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Over in the 1E section, there's a bit of discussion about what we would've liked to see in Pathfinder First Edition. Various ideas came up for expanding Distant Worlds into a series of softcovers, one or more hardcovers, or an AP that leads PCs on a "Grand Tour" throughout the Golarion system.

All of these ideas could be implemented in Second Edition, but I expect Paizo has already mapped out the next several years' worth of 2E releases. Even so, it would be great to know if there's any interest in this sort of product for 2E, and whether anyone at Paizo is considering a return to other worlds in the Golarion system.

I doubt that there is much of a reason or demand to explore many other planets currently or even to go beyond Golarion's solar system, especially since a couple of these aspects have been covered in PF1.

And I wish I could bring myself to homebrew a wholebunch of Dark Sun stuff to run a game in the setting, but every time I try I set the bar too high, and end up giving up once I try to figure out defiling, and class changes.

So correct me if I'm wrong, which I might well be since it has been a couple of years since I've looked at the Dark Sun setting, but would it be that difficult?

Sprinkle in a couple of new ancestries (Thri Keen, Genasi, Half-Giants), tweak (Halflings, Elves) and remove some others (Golbins, Gnomes), remove all classes that get their powers from divine entities or are related to them (Clerics, Paladins, Sorcerers) and rebrand sorcerers to Psionics if you don't want to design a new class.

I know that's probably not all but to me that would be a good approximation to get started with. You don't need to recreate everything to tell engaging and compelling stories, within that setting, that are vastly distinct from Golarion. Removing the divine aspect by itself goes a long way to differentiate these two because the Gods are such an integral part to Golarion.

I actually DON'T believe that the designers, staff, and marketers for Paizo thought that a Beginner Box for Pathfinder 2e was unnecessary. They simply didn't have time to get one prepared and out the door with the Core Rule Book launch, at least not at the quality level people would expect.

For all its accomplishments and the fact that it is still growing, Paizo remains a small company with limited time and resources. They can only do so much in a set period of time. Over a thousand pages of rules and adventure for the August launch? That pretty much tapped them out.

If I remember correctly, Paizo even said back during the Playtest streams that releasing a Beginner's Box at launch was never a goal because the designers first wanted to get feedback, so that they know what newcomers are struggling with, so that they can tailor the experience better to the beginner's needs.

The way magic is balanced in this edition will probably be contentious for years to come.

So far, I've only seen it being contentious on these boards, so I guess I would rephrase it to: "The way is balanced in this edition will probably be problematic for certain former PF1 players for years to come."

As an aside to everything discussed thus far; at current rate of growth, in under 6 weeks this thread will have more comments than the rest of the General Discussion section combined.

If nothing else, I'm sure we can all agree that the state of Wizards is divisive and probably due a little extra attention from Paizo in future releases.

Many, if not the majority, of the arguments that are thrown around in here, apply to casters in general, so there seem to be two different populations in here airing their grievances:

• Those who have problems with the wizard
  
• Those who have problems with spells and spellcasting
  

I'm actually not convinced that wizards specifically need that much of a change when compared to the other casters and the people who are not happy with casters in general probably won't be appeased by additional material unless they are looking for small fixes, like more 1 action spells.

Actually, what I wrote was that it could probably benefit from a revision, not that it "needs" one (whatever that means).

...

I mean, those are some minor criticisms that you offer here. None of which would even remotely warrant a rules update, in my opinion at least. Also, these are quite easy to house-rule if you don't like those rules.

I think the point isnt that pf1 ran out of space for content, it's that due to the disunified nature of the core engine every new addition was trading worse and worse on the complexity for depth ratio and was even harder on the devs to keep things in mechanical balance.

I agree with this and I think it becomes rather noticeable when looking at the later releases of PF1's lifecycle. Yes, you could expand Golarion at infinitum but if you don't find satisfying mechanics to pair with the flavour than people probably won't buy-in as much. I think that started showing with the releases of the Vigilante, the Occult classes and in the end the Shifter. While I greatly appreciated the flavour of those I found most of them rather clunky and convoluted to play. So I felt that PF1 hit a design wall at some point but I understand if people feel differently if they enjoyed that new content.

But wasn’t the concern that it was slipping?

I don't think it was the main concern because you expect systems to start slipping after a couple of years but I think it becomes much more concerning when sales for the subsequent "splatbooks" start plummeting because that generally means that your core market is probably saturated and you are at that point hoping and relying on new blood finding the system. And I don't think that's a sustainable model.

Yes, I am. That is because I have more than 40 years of movie-watching experience in all, and I have actually directed short-films and I know how movies work. Also, I listen to test audiences to hear what people are unhappy about, and I take many of their comments and suggestions into account. It doesn't mean I always do things the way they'd prefer, but I consider everyone's comments.

On the whole, I probably have more film-making experience in general than most professional directors and a vast array of experience with a very wide variety of genres.

As you see, I took the liberty to alter your comment slightly and replace the context of it with another one, to illustrate how ridiculous this comment reads. Would you take this person's opinion on the latest Scorsese movie, in which they claim they know more than him about his movie, seriously after reading that?

I haven't heard much about it but all the fandoms are pretty busy right now.

I imagine once they pull out a Kingmaker-like Adventure Path for 2e (or Starfinder, for that matter) you'll get more talk about 2e. Big old interesting things to draw attention for a bit of time, and Kingmaker's popular enough to do it. Some of the people who come to look will stay, others will find something else. Keep doing it and you've got a fandom.

Numbers don't matter, people will believe what they want, and online you'll always hear more people complaining than saying they like it. Give it some time to stretch and grow.

Well, isn't Kingmaker being released for PF2 next year? The crowd-funding campaign for that one was very successful if I remember correctly and the PC game might also have attracted some new people.

As for Jester David, it's literally impossible to argue for, against or with his position, considering how he has set up his argument. So I guess it's best to leave it alone instead of harping on faulty logic.

Lanathar wrote:

I believe most game stores are hostile to paizo due to pdf policy (and potentially other factors). So sadly I don’t think there are going to be many game store clerks helping with that

As an example the Forbidden Planet in Southampton U.K. does not stock a single pathfinder item. There was a brief spell when it had war for the crown and return of the Runelords books but I guess they didn’t sell well. And apparently that was driven by a particular manager (who might be gone now)

Interesting. I haven't had that experience with stores, but I note that D&D gets primary shelf space because its a mover, then you see the Pathfinder books, then there's Shadowrun, Vampire, and Warhammer, a pile of one off system books which are fun to page through. Most gaming stores I go to end having most of their shelf space dedicated to Warhammer though, because Warhammer keeps game stores in business.

Yeah, I think that problem is somewhat overblown. It's not like other RPGs don't offer PDFs, with one glaring exception obviously. I bet most stores are more favourable towards WotC mostly because of MtG and not because of D&D. At this point, you don't even have to go to a gaming store anymore to buy a system but many large bookstores even have them on the shelves, so I doubt that it is a primary income source for gaming stores anyway.

I also wanted to add another potential pool for PF2 to draw upon: Those who have left PF1 in general for whatever reason. That's where I'm coming from.

I have just clicked on warhorn and PF2 is about 80% of PF1 and more than starfinder

Not knowing much about warhorn I don’t know how much that shows!

I have never heard of "Warhorn" before and I'd say I'm quite entrenched in this hobby. What kind of platform is it and who is it targetted at?

Because someone might come up with an argument that shows me what I am missing, or something so good I can look passed it. On roll20, not had that experience, sadly, have tried multiple games, best was an Eclipse Phase game that lasted 8-10 months.

Sorry, but you seem to hate many of the design choices with a passion, so I doubt that changing your opinion or perspective on this is even possible.

Go4TheEyesBoo wrote:

Monk 1 (for AC)/Paladin 2 (for smite+saves), Wizard 1 (for Mage Armor + Shield + Enlarge + other utility), Fighter 4 (for Weapon Spec), Barbarian 1 (for fast movement),

This character in particular sounds like a grab bag of mechanics for the mechanics.

To achieve the same in play result in PF2, considering it's a different system, I'd recommend fighter with wizard MC, picking up multitalented if human for either champion or barbarian to achieve the same flavor.

No, you can't dip into several front loaded classes to achieve an all over the place character that still works somehow. I'm not convinced that's a loss.

Yeah, that looks like a theorycrafted build to me not like something that any character would organically develop into, especially when considering it requires at least 1 or 2 diametrically opposed alignment changes to get there.

when the group I have moves on, it will be pf2 or nothing. I have tried Roll20 etc, they fizzle, and finding games for anything that isn't 5e is hard enough for current systems on there, let alone abandoned ones, having a group last more than a few sessions is also nigh miraculous.

And how will complaining about a system that you don't like solve that? Also, that is highly hyperbolic and not the case if you put in some time to find the right game with the right people. I've run and played in multiple games and campaigns that lasted for about a year and that in a time-zone that's not exactly primetime for RPG communities.

But despite their comments to the contrary earlier, it does sort of feel like Tremaine is coming into this looking for reasons to not like Champions and PF2. They seem to be going out of their own way to frame things in the worst way possible in order to denigrate them and... I mean it's no wonder you aren't having fun if that's your approach to things.

Agreed. I might be mistaken but I think that they are the same person who said they didn't like the 3-action economy. If you dislike the fundamentals of a system to such a degree than it's easier to look for other options instead of complaining about the one you don't like. If you don't like PF2 then that's fine, there is still PF1 and 3.X around if you prefer those or one could check out the hundreds of other options that are out there.

. You punish evil by proactively striking it down before it acts, not reactively mitigating its effects, innocents are saved when the creatures body is rotting meat, so strike with swift and sure judgement, in righteous fury, the reactions are the opposite of that. If they were an option I could just avoid them, but they aren't, we are stuck with them, and their aren't ways to build out of them. Hint: to me Ragathiel is the perfect holy warrior.

This is a very narrow view of Paladins and Champions and doesn't even fit or describe most LG deities in the Pathfinder pantheon. Redemption and forgiveness play a major role in most of the LG faiths, so just going out to strike down anything evil is a rather simplistic and one-dimensional way of playing Champions. Yet nothing in the rules stops you from playing that way, even throwing in some free reaction attacks if you position well in a combat.

My personal resistance to 2e is it suffers from the same bad design decision that both DnD4 and and DnD5 took. Under the d20 System and derived games, the attitude was here's the mechanics, make the character you want to play. Under PF2/DnD4/DnD5 the decision was made to be here's the characters we, the designers, want you to play, you're not allowed to customize them; be happy with that. The decision to remove multiclassing (feat classing wasn't multiclassing in DnD4, and it still isn't multiclassing in PF2), class locking most mechanics, and designers start saying nonsense like "niche-protection" fully cemented that opinion.

Sometimes I'm really baffled by people's opinions. I don't see how 3.X's and PF1's multiclassing gives us that much more freedom and liberates us from the designers' choices. If the old multi-classing was that great then why did we need hundreds of prestige classes or respectively hundreds of archetypes to access and replace class features? And how are archetypes that different from the current multiclassing of 4e and PF2? You just swap out class abilities... Also doesn't 5e literally use pretty much the same multiclassing as we were used from PF1 (haven't touched 5e for a couple of years)? So why throw it in with 4e and PF2?

You cannot retrain your class in PF2. Multiclass works much much better in PF2 than in PF1 in most aspects but not this one.

One what started life as a Wizard but soon dropped it all and dedicated themselves to the fighting science are best built as Fighter with MCD in Wizard. But that does not fit the character's narrative.

I think this can still be accomplished when looking for solutions outside of class-levels: Starting out with the acolyte background then taking the fighter and picking up some magic powers here and there along the way.

But overall, I never bought this as a good reason to keep PF1 multiclassing around anyway. Yes, in theory, this sounds like an interesting character development but in practice, this resulted, at least in my games, with frustrated players because their characters were hamstrung compared to the other characters. So if that's all you gain from PF1 multiclassing compared to PF2 multiclassing than I'd say that's not worth the trade-off.

I'm concerned that rules-lite and more unique systems might make it more difficult to "knock it out of the park" and have a really successful campaign. We haven't had a long term campaign in nearly 2 years, and many players are getting frustrated and moving on to other gaming groups. And for me, it's really frustrating because I basically created an entire campaign world, mapped numerous cities, and put more time into this campaign than anything I've done in years. And it didn't last 3 months.

I would encourage you to look up Open Legend. It's a classless generic RPG system, so it can fit most settings but has more meat on the bone than Fate for example, but never reaches PF1 or GURPS levels of complexity. I think it might fit you and your group well.

Otherwise, I would also recommend when worldbuilding to start small, especially if you are not sure that the campaign will last because often starting with a village is good enough to run the beginning of a campaign. If you have already established a world or a continent then consider only presenting the most relevant parts of it to newcomers because in my experience new players often get overwhelmed when they have to dig into something big and massive without knowing where to start. So doing a little parsing for them often goes a long way.

Gorbacz wrote:

- very rules-loose narrativist games (FATE, Dungeon World, Amber) where rules take a second seat and a lot depends on how do players and GM craft the narrative collaboratively and where imagination is literally the limit (within some bounds) with HOW you describe your Wizard using clockwork time magic determining what it does;

Thanks, I will try these next. From the description it sounded more like what we are looking for.

For the game world it doesn't have to and should not be a simulation. Game of thrones is also not a simulation, just to give a positive example of a good fantasy framework.

I will throw in Open Legend as a recommendation for a system that might fit more your sensibilities and ideas what an RPG should be like better.

In terms of fantasy worlds, it sounds like you just prefer low-fantasy settings instead of high-fantasy ones, so you and your group should probably stay away from those if they impede your enjoyment of a campaign so strongly.

Quote:

Being barely able to cast your spells is not a plus and I bet a vast majority of players want to play characters who are good at their speciality, hence the requirement.

There's no casting requirement for spells in PF2 and given how proficiency works, your attack spells are gonna kinda suck anyways.

A wizard interested in primarily using buffs and utility honestly doesn't need int at all.

Though I don't think the mainstat requirement is necessarily problematic. For me the frustration is more from the dual stat ones that certain classes have.

The point about spellcasting was a reference to PF1 on my part, as the previous answer was about being able to do something PF1 and not in PF2.

I'm rather agnostic to having one of the mainstats as a prerequisite. I can see the upside to reducing it to only one of them but I also see the downside in making it too easy to access the martial Dedications. I'm only opposed to eliminating all prerequisites because then multiclassing feels cheap.

When I learned that 2E wasn't going to be backwards-compatible with 1e adventure paths, I decided not to bother with it.

Now that I've actually read the finished product, I'm madly in love and will put up with the extra work, because I know my players will have a great time with 2E!

I have stopped playing PF1 a couple of years ago and I have to say the APs still offer great value even when I haven't been running them. I'm now running book 1 of Tyrant's Grasp in PF2 and the only thing that has been a slight headache to convert is the treasure and loot.

I think that shows that keeping an open mind and not judging beforehand is beneficial in most cases.

1) There are plenty of skill feats which gives only a slight customization if compared to general/ancestry/Class ( consider also that the skills one are the lower tier, followed by ancestry/general and at last class ). Class Feats customize your gameplay, while ancestry/general/skill just ( from slightly to noticeable ) enhance your gameplay. More class feats would be good ( which could simply mean not wasting the first multiclass lvl for nothing ).

The problem about ranks is that Everybody will go for legendary, but that' a skill issue not necessarily related to the multiclassing itelsf. Guess we don't even have to argue that everybody will go +8, with maybe lvl 15 skill feat. This only because will be stupid do the opposite ( even if you are allowed to do it ).

2) Not multiclassing to warrior, but starting as warrior. Definitely too convenient.

3) If you can start a character, let's say mage, with 12 int, then you can be a mage with 12 int. That's why ( not only pathfinder ofc, but the previous versions too ) it's stupid to lock a choice behind a stat wall.

1) I kinda disagree with your fundamental assessment here that skill feats offer less impactful customisation than other feats. In combat? Sure. But outside of encounter mode, these are more often rather impressive.

2) I'm sorry but I still don't see how combat flexibility interacts with multiclassing, so maybe you could give an example of how you think this would play out?

3) I find this argument a bit far-fetched honestly. Yes, you could play a bad wizard in PF1 but I wouldn't hold that up as a positive. Being barely able to cast your spells is not a plus and I bet a vast majority of players want to play characters who are good at their speciality, hence the requirement. Multi-classing into a champion to get heavy armour proficiency, just to find out later that it's too heavy for you isn't good design in my book.

I like multiclassing.

However, there are a few issues in this system:

1) Too many skill talents, which does not enhance enough the gameplay ( while a class feat does ). They could allow us to swap them for general/ancestry feats, for example. Or giving us the possibility to chose an extra rank for skills ( 3 legendary ranks per class but rogue is silly. It also "forces" you not to lvl different tiers to expert/master instead. ).

2) Fighter "flexibility" needs to be totally reworked. Having a talent boost is simply broken in terms of multiclasses. There shouldn't be a class better than others in multiclassing ( leaving apart the fact that, if it would exist, it shouldn't be the fighter ).

3) Stupid requirements. A warrior shouldn't necessarily be both str and agi, to make an example. Requirements should be imo removed, to allow players to create whatever character they want.

That said, there's a nice customization, but you have to deal and limit it because those "unclear" reasons.

1) I don't see how any of this point ties into multiclassing, but I guess Skill Feats are less potent than most General and Ancestry Feats by design, so being able to swap them out for these other options would downgrade them to the lesser choices. Same rationale goes for skill upgrades and "Legendary" would become much to common.

2) I'm a bit at a loss here. Do you mean "Combat Flexibility"? If so, I don't see how that feat would be too powerful when multiclassing, especially since you don't even get access to that ability when taking the Fighter Dedication.

3) I think the requirements are fine because it isn't all that difficult to get 14s in many different stats, especially if you don't specialise too hard in one stat. I disagree strongly with removing the requirements all together because that encourages and makes dipping into the dedications to get quite a few features (skill trainings plus additional abilities or proficiencies) way too easy and accessible. But not only from a balance standpoint do I find it a bad idea but also in terms of flavour because the flavour then clashes with the functionality of a dedication.

I think it's slightly more complicated than that, given WotC's support for DM's Guild - the Core books aren't available in PDF (in deference to brick and mortar stores, I believe) but there is a host of PDF material out there. The two companies have quite different models in terms of distribution of both core material and support products.

The DM's Guild is more than just a 3PP marketplace, given there's a lot of support products featuring Wizards' IP (and that the publishers give up a lot of their rights to what they release there). It's kind of quasi-3PP, really - more of a hybrid.

Agreed, not only are the two companies' distribution methods vastly different, but also their business models. The only disagreement I have with your post is the part about no PDFs being available due to WotC catering to FLGS and bookstores. I don't know if WotC is saying that, but I doubt that to be true because their business model seems to be very much about licensing stuff out to other companies to sell them online and PDFs would undercut that part of their business. And PDFs are more easily pirated and distributed online, so it might also an anti-pirating measure.

The question didn’t come up because PF1 didn’t set the same expectations. By having a fairly traditional and generic core and then 3 years for that core to be pretty firmly established, in my experience most people didn’t stray very far from that core. Contrast that with PF2e...

I can't contrast your experience with your perception of PF2, especially since mine was very different and considering that I find Goblins rather banal and not all that standing out in a fantasy setting.

How about this: if next year’s APG has an iconic that is of an ancestry not from the core Rulebook will people concede that PF2e is setting different expectations with its ancestries compared to PF1e? Because I just went through all the PF1e iconics and with the exception of villain iconics they were all core Rulebook races.

I don't understand what you are trying to get at with "expectation of ancestries" and I find your parameter to measure that also strange. Why would the iconics be a good way to measure this? Maybe Paizo has decided to use a dartboard to decide all further iconic configurations, for all we know. Or maybe having the rule books tie directly into the setting, unlike in PF1, opens up the audience to being more tuned into the setting, thus not needing to stick to dwarves, elves, and "hobbits", to keep the representation generic.

And if they are all core ancestries I will concede they are not pushing new ancestries like D&D 4e did.

Does that sound fair? :D

I have no clue how 4th edition ties into this or how that matters.

SteelGuts wrote:

- Goblins are core, and don't have the Uncommon tag. Which make no sense at all in Golarion or in many universes. This is a just a mascott thing to sell more. You have as many chance to cross the path of a Goblin adventurer than a Halfling adventurer.

You've hit the nail on the head. Goblins and the fact they're going to include more and more ancestries in most player facing books they produce is going to result in a Golarion where most players are not human and are not one of the classic races. We're going to have lizardfolk, tengu, ratfolk, catfolk, etc. That wasn't how my PF1e group played in Golarion and it's not how I like to play in Golarion.

So given two choices: (1) ban most ancestries from the game or (2) play in a different setting where goblins make sense I've gone with option 2.

I'm curious, what your group will be doing long term? Are you just going to suck it up and allow goblins? Ban goblins and allow most monstrous ancestries (orcs, lizardfolk and anything else Paizo comes up with)? Or are you going to ban most ancestries?

I find this sentiment rather peculiar and slightly baffling, especially for people who are familiar with Pathfinder and Golarion. The Halfling comparison is actually a really good one, as being a Halfling adventurer in about half of Golarion is about as feasible as being a Goblin adventurer. Cheliax, Irrisen, Isger, Qadira, and Taldor, are all nations with considerable Halfling populations living mostly in slavery, so should Halflings also be made into an Uncommon ancestry?

I think common sense should solve these problems quite easily: Ask your GM "Hey how does ancestry X work in campaign Y that takes place in Z?". Even the player's guides mention which ancestries play well in that AP and deviating from these recommendations should always spark a small exchange between a player and a GM. No need to ban anything, but a GM can always just say "keep this idea for another campaign because it doesn't fit in here".

This problem isn't new though, as others have already pointed out, as PF1 tons of much weirder options than goblins. How have you dealt with those, when they came up during your PF1 games? The answer to that question will probably provide you with a good guideline on how to handle them in PF2.

About two years ago I stopped GMing because I've just had enough of it and my players couldn't muster the time anymore to really delve into their characters the way you need to in PF1 (I didn't like 5e though, so ended up with a small indie game called Open Legend).

Back then I had a similar decision to make as you: Keep my AP subscription, even if I don't run games anymore in that world and don't use the system anymore, or ditch the subscription? Honestly, the answer was quite easy for me: I kept the subscription active most of the time unless I didn't like the premise of an AP. There are still so many valuable assets (NPC art, monster art, maps, etc.) and ideas (encounter designs, plot threads, storylines, villains, etc.) in there that I never regretted still being subscribed. Having tons of ideas at my hands when I might run out of them is invaluable to me.

I understand though that converting or translating stuff to PF1 is quite difficult (one of the reasons I stopped GMing it) but, at this point, PF1 has so much material that reskinning monsters or using previous material as inspiration should be a decent option, so I found there is always a use for having unused adventures lying around.

I think the general answer to your question is: Yes. But I disagree with the framing of the question, as I would rather say that the rituals are devices and goals that need to be worked towards and earned by the player characters. The end result still stays the same though.

Kind of. Sound is a thing, Rog can get Invis pretty easily too and is better than Wiz by far if so, at hi levels See Invis is super common on monsters (etc.)

"Of course, the subject is not magically silenced, and certain other conditions can render the recipient detectable (such as swimming in water or stepping in a puddle). If a check is required, a stationary invisible creature has a +40 bonus on its Stealth checks. This bonus is reduced to +20 if the creature is moving."

This stealth bonus eclipses most rogue builds for a solid number of levels, so yeah the sound part is in most cases negated by this bonus. And rogues getting wands or whatever to get invisibility only illustrates the problem further, in my opinion. You needed to get the caster's tool to keep up, so that does not minimise the discrepancy between martial characters and casters.

I seriously wish people would stop saying things like "the caster invalidated the rest of the party".

That statement is just blatantly false, and comes from either theorycrafting or poor DM'ing. But it was taken at face value and now look at wizards.

I guess I'm a poor GM then: Invisibility makes any character sneak better or at least on par with any rogue. Shape Stone/Wood creates breakthroughs in walls or doors better than any Fighter or Barbarian could ever punch through. Save or Suck spells can end encounters quicker than any martial ever could etc.

So I don't see how the previous statement is false.

As a GM, I like the idea of Rarity, but I have to admit I haven't looked at the execution yet. This makes homebrewing, switching settings up and adding new elements much easier in my opinion, as you can introduce new elements and have them be exclusive to a region or have them be earned by the characters.

This turns brewing up and handing out spells as rewards also a compelling option for a GM, as it can clearly be tied to the events and narrative of that campaign. You could even design spells that become uncommon after a certain amount of time as they spread within that region, like for example bringing back Rune Magic in New Thassilon.

But I guess there is a strong divide here between players who don't like to be restricted and GMs, who probably have more of an eye on narrative and story implications.

NOTE2: I know this is a lot asking, but it would be great if some of the designers of the game could explain their reasoning for this much restrictiveness and weak sauce of the system.

Ah yes, I think calling it weak sauce will certainly encourage and incentivise the designers to respond to your comments and questions.

The_Hanged_Man wrote:

sherlock1701 wrote:

Oh, and the minion trait is chock full of logical holes and means that nobody would fear powerful necromancers anymore, since only 3 of their undead could do anything at a time. Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle. Just 3 at a time, and they're always slow and oblivious.

You do realize that monsters don’t need to follow the same build rules as PCs right? The rules exist for PCs to facilitate flow and reasonable balance at the table. Sauron the necromancer can still control all of his ringwraiths just fine.

No, that's unreasonable. If the NPC can do it, the PC should be able to just as well, and vice versa. Otherwise it's unfair to one side.

And you may have missed this, but I'm against separate build rules for monsters, so...

Not this again... I've just looked the Great Wyrm Red Dragon up and I'd like you to point me to the parts in the rules where player characters get 39 natural armour, frightful presence, Manipulate Flames and Melt Stone.

Transporting a building from one location to another or determining the number of casts needed to build structures, to name a couple.

I think most people don't care how many people it takes to build a house or whatever, which is why there were more abstractions being used for this in the kingdom-building rules.

It was always used in every game I've played in without issues, across several groups in the past 8 years.

And no, it doesn't allow for easier judgement calls. Without any correlation between Bulk and reality, you have no way of knowing what hte Bulk of something should reasonably be. In reality a longsword was similar in size and slightly heavier (2 lb vs 2.5 lb) than a falchion, yet here a falchion has twice as much Bulk as a longsword. Then consider than an unconscious person has about 8 bulk. They're really only 16-20 lb?

Mind you, I rewrote the equipment tables for PF1 to use more realistic weights and item names (not to mention making the terrible weapons useful), but this seems rather difficult for PF2 (for the weights, obviously names are easy enough).

I'm sorry, but again I think less than 1% of this player base cares about the rather pedantic difference of 1/2 lb. being falsely represented by bulk. Most people will probably just ask themselves: "Is it about as heavy or unwieldy as X from the chart?" If, yes then it's about the same as on the chart. That's good enough for most people who don't take the time to rewrite all of the item tables for realism because most people don't care that much about realism. If it doesn't break the verisimilitude of the world then most people won't care.

It means I sometimes have no idea how something will work before I attempt it. I am not a fan of uncertainty. Or in 5e as a specific case, there are not very solid rules on crafting magic items, and whether you can do so at all is entirely up to the GM (let alone buying them)

Yes, the crafting rules of 5e are lacking, to say the least, because magic items aren't integrated well into 5e. But we are playing a game of rolling dice to determine outcomes, so not liking uncertainty in your games feels rather bizarre to me.

I noticed this as well, and if a player brought it up I would allow it.

This "cheeze" is the spice of life that made me love Pathfinder 1 over other editions, so it warms my heart to know there are nuggets of this in Second.

I agree, especially if the picture you are selling with this isn't a person playing the fiddle, but instead being a brute on a war drum or something along those lines, because here the flavour fits the mechanics.

No, it's definitely worse. How do you determine the bulk for something not on the table? What's the bulk of a building? How does that interact with the support of its foundation? How are we supposed to calculate volumes from specific gravity with only Bulk as a guideline? These are all things that come up frequently at my tables.

I'm not sure that I've ever heard before needing the weight of a house or its foundation, but I'm quite sure PF1 didn't provide weights for houses or foundations either. Now I'm rather interested to hear in what context these things came up frequently in your campaigns because at this point I'm not sure I was playing the same game as you.

On top of that, how can it possibly be harder to carry one falchion than 19 hatchets? What about the fact that a longbow is just as hard to carry as an un-worn suit of studded leather strapped to your back? 9 daggers have no mass until you throw a 10th one into the pile. None of this makes sense.

It's called making abstractions and I'm glad Paizo went this way because I find this rather intuitive and allows for easier judgement calls at the table, as it is less granular than having to google weights of whatever wasn't listed in the books. Simplifying this whole weight and encumbrance thing was also necessary so that people would actually use it, as I'm willing to bet that less than 10% of all games would never look at this again after character creation.

No, lack of rules often leads to 'you can't do that', or getting a very lackluster/unsatisfying ruling. Codified rules as they are in PF1 are excellent, and provide mechanical context for doing just about anything at any time.

I think this explains why you are in opposition to most people on the boards here because most more narrative-focused, rules-light systems, like let's say Fate, actively encourage the GMs to say yes. If that isn't your experience than I think that differs from most other people here, which why many people are wishing to put back more power in the hands of the GM, as most of us have realised since the days of 3.X that the GM/player relationship isn't an adversarial one, but a collaborative one and that saying yes leads to more fun for everyone. I think the whole idea of "Yes and..." has spread a lot and has changed ttrpgs significantly.

Shrug. I don't think that is at all accurate.

I seem to find that the "natural progression" theme is just a red herring constantly thrown up to focus the conversation on hypotheticals and avoid discussing the issues with the real game that does exist.

WotC has demonstrated that you can produce a game that fragments your base AND you can produce a game that pulls your base together. So, clearly, it is not unavoidable.

But, in the end, it seems we are in agreement that "alienating a chunk of prior fanbase" happened [I certainly do and you are labeling it "inevitable"] and I presume you agree that avoiding would be preferable.

Yes, I think it was inevitable and there are people who didn't enjoy the release of 5e (a minority obviously). 5es biggest success wasn't to pull together the base, but to expand it massively.

Also, I don't get the red herring part, but I see plenty of people here discussing and critiquing the game, while a couple of people derail discussions with the same talking points of what they perceive to be "the issues with the real game", without contributing anything of substance.

I might be wrong, but I think they are included in the Gamemastery Guide.

But all that aside, I'm comfortable sitting on the limb labeled "alienating a chunk of prior fanbase is not good".

I think this was inevitable. I doubt there is a way Paizo could have done a new edition without alienating some people. From reading the boards, I get the feeling that the "I wanted a natural progression/evolution" people, feel alienated right now, as they wanted what PF was to 3.5 from the new edition. This would have raised a lot of questions though for why even release a new edition and in the process alienating people who were looking for a change and not more of the same.

I think this was already in RotRl, but it's been quite some time since I've played that. I think it was overshadowed by the more destructive tendencies of the Goblins, liking Fire, hating horses, etc.

Yes, this thread is dangerously close to provoking edition warfare. But money is tight, so I want to know if it is worth it.

Why not ask this instead from the get go? Because I don't think the other question will provide you a good answer, especially since you didn't provide any criterea for what you mean with "better". I think PF2 is "better" because it is much easier to run. Another person might find PF1 "better" because of all the choices available.

Defining what you are looking for and what you mean with "better" will raise the chances that you'll get usable and meaningful feedback. If you don't, it will probably devolve into why rarities are a plight, or something like that.

The spell casting tradition of DND comes from Jack Vance's Dying Earth fiction series. Gary Gygax was a huge fan. The mechanics of the magic system in Dying Earth has since been named "Vancian Magic". As per the wikipedia article on Dying Earth:

"Magic in the Dying Earth is performed by memorizing syllables, and the human brain can only accommodate a certain amount at once. When a spell is used, the syllables vanish from the caster's mind."

In essence, the act of casting the spell steals memories from your brain, and you must re-memorize them.

That's all well and good, but the setting never takes that step to establish that connection. You might as well say that depleting resources is very Dark Sun and thus Golarion emulates that.

I guess, what I'm trying to say, is that I hope that PF2 creates a much more robust system for magic in the setting of Golarion because I found that part always a bit bland. Splitting the Spell lists is a good first step, now I hope we see more archetypes and ways to differentiate the different schools and forms of magic. Having an archetype for Runelords or rather Rune Mage would be great for example, because so far, a Runelord is just a powerful Wizard, while they could be so much more.

[i]"An associated mechanic is one which has a connection to the game world. A dissociated mechanic is one which is disconnected from the game world.

This is interesting, as the whole spell slot system essentially has no narrative rooted in the setting, especially the Arcane traditions in PF1 terms, or am I missing something?

For a Cleric, I could see the justification of a Gods just saying "Hey, you've had enough for one day, slow down", but for other cases, that doesn't really fit. Have we accepted that running out of spells is necessary disconnected mechanic to balance spells and limit resources?

I don't know what to expect from non-lethal damage in PF2, as it never came up during my Playtest experience, but I would be glad if they got rid of having to track non-lethal damage, as it created two health pools, which was unnecessarily confusing and complicated. Non-lethal damage as a player was generally only relevant if you wanted a monster or NPC to survive after an encounter, which can be easily handled by a GM in the situation without having the need of tracking two different health bars.

I think QuidEst hits the nail on the head: There are some fundamental paradigms that give D&D, and by proxy Pathfinder, a distinct feeling and most of these that you listed fall under these paradigms, in my opinion.

I certainly can't speak for the devs, but one of the stated goals was to make Pathfinder simpler, while still giving it the feeling of Pathfinder, and if you start removing all or most of these, than you might as well be playing Fate or CoC or whatever else you might want to throw into this category, because they are quintessential mechanics of PF. And while I'm not a fan of all these mechanics, I recognise that they are too interwoven with the fabric of the game or the setting. For example, I dislike alignment, but removing it from the game would raise a whole lot of questions on Golarion, which was another no-go, as isn't supposed to change greatly from 1st edition to PF2.

I'm generally excited for PF2. I quit GMing PF around 2 to 3 years ago, as I found preparing for sessions just too cumbersome and tedious. So I've switched with my group of friends to a leaner system, that's easier on me as the GM, but still allows for a lot of customisation for the players.

Anyway, in that same time span I've joined an online group with rotating games and so we ended up playing some of the Playtest when it dropped. And while the Playtest wasn't always fun (having whole turns of no one hitting anything and new rules every two weeks, just to name a couple), at least I was liking the direction we are going in. The new action economy, streamlining classes, to allow more adaptability and modality between classes, and independent monster rules (Hooray!) simplified the system, while the degrees of success added a welcomed layer of complexity.

Overall since my experience with the Playtest, I actually could see myself GMing Pathfinder again, and that makes me really happy, as I want to return to Golarion for some more adventures and I always love to bring back PCs with previous campaigns and do callbacks to these campaigns.

Crayon wrote:

They weren't.

I strongly disagree. Perhaps traits weren't significant choices, but they were nonetheless meaningful since they could fundamentally change what sorts of things your character would/was able to do.

I mean if traits weren't meaningful choices in PF1, then feats weren't really either. "Student of Philosophy" is liable to change a character's focus a lot more than "Weapon Focus".

I think giving this trait as an example is a bit fallacious, because for every "Student of Philosophy" you can find a dozen traits that read "become proficient with skill X" or "gain +1-3 to Y". So I'd argue that 90% of the traits aren't as impactful as your example. You could still say that those 90% are meaningful, but I guess I have a different idea of what that term means in this context.

To me meaningful customisation means that the choices reflect part of a character's flavour or help to show a character's progression and development. That doesn't mean the choices have to be flavourful, but they have to be at least impactful enough to create a noticeable difference between your character and a similar character that made a couple different choices. So to me that eliminates most Traits from PF1 and most Skill Feats from PF2.

Rangers as the absolute best at perception is interesting, but it is a narrow line to walk with the rogue being the iconic master of traps. That is part of why the snares/traps ranger felt like a bad direction for the ranger to jump into for the playtest, because it was pushing it much closer to something that "feels" like it is the rogue's domain. Someone much earlier in the thread pointed out that maybe the "Leadership" role could be a unique ranger niche, with a focus on improving the rest of the party's ability...

I could get behind that premise: A tactician who uses their information gathering to enhance the capabilities of their companions. It is certainely a niche that is still unoccupied at this point and is a feature that I could see other classes wanting to multiclass into, depending on the narrative a character is going for.