I just bought the latest hardcover of the Pathfinder 2nd Ed. Core Rulebook to get started with the game. Is this the only book I really need to play or to run a pre-made dungeon for my friends?
When I click on the Pathfinder 2nd Edition link on the website, all these other books pop up and it's very confusing. If the above book contains player guide, DM guide, and Bestiary then why do I need another $60 Bestiary book and stuff like that? (shrug)
All the books should be laid out in the order a new player should purchase them because they are all kind of jumbled in one area. Thank you.
I think you would also need a bestiary book too - but currently that is all that is absolutely necessary.
The Core Rulebook does contain all of the necessary information for both players and GM in order to build characters and run the game.
Alternatively to the bestiary, the Gamemastery Guide has rules for building your own creatures for the players to battle against.
And all of them are available online - as it seems that you have noticed.
All you need is the core rulebook, and I highly recommend the PF2 GM screen which is chalk full of useful reference material. Bestiaries aren't necessary but are very cool to read, and will likely be helpful if you're planning your own adventure.
The Gamemastery Guide isn't needed per se, but I do think it is extremely helpful. Especially for homebrewing monsters or entire campaigns.
If you want to run a pre-written adventure, you will of course need a copy of that adventure. The longer adventure paths come with free player's guides, which I highly recommend reading before making purchases and pressure your players to read it before they come up with character ideas.
Bestiaries aren't necessary but are very cool to read, and will likely be helpful if you're planning your own adventure.
When running Abomination Vaults only some of the enemies have full stat blocks in the AP book. Others are simply referenced as being in the Bestiary.
Which isn't a huge problem - I can just look them up on AoN. But if you are a book purist and don't want to touch digital data, you would probably need the Bestiary in order to run the AP.
What do you guys know about the new core books coming out in October/November?
Thank you for your replies and assistance.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I only know what the Paizo team has said - which is that the rules themselves are not changing much. There is the standard errata level changes that happens every time they run another print run. But in addition to that they are doing some re-ordering of things like moving which book a particular class is printed in. There is one big change and that is the removal of alignment by that name. There are some similar mechanics that are being put in place to replace it.
One thing that they note is that with the bulk of the rules not changing, there is no hard requirement to get the new printings of the books if you already have the older ones. I don't intend to do that - I will just keep using my old books and the errata changes listed online.
I just bought the latest hardcover of the Pathfinder 2nd Ed. Core Rulebook to get started with the game. Is this the only book I really need to play or to run a pre-made dungeon for my friends?
When I click on the Pathfinder 2nd Edition link on the website, all these other books pop up and it's very confusing. If the above book contains player guide, DM guide, and Bestiary then why do I need another $60 Bestiary book and stuff like that? (shrug)
All the books should be laid out in the order a new player should purchase them because they are all kind of jumbled in one area. Thank you.
You really don't need to purchase any books to play, there is the Archives of Nethy's which present basically all the rules for the game that players and GMs need, however you wont find pre-written adventures on the website (although game mechanics from those adventures do sometimes get added).
That said, the Core Rule Book is actually a good purchase because the way it presents the rules is much better than the website for the purposes of learning the rules. Once you have a basic understanding of the rules AoN is a great reference, but for learning the basic concepts the CRB is very useful.
So, no purchases are necessary to play Pathfinder. CRB however is very helpful to learn the basics. Afterwards you just need a GM to put together a campaign. That can be very hard to do, especially if you're new to table top gaming or even just the PF2 system, so it can be helpful to purchase pre-written adventures to learn the ropes of being a GM.
I only know what the Paizo team has said - which is that the rules themselves are not changing much. There is the standard errata level changes that happens every time they run another print run. But in addition to that they are doing some re-ordering of things like moving which book a particular class is printed in. There is one big change and that is the removal of alignment by that name. There are some similar mechanics that are being put in place to replace it.
One thing that they note is that with the bulk of the rules not changing, there is no hard requirement to get the new printings of the books if you already have the older ones. I don't intend to do that - I will just keep using my old books and the errata changes listed online.
While this is all correct, I feel it's also important to state why this is being done.
For anyone not familiar, Wizards of the Coast tried to pull the rug out from underneath the TTRPG industry by attempting to alter the Open Gaming License (OGL). And while it was unclear if they actually could and whether it would be enforceable the other big players in the field decided the best response was to make their own license, the Open RPG Creative License.
Because the older books were published under OGL, it is possible that Wizards could try some additional shenanigans at some point. So they are revising the products to remove anything covered by OGL, making some errata updates, and also taking this as an opportunity to makes some other tweaks to the game. All the fundamentals remain the same, and your old versions of the game books all remain valid.
I only know what the Paizo team has said - which is that the rules themselves are not changing much. There is the standard errata level changes that happens every time they run another print run. But in addition to that they are doing some re-ordering of things like moving which book a particular class is printed in. There is one big change and that is the removal of alignment by that name. There are some similar mechanics that are being put in place to replace it.
One thing that they note is that with the bulk of the rules not changing, there is no hard requirement to get the new printings of the books if you already have the older ones. I don't intend to do that - I will just keep using my old books and the errata changes listed online.
While this is all correct, I feel it's also important to state why this is being done.
For anyone not familiar, Wizards of the Coast tried to pull the rug out from underneath the TTRPG industry by attempting to alter the Open Gaming License (OGL). And while it was unclear if they actually could and whether it would be enforceable the other big players in the field decided the best response was to make their own license, the Open RPG Creative License.
Because the older books were published under OGL, it is possible that Wizards could try some additional shenanigans at some point. So they are revising the products to remove anything covered by OGL, making some errata updates, and also taking this as an opportunity to makes some other tweaks to the game. All the fundamentals remain the same, and your old versions of the game books all remain valid.
Thank you, Claxon. I figured it was probably a more legal thing and then taking the opportunity to tweak some rules along the way. I appreciate the info.