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The Imperial Calendar was explained in the Travel Guide:

The Imperial Calendar (IC): While not the only calendar in Tian Xia, the Imperial Calendar is the most commonly used and begins with the founding of Yixing, the first human empire on the continent.

(In turn that year was -2499 AR, so you can kinda orient other dates around those.)

Deity stat blocks (for deities that are brand-new at least), plus some ship vehicle stats.

Other than those, not really - but that's what the Character Guide is for, seemingly.

There is indeed full-body art of Ameiko (as Empress Amatatsu Ameiko) in the Minkai section.

Darklands get a section, with descriptions of several subterranean nations within.

Each section is about 8 pages, though some that incorporate a neighboring non-nation geographic region (like Minkai and the Forest of Spirits, or Xidao and the oceans) are longer on account of including the latter.

There's no bespoke ancestry descriptions (though all the ancestries we know are coming in the followup book are mentioned and integrated throughout) - those might be in the Character Guide.

In addition to "asset" being a strange term, I'd make the argument that "Size Up" isn't a great name either - insofar as it's very idiomatic English, which might make things awkward for non-native players (I've been speaking English for over a decade at a close-to-native level and it tripped me up!).

Also: the leadership style names are fun, but it's awkward to say "I'm playing a Through Desperate Times envoy", so I'd maybe try to get them all to be nouns, like Hotshot or Infsophere Director.

So far, we've seen playtests for the Soldier (who uses Constitution as the key stat), Mystic (who uses Wisdom), and now also Envoy (who uses Charisma).

It's also easy to imagine that the Operative uses Dexterity - leaving Solarian and Witchwarper a little uncertain, as I doubt Paizo would want 3 out of 6 core classes to use Charisma.

From that kind of coverage viewpoint, Strength solarians (they are the go-to melee class now after all, though I could see them being Str/Dex given they still have some ranged options, and the more graceful Lunarians were a thing in 1e after all), and Intelligence witchwarpers would likewise make sense given they've been merged in with precogs (who did use Intelligence for their casting, if not as a key attribute outright) - and there sure isn't any other viable candidate for playing a smart guy since neither mechanics nor technomancers are making this core lineup as full classes.

...Unless those con pregens for the remaining classes totally undermine this theory.

I imagine that a lot of Adventure Path and Society plotlines are also going to be incorporated into the baseline setting (with the assumptions that PCs succeeded on any given one), the way that they were for Pathfinder.

We don't know the specifics there exactly, though.

A minor but fun note: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are now seemingly referred to as the Apocalypse Riders (Szuriel the Rider of War and so on), which is a fun little new development but it's strangely desynced with the first two Core books which still use the Four Horsemen terminology.

And yeah barghests are in but look far more like the folkloric variety.

Starfinder already features skymetal (or rather, starmetal) dragons, including adamantine, but looks like these will be a distinct take.

For most of its lifespan, 1e Starfinder APs followed the same format as the Pathfinder ones, released as monthly (or bimonthly) volumes, 3/6 volumes per, though that's now shifted to the hardcover releases, starting next month with Scoured Stars and following up with Mechageddon! later in 2024.
(And I guess there's the hardcover re-release of Dead Suns too.)

...And then there's the question of whether SF2 will continue that single-release hardback format, or return to the softcover magazine style.

I don't think Paizo has said anything one way or another about this, and it does strike me as more of a business decision than a creative one, but there's pros and cons to both methods, and while I'm not really the target audience for Paizo AP subscriptions one way or another, I'm curious how the community might feel on this.

Page 134 - Primal Summons druid feat - The descriptive text mentions the classic four elements but omits wood and metal, which are listed in the actual primal summons order spell now, so that should probably be updated to mention all six elements.

While the situation on the PF side is somewhat different since all those classes already exist on the engine and 'only' need revisions, it might potentially echo the Remaster situation of the classes being split across two core books, even if some of the PF2R Player Core 2 classes could be deemed classic or essential in the current day and age (like champion, barbarian, and sorcerer).

Mechanic and technomancer being pushed back to a Starfinder Player Core 2 (or a new Character Operations Manual, depending on which kind of presentation and naming scheme SF2 ends up going with) does seem like an entirely plausible reality, if a mildly surprising one at first.

I'd be on board with a Gunner rename, which while technically close to the PF2 Gunslinger, does have a very distinct vibe that better conveys the new "big gun" focus.
It doesn't account for the 2h melee playstyle admittedly, and "melee Gunner build" feels a bit like an oxymoron relative to "melee Soldier build", but who knows.

Xenocrat wrote:

Man, if you're mad about the SF2 Soldier not being mechanically or functionally similar to the SF1 Soldier, I can't wait to see how people react to the Operative (it's not a skill monkey anymore!), Solarian, and all the spellcasters.

The Operative isn't a skill monkey anymore? Are you sure?

I mean, it's not a tiny god of skills anymore, but I had been under the impression that it still had a larger skills budget than the other classes.

Thurston Hillman stated as much on Know Direction Beyond recently.

There's the Hero Point Deck which has additional Hero Point uses and effects, but it's a relatively recent accessory and I haven't heard much about it.

Hero Points always struck me as a little awkward in how disconnected they feel from the rest of the system (no ability, spell or feat references them, best as I can tell), and how GM-dependent they can be to regularly obtain (either because your GM forgets to hand them out regularly, or isn't easily convinced by your Heroic RP - though my GMs have thankfully been reasonable about them, but I know I've been a little forgetful in my brief time as GM).

It's a far-off priority, but one worth having a discussion on regardless.

Starfinder 1e has four Alien Archives providing the bulk of creatures, plus lots of extras scattered in things like Adventure Paths and standalone adventures - quite the corpus to pull on when looking at what to bring over to 2e, especially for the playtest/launch.

While it's not entirely unreasonable to assume that SF2's first creature book will largely resemble the 1e AA1, with aeon guards and tashtaris and necrovites and the like - there's a lot of room for swaps (akatas, the glitch gremlins we already saw in the field test, popular post-launch species like vlakas or uplifted bears), new additions (like ORC monster swaps, perhaps pulled from PF2's Monster Core, though it's hard to say whether SF OGL-derived monsters are at quite the same risk given they're already inherently remixed when put into a far-future science-fantasy context), and other bits and pieces (humanoid NPC stat blocks like in Pact Worlds or Interstellar Species, or PF2's Gamemastery Guide's NPC gallery section would be a great thing to have from the start).

Runelords are one of the most iconic Pathfinder things so there's a good chance they might either issue errata or reprint it in a new form in some other future source - I believe an idea was tossed out that the archetype would be rejigged to lean into the sins the schools were based on (pride instead of illusion, wrath instead of evocation, etc.).

While I don't have first-hand experience with it myself, I have been thinking about how PF2 Kingmaker's kingdom-building and warfare rules can serve as a conceptual blueprint for how SF2 might go about handling building starships and space combat.

Kingdom building has a lot in common with building a character (especially in that 2e incarnation, with kingdom feats and skills and attributes and whatnot), something that Paizogame players are already accustomed to and generally enjoy on its own merits, and they too follow that same 1-20 level advancement that can make for a smooth mathematical progression; Obviously, kingdoms and starships are structured very differently (I would expect much more in the way of ship 'upgrades' than ship 'feats', hearkening to the bevvy of options that SF1 provides, even if a lot of them were really fiddly and minute for modern design standards), but it would make for something that feels like a natural extension of the existing game language than an entire bespoke mini-game that only sort of connects to the existing ruleset - incidentally, this is the route that a friend and GM of mine took when developing her own naval ship combat system for PF2 (when the normal vehicle rules proved insufficient), so that's a data point towards that being a workable model at least.

If some extra narrative elements can be put in this way, like ship backgrounds (scrap-built, inherited, company-owned, gifted, hijacked, salvaged, bought from a shady dealership, etc.), then that's all the more fun.

And here's the whole thing!

Locking in my Demigod and Animist guesses, but I suppose we'll find out in 15 minutes!

From Paizo's IG, we have another piecemeal teaser of one of the iconics (with another few to follow at the top of every hour, I'm wagering a guess).

The Animist theory is looking increasingly solid, I'd say!

Demigod and Animist are my personal called shots here, we'll see if they hold up!

Do keep in mind that the playtest Psychic was slated as uncommon before being bumped down to being common.

I think if this class is rare then there's probably a very good reason for it (if it's something like a Demigod), but playtest feedback could damn well bump it down to Uncommon (though probably not any more than that).

The SF1 CRB has the Pathfinder Legacy chapter at the end, so it's not like that game was 'pure' either (though I too want SF2 to not be viewed as just a sci-fi spice cabinet for PF2, much as ideas like playing a lashunta psychic in PF2 or some kind of far-future magitech thaumaturge in SF2 excite me as well) - I could see the (final, non-playtest) 2e CRB rulebook including a spiritual successor to that, with science fantasy-appropriate options for some PF2 classes and ancestries.

Unexpectedly, the tail end of the Remaster preview panel at GenCon mentioned that a frog-people ancestry called the trypki (spelling might be off) are also in this, which are presumably a renamed grippli.
(Gnolls were still called that instead of kholo but I'm unsure whether that's a slip-up or if they've managed to find a way to hold onto the name.)

No news on what the new versatile heritage is, or anything else about the book though.

The playtest FAQ does say that new skills are within the scope of SF2, and the Computer Glitch Gremlin stat block in the Field Test even mentions it.

That said, the likes of Physical Science, Life Science, Piloting and maybe Engineering all seem like they might be relegated to being categories of Lore (though ones that might be referenced by specific parts of the game more than others, like how Engineering Lore and Piloting Lore come up in some PF2 archetypes and subsystems despite the Lores' otherwise fuzzy nature).

I'm not thrilled about how some PF2 skills might end up showing up in SF2 even if they don't quite fit (I sure hope we can get away with not having Performance in core, given the lack of bards and envoys not needing that flavor), but that's a different concern.

DnD 3e lasted 8 years between 2000 and 2008 (split that 3:5 if you wanna treat 3.0 and 3.5 separately, I guess).
DnD 4e lasted 6 years between 2008 and 2014.

A 2017-2025 lifecycle is only 2 years behind something like PF1, which was kinda ahead of the curve compared to your average RPG anyway (and PF1 was already struggling sales-wise in those final years apparently).

On one hand, I'm stoked for Starfinder to inherit the good bits of PF2, like the three action economy and functional encounter balance.

On the other hand, I am gonna miss how SF1 did diverge from PF1 (and how SF2 seems like it will not be able to do so, in order to maintain PF2 rules compatibility, unless Paizo is willing to walk this back), and how it is liable to inherit PF2's own flaws (get ready for "casters feel bad to play": three-action science-fantasy edition!) .
I'll also miss quirks like EAC/KAC, light/heavy/powered armor, stamina and resolve, class and build flexibility, and the very oddball species.

(And I'm glad I am not alone in this sentiment across both here and some other places online.)

I'm still more excited than not, but it's not without caveats.

Interestingly enough, we have not yet gotten any kind of heads-up that a playtest (class or otherwise) is even happening - those usually were given ~2 weeks ahead, and we are now exactly a week away from GenCon with nothing to go on.

That said, Paizo seems to have hinted enough at the possibility of a non-class playtest that I think we might just get that this year, but I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

I'd sooner expect 8-12 classes than 13 specifically, but for my part:

The Player Core 1 list (fighter, rogue, wizard, cleric, druid, ranger, witch, bard), with bard replaced by psychic (more unique to PF + fills the same role of a spontaneous occult caster but more intuitively), and with the addition of an alchemist (makes alchemy immediately a distinct part of PF + offers a playstyle outside the standard martial/caster binary) and either another martial (a finally-renamed barbarian? Magus?) or another spontaneous caster (sorcerer? Right now it's bard/psychic + FOUR prepared casters which is kind of silly) would be my best attempt at a list, though it's hard to speculate on this sort of thing in isolation, years and years away from an actual third edition being anywhere in sight.

Drukra volunteered to Oprak's experimental geokinetic soldier program, implanted with a tiny splinter supposedly taken from the Onyx Key itself, acting as her kinetic gate to the Plane of Earth.

A walking font of inexhaustible elemental energy with great combat potential, the program's inherently magical (if not arcane) nature meant that she never quite got the support (or the respect) of her fellows clad in plain worked steel, so she eventually struck out on her own as an elemental mercenary instead, fighting up close in earth-armor, with a disciplined military bend to her kinetic powers.

I believe they said that a docuiment with updated terminology and such will be released around GenCon, yes.

Yeah, the PaizoCon image was the entire landscape illustration with no trade dress.

Removing the open trait from fighter (and I think ranger?) feats - though apparently it might be retained on a few of them, as an explicitly written-out requirement.

Flails and hammers now require a save for their crit spec effects, in line with other weapon groups.

Casting raise dead on this thread, since minotaurs being introduced as a playable ancestry (alongside things like hobgoblins and kholo being made core in Player Core 2 next summer) has reminded me about how much potential this region has again - and the more time passes by without major developments in the area, the more I get itchy for it considering how much it's been set up as a metaplot threat for the Inner Sea as a whole.

And surrounding the Remaster wizard schools, the idea that was floated at PaizoCon of an Ustalavic school of electric+ghost magic as a bespoke player option also sounded incredibly cool...

To me, awakened animals seem like they have more in common narratively with an ancestry like poppets or leshies (where they're singular individuals or at best forming small secluded communities), than with any given animal-folk ancestry like lizardfolk, ratfolk or catfolk (who have entire well-established cultures and nations unto themselves).

The reveal of the athamaru as one of the Howl of the Wild ancestries has me wondering - they are described as living in Xidao in Tian Xia, which has historically been the domain of locathah, who seem to be an OGL inclusion and thus likely slated for a re-design/rename/removal.

Granted, locathah were originally in Bestiary 3 and thus probably not super likely to show up in Monster Core either way, and Grefu's concept art is dated 2022 like all the other HotW ancestries unless there were some more recent changes involved.

I am personally hoping for both elemental (primal) and genie (arcane) eidolons in that section, but there has not been a confirmation either way.

Is athamaru a new name for locathah, or are they a new ancestry that happens to live alongside them in Xidao?

Either way, this is a solid selection (people will love awakened animals for sure), and I adore the crewmates (good on me for guessing Ten was a mechanic!) - Ken's concept art is always a delight, especially with all the notes.

The insect person being a klinkoi would make further sense as they're portrayed (best as I can tell) as the airship's machinist, and klinkois were namedropped in the context of Arcadia's industrialized Three Craters area.

The maybe-locathah's design feels very different from all the past portrayals though, closed to an ulat-kini almost. That said, Paizo has been getting very divergent with some of the PF2 ancestries' designs, and they would pair very well with Tian Xia and Xidao.

The badger person is a complete mystery, but would track for the brand-new ancestry, if we treat klinkois as already-existing on account of that brief lore teaser.

Yeah, a lot of people seem to be confusing "rogues have martial weapon proficiency now" for "rogues can sneak attack with any martial weapon now".

The "agile or finesse" (for melee, at least) restriction is still very much gonna be there, this will just make it easier to do with something like hatchets or other weapons you previously had to scrounge weird archetypes or ancestry feats for.

The PC1 change from the locked-in wizard schools to the more flavorful and expandable ones with the curricula have me hopeful that a similar approach is gonna be taken for the champion options - I dearly hope for something that is more along the lines of 5e paladin's oaths, which I have to admit I think do a much better job of representing all manner of divinely-empowered warriors that aren't locked into a 3x3 alignment grid. (for which an entire middle row is off-limits, in PF2's case!)

Now, for legal and creative reasons I expect Paizo to come up with something else entirely, but if it opens up previously-incompatible deities to champions (and shores up the mechanical inequality between the most popular and unpopular causes while at it), I'll see it as a win no matter what form it takes.

I'm very curious what the fate of the owlbears will be (they are moderately iconic to D&D at this point, and even a bit of a namesake for the uncommonly-used subgenre term "owlbear fantasy" that games like D&D and Patfinder represent) - I suppose another kind of dangerous hybrid forest animal is an obvious swap, though I hope it's more than "instead of owl-bears, it's hawk-wolves now!".

I, for one, am glad that cavern elves will no longer feel like a contextless elf heritage, despite being right there in the CRB/PC1 alongside the likes of woodland elf and arctic elf - looking forward to seeing some ayindilar buddies soon!

Demonskunk wrote:

The Painted Oryx wrote:

Demonskunk wrote:

Woah, $60 per book, and you need at least THREE of them!?

$180 is a BIG ASK for the bare basics you need to play the dang game.

All the rules are available for free on Archives of Nethys! So you really don't need to spend any money. $60 for a beautifully illustrated hardcover book is perfectly reasonable I think!

Like, you're not wrong, but I'm still upset.

P2.0

Core Rulebook $60
Gamemastery Guide $50
Advanced Player's Guide $50
Bestiary 1 $50

$210

P2.1
Player Core $60
Player Core 2 $60
GM Core $60
Monster Core $60

$240

That's without getting into the other expansions added and reworked like Treasure Vault.

All of the new Remaster Core books will be getting pocket editions at least (albeit a few months after the hardbacks), plus the cheaper PDF and entirely free online SRD options.

I think they even mentioned offhandedly the possibility of a Remaster Humble Bundle eventually, but that's probably a late 2023 prospect at the absolute earliest.

Sekmin seem to be the same in both plural and singular, but 'anadis' and 'iruxis' both pop up in LO Mwangi Expanse as a plural form, it seems. (With anadi and iruxi as the singulars - there is no 'anad' or 'irux'.)

What's especially curious about this one is the final line, no longer mentioning the OGL or The World's Oldest Roleplaying Game.

Given recent events and announcements, I take it this one might no longer be under the Open Game License (but presumably not under the ORC yet either)?

I think Paizo has generally wanted to strike out in their own direction away from WotC's, and directly copying from them just because they now legally can (especially when they already provide similar enough options of their own) isn't something I imagine them doing.

Likewise I wouldn't expect dragonborn or other post-4e/5e-isms to happen now either.

3rd party publishers can go ham though, but debatably they always could already.

I've been curious about this for months now - assuming this has the player's guide baked in like the Abomination Vaults hardcover did, is the provided map of Tian Xia the same or is it perhaps updated in any way?

Resolving what could suddenly be either an existential threat to their business (or, if all goes well, a huge swing in their favor) does feel like a higher priority over a rulebook which is still some time away, IMO.

Quote:

What pitfalls do you perceive in the class

The biggest problem with the Witch as I see it is it kind of is stuck with a worst of all worlds approach to magic, while lacking a headlining feature of their own that really stands out.

It has the spell slots of a druid or cleric, but the chassis and preparation system of a wizard. They also have probably the worst starting focus spell of any spellcaster. So an arcane witch can kind of feel like a wizard without as many spells and a primal witch can feel like a squishier druid with like 10% of the spells known without spending money.

Familiars also kind of suck, but I think it's best to just treat it as mostly a ribbon feature. Many of the Witches I've seen in actual play more or less treat their familiar as nonexistent outside a couple helpful master abilities and RP. Some of them even forget they have a familiar at all.

As for fixes... turn Phase Familiar into a level 1 feat and give them Basic Lesson for free instead so they can have an actual focus spell (while preserving Basic Lesson so they can grab a second if they want).

Quote:

remove the 1 hex per round limitation

I'd prefer to change it to restricting the same hex to once per round. I can understand when they were writing it why they didn't want someone just casting Evil Eye three times in a round, but having your core options be mutually exclusive with each other is kinda lame.

I'd also like to see an option somewhere (a feat? A freebie at level 5 or 6?) to give Witches access to more hex cantrips. This would broaden a witch's options and help them lean into the idea that Hexes are their thing. It feels wrong to me that Bards get so many excellent class cantrip options, while Witches just get one and a lot of them are kind of mediocre tbh.

Much of what you mention here, including starting with a Basic Lesson and having Phase Familiar as a feat instead (and possibly also easier access to more hex cantrips, I can't quite remember), is done by the very popular* Pathfinder Infinite book, Witches+.

* - as far as PF2 3pp stuff is concerned anyway, it ain't outselling Paizo probably.