Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster Project!

There's quite a lot I'd like to say, but I want to make it quick, so I'll bullet point em.

1. If you bought the "old" versions of any books, you can look on the bright side: they're now collectors items, and still useful at that. They'll be FAR more useful than an "old" 5e book, for example.

2. People need to stop being dismissive of Archives of Nethys. Other game systems aren't giving away their rules for free. If you feel like purchasing these books isn't for you, you can still use all of their contents for free.

3. Alignment has been useful for us grognards, but let's be honest: the whippersnappers haven't been using it right for years now and it's been on its way out for a long time. If you want to still use it at your tables and in your notes, it will be trivial to do so.

4. Ability Scores actually do serve a purpose, but let's be honest: if removing them by default helps someone grok the rules better it's probably worth it to do so, and adding them back in takes a second or two.

5. Some of these quality of life changes like Wizard and Rogue proficiencies and Witch rework are incredibly exciting. Lots of things like that may not have been pushed out for years without an excuse like these books.

6. My understanding is that Paizo has avoided emphasizing dragons for the most part out of professional courtesy, since they're featured so heavily in D&D. I LOVE the fact that since WoTC believes professional courtesy is dead, Paizo is now free to explore exciting new dragon content. I'm hopeful for Paizo's new dragons to outshine WotC's.

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

BretI wrote:

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).

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 on WotC’s part. If the claim is so weak that a judge would dismiss it immediately should they cede it?

I am immediately canceling my rule book and adventure path subs. They should have halted all releases immediately when they knew they were going to change the rules. They released a new book in the last 2 weeks. It’s “compatible” is the same as saying regular gas will work in your high performance car. You can use it but it won’t work as well. Also, not offering a break on prices for people who just purchased books is not right. Also, they are not saying if PDFs will be included. Paizo needs to pay more attention to the consumer as well as the player. If they are going to make me spend an additional $200 to play they might want to consider there are are other highly visible systems coming out soon. I may vote with my wallet.

demlin wrote:

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.

I'm not arguing about that. I don't like seeing a significant amount of player magic items in GM books (which is what they're going to do for GM Core).

OperationsKT wrote:

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.

{snip huge well thought out answer for space, seriously, it was very good, go read it}

Thank you for the very honest, frank, and detailed answer. This does settle a lot of my concerns that if we want to continue playing now and some folks at the table buy books they can find NOW that it won't hurt the majority of their characters or play experience.

Thank you. This is an answer that we NEVER would have gotten from WotC.

Paizo needs to pay more attention to the consumer as well as the player.

How are those different?

Also, I suggest you read Mark Moreland's post about the backstory of these changes
Remastering Project

I am immediately canceling my rule book and adventure path subs. They should have halted all releases immediately when they knew they were going to change the rules. They released a new book in the last 2 weeks. It’s “compatible” is the same as saying regular gas will work in your high performance car. You can use it but it won’t work as well. Also, not offering a break on prices for people who just purchased books is not right. Also, they are not saying if PDFs will be included. Paizo needs to pay more attention to the consumer as well as the player. If they are going to make me spend an additional $200 to play they might want to consider there are are other highly visible systems coming out soon. I may vote with my wallet.

K

Dancing Wind wrote:

demlin wrote:

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.

I'm not arguing about that. I don't like seeing a significant amount of player magic items in GM books (which is what they're going to do for GM Core).

And again, AoN solves this personal nitpick of your’s.

They should have halted all releases immediately when they knew they were going to change the rules.

Companies have gone out of business doing that sort of thing. Regardless of how much people like to ignore it, there is a lot of time and effort required to do this project. People like to get paid for doing their jobs, so stopping all new publishing for eleven months does not sound like a good business decision.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

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.

I kind of like Harnmaster's terminology. Spells have "Complexity Levels". Characters don't have levels (though NPCs can be rated as 1-5 stars depending on how good they are at what they do). Characters don't have classes either. :-)

demlin wrote:

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.

Exactly this. My version of the CRB doesn't have medium armor proficiency for the Alchemist. If I came across a version of the CRB that does have medium armor proficiency for the alchemist I can compare the publication dates, or I can check AoN, or the official Paizo errata documents and figure out what's up.

Dark_Mistress wrote:

BretI wrote:

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).

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...

FYI. Copyright law covers the entire work. That’s one of the reasons coders can sue when someone uses a part of the code and not the whole thing. There is no copyright protection for things in the public domain such as Orcs, derived from a creature in Beowulf. So a “Cloak of Elvenkind” would be protected because it was created by TSR.

Also, the point is not "what is the case within the law" so much as "what is so obviously the case within the law that even the most litigious of entities would not bother to argue otherwise."

By all given accounts, the same events that spurred on the influx of sales earlier this year also spurred on the rush to figure out what to do re:licensing and reprinting. Like, the most opportunistic thing they did was probably putting their stuff in a Humble Bundle of pretty enormous value, and maybe some sales and advertising or whatever. Considering they can't reasonably stop selling their premier thing at a critical time for most of a year, I'd much rather that influx come with sales and bundles rather than raised prices.

Aside from that...this is just a microversion of the same grief people have when anything new comes around to be focused on in place of the old. You've got people in this thread who lament that 2E isn't more like 1E and lots of stories of 'I spent all of this money on 1E books, what do you mean the system's being sunset!?'

I might be exaggerating a little, don't mean to. But, like, s%@! costs a lot of money to make for a lot of reasons, and there are always diminishing returns. New will usually supplant old in the spaces where money needs to flow for survival. Sometimes that's abused, but it's largely the way of this world, and it's weird that so many people('s brains) don't accept that. Alignment is bigger than the past biggest errata targets, but...not by much, still, and if you can deal with alignment the rest is pretty trivial to keep up with one way or another, with or without purchasing some restructured books.

I'll buy 10 copies of all the Core books if someone can get HWalsh to come back from his Paladin -> Champion exile to tell us in at least 5,000 words what he things about alignment being removed.

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?

Padaddy wrote:

I am immediately canceling my rule book and adventure path subs. They should have halted all releases immediately when they knew they were going to change the rules. They released a new book in the last 2 weeks. It’s “compatible” is the same as saying regular gas will work in your high performance car. You can use it but it won’t work as well. Also, not offering a break on prices for people who just purchased books is not right. Also, they are not saying if PDFs will be included. Paizo needs to pay more attention to the consumer as well as the player. If they are going to make me spend an additional $200 to play they might want to consider there are are other highly visible systems coming out soon. I may vote with my wallet.

So you're telling a business running on tiny profit margins that they need to cease a major part of their income for three months.

Which would have guaranteed that they wouldn't have had the resources to actually make this happen.

Interesting strategy there.

Be transparent. Give people the opportunity to make a choice to support the new product or the old. There is a lot that goes into this such as compatibility with VTTs. If you read what’s out there, there are a lot of people who feel the same way I do. Firebrands was released at the beginning of this month and 20ish days later they are telling people it is about to become particularly obsolete. What do you have to say about that strategy? People are pissed off at WotC because the new OGL felt like a money grab. As I said earlier, think about the consumer. I have the rulebook subscription but only use the PDFs because I wanted give some additional funds to Paizo to help them out. You can do what you want but I’ll have to reconsider subscribing again. Profit and loss are long term items. In my case, and others, they may lose the thousands of dollars I would have spent over the next few years because they may not respect to thousands I have already spent on their site, other sites and brick and mortar.

I am immediately canceling my rule book and adventure path subs. They should have halted all releases immediately when they knew they were going to change the rules. They released a new book in the last 2 weeks. It’s “compatible” is the same as saying regular gas will work in your high performance car. You can use it but it won’t work as well. Also, not offering a break on prices for people who just purchased books is not right. Also, they are not saying if PDFs will be included. Paizo needs to pay more attention to the consumer as well as the player. If they are going to make me spend an additional $200 to play they might want to consider there are are other highly visible systems coming out soon. I may vote with my wallet.

I felt the need to comment on this as a 1e player.

When PF2 was announced, I decided to keep purchasing the product because I may as well complete it. Some of the quality dropped, true. But they didn't pull a fast one in that case. New homeowner also meant I needed that capital elsewhere anyway. I still support 1e publishers when I can.

This is a much more fluid and dynamic situation. To go from chaos to a publicly announced plan in roughly 4 months is an impressive feat.

It's your option to do so. This isn't nearly as major an overhaul going from 1e to 2e.

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.

Be transparent.

By announcing the product several months in advance so people can make informed decisions? Like they just did?

Firebrands was released at the beginning of this month and 20ish days later they are telling people it is about to become particularly obsolete.

That's literally the exact opposite of what they're saying. It kind of sounds like you're hearing what you want to hear now.

I could see a legitimate frustration if someone just bought the CRB and is feeling bad about it but... Firebrands? Really?

Some format changes, errata, and alchemist buffs in the CRB is going to do about nothing to render it 'obsolete'

Lets be real here, despite the 'remaster' hype, the changes they've talked about so far are pretty mild and low impact. This isn't PF3. This isn't PF2.5. Until we learn more about the class changes they've talked about I'd hesitate to even call it PF2 Unchained.

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.

From what I've read sounds like that is on the agenda. The original names are from OGL I think.

Be transparent. Give people the opportunity to make a choice to support the new product or the old. There is a lot that goes into this such as compatibility with VTTs. If you read what’s out there, there are a lot of people who feel the same way I do. Firebrands was released at the beginning of this month and 20ish days later they are telling people it is about to become particularly obsolete. What do you have to say about that strategy? People are pissed off at WotC because the new OGL felt like a money grab. As I said earlier, think about the consumer. I have the rulebook subscription but only use the PDFs because I wanted give some additional funds to Paizo to help them out. You can do what you want but I’ll have to reconsider subscribing again. Profit and loss are long term items. In my case, and others, they may lose the thousands of dollars I would have spent over the next few years because they may not respect to thousands I have already spent on their...

Actually, they've pretty specifically said that books like Firebrands will not be obsolete. And given the nature of its content, I'm inclined to think it will be completely unaffected because I don't believe there's any OGL content in it.

Bronze Fox wrote:

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.

From what I've read sounds like that is on the agenda. The original names are from OGL I think.

They are also just normal English words. I am not a lawyer, but they should be safe to use them. If they change them, its probably going to be for aesthetics or something similar.

An initiative that makes my favorite rule set ever even better? Yes, please. I’m looking forward to owning the new books.

Aside from that...this is just a microversion of the same grief people have when anything new comes around to be focused on in place of the old. You've got people in this thread who lament that 2E isn't more like 1E and lots of stories of 'I spent all of this money on 1E books, what do you mean the system's being sunset!?'

When Shadowrun went through it's last angst-ridden edition change, I remember the devs coming on the forums and pointing out that ~5-8 years since between editions was about normal for a large (but not D&D large) audience TTRPG. We're at 4 years, and the remaster won't be released for, what, 7-11 more months? And it sounds like it's going to be near fully compatible. I.e. focused much more on 'content' rather than system rules changes (I would assume alignment is one of the biggest changes, since they mention it).

So, I agree with you. Everything sunsets. This is pretty normal and not any sort of betrayal, or inconsideration, or whatever. It's just regular game evolution. Folks should recognize that. This one's a bit earlier than normal but the devs explained exactly why: OGL issues. And that seems a pretty darn legit reason, given that it could have potentially put them out of business if not fixed asap.

On top of all of this, there's AoN and Paizo's strategy of 'open rules, purchase adventures'. Which is extremely player-friendly IMO.

I've got no complaints. I just bought a pdf version in the last couple of month for on-screen reference, and I'll happily buy the remastered ones.

Padaddy wrote:

I am immediately canceling my rule book and adventure path subs. They should have halted all releases immediately when they knew they were going to change the rules. They released a new book in the last 2 weeks. It’s “compatible” is the same as saying regular gas will work in your high performance car. You can use it but it won’t work as well. Also, not offering a break on prices for people who just purchased books is not right. Also, they are not saying if PDFs will be included. Paizo needs to pay more attention to the consumer as well as the player. If they are going to make me spend an additional $200 to play they might want to consider there are are other highly visible systems coming out soon. I may vote with my wallet.

You're trolling. If you can afford a high performance car, buying rulebooks is trivial. If you're a knowledgeable engineer you know that cheaper gas wrecking your expensive car is a myth. All modern fuels are equally clean and higher octane preserving your mileage is marginal for most drivers (it only really works when driving huge cross-country distances and even then you're talking a difference in nickels and dimes). Your basically just burning $$$ by buying the premium fuel. So in the end, your analogy doesn't really work.

You also don't know a lot about how businesses work but others have schooled you on it so I'll leave that aside.

Funny how people call others who don’t agree with them “trolls”. It’s pretty weak if you have to resort to name calling because you didn’t exactly address my major concerns. If you had a performance car instead of just reading the internet you would understand there is a difference. Also, I know a lot about business, personally. Successful businesses are built on repeat customers. Please listen to Roll for Combat from yesterday. I am not the only person who thinks this way. I would not consider the thousands I have spent on the Paizo site, Amazon, brick & mortar, VTT books and modules, etc. to be trivial. Eventually, PF2 will become incompatible with PF2 Remastered. It’s evolution and it’s bound to happen. How will this affect any of the VTTs? Have you ever tried to convert a PF1 to PF2 on a VTT? It’s not easy. I guess the difference between us is I value your right to express your opinion without calling you a troll. Let’s have civil discourse in the future without resorting to name calling.

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...

If it helps, I can invite you and/or any friends to my demiplane party. It'll allow you to access all the pf2e material that's been released. It does require an active connection. Send me a pm if you want the link to join.

Edit: oh I just read the end of your post. My offer still stands.

Pretty much all the OGL concepts Pathfinder used are in the 5.1 SRD, and that got released under a Creative Commons license that WotC doesn't control. So it seems that Paizo could rerelease their ruleset using the 5.1 SRD under Creative Commons, and still license it under ORC.

The CC-BY does not have the ability to build a citation forest. OGL was a true sharealike you can plant new trees and new branches, you could have a PF1e which was 99% copy paste D&D3.5 with minor revisions or you could have a PF2e which was 1% copy paste, and if you cite OGL and publish under OGL your new stuff goes back into building the community forest. ORC keeps that concept.

CC also lacks the ability to divide your book into the Product Identity part and the Open Gaming Content part with a simple preample statement. Instead the open gaming content part has to be kept seperated which is what WOTC tried to do with their SRD. But in their rush to end the boycott they did not realize that CC lacked the concepts of PI and OGC and thus they have now made a vampire named Strahd and tentacle monsters from the great beyond named Beholder as part of CC! Even though these are banned in OGL PI!. All they did for CC was copy paste the SRD with the OGL PI/OGC preample removed. This is why when asked if they will CC older D&D versions, they are saying they need to carefully take their time sanitizing those SRD basically admitting they made a mistake stamping their OGL SRD as CC in a rush.

Also both PF1e and PF2e are 3.5SRD citations not 5.1SRD citations, and 3.5SRD is not under CC - so even if CC did not have the issues noted they cannot reprint PF1e/PF2e with a simple switch from OGL to CC for that reason alone.

Padaddy wrote:

Be transparent. Give people the opportunity to make a choice to support the new product or the old. There is a lot that goes into this such as compatibility with VTTs. If you read what’s out there, there are a lot of people who feel the same way I do. Firebrands was released at the beginning of this month and 20ish days later they are telling people it is about to become particularly obsolete. What do you have to say about that strategy? People are pissed off at WotC because the new OGL felt like a money grab. As I said earlier, think about the consumer. I have the rulebook subscription but only use the PDFs because I wanted give some additional funds to Paizo to help them out. You can do what you want but I’ll have to reconsider subscribing again. Profit and loss are long term items. In my case, and others, they may lose the thousands of dollars I would have spent over the next few years because they may not respect to thousands I have already spent on their...

Actually, they've pretty specifically said that books like Firebrands will not be obsolete. And given the nature of its content, I'm inclined to think it will be completely unaffected because I don't believe there's any OGL content in it.

I hope you are right. I have supported Paizo for years and I want them to be successful. My point again is think about the consumer. Especially the GMs. We spend the money and in my case the players don’t. My players are fans and not consumers.

Funny how people call others who don’t agree with them “trolls”. It’s pretty weak if you have to resort to name calling because you didn’t exactly address my major concerns. If you had a performance car instead of just reading the internet you would understand there is a difference. Also, I know a lot about business, personally. Successful businesses are built on repeat customers. Please listen to Roll for Combat from yesterday. I am not the only person who thinks this way. I would not consider the thousands I have spent on the Paizo site, Amazon, brick & mortar, VTT books and...

Lolz. I'm not calling you a troll. I'm referring to fishing. You're trolling for responses. Congrats. You got responses. Very few people agree with your position. Take it for what you may. Your car analogy still fails. Fuel technology has come a long, long way since even the 2000s.

If you want to blame someone for this situation, blame Hasbro for changing the status quo.

P.S. I have listened to the RfC and twitch stream yesterday. I know people are up in arms. But being a grognard and knowing how businesses work, this situation was inevitable. (And I've been through it all before.) Everything's going to be fine. This will basically be a 2.0.1 patch for PF2.

Paizo’s goal isn’t winning the court case, it’s not ending up in court to begin with.

One thing we should keep in mind is that Paizo have proven to be trustworthy for many years. I can understand being disappointed, but please don't assume maliciousness on their part or even just that they don't care. They clearly do.

Offer ...

Thanks, I'll run it by them and get back to you if they are interested. I do have a linux laptop I can use for web apps if we have to.

Padaddy wrote:

Be transparent. Give people the opportunity to make a choice to support the new product or the old. There is a lot that goes into this such as compatibility with VTTs. If you read what’s out there, there are a lot of people who feel the same way I do. Firebrands was released at the beginning of this month and 20ish days later they are telling people it is about to become particularly obsolete. What do you have to say about that strategy? People are pissed off at WotC because the new OGL felt like a money grab. As I said earlier, think about the consumer. I have the rulebook subscription but only use the PDFs because I wanted give some additional funds to Paizo to help them out. You can do what you want but I’ll have to reconsider subscribing again. Profit and loss are long term items. In my case, and others, they may lose the thousands of dollars I would have spent over the next few years because they may not respect to thousands I have already spent on their...

Actually, they've pretty specifically said that books like Firebrands will not be obsolete. And given the nature of its content, I'm inclined to think it will be completely unaffected because I don't believe there's any OGL content in it.

I hope you are right. Have you heard anything about the affect this will have on VTTs and VTT modules? In VTTs you have to select a rule set. Will 2e VTT modules work with 2eR? I am afraid that it will be Runelords all over again.

One thing we should keep in mind is that Paizo have proven to be trustworthy for many years. I can understand being disappointed, but please don't assume maliciousness on their part or even just that they don't care. They clearly do.

Exactly. Unlike certain other corporate entities, they're not going to send the Pinkertons to your door to take stuff.

Have you heard anything about the affect this will have on VTTs and VTT modules? In VTTs you have to select a rule set. Will 2e VTT modules work with 2eR?

Why wouldn't it. VTTs are quite used to updating their rules for errata. Did the 4th printing of the CRB crash all of the VTTs?

Unless you have a VTT that is enforcing that a player role-play their character's alignment accurately...

Stephen from Roll from Combat I think mentioned hearing about this before the release. I am assuming paizo contacted partners and informed them a head of time. And even then roughly 7/6 months a head is plenty of time to work things out. Especially since the math and the majority of the game is the same. This is mostly just eratta, which paizo has been doing forever. So yeah virtual tabletops should be fine.

Padaddy wrote:

Funny how people call others who don’t agree with them “trolls”. It’s pretty weak if you have to resort to name calling because you didn’t exactly address my major concerns. If you had a performance car instead of just reading the internet you would understand there is a difference. Also, I know a lot about business, personally. Successful businesses are built on repeat customers. Please listen to Roll for Combat from yesterday. I am not the only person who thinks this way. I would not consider the thousands I have spent on the Paizo site, Amazon, brick & mortar, VTT books and...

Lolz. I'm not calling you a troll. I'm referring to fishing. You're trolling for responses. Congrats. You got responses. Very few people agree with your position. Take it for what you may. Your car analogy still fails. Fuel technology has come a long, long way since even the 2000s.

If you want to blame someone for this situation, blame Hasbro for changing the status quo.

P.S. I have listened to the RfC and twitch stream yesterday. I know people are up in arms. But being a grognard and knowing how businesses work, this situation was inevitable. (And I've been through it all before.) Everything's going to be fine. This will basically be a 2.0.1 patch for PF2.

Not fishing for comments. I could care less if anyone responded. But a response gets a response, positive responses and negative ones. As a person who handles executive level issues in a multi billion dollar company, I also understand that if a person raises an issue publicly there are many, many more who agree but don’t have the bandwidth or inclination to say anything publicly.

I understand and agree with the business reasons but no one has commented on the consumer part of my original comment. For example, as a GM, I am a consumer because I spend the money. My players are fans. For me it is a matter of respecting my investment. To be fair it has only been a day or so since the announcement but it might me smart to offer a limited time discounted price on the new books to previous verified purchasers. That would make the consumer feel respected and appreciated and grow the revenue stream. The money is not an issue for me, it was the continued offer of new products they knew would will become partially obsolete.

Eventually, PF2 will become incompatible with PF2 Remastered. It’s evolution and it’s bound to happen.

Have you bought all four printings of the PF2 Core Rulebook? Because every one of them had rules changes printed in them in addition to the errata. Like the change that made Ancesestry flaws an optional rule, and removed all flaws from standard character creation rules.

If rules changes and errata didn't bother you in the past, why are they so important today?

Padaddy wrote:

Have you heard anything about the affect this will have on VTTs and VTT modules? In VTTs you have to select a rule set. Will 2e VTT modules work with 2eR?

Why wouldn't it. VTTs are quite used to updating their rules for errata. Did the 4th printing of the CRB crash all of the VTTs?

Unless you have a VTT that is enforcing that a player role-play their character's alignment accurately...

I suppose if you plugged ChatGPT into the VTT then it might be magically possible to even do that? Some how? (I'm jesting of course. Or am I? [frightening thought considering where AI is apparently headed...])

Padaddy wrote:

Have you heard anything about the affect this will have on VTTs and VTT modules? In VTTs you have to select a rule set. Will 2e VTT modules work with 2eR?

Why wouldn't it. VTTs are quite used to updating their rules for errata. Did the 4th printing of the CRB crash all of the VTTs?

Unless you have a VTT that is enforcing that a player role-play their character's alignment accurately...

Indeed Foundry was very quick to add the switch to use the old ancestry flaw/boost rule when they added the errata rule for optional flaw with any two boosts.

And they have always had the ability boosts as core for their UI with the ability score already being vestigal for years, because the beginner box is when that char sheet change was made, and the ABCD system had already made the change in PF2e to start with. It will be trivial for them to add an option to hide the ability score.

Just like it will be trivial for them to hide the alignment field, and they already have the ability to homebrew traits which is how people have already replaced alignments. And new traits with new rules interactions are being added all the time, so them having to have a holy trait with rules interactions is nothing new to the system.

None of these changes mechanically are anymore burdensome than the erratas which have even rerranged classes (alchemist)

Now you may have other VTTs that have not kept up with releases with new mechanics and erratas, but that has nothing specific to do with remaster itself.

I hope you are right. Have you heard anything about the affect this will have on VTTs and VTT modules? In VTTs you have to select a rule set. Will 2e VTT modules work with 2eR? I am afraid that it will be Runelords all over again.

All of our VTT partners knew about this before even our other business partners did. They are, across the board, excited to provide support for a more robust game, and are endeavoring to support both remaster and legacy content. Each platform is free to make its own decisions on how it implements this evolution of the game, so if there's one you're particularly invested in, feel free to reach out to them directly and offer suggestions on how you'd like to see it done.

And I hope this is as successful as Runelords! That remains one of our most popular and bestselling pieces of content ever!

I suppose if you plugged ChatGPT into the VTT then it might be magically possible to even do that? Some how? (I'm jesting of course. Or am I? [frightening thought considering where AI is apparently headed...])

Understanding alignment seems like something that a computer is inherently incapable of handling - because alignment isn't actually defined properly.

AI could theoretically be as powerful as people make it out to be, but it would need to be powered by something more than what we currently have for computers. Computers (algorithms and everything else equivalent to turing-complete) have some known limits.

breithauptclan wrote:

Padaddy wrote:

Have you heard anything about the affect this will have on VTTs and VTT modules? In VTTs you have to select a rule set. Will 2e VTT modules work with 2eR?

Why wouldn't it. VTTs are quite used to updating their rules for errata. Did the 4th printing of the CRB crash all of the VTTs?

Unless you have a VTT that is enforcing that a player role-play their character's alignment accurately...

I suppose if you plugged ChatGPT into the VTT then it might be magically possible to even do that? Some how? (I'm jesting of course. Or am I? [frightening thought considering where AI is apparently headed...])

Lol. Am I wrong or did I hear it was going to be more than errata corrections? I thought there was going to be class revamping due to alignment disappearing. 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.

Lol. Am I wrong or did I hear it was going to be more than errata corrections? I thought there was going to be class revamping due to alignment disappearing.

That is still errata levels of changes. Take a look at the Horse animal companion and the Alchemist class for other examples. The differences between the original first printing and the 4th printing of the CRB are quite noticeable.

Not fishing for comments. I could care less if anyone responded. But a response gets a response, positive responses and negative ones. As a person who handles executive level issues in a multi billion dollar company, I also understand that if a person raises an issue publicly there are many, many more who agree but don’t have the bandwidth or inclination to say anything publicly.

I understand and agree with the business reasons but no one has commented on the consumer part of my original comment. For example, as a GM, I am a consumer because I spend the money. My players are fans. For me it is a matter of respecting my investment. To be fair it has only been a day or so since the announcement but it...

Ah, gotcha. (As in, I see, I understand.) Generally speaking I don't know if I believe that anyone posts to a BBS without expecting a response since you're plugging into the conversation. I see where you are coming from though since I'm typically the only person in my group who interacts with web forumites (or I suspect Reddit). And so yeah, the rule of 10 applies, like in classrooms. If one person has a question, at least 10 others have the same question. (And there are no dumb ones for that very reason. Sometimes the message gets garbled and hard to understand but the speaker has no idea, unless someone asks a question.)

For the record, I believe your investment is safe. PF2 has at least another 5 years in the tank and could possibly rival (A)D&D1 which was around for a whopping 15 years before the next edition rolled out. IMO, for TTRPGs I tend to expect newish core books that gather and reorganize resources and apply errata every 5~6 years and a new edition of a TTRPG every 10~12. If things happen earlier than this then something usually went awry. E.g., D&D 3.5 rolls out after less than 2 years, D&D4 is a flash in the pan, etc. Hasbro's OGL mess upped the timeline for PF2 errata-applying, resource gathering rulebook and forced some additional changes but none of the changes invalidate anything that's come before.

Lol. Am I wrong or did I hear it was going to be more than errata corrections? I thought there was going to be class revamping due to alignment disappearing. 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.

Witch is getting some love (and it seems like it needs it since the revulsion for its current state is nigh-universal). Champion has to be altered because alignment is out. I expect the change will be mostly cosmetic because the existing edicts, anathemas, tenets, and oaths were already carrying 90% of the mechanical weight anyway. Good champions may gain the Holy trait and evil champions may gain the Unholy trait. This might happen to certain clerics when they select deities that require it. Barbarian and sorcerer dragon sub-classes have to be tweaked to accommodate the move from metallic/chromatic dragons to primal/occult/arcane/divine dragons. Alchemist is getting tweaks related to magic item changes occurring in the new GMC (which those mostly have to do with moving away from certain items specific to the OGL). Depending on who you talk to Alchemists might be getting additional changes but no one at Paizo said such a thing, so those are Schrödinger's changes. Oracles are getting a tweak that I bet focuses solely on the playability state of the ancestor mystery. Beyond that, just the application of errata, the alignment change, and sunsetting OGL things (which will be maintained as legacy material on AoN and so you can keep on using your current books without worrying, the mechanical support for those rules isn't going away, just being more sectioned off). Beyond that it's a lot of Schrödinger's edits that we don't really know about. More info is coming at the PaizoCon seminar thingy.

Am I wrong or did I hear it was going to be more than errata corrections?

Every reprinting has been "more than errata corrections". Have you bought all the new printings with all the rules changes?