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This is the best possible response to this mess
POWERFUL
Last I checked corporations are made up of people. And if my numbers are correct I think more than 50% of those people think a union should be the way to go. Wonder what harassing a corporation actually means in this case (thinking emoji)
The existing Community Use Policy isn't edition-specific or even game-specific. It already applies to 1E, 2E, Starfinder, the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, and more. Are there any plans to include the 2nd edition action symbols as a part of the community use license?
This is great, thanks! For those looking for an "official-adjacent" alternative similar in presentation as images, I made these for anyone to use. Cheers and happy homebrewing.
You are correct in that Erik, Jason, and Logan (if memory serves) all strongly implied that the reason heritages are the way they are is because in the future they can implement heritages that are compatible with multiple ancestries. No word on the specific different denizens, but I imagine flavoring through feats would work for the samey outsiders. The significantly different outsiders could have their own heritages (beyond just Aasimar and Tiefling).
I generally agree with some of the folks here in that I don't want too many individual classes when we have so many options with the ability to add things like specific class feats and new archetypes that significantly change classes. That being said... I've always wanted official support for two things: 1. A long range monk-type character that utilizes innate elemental attacks The Kineticist is sort of this, and I think it would lend itself well to a new ground up class that does something different and unique, instead of being a weird monk/druid hybrid. I want to be an earthbender, dammit. I think the simplified action system would lend itself very well to this type of class. 2. A constitution spellcaster Something like an occult bloodmage would be pretty thematic for this. Tooling with the idea of temporary hit points and utilizing your own HP to cast spells is COOL. Might be a bit difficult to balance but risk and reward is always neat.
Also, during the panel about the design philosophy of pf2, all the devs stated that archetypes in part were a move away from prestige classes, but prestige classes may not be out of the question. Personally I think high requirement archetypes are the way to go, because they're very thematic, and could serve as an effective way to move away from traditional multiclassing. Old school multiclassing always frustrated me.
I'd love to avoid using the term "feat tax" unnecessarily when the benefit very clearly outweighs the cost here. Adding damage dice to spells is pretty powerful. In a game where almost everything is a feat, using "feat tax" like we did in PF1 with good reason is a little hyperbolic IMO
Running a mid level creature was easy and intuitive and fun, I'm looking forward to GMing later this year. The simplicity is quite empowering; to have the ability to keep things moving the way they do in 2e is really great. On the note of crunch, PF2 is just enough, not too much and not too little... I'm looking forward to the future to say the least.
what could the classes do at level 1? A lot more actually than you would expect. Damage cantrips are actually pretty good from what I've seen. The third action is never a "dead* action because you might still be able to move, raise a shield or do something else of the sort. Being able to attack more than once at level 1 is quite impactful, nailing crits at level 1 is sometimes worth the risk even if landing a hit is EXTREMELY difficult, you still have a chance! Casters aren't completely useless after going nova and spending all of their spells because of the attack cantrips. Heal is great for clerics! The ability to spend different amounts of actions to get more benefits is extremely useful. Level 1 is dangerous, but there are ways to handle things if you take care and are smart about things. It feels like there are a lot of options available even at level 1, even if they're small ones. Cheers! You guys did a great job in Unreality Incursion. I like it when the players make me (and each other) laugh out loud. Thanks Mark! It was a blast, playing Elly was super fun :) glad I was able to bring friends to sit in on the fun.
Hello! This was my first Paizocon (and actually my first con) and I attended pretty much entirely with the intention to learn as much as I possibly could about Pathfinder 2nd edition. I got to play in Mark's "Unreality Incursion" and I attended every 2nd edition panel that didn't conflict with another panel. With that said, below are some of my thoughts about what I've learned between my 2nd edition playtime in the delve(s), The Unreality Incursion, and all of the panels I attended. 1. Level one is dangerous! During our level 1 delve, I was playing the Alchemist (Fumbus) and I got critted by the ogre. Granted, said ogre was a high CR for 4 level (CR 3 I believe) but it hit me so hard I got killed in a single hit. 32 damage! Death and dying rules or not, you're still dead if you're killed by a hit that exceeds your HP by X2 your total. I worry a little for level 1 characters, but it being as deadly as it is is definitely dramatic. The extra HP from ancestries helps for sure, just gotta worry a bit more about positioning, tactics and scouting. 2. Monsters are easy to run Boy, it's hard to explain just how intuitive and natural it is to run monsters. When playing "The Unreality Incursion" we were playing with monster templates direct from the Bestiary, two angels (one fallen and one not), an Axiomite, an Archon and an Azata. Running each monster was easy as pie because of the action system. There's always SOMETHING you can do with three actions, even if it's just moving around. 3. Possibilities! One of the things I'm most excited about, and something that the designers iterated a few times throughout the weekend was that the ability to expand upon the new system is a lot more integrated. During the "Design Philosophy behind Pathfinder 2nd Edition" panel they discussed how a lot of the bulk from 1st edition was from the fact that certain systems were bolted ON TOP of D&D 3. Now that we have a new system with ample space for new design implementations, we can expect splat books and expansions to be plentiful and INTUITIVE. The new Game Mastery guide that will be coming out this next coming winter will have some additional systems to add on to the existing stuff. We can expect because of the rules being more streamlined when we do get more stuff in the future its going to be more easily integrated into the core system. Things like proficiency being baked into all aspects of the game allows us to better onboard new things onto the existing system. I think, ultimately what it comes down to for me is that the new system is going to support things like more expansion while note getting bogged down. 2nd edition is fun. Fun enough that if there's something that I can't quite get out of the core rulebook, I know that I'll be able to easily homebrew whatever I need while I'm waiting for additional options to become available in the future through the official pathways. What are your thoughts? What excites you most about 2nd edition? What do you hope to see next?
Thanks for summarizing, I was bad at taking notes during this. When I asked the question about class paths I was a little disappointed to hear that the monk (and by extension the fighter) would not be getting path expansion options I was a bit disappointed, but I do have hope that there will be interesting options available for certain paths. I think ultimately the future of pathfinder is bright, I really liked all that I've seen from the panels and what I got to play at the con. What's coming in the future has me very hopeful for what's to come.
Man you guys are quick on the uptake here. Looks like my list of 50+ is already uploaded accurately. I've reuploaded images to a google drive to keep track of the images. I also manually renamed the files so you can find those here!
If the critical specializations scaled with weapon quality and replaced the damage doubling for everyone I think combat would be more interesting and dynamic. Don't know how this would affect higher level fights but it could be interesting.
Replace the Alchemist with the gunslinger except his hands are the guns and every time someone on the forums mentions how much they hate resonance the gunslinger regains a point of grit.
I took some time from reading through the forums, engaging and playtesting and instead decided to try to see what it was like to develop for 2nd edition. The experience helped me understand a lot of the engine under Pathfinder so that I have some new perspective on some of the rules driving the game. So I decided to try and port over the Gunslinger from 1e to 2e, and created this google doc. I only developed up to level 10 feats but the class features are fully featured. The equipment info is in there as well for the firearms (it's WIP right now). So, on to thoughts about the rules. Pros: 1.) Developing new actions within the action economy is very fun.
2.) Enhancements are great.
3.) Conditions make combat actions more interesting.
And finally, some cons for the issues I ran into. 1.) Balancing new stuff will become complicated/difficult.
The main issue with this is when creating a new class, if creating a new class, the consideration is slightly more complex in this manner. Without serious number crunching and also considering the more nebulous conditions system it's hard to say what may be considered "balanced" in this system since we have to consider all actions of a comparable level against all other actions. There are tons of variables.\ The best example of this in my doc is probably the Careful Shot level 1 feat. I wanted a "dead-eye" type gunslinger to be viable. I knew with the crit rules that targeting touch AC wouldn't be an option for the gunslinger by default because that would upset the balance of damage on a lot of these weapons. My idea then was to create an attack action that used more actions than a normal strike, so I took a look at the Ghost Strike monk feat. I thought:
I quickly realized that I would have to pull a lot of averaged data from across the book to determine if this was a balanced choice. As it's written now, I think a "full round" action for an attack that requires a reload is pretty fair. If you're using a single firearm you cannot perform a Careful shot more than every other round. Monks can make 4 attacks in a round with FOB so one attack every other round seemed appropriate. It's hard to say definitively though, I suppose. I'd need to take a hard look at other attack actions to see how that would work. 2.) Spell point integration
I rather like spell points. They're a good halfway point between actions and full-blown spells. Boosting powers to accommodate having less points to spend on them puts non-casters in an awkward spot. That's a topic for another time, though. 3.) Dedications (multiclassing)
The rogue dedication is a good example. The pros from getting extra skills and a skill feat are great, but the fact that Surprise Attack is the class feature you get is... less attractive than advancing your class feats to have better combat options. Conclusion I enjoyed the experiment and challenge. I think the system is great for homebrew, 3rd party and future release content and I look forward to full release for when I can really start digging in to how to pull apart the game mechanics we have and stretch them into a complex and deep web of interlocking options that opens up tons of build diversity within the classes. Thoughts? Opinions on my little homebrew half-class? Do you want to see the gunslinger as the first non-core class to be released officially like I do?
Hey everybody, So with signature skills now out of the game as of update 1.2 and more base trained skills for almost all of the core classes I have had one of my biggest gripes with the playtest addressed. That being said I still think there is plenty of stuff that can or should be discussed mechanically and otherwise. My biggest issue now as the title of this thread suggests is formatting, the sexiest topic. A bit of my background first, I have been a tabletop fantasy player for approximately seven years. I'm young compared to many D&D or Pathfinder players but in the time I've played I've almost exclusively played Pathfinder 1E as a player (with some GMing experience in my time). That being said, my concerns are primarily in first time player experience and clarity/density of info for mechanics and game rules. I spend most of my day at work on the day to day formatting nice emails, charts, and word documents to various people that make a lot more money than me so they can understand at some level the goings on of the people under them. I'm a data analyst of sorts. The rulebook for a tabletop game is a kind of business project that informs a team of people how to follow a set of rules so that everyone can work together toward their common goal. In the case of Pathfinder 2E the goal of the group (the party and GM) is to have fun. The rulebook is the guide by which everyone operates to ensure fairness to some extent and fosters common understanding. The problem I have with the rulebook as it currently stands is that the layout is not conducive to finding things in a quick, easy, or sensible manner. I know this is the playtest book and as such it's a WIP, but I mostly want to provide some suggestions both large and small to reduce the pain of flipping through a physical rulebook. I know that some of this surely will be planned going into the final stages, but I would be remiss to not voice my concerns regarding the topic. Firstly, my hands on experience with the playtest so far is with homebrew content. More specifically, the world, dieties, and characters. So far our GM has been using the bestiary and the already existing equipment to kit us out. We try as best as we can to stick to the rules to the best of our knowledge (especially since we've started livestreaming our games) but it's difficult to know every rule in a system you aren't yet familiar with. That being said, I'll start with our character creation. I'll be honest, character creation was downright painful. The timing of our first planned session wasn't ideal mind you. Our first session was planned in person the Saturday after the playtest release because all our players (and our GM) were going to be visiting me from out of town. Because of the timing none of us had really gotten a great chance to read through the rulebook. Because of the timing of it all the GM planned a good portion at the same time of our character creation. I said creation was painful because of the amount of time it took us all to do it. There were five of us including the GM. I had my tablet, Our GM and one of the players had laptops, and the other two only had their phones to scroll through the rulebook to find things. Circumstances weren't ideal but everyone was willing to help each other out when it came to rule lookups. All in all I'd guess the character creation took us approximately four hours including breaks we took. We had to use what we had gleaned of the system from the weekly previews to guess at what we wanted to play or do with our character concepts. Once I had finished my character creation I did my best to help lookup powers, feats and rules for the others because I finished a bit before the others. Generally speaking I think the guide on creating a character is well constructed. Below are my thoughts on the good parts and the parts that need work for this first hurdle toward gameplay. The Good: 1.) The boosts/flaws to ability scores because of Ancestry, Background and Class make sense from the perspective of roleplay and game mechanics. This is a great way to onboard new players and it's probably one of the best designed systems in the whole book. Speaking in terms of boosts and flaws is a great way of translating numbers into something the player can contextualize as a bonus to their modifiers. A boost at level 1 character creation is +1 to that ability score mod! Simple, clean, love it. 2.) The tables giving quick summaries of the Ancestries and classes are great. This can give new players a good idea of what they might be interested in playing. 3.) Tables and chapters are appropriately referenced for the full descriptions on their respective pages. This is good, though it is as expected. The Bad: 1.) The base character backgrounds don't have their own table like the Ancestry and Class. I'm not sure if this is just oversight or by choice, but I'm of the opinion that the backgrounds should get their own table alongside Ancestries and Classes. Since backgrounds affect character creation so much now with both trained skills baked in as well as ability boosts, this is a must have for easier character planning. This would help reduce flipping between pages 13 and 38, and it might help more veteran players plan characters more easily from the rulebook itself. 2.) This may be personal preference, but typically I am the type to choose my class first as my character's defining trait. If it were up to me, I would be placing the Choose A Class paragraph BEFORE ancestry. I think advising a first time player to choose their Ancestry first is somewhat of a misleading pull. Typically when I'm playing a character in a tabletop I use the Class of the character as a defining trait first. The content of my character's personality is first and foremost informed by their chosen "career" path. IMO your ancestry plays more into how other characters/NPCs will respond to your character. It's sort of like the character Class you choose for your character is indicative of your character's personality and interests. Your character's Ancestry and Background are more indicative of his or her history and experiences. If Class is recommended as a new player's first choice, that player will be more likely to make an informed decision of how they want their character to play both mechanically and socially (as in RP). If somone looks at the Wizard class and decides "I want to be a Wizard, but not the high tower kind of guy. I want to be a rough and tough traveling wizard!" They can be informed by the three key things that inform the basis of their character in an order that would not require them to go back if they have regrets about the earlier choices they made in regards to stat boosts. (Class, Ancestry, and Background.) 3.) Class Feature flipping. This drove me nuts. I rolled a monk for our current campaign, and since the monk is one of the character classes that gets a choice of key ability (STR or DEX) I went to look at the class feats for the monk to determine which stat I should be picking. The core class features didn't tell me a whole lot about which stat I would want to pick. So I scrolled down to the class feats... Lord help me here. In order to figure out which stat I wanted to go with as my primary I had to read through all the first level class feats. That's a lot of choices to choose from for a new player. The Monk adavancement table on page 98 was useful in that I knew I would get another class feat at level 2 if I made a sub-par choice, but I still had to read into the class feats to get an idea, as well as looking at equipment when considering monastic weaponry, and considering the pros and cons to each of the stances with both their attacks and traits. All of this was just so I could decide which key stat I would prioritize! This doesn't account for the issue that some of the more supernaturally inclined classes have some (or many) powers in addition to any spells they may get. The monk at level one has access to Ki Strike, the class feat. In order to determine what Ki Strike the power does you have to look at the powers section in the back half of the book, just to see if that power/class feat fits your character So, that being said! TL;DR thoughts on how to address some of these issues.
2.) Problem? Character creation order recommendation (page 14)
3.) Problem? Class features that give class powers require the reader to flip to the back of the book to see what the power does, whereas any non-power related action (like stances or doubleslice) are already imbedded in the class feat itself.
4.) Problem? This isn't an issue I brought up in my previous description of some of the issues I had with the way the book was laid out, but I think it may be one of the most vital changes for ease of use. The problem is as such: There is no delineation in the book to differentiate flavor text and game mechanic text.
As an example, let's take a look at Dragon Roar, a 6th level Class Feat for the Monk.
In this case we've expanded the use of bold text to include the primary function of the action of dragon roar, what benefit it gives the PC, and how often it can be used. By doing this, we've broken the description for Dragon Roar into a paragraph that has highlighted key features and minor features without breaking the flow of the description. The bolded text is then indicating the key features the player will use most often. Small changes like this to some of the more complex actions or powers would help draw the player's eye to the most important functions of any action, power or other functional effect. Any questions about something the player or GM is not aware of in regards to that action can be clarified by checking the primary points at a glance. If that doesn't suffice a full reread of the action or power can be done to identify the rule pieces outside of the primary functions.
In conclusion, I don't think these changes are the be all end all of how to fix the formatting in the rulebook. I also know that since the rulebook is not final that some of these may already be under consideration, but as I stated previously I think it's important to voice. With Pathfinder 2nd Edition being a step towards a new system I think one of the core/most important things for the life of the game is to reduce player stress with improved player AND GM experience when parsing out what rules do what. Character creation is the most vital part of retaining a new player. If the pathfinder community is to grow I think this is another great place to start by taking the opportunity to onboard potential new or longtime players better. These are my thoughts. Apologies for the verbosity. I love this game a lot and I would love to see it's popularity explode beyond measure. Some small tweaks to the fundamentals could seriously help that along by simplifying those first few steps before the official rulebook is printed. If the designers already have something of this sort cooking, feel free to correct me. I would love to hear any thoughts or considerations on these matters. Regards,
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