Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster Project!

Enough pettyness about ability scores/bonuses.

you are distracting the real discussion to be had.

When do we get the first remastered AP. We all know they added ORCs to CPC1 for a reason. We gotta have ORC PCs taking on some evil unholy coastal wizards (but not red ones from thay because copyright)

I believe there's a Whispering Tyrant that needs some neck splitting not that far of Belkzen

That's never going to play well in PF2, and as much as I miss my -2 ability mods? Good riddance.

The thing I don't like about this comment is the implication that a system must be used in a particular way. That because it does a decent job of mechanical balance that it somehow becomes a requirement to seek mechanical balance.

It's the same mistake as dnd 3.x. People get weird ideas of "how it is supposed to be" and become unable or unwilling to go against those ideas even when the books themselves explicitly tell them to.

Did you know that the 3.5 DMG has examples of adjusting classes to individually and uniquely tailor classes to players? One if the examples is a witch class. Of all the dozens of GMs I asked, not a single one let me play that example straight out of the book. Most of them stated that they just weren't comfortable with it. If you think about it for two seconds, they were not comfortable doing what the official rulebook was explicitly saying to do.

Don't fall into the same trap here, of letting some preconceived notions limit your play.

Oh, these aren't preconceived notions. They're very much post-conceived, after having played the game your way for a while and found it to not really be to my liking. ;)

PF2 is designed a particular way that prioritizes balance and rule consistency. That's just how the game works; it's a central conceit. They're unlikely to change that in the Remaster.

Yeahhh, don't assume it's preconceived. I've played (and am still playing some) multiple games with rolled stats (individual per player) in both 5e and PF1e and I've learned through all these games to thoroughly dislike it.

There are plenty of people on here who make a stand that starting with a +3 in your primary stat is a big problem. And most everyone agrees that starting with +2 or lower in your primary stat is enough to make the character not feel fun to play.

So sure, you can add some randomness to your ability score generation. But in PF2 it comes with a steep cost.

It can be fun to play such a character in a one-shot or something like that. But I wouldn't want to play through a 10-level or 20-level AP like that. Certainly not one like Age of Ashes.

Enough pettyness about ability scores/bonuses.

you are distracting the real discussion to be had.

When do we get the first remastered AP. We all know they added ORCs to CPC1 for a reason. We gotta have ORC PCs taking on some evil unholy coastal wizards (but not red ones from thay because copyright)

They’ve said Rage of Elements (an August release) is the first Remaster rulebook, so I would assume either Sky King’s Tomb or Season of Ghosts is the first AP Remaster material.

They’ve said Rage of Elements (an August release) is the first Remaster rulebook, so I would assume either Sky King’s Tomb or Season of Ghosts is the first AP Remaster material.

We have not yet announced when we are going to release "Remastered adventures."

Currently, Sky King's Tomb, Season of Ghosts, and the two unannounced Adventure Paths that follow those are being developed, edited, and written, and that means we're using the current rules to create them. At some point, once the Remastered rules are all complete (including Monster Core and, very likely, Player Core 2), we'll make the decision to adjust the language of the adventures to assume that the Remastered rules are the ones being used, but there is going to be a period of time where our published adventures will be assuming the currently in print as of today rules rather than the Remastered ones.

It's not an ideal solution, but it shouldn't be a huge problem since the Remastered rules are still 2nd Edition, and you'll be able to use them to play a pre-Remastered adventure. Or vice-versa. The TYPES of stories we tell in our adventures won't be changing, in any event.

But I can confirm right now that Sky King's Tomb (the last book of which will be going to the printer pretty soon) and Season of Ghosts (the last book of which I'm scrambling to finish development for before Paizocon) and the AP that comes after Season of Ghosts are not using any of the Remastered rules. It's just not possible to do so.

While we do develop these adventures, we're making some adjustments to the monster choices and bits of "inherited from OGL/SRD" lore bits so that they'll look to a remastered future though. We'll have a bit more to say about all of that during Paizocon, and I'll have an Ask Me Anything room going on Discord at Paizocon and will be happy to chat about all things adventure related there!

This makes complete sense. We know that there's about two years of lead time on a given project, and the Remasters are a very recent development that is in response to a highly unexpected move attempted by a different company (not gonna relitigate it here; safe to assume we're all basically on the same page when it comes to that). I wouldn't expect any ORC compatible adventures or APs until '25 or '26, more likely the latter unless what's already in the pipeline is easily modified. Frankly, I'm quite surprised that Rage of Elements was able to be switched. The fact that it's got so much Paizo exclusive material must have been a godsend.

Personally, I'm a big defender of +3 KAS builds, but specifically because PF2 makes it a very well-balanced tradeoff. You're a bit worse at your main thing, but only a bit, and you gain a tiny bit of powerful versatility. That doesn't mean +3 isn't a significant sacrifice. The sacrifice just has enough good to counter it out.

In a rolls-based system, though, the "sacrifice" is into the ether. You might get nothing for it, and then you're kind of just struggling for the rest of the game. And that's assuming you manage to nab even a 16!

There are plenty of people on here who make a stand that starting with a +3 in your primary stat is a big problem. And most everyone agrees that starting with +2 or lower in your primary stat is enough to make the character not feel fun to play.

So sure, you can add some randomness to your ability score generation. But in PF2 it comes with a steep cost.

It can be fun to play such a character in a one-shot or something like that. But I wouldn't want to play through a 10-level or 20-level AP like that. Certainly not one like Age of Ashes.

But you can have randomness with ability bonus ABCD CRB generation, you do not need ability scores to do that.

Roll a random Ancestry with random free, Roll a random Background with random free and random choice. If you are feeling frisky and want to have a character funnel Roll a random Class and random Detailed bonuses. It is very likely to be more MAD than SAD. But if you want it very likely to be the +3/+4 prime then pick a Class then pick you bonus Details

All random, all crazy roleplay possibility no min/maxing - but perfectly balanced within the ABCD point buy rules. You can play PFS like this every night and they will be wondering where your creative character stable comes from

Well, sure, but that's not what anyone's talking about here, is it? That has nothing to do with the Remaster.

Well, sure, but that's not what anyone's talking about here, is it? That has nothing to do with the Remaster.

it goes to the argument that you need 3d6 straight or 4d6 place freely to have a random char thus we need ability scores to preserve the random roll alternate rule. Just make a new alternate rule that says you can randomize ABCD and free.

Oh, that's true, I guess!

The idea did cross my mind to create a 'random character generator' for PF2e with options to randomise exactly what krazmuze is suggesting as a coding exercise. And because my friend decided to do that to randomise his character and obviously as a programmer I'd rather spend 10 hours to create a thing from scratch than just do it manually.

Personally, I'm a big defender of +3 KAS builds, but specifically because PF2 makes it a very well-balanced tradeoff. You're a bit worse at your main thing, but only a bit, and you gain a tiny bit of powerful versatility. That doesn't mean +3 isn't a significant sacrifice. The sacrifice just has enough good to counter it out.

Half disagree. I do think people way overestimate how bad +3 KAS builds are (feels like some posts act like they're borderline unplayable) but I don't really think it's necessarily a good trade. Trading +1 at your main gimmick for +1 to a secondary thing definitely is a bit of a loss.

... That's one thing I did prefer about PF1 stat generation. Scaling point buy meant chopping a +1 modifier off your top stat gave you enough extra points to get a couple +1s in your lower stats. 18/10/10 and 16/14/12 across three stats had the same cost in PF1. Made making that trade off feel a lot more compelling and dilettante characters better as a result.

I guess we'll agree to disagree! I see where you're coming from, but I think +3 KAS builds get a lot of bang for their buck in more indirect ways. Versatility is good! They're also objectively just good for levels 5-9, where you basically just get a net +1 to a secondary stat for free. Sure, that's only five levels (levels 1-4, 10-14 and 20 are the standard tradeoff, while 15-19 are a wash), but they're very commonly played levels and arguably represent the point where your archetypes, which may privilege secondary stats more, first start really paying off.

There are plenty of people on here who make a stand that starting with a +3 in your primary stat is a big problem. And most everyone agrees that starting with +2 or lower in your primary stat is enough to make the character not feel fun to play.

So sure, you can add some randomness to your ability score generation. But in PF2 it comes with a steep cost.

It can be fun to play such a character in a one-shot or something like that. But I wouldn't want to play through a 10-level or 20-level AP like that. Certainly not one like Age of Ashes.

This stem's entirely from the whole "every encounter is approximately the party level" nonsense that became popular for some odd reason.

nonsense that became popular for some odd reason.

That nonsense reason being that encounters more than +/- 2 from party level become unplayable.

So yeah. There is that.

GM DarkLightHitomi wrote:

nonsense that became popular for some odd reason.

That nonsense reason being that encounters more than +/- 2 from party level become unplayable.

So yeah. There is that.

If you don't TPK and do a hard reboot on the story every game session, are you even really playing the game?

Party level +4 encounters aren't combat encounters. If the GM presents them like combat encounters, the party dies. So, yeah. We can talk about "realism" all we want, but at the end of the day, we're telling a story. Good narratives pick and choose where they want the stakes to rise and where they want them to fall.

The idea did cross my mind to create a 'random character generator' for PF2e with options to randomise exactly what krazmuze is suggesting as a coding exercise. And because my friend decided to do that to randomise his character and obviously as a programmer I'd rather spend 10 hours to create a thing from scratch than just do it manually.

I do roll tables in Foundry VTT (used to have them in Fantasy Grounds that did that). Problem is keeping it up to date is painful across PF2e updates and Foundry updates. My macro coding skills are not good enough which is probably the better way to do it.

There are also spreadsheets and websites around that do it none of them do my half random AB pick CD method though just ignore C and D. ABCD character funnels are fun...once.

There is also roll for book then roll the table of contents method but like you said that is just too easy.

Half disagree. I do think people way overestimate how bad +3 KAS builds are (feels like some posts act like they're borderline unplayable) but I don't really think it's necessarily a good trade. Trading +1 at your main gimmick for +1 to a secondary thing definitely is a bit of a loss.

Note it is better when that secondary thing at +1 can get your team a +2 (de)buff to take down the boss to your level, it just requires keeping score based on your team and not your DPR. teamwork makes the dreamwork

That's an overstatement: I, for instance, knew what he meant as I read manhwa/manga/manhua/light novels/web novels.

I read a lot of manga/manwha and saw a metric ton of anime and it's the first time in my life I heard of the term. Also, it sounds terrible and something to do with gardening, which, for me, is one of the most uncool things around. So, please, stay with either Monk or Martial Artist (the latter of which I actually vastly prefer, given how the 2E monk ain't shackled with the alignment thing anymore).

Oh, by the way, I'm finally on board with the 2E train. At least I'm buying the books now, I still got about 2 to 4 years of 1E material to go through (Return of the Runelords, War for the Crown, a second run of Hell's Rebels with another group, also I get to be an actual player in Iron Gods, Ironfang Invasion and Strange Aeons, to which I look greatly forward after a decade of almost exclusively GM'ing) which I will not just drop. But I've started suscriptions for the rule books and adventure path line again and have bought back volumes for Gatewalkers and Stolen Fate, as well as getting Treasure Vault as the first hardcover.

Any recommendations if there are already published hardcover rulebooks which would be good to also have with the new "core" books? I kinda fear that all the already published classes will just come out again in "Player Core 3" or "Player Core 4" in three or four years.

breithauptclan wrote:

GM DarkLightHitomi wrote:

nonsense that became popular for some odd reason.

That nonsense reason being that encounters more than +/- 2 from party level become unplayable.

So yeah. There is that.

If you don't TPK and do a hard reboot on the story every game session, are you even really playing the game?

"They wanted me to run PF2E. I wanted to chill and play Infinity Blade. So I asked myself ... why not both?"

Paizo stated that material from rulebooks beyond APG (Guns and Gears, Secrets of Magic etc.) won't be "remastered" and these books will be fine as they are now (probably with some minor errata to account for alignment changes etc.).

I read a lot of manga/manwha and saw a metric ton of anime and it's the first time in my life I heard of the term.

You can literally type in cultivator manhwa/manga/manhua in your favorite search engine and get multiple entries like "Top 50 Cultivation manga/manhua/manhwa/webtoon" and "11 Best Cultivation Manhua, Manga & Manhwa To Read In 2023". I can only assume that you have opted to only read a narrow set of genres as it's quite common genre for Korean and Chinese comics that focus on martial arts [gain qi, martial arts abilities, supernatural powers, and quest for immortality].

*shrug* Not that any of that matters as I was refuting the statement "that no one knows what the heck a "cultivator" even is": even if I was the only one that recognized the term, that is enough to make the statement false. Plus I already agreed it wouldn't be the best term to use, so...

Party level +4 encounters aren't combat encounters. If the GM presents them like combat encounters, the party dies. So, yeah. We can talk about "realism" all we want, but at the end of the day, we're telling a story. Good narratives pick and choose where they want the stakes to rise and where they want them to fall.

Truthfully, combat encounters that are just combat encounters should be somewhere between rare and nonexistent. Encounters should near always be doing double duty. That's one of the hardest parts of encounter design in my opinion.

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Party level +4 encounters aren't combat encounters. If the GM presents them like combat encounters, the party dies. So, yeah. We can talk about "realism" all we want, but at the end of the day, we're telling a story. Good narratives pick and choose where they want the stakes to rise and where they want them to fall.

Truthfully, combat encounters that are just combat encounters should be somewhere between rare and nonexistent

Mind to explain a little more?

GM DarkLightHitomi wrote:

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Party level +4 encounters aren't combat encounters. If the GM presents them like combat encounters, the party dies. So, yeah. We can talk about "realism" all we want, but at the end of the day, we're telling a story. Good narratives pick and choose where they want the stakes to rise and where they want them to fall.

Truthfully, combat encounters that are just combat encounters should be somewhere between rare and nonexistent

Mind to explain a little more?

Far better than me, watch this video,

Especially at time 12:20, which is where he starts talking about action scenes in particular. He is talking movies but it's all applicable to running an rpg.

That said, the whole thing is well worth watching for any prospective GM, or storytellers of any kind, and a major theme he talks about throughout is how scenes do more than one thing at a time.

Of course, our difficulty in extrapolating fine details of complex game systems stems from our inexperience, lacking those thousands of hours of play across countless systems.

Kind of explains a lot, actually.

Paizo stated that material from rulebooks beyond APG (Guns and Gears, Secrets of Magic etc.) won't be "remastered" and these books will be fine as they are now (probably with some minor errata to account for alignment changes etc.).

Alright, then. Any recommendations what is particularly good? I kinda dig Secrets of Magic, but I also think waiting for the 2nd printing would probably not be a bad idea, given the normal amount of errata one can expect from Paizo will probably make the hardcopy of the first printing obsolete.

Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:

Paizo stated that material from rulebooks beyond APG (Guns and Gears, Secrets of Magic etc.) won't be "remastered" and these books will be fine as they are now (probably with some minor errata to account for alignment changes etc.).

Alright, then. Any recommendations what is particularly good? I kinda dig Secrets of Magic, but I also think waiting for the 2nd printing would probably not be a bad idea, given the normal amount of errata one can expect from Paizo will probably make the hardcopy of the first printing obsolete.

That's pretty much down to what's your jam. I love Guns and Gears because Inventor is a really fun stab at "character with mech gizmos" concept that has eluded D&D and its offshoots for quite some time, but I also appreciate how Thaumaturge (from Dark Archive) is one of smarter designed classes that I've seen in some time. I'm a bit neutral on Secrets of Magic, but that's just because the concepts of Magus and Summoner don't rock my boat as hard as "weird" classes do. Then again some SoM spells are just ballers in terms of effects or names (Summon Kaiju, Canticle of Everlasting Grief, Horizon Thunder Sphere etc.)

Magnuskn here is a great example of how some things about how a game works you discover only after quite some time of playing it :)

Aw, come on. I've been mostly GM'ing 3.X/Pathfinder for more than 20 years now, I am pretty versed in that system. And, yeah, only now after all that time, when my players are discovering that teamwork feats are really good (and I am discovering that there are few mechanical ways to counter a "two two-weapon fighting kukri high-crit characters with lots of DEX and combat reflexes play crit ping-pong with Outflank"), I have gotten to the point where I am finally done enough with the system to want something more balanced, magic nerfs included.

magnuskn wrote:

Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:

Paizo stated that material from rulebooks beyond APG (Guns and Gears, Secrets of Magic etc.) won't be "remastered" and these books will be fine as they are now (probably with some minor errata to account for alignment changes etc.).

Alright, then. Any recommendations what is particularly good? I kinda dig Secrets of Magic, but I also think waiting for the 2nd printing would probably not be a bad idea, given the normal amount of errata one can expect from Paizo will probably make the hardcopy of the first printing obsolete.

That's pretty much down to what's your jam. I love Guns and Gears because Inventor is a really fun stab at "character with mech gizmos" concept that has eluded D&D and its offshoots for quite some time, but I also appreciate how Thaumaturge (from Dark Archive) is one of smarter designed classes that I've seen in some time. I'm a bit neutral on Secrets of Magic, but that's just because the concepts of Magus and Summoner don't rock my boat as hard as "weird" classes do. Then again some SoM spells are just ballers in terms of effects or names (Summon Kaiju, Canticle of Everlasting Grief, Horizon Thunder Sphere etc.)

Alright, I think I'll get Dark Archive then, too. I'm not that interested in the Gunslinger and the Inventor in fantasy games, hence I'll hold off of them for a while at least. Gah, I probably need to get the Bestiarys as well and the Gamemastery Guide. There go another 200 - 300 Euros...

Thanks for the help!

At least you were lucky not to have gotten to the point of Shatter Defenses/sneak attack/fear spam build characters forcing you to run exclusively fear-immue things against the party - I've been there, and it's ugh. Again, something you only discover as you play.

At least you were lucky not to have gotten to the point of Shatter Defenses/sneak attack/fear spam build characters forcing you to run exclusively fear-immue things against the party - I've been there, and it's ugh. Again, something you only discover as you play.

Yeah, ugh. I can imagine, including the frustration on part of the player when his build doesn't work, due to the fear immune opponents. No fun for anybody.

I expect things will still get pretty crazy the next years, but I at least I can be happy that I am the only guy who actually reads guides or the forums and my players, in all three groups, accidentally stumble into the powerful stuff. ^^