
Do they crack easily, unlike PF1E when equipments usually didn't break unless successfully sundered?

So does that mean that a Muscle Wizard will be weaker than both a normal wizard and a fighter at magic and fighting respectively and thus reduce a party's effectiveness?

... I mean, I hope so. Otherwise, why bother having a fighter or wizard if there's a class that can fight just as well but have spells/cast spells just as well but good in melee?

Yep, works for AC too. Even a "minor" effect like Dodge feat (if still there) will get a much better benefit, without contributing too much to "untouchable" characters.

On paper, it's an elegant and simple solution. Will see how it works.

The biggest example of this, in my mind, is the use of terms like "simplified" or "streamlined," and the way they were allowed to be associated with my feeling of "dumbed down-ness"

I agree. Often we equate "simplified" with "dumbed down". There are a lot of tidbits here that I would describe as "elegant" solutions more than "simple" solutions. It looks like the edition is more streamlined in the sense that iPhones are more streamlined than old Blackberries.

I started roleplaying with 3.5 when I was in high school and despite dabbling in other games (Vampire the Masquerade, Changeling the Lost, Lot5r, Shadowrun, Anima Beyond Fantasy, In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas...) discovering Pathfinder made me very happy and I focused on it.
Over the years my favorite races and classes changed, from half-elf draconic sorcerers, to undine oracles, to tiefling witches, to aasimar kineticists... And to be truthful, I don't want to go back to not being able to make a kitsune mesmerist, an aasimar lunar oracle who becomes a near demigod for good lychanthropes or a gillman aether kineticist (with some of N. Jolly's exellent 3pp) gestalted with rapport psychic for some epic mind powers.
I will look at the playtest, I don't really care about the fundamental mechanics changing (as long as it still feels Pathfinder, and magic doesn't get nerfed so martials can feel special) and I'll certainly comment on it, but until I have all my options again, I won't buy any PF2 rulebooks (if I still care about Pathfinder).

EDIT: Also no backstage shenanigans on monster stats, in my opinion both pcs and npcs should run on the same chassis.

I am always skeptical when a game changes design. I love Pathfinder and it has been the game I've treasured the longest... I was sort of iffy when the announcement came, but the best thing Paizo is the community feedback.

I am going to echo what many other people have already done: Using the word simplified/streamlined is a terrible term to use. It's very "buzz wordy" in the sense that a of games that have come out over the past 5 years use that term to describe limiting the number of rules to make the game faster and is geared more towards storytelling. Just listening to the Glass Cannon podcast, "streamlined" is not the word I'd use.

With that said I can't wait to learn more about the different building blocks coming in the new edition!

ALSO :clap: :clap: :clap: for Jason Bulmahn showcasing the game with Glass Cannon. I think it's a brilliant way for us eager to see what lies ahead!

MidsouthGuy wrote:

Please tell me we can still roll for stats and don't just get them based entirely on ancestry, background, or class. Don't give me another game with that stupid 'Standard Array' mechanic. By the Rough Beast I hate that in 5e!

Rolling your stats is an optional rule in the Playtest book. Because we want to get the playtest results from a more stable dataset, we prefer people use the default ability system for characters they'll be giving playtest feedback on, but we did want to show how it could work.

Great, so now when I decide to roll for my stats instead just taking the standard set, everyone at the table is going to roll their eyes at me and give me that "hurry up, you're taking forever, can't you just use what you're given" look that I absolutely LOATHE.

I'm hoping this new edition will be compatible with the previous edition. I'm going to be mightily miffed if all my previous manuals are going to become useless for future Pathfinder releases.

Me too. It's not impossible. A lot of the things we've seen so far, like the action economy, aren't the sort of things that an AP module would refer in more than passing, so 2e APs might be almost directly runnable in 1e.

I have been directly running Shattered Star in PF2 out of the PF1 AP volumes for a while and am nearing the end of Book 3. I can do the whole thing on the fly, even including converting monsters and NPCs that hadn't been converted yet on the fly, but I suspect for most people there will be a little time beforehand converting those monsters and NPCs (and that probably in Part 4 I will run into an NPC too complicated to convert on the fly).

Mark, I'm talking about the other direction. (Running 2e adventures in 1e system.) We already saw you run Everflame on the video on the fly, so we know that's doable -- it's the other direction that some people are still wondering (and hoping) about.

I don't intend to jump into 2e until there's much more races and classes, so it would be really cool if we could still continue to buy the AP line and use them in 1e while waiting for 2e to fill out with the options we require.

However, plenty of people have the opposite concern. If Might of the Morelords or however is called the first AP for 2e, will be playable with 1e, without strong modifications

EDIT: ninjaed

I'm hoping this new edition will be compatible with the previous edition. I'm going to be mightily miffed if all my previous manuals are going to become useless for future Pathfinder releases.

I mean, it's going to be pretty weird if those books become useless since the lore is still going to hold, the advice for GMs will always be accurate, the potential inspirations for stories and characters aren't going anywhere, etc.

I mean, my 1st edition AD&D books aren't useless.

Oh come on, you know what he means. Of course he doesn't mean that they won't have *any* use whatsoever -- he means if he can still use the Oracle or the Dhampir in enough places to matter.

Mark, I'm talking about the other direction. (Running 2e adventures in 1e system.) We already saw you run Everflame on the video on the fly, so we know that's doable -- it's the other direction that some people are still wondering (and hoping) about.

I don't intend to jump into 2e until there's much more races and classes, so it would be really cool if we could still continue to buy the AP line and use them in 1e while waiting for 2e to fill out with the options we require.

Honestly, the main barrier to doing that, and the reason it's harder than vice versa, is simply PF1 itself. By which I mean, If you have an appropriate PF1 monster or NPC handy already (like if you're fighting a troll and you have the B1 troll handy from PF1), it shouldn't be too hard, with the main task being treasure adjustment. If not, then just the fact that making a monster/NPC is always inherently complicated in PF1 is going to slow you down in that direction.

Honestly, the main barrier to doing that, and the reason it's harder than vice versa, is simply PF1 itself. By which I mean, If you have an appropriate PF1 monster or NPC handy already (like if you're fighting a troll and you have the B1 troll handy from PF1), it shouldn't be too hard, with the main task being treasure adjustment. If not, then just the fact that making a monster/NPC is always inherently complicated in PF1 is going to slow you down in that direction.

That sounds pretty promising, thanks Mark. It would be a lovely olive branch if the first 2e AP focused on creatures (not exclusively, but largely) that are also found in 1e, to make that sort of swapping easy, and thus allow 1e players to sample the first 2e AP.

Have you considered the possibility of making 1e PDF versions of 2e APs? After selling 10k 2e copies, maybe you could make available a PDF that just swapped out 2e statblocks to 1e statblocks, to fish out 3k more sales with minimal effort? (I'm not even suggesting 1e print versions, because of printing economies of scale...)

I do understand the logic that that could entice people to stay with 1e and thus cut into your 2e profit margins, so if not that's fine. Just throwing out ideas.

I'm glad to see that plenty of people who had reservations, have been more supportive of the idea of the new edition with every little bit of info the devs are giving. I hope the Devs find a way to please as much people as possible, while still moving on the new system

I'm glad to see that plenty of people who had reservations, have been more supportive of the idea of the new edition with every little bit of info the devs are giving.

Well, after the initial shock, I realized that I really do have enough 1e material to last me a lifetime, so I can happily keep playing it forever if need be. So once I got secure in that idea, it's easier to take tentative nibbles that maybe I could make use of *some* parts of 2e (like the APs).

If I may ask...
1) Exactly how much emphasis on miniatures this time around?
My biggest gripe with 3.5/PF is the strong emphasis on the tactical with minis and battlemats and the need to stop the game constantly to draw out a new room. If it goes back to a 1E/2E style of play where minis are completely optional and a lot of the combat section doesn't require you needing to see a grid for flanking, etc. I may be up for this.

2) Based on the FAQ, It seems that the old stuff will likely require statblock conversions, skill changes, etc. I'm ok with streamlining skills a little, and the feats by alot (there were too many books with feats and archtypes to cross reference to build a character. This is good rules-wise but incredibly bad for me with the old APs. Converting statblocks is definitely NOT in my future. This also will feel like all my old books are useless if I adopt the new system.

In summary, no minis/mapping "required" is a massive plus for me, optional use of minis for visual flavor is good enough. I'd give it a shot for this alone.

Statblock conversions required? Huge negative for me. I know you can wing stuff, but winging a whole AP isn't good. I'm willing to get some new APs, but if the minis/mapping is still required I'm out.

Have you considered the possibility of making 1e PDF versions of 2e APs? After selling 10k 2e copies, maybe you could make available a PDF that just swapped out 2e statblocks to 1e statblocks, to fish out 3k more sales with minimal effort? (I'm not even suggesting 1e print versions, because of printing economies of scale...)

There are still significant economic factors involved in this plan. Off the top of my head, that would require writing and development time to prepare the 1e statblocks, as well as having the product go through layout and graphics again. In addition, from the sounds of things, treasure would have to be realloted as well.

This isn't intended as harsh criticism - some of these factors are nuts-and-bolts publishing stuff most folks don't automatically know much about. (It's also why AP compilations are way more work than one might expect.)

That said... these forums are renowned for their homebrew solutions and willingness to share. I bet that people who go through the effort to convert 2e adventures themselves will be more than glad to share the fruits of their labor here for others to make use of. ^_^

What are the weapon types and proficiencies going to look like in Pathfinder 2nd Edition? I like what Kirthfinder did (although I would like it a bit more fleshed out) in which weapon proficiency effectively has multiple levels (with usually 3 levels being relevant, but sometimes more), with Pathfinder Simple, Martial, and Exotic Weapons corresponding to those having a minimum proficiency of 1, 2, or 3 (respectively) to a void a non-proficiency penalty, but with additional levels beyond the minimum giving you additional benefits (right now the Doru Spear is the only weapon I know of in Pathfinder that has this characteristic going all the way from Simple to Exotic, although a handful of others such as the Bastard Sword and Aldori Dueling Sword have this characteristic going from Martial to Exotic).

Also, I'd like to see Weapon Familiarity and language choices depend mainly(*) upon your upbringing, not your race/genetics.

(*)With certain allowances for physical capability -- you aren't going to be able to use a 4-handed sword if you have only 2 arms, and you aren't going to be able to speak a polyphonic language if you have just 1 voice.

gustavo iglesias wrote:

I'm glad to see that plenty of people who had reservations, have been more supportive of the idea of the new edition with every little bit of info the devs are giving.

Well, after the initial shock, I realized that I really do have enough 1e material to last me a lifetime, so I can happily keep playing it forever if need be. So once I got secure in that idea, it's easier to take tentative nibbles that maybe I could make use of *some* parts of 2e (like the APs).

That's were I am right now. If the PFII APs are still of use to me, that's good. If I have to spend 5 minutes on PCGen to build a monster or NPC from scratch and that's the hardest thing in converting the APs so be it

Just don't hit effective D&D Edition 4.000000, or you Bust . . . Unless you make it an Unholy hybrid with Mutants and Masterminds.

There are some neat ideas from M&M that would adapt nicely, such as staged conditions and degrees of success (an effect starting at sickened or shaken and proceeding up to nauseated or panicked or whatever).

Well, after the initial shock, I realized that I really do have enough 1e material to last me a lifetime, so I can happily keep playing it forever if need be. So once I got secure in that idea, it's easier to take tentative nibbles that maybe I could make use of *some* parts of 2e (like the APs).

I'm in the same boat, I have bought with few exceptions all the main books and AP's....so we have enough material to work with for many years.

Still, It would be nice of the 2E AP's coming out are easily usable in 1E play.

Aren't Hero Points from Mutants and Masterminds initially?

They've been an option in multiple rule sets since the 1980s, from my experience.
I first recall spending them in Warhammer Roleplay, 1st Ed, but I don't know if they were in the main rules, compendium, or an article in White Dwarf.

And many forum writers (back when mags had letters pages!) promoted the concept of giving rerolls for good play.

They've been an option in multiple rule sets since the 1980s, from my experience.

I first recall spending them in Warhammer Roleplay, 1st Ed, but I don't know if they were in the main rules, compendium, or an article in White Dwarf.

And many forum writers (back when mags had letters pages!) promoted the concept of giving rerolls for good play.

The James Bond 007 RPG from 1983 is the first one I saw the term "Hero Points" in. Good game, that was.

Saw some more of the 2E Pathfinder rules today. It's all compiled on ENWorld.

It's no longer Pathfinder anymore. 2nd Edition is a complete overhaul and I hate it the more and more I read it. You don't want me playtesting it. I'll just be suggesting and pushing a lot of things to bring it more in line with PF1 again.

I expected this kind of garbage from WotC with D&D. WotC with the complete abandonment of the 3.0/3.5 community for their crap 4e and, then soon after, 5e, was why I left them and came to Paizo. Paizo showed the RPG industry that you can do an edition change without throwing away so much of the original material. This was why Pathfinder had the moniker of "3.75" but, to me, they are MY 4th Edition D&D. They were what 4E D&D should have been.

Now Paizo is just another clone of WotC, abandoning a great system like PF1 and giving us a completely new, different, and unnecessary 2nd edition.

The saviors have now become the perpetrators. Thanks for succumbing to the same mistakes WotC has made.

gustavo iglesias wrote:

I'm glad to see that plenty of people who had reservations, have been more supportive of the idea of the new edition with every little bit of info the devs are giving.

Well, after the initial shock, I realized that I really do have enough 1e material to last me a lifetime, so I can happily keep playing it forever if need be. So once I got secure in that idea, it's easier to take tentative nibbles that maybe I could make use of *some* parts of 2e (like the APs).

The 2E APs are probably the only things us PF1 players will get use out of.

Considering the entire restructuring of their feat system, magic and spells system, and their monsters we are all screwed from harnessing any of the crunchy material from PF2 to our PF1 games.

Converting a PF2 monster to PF1, for example, is probably not going to be possible. Or may be with a ton of work.

I have to say, the early teases/reveals are steadily shifting from "cautiously optimistic" to "that's...pretty damn cool".

I love the attention to the math, I love the implied willingness to sacrifice "tradition" to make the game better, closer to swords-n-sorcery source material, and more internally consistent.

Hero Points look a LOT like Savage Worlds bennies (and that's a great thing).

Love the shield mechanics. Really liking the elegance of the new action economy. Love the commitment to customization.

I'm good with sturdier 1st-level characters and ok with top-tier characters breaking reality. I just worry that the game will, once again, result in a power shift up at all levels. If you're a demigod from 16-20, good on ya. If you're a demigod at level 10, it's a non-starter.

I love the move away from the Christmas Tree Effect and the move towards multiple non-magical tiers of quality for gear.

10th level spells still have me concerned. Are cantrips 1st-level spells now if 0-level spells are gone?

I'm thrilled that Starfinder is "another branch of the tree" and not a 2e pre-cursor. Starfinder is a fine game, but it's not for me and if PF 2e went that route, it likely wouldn't be for me or my group either.

Overall, I'm tremendously impressed with the discipline, forethought, planning that has gone into this thus far and I like the way Paizo is releasing information.

I'm tremendously disappointed that some people equate public playtest to "the game can/should be re-written according to my vision" and anything short of that is a malicious failure on Paizo's development process and playtest.

Note: Yes, I'm weighing in with what I'd like to see as well. I just don't believe everything that I'd like will make it in, nor do I think they will go back to the drawing board for major game elements at this stage. Nor do I want them to as that would only impact the overall quality or delay the release further.

Converting a PF2 monster to PF1, for example, is probably not going to be possible. Or may be with a ton of work.

Probably not needed for the APs anyways. Maybe you cannot match the NPF hydra because it has some cool ability related to the 3 action economy, but you can just use an OPF hydra without cool ability and it'll work just fine.

Saw some more of the 2E Pathfinder rules today. It's all compiled on ENWorld.

It's no longer Pathfinder anymore. 2nd Edition is a complete overhaul and I hate it the more and more I read it. You don't want me playtesting it. I'll just be suggesting and pushing a lot of things to bring it more in line with PF1 again.

I expected this kind of garbage from WotC with D&D. WotC with the complete abandonment of the 3.0/3.5 community for their crap 4e and, then soon after, 5e, was why I left them and came to Paizo. Paizo showed the RPG industry that you can do an edition change without throwing away so much of the original material. This was why Pathfinder had the moniker of "3.75" but, to me, they are MY 4th Edition D&D. They were what 4E D&D should have been.

Now Paizo is just another clone of WotC, abandoning a great system like PF1 and giving us a completely new, different, and unnecessary 2nd edition.

The saviors have now become the perpetrators. Thanks for succumbing to the same mistakes WotC has made.

I'm one of the most ardent promoters of "2e doesn't need to happen" and "if it does, it doesn't need to be a WotC-style reinvention" on these boards. I couldn't disagree with you more. I love PF 1e but I can acknowledge that there are areas where it could use some improvement. The snippets revealed thus far do not suggest a change-for-change's sake, a 5e clone, or a cash grab.

Even if PF 2e ultimately turns out to not be the game that I want it to be, I can appreciate the business realities of why it's being made. I'd much rather have a RPG hobby with a vibrant, growing Paizo than one without it.

I'm wondering, will Pathfinder Second Edition adventures still assume a party of four characters, or is that changing?

Considering the entire restructuring of their feat system, magic and spells system, and their monsters we are all screwed from harnessing any of the crunchy material from PF2 to our PF1 games.

Converting a PF2 monster to PF1, for example, is probably not going to be possible. Or may be with a ton of work.

Is it a Complete Restructuring though?

Class Feats looks like a unified term for Rogue Talents, Alchemist Discoveries, Gunslinger Deeds, and every other Class Specific array of talents.
In other words just a new name for something that was already there.

The New Action system looks like it's based on the one we saw in Pathfinder Unchained. So that's just an optional rule that's been polished up and made Core. So we already have a rough idea how to move between the normal PF1 system and that.

The Simplified Monster system is also based on something we saw in Unchained. Presumably polished up a bit as well but it doesn't seem like something we can't use in PF1. Assuming of course you don't already have the monster in one of the 6 Bestiaries already. If the CR is a bit off add a template or two until it's what you need

Spells might take some work to shift from Slot Scaling to Caster Level Scaling but we already have an understnad of Spell Anatomy for PF1 so it's just a matter of compairing them to existing spells.

Races might be hard to convert backwards except that we have the Advanced Race Guide. If a new Race comes along that seems cool, just keep the fluff and Race Build it.

Will we the players be testing these?

The saviors have now become the perpetrators.

I'm mostly ignoring the "from my cold dead hands" posts, because I get it. Really, I do.

But "perpetrators"? That's laying it on a little bit thick. Maybe dial back the hyperbole just a little?

Converting a PF2 monster to PF1, for example, is probably not going to be possible. Or may be with a ton of work.

Depends on what you consider to be "a ton of work."

Converting a statblock from PF to 5e* or vice-versa takes about 30 minutes if you're not constructing something finetuned or writing your own fluff. In the Fires of Creation module, I count 41 unique statblocks which, according to my own math, would make a conservative estimate of about 20 hours to convert.

But that's if every single entry in that book needed to be converted, as they would when converting to/from 5e. Since we're talking about converting from PF2 to PF1, it's important to remember that quite a few of those entries are straight out of PF1 Bestiaries or other books (19 by my count). A more realistic estimate would be somewhere around 12 hours for converting a single module (an odd estimation, but I'm trying to take into account how long it would take to convert minor variants as well). So, assuming that Paizo isn't going to make PF2 modules that only use PF2-exclusive monsters (which I think is a safe bet), it's not going to be as bad as the original estimation.

So that seems like a lot, and I'm not saying it isn't a healthy chunk of time (because it is). However, you wouldn't be doing them all in one sitting. In fact, how many sessions would it take your group to go through an entire module? Devoting some downtime in between sessions to convert monsters seems to me to be in the same order of magnitude as constructing functional maps.

*I mention converting to 5e specifically because people seem to be in the habit of comparing PF2 (for which we don't yet have the rules) to 5e for some reason.

Looking through what's released, I'm a bit concerned with the feet restructuring as it sounds like they are segregating feets in a way that could discourage creative interactions of abilities. Hopefully there's some low cost method of forcing access to restricted feets.

The spell upgraded slot memorizing thing is not very exciting to me. If a lower level spell with some more dice tacked on is comparable in power to a higher level spell, then you probably didn't do enough with the higher level spells. It's one of the things in 5e that make the game seem really shallow. And, considering how dull the Starfinder caster classes ended up, I worry that the focus on rebalancing casters and mundanes will leave the over all world more mundane.

The crit system sounds great. Backgrounds sound like they could be interesting if they aren't restrictive. Perception as base line is a necessary improvement. It's a mix of good and bad from the snippets we've gotten so far.

All of this talk about muscle wizards is causing a pretty big question to pop up into my mind, especially in the context of converting classes like the magus into P2e:

Is arcane spell failure chance still a thing? One of my biggest issues with Fighter/Wizard or Sorcerer multiclasses is the fact that, without the class features that permit armored spellcasting, there's absolutely no way to bypass the possibility that your spell just fizzles out unceremoniously.

Other than Mithral Armor? Or armor that doesn't have ASCF? Still spell? Or using bracers of Armors, ring of protection, ring of forceshield, amulet of natural armor instead of armor?

Other than Mithral Armor? Or armor that doesn't have ASCF? Still spell? Or using bracers of Armors, ring of protection, ring of forceshield, amulet of natural armor instead of armor?

1.) Mithral is expensive and only drops the ASFC by 10%, meaning it only really benefits lighter armor for reducing ASFC, which in turns prioritizes dexterity in order to fill out AC. Thanks to the magus and similar classes that start with light armor proficiency right out of the gate, having to worry about the ASFC for light armor is a non-issue, but with heavier armors it becomes more nebulous, especially with multiclass builds such as fighter/wizard/eldritch knight - if you want to do a dexterity build with that, odds are you're better off just going magus.

2.) There's only a very small handful of armors in the game that don't have an ASFC, and the armor bonuses they give out anyway are generally so small they don't benefit builds that plan on wading into melee, as opposed to normal wizards who generally don't plan on being in melee to begin with.

3.) With melee gish builds, odds are you're going to want to prioritize your feat investment into combat feats, or feats that increase overall survival. Because you're multiclassing, you're losing out on caster levels, meaning it takes longer to gain access to higher spell levels. Other than the issues of investing a feat for still spell (which, on paper, isn't itself an issue), the logistics behind taking still spell and putting it on all of your spells, increasing the effective spell level for them by 1 just to avoid ASFC isn't economical at all.

4.) That's even more expensive than the mithral armor right out of the gate, and the amount of financial strain upkeeping the bonuses just to keep the AC up as you level would induce, considering the expenses would get quadratically worse, is so ridiculous that I would show this as an example as how to not build a character from an equipment standpoint.

Let me just emphasize real quick that, if ASFC is in P2e, it's by no means a deal breaker. I just think that it's a bit of a relic, and considering the cleric and (hypothetically) the druid have no such armor limitations despite also being full 9th level casters (or, I guess in P2e's case, 10th level casters), it just seems somewhat biased.

My bet is they'll go the route of both 4e and 5e.
If you try to cast a spell in armor without proficiency, you fail, period. If you try to do it in armor with proficiency, no check needed.

My bet is they'll go the route of both 4e and 5e.

If you try to cast a spell in armor without proficiency, you fail, period. If you try to do it in armor with proficiency, no check needed.

Honestly, that's the ideal scenario, especially if it applies to both arcane and divine (and eventually psychic) magic. If a cleric can wear a full suit of banded mail and bless people left and right, a druid can put on her dragonhide plate armor and keep preaching about nature, and a psychic can put on his dad's old suit of hellknight plate and still read people's minds, why can't the wizard be allowed to put on some half plate and cast fireballs in the middle of a battlefield? It just forces wizards into stereotypes that go all the way back go Gandalf in LotR and stifles exploration of concepts such as full blown warmages who wear heavy armor but lead armies and cast spells from afar.

EDIT: Besides, while the explanation that armor "interfere's with the wizard's somatic components" is pretty much taken at face value, both druids and clerics ALSO have somatic components to their spells, but as I said, they have no such restriction.