delbert thompson's page

Okay, so my group and I tested Pathfinder around 20 hours since the Playtest was realeased, and I would like to share my opinion on it on theses boards.

So, a little backstory first. I am 27 years old, French (so pleasae forgive my possibly familar English), an History teacher/PhD student, who started to play RPGs when I was 12 years old. We tested PF2 with the same group I play with since 15 years.

I started playing with 3.0, and then 3.5. We also did a lots of Warhammer 2.0, Cadwallon, Star Wars D20 and FFG, L5R, Cyper System, Shadow of the Demon Lord, 5E and homebrew RPGs. But from all of these, Pathfinder 1E is by far the main dishe. We played through Rise of the Runelords, Kingmaker, Iron Gods and Reign of Winter through the end. We started almost each other APs. We followed the rules for many years, and then started to houseruled of lots of things to finish with our "perfect" Pathfinder.

We tested PF2 on an homebrew adventure loosely inspired by the sysnopsis of the Doomsday Dawn, from level 1 to levels 7, with a lots of story XP and sometimes gaining a few levels very quickly to test at different levels range. The group is one Druid, one Barbarian, one Figther and one Bard.

We got ROLEplayers and ROLLplayers in our group. And we succeed during many years having the best of both worlds in PF1. So, here I am. This is what we think of the game so far.

The PROs:
- The 4 tiers of failures/sucess is the best thing idea so far. It allows more flexibility for the DM.

- Expert and Master items that are not magical. Best loots ever for low level adventurers and to present perfect craftmanship.

- Less skills is good. And we like the mastery system that increase with levels. Yes, we do believe that a Wizard level 7 should be able to take down a few commoners with a stick. Or that a Barbarian who defeated a Troll or a Antipaladin of Norgorber can sometimes have insight on what a mysterious monster can do.

- Items with levels are easier to use for the DM.

- Best multiclassing...

First, Appreciate the post, actually pointed out a few things I was concerned with myself reading and rereading the book, if I may ask how does the new rage mechanic feel, being more of a cool down ability, especially when coupled with the rage powers?

Hard to say, rather disappointed with familiars in the playtest myself, considering how much i liked them in PF1. Hopefully final product is more fleshed out.

Mechalibur wrote:

Charlaquin wrote:

Ooh! I just realized that this effectively allows people who want a spellcasting ranger to get it with a couple Class Feats by taking the Druid archetype. Or heck, if you want to go really old school, splash some Wizard Archetype Feats in there too!

That's a good point. I was hoping ranger would have class feats that could give it casting if you wanted, but functionally multiclassing into druid works as well.

Eyup.

No reason to have a Ranger spell list if they can just yoink it from someone else. Wait....

And I'm sure someone will come along and say that the spell list was junk anyway so what's the big deal.

Me. I will say it. Ranger and Paladin both had rubbish spell lists. With the new spell systems in place they can roll them into divine and natural spell lists as appropriate, while leaving the option to still attain a spell list. Personally I though the spell-less archetypes for both Ranger and Paladin were far more interesting than having a tiny spell list, particularly the Paladin one.