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Comparison of basic proficiencies between the classes I found this pretty informative to put together. Let me know if you spot any mistakes. P.S. here is the list of resources I've put together so far for Pathfinder Second Edition
Basic data on all monsters in the Second Edition Bestiary This data should be useful for system & build analysis and for reverse-engineering some monster creation guidelines I input the data manually, and moved quickly to get this to you, so it likely contains some errors. Let me know if you spot any! (These are especially likely in the Attack & DC columns, since I was just skimming for the highest number there—it wasn't info in a fixed place like AC.) And here is the list of resources I've put together so far for Pathfinder Second Edition
The Pathfinder Second Edition Core Rulebook has 46,690 possible combinations of Ancestry, Heritage, Background, Class, and Class Path—and that's before you add archetypes to the mix! If you add an archetype to your build parameters, you're up to 560,280 possible character options. That's ... a lot!!** So what on earth should you build? Ask my character-suggestion spreadsheet! It'll give you new suggestions all day long. And if you prefer to roll physically, you can always pull 100 suggestions at once from the "d100" page to make a chart to roll on. Enjoy!! ** And if you count the Wizard's Thesis as a "Class Path" choice, you bring the Wizard's number of choices up from 9 to 36 (= 9 schools * 4 theses), which bumps the overall numbers to 74,095 characters (without archetypes) or 889,140 characters (with archetypes) in the CRB. I haven't added in the theses yet, though, so I kept those out of my initial count. P.S. The spreadsheet is coded so that it is very easy to expand as PF2 adds more content (including the ability to easily filter for the specific sources you want to draw on). I've already put in some options that we know are coming in the next few months in the world guides, and I'll keep adding to this for a while at least.
For years now, I've used statblocks for my characters rather than character sheets. I find them a lot easier to use as a player (and also as a GM for pregens & NPCs) So now that we have the PF2 character sheets, I went through those and a bunch of the monster statblocks we've seen previewed to create a statblock template for the new edition: Pathfinder Second Edition Statblock Template Feel free to use & share. And let me know if you have any suggestions for making it better (e.g., I'm not in love with how I put in Bulk and GP.) I'll maintain the template (as-updated) at this link for the foreseeable future. (Note: I'm hoping that Paizo makes the action icons available for community use on release of the game. Big thanks to Rysky for suggesting that I use emoji for the job in the meantime. They work pretty well!)
I thought we might get an archetype related to New Thassilon! For reference, here's the list we have so far: 1) Absalom: Pathfinder Agent
I'm pretty sure we'll get something related to the Firebrands in the Shining Kingdoms. Looking forward to finding out next week!
Neat! This should be a fun little addition to characters. I'm especially glad to see a solid "default" option provided for folks who don't want to bother.
Luis pointed out on one of the Discords that all of the organizations in the Lost Omens Character Guide have been revealed (in one place or another) at this point. So for folks who were wondering, I collected the list. These are the 5 organizations:
Luis added that "Every org gets a minimum of 1 archetype" and that "The Firebrand archetype is a double-sized archetype." We know the following archetypes so far, I believe:
I'm not sure we've heard any others, but I may have missed it. Note that these all seem to be built so you can roll right into them from the "entry" archetype in the Lost Omens World Guide. E.g., you can go from Armiger to Signifier without having to fully satisfy the dedication requirement in Armiger, same for the Pathfinder Society and for the Knights of Lastwall. This pretty clearly suggests that we're getting something Firebrand-related for the Saga Lands or Shining Kingdoms region in the LOWG, whichever would be appropriate for it. P.S. As a reminder, the LOWG archetypes we know so far:
The Lost Omens World Guide product page appears to show a delay in the product:
I'm hoping that's just an error? (The Core Rulebook and Bestiary still show hardcover & PDF for August 1st)
I have transcribed all of the multiclass archetypes from the UK Games Expo images. See below. There are some instances (especially on the Rogue page) where I could not make out some text due to glare in the images. I have marked those lacunae with ??. Enjoy!
The spellcasting archetypes standardize "basic", "expert", and "master" spellcasting. Here is what those mean: BASIC CASTING BENEFITS
EXPERT CASTING BENEFITS
MASTER CASTING BENEFITS
Just so I can say "I called it," let me put down my marker: the Lost Omens World Guide archetype for the High Seas will be the Red Mantis Assassin. You might think it would be Pirate, but you'd be wrong! Here's my theory: (1) The world guide archetypes we've seen (Pathfinder Agent, Aldori Duelist, Student of Perfection, Hellknight Armiger) are all quite vivid and distinctively Golarion, designed to bring the world to life. Generic "Pirate" doesn't do the job. (2) We know we aren't getting Cavalier at launch, and that's like the Pirate in being rather flavor-light/generic. (3) I seem to recall several comments from designers in the past (Jason? Mark?) suggesting that Pirate and Cavalier were included in the Playtest as proof-of-concept: both to test the generic archetype idea and, in the case of Cavalier, to test how players would react to seeing a full class reduced to such an archetype. (I believe there was one interview where someone asked "why Pirate, anyway?', and Jason said it just happened to be the first thing that came to mind when they thought about generic archetypes.) (4) We know the first 2 APs, and neither seems like a great fit for pirates. (5) In the UK Games Expo interview, right around here, Jason is talking about the design space enabled by the archetype structure. He says "and what that will allow us to do in the future is, as we do new archetypes, let's say we do an archetype that makes you a pirate ..." He then gives the usual spiel on that one. But "in the future" and "new archetypes" isn't exactly cagey. (6) Consider this paragraph from the High Seas page in the Core Rulebook (displayed later in the same interview). Note in particular the last sentence: Piracy is one of the greatest dangers facing travel on the High Seas. The immense volcanic archipelago known as the Shackles serves as a haven for these pirates, with their Hurricane Queen providing just enough structure to keep them from going at each other's throats. A great diversity of monsters and threats populate these islands, and the local pirates know which are safe and which to avoid. North of the Shackles lies Mediogalti Island. While its only significant port, Ilizmagorti, is a known safe harbor for pirates, it is the presence of the infamous Red Mantis assassins who rule the isle that gives this region its greatest infamy. So we have a paragraph go specifically from "ooh pirates" to but it's the Red Mantis assassins who are the big deal. (7) Checking the Core Rulebook images for the other World Guide archetypes we know about, the Pathfinder Society is prominently featured on the Absalom page and the last paragraph of the Impossible Lands page is all about the pursuit of perfection in Jalmeray. Unfortunately I can't make out the Brevoy paragraph on the Broken Lands page to see if the Aldori swordlords get much focus, which would help with this kind of evidence. *** So maybe I'm wrong! But if you put all that together I think there's a good chance we're getting Red Mantis assassins as the High Seas archetype in the Lost Omens World Guide. The one drawback: evil assassin cult is much more of an enemy thing than an option for PCs (assuming a normal fantasy heroic campaign), so I could definitely see them being saved for a more enemy-focused book rather than a launch product (with, I'm assuming, the goal of launching the game with as many player options as possible). This is the one thing that really makes me hesitate. We'll find out in 3 weeks when we get the Lost Omens blog about the High Seas! (They seem to be going alphabetically, which would give us the Eye of Dread and the Golden Road in the next 2 weeks.)
In this thread, I am posting my best-effort transcriptions of the rules content from the Bestiary screenshots displayed at the PaizoCon Preview Banquet. You can view the images in this shared folder. For ease of reference, I will be posting one creature/element/chunk of rules text per post, in the order they were displayed at the Banquet. So we start with the Balisse and end with Treerazer's Blackaxe. The low resolution on the screenshots means that there are likely some errors here and there. I had particular trouble with the text in some of the tags, in a few spots distinguishing between '+' and '-' (introducing the potential for significant error, rules-wise), and in a few spots distinguishing between '6' and '8'. Nevertheless, I believe that these transcriptions are mostly accurate. Please let us know if you spot any errors. There's a good amount of data here, and some of it reveals some interesting things about the system. I particularly wonder if we have enough for the analytically minded among you to start to reverse-engineer some monster creation guideline numbers, and/or if this data will shed some light on the (endless) ongoing debates about DCs in PF2. Enjoy! P.S. Because there's like a gazillion posts in this one, here's an index: 1. Balisse
I did not catch everything because there was a lot here. I’ve focused mostly on PF2 content, but I’ve tried to leave in links to each individual presentation so you can find what you’re interested in/double-check my summaries. You can see the slides at pretty high-def in the Twitch presentation, so dig in and copy over all of the content! (1) Lisa kicks it off at the above link. (2) Erik Mona begins the presentations with thank yous for everyone. (3) Rob McCreary re: Starfinder (4) Erik Mona introduces the PF2 Content He waves the GM screen around. I can’t really make anything out. He displays a slide with several characters from upcoming books, including a Strix, a couple Goblins, some kind of Elf, and a Hobgoblin (new design! looks good!). (5) Erik Mona re: Lost Omens World Guide Updating the timeline. “A world that is fundamentally shaped by events in Pathfinder adventures and Pathfinder Adventure Paths.” The regional breakdown. Absalom gets its own region, its own chapter. Erik wrote it. “We’re going deep on the island [of Kortos] itself.” As with all of the slides displayed in the banquet, the design of the book’s interior looks *gorgeous*. Backgrounds & Archetype from Kortos. Backgrounds: Child of the Puddles; Diobel Pearl Diver; Freed Slave of Absalom; Grand Council Bureaucrat; Inlander; Menagerie Dung Sweeper; Pathfinder Hopeful; Trade Consortium Underling. Archetype: Pathfinder Agent! The dedication feat lets you add your level to any untrained skill check (pretty dang cool!). You can dig into the details on the image shared. (6) WORLD GUIDE #2: LOST OMENS CHARACTER GUIDE The World Guides will come out about quarterly. Typically around 120–140 pages. Every once in a while a bigger one. This one gives ways to dive deep in your character: * New heritages & ancestry feats for every Core Rulebook ancestry. * 3 new ancestries: Hobgoblin; Leshy; Lizardfolk. (The slide incorrectly says Bugbear when it should say Hobgoblin.) * Five complete factions with archetypes and other benefits of membership. * Templates to make faction-specific monsters. Erik mentions Elves from the Mwangi Expanse or from snowy lands. He explains the choice of the new ancestries: there’s a Hobgoblin nation in the Inner Sea now; all of the staff & the fans loves Leshies; Gabe is playing a Lizardfolk on Oblivion Oath. What about Teiflings, Ratfolk, other ancestries folks really love? “Soon!” Factions include Hellknights. Each faction includes monster templates and a few NPCs for GMs to use. Erik displays a slide with a Leshy, a Dwarf, a New Thassilonian (“you have the opportunity to play those as well”), and a couple others. (7) WORLD GUIDE #3: LOST OMENS GODS & MAGIC January 2020. * Key details on the gods of the Age of Lost Omens! * Exhaustive index of hundreds of deities with domains, favored weapons, and more! (“All the stuff you need to play those characters”) * New domains, feats, and spells to customize your character based on their faith! Some beautiful art of Merisiel & Kyra fighting an armored skeleton dude. Erik describes the rough outline of the AP plot. Nothing that sounds terribly new. Re: the bad guy: “maybe you kill him, maybe you convince him he’s wrong, maybe you just get breathed on.” APs will double up in July/August so last PF1 AP volume comes out pretty much at same time as first PF2 AP volume. (And ongoing? I’m unclear.) Goal is to get 2 full APs each year. (9) AP #2: THE EXTINCTION CURSE It ALL takes place on Isle of Kortos. You’re members of a traveling circus exploring the island. When he raised Kortos, to make it fertile & thriving with life Aroden stole magic gems from Orv that Troglodytes used to grow food deep in the darklands. Now the Troglodytes want them back! They want to destroy all life on Kortos! Only the circus performers stand in the way! “It’s gonna be awesome.” Stuff re: Starfinder Society. PFS is going into the Year of the Open Road. Exploring famous PFS history/historical figures. Adventure Card Game gets org play too. Including its own themed year. (11) Mike Selinker re: Adventure Card Game (12) Erik Mona re: Kingmaker CRPG & PF2 Release Kingmaker video game. Free “enhanced edition” coming out June 6, 2019. Includes the Slayer. Also releasing new DLC, “Beneath the Stolen Lands”, a giant dungeon. (13) PATHFINDER SECOND EDITION: Core Rulebook Jason walks through the Core Rulebook chapter-by-chapter. Lots of slides. The spreads are absolutely gorgeous. Dig in! Introduction. Entirely rewritten. Does explain character creation. Ancestries & Backgrounds. Art of a Goblin eating a giant pickle. 35 backgrounds in Core Rulebook, including: miner; blacksmith; farmer; fortuneteller. Classes. Barbarian intro spread including great art of Amiri. We went through all 12 classes “with a fine-toothed comb” after the Playtest. Only classes that don’t have class-path options are Fighter & Monk, “we wanted you to build your own” with feats. Renamed Barbarian “totem” to “instincts.” Sorcerers get some new bloodlines including Hag and Undead (which gets a spell called gluttonous bite, with some horrifying art). All of the classes get sample builds. Classes take up some 180–200 pages. Lots and lots of class features and options. Archetypes: multiclass archetypes for each class. Displays the Bard/Champion spread (looks like 9 Bard feats & 7 Champion feats?). Great art. Skills. Reorganized to unify uses common to several skills up in the front of the chapter to clean up the rest. E.g., knowledge, seeking. Feats. E.g. Underwater Marauder, with art of Valeros ‘bout to get eaten by some underwater monster. “He’s gonna need a bigger boat.” Equipment. “There is some dynamite new stuff in there”, including a set of “armor” anyone can wear that you can enchant called “Explorer’s Clothing.” So even if you’re a Wizard you can get magic “armor.” Spells. Dinosaur Form. Jason talks about the forum-thread joke of “Dinosaur Fort.” They built it as a 10th level primal spell, “I’m gonna be honest,” it was in the book until the 11th-and-a-half hour. It will be in a future book. Golarion. Looks like a 1-page spread for each of the 10 regions. Beautiful art on the top half of the page, then a half-page of text. Playing The Game. Death & Dying illustrated by arrow-riddled Fumbus. Works much like the end of the playtest: wounded condition means yoyo’ing is *really bad* in PF2. But we got rid of negative numbers because everyone hated those. Gamemastering. Art of Kyra fighting Treerazer. Jason doesn’t really talk about this one much. Magic Items. Robe of Eyes. Wayfinder. The Vial of the First Lie (whisper from the astral plane of the first lie ever told, open it up to tell a nigh-unbeatable lie, like DC 47 or something: tell the king “I’m the king now”, “oh you are the king!”) (14) BESTIARY Jason holds up a final printed & bound copy. Apparently those have already arrived! Shows a spread of good two good outsiders and a spread of two evil outsiders. And a spread of “the ugly” to go with the good and the bad. Shows zonbies, including a giant zombie template that can throw other, smaller zombies. Talks about an “unkillable” zombie template where it resists most damage except head shots. Shows a dragon. Shows the Otyugh/Owlbear spread. Shows a nightmarish sloth. Shows the lich. “Lots of cool customizable abilities.” Shows the Treerazer page: the biggest, most powerful monster in the book. Huge Demon. Level 25. Axe looks like it’s covered in acid. It’s +5 while most weapons only go to +3—but good luck getting it from him! (15) Fall of Plaguestone Shows a beautiful intro spread featuring a really nice turnip-themed border. (16) GAMEMASTERY GUIDE Dropping Winter 2019. Chases. Duels. Victory Points. A mountain of sample NPCs. Rules for creating: spells, magic items, monsters. The essential book for the GM who wants to customize their game. (17) #MyPathfinderSpoiler Employees distribute 100 index cards, each with some rules text copied straight from the game. Each numbered & printed with the hashtag. Hopefully between all of you you can collect all 100 spoilers. Some aren’t exciting but there so you can understand the others. #77 is Jason’s favorite. Jason’s going to UK convention; if the message boards collect all 100 before he gets back he’ll dump a lot more spoilers. THREAD HERE (18) Owen re: Compatibility License We love our 3rd-party publishers. 1st Edition Pathfinder licensing isn’t going anywhere! Also PF2 licensing. Slide: * Early access to the game rules to qualifying publishers. * Qualifying publishers must sell digital or physical products on paizo.com or physical products through Alliance Game Distributors. * Early access publishers will receive rules files and the special Pathfinder symbol font starting June 14. * Interested qualifying publishers should contact licensing@paizo.com (19) Erik Mona closes the banquet Seems to suggest they might distribute high-quality copies of the slides? Or maybe just encouraging folks to screencap from the stream, which should be high quality. Tells attendees what they can do next. We’re done.
Here are my notes from the “The Future of Pathfinder” panel. I took these as I listened on the train home, with links added just now, and mostly tried to grab what sounded new to me rather than recreate the whole discussion. This is all paraphrase, so please listen to the panel itself before reading too much into anything. I’ve scattered timestamped links throughout to make it easier for you to find a particular bit you might be interested in. ### Panel Presentation/Discussion ### [EM] What are you most excited about in the new rules? [Designers] ... [Between the d20 basic and the 3-action system, it’s really easy to teach] [EM] “Design space”, what’s that? [Designers] ... [Heritages; magic items] We shrank the scale of [how much you need items]. Instead of 5 armor bonus it’s 3 now. We heard a lot of people saying, we want items to matter less. We heard you! [Archetypes] Specific questions/discussion about wands, bc Erik has been watching the online chatter. (1) Is casting a spell out of a wand always 1 action? No, no way. It’s the same as the spell. (2) If you’re trying to cast beyond the 1/day, is it destroyed, just broken and can be repaired? You *always* get the second spell, and it’s about a 50/50% flat check whether or not the wand is merely broken (and can be repaired with a skill check) or whether it’s permanently destroyed. (3) Special wands. E.g., a “wand of smoldering fireball”: when you cast fireball from this wand, the fireball also lights everyone on fire! (In the background, SRM: “There’s also a wand of widening.”) But remember, this is just the Core Rulebook! We only have so much space. [EM] Just thinking about the launch slate: each of you reveal something that you think *nobody* knows yet. [MS] World Guide. One of the archetypes in here is the Hellknight Armiger. So if anyone told you you couldn’t play a Hellknight in Hellknight Hill, that information is incorrect. This also introduces two new things. This archetype wants to become another archetype. It lets you enter another archetype before you’ve taken enough feats to satisfy its dedication. And, it has an “access entry”, a special way to get make an otherwise-uncommon choice common-for-you. Here, anyone who’s from the Old Cheliax region can choose Hellknight Armiger automatically at 2nd level. [JB] The Fall of Plaguestone. Designed to be the adventure that tells the story of how your group came together. Opening scene. All of you in the back of a wagon travelling through Isger, with a one-eared Elven cook named Cookie, who can barely hear you, as you make your way to a tiny, tiny rural town known as Plaguestone, that is known for its turnips. You even have the opportunity to become a turnip cop in the adventure. — This also lets us show off how an adventure can give you access to things you couldn’t otherwise get by completing it. Things we won’t put in other products. This speaks to our rarity system. I want to be able to pick up your character sheet and know some of the adventures you’ve played based on the options you have on there. Because you can’t get it any other way. So there’s an option in here that, for some characters, will be super awesome and unique. And you can’t get it just by building a character from the Core Rulebook. [LB] In the Gamemastering chapter of the Core Rulebook, we actually devote a fair number of words to creating a good, safe, fun game environment for everyone at your table [... more about the social contract of a gaming table] [SRM] Bestiary. It turns out that Axiomites are actually a type of Aeon. That’s all I’m saying. Have fun! ### Open Q&A ### Q: How much of a factor was society play in the design process? A: ... Q: How many classes do or don’t have a class path option? A: 10 out of 12. The Fighter and the Monk don’t have this kind of option. Here’s why. They both have so many feats that build in so many different paths we wanted you to be able to build your own. So, e.g., when you pick a Monk stance, you’re kind of picking a path there. They just have so many feats, we wanted you to be flexible there. Q: Difference between wands and scrolls? A: 1/day v. once ever. Also scrolls are a hell of a lot cheaper. Q: Item slots; belts and headbands of physical stats; what’s up? A: ... Q: What do we need to know about rituals? A: Anyone can perform a ritual if they’re good enough at the relevant skill. If a Fighter is very religious to Cayden Caliean, pour some ale over the dead Rogue and resurrect them. Q: Could I play a mute spellcaster? A: ... Discussion of GM advice, need to be respectful of real persons with disabilities so it can’t just be a bare mechanic ... Q: What do we need to know about combat maneuvers? A: Part of the Athletics skill. Resolved against Fortitude or Reflex DCs. That’s pretty much it! Q: [Some question kind of about monster customization] A: ... Q: Non-arcane Sorcerers seemed much weaker in the Playtest for ... reasons. Has the Sorcerer class been changed or improved to make it more even? A: Sorcerers have been changed a fair amount. We added a lot to Sorcerers overall. Feedback was: Wizard was very powerful but very boring; Sorcerer was very interesting but very weak. So Sorcerers have added a number of very useful features. Their bloodline focus spells are more powerful, more cool; new bloodlines that are cool. Whenever they cast any bloodline focus spell or other spell granted by bloodline, something else happens, that’s different by bloodline. Q: Combat maneuvers for dex-based characters? A: Dexterity has enough! Let Strength have something! In the Core book we don’t really, but that’s ripe for exploration in future products. Q: Resonance is gone. What replaces it? A: You can wear 10 “invested” magic items. Yes, your armor counts; no, your weapon doesn’t. It’s items you’re wearing on your person, so no, a bag of holding doesn’t count. The system is about worn items: you invest it, you put it on, you get the benefit, it counts against your limit. Generally, this makes magic items a more powerful part of the game—but that’s okay. Q: Will Gunslinger be just an archetype? A: This worked really well for Cavalier. But a lot of classes have enough going for them that they could be a full class. You could do a full Gunslinger class. But the Cavalier was already just barely attaining full class status. [JB takes over ...] So if you look at classes that are way far out in the reeds. Well, maybe we’ll say, “maybe that’s just an archetype.” E.g., some classes in the Advanced Class Guide. Q: Is the maximum bonus for weapons +3? A: Yes. The maximum bonus of items in the Core Rulebook is +3. That might not be true in the Bestiary. JB: The maximum bonus is not +3 written in the rules. But Jason will show something at the banquet that is beyond that cap. Q: Vehicular combat? A: At some point in time. But it’s not in the core of the game. There’s a product we’re announcing at the banquet that will have vehicles in it.
Hi everyone. I've been lurking for a while but figure PaizoCon is as good a time as any to start posting. Just watched the "Moving on from the Playtest" panel streamed on twitch. A few interesting details in the Q&A: Rage. Flat 1 minute; when you're done you aren't fatigued but can't rage again for a while. Wands. Cast a spell once/day. No level cap. Can try to cast additional times/day but risk destroying the wand. This also opens up design space for special wands. (Factoid: around 75% of survey respondents didn't care about keeping stick-of-spells style wands.) "Basic Saves." I believe this one has been discussed before, but confirming "basic saves" for the standard fireball type lineup: double damage/full damage/half damage/no damage. Just a space-saving efficiency term. Heritages. With this structure, it opens up the possibility of heritages that are open to more than one ancestry. Mark: "Like, you know how in Golarion Aasimar and Tieflings come from more than just humans?" So big hint-hint there. I'll try to catch some of the other streams through the weekend and see what else comes up. |
