Pathfinder Core Rulebook

It's been a long while since I've played Roleplaying games due to some tumultuous times in my life. However, I started trying to pick up 5th edition here recently and truthfully I wasn't a huge fan. Then I saw that Pathfinder 2e was coming out. I absolutely fell in love with this system. The book is fantastic! Very fun to develop characters and I'm excited to see how the game continues to evolve.

Pathfinder 2.0 is a reboot of a venerable franchise based upon a prior iteration of D&D. Looking at it next to the current 5th edition of D&D you can call them two different branches of the same tree. This review assumes that the reader is unfamiliar with Pathfinder or s/he has only a passing knowledge of it, I'll leave it to grognards in other reviews to shake out the minutae of what changed from the previous iteration of the game ;-)

Pathfinder is a fantasy cooperative role-playing game that is rules-heavy. If you prefer less complicated games - you might want to try D&D 5ed instead. But if you find yourself liking a crunchier game with more options - PF 2ed might be just right your alley. It hits a nice middle ground between complexity and simplicity. You can play an Elven warrior or a Dwarven wizard and customize your character with a wide array of options.

The gameplay itself is tactical, fast-paced and exciting. I've ran two games of it so far and found it right up my alley.

Production values of the book itself are top notch. Artwork is fantastic with evocative images and gorgeous landscapes spilling out of the book left and right. An overview of a fantasy setting - Paizo's renowned Golarion world - is provided. Trust me, Paizo's world building is outstanding and sets the bar very high.

Sprinkled throughout the books are examples, diagrams, tables and explanations which make this daunting 640 pg tome easier to consume. Additionally, and maybe to poke a stick into some reviewers below, I've found the "revolutionary" references to the game being a social experience that requires some sensitivity refreshing.

If you're looking for a mainstream fantasy RPG with some crunchy bits but with gameplay smooth enough to make recreating the Matt Mercer and Co. experience possible, check this out. You won't be disappointed, and with Paizo's legendary record of high quality game setting books and published adventures/campaigns, you're into fun for years to come.

D&D 3e/3.5e left a bad taste in my mouth, despite extensive play. D&D 4e was my favorite edition, but I often felt like nobody else shared that opinion. I felt D&D 5e was flimsy and bland; I got all the mileage I could out of it in a very short time.

I picked up PF2 for the following reasons:

- Favorable comparisons between PF2 and D&D 4e
- Paizo's unmatched prewritten content support
- Paizo's dedication to inclusivity in gaming

PF2 gave me everything I missed about D&D 4e and fixed the things I didn't:

- Classes that feel diverse and highly customizable instead of homogenous
- Intuitive systems built on solid underlying math that won't require volumes worth of splat to fix
- More effectively written content than I know what to do with instead of volumes worth of impractical bloat
- Thriving organized play instead of what seemed to be a barely extant community
- Engagement with the player-base instead of spitting products out from some corporate bunker

I wouldn't have ended up trying and loving PF2 if the developers hadn't committed to giving the game a fresh identity. I'm really happy they did it "the hard way" despite the associated risks and gargantuan effort.

PF2 is my new dedicated system!

(edited 1/7/20)

The core rules for the second edition of Pathfinder clock in at 642 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 2 pages ToC, ¾ of a page SRD, 2 pages advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 634 ¼ pages of content, so let’s take a look!

So, Pathfinder Second Edition. I believe I should first specify where I’m coming from: I’m a huge fan of the first edition. Heck, I’ve reviewed literally thousands of PF1-books. I’ve also spent a lot of time with Pathfinder Playtest, and had complaints regarding that book that rendered me rather conflicted about the second edition.

Opening the second edition’s covers, we notice something good from the get-go: The book explains, in a concise and easy to grasp manner, with bolding of key components, the basics of the game. This is very much welcome, and in contrast to PF Playtest, which beat you over the head with complex concepts without explaining key-terms – so we’re off to a promising start. Indeed, the most crucial improvement on a formal level over PF Playtest is easily organization, something I loudly complained about back then – for example, we get tables that list ancestries and classes and their key ability scores, flaws, secondary ability scores, etc. This makes grasping the game easier for newbies. This extends to a step-by-step guide to make characters that is simpler and easier to grasp – the presentation if more concise, and we do get a spread-sheet summary of basics of races and classes, a quick reference, and step-by-step go through the filling out of the character sheet.

This being a review of the core game, I believe it is not helpful to go into the details of every bit of rules-relevant component; instead, I’ll attempt to convey what Pathfinder’s second edition is, and what it isn’t.

To make this abundantly clear from the get-go: Pathfinder’s second edition does not have much in common with the first edition, and it does not attempt to ape D&D 5th edition either. It is a game of its own. Both are mindsets I initially admittedly had – I expected either a further development of the first edition’s rules, or a 5.75 of sorts, similar to what Pathfinder’s first edition did with D&D 3.5 back in the day. If you expect either of these things, you may be somewhat flabbergasted by this game – this is not what Pathfinder second edition is all about.

There are similarities, sure – there still are feats, races are now called ancestries, and the ability score modifiers apply to the same extent as before – Strength 16 means you have a +3 modifier, for example. There are still feats that can only be taken by certain species, and indeed, these are more important now – ancestry feats are an important thing, and in Pathfinder second edition, matter more than for many races in PF1. Indeed, the ancestries have core benefits, the heritages, which actually have a significant impact on the playing experience. So that’s a plus.

While I have commented on the improved organization of the book, there is one aspect where it fails hard from a didactic point of view: It explains its combat actions etc. LONG after the ancestries, backgrounds and classes, which means that many of the rules featured in them will make no sense to you, unless you’ve read that section as well. Why not explain encounter mechanics first, and THEN let the players make informed choices? This is an unnecessary complication, one I believe was made to maintain the ABC of ancestries, background, classes in the beginning, which ultimately is a gimmick, but nothing more. In this way, the book mirrors the organizational shortcomings that annoyed me to bits in 5e.

First, you explain the game. THEN you let folks make characters. Not that hard per se, right?

While we’re on the subject matter of things that I don’t like: The new default speed, unless you’re playing an elf or dwarf, is 25 feet. This may not be an issue for people using and thinking in the imperial system, but I was born and raised with the metric system, which also makes mathematically more sense to me. That being said, I never had issues grasping the basic size relations in RPGs - 30 feet equals 9 meters. 20 feet equals 6 meters. Elegant. Simple.

Even if you think in meters, that’s something you can learn to understand pretty quickly. 25 feet…equals 7.5 meters. Utterly opaque. I am willing to bet that, no matter how much I play the game, I will NEVER have a firm mental grasp of how much 7.5 meters are. Slightly less than 9 meters. By approximately half of a small person, and less than half of an opaque average value for human sizes- …yeah, that doesn’t help me at all. I can have a rough idea, but I’ll never be able to precisely see the distance in my mind’s eye. Why am I harping on this? While I often use battle maps, I can narrate complex tactical situations in mind’s eye theater, and with this…I won’t be able to do that. It might seem petty to you, but it’s a big strike for me as a person. That being said, I will not have this influence the final verdict, because it’s not an issue for people accustomed to the imperial system, and I can’t assume that my problem here is shared with all people accustomed to the metric system. As an aside: The change of default speed also provides a basic form of incompatibility with previously released content – one that can really trip up the GM, so please be aware of that. And yes, I get why. It’s got something to do with the changed 3-action economy and the size of the average flip mat. It still is something that proved to be problematic for me.

Anyhow, some more notes on ancestries, and namely, how they work: There are feats, and heritages. Heritages require that you choose one, and in a way, I don’t get why they’re the way they are. Let’s take the death warden dwarf. That heritage makes successes on saving throws versus necromancy critical successes instead. Umbral gnomes or cavern elves get darkvision as their heritage benefit. Notice something? You do choose, but the choices per se seem like there will be a ton of redundancy in the future. How many races will have a heritage that nets darkvision? How many will have a heritage that transforms a success into a critical success? The answer is, to spoil that for you: A TON. And I’m already bored by seeing them, because, you know, you get ONE heritage. Contrast those with e.g. the Whisper elf, who gets a 60-foot cone instead of a 30-foot cone when using Seek. That is…kinda more interesting. But, again, it is something we’re bound to see from other ancestries. In a way, heritages feel a bit like arbitrarily-restricted ancestry feats. In a way, these heritages don’t feel too tied to the species. Humans, in case you were wondering, still are very potent – their heritages include becoming trained in a skill, or get a bonus general feat. Oh, and a level 1 human feat can net you a 1st level class feat, which is a HUGE advantage for any character. So yeah, humans are very potent.

But I’m getting lost in the details, so let’s once more return to the big picture, shall we? Pathfinder’s second edition

Pathfinder’s second edition is a game that has a very tightly-wound math. This may not be evident at first glance, but upon delving deeper, it becomes readily apparent. This is at once one of the greatest strengths of the system, and one of its greatest weakness – which of the two apply to you and yours ultimately is contingent on personal preference. Let me elaborate: From the very core of the game, we have critical successes and failures contingent on beating or failing to beat a DC by +10 or -10, respectively. This degrees of success or failure paradigm is something I very much enjoy, However, it also makes a few things clear: There is a bounded accuracy paradigm at play here – and this is very prominently by the proficiency system: Untrained characters get +0, trained characters +2, expert +4, master +6, and legendary +8. Additionally, the character’s level is added to all but the untrained proficiency in respective checks. These proficiency ranks feature as a deeply ingrained component of the game in pretty much everything. It should become apparent that, at +8, the proficiency bonus alone can’t elevate a success to a decisive success. That being said, my math tests resulted in a general notion that legendary will make you only fail on 1s on relevant skills. Oh, take 10 is gone, so a degree of reliability is gone – which, I assume, will in the long run help in the regard of making proficiency rank matter more.

This brings me to a core design component I enjoyed in a way, but also somewhat bemoaned: In Pathfinder’s first edition, starting at mid levels, the specialization chasm began, at the very latest, to loom very widely. The rogue would have ridiculous amounts of Stealth, while the other characters wouldn’t; you’d be either excellent at something, or suck to the point where rolling the check was a waste of time. Pathfinder’s second edition gets rid of this issue by emphasizing two things: With a smaller range for the math to work in, ability score modifiers become more important. So does the level. If you’re a level 10 character, the difference between being trained and an expert in something becomes much less important. +2 difference vs. +10 gained by levels. Even a legendary proficiency would offer less of a boost than the full character level. Being trained, however, is very important, because it unlocks the level boost – in the example above, being untrained vs. trained means a difference of a whopping +12. This system allows for the creation of more streamlined adventure writing and means that high-level characters will be more universally useful, instead of being specialists. I don’t yet have enough playing experience to discern whether I prefer this take, or the first edition’s hyper-specialization. That being said, there are more ways to become better than in the Playtest, so there is a bit more difference between being sucky and being good. Still, one can’t expect the same range of different skillsets in Pathfinder 2nd edition.

On the plus-side, this mechanic extends to basically everything, replacing BAB, saves, etc. – which makes explaining the game quicker and provides a sense of unification of previously disparate concepts.  E.g. the highest two proficiency ranks are restricted to the higher levels, while you can potentially start with up to third rank. This means that levels and ability scores are more important than the proficiency, but I do like that you can now be bad at something.

Now, backgrounds deserve some applause, in that they very much matter in contrast to the traits of PF1, and they provide very tangible benefits – but on the other hand, I fail to see the difference between many heritages and backgrounds. It may just be me being somewhat anal-retentive – I think that heritages should reflect biological components, and the other stuff should be ancestry feats and/or backgrounds, but that may be me. That being said, there are MANY more backgrounds than in the playtest, which is a GOOD thing.

Speaking of good things: Beyond feats, there are some serious decisions at first level; this is a huge advantage over 5th edition, where the choices , for many classes, start mattering at 3rd level. So yeah, good thing. Speaking of things that this does well: In contrast to Pathfinder Playtest, each of them comes with a sidebar that lists suitable choices for you – want to play chirurgeon alchemist? Check the sidebar. Want to play an animal rager barbarian? Check the sidebar. This is an excellent way for new players to prevent choice-paralysis. That being said, layout is not 100% as efficient as I’d expect it here – each of the classes has its cool icon, and there is necessarily some overlap between the classes and their presentation; if a class feat exists for two classes, it’ll be there multiple times. That being said, I once again understand the choice, and for a core book, this is smart: Each class chapter contains all the rules for each class, which means you can print out everything for one class, be done.

On the downside, you will be rereading the same paragraph over and over. If I have to read “In addition to the abilities provided by your class at 1st level, you have the benefits of your selected ancestry and background, as described in Chapter 2.” One more time…These feel like filler. On the other hand, the class tables are condensed to a point where they lose any ability to parse them efficiently. They have a whopping 2 (!!) columns: One for the level, and the rest is a frickin’ wall of text. WHY? My eyes glaze over whenever I try reading one of them. How hard would it have been to have a column for ancestry feat, one for skill feats, one for class feats, one for ability boosts and one for class features? Not hard. And it’d allow for swift and simple parsing of information.

On the plus-side: Each class offers a TON of choice, including e.g. monks and wizards. Wizards of different arcane theses (a super-important 1st level choice) will feel radically different from each other. Monks and fighters, on the other hand, do not get such a choice and instead relegate the customization to a combination of fixed class features and class feats – there is a lot of diversity here, but unlike most of the classes, these two do not have the same subclasses. The fighter is pretty novel, in that it clearly has had some fans of a certain OotS-fighter among the design team – the class now clearly rewards playing smart and knowing when to use what class feat. It is no longer a grab bag and a “hit it”-class – meaningful choices abound. This is good.

Not so good: Let’s talk about the druid – it has been nerfed, but the primal list now includes spells such as lightning bolt…and the class has a choice between orders: Shapechanger, blaster, leshy familiar + healing, or animal companion – you must choose one. You can get the stuff later, but you’ll have to spend class feats on those if you don’t get the order. Oh, and the class feat shows up at 2nd level, not at first. So you can quickly, potentially, have more than one order’s abilities, but it’ll cost you. I like the druid class per se, but compared to the ranger, the companion option is much better when taking the entire package into account. Still, less overpowered than in Pathfinder’s 1st edition. The cleric wasn’t changed too much, but THANKFULLY, we can now decide between being an old-school cleric, or being essentially a white mage. This is another decision I very much applaud. While we’re on the subject of divine classes: Paladins are now a subset of the champion class, which is essentially the defensive tank martial. So yeah, we have a functional defense class. As an aside on defense: Shields now actually NEGATE hits. Shields matter. Big time.

Sorcerers have drastically different feeling as well, with the bloodline influencing the magic tradition from which you draw your spells – divine, primal or occult sorcerers? Very much possible. In case you’re new to the tradition concept: Spell-access is now by tradition – arcane, divine, occult, primal. Smart future-proofing. As an aside: if you were like me and hated the Playtest sorcerer, it has grown tremendously – for the first time, they feel like a class of their own, with flexibility being tantamount. No longer late spells gained, and in fact, they get more castings per day and spells. Oh, and the barbarian? We are no longer locked into totems. That’s a very good thing – instead, we choose instincts for the barbarian – a good piece of advice here: Please do read the entire class here. This class, ironically, rewards planning more than others, as there is much building on instincts. Love it to bits.

Part II of my review may be found here!