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Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti wrote:

How long ago was this remastering planned? It seems that the OGL mess may be the justification for this but I am what I kept hearing in the Roll for Combat and the Twitch stream is that they have been working on this for months. If the OGL debacle was in Januaryish, would they be able to have all of these planned to go out in November for the first 2 books? Or was this something that was always planned? If it was always planned I think that needs to be stated.

Will subsequent APs and books have a Pathfinder Remastered logo?

The Remaster Project was not considered until after January. It’s been a tremendous behind the scenes reshuffle.

They are getting all this work done and the books printed in 10 months? (February-November)

Oh, a random guy online knows better how to run a business than people who are running it, that's new.

That's a good point. I definitely am not a business analyst. I don't have access to their KPI, sales trend, or profit analysis reports.

Determining when a set of rules is performing poorly enough that it needs updated has to be an incredibly difficult decision. I am merely suggesting that if their analysts look at the numbers in 2025 and decide it may be time to bring in designers to look at the rules then I think many of the top ones might have an opening for a project then. I would still not really expect for the new rules to come out until 2027 or 2028.

A lot can happen between now and 2025-26, and it will be interesting to see the future of Pathfinder. Paizo could one day be challenging Wizards for the top spot in the industry instead of being a very distant second, but I don't know if they can achieve that if they use a conservative business philosophy and cater mainly to entrenched players who prefer more complex rules.

They've been there before because they are very good business people. It would be refreshing to see it again.

PF1 was launched Aug 19, 2009. It is still in print. PF2 was launched Aug 1, 2019. It took them about 3 years longer just to get most of the PF1 classes, ancestries, etc published in their PF2 versions.

In January 2023, they sold out of what was expected to be an 8-month supply of the Core Rulebook hardback in about 2 weeks. I don't think you will see them start over again any time soon.

They aren't chasing WotC, and they don't plan their business around WotC's release schedule. They aren't going to suffer if WotC puts out yet another edition of DnD.

I noted in my statement that the OGL mistake by WOTC caused the increase in sales the first quarter of this year. Even Paizo concedes this caused the spike, not the community suddenly switching systems because they had major problems with the rules of D&D.

Pahtfinder 2E is a great system for the veteran player. The Beginner Box for 2E is also an amazing product for new players. The problem is the transition of a new player from a nice Beginner Box to a huge 640 page Core Rulebook. The D&D Player's Handbook is half the size and half the price. I believe Paizo should make all three options:a player's guide, a game master's guide, and an all-in-one game guide. Also, I think Paizo missed out on quite a few sales when the OGL scandal hit because they would have had more inventory to sell if they printed three options for the base rules of the game.

If I use a complexity scale of 1-10 for RPGs, I would put 4E D&D around 9 and PF2E at about 7. In contrast, I would put 5E D&D right around 4. Should they consider starting a playtest in 2025 to revise PF2E to move a little further down that scale?

I think 2025 would be a perfect time to start an update of PF2E because it takes quite a few experienced designers to even revise an established system. Many of them are developing the new systems that spun off 5E because of the OGL. Usually, it's very hard to find one designer with the experience of rebuilding an entire system. But when the 5E clone projects are completed, Paizo will have an overabundance of designers available with this valuable experience looking for their next challenge. Paizo should probably start contracting them for that time frame now if they have given any consideration to revising PF2E. These designers will have information on what options worked in 2019 but need updated or removed now because of changes in player preferences. They can also bring new ideas to evolve the game and make it even better. It would be wise of Paizo to take advantage of this golden opportunity.

I have often wondered lately when Paizo may consider releasing a new ruleset for Pathfinder. Do they consider PF2 to be successful enough that there is no need to revamp their rules anytime soon? 5E ran for ten years but 4E only lasted six and playtesting started for 5E after only 4 years of 4E because it was not very profitable. I'm curious if Paizo sees PF2 as so good they are near the upper limit of their profitability or if they feel it's actually underperforming compared to what they expected. Pathfinder 2E is coming up on it's 4 year anniversary and I'm sure it has performed well the previous quarter thanks to WOTC basically shooting themselves in the foot. The question is how much it suffers if WOTC corrects course and fixes many of the issues in 5E 2024 that drive people to play PF2. Would it be time to start the designers of the next edition then?

I expect I'm not going to like the elf and kobold starting 3 hp down from average because of starting not only with 6 ancestry hp but also a flaw in con. Heaven help me if someone wants to play one of those ancestries as a front line combatant. I'm going to be walking on eggshells. I'll see if it works but I'm suspecting this is a flaw from the fact that when designers playtest a system they usually get accomplished players with quite a bit of experience. These playtesters tend to minimize weaknesses better than casual players because they may have a background in wargaming or simply understand better how to use speed and positioning to their advantage.

Thank you everyone for the responses. My players aren't power gamers and I see enough evidence here of the fragility of 6 hp ancestries that I must say I'm as concerned as I thought I would be about them. I will house rule the 6 hp ancestries to 8 hp in my game. I'm not saying that 6 hp for these ancestries is wrong, but 8 hp may be more correct for my players because they are not optimizers.

Ldragon1020 wrote:

I am looking into running Pathfinder 2e for the first time. I have game mastered for 30+ years so I am just asking this question just to tap into the knowledge of GMs with experience with this set of rules. Can the game really balance having a dwarf barb with 25 hp and an elf wizard with 12 hp in the same party at level 1? It seems if the monsters are strong enough to drop the dwarf they will just steamroll the wizard.

In practice, you tend to see that wizard putting some ability boosts into constitution. I've certainly seem some dwarf barbarians reveling in the ability to have a ton of HP though.

The thing is, the barbarian also has to be on the front line to be at his best. So when the monster's turn comes up, the barbarian is right next to him while the wizard is probably trying to stay a bit at a distance. Also, when you're not in a wide open field, the fragile characters will probably be trying to position so enemies can't easily walk past the frontline characters to get to them. So the result is that the barbarian gets attacked a lot more.

Ldragon1020 wrote:

If the monsters have decent intelligence and the wizard casts a highly damaging spell they should also come after him first, right?

In some other RPGs it's proverbial to kill the mage first. Certainly in Pathfinder 1st edition. But in second edition? A level 1 giant instinct barbarian can hit for 2d6+10 damage with a greatsword. The wizard's hydraulic push spell does 3d6 damage. The barbarian's attack takes 1 action, the wizard's 2. So the barbarian could be trying to hit you multiple times per turn.

Since the wizard is probably harder to get to, and the barbarian does obscene amounts of damage, I dunno if it's really the intelligent thing these days to fixate on the caster.

Okay, so it seems the 12-14 hp for the elven wizard won't cause them to constantly down for the count and start dying from one ranged attack. That's good to hear. Also, my intelligent monsters won't appear to be acting out of character if they don't focus on them. Thank you for the clarification.

Ldragon1020 wrote:

I am looking into running Pathfinder 2e for the first time. I have game mastered for 30+ years so I am just asking this question just to tap into the knowledge of GMs with experience with this set of rules. Can the game really balance having a dwarf barb with 25 hp and an elf wizard with 12 hp in the same party at level 1? It seems if the monsters are strong enough to drop the dwarf they will just steamroll the wizard. If the monsters have decent intelligence and the wizard casts a highly damaging spell they should also come after him first, right?

At low level, the Barbarian is certainly much more of a threat, so monsters should not come to the Wizard that often. Also, it's quite the point for the melee martials to protect the casters in the back line.

Now, first level is a bit extreme, and your Wizard went a lot into the extreme (6 hp ancestry with a penalty to Constitution) while your Dwarf Barbarian went the complete other way. In general, fragile casters have around 15 hps and melee martials have around 20 hps. The difference is much smaller.

I believe an elven wizard is a pretty common build. Unless the player wants to sacrifice some of their Int and Dex, it seems pretty rational they would only spend one boost to recover their flaw in con. Not what I would really consider extreme. The dwarf barbarian also would be a common build and those characters would not need to sacrifice their str to get a 16 con through boosts so I assume most players would arrive at that conclusion also. Neither player is going out of their way to subvert or boost their hp-these are just really how the numbers work out if you have these two ancestry-class combinations. These are also the archetypal choices for class when it comes to these ancestries (possibly ftr for dwarf but that does not do a lot to alleviate the problem) so I don't see how having these characters in the same party would be unusual either.

If you watch this video all the way through you find that while Luke Hart started playing PF2E, the DM Lair is not even switching. His videos are still going to be 5E and he is only possibly considering making videos for PF2E. His publishing company is slowly transitioning their content into being playable with PF2E because they don't even know the system well yet. He's unfamiliar with the worlds of Pathfinder and has never mentioned anything in his videos about liking them better. This is the most half-hearted switch to a game system I have ever seen, and I doubt seriously if he will continue to play it if 5EV2 (or D&D24 if you prefer) addresses the issues he raised in the video. WOTC hired quite a few PF2E designers and still have the lead designers with the most experience in the industry by decades. I wouldn't place any bets against them fixing all the issues. Then he will undoubtedly do what is best for his company and renew his focus on D&D content.

I am looking into running Pathfinder 2e for the first time. I have game mastered for 30+ years so I am just asking this question just to tap into the knowledge of GMs with experience with this set of rules. Can the game really balance having a dwarf barb with 25 hp and an elf wizard with 12 hp in the same party at level 1? It seems if the monsters are strong enough to drop the dwarf they will just steamroll the wizard. If the monsters have decent intelligence and the wizard casts a highly damaging spell they should also come after him first, right?