The Pathfinder Playtest is Closed!

Can't wait to see the final game. It'll be great. Thanks for everything!

Thank god.
Hopefully we'll get a good rules set in august 2019.

Looking forward for the final game. While the adventure may have been a test, it was also one of my group's first experiences with running an official-style adventure path (as opposed to homebrew) - so we ended up having a lot of fun with it overall. As a result, we're expecting to play the parts we skipped over the next few months just for the experience of it.

Thanks for the ride, looking forward to the final product this summer.

The stressful part is over (for us). Now it's just waiting.
Here's my question. And I'm sure this happened right before Council of Thieves as well. These APs get written at least a year in advance. How are the adventure writers (not to mention the developer) coping with the new rules before putting out an AP to go along with the new core rules?
I believe I'd tear my hair out.

The stressful part is over (for us). Now it's just waiting.

Here's my question. And I'm sure this happened right before Council of Thieves as well. These APs get written at least a year in advance. How are the adventure writers (not to mention the developer) coping with the new rules before putting out an AP to go along with the new core rules?
I believe I'd tear my hair out.

Seeing as how easy it is to convert PF1 adventures to the playtest, I can't imagine it being that hard to convert an adventure written with playtest rules to PF2 rules. If *I* can manage the former, I'm sure the much more talented folks at Paizo can do the latter.

Woo! Now the excited waiting begins :3

Sorry I couldn’t contribute more to the Playtest, life got hectic-er.

I enjoyed being part of the playtest and look forward to seeing (and playing with) the final rules. I'm sure I'll find various tuff to do between now and then...

Thanks for giving us the opportunity to provide input in a structured manner. We could only play 3 parts (1,2,4) but it was thoroughly enjoyable. I answered to as many surveys as I could, within the limits of this short player experience.

I can't wait for the new teaser blog series leading up to public release :-)

Was certainly an interesting experience! I'm looking forward to seeing how the final rules turn out.

I hope that there will be a lot of changes to the rules in the final release.

Well, honestly speaking, i dont have high hopes for this game at all, but i will still be checking out the 2E book, if nothing else, for all the years i have been playing PF1.

Sets alarm clock for August.

Thanks for the hard work! I'm looking forward to seeing how the new system works for my friends and me.

Me and mine will probably start using Microscope to homebrew a setting in the summer all fresh and ready for some PF2 action.

.... yeah well.....
might not be happy with it so...

If there aren't major changes between the playtest and the final version, my group will not be picking this up.

I entirely understand wanting to push the rules and see how far is too far, and where they are going to break. That said, my group was begging me to wrap up the playtest and go back to our Mummy's Mask game by the end.

I had high hopes for PF2 last summer, but the playtest burnt through a lot of my trust in Paizo's vision.

The rest of the design team and I are going to be a little quiet over the next couple of months as we finalize parts of the game and get it ready to go to the printer. Once that hard work is done, you can expect us to start showing off the final version of the game.

I think this is the worst thing you can possibly do for those of us who left the playtest with a bad taste. Instead of letting that opinion sit for the next several months, post about problems that were identified and the kinds of thing you're considering to fix them. It doesn't need to be a final "Here's what PF2 will have!" preview, but just insight into "Here's something that was identified as a problem, why we think it was problematic, and how we're thinking of fixing it."

I wish we could know some big picture info like
"What happened to status of Goblins/alternate new Core Race"
Getting rid of Arcane Spell Failure was supposedly just experiment, so is it IN/OUT?

I imagine that there is still time to get feedback in. I just ran Raiders of the Shrieking Peak on Saturday.

I entirely understand wanting to push the rules and see how far is too far, and where they are going to break. That said, my group was begging me to wrap up the playtest and go back to our Mummy's Mask game by the end.

I had high hopes for PF2 last summer, but the playtest burnt through a lot of my trust in Paizo's vision.

Quote:

The rest of the design team and I are going to be a little quiet over the next couple of months as we finalize parts of the game and get it ready to go to the printer. Once that hard work is done, you can expect us to start showing off the final version of the game.

I think this is the worst thing you can possibly do for those of us who left the playtest with a bad taste. Instead of letting that opinion sit for the next several months, post about problems that were identified and the kinds of thing you're considering to fix them. It doesn't need to be a final "Here's what PF2 will have!" preview, but just insight into "Here's something that was identified as a problem, why we think it was problematic, and how we're thinking of fixing it."

Yeah, I hate to be negative in a thread like this, but this is the move I was afraid of. I think there is the basis for a great system here, but my whole group had a bad time with the playtest and eventually imploded in frustration during the beginning of part 7. In particular, the impression that this was a traditional test, where it's close to the final version caused a lot of despair due to some really bad aspects like Resonance, the math leaving most PCs feeling unimpressive and the terrible state of magic. It's great to hear there are going to be major changes, but simply going dark and saying "Trust us, this time it'll be good!" is not encouraging. The feedback you got about the playtest will be vitally important to creating a great game, but it's not enough. You only have feedback on the particular implementation. You probably have information on what the right direction to go is, but without further feedback you won't know if you're going too far or not far enough. I am sorry to say, but Paizo has had a tendency to dramatically over-correct. The playtest put that on display quite prominently. Magic for example was seen as too powerful, so it got nerfed to an absurdly painful degree. That proved unpopular, but how much buffing of magic is the right amount? Doing not enough and leaving it still uninspiring would be a problem, as would doing too much and making it godlike. Also knowing just what needs to be improved. Spell duration was one of the biggest problems, but wasn't even an option in the surveys. Conversely, the updates done through the playtest were mostly way too minor. Ancestries need a lot more than they got, same with the classes. The 1.6 changes were a nice start, but not nearly enough, especially for The Alchemist and Paladin which suffer from fundamental problems. Sharing progress and getting feedback about fine tuning is possibly even more important than the broad strokes info you got from the playtest. Going quiet and not taking any more feedback is a terrible mistake, both for reassuring those with bad playtest experiences and for getting the details right and making the best game possible.

I want PF2 to be awesome. And I think it can be. But it needs a whole lot of work, and a lot of fine tuning to get to that point. And that's better done with player feedback than blind. I wish you the best of luck, but I think you're making a huge mistake.

Good luck. Judging by the look of the playtest docs you certainly have a lot of work ahead of you to get something resembling a Pathfinder level game out.

Thanks to the design team and the Order of the Amber Die for the breakdowns of testing each chapter/scenario! I look forward to the previews once you're ready!

Thank you all so much for the fantastic playtest. The rules are already in a good state and have instilled a lot of faith in your company's judgement on game design. So feel free to be bold with further changes. Rest assured we are ready to move forward from the flaws of the old PF1 system and into the future!

If there aren't major changes between the playtest and the final version, my group will not be picking this up.

We already know for a fact that there will be huge and sweeping changes (at least by my definitions of 'huge' and 'sweeping'). I mean, they've already mentioned that the DCs table is completely different (and has only one DC per level, with varying difficulty coming from going up and down the chart), while Proficiencies have been drastically altered numbers-wise, item bonuses to skills have been minimized, spells in general are gonna be more powerful, and Resonance as such is just gone. Plus various other stuff.

So...it's gonna be very different indeed.

I think this is the worst thing you can possibly do for those of us who left the playtest with a bad taste. Instead of letting that opinion sit for the next several months, post about problems that were identified and the kinds of thing you're considering to fix them. It doesn't need to be a final "Here's what PF2 will have!" preview, but just insight into "Here's something that was identified as a problem, why we think it was problematic, and how we're thinking of fixing it."

They've done this to some degree (heck, everything I mentioned above is stuff they've commented on). I imagine they'll continue to do so to some small degree. The warning is that it won't be to nearly the degree it was during the playtest, not that we'll never get a single word out of them.

Conversely, the updates done through the playtest were mostly way too minor.

I'm sorry, but just how much change did you EXPECT them to be able to make within each 2-week period? I personally thought it was astounding just how much they did change and alter and how quickly they responded to feedback in the PLAYTEST. Now that it's over and they're focusing in on the game, I'm not sure how to NOT expect them to make changes and additions well beyond what we saw in the Playtest. Where they had weeks they now have months and more ability to quietly focus.

And I mean, it's not like not doing another public Playtest is going to mean we get an untested final game. I'd think Paizo is perfectly capable of running tests on their own mechanics to fine-tune the changes now that they have a good general impression of what needs done.

I feel like another public Playtest would do more harm than good, as I feel what would be on the table at that point would be (compared to what we saw in the Playtest) minor changes that people would majorly disagree on the precise implementation of. I just feel like the work that remains isn't of the sort that wide public feedback would help much with. We helped with testing concepts, ideas, direction, and finding a lot of specific issues big and small, but the work they're doing now is likely to come down to much more specific and precise matters of the numbers and math and frankly most of us aren't game designers (Despite what a lot of people seem to think), so I think that part of the work is better left to the smaller team of experts than the wider public that all have slightly different ideas on how exactly things should be built.

That's just my take on it though.

Something I learned when asking people to review my designs as part of the RPGSS ritual is that when working under a tight clock, you just cannot process so many info during the last steps as you could in the beginning.

Paizo gambled to insert a potentially highly disruptive open playtest phase in their design process to collect as much info as they could about what people actually want. That phase is now done

Now, they need to quietly compile all that info and integrate it in the conception and production of their final design

Will the result be perfect ? Of course not. But I know it will be a game that will give many many people what they want out of PF2

Five months and was there not a single question on whether we should keep or remove Vancian style prepared casting?

Five months and was there not a single question on whether we should keep or remove Vancian style prepared casting?

I think of all my criticisms of PF2, this was the biggest. I think it had a knock on effect that made every casting class feel subpar. The spells themselves I think are largely fine or need tweaks (detect magic sonar was a frustrating issue at my table that needed houseruling), but the seemingly constant inability to actually cast magic was a big complaint. Paizo could increase the spell slots it add new complex abilities to make Vancian casting not suck so much, but at its root I don't think that system was designed with such extremely limited slots or such specialized spells in mind.

Arcanist casting we know does work quite well with low spell slots from how it was received in 5e, casters frequently have fewer spell slots but there but there's still some semblance of caster supremacy. Since PF2 does more to elevate martial characters, I think it's what the feedback was pointing towards anyways as an appropriate buff. When the Wizard is getting quasi-Arcanist abilities as a default part of the class in response to feedback, I think that implies a good chunk of those interested in PF2 would like at least a non-Vancian casting system.

Hard to know since it didn't come up in the surveys. I just really hope Paizo doesn't plan on keeping things as-is.

Quote:

The rest of the design team and I are going to be a little quiet over the next couple of months as we finalize parts of the game and get it ready to go to the printer. Once that hard work is done, you can expect us to start showing off the final version of the game.

I think this is the worst thing you can possibly do for those of us who left the playtest with a bad taste. Instead of letting that opinion sit for the next several months, post about problems that were identified and the kinds of thing you're considering to fix them. It doesn't need to be a final "Here's what PF2 will have!" preview, but just insight into "Here's something that was identified as a problem, why we think it was problematic, and how we're thinking of fixing it."

Quoted for truth. Paizo has built customer relations experience with this playtest and now has a blog with actual readers and a Twitch stream with actual subscribers. Continue in this vein. Exploit these resources. Paizo should have somebody who has decent insight into the continuing design process report back to us potential customers what is happening in the design process. If nothing else, this is a way to keep excitement up. To stay in focus among your customers. To hype the coming product.

If anybody wants to see some of the other things the devs have announced about what Pathfinder 2's final version will look like, check out the interview or the summary post.)

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

Five months and was there not a single question on whether we should keep or remove Vancian style prepared casting?

I think of all my criticisms of PF2, this was the biggest. I think it had a knock on effect that made every casting class feel subpar.

Personally, I'm very happy they're keeping Vancian casting for prepared spell casters (one of the very few things in what we know about PF2e that I am happy about). For me, it's a fundamental part of D&D writ large.

This next bit is not a criticism of the folks I'm quoting but a more general observation. I find it odd/interesting that there is both concern about the alleged "caster-martial gap" (something that I don't think is all that real) and also unhappiness about Vancian casting which would seem to be a limit on caster effectiveness.

Man, I hope they don't use Twitch as the primary means of getting information out. The last thing I need is an hour long video to cover something that can be done in 2 minutes of reading.

Helmic wrote:

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

Five months and was there not a single question on whether we should keep or remove Vancian style prepared casting?

I think of all my criticisms of PF2, this was the biggest. I think it had a knock on effect that made every casting class feel subpar.

Personally, I'm very happy they're keeping Vancian casting for prepared spell casters (one of the very few things in what we know about PF2e that I am happy about). For me, it's a fundamental part of D&D writ large.

Except for the most popular version of D&D ever released, by a huge margin?

This next bit is not a criticism of the folks I'm quoting but a more general observation. I find it odd/interesting that there is both concern about the alleged "caster-martial gap" (something that I don't think is all that real) and also unhappiness about Vancian casting which would seem to be a limit on caster effectiveness.

It's not a limit on caster effectiveness. If anything, it enables the disparity in the first place, because it makes caster power so widely variable.

The power spread between a vancian caster played by someone who gets their spell selection perfect and one who doesn't is huge. It's effectively impossible to balance against martials who aren't doing it, because which point do you balance for? If you make a near perfect vancian caster balanced, anyone falling well below that on a given day's spells will be at a severe disadvantage relative to the party. This is where the playtest came closer to, and it made magic feel awful for people who simply didn't get those perfect spell selections.

If you make a suboptimal spell selection what you balance for, then the perfect one becomes far more powerful than everyone else and you have the very problem we've had in the past.

You don't try to balance class power by making the OOC game mechanics obtuse and complicated to use to their full potential. That simply gets you a wide disparity between people playing the same class.

You don't try to balance class power by making the OOC game mechanics obtuse and complicated to use to their full potential. That simply gets you a wide disparity...

I guess I don't see how selecting one's spells at the start of the day as prepared casters do is "obtuse and complicated." It seems fairly simple and straightforward to me.

And for those who'd refer not play prepared/Vancian casters, there are numerous spontaneous caster options - oracles, sorcerers, etc.

Tridus wrote:

You don't try to balance class power by making the OOC game mechanics obtuse and complicated to use to their full potential. That simply gets you a wide disparity...

I guess I don't see how selecting one's spells at the start of the day as prepared casters do is "obtuse and complicated." It seems fairly simple and straightforward to me.

I think people have described their feelings on that in the other thread. :)

And for those who'd refer not play prepared/Vancian casters, there are numerous spontaneous caster options - oracles, sorcerers, etc.

Those aren't really the same as they move the issue to level up instead, and leave you without the same versatility. I like picking spells, I don't like "well I took X and Y because I thought we were doing one thing, but now we're doing something else so 2/3 of my highest level spell slots don't exist today." With how much magic was nerfed in the playtest, the power level loss caused by that simply hurts too much to make vancian casting tenible for me.

I can handle it more easily in PF1 simply because with so many more spells per day (and generally stronger spells, and less need to heighten things to make them effective, and longer durations, and scaling...), getting one or two wrong simply doesn't hurt as much.

Helmic wrote:

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

Five months and was there not a single question on whether we should keep or remove Vancian style prepared casting?

I think of all my criticisms of PF2, this was the biggest. I think it had a knock on effect that made every casting class feel subpar.

Personally, I'm very happy they're keeping Vancian casting for prepared spell casters (one of the very few things in what we know about PF2e that I am happy about). For me, it's a fundamental part of D&D writ large.

This next bit is not a criticism of the folks I'm quoting but a more general observation. I find it odd/interesting that there is both concern about the alleged "caster-martial gap" (something that I don't think is all that real) and also unhappiness about Vancian casting which would seem to be a limit on caster effectiveness.

An appeal to tradition isn't super compelling when there's already massive changes and the people who would prefer it stay still aren't going to like the system.

As for the martial/caster disparity problem, there's been massive write-ups on why it exists in 3.5 and PF1. Arcanist casting would indeed be a buff, but 1) it's in the context of a system that seems to have sufficiently buffed martial characters, at least in combat itself and 2) Grid's Law, you don't balance bad mechanics by making it a pain in the ass to use. Vancian casting isn't very well suited to playing with scarce spell slots so it's even more annoying than it usually is, but at its core it's a complexity issue. It's complex, doesn't make a lot of sense, adds variance in how many impactful spells can actually be cast per day so that more boring spell selections are noticeably more powerful than something that encourages variety.

It's not the picking the spells per day per se that's the issue, it's trying to predict the exact number of uses based on largely guesswork. In PF1, with its many spell slots, you could be obnoxiously strong if you also liked taking an obnoxious amount of time to actually get ready if you made changes to your usual list of prepared spells. Without those extra slots, any amount you're wrong by is extremely punishing, which again is on top of the other magical nerfs. Not to mention this is most restrictive at low levels, where even PF1 casters tended to suck as having only 2 or 3 spell slots to work lwith per day meant putting anything in there that isn't 100% guaranteed to be used is a massive loss of power.

Martials, meanwhile, are actually pretty great now. So why make casters annoying and unfun to play when they do need a buff anyways? I'd gladly give them that extra power, especially if it gave a bit more leeway for all martials to be more skilled by default. Martials use powerful skill feats to address problems, casters can flex to whatever spell with Arcanist casting to fill in the gaps. It's not like the spells themselves or the saves they target make it so going for HP damage is for chumps.

Hoping that like Rise of the Runelords did for Pathfinder 1.0 from 3.5, Doomsday Dawn will see a minor revision so that it can be replayed and even sanctioned for Pathfinder 2.0. Same for the PFS scenarios. If not, then a minor errata of rules of what's changed and how to deal with things like Season 0 of PFS versus Season 10.

Vancian casting is a sacred cow that should have been slaughtered in 3.0, instead of having two forms of the Mage. (Wizard and Sorcerer) Other than mechanics, nothing was different between the two classes. PF1 has some additional class abilities such as Bloodlines and Bonded Object that strengthen the classes and the difference between the Mages is more pronounced, but the overall choices of spells and class abilities seem about the same.

I was hoping, back when PF2 was a distant rumor, that the Arcanist would be the new "wizard" for the new edition, and the Sorcerer would concentrate on being an Elementalists or other bloodline focuses and have some of the Kinestist class abilities.

The thought that Vancian casting has to be a part of D&D, though, is something that 5th ed has done away with. I think the system in place now in PF2 will be a better visioning than what came before it, but it does seem that class abilities are being put in to compensate for overcoming limitations of the mechanic rather than fixing it.

Pretty interesting that this thread has posts of both "the playtest needs to massively change or I won't pick up PF2e" and "the playtest was great, keep heading in that direction and I will love PF2e".

If nothing else, it certainly illustrates how impossible it is for Paizo to make everyone happy.

This isn't the place to discuss it, but as far as I can tell, 5E still has Vancian casting. I don't know why this is a big deal. Maybe we just have a different understanding of the term.

This isn't the place to discuss it, but as far as I can tell, 5E still has Vancian casting. I don't know why this is a big deal. Maybe we just have a different understanding of the term.

5e uses Arcanist/Neo-Vancian, it's still kind of Vancian but you don't need to prepare each casting of each spell. The main argument of mine and a lot of people here is that PF2 should use this system as well, which keeps the feeling of Vancian while also solving its biggest problem.

Vancian Casting is fine. I'm not a fan of it particularly but it is easy to learn (provided you start at lvl one) and it is pretty baked into the Golarion so Paizo wants to keep it. I agree that 5e style semi-vancian would be better though. My biggest problem with the playtest casting system was spontaneous casters needing to learn the same spell multiple times.

Hopefully if PF2 is good there will be some new version of spheres of power to go with it soon. Weather that's a port or a conversion depends on how drastically different PF2 is from PF1 which is currently unknown.

Our group was pretty disappointed that we did not get to finish the adventure and contribute to the feedback. We plowed through the first 4 chapters with enthusiasm but fatigue and life started messing with us. Not sure if we'll pick it back up now or not. We liked several aspects of the game and we're interested to see how it holds up at high levels...

Bobson wrote:

Quote:

The rest of the design team and I are going to be a little quiet over the next couple of months as we finalize parts of the game and get it ready to go to the printer. Once that hard work is done, you can expect us to start showing off the final version of the game.

I think this is the worst thing you can possibly do for those of us who left the playtest with a bad taste. Instead of letting that opinion sit for the next several months, post about problems that were identified and the kinds of thing you're considering to fix them. It doesn't need to be a final "Here's what PF2 will have!" preview, but just insight into "Here's something that was identified as a problem, why we think it was problematic, and how we're thinking of fixing it."

Quoted for truth. Paizo has built customer relations experience with this playtest and now has a blog with actual readers and a Twitch stream with actual subscribers. Continue in this vein. Exploit these resources. Paizo should have somebody who has decent insight into the continuing design process report back to us potential customers what is happening in the design process. If nothing else, this is a way to keep excitement up. To stay in focus among your customers. To hype the coming product.

Quoted for its myopic nature.

So, rather than just spend the time on making the game as good as possible, you'd prefer they spend their time TELLING YOU what they're going to do, rather than DOING IT?

How about we just let the design team do just that, and let them design the game. They can tell you about it when it's finished.

Does this mean we can no longer recieve Playtest Points if our lodges play through scenarios or Doomsday Dawn?

TriOmegaZero wrote:

This isn't the place to discuss it, but as far as I can tell, 5E still has Vancian casting. I don't know why this is a big deal. Maybe we just have a different understanding of the term.

5e uses Arcanist/Neo-Vancian, it's still kind of Vancian but you don't need to prepare each casting of each spell. The main argument of mine and a lot of people here is that PF2 should use this system as well, which keeps the feeling of Vancian while also solving its biggest problem.

I would say that Preparing spells in of itself isn't the Vancian system by itself, but that the need to prepare multiple copies to cast a spell more than once is the headache that needs elemenated. "Fire and Forget" was not the best way to go about it in 1st edition, let alone an updated rules edition that have left so many other things behind.

thACo indeed.

I feel a bit stupid and naive right now. I was hoping that with the end of the playtest the the aggressiveness would get less....

I hope that this community will find it's way back to a more constructive tone and spirit.

If folks want to continue to discuss Vancian spellcasting, please start a different thread. This is not the place for it. Further posts will be moderated.

Does this mean we can no longer recieve Playtest Points if our lodges play through scenarios or Doomsday Dawn?

I could be wrong, but I think the organized play team has said that you can continue playing the playtest scenarios until sometime next summer to accumulate the playtest points. I'm not sure whether that also applies to the doomsday dawn adventures, but probably?

It'd be nice to get an update from the OP front soon, because the messaging about the playtest being over and done with has been quite strong from the regular Pathfinder design team.

I want to thank the Paizo team for doing a great job on the playtest. While my gaming companions only reached the conclusion of Part 5, it was an amazing experience and a wicked end for the characters. On the bright side, playing the playtest gave us an opportunity to return to Pathfinder after four years of 5e D&D. We played Pathfinder for four year before and now we have become very interested in Starfinder. So we look forward to August 2019 and, hopefully, being able to play Starfinder (please keep this game updated to be compatible with 2e) as well as 2nd edition Pathfinder :)