Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster Project!

I started with PF2 and wanted to play Runelords. It’s taking me and another GM spending a lot of time to manually convert it. It’s not going to be easy to reconcile the rule sets. It can be done but it will take a lot of time getting the tables to sync so the experience will be flawless.

Are you meaning that you have a copy of the PF1 AP of Runelords and are converting it to run in PF2?

Because yeah, that is a huge amount of work.

Not the type of changes we are talking about with the PF2 Remaster printings of the four core rulebooks.

I love what PAIZO has done over the years as a company and with their products. Change is not always easy but I'm really looking forward to the update. I'm sure I'll have mixed feelings about some stuff. The nostalgic part of me will have a hard time letting go of Ability Scores. Also, I've found with a lot of players, Alignment was used less for role play and more as an excuse to get away with certain types of behavior. Without evolution I'd still be playing Adventure on the Atari 2600 instead of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. I'm pumped for November!

Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti wrote:

How long ago was this remastering planned? It seems that the OGL mess may be the justification for this but I am what I kept hearing in the Roll for Combat and the Twitch stream is that they have been working on this for months. If the OGL debacle was in Januaryish, would they be able to have all of these planned to go out in November for the first 2 books? Or was this something that was always planned? If it was always planned I think that needs to be stated.

Will subsequent APs and books have a Pathfinder Remastered logo?

The Remaster Project was not considered until after January. It’s been a tremendous behind the scenes reshuffle.

They are getting all this work done and the books printed in 10 months? (February-November)

7. Even with everything that's changing, this STILL feels like a 2.1 at most to me.

A mid-edition remaster that splits the player book in two and distributes the classes differently between them?

This is not 2.5 or 2.1. This is Pathfinder Essentials.

Removed a post that was off topic and the quotes.

Maybe the will have cleaner rules for creating custom magial staffs? I use Herolab and was trying to create a magical staff and was told by Herolab tech that it is not possible to do so because of the language used by Paizo.

What I'm looking for is a developer who isn't going to sell me one thing, then rugpull on me five years later and say "Those things you've been using for five years? We're not going to use them anymore and we're going to stop printing the books that have them in there. But it's not 2.5e".

Up to you whether ye want to check out what the post OGL removal world is like, but either way I'd be hypocrite to say "Hey don't express your annoyance at addition of ability to ignore ancestry stat modifiers completely and removal of alignment" when I was being super sad about removal of alignment yesterday and I disagree with idea of ability flaws or bonuses being inherently offensive. Like I get why some posters are annoyed about you declaring your intention to stop playing system several times, but its part of venting out the frustration. I don't need to agree with everything to understand it.

And hey there ARE plenty of trpgs in the world. I like Cypher system a lot, its my favorite system I never get to run or play. I always kinda wanted to try out cthulhutech but heard it wasn't super good system, same with eclipse phase... But then there are other systems that are about as praised as cypher as well that seem interesting to at least test out but I don't have time to.

How is this impacting virtual character creation software like Herolab and Nexus?

neither you nor Paizo are entitled to my money.

I mean, no one said they were, but they are free to disagree with you if they feel like it. The highly dramatized tone in your posts makes them an even more appealing target to some people. So it is what it is.

We got PF2e based on the gold standard: OGL. Which became very volatile when WoTC decided to try to not only cancel it, but force anyone who published under the OGL to freely give all of their IP up stream. No thanks

Now we have a developer who is building something that is going to outlast all of us, and at the same time not altering it so much that it isn't backwards and forwards compatible with the existing content.

People have questions and that is great. Will help build the community up.

So far nothing about the Remaster has struck me that it is worth bailing on the system and most of the changes just look like expedited errata anyways.

I still haven't seen any changes that are going to break anything in the core. And anything that is removed other than Alignment mechanics is mostly superficial. Some things like weapon proficiencies are going to make more sense now. Thank god my Dwarf Wizard can use their ancestral dagger proficiently that they have been playing with since birth.

And the Alignment changes, my guess, is that the mechanics people are worried about will be baked in with new terminology. I have faith in Paizo's ability to make sense of the rules and removing the troublesome OGL links at the same time.

so far nothing about the Remaster has struck me that it is worth bailing on the system and most of the changes just look like expedited errata anyways.

I'm not so convinced that is solely the case, because it's not like they can't just errata the content. I'd be more inclined to believe that they want to errata things (without having to spend money to do just that, because Paizo doesn't earn money by doing errata), and wanted to utilize the ORC licensing to both build rapport/steam with other publishers, and forge a new customer base independent of the OGL, and decided that they wanted to kill two birds with one stone, so here we are. (We can also maybe get some more egregious balance changes done with a "republish" instead of errata, so there is that too.)

That, to me, seems more like what's going on here, and while I can understand it from a business perspective, and part of it from a playing perspective (large swathes of errata for balancing purposes are nice), I'm not going to say that Paizo is 100% making the right move, either, since this is relatively unexplored territory we're dealing with here.

I'd like to see a change in the ability score names, which I think can be associated with the OGL. I always thought it should be AGILITY rather than DEXTERITY.

I don't know about "associated with the OGL" but to me dexterity has to do with how good you are with your hands, while agility has to do with how good you are on your feet.

Zaister wrote:

kinderschlager wrote:

something

Maybe it is just me, but to my German ears your nickname sounds really offensive. If you don't know, it basically translates to "child beater". Is that what you want?

Maybe it’s in another language that isn’t German, or maybe it’s an unfortunate last name?

Well, that very unfortunate name would be "Kinderschläger" or "Kinderschlaeger", if you avoid the Umlaut. Although it is not a word used in German common speech, the literal translation of "Kinderschlager" would be "childrens hit song" or "childrens pop song".

Although it's definitely a bit of a strange forum name.

As for the rules, one important thing to note is that no core rules, other than alignments, are really being tweaked.

The rolls remain the same, the mechanics of attacks, Strikes, spells, saves, crits, actions, proficiencies and etc are the same. Including this is the main fact to avoid breaking backwards compatibility.
What we will probably see in the next books will be a re-reading and replication of how these rules are described, many classes, ancestries and so on. Things that can take advantage of this movement of changing license and get away from WotC things, to be reviewed based on the experience of more than 4 years of "playtest" of the 2ed.

While I am still very leery of 2E overall, these new books might just be the thing to get me to buy some 2E material after all. I'll have to think about it for a bit, but then again the first relevant book (Rage of Elements) comes out in July, so there's time.

Elves are not a creation of the folks of WotC or even JRR Tolkien.

Do they need to change the name of a Cloak of Elvenkind?

This is the sort of question that I am hoping they are asking themselves. What they do sets a precedent and capitulating completely on things where they don’t need to is bad.

They have talked about how costly a legal battle can be, but I’m hoping they are also keeping in mind how costly conceding rights can also be.

We already know they don’t intend to carry Otyugh into the remastered content.

My understanding is that you can’t copyright names, that is Trademark or Servicemark. The 1st edition Monster Manual doesn’t list a Trademark on Otyugh. I think TSR (who WotC bought) only have copyright for their description of the monster. To my knowledge, the Otyugh is a monster that was original to D & D but there are still limits on what about that copyright can protect.

I am not advocating that Paizo set themselves up for a complicated and costly legal battle. I would like some assurance that they also aren’t abandoning things where there is a weak to non-existent IP claim...

I just used Elven Cloak as a example. They could change slightly what it does and leave the name the same, change the name slightly and leave what it does the same etc. So in the end we will have a cloak that does basically the same thing. Same with most of the monsters, magic items etc.

I was only pointing out even with the stuff they have to or feel it would be safer to tweak to avoid possible legal issues. I doubt it will have much effect at all, since much of DnD lore comes from real world lore or other sources anyways.

They are getting all this work done and the books printed in 10 months? (February-November)

You might be interested in this behind-the-scenes look from Mark Moreland

Remastering Project

Shisumo wrote:

Very excited for all of this, but I would like to take the opportunity to beg the design team to take a look at Unconventional Weaponry and Additional Lore so that they don't incentivize making your characters "backwards." It should not be easier for a fighter from Goka to use a falcata than a fighter from Taldor, and it shouldn't make more sense for a legendary card sharp to not take a background offering Gambling Lore. I know these are minor things but they have been my personal bugbears since the edition first released!

This needed to be said twice.

I'll say it a third time!

WatersLethe wrote:

7. Even with everything that's changing, this STILL feels like a 2.1 at most to me.

A mid-edition remaster that splits the player book in two and distributes the classes differently between them?

This is not 2.5 or 2.1. This is Pathfinder Essentials.

I remember that. It wasn't the greatest then, but they also really split those up so, SO wrong.

As for the rules, one important thing to note is that no core rules, other than alignments, are really being tweaked.

To add to that, the other thing I would note:

The books that aren't changing - such as the extra rulebooks and the AP books - are not being changed because they don't need to be changed. That is how compatible the Remastered Core rulebooks are with the current core rulebooks.

So if a group of people came together and:
* the GM has the 2nd printing CRB, Gamemastery Guide, Monster Core, Bestiary 2, and the Abomination Vaults AP
* one of the player has the 4th printing CRB and Advanced Player's Guide
* another of the other players has the Player Core, Player 2 Core, and Guns and Gears
...

they will all play just fine together.

The CRB and Gamemastery guide will still have alignment rules in it, and the Bestiary 2 will still be listing alignment tags for all of the creatures, as will the enemies printed directly in Abomination Vaults. But that isn't a big problem to ignore (or continue using).

If someone is playing a Witch, they will likely want to be using the version in Player Core rather than the Advanced Player's Guide.

And that's about it. Pretty much everything else is going to agree just fine.

Hilary Moon Murphy wrote:

I think that taking away a hard-coded alignment system will allow for more complex stories and antagonists.

Yes! Exactly! This!!!! The alignment system, especially with it being so ingrained into mechanics like with alignment damage, makes complex stories and villains hard to make.

It totally does not. Alignment was always an optional background thing you could lean into or leave it alone. That you can't ignore something that doesn't work for you is not a fault in the system.

Staffan Johansson wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

7. Even with everything that's changing, this STILL feels like a 2.1 at most to me.

A mid-edition remaster that splits the player book in two and distributes the classes differently between them?

This is not 2.5 or 2.1. This is Pathfinder Essentials.

I remember that. It wasn't the greatest then, but they also really split those up so, SO wrong.

Ok, now this untruth is getting quoted, so there's a correction:

YuriP wrote:

As for the rules, one important thing to note is that no core rules, other than alignments, are really being tweaked.

To add to that, the other thing I would note:

The books that aren't changing - such as the extra rulebooks and the AP books - are not being changed because they don't need to be changed. That is how compatible the Remastered Core rulebooks are with the current core rulebooks.

So if a group of people came together and:
* the GM has the 2nd printing CRB, Gamemastery Guide, Monster Core, Bestiary 2, and the Abomination Vaults AP
* one of the player has the 4th printing CRB and Advanced Player's Guide
* another of the other players has the Player Core, Player 2 Core, and Guns and Gears
...

they will all play just fine together.

The CRB and Gamemastery guide will still have alignment rules in it, and the Bestiary 2 will still be listing alignment tags for all of the creatures, as will the enemies printed directly in Abomination Vaults. But that isn't a big problem to ignore (or continue using).

If someone is playing a Witch, they will likely want to be using the version in Player Core rather than the Advanced Player's Guide.

And that's about it. Pretty much everything else is going to agree just fine.

Yet I imagine if a player comes if a Player Core version probably most tables will switch to them instead of keep the older version. Just because it will be the more revised and balanced version.

But in tables where the new core versions are unavailable players will able to play normally. At same time that classes like summoner, magus, gunslinger, inventor, psychic and thaumaturge will still available to anyone who want's to play in core versions normally while a new remastered version don't comes.

I always kinda wanted to try out cthulhutech but heard it wasn't super good system, same with eclipse phase... But then there are other systems that are about as praised as cypher as well that seem interesting to at least test out but I don't have time to.

Semi-off topic, but the issue I have with Eclipse Phase (at least 2nd edition) is not the rules, but the setting. As in the setting is very, very dense, and it 100% requires player buy in and interest to learn the setting _as well as_ the rules.

Back to on semi-topic, as part of this change is for the ORC license, have we seen the final public version of it yet? It's very possible I missed it. The last few months have been wild, both IRL, work, and with my games hobbies.

I'd like to see Paizo insulate themselves from legal action from Hasbro as much as possible. I have watched plenty of larger companies use costly legal attacks to put smaller companies out of business or make doing business too costly. Hasbro would like nothing more than to put their primary competitor out of business or hamstring them sufficiently to make doing business painful and costly.

If this move protects Paizo from attempts by Hasbro to put Paizo out of business using lawsuits, then it's a smart move. Players would not be happy if every time Paizo put something out, Hasbro was filing a lawsuit just to be a costly nuisance.

It seems pretty clear that Hasbro/WotC has decided to attack competitors using the OGL rather than compete with better quality product. That was what I read into WotC's OGL move a while back, "We can't beat you with better products, so we're going to make your life miserable to compete against us."

Some business person in the Hasbro/WotC hierarchy wants to dissolve the OGL if they can, so they can take complete control of their IP in the marketplace pushing out competition.

have we seen the final public version of it yet? It's very possible I missed it. The last few months have been wild, both IRL, work, and with my games hobbies.

The close-to-final draft was released at the beginning of April, with a comment period that was supposed to end sometime soon (I'm remembering April 29, but with little confidence).

Once that comment period closed, the final version was supposed to be released pretty shortly after that.

Edit:
Here's the blog post
First Draft

Azora will be soliciting commentary and feedback through that platform between now and Friday, April 21, at which point they will incorporate that feedback and release another public draft. If additional rounds of public commentary are required, the process will continue until the license is complete and meets the needs of the majority of participating publishers. It is our intention to wrap up the entire process by the end of April if possible.

Will these be part of the Core Rulebook subscription?

From the Blog post that you are discussing

Will the Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster books be part of my ongoing Pathfinder Rulebooks subscription?

Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster books will be included in ongoing Pathfinder Rulebooks subscriptions. We are currently working on a method whereby existing subscribers will have the opportunity to “opt out” of these volumes if they wish and will provide additional details as we get closer to the release of the first two volumes.

I left comment in product discussion.

Update for Starfinder, yes please! I want to run this for my group, but I don't want to teach yet another system. Ideally SF2e will be as close to PF2e as systemically possible. This is all that has kept me from buying up all the Starfinder books as I have with Pathfinder First and Second editions.

Whereas I'm the opposite. I'm still using PF1, and if SF2 was closer to PF2, I simply wouldn't buy it. I find PF2 far too restrictive for my tastes, and I want that level of flexibility in Starfinder.

Will subsequent APs and books have a Pathfinder Remastered logo?

In one of the streams yesterday, they said that they specifically decided *not* to put Remastered on the cover because they want to underline that it is the same game and not an edition change. Still just Pathfinder 2nd Edition.

Amazing how all edition wars start to look the same, right down to the inevitable "no one is coming to your house to steal your books" straw man.

Given WotC's reaction to somebody who bought Magic cards before the street dates (sending Pinkerton thugs to intimidate him into returning them), we can no longer be sure that even something that far fetched would never happen.

I am hoping that Paizo never does anything comparable to that.

Getting rid of Vancian casting isn't that hard. It's basically make Flexible Spellcaster as default rules. It's a thing that affects only prepared casters not the entire spellcasting system. It's even compared to the work they will need to do with the removal of alignments.

I'm not so sure that this can't happen once they addressing many complains of the community and Vancian casting is one of the biggest.

If they make Flexible Casting the norm, it would have to be with the Prepared Spells that the Prepared casters would normally get, with spells per day being the new chart. Never understood why it was configured to further hamper the poor ol' man Wizard even further to chose a spell while casting instead of guess work at the beginning of the day.

WatersLethe wrote:

7. Even with everything that's changing, this STILL feels like a 2.1 at most to me.

A mid-edition remaster that splits the player book in two and distributes the classes differently between them?

This is not 2.5 or 2.1. This is Pathfinder Essentials.

Whoah, there, hold up, partner!!

4Venture Essentials was additional rules and "updates" that were changing the then current edition to be more like 3.5, and was considered "evergreen" as a always printed accessory. (they also had a map and starter adventure)

This Remaster Project is not, it is an errata printing that puts the material in a different format for easier understanding, better presentation and lower buy in cost. (For a single book)

It totally does not. Alignment was always an optional background thing you could lean into or leave it alone. That you can't ignore something that doesn't work for you is not a fault in the system.

Seriously true. I absolutely love alignment as a concept, but in all the decades of playing D&D and Pathfinder it hardly ever really mattered at my tables outside of a handful of encounters.

4e Essentials was additional rules and "updates" that were changing the then current edition to be more like 3.5, and was considered "evergreen" as a always printed accessory. (they also had a map and starter adventure)

Yep 4ee was Mearls wanting to fix D&D to be classic unbalance rather than carefull balanced and went back to wizards > fighter. I started with those pocket books and was confused when people kept saying wizards==fighter with same number of powers in 4e! Sure they was "compatible" and I remember Mearls saying you can play the same adventure at the same table. Which was not true as 4e MM1/2 math got changed in MM3 which 4ee used same math so you had to convert the numbers (copy/paste at print store is what I did) combined with if you had a 4e melee and a 4ee melee one of them will be happy and one will be sad. They also said the same thing about D&D Next and D&D 5e, so I do not trust them that D&D 2014&2024 will be "compatible".

But with Paizo already having done whole class erratas as well as changing ABCD rules flaws already and already ditching scores in favor of bonuses in Beginner Box- I trust them when they say they are the same edition and table compatible.

Staffan Johansson wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

7. Even with everything that's changing, this STILL feels like a 2.1 at most to me.

A mid-edition remaster that splits the player book in two and distributes the classes differently between them?

This is not 2.5 or 2.1. This is Pathfinder Essentials.

Whoah, there, hold up, partner!!

4Venture Essentials was additional rules and "updates" that were changing the then current edition to be more like 3.5, and was considered "evergreen" as a always printed accessory. (they also had a map and starter adventure)

This Remaster Project is not, it is an errata printing that puts the material in a different format for easier understanding, better presentation and lower buy in cost. (For a single book)

The biggest thing really, essentials signaled a major shift in design direction where the products they created could simply be used alongside classic 4e classes without issue, but they basically stopped designing content in the classic 4e way.

Not only does the remaster not radically change class structure to feel like a different game, we don't have any evidence there's a design shift-- it seems like the products from after will be the same course they've been on in the first handful of years.

So its def less of a shift than essentials.

YuriP wrote:

Getting rid of Vancian casting isn't that hard. It's basically make Flexible Spellcaster as default rules. It's a thing that affects only prepared casters not the entire spellcasting system. It's even compared to the work they will need to do with the removal of alignments.

I'm not so sure that this can't happen once they addressing many complains of the community and Vancian casting is one of the biggest.

If they make Flexible Casting the norm, it would have to be with the Prepared Spells that the Prepared casters would normally get, with spells per day being the new chart. Never understood why it was configured to further hamper the poor ol' man Wizard even further to chose a spell while casting instead of guess work at the beginning of the day.

There's another thing that worries me a bit here if they kept the vancian cast by default.

With the release of PC1, the only re-released spontaneous class will be the Bard. This will force 3 strange situations until PC2 is released:

thaX wrote:

4e Essentials was additional rules and "updates" that were changing the then current edition to be more like 3.5, and was considered "evergreen" as a always printed accessory. (they also had a map and starter adventure)

Yep 4ee was Mearls wanting to fix D&D to be classic unbalance rather than carefull balanced and went back to wizards > fighter. I started with those pocket books and was confused when people kept saying wizards==fighter with same number of powers in 4e! Sure they was "compatible" and I remember Mearls saying you can play the same adventure at the same table. Which was not true as 4e MM1/2 math got changed in MM3 which 4ee used same math so you had to convert the numbers (copy/paste at print store is what I did) combined with if you had a 4e melee and a 4ee melee one of them will be happy and one will be sad. They also said the same thing about D&D Next and D&D 5e, so I do not trust them that D&D 2014&2024 will be "compatible".

But with Paizo already having done whole class erratas as well as changing ABCD rules flaws already and already ditching scores in favor of bonuses in Beginner Box- I trust them when they say they are the same edition and table compatible.

They were compatible, the MM1 and MM2 monsters felt different from MM3 and onward because of those changes in design (combats were slower) but you could absolutely use them and the monsters did just work.

From what I'm seeing is people can use original PF2E characters alongside PF2R characters at the same table without issue.

Right. If there's feature in one of my current games that isn't in the Remaster (say, sorcerers), then the current rules will just continue in force without change.

When does all of the other published content lines move to the new rule set? Society? APs? Cards? All that stuff will need to get updated. Is Rage of Elements the last core book? Is Stolen Fate the last AP?

On new tables, without the old CRB and without access to AoN, spellcasters other than Bard will be forced to play prepared classes.

On new tables, without the old CRB, but with access to AoN, players who want to play with some classes like the sorcerer, in addition to having to do the build built only with AoN (which is not so intuitive to do a build of 0, especially if your queries are made from a reduced screen like a cell phone).

On new tables with both PC1 and CRB the process of consulting and using different classes can easily turn into a tremendous mess and mix of different mechanics.

If someone wants to play a class that hasn’t been reissued yet, is it really that unreasonable to expect them to pick up the book that the existing version is in? No one is being forced to play anything, there are plenty of options out there to choose from.

As for the third scenario, I am not so sure it will be a tremendous mess, it sounds pretty manageable from what we know, but I guess time will tell.

When does all of the other published content lines move to the new rule set? Society? APs? Cards? All that stuff will need to get updated. Is Rage of Elements the last core book? Is Stolen Fate the last AP?

... Whoa there, you seem to be massively overestimating the impact of these changes.

We already know the AP after Stolen Fate, so no, I can promise it's not the last AP. None of the existing content needs to be updated to move to the new rule set; people can deal with old books saying "spell level" instead of "spell rank" or listing alignments. Nothing about the Thaumaturge needs to change to accommodate these changes.

I want to see the newly designed (and better!) character sheet. :-)

Having just bought the current PF 2E core will I still be able to purchase the Bestiaries, Gamematstery guide and Advanced Players guide and other earlier books that came out for PF 2E core?

Or will I need to purchase them all over again?