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Divergently, I would like to see a more modular Witch class chassis.

Prepared caster, yes. Options to have their "spellbook" be either a Familiar, a Cauldron, or a Tome.

And Patron determines Tradition. I could argue equally for an Arcane, Divine, Occult, or Primal Witch.

Okay, maybe not Divine...

If you're an arcane witch with a tome, why are you not a wizard? Besides, if you want to be a wizard with hexes, you can multiclass witch. A spellbook witch would be completely redundant.

Again, the issue with prepared anything rather than prepared occult for a witch, is that they'd step on the wizard, druid, and cleric's toes. Hexes mean little in terms of mechanical difference when you can just multiclass to get them.

I currently run Eberron using Pathfinder 1e, and the system is fantastic for it. I'd say it's an even better than D&D 3.5, because of how much pulpy stuff that's built into the system. I'm planning on making a Pathfinder 2e conversion of Eberron as soon as I get my hands on the D&D 5e sourcebooks. I'm also playing a Magaambyan wizard in a Pathfinder conversion of Savage Tides, which not only converts the game into the Pathfinder system but also into the Golarion setting.

I also pillaged the advantage/disadvantage system from D&D 5e instead of percentile dice and circumstance bonuses/penalties. It makes a lot of things so much easier, and it's not like the roll twice take better/worse mechanic doesn't already exist in Pathfinder.

Prepared int-based occult caster, using your familiar as a spellbook. Hexes will work like bard compositions. Some of them are cantrips, some of them are focus powers, and some of them are rider effects on other hexes or class spells. You get 1 focus hex spell and 1 hex cantrip at level 1 depending on what patron you choose, and you can get more hexes from your patron's list through witch class feats.

Patrons would also grant a bonus spell known for each spell level, often taken out of other tradition's lists, and would impose anathema. I'm wondering if patron choice would limit (or at least inform) your familiar choices too.

It really depends on HOW the rules differ.

Transitioning from 3.5 to Pathfinder or even Pathfinder 1e to 2e isn't a big deal, because tone and feel of the game stays relatively the same. The way combat turns work differs for example doesn't matter to me, because turn based combat is an abstraction of the narrative anyway, which of course is real time. The mental images a player gets of how combat happens will remain the same as long as the narrative descriptions remain the same. Same goes for different spell names; the change from "cure light wounds" to "heal" cast at level 1 is irrelevant because nobody in character says any of those words.

I actually feel like converting from 5e to Pathfinder or vice versa is quite a bit more jarring, because 5e FEELS different from Pathfinder, due to the fundamental difference in how power levels are balanced. If I convert a d&d 5e game to pathfinder 2e I'd seriously consider removing the +level to proficiency, just so I can keep the same gritty tone that comes from bounded accuracy.

So to me it depends on whether or not the two systems can be used to tell the same story. If the story I want to tell includes an army of low level soldiers suffering heavy losses to slay a dragon, I would use 5e, because that story is POSSIBLE in that system; if instead I want my story to include a near-invincible dragon that can destroy entire nations, defeatable only by legendary heroes, then I would use Pathfinder instead.

As to more significant class ability changes compared to just renaming spells....do people feel like justifying how a character suddenly learned a new feat every time they level up too? The party wizard now carrying a shield can be explained as "he learned to use a shield". It's as simple as that.

It feels like "your PC intersects the path of a traveling circus" is a vastly looser hook than "your PC is from Kintargo" or "you were visiting Sandpoint on the wrong day" or "you have a prior relationship with a specific Ustalavic academic/noble" (they did this one twice!).

The circus needs lots of different people, after all, and lots of different kinds of people will find "traveling with a circus" to be useful for them.

Not to mention that almost every class can use their skills as a circus performer. Rangers and druids make for great beast trainers, rogues excel as acrobats, wizards, bards, and sorcerers all make for good stage magicians, fighters, monks and barbarians work well as strongmen (or women), and clerics are good fortune tellers. The only classes that take a little big of work are alchemists and champions.

And even if you really don't want to perform, you can still play a guard hired on by the circus to protect them from bandits, wild beasts, and city thugs. That's as "adventurer" as can be.

You do realize that circus performers ARE adventurers, right? Circus troupes travel to a lot of different places to perform, and in a world like Golarion, the wildernesses between cities are dangerous enough that the average troupe has probably defeated (or tamed!) an owlbear or two. Besides, "adventuring" often is a real job in a world like Golarion. In fact if you've read the blog pages on Lost Omens World Guide organizations, like 3 out of 5 of them are "real jobs". Being a hellknight is a full time job, so is being an explorer or archaeologist for the Pathfinder Society, or a professor in the Magaambyan college.

As for city guards, have you never watched a police procedural show? Trust the developers to give you plenty of action. If anything I find "simply adventurers" really hard to run from a DM's perspective, because it often ends up with a party that has nothing in common with each other in terms of background and motivation.

Not every PC needs to be Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, or Nathan Drake. Sometimes they're also Harry Dresden.

You probably wouldn't be punished for it, but Cayden Cailean certainly would not approve.

Buying slaves to free them rewards slavers, because they only care about getting money, not where their slaves are going after they get paid. If a slaver can get enough people to buy his slaves and free them, you're not ending slavery -- you're just turning slavers into kidnappers who demand ransom.

Cayden Cailean wants to see all slavery gone and slavers get rightful comeuppance. He would prefer you use violence or guile against slavers rather than play by their rules.

Have we heard anything from Drop Dead Studios on this topic?

@Bandw2
I'm not exactly sure how your proposed complex fraction system not working illustrates how a point system using integers doesn't work. Again, Dreamscarred Press psionics is extremely popular for a good reason. Plenty of people I've played with found it MORE balanced than 1e Vancian prepared casting, since all their classes cap at approximately tier 2.

What's wrong with a weird looking number? Hit points look like weird numbers all the time anyway. I don't consider having a non-rounded number to be inelegant, nor do I think doing any math on the same scale as getting hit in combat to be inelegant. If someone needs a calculator to calculate their spell points, they'd already use one when taking damage anyway.

Plenty of people have already suggested to prevent nova with a limit on the highest level spells cast. A maximum of 7 or 8 spells of your second highest and above, and a maximum of 3 or 4 of those spells being your highest level, should do the job.

As for spells, I'm OK with using spell prerequisites to balance out the inherent flexibility of spell points. I'm also okay with a progression that allows lowest level spells to be cast for free so as to keep the numbers small.

I just don't feel like homebrewing Spheres from the Scratch. I like it and all, but Drop Dead Studios do have plans to release it for 2e and I'd rather use the official version of their classes.

A question I would ask is, what is the goal of such a redesign? I think a mana pool means less variety in spells cast, as people default to using their strongest stuff all the time so they don't have to keep the rest of their spells in their head space. It encourages 5-minute workday for the same reason. I think stating why you want such a system up front can help when designing it (and help others giving advice or feedback).

I don't like spell slots. I think that resource management for spellcasting is more fun when it's more freeform. I also prefer spell variety to come from creative solutions based on circumstances, rather than enforced by mechanics, especially for a spontaneous caster. It doesn't feel fun when I can't cast a fireball because I've used up "level 3 slots" but I can't sacrifice say, 2 level 2 slots to make it happen anyway. The restriction comes across as arbitrary.

Five minute workday is an issue that's better addressed by having many small enounters and a few large encounters, rather than by spellcasting mechanics.

Feel free to disagree with me, obviously. It's just that from personal experience I had a lot more fun with Dreamscarred Press psionics than I did playing a slot-based caster.

I don't think a point system where you're doing hand math should ever go above 50 points, I would try to rebalance a system where any character has somewhere in the ballpark of their level to twice their level (plus caster stat) spell points to use.

then instead for prepared casters have a number of slots you can fill and the spell levels determine how many slots they use. (and they have to choose what spell level to prepare the spell at, no heightening)

spontaneous caster just has their spells known like normal.

Level + casting stat is actually how Spheres of Magic did it, which usually comes to either freely cast something at half caster level, or spending 1 point to cast at full caster level (or combine different effects).

5e ability boosts give +2 to one ability score, and 5e feats give +1 to an ability score and a special power. The special powers gained from feats in 5e are also quite strong, so in that way I'd equate them to Pathfinder's class feats.

I suggest letting characters give up two ability boost for a class feat, or one ability boost for an ancestry, general, or skill feat instead.

The additional problem is that, as mentioned by WatersLethe, Str, Int and Cha are dumpable stats for any class that doesn't depend on them. Any pure caster can get away with 10 or even 8 strength. Int is only useful if you're an Int caster or a skill-focused build, since it doesn't govern how many skills you get to increase, only how many skills you get initially. Cha is fairly pointless for anyone who isn't a Cha caster, since skill proficiency matters more than ability mods and you can become very good at social skills by just putting skill increases and feats in them.

So in order to avoid min-maxing and stat-dumping, you'd also have to make those three stats do more for characters who traditionally don't need them. For example, using Cha for will saves against mind control, while saving Wis for perception and will saves against illusions. I'm not sure how to make Str useful for anyone unlikely to be in melee, or int for anyone who just don't want to start with extra skills. If anyone has suggestions that would be welcome.

Well prepare caster could be required to spend the points when they prepare a spell; Which means once the spell its prepare the points are locked for the day. (Baring some feat to change the spell)

Spontaneous caster lacking this limit could then free use any spell using any spell level.

To prevent nova would be hard, maybe some type of penalty for over casting a spell level above X? Ex: Overcasting spells of top 2 highest spell levels gives a penalty; So if you can normally cast 2 6th lv spells, casting 3 would give you a penalty.
This is similar to mana burn in stories where casting some magic too much harms the body.

I'm not sure if making a prepared caster prepare every spell in a point-based system would be too time-consuming at the table. There's a lot of math being done there, rather than just preparing into slots.

I like the idea of overcasting penalty for highest level spells -- kind of like the Psychic Enervation mechanic of the Wilder class. It should certainly depend on school, and sorcerers would not suffer from it when casting their highest level bloodline spell.

Our first edition games we have been trying a system like this slightly based on the 3.5 spell point system where a level 1 spell is 1 mana, level 2 is 3 mana and level 3 is 5 mana etc. But as you said it had the potential problem of too many higher level spells so we have been trying a split mana for higher level spells. We also gave spontaneous another spell per level usually and restricted prepared to only prepare based on the classes spells per day without adding the attribute. Im not sure how well that would work for 2e yet.

I'm not sure if dividing mana into tiers would be the right way to go, although making spells of different levels fall into different tiers is something I'm considering (see above).

What would be the benefits of a mana pool? If they can cast any spell known at any level they can cast, just let Spontaneous casters like Bards and Sorcerers have all their spells = their Signature spell ability. That's what I did in my house rules.

If you want to let casters change their spell slots, just create a system to combine or break apart slots. For example, you could say that 2 slots can combine into the next higher level slot, and similarly you can break apart a slot into 2 slots of -1 level each. For example, 2 level 1 slots can become 1 level 2 slot, and vice versa.

The thing is, that's indistinguishable from a spell point system, where level 1 slots are 1 point each, level 2 slots 2 point each, level 3 = 4 points, level 4 = 8 points....until you get to level 10 spells that cost 512 points each.

Pathfinder second edition no longer automatically scales spells with level. That means it would be fairly simple to convert it to a psionics-like point-based system, where raising slot level becomes increasing point cost when casting. At least in theory, anyway.

I'm trying to homebrew a mana point system for my home game, because it doesn't seem like there's any news on psionics from Dreamscarred Press at all (seems like they're still working on their Starfinder conversion, so it would take a while).

The challenges here is mostly the distinction between spontaneous and prepared casters, since spontaneous casters would lose their biggest advantage in such a system. A second concern is how to limit higher level spells so they not used to "nova".

Samurai wrote:

so it only seems fair to give Spontaneous Casters a bit of a bonus too.

I don't think you can just disregard the bonus that is spontaneous casting itself. Being able to flexible utilize your spell slots based on the needs of the encounters you run into rather than effectively guess ahead of time is in and of itself a huge boon (and sorcerers get an extra spell per day too).

Universal spontaneous heightening is a significant power boost and while I certainly think it fits the flavor of spontaneous casters a lot better than signature spells, I'm not sure they're mechanically weak enough to actually need either. Throwing an extra feat on top of that too seems like overkill.

I think a good balance between full spontaneous heightening and what we have now is spontaneous undercasting. That is, when you learn a spell you automatically know lower level versions of the same spell, without them taking up space in your spell repertoire.

Plenty of people I've talked to about the subject don't even know that's not how it works by default. The only justification I've seen from the designers on why it works the way it does is some comment about players taking too long during the playtest, which from my experience playing 5e is just flat out nonsensical. No one I've played 5e with (including complete newbies who's never even seen an RPG before) ever had trouble figuring out how to cast the same spell at different levels...

A very VERY minor critique here: it's half-orc not half-ork.

Consider this comment a bump.

I like it. quick and simple. Seems easy to implement.

Though I'd rename Unholy to Profane or Blasphemous instead. That way it isn't defined by being not-holy and is instead it's own thing. Like you haven't call Anarchic, Un-axiomatic.

In that case I'd rename the weapon too. Maybe keep the 1e bonus names of Sacred and Profane instead. Blasphemous wouldn't make sense since you can blaspheme against evil gods just like good ones, and often be punished way more harshly for it in societies devoted to evil gods.

I've also considered doing away with moral or ethical implications completely. Instead of good, evil, axiomatic and anarchic, try radiant, corruptive, crystalline and entropic.

I've actually done this for 1e. Working out a similar system for 2e right now, so tell me how you think.

I renamed all alignment damage to correspond to weapon runes, so they are now holy, unholy, axiomatic, and anarchic damage. They deal full damage to aligned creatures of the opposite alignment, no damage to aligned creatures of the same alignment, and half to everyone else.

An aligned creature is an outsider from an aligned plane, a divine caster who serves a deity from an aligned plane, or a creature descended from an aligned outsider (eg planar scions and divine sorcerers). Aligned mortals count as the same alignment as their deity or bloodline. All other creatures are considered unaligned.

Clerics and champions still have to follow edicts and anathema or lose powers as appropriate, obviously. There still won't be any serial killers getting divine magic from Shelyn, regardless of alignment system used or lack thereof.

So they built a fungus leshy champion hellknight who worships Abadar. Well done, everyone. This is hilarious.

A leshy druid with a leshy familiar. It's leshies all the way down. Please make this happen.

If added, Azlanti would be a heritage of human rather than their own ancestry, and I doubt they'd be written as overpowered this time around.

There are technically Azlanti on another planet. Some of them escaped the fall of Azlant through a portal (not unlike Elfgates) and it might be an interesting plot for some of these to come back to Golarion for whatever reason.

Are mythic rules really necessary in Pathfinder 2e? Pathfinder is an extremely high powered game already. Mythic didn't feel necessary in 1e and I don't feel like it's worth it now either.

I would expect rules for gestalt classes to easily cover the niche of "more powerful than average" heroes. I'd also rather see options for extending the game beyond 20 levels, which should be fairly easy given how modular classes are, rather than trying to balance high level abilities for low level characters.

Both of those options would be automatically supported as more materials are released. The existing mythic rules are pretty much abandoned once it's out, and I hope 2e doesn't create subsystems only to badly maintain them.

No but seriously, isn't that the description of saurians? They are huge dinosaur humanois :P

(should have linked to the page first time around, I kinda forgot that lots of people haven't actually read bestiary 6 since everytime bestiary 6 monster pops up somewhere people think its completely new :'D)

That's..a T-Rex with human arms.

Oh my god.

I'm curious to see if there are feathered lizardfolk, resembling the feathered dinosaurs (eg Ixalan cards).

That would be a super cool heritage!

A mage-knight archetypes that grant better weapon-spell synergy as well as expertise in medium and heavy armors.

Archetype granting animal (or even monstrous) companions with feats focused on improving them.

Archetype focused on various environments -- underwater, darklands, jungle, desert, arctic, the planes, etc. A good way to make sure that everyone in the party can be more or less equally competent at survival and adaptation if the campaign takes place in a unique environment.

Archetypes for transforming into a different creature type, like 1e's corruptions, but without turning a character into an NPC. A good way of playing vampires, lycanthropes, liches, half-golems, etc.

Anywhere but Avistan, but especially Arcadia and Southern Garund.

Also, more queer representation, and unique cultural/Ancestral approaches to gender.

I second unique cultural approaches to gender! I've always thought it would make sense for Gozreh-worshipping cultures to have nonbinary priests that are spiritually both male and female, or even just priests who take on alternating masculine and feminine gender roles (eg. through crossdressing) to emulate their deity.

Many real life animals have fairly unconventional sexual expressions. Off the top of my head I can think of maned lionesses, birds whose primary and secondary sexual characteristics don't line up at all, lizards with 3 types of males, and fish that change sex as they age. I would actually love to see playable ancestries (and creatures in general) based on animals having alternatives to humanoid sexual dimorphism, coupled with a completely different perspective on gender. Purely fantastical creatures could be even more different than that -- Eberron for instance has doppelganger-descended changelings, whose sex at birth barely matters and pretty much all become genderfluid once they master their shapeshifting abilties. I also love how Starfinder has the tri-gender Shirren.

DerNils wrote:

I am ok with Polytheism for the normal guys, but in order to get your Magic powered by them you need to concentrate on one deity. That was always my rationalisation for the one Cleric-One God rule.

Well, sure... for clerics. But there should be ways to access divine power that don't require being beholden to a specific god (indeed divine sorcerers in PF2 and oracles in PF1 and presumably PF2 do this).

Moreover, every version of "divinely empowered thing" (so Champions too) should have a version which is accessible to polytheists, animists, pantheists, shamanistic people, ancestor worshipers, etc. lest we are implying via the mechanics that "sure, lots of people believe lots of different things, but this one thing works the best so it's the one true way."

The main issue with pantheon worship for clerics is that pantheons tend to be composed of gods that all have different alignments and concerns. If I might make an example from a real world pantheon, consider a champion or warpriest following the Greek gods of war. It would be literally impossible to follow the edicts of both Athena and Ares without also committing each other's anathema.

I agree that monolatry or henotheistic worship shouldn't be the only way to handle religion in a setting, but I'm fine with the cleric class working in that manner. Pantheistic or animistic faiths could be better represented by a different divine class, like oracle or shaman.

I am ok with Polytheism for the normal guys, but in order to get your Magic powered by them you need to concentrate on one deity. That was always my rationalisation for the one Cleric-One God rule.

That's pretty much how it works by canon, if I'm not mistaken. The 12 months of the Inner Sea are named after the core gods, which basically means that the average person would treat all of them with more or less some reverence. Good gods are prayed to for help, evil gods are appeased with rituals, and neutral ones can lean either way depending on the situation.

The issue with polytheism is more that we don't quite see definitive descriptions of ethnic pantheons, despite the Inner Sea being described as an incredibly diverse place. We've seen a few, like the Azlanti pantheon, but the Azlanti are...well, dead. Or on another planet. Not exactly all that relevant to 4719 AR Golarian PCs.

Are there rules for removing alignment from games in the GMG? If so, how do those rules work with spells, abilities and other things that directly interact with alignment in a mechanical level?

I've been doing without alignment in my PF1e Eberron and Dark Sun games for years without a hitch, by simply counting all non-outsider creatures as true neutral for all alignment effects. Outsiders have alignments, but I use the weapon rune names for them instead, so it doesn't really have as much of a moral implication. Most celestials are still benevolent, but saying they're "holy" rather than "good" allows a bit more leeway in their actions. And of course, allows for celestials to act as villains without having to make up an excuse.

Although I do wonder if there's a codified variant in the GMG. It would be really useful to be able to point to an official section of the rules.

The neighboring state, by virtue of being a neighbor, is still not one of the "people who live there." And by virtue of being a state exercising territorial claims, is acting colonial.

Put another way, being from the same continent isn't a pass to invade and subjugate peoples.

Why don't the wyverns and air elementals get to be considered indigenous?This is the same problem I had with Ruins of Azlant. The colonialism doesn't go away because you've decided to call your indigenats monsters. Indigenats are always called monsters, or something similar.

Adventuring is a problematic enterprise that cannot be divorced from colonialism, period.

I didn't say the historical claim involves invading indigenous lands. My two paragraphs are meant to be read together. The idea is that it's not colonialism if the people exploring and staking land claims in the jungle both have historical claim to the jungle, AND are not infringing upon any current civilizations, as the jungle-dwelling culture has fallen thousands of years ago leaving only monsters behind.

As for the second point, I personally don't see any monstrous creatures with utterly inhuman psychologies and inherently villainous intents to be a stand in for "indigenous" folks. Ruins of Azlant pits you against aboleths, who actually caused the Azlanti civilization to fall. Hence I don't see any moral issue in killing them and taking their stuff. These aren't innocent creatures who happened to have found a ruin and shacked up in there to build a civilization; these are ancient abominations who hate humanity (and humanoids in general) and are still plotting world domination.

In my example I was running with the idea that the at least some of Shory's flying city-states have fallen to monsters, whether they be invaders or creations meant as living weapons. Again, these aren't the same as an innocent tribe of kobolds who just happened to live there.

For better or worse, players like monsters, and they like slaying monsters for treasure. Everyone has a line to draw for what constitutes as a "monster". Paizo's current stance is that if it's a playable humanoid, it's not a universal monster and can have diverse moralities just like real world humans, but there's no guarantee for the rest. You are free to disagree, of course.

keftiu wrote:

Frogliacci wrote:

Southern Garund is full of ruins and monsters and hazards. You can easily write about it from an explorer's perspective by making the explorers FROM Southern Garund. Magaambyan archaeologists studying Shory ruins and all that.

Yes!

One of my favorite games ever is the old Guild Wars: Nightfall, which did African-inspired fantasy SUPER well, and part of what I liked most about it is that it still had classic sort of pulp-y jungle exploration and archaeology, but undertaken by the native people. I love that approach! People get the genre elements they like without the nasty colonial context that normally buries it.

You can't have pulpy jungle exploration by someone who lives in the jungle, simply because they already live there. You can give your outside explorer a non-white skin, they'll still be an outside and probably thus a colonial messenger.

Jungles can be really, really big. You can have several civilized nation-states bordering that jungle, who all have some degree of historical claim to that jungle, and none of them having idea what's going on deep in there.

And it's not colonialism if the civilizations in that jungle have fallen thousands of years ago, and the things defending these ruins aren't native cultures, but rather monstrous fauna magebred by the fallen civilization that have gone feral. Imagine playing a party consisting of a a Magaambyan wizard, an Ekujae ranger, a Bonuwat water sorcerer, and a Holomog Ganzi amazon-barbarian getting together to clear a crashed Shory sky-city filled with mutant wyverns and fiendish air elementals. Toss in some Rovagug cultists who were Avistani explorers that went insane, and you've fully inverted the trope while maintaining a pulp feel.

Southern Garund is full of ruins and monsters and hazards. You can easily write about it from an explorer's perspective by making the explorers FROM Southern Garund. Magaambyan archaeologists studying Shory ruins and all that.

FYI alchemy in real life has existed since Ancient Egypt. It's definitely not something that only started in the Renaissance.

Greek fire (what alchemist's fire is based on) had its first recorded use in the 600s.

Dark Sun city states are usually based somewhat on Classical Antiquity cultures, so alchemists definitively have a place.

I'd prefer uncommon races be Uncommon & rare races be Rare.

Or some other guideline that emphasizes the variance of availability (or even suitability).

That'll make it easier for GMs to balance what they do or do not want in their games, even on Golarion. Maybe it's just me, but I'd find it odd to meet an Android outside of Iron Gods (or lasers, robots, etc.). Sometimes we want the Tatooine cantina or Witch World feel, yet when we don't, it'd be nice for those choices to be "normal" too.

I actually think this is why many people in this thread are asking to see more planar scions. Planar scions aren't actually all that uncommon, and they have an established place in plenty of Golarion nations-- Qadiran geniekin, Chelish tieflings, Nidalese fetchlings (Kayal), Taldan aasimars, and the Ganzi of Holomog, just as a few examples. Even in places where they're less known, they're extremely easy to fit into any story, since their very nature means that their births can be unpredictable. They fit into a special category of "different, but not too unique" that's perfect for PC heroes.

I'd also like Paizo to focus first on Ancestries that have fleshed out cultures and personalities. Fleshed out within the same release works too (and might be necessary if PF1 only covered them in regional books or APs). I say this coming from Starfinder where at first it was great to have many different races w/ personality and backstory, but the overload of sketched species soon blurred aliens into a smudge. Parties became random costumes plus the token Android Operatives. So please no cardboard Ancestries as filler. Give them roles, not just mechanics. I guess a good rule of thumb is whether Lore about the Ancestry would ever reveal story-relevant knowledge!

Starfinder does have that problem, doesn't it? Flipping through the Alien Archives I can find a huge number of playable species that usually just seem incredibly....random. Nothing that looks particularly iconic to the setting; they just look like a list of checkboxes for "mandatory" alien diversity in your generic space opera. Some of the races in Pathfinder 1e has that issue too, so I'm hesitant to demand any new monstrous ancestries before we get good mechanics and lore support for things that do have a place already, like strix, centaurs, or gnolls.

Catfolk, some sort of wolven-type would be good [not necessarily rougarou, but that's fine too], ratfolk… I obviously have a penchant for animal-people. Honestly, a beast-type ancestry that has claws that do more than a piddly d4 would make me ecstatic.

And whereas I doubt it'll ever happen because I'm sure I'm in a MAJOR minority here, I'd love to play a tanuki and have it be ''rules-legal.''

I'd like to see more yokai ancestries too. We only have tengu and kitsune so far, but kappa and tanuki would be highly welcome. And no...uh...mythologically correct "sacks" on the tanuki, please.

I'd just like to point out that Pathfinder isn't the first setting to make up names that fantasy races use for themselves. D&D had been doing it for ages, and continues the tradition today in 5e.

As for what I'd like to see: more planar scions! While the elemental and outer planes heritages are coming sooner or later, I'd love to see a First World heritage that can be applied to everyone. First edition had fey-themed alternate racial traits, so it's not like it's without precedent.

This is really minor, but I'd like to see fetchling as a common heritage for all ancestries, while keeping the term Kayal for a specific human-descended ethnicity in Nidal. The impression I got from 1e Nidal material is that Nidalese Kayal hate being called fetchlings, but it's more a matter of regional racial tension than something that extends to all shadow-touched humanoids.

Also dragon heritages would fill a niche that we haven't really seen before. We already have class mechanics that are themed around having dragon blood, after all -- but it would be rather restrictive that you have to be a sorcerer or barbarian (or multiclass) to represent being descended from a dragon.

I also think that a single aquatic heritage should cover both gillmen and aquatic elves, and allow for more options. Water halflings, sea dwarves, and amphibious orcs don't yet exist in Golarion....but who says they can't?

I just took a look at my own copy of Nyambe. While the lore and setting is interesting, I'd agree that it doesn't exactly fit the tone of Southern Garund. Nyambe is a LOT less socially or technologically advanced compared to most places in Golarion. PCs are illiterate by default for instance, and complex mechanisms and devices common to Golarion are near non-existent.

I still like how it introduces mechanics for Orisha-worship as a distinctly non-European tradition of magic. I'd love to see something similar in Golarion, considering we know almost nothing about divine powers worshipped in Southern Garund. An Orisha-inspired pantheon of empyreal lords would be pretty neat.

I also own Southlands! Midgard is an amazing setting overall and it deserves more recognition.

I'm super interested in non-European fantasy in general.

Have you ever checked out Nyambe: African Adventures? It's 3.5 OGL, so it's really easy to convert to Pathfinder 1e. You can also easily steal ideas from it for PF2e while waiting for more Mwangi Expanse and southwards content.

I love the Pathfinder setting, though I am not overly fond of the kitchen-sink approach to world design (though it is absolutely necessary for the setting of an rpg system like Pathfinder to be designed in this way).

Golarion is an incredibly crowded world where everything that a player could want to be or interact with has to exist in that world, so there has to be a region recreating each kind of setting someone would want to play in (sci-fi, steampunk, post-apocalypse, jungle, Egyptian desert, pirate seas, etc), every mythological creature ever to be thought of, every kind of magic, etc.

This is again, absolutely necessary for being a core setting - but, in playing a campaign, I prefer a setting that is a bit more realistic and less crowded, hence why I plan to run games in my own setting where I can just have what is necessary and appropriate to the campaign.

I actually see the amount of diversity and weirdness in Golarion to be its strength in worldbuilding. Given how the practice of magic is highly dependent on culture (think about how many real life mythical traditions there are), it only makes sense that the types supernatural strangeness change as you trek across the globe. In addition, different philosophies attract the attentions of different deities, who in turn teach cultures under their patronage even more distinct supernatural traditions.

I would actually find it unrealistic if a setting has the same supernatural creatures on every continent regardless of ecosystem, and the same magical traditions are practiced everywhere regardless of culture. For example, if the magical tradition in your setting is based on European Hermeticism, it would feel way, way more out of place to see a mage from your world's Africa-equivalent invoke the Kabbalah, than it is for them to perform a Vodun ritual.

Have you taken a look at adventure paths? When you specifically limit the story to a single region, the amount of crowdedness goes down significantly.

If we actually look at fantasy fiction and video games, Vancian casting and even spell slots would look strange at best and utterly outdated at worst. Mana point systems make a lot more sense in representing what people usually imagine when they think of mages. Even with mana pools, prepared and spontaneous casters can still be made distinct enough with unique class features and unique spells not on tradition lists (eg. bard compositions and sorcerer bloodline spells).

But that would require an entire change in paradigm. Paizo wants Pathfinder 2e to look like it's still Pathfinder. 3e style casting is kind of an identity of Pathfinder at this point.

That wouldn't work very well, as d&d 5e also allows all spells to be spontaneously heightened, which also isn't available in Pathfinder 2e.

You could theoretically houserule those things, but be mindful that it will significantly boost spellcaster flexibility in general. PF2e had balancing casters and martials as a stated goal, since that disparity is a frequent complaint in 1e.

So if you do that, consider adding some drawbacks as well.

I had sort of an idea for weaving them together. This is by no means fully formed, but I hope to start a discussion on this topic. The core theme of this megacampaign would discovering the Shards of Sin to form the Sihedron, in order to use its power

Start the story with Secrets of Roderick's Cove (book 1 of Return of the Runelords), and run it largely the same. The players discover that the Runelords are awakening, and are sent to further investigate in Magnimar.

Here the story transitions into Shards of Sin, where the PCs join the Pathfinder Society and begins the hunt for the eponymous shards, discovering the shard of Pride. Since the Sihedron Council would not exist yet, it is the Pathfinder Society who task the PCs to travel to Hollow Mountain and investigate, transitioning into It Came From Hollow Mountain.

The next part of the story weaves together Curse of Lady's Night, Asylum Stone, Sins of Saviors, and Runeplague. The PCs find and defeat (later revealed to be rogue) agents of Runelord Shorshen instead of Grey Maidens, discover the Shard of Gluttony in Kaer Maga, and find the Shard of Greed in the dungeon under Sandpoint. Meanwhile they contend with the the agents of Xanderghul, Alaznist, Zutha, and Karzoug in each of the locations they visit.

The PCs can then do Beyond the Doomsday Door and Temple of the Peacock Spirit in whatever order, obtaining the Shard of Envy and defeating Xanderghul, as the first Runelord encountered and slain. They learn from Xanderghul that the Runelords Karzoug and Alaznist are behind all the recent strife, and while the two have yet to meet up, they have the potential to cause great ruin to Varisia through either an alliance or all out war against each other.

The story transitions next to Into the Nightmare Rift, where PCs obtain the shards of Sloth and Wrath, and then form the Sihedron. The activation of the lost city of Xin is rewritten to be caused by Alaznist's time shenanigans, and the PCs proceed to venture into the Dead Heart of Xin. Furthermore the PCs discover that Xin-Shalast has similarly risen due to time shenanigans, Karzoug is fully awake, and they must defeat him as well. The PCs can then learn to activate the Cyphergate using artifacts and notes discovered in Karzoug's personal realm.

Armed with the Sihedron, the PCs then enter Xin-Edasseril, the City Outside of Time, and gain contact with Belmarius.

The story then concludes with the confrontation against Alaznist herself in the Rise of New Thassilon.

This is by no means perfect, and the leveling is all over the place. Count this as a bump. I'd love to see other people's thoughts on the matter.

Asura ranas live in hell without being under Asmodeus though. And wasn't Minderhal also living in mountain range in hell?

Asura Ranas don't have a fixed place to live. Some are in Hell (in fact one of these became the archdevil Geryon), others are in defiled or abandoned holy places across the multiverse. That's sort of what I was saying -- unique outsiders from mythologies that are rarely represented in fantasy are often relegated to a demiplane, or shacking up somewhere in the Big Nine without a defined realm of their own.

Minderhal lives in Stonepeak, a demiplane on the border between Hell and Axis. It's fairly minor, but again, I can easily see Stonepeak being the most important Outer Plane in stone giant culture with Hell and Axis being a mere footnote. It's like how Cayden Cailean and Iomedae are extremely important deities in the Inner Sea region of Golarion, but if you go to Castrovel or Triaxus nobody's ever heard of them (until Starfinder's era anyway).

BTW, does anyone know if the next claim from Pathfinder Tales (redemption engine) is canon?: that every time mortal travels to outerplane, because they can't actually comprehend infinity they perceive the plane differently from what it actually is

I would love to see this canonized, along with variant cosmology models as perceived by non-Inner Sea cultures.

I mean, even the Hell itself is composed of multiple different realms <_< I don't see why the said different LG bastions couldn't also be in Heaven

All of Hell is under Asmodeus, though, and that gives Hell a very particular flavor that might not fit other possible visions of such a realm. Heaven is similarly heavily Judeo-Christian in inspiration, so it would be kind of weird to put, say, Taoism-style Celestials in the same place as Archons.

I personally thought of the relative sizes and positions of the planes as "infinite sets can contain other infinite sets which are the same size."

Like there are as many real numbers between 0 and 1 as there are real numbers.

So we can think of it as the other 8 planes as just intervals [0,1],[1,2],[3,4], etc. and the maelstrom is the remainder of the number line. In a sense the the maelstrom is bigger because it contains all the other planes, but in another more precise sense it is exactly the same size as axis, nirvana, etc. Like you could make the abyss the entire set of non-positive numbers, and it's still not bigger than [0,1].

Of course, this leaves us room for lots and lots of disjoint other planes. It's conceivable that the reason that those 8 outer planes are the main ones is because they overlap or touch on the boundary. There could be other ones that are just hard to get to since there's not a natural boundary to suggest their existence. Like it makes sense to put the planes in a 2 dimensional grid, so there could be other planes which exist in orthogonal dimensions.

Actually, not all infinite sets are the same size. The infinite set of all real numbers is larger than the set of real numbers between 0 and 1. I don't really want to get into a talk about math, though.

Although it would make sense if the planes being portrayed as "equal" is the Inner Sea perspective, whereas outside of these places they rank them differently. I could easily see the Razatlani replacing Abaddon with Xibalba in importance in their own version of the Outer Planes, for instance, and it wouldn't be wrong.

Just like I want to see deities differ in importance depending on culture, so should different Outer Planes. After all, gods live in the Outer Planes.

While we're on the topic of Pathfinder's cosmology, I've never really liked how the Outer Planes are presented as 9 alignments in equal balance when that's not how it is at all. Pathfinder's cosmology can't be further from the traditional Great Wheel cosmology. The Maelstrom and the Abyss are bigger than everything else combined, to start. Yet it seems rather...overly coincidental that there HAPPENS to be one big and super important plane of each remaining alignment floating in the Maelstrom, with the rest being just minor planes.

To be sure, I LIKE the cosmology of Pathfinder. I also like the Great Wheel of Planescape, the World Tree of Forgotten Realms, and the Planar Orrery of Eberron. All of these things are completely different cosmological models and add uniqueness to each individual setting. It just feels to me that, as written, the uniqueness of Pathfinder's cosmology doesn't quite shine. For example, given that the Maelstrom is the primordial chaos in which other planes float, I feel like there could easily be more than a single version of a Lawful Good bastion of righteousness, more than a single Lawful Evil realm of torment, etc. Given Pathfinder's efforts to represent mythologies from around the world, this setup is actually great for allowing vastly different mythical afterlives to coexist, even if their alignments overlap. It also gives the possibility to write unique outsiders without having to fit them into an existing "greater" plane of their alignment, or alternatively make their home a "minor" plane (like Xibalba, for example; there's no reason why it can't be as big and important as Abaddon in the cosmic scale, just lesser known on Avistan).

Going forward in 2e I'd love to see the possibility of major Outer Planes that aren't just the the Big Nine.

Lost Omens World Guide is written with new players in mind, who got into Pathfinder through 2e launch and are strangers to the Inner Sea setting too. So there's no reason why they won't follow that format for other regions.

Signs point to the imminent return of Nex from Refuge. The Council of Three and Nine are scrambling to find a way to cope, some will want to swear allegiance to Nex to secure power and militarize the nation against Geb. Others will want to prevent the return to keep power focused on the council. Meanwhile, Geb is preparing his forces to resume their ancient war. Nexian citizens are already dependent on Geb for food, and Gebbites need access to the Golden Road trade through Nex to maintain their economy. War would be disastrous, and possibly span another millennium. Tensions are high, PCs need to stabilize the region. Maybe they need to unify the Council of Three and Nine, or perhaps unseat them instead. Maybe they need to prevent the return of Nex, or perhaps they need to kill him. Maybe they need to dispose of Geb as well, the old ghost is paranoid and likely won't accept that his nemesis is dead.

I actually have an idea similar to this!

The premise is that a conspiracy between Arclords of Nex and Bloodlords of Geb have been working together towards some nefarious goal -- ascension to godhood, some other form of ultimate power, destroying Nex and Geb forever and taking their place, etc. To do so, they would need to conduct a ritual that sacrifices tens of thousands, and they want to do so by restarting a war so that they could justify using the resources of their respective nations and allay suspicion. The adventure path starts when the conspiracy figured out a way to stabilize magic in the Mana Wastes for a brief while at a time, and convinced the forces of both Geb and Nex to attempt annexation of Alkenstar. The plan is to center the ritual in Alkenstar during the most brutal of battles, and sacrifice its citizens in the ritual.

Players are natives of Alkenstar defending their nation from conquering mages on both sides. Throughout the campaign, PCs would venture through war zones to secure allies from Mana Wastes ghorans, Jalmeray, the Mwangi Expanse, as well as pacifist factions in Nex that have been branded traitor -- all the while learning about and thwarting the plots of the conspiracy everywhere they go. Political intrigue in the courts of Nex and Geb is a given, and with luck and skill PCs could even change the power dynamics in these two places. The final confrontation would see them liberating Alkenstar from a magically enabled siege, helped by their newfound allies, and they must race against the clock to stop the conspiracy from performing the ritual and turning their home into ash.

I wouldn't say I MISS anything from 1e, considering that I'm currently playing it, but androids, robots, and technology certainly are rules I would love to see in 2e sooner rather than later.

Looking at just mechanics, not lore, I would have to say that 2e feels a lot more traditional fantasy than what I'm used to in Pathfinder. The playable classes are largely generic, with even the alchemist rendered fairly conventional since it no longer has gross spells and discoveries.

Now PF2e still has way more options than PF1e at release and is arguably more customizable than 5 years worth of D&D 5e, so I'm not complaining. I just can't see myself switching until I have stats for all the sci-fi references, obscure cryptids, and bizarre planar denizens that I came to use far more than zombies and goblins. The weird is still there in the fluff, but the new rules just doesn't support most of it.