Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster Project!

Electric arc could use a little nerf, I think.

Nah. Bring the other cantrips up to the level of Electric Arc. Start by making them provide debuffs on a regular hit and/or make them basic saves instead of attacks.

Interestingly, I think the removal of alignment as a personality type will actually move it closer to Moorcock's original material from which Gygax was obviously inspired.

In Moorcock's universe Law and Chaos were cosmic factions with whom individuals would align themselves. Hence, alignment. On some worlds, the Lords of Law would be worshipped as gods while on others tyrants, and the same for the Chaos Lords. While they were beyond good and evil, their champions would commit acts in service to them that could be viewed as such depending on your point of view.

I've always felt ambivalent about the Myers-Briggs-ian thing alignment morphed into over the editions. It made for fun arguments online, but at the table it felt subjective and arbitrary.

Personally, I think alignment works better as an affiliation than a personality type, so I am fine with the changes being made.

My general feeling is (with the possible exception of the Alignment changes and those ripple through effects), if we had seen most/all of these changes over the course of a couple years of regular errata it would have been seen as extremely positive developments and not a major change in the landscape. Which is why I generally trust the "forward/backward" compatibility claims and view this as a 2.0.5 style update rather than a 2.5 style edition.

But to be fair, the timing kinda sucks...especially for the people who moved to PF2 recently because of WotC's shenanigans. Reacting with hostility and/or sarcasm to these people -- who are (imo reasonably) upset that the game that they just bought into is already changing -- is the opposite of productive.

Thank you, that is my main point.

I get it, WotC kinda forced their hand. But for those on budgets that just got into PF2e, this stings.

I know they will have a free changes document, but in the meantime, there are just no dead tree copies out there for people looking to get started.

"Just use PDF or AoN!" I already can hear frothy fanboys saying. Yeah, I can, I work in IT, I get all this stuff. But this area is a rural area.

First, yes. Those are options.

Also, the Hardcover CRB is currently available (though I do notice that the pocket edition is not). I expect that sales of the CRB will be a bit lower than normal for the next several months ;P so you should have plenty of time to get that if you want all of those classes in one book.

And as a final option, the Player Core book will still have several classes available to choose from and play with all by itself. Player 2 Core book is not absolutely required.

bugleyman wrote:

But to be fair, the timing kinda sucks...especially for the people who moved to PF2 recently because of WotC's shenanigans. Reacting with hostility and/or sarcasm to these people -- who are (imo reasonably) upset that the game that they just bought into is already changing -- is the opposite of productive.

Thank you, that is my main point.

I get it, WotC kinda forced their hand. But for those on budgets that just got into PF2e, this stings.

I know they will have a free changes document, but in the meantime, there are just no dead tree copies out there for people looking to get started.

I don't think the older print edition will ever be unusable, though; you mentioned they'll have a changes document. I'm sure people on Reddit etc will be tabulating and sharing conversion guides as well. There will be tons of official and unofficial resources to keep you going.

Also, it's still 7+ months away. Continue to enjoy PF in the meantime.

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.

I do not know how long a book takes fron start to finish but this seems pretty well developed project to have begun post Janauary.

I do not kbow how long a book takes fron start to finish but this seems pretty well developed project to have begun post Janauary.

I expect that most of the errata was in the works before January. Things like the Witch rework and the Spell Rank name change.

Post-January was only things like removing alignment and creating new dragon types. And probably shuffling around which classes and items come from which book.

I think that since a lot of it is simply restructuring rules that already exist, and implementing eratta that they were potentially working on already cuts down on the size of the project.

I suspect the change I'm going to have the hardest time with is saying "spell rank" instead of "spell level."

I believe they’ve said some deities only want followers who commit to being Holy or Unholy, depending on their own desires. One imagines Asmodeus only has Unholy folks on his team.

Honestly this sounds way more interesting to me than how alignment was previously done, turning it into more of a divine philosophy your character can side with rather than a simplified version of good and evil that everyone has to conform to opens up a lot of fun options. It's also very reminiscent of Planescape, which feels a little ironic but doesn't make it any less cool.

Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti wrote:

I do not kbow how long a book takes fron start to finish but this seems pretty well developed project to have begun post Janauary.

I expect that most of the errata was in the works before January. Things like the Witch rework and the Spell Rank name change.

Post-January was only things like removing alignment and creating new dragon types. And probably shuffling around which classes and items come from which book.

And, of course, that they would have to do books. But yes, I think there will be very few things changed in a substantial way. The changes to alignment are likely to just formalize a rule variant that was already published. Other changes look like they would have quality-of-life errata publications that might have been codified through further printings.

I do not kbow how long a book takes fron start to finish but this seems pretty well developed project to have begun post Janauary.

And that's a testament to the incredibly hard work of everyone at Paizo (special callouts to the Rules & Lore team, Edit, and our friends on the Starfinder side who helped grind these pages out.) Also the thing we've been saying all along: this isn't a new edition and there's significantly more content that we didn't change, beyond tweaking its presentation and reorganizing it to be more approachable, than content we did.

Here's hoping that the action tax abilities commonly seen among the (now) non-core classes aren't brought over into the core classes in the new books!

So the remaining classes, not included in the 2 core player books will also have to be updated, save the Elemental class coming out in July? How will faction archetype classes work? I understand same system but there are some alignment requirements (Knights of Last Wall) to consider.

Here's hoping that the action tax abilities commonly seen among the (now) non-core classes aren't brought over into the core classes in the new books!

Yes. Very important for new players to experience the pain of building a character that has nothing better to do with their actions than Strike 3 times.

Ed Reppert wrote:

Rhapsodic College Dropout wrote:

My players didn't take the news too well haha! After begging my group to switch to PF2e for years, they finally did when the OGL debacle hit and now they feel like they've been bait and switched after buying a book that is being phased out and pdfs that won't be updated after already purchasing them.

Welp, time to do a full court press on switching them to Savage Worlds.

Nah. Go Harnmaster, but wait until later this year when the new editions of the GameMaster's Guide and Player's Guide are out. :-)

Wait, are you saying there are new Harnmaster books coming out?

kelestia games is working on a new version of harnmaster gold.

So the remaining classes, not included in the 2 core player books will also have to be updated, save the Elemental class coming out in July? How will faction archetype classes work? I understand same system but there are some alignment requirements (Knights of Last Wall) to consider.

That is what the normal errata cycle is for. They just won't be discontinuing and replacing the entire book for each of those cases.

FallenDabus wrote:

If it helps, think of it this way. Which is more evocative in plain English?

“A devil is a symbol of lawful evil”

-or-

“A devil is a symbol of tyranny”

I know d20 gamers are used to the former, but the latter is actually far more powerful as well as being far more specific. The setting still means the same things, it still works the same way, but now it has a chance to jettison terms it inherited from another game that barely make sense anymore and are loaded with some very uncomfortable implications.

On one hand being more evocative is usually, but not always, a good thing. However, Lawful Evil is not equal to tyranny nor is tyranny exclusive to lawful evil.

I never said it did or is. I said that devils symbolize tyranny. Which they do.

Masters of corruption and architects of conquest, devils seek both to tempt mortal life to join in their pursuit of all things profane and to spread tyranny throughout all worlds.

If I had to add a bit more to that description, I'd also say they represent the corruptive and tempting influence of weilding power, but I wanted to keep it punch.

That does however bring up a great point as to why this is good. Devils, Rakshasas, and Velstracs all share the lawful evil alignment, but clearly symbolize very different aspects of that behaviour.

Devils symbolize tyranny and corruption
Rakshakas symbolize the violation of taboos
Veltreces symbolize the methodical search for perfection and detachment from mortality.

If things get set up right, using anathemas and edicts could be a very powerful way to communicate that quickly rather than just saying "they are LE." I welcome this. If done correctly, its going to be a major improvement.

Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti wrote:

I do not kbow how long a book takes fron start to finish but this seems pretty well developed project to have begun post Janauary.

And that's a testament to the incredibly hard work of everyone at Paizo (special callouts to the Rules & Lore team, Edit, and our friends on the Starfinder side who helped grind these pages out.) Also the thing we've been saying all along: this isn't a new edition and there's significantly more content that we didn't change, beyond tweaking its presentation and reorganizing it to be more approachable, than content we did.

I do appreciate their work. if only the Aroden module would come out now :)

If I am being honest, I was very upset a few years ago the announcement was made that there would be no more PF1E being made. I was very close to not giving PF2E a chance. Not one bit. No. Nada. Non. Not even a little. But then I got the Core book and started reading and playing, and IMHO it is the best and more comprehensive system out there and the options it gives to players is magnifico.

I think that the same will hold with the Remastering. (Though the name reminds me of the late night CD sales where all the original hits were remastered :) )

If, Player Core 2 doesn't explictly affirm that pink kobolds(from kobolds of golarion) are still canon than what is even the point of all this.

(To be clear this is a joke. We are excited for the changes. Although as a kobold myself i like kobolds and I like pink)

I don't really have access to the streams or anything atm, so can someone tell me if looking at some of the more underpowered feats will be part of this? Beyond the class revisions, anyway.

Aaron Shanks wrote:

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.

I do not know how long a book takes fron start to finish but this seems pretty well developed project to have begun post Janauary.

RPG books I have worked on (again, not Paizo) have had a development cycle of about two years. COVID may have played havoc with that, but yes, this is extremely well developed for such a short timeframe.

Ravingdork wrote:

Here's hoping that the action tax abilities commonly seen among the (now) non-core classes aren't brought over into the core classes in the new books!

Yes. Very important for new players to experience the pain of building a character that has nothing better to do with their actions than Strike 3 times.

If you have to waste actions just to make your main schtick work while other classes get similar outcomes without being forced to spend their actions, there's a bit of a balance concern there. Mandatory actions to use your core abilities doesn't increase versatility and options. It limits them.

Fighters, monks, rogues, most casters, etc. can just do their thing. But a swashbuckler needs to waste actions to get panache. A gunslinger needs to reload. Rangers and thaumaturges need to declare specific targets. Some classes, like the inventor, swashbuckler, and thaumaturge actually require time wasting checks in addition, making it so their abilities aren't assured even when they DO spend their mandatory action tax.

If this gets improved in some way in the coming material, I will be very thrilled.

However, if that action tax design philosophy is added to the tweaked classes, then I think this will be more of a downgrade rather than an upgrade.

I bring it up here only to caution the developers against doing exactly that.

I don't really have access to the streams or anything atm, so can someone tell me if looking at some of the more underpowered feats will be part of this? Beyond the class revisions, anyway.

It's unclear. However, despite folks saying X is getting rebalanced, it isn't clear that any class beyond the witch is going to be receiving quality of life adjustments. Sorcerer and Barbarian are getting revised because dragons are changing, so I would expect only those sub-classes of those two classes will be affected. Alchemist may be affected by changes to magic items which will be showcased in the GameMaster Core (and hence is why the alchemist appears in PC2). Oracle was mentioned, but I would bet the only thing specifically addressed is going to be the Ancestor sub-class.

Re: feats, I'm dubious that these will be rebalanced at all. They were not specifically mentioned. With the exception of the witch, almost everything affecting classes is going to be related to specific things that have changed because of the move from OGL to ORC, like the case with dragons.

Anything that would normally be part of errata is eligible to be changed, plus a little more, so possibly here and there. But nothing beyond the certain class revisions has been confirmed.

(For my own pet concern, I do hope Investigator in combat will get a good look despite not being mentioned as one of those classes! It's often harder to use and weaker than Rogue for pretty thin and GM-dependent exploration benefits, the fundamental tools to play it best (non-Strike backup attacks like cantrips) aren't in it at all, and there's very little to make melee with it worthwhile. Swashbuckler could also use a little love as restrictions and power goes — APG classes in general seemed to lack time to bake.)

It's unclear. However, despite folks saying X is getting rebalanced, it isn't clear that any class beyond the witch is going to be receiving quality of life adjustments.

Alchemist was specifically described as continuing to be revised, and Champion as needing adjustments for the removal of alignment. Reasonable to assume they meant similar big looks for Oracle: though I personally find it mostly fine at a core level, there's certainly imbalance between the power of Mysteries, Divine Access as a feat has proven weirdly centralizing and complicated, and it's annoying that overloading a curse is boring and heavily restricts your use of points. (Unless, again, you take things the class doesn't provide, then it's not an issue.)

bugleyman wrote:

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.

With WotC hiring Pinkertons to retrieve MTG cards, I’m not sure we can call that a straw man anymore…

On the other hand, I would like to remind everyone complaining about having already purchased the books that this means they can play the game now rather than waiting until November or later.

I am concerned that this announcement will stifle sales of the current material, even things like the Lost Omens books that are not getting any changes. I wouldn’t want to wait six months but I suppose it might be worth it to others.

I am somewhat concerned that Paizo might be giving up a bit more than they should with respect to removing the OGL. I do hope they don’t remove things like Pegasus or the Elven Cloaks. They need to do their own game stats for such things but most of that was already done in the 2e conversion. A lot of the D&D material comes from lore that predates the game.

Pegasus and many of the monsters come from real world myth's so they won't go away. Maybe a few tweaks and some of the ones who's names are IP's they have already said they will be replacing them with similar monsters that fill a similar role.

Things like Elven cloak might get renamed maybe, to shadow cloak and it helps you hide(assuming they still do that in PF2e didn't look).

For better or worse, removal of alignment is some major surgery. And this seems like a bad time to do it, since it will be cutting down on alignment flame threads just when the forums seem to be running short on threads . . . .

If the forums rely on a topic so rife with toxicity and angst that it can't be touched on without the moderators needing to go in and clean up the mess, then it could be argued they were already dead. Hopefully people's excitement about the remaster will provide new topics full of less grar to occupy the forums.

demlin wrote:

I mean if you play without magic items, I guess? Similarly, not super happy about moving some items to the GM Core book, that way you can't simply tell your players to reference the item in their CRBs anymore.

Archives of Nethys says hello.

Why bring up Nethys? We're talking about books. If the books aren't usable at the table, there's no point in buying them.

Alignment removal excites me. Not because of the hurdles for aligned damage or aligned planes.

But for the role play aspect.

Mona talked about how players would be consumed with the idea of needing an alignment on an NPC to properly role play them, but the solution he said in a blip was so simplistic that I am surprised I hadn't home brewed it before.

Personality traits/motivations.

Greedy/Altruistic, Resourceful, Paranoid.

These are actual traits that will help me role play an NPC's motivations much better than 'Lawful Evil' Because Lawful Evil can mean so many things but typically gets widdled down to the same dialogue over and over when done ad hoc.

So, I trust Paizo with their world building and I am excited to see how these things unfold in the upcoming books

I do not have strong feeling about the alignment thing, or ability score being ditched in favour of just modifiers. I strongly approve of spell ranks (that being the term that I use in my perennially-unfinished homebrew system).

As to whether this is a new edition, that very much depends. It will take discipline to not make it a 2.5, but I have rather more faith in Paizo's willingness/ability to keep their promises than WotC's (not that that's a high bar).

One thing I really hope for is that they put DCs (or whatever DCs are renamed to) in the skills descriptions, and other places they are needed. If I never have to read "the GM will set the DC" again it will be too soon!

Rysky wrote:

demlin wrote:

I mean if you play without magic items, I guess? Similarly, not super happy about moving some items to the GM Core book, that way you can't simply tell your players to reference the item in their CRBs anymore.

Archives of Nethys says hello.

Why bring up Nethys? We're talking about books. If the books aren't usable at the table, there's no point in buying them.

So, I get that. And you aren't wrong, but it is moving the goal post.

Not every magic item is in the CRB anyways and having Archives of Nethys is a great boon when looking things up.

The person running the game should have the GM Core book, if not also a Player Core, on hand and if the player has the Player Core book on hand then between the two of you the references are there. Just because the book says GM Core doesn't mean it should be kept out of the players hands.

This feels like a true non issue here.

I wonder if NPCs get traits related to their personality, if the champions litany ability's will trigger off those traits. Like right now its hard to tell what other than a wrath demon counts as a "particularly wrathful creature" for the purposes of litany against wrath, but if it triggered off characters with the wrathful tag, the confusion would go away.

Just some quick maths on page count and price:

Original 4 books, 1528 pages for $210. Remasters, 1496 pages for $240. That works out at a 17% increase. (happy for someone to check my calculations)

Considering that the original books didn't have any repeated (literally) text, I am guessing that that means less content, smaller fonts, tighter layout, less art, etc. Or maybe that is just the OGL stuff removed :)

I completely get the need to move away from OGL and onto ORC, and while doing that, why not change some things that were poorly received, but I also agree with others that are suggesting some kind of discount (even if only on the PDF) for those that already had core books. Everyone knows that FOMO exists and so some (many?) people will feel obliged to buy these because they will feel that game has moved on and this is how they keep up.

I also get the backwards compatibility, but if this is marketed as being an improvement, surely the expectation is that people will want the 'better' version. Paizo keep saying that your existing books are still fine, so why the remasters? Surely they don't really want people who have the existing books to not buy these new books. But I don't know how many core rulebooks are replaced by people over time - I only ever had 1 copy of the each of the PF1 hardbacks (and SF hardbacks) and didn't expect to replace my PF2 hardbacks.

And finaly it was little disheartening to hear that this was in the works but they didn't announce it until after the whole new stock of Core Rulebooks appeared and 'everyone' rushed to buy one after not being able to get their hands on one when the stock sold out after the OGL debacle. But I guess, the wait to July 2024 for all the core rules to be remastered is a long time to wait without anything (I am sure that I will buy these, but probably wait until all 4 books are out and then 'switch' to remastered).

(And one last thing, I wonder how much of the existing 'non-core' and Lost Omen books end up needing errata to account for the 'minor' changes, and how quick we will get that.)

Yoshua wrote:

Not every magic item is in the CRB anyways and having Archives of Nethys is a great boon when looking things up.

You forget that a not insignificant part of the community are proud luddites for whom the products of the printing press are the most advanced form of technology they are willing to accept for their game...

See, now. I don't forget. However, as a background in tech I know that the best way to lead a user to a solution isn't to point out that they lack vision.

Food for thought for people who want to gainfully contribute to the conversation.

Maybe it's time for a more nuanced and objective alignment system that defines Outlook and Behavior rather than some nebulous concept of law and chaos/good and evil.

This is basically what I do, but I think this description actually fits the original dnd 3 alignment, but it was just described poorly.

That said, law vs chaos actually does make sense. In real world p, there are five topics of morality, Issues of harm and fairness can together be called Justice, and issues of authority, ingroup vs outgroup, and "purity" (for lack of better term) can be called Order. Liberals tend to believe in Justice but they usually see Order as amoral and don't care and thus are usually less orderly. Conservatives see both Justice and Order as moral and tend to be concerned with orderly conduct and proper ways behaving. So law vs chaos is actually quite apt for real world description of moral values.

I suspect the change I'm going to have the hardest time with is saying "spell rank" instead of "spell level."

I've been using the term Spell Tier since 2E released.

It sounds more mystical to me than level or rank.

SebsVesk wrote:

God I hope not, I still don't get why people enjoy ABP so much when it basically makes playing an alchemist more boring than it usually is.

Because a high-level warrior should not need a sword worth more than a castle to be effective in combat. When Conan has been captured and grabs a sword off a guard, he's just as lethal with that sword as he is with any other weapon. "What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?"

Interestingly, this is an incorrect view of the mechanics, at least since 3e. By dnd 3 and pf1 mechanics, Conan was at most a lvl 5 barbarian. if you reexamine your example with this in mind, the need for ABP goes away.

I'll grant that I'm not fully familiar with how it got translated into pf2, but given how ubiquitous the misunderstanding of this is and was, it wouldn't surprise me if pf2 incorporated the misunderstanding into it's mechanics.

Yoshua wrote:

Not every magic item is in the CRB anyways and having Archives of Nethys is a great boon when looking things up.

You forget that a not insignificant part of the community are proud luddites for whom the products of the printing press are the most advanced form of technology they are willing to accept for their game...

Some types of people just have to find something to complain about.

That this is the best that they can come up with is a good indication.

-----

@TrickyUK

Paizo keep saying that your existing books are still fine, so why the remasters?

The layout and organization is better.

The rules are the same - with the addition of a normal errata cycle application.

Surely they don't really want people who have the existing books to not buy these new books.

It seems to me that this is indeed the intent.

And finaly it was little disheartening to hear that this was in the works but they didn't announce it until after...

It is a bad idea to announce a project in the works until you are certain that you can actually complete the project successfully. Announcing a project always has an impact on your existing product. Taking that hit to the existing product and then having the new project fail is disastrous from a business perspective. Let's not insist that Paizo risk bankruptcy just for a tenuous sense of fair play based on being able to accurately predict the future.

Just my thoughts. Like, this all sounds exciting, but not sure Paizo has fully thought out the timing, budgets and logistics of people looking to convert now in the wake of WotC both screwing with the OGL and sending a PMC after a gamer...

You have no idea how much we've wrestled with the timing, and how to balance an influx of interest in the game with the needs of transitioning the game away from the OGL and to the ORC.

Once it became clear in early January that we had to do something to protect ourselves and our game from potential legal entanglements down the line, we needed to figure out how quickly we had to pull the OGL ejector seat. Why would that mean for all our projects that were in process at that time? What was a reasonable timeline to expect the ORC license (which we hadn't even announced yet) to be ready to use? How would the ORC interact with the OGL? Why can't we sleep at night anymore?

We'd already been talking about doing a revised presentation of the core rules to make the game more easily accessible to new players, who might be overwhelmed or turned off by a 600-page entry point. This was something we had tentatively planned for a few years down the road, but it was likely to come around at some point regardless of industry shakeups. When it became clear that we'd need to excise elements from the game that were arguably derived from the 3.5 SRD (which, I note, has not yet been added to Creative Commons, as was promised) in the process of converting the game's underlying license from the OGL to the ORC, this re-presentation was moved up in the production schedule, so that it could both present the game in the most accessible way possible, but also set a new ORC baseline for the game going forward.

It was incredibly frustrating to see the incredible influx of interest, and associated sales, that followed our announcement of the ORC project with Azora Law. On one hand, we recognized that more people checking out Pathfinder meant more people who'd recognize the system's many great qualities and stick around longterm. On the other, we knew that all the people buying out our year's supply of Core Rulebooks might feel that the coming Remaster Project was a bit of a bait and switch, but we couldn't really tell people not to try out the game. That spike of interest in late January was very short-lived, as spikes are tend to be, and had we not been able to capitalize on it when it happened, we'd not have had the resources to produce these remastered books on such a short turnaround.

So, just because the situation wasn't (and isn't) ideal, it doesn't mean there weren't many very tough decisions that had to be made on very tight schedules all while the overall TTRPG publishing landscape was changing around us seemingly by the day.

At the end of the day, if someone's budget or mental bandwidth can't handle the remaster now, it's not something players or GMs have to engage with. If someone new to the game continues playing and decides in 2 years that they want to check out the remaster then, maybe to run a new AP that catches their interest, or to better utilize a new class or thematic subsystem, they can engage then. But in the meantime, and beyond, the classes, ancestries, feats, spells, magic items, monsters, and everything in between that exists in the corpus of Pathfinder second edition will continue to work with both extant and upcoming material. Some of the terms might change, or GMs might find that monster alignment isn't presented on the SRD-derived 9-point good/evil/law/chaos axis, but players' and GMs' investments in the game aren't going to suddenly be rendered obsolete.

If we're doing our jobs correctly (and I must say, having seen behind the curtain, it seems we are) then this will be as seamless a transition for Pathfinder players as possible, while both addressing some longstanding organizational and quality-of-life aspects of the game and freeing us up to publish material indefinitely regardless of the actions of other companies and their executives/shareholders. Like the proverbial swan paddling furiously under the water, we are working behind the scenes to make this as graceful a transition as possible, but it's also in the community and the game's best interest for that paddling to happen off-screen so that you and other players can focus on the game, and not the inner workings of our publishing operation or the legal intricacies of using Open Gaming Material in a post OGL world.

Aaron Shanks wrote:

You have celebrations and questions? Join Jason Bulmahn, our Director of Game Design, on Twitch today at 1 PM Pacific. Then Erik Mona, our Publisher and Chief Creative Officer will be interviewed on Roll for Combat’s YouTube channel at 2 PM Pacific: https://www.youtube.com/@RollForCombat.

Edit: These cover are not final. Stay tuned!

I know this wasn't intentional (and might have been in the works before OGHell spawned the ORC) but the timing could not be worse for my public table.

We have one copy of the Core Rulebook and Bestiary (mine). The other GM and I sold them on the idea of PF2e _because_ it was cheaper buy in for full rules than D&D (2 books, at $60 + $50 for $110+ tax vs D&D 3 books at $50 each for $150) with more options put into those books. Even cheaper, we noted, if you went Pocket Edition!

Yeah, they could not find any books now, but we had my set at least. Enough to go on while they waited for books to come back in stock.

We helped them make characters, we demoed the game, they liked it. We got them set up with some setting details in their characters, were planning to move forward, a couple were planning on buying Core Rulebooks.

Now, the player cost to entry has doubled, because 3 of the players classes are in a 2nd book now (Barbarian, Alchemist, Champion), that doesn't have all the core rules alone, so they have to buy 2 books at $120. Their cost doubled!

The other GM was also planning on buying books. So, his cost has gone from $110 to $240. I can afford this thanks to a good job, but the rest of this public table is poor college kids or even high school kids. They are NOT flush with cash, and neither are their families.

"Just use PDF or AoN!" I already can hear frothy fanboys saying. Yeah, I can, I work in IT, I get all this stuff. But this area is a rural area. They barely understand their phones (if they own one). 3 of them are...

Just going to suggest printing out the AoN web pages. Especially for the teens you can form packets tailored to their characters.

MUbe dome people woukd be happier if NOw Paizo did a pdf only subscription.

Excellent post, Mark. This is an absolutely heroic effort on the part of the team to get the books turned around so quickly.

If the books aren't usable at the table, there's no point in buying them.

I'm still using my Core Rulebook (First Printing) at the table.

Did you know that there have been 3 more printings of the CRB? Did you know that all three of those printings included errata and slight changes to the rules?

Did you know that the Fourth printing has an entirely different way of creating characters than the First printing? A way that removes restrictions based on Ancestry completely?

According to staff, this remastered version of the Core rules (player, GM, and creatures) will be fully compatible with all four of those previous printings.

All of your PF2 books are still useable at the table and will be even after these remastered books are released. Just like I can still use my Core Rulebook (First printing) at the table even when other people are using 2nd printing, 3rd printing, and 4th printing copies.

Most people don't throw out their old printed copies and buy new ones each time a new printing occurs. People aren't complaining that they've now had to replace their First printing version with three other versions. You don't have to replace them with this remastered version either.

Anything that would normally be part of errata is eligible to be changed, plus a little more, so possibly here and there. But nothing beyond the certain class revisions has been confirmed.

(For my own pet concern, I do hope Investigator in combat will get a good look despite not being mentioned as one of those classes! It's often harder to use and weaker than Rogue for pretty thin and GM-dependent exploration benefits, the fundamental tools to play it best (non-Strike backup attacks like cantrips) aren't in it at all, and there's very little to make melee with it worthwhile. Swashbuckler could also use a little love as restrictions and power goes — APG classes in general seemed to lack time to bake.)

Jacob Jett wrote:

It's unclear. However, despite folks saying X is getting rebalanced, it isn't clear that any class beyond the witch is going to be receiving quality of life adjustments.

Alchemist was specifically described as continuing to be revised, and Champion as needing adjustments for the removal of alignment. Reasonable to assume they meant similar big looks for Oracle: though I personally find it mostly fine at a core level, there's certainly imbalance between the power of Mysteries, Divine Access as a feat has proven weirdly centralizing and complicated, and it's annoying that overloading a curse is boring and heavily restricts your use of points. (Unless, again, you take things the class doesn't provide, then it's not an issue.)

I mean, we both have interpretations of what was said. My read was that they want to move as fast as possible. That's only possible if few things are changed. IIRC, in the Roll for Combat stream it was mentioned that the reason Alchemists are in PC2 is because there are changes to magic items. While there's also errata for alchemists to be integrated, I wouldn't expect them to receive any game-shattering changes. The witch on the other hand... YMMV

At this point debating how extreme the changes will be is kinda moot. We're looking at Schrödinger's edits. We'll likely learn more about how extensive things will be altered at PaizoCon (which I can't go to, so hopefully they'll post the seminar to something that streams).

We'll likely learn more about how extensive things will be altered at PaizoCon (which I can't go to, so hopefully they'll post the seminar to something that streams).

You are aware that PaizoCon is completely online this year, right?

Original 4 books, 1528 pages for $210. Remasters, 1496 pages for $240. That works out at a 17% increase. (happy for someone to check my calculations)

One aspect of this line of discussion that's often overlooked is that the cost of printing roughly 1,500 pages of gaming material has gone up drastically in just the few years since the original books were printed (far more than 17%). Every time we reprint those books at the same MSRP, we're cutting deeper and deeper into their profitability. Combined with the fact that reprints are rarely, if ever, done at the same quantity as initial print runs, the cost of goods for these and the need to maintain stable pricing for the same book over time, meant that at some point, we'd have had to do something anyway.

So in addition to providing Paizo an opportunity to transition from the OGL to the ORC license, allowing us to make some organizational and presentational changes we had already planned for the edition's "mid-life" point (not to be used for actual math, please), and incorporate errata we'd already been looking at doing, the Remaster Project also allows us to recalibrate our core entry point material to keep up with rising production, shipping, and distribution costs affecting all industries everywhere in a post-COVID world.

keftiu wrote:

I believe they’ve said some deities only want followers who commit to being Holy or Unholy, depending on their own desires. One imagines Asmodeus only has Unholy folks on his team.

Honestly this sounds way more interesting to me than how alignment was previously done, turning it into more of a divine philosophy your character can side with rather than a simplified version of good and evil that everyone has to conform to opens up a lot of fun options. It's also very reminiscent of Planescape, which feels a little ironic but doesn't make it any less cool.

Yep. And as The_Hanged_Man points out, it's closer to the Michael Moorecock material from which Gygax drew.

The original concept was full of plot about the 'aligned' protagonists disagreeing on some philosophy or ethics point with the God(s) they serve. It opens up some interesting plot hooks, to have some mortal being an agent of Asmodeus while not really liking him. It's a story dimension you don't get with the current "clerics of X must be alignment Y or Z" system, and it also makes NPCs potentially more complex and interesting.

Thumbs up to the Paizo team, and thank you for doing this immense amount of work on our behalf (but also for our dollars :)