Ready to go beyond the basics? Expand the limits of what's possible with the Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide! This 272-page Pathfinder Second Edition rulebook contains exciting new rules options for player characters, adding even more depth of choice to your Pathfinder game! Inside you will find brand new ancestries, heritages, and four new classes: the shrewd investigator, the mysterious oracle, the daring swashbuckler, and the hex-slinging witch! The must-have Advanced Player's Guide also includes exciting new options for all your favorite Core Rulebook classes and tons of new backgrounds, general feats, spells, items, and 40 flexible archetypes to customize your play experience even further!
The Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide includes:
Four new classes: the investigator, oracle, swashbuckler, and witch!
Five new ancestries and five heritages for any ancestry: celestial aasimars, curious catfolk, hagspawned changelings, vampiric dhampirs, fate-touched duskwalkers, scaled kobolds, fierce orcs, fiendish tieflings, industrious ratfolk, and feathered tengu!
40 new archetypes including multiclass archetypes for the four new classes, Pathfinder favorites like the cavalier, dragon disciple, shadowdancer, and vigilante, and brand-new archetypes like the familiar master and the shield-bearing iron wall!
New class options for all twelve classes from the Pathfinder Core Rulebook including champions of evil, genie and shadow sorcerers, zen archer monks, rogue masterminds, spellcasting rangers, and more!
Even more exciting new rules, from rare and unique backgrounds to investigative skill feats, from spells and rituals like reincarnate and create demiplane to new items including special wands with unusual effects and exciting potions worthy of a witch's cauldron.
ISBN-13: 978-1-64078-257-0
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It gave us four beloved classes (some being reworked as time of writing) with unique flavor and original mechanics, showing what insane feats (pun intended) the system is capable of reaching. Excellent resource for GMs and players alike.
The Advanced Player's Guide is the capstone piece to the original vision for Pathfinder Second Edition. The PF2 CRB was a whopping 640 pages and Paizo still had more content ready to go in it that they just could not release due to space issues. Everything that was left out was designated to be released over the next year in either the Lost Omens line of books or in the Advanced Players Guide. Things that were not quite fully fleshed out for the original release were then worked out. Four additional classes were put through a playtest and are featured in the APG; the Investigator, Oracle, Swashbuckler, and Witch. Five new ancestries are in the APG while three more were released in the Lost Omens Character Guide in 2019.
One of the new concepts in PF2 is that of Versatile Heritages. Instead of having separate ancestry categories for Aasimar, Tiefling, Changling, Dhampir, and Duskwalker, they are now what is called a versatile heritage. These modify the ancestry choice the player made for the character via the heritage selection. This is a very interesting concept as it provides many additional options for players. These five are just the first of multiple waves of versatile heritages which will be released over time by Paizo.
For those who have been desiring more options for characters, the APG delivers. The four new classes have their dedications for multiclassing along with 38 new archetypes. In addition, each of the 12 original classes gained some new options to choose from as did each of the original ancestries. Not all of the options are as viable as other options, but much of that will depend on the theme of a campaign and how GMs choose to allow players to select archetypes. I can envision some GMs designating some archetypes as free additional choices for players in that they can take one with no additional feat penalties because they give added depth to the campaign's theme such as the dandy or celebrity. Other GMs could emphasize select archetypes like the gladiator as a free archetype for their campaign's theme. The potential for some very interesting campaign themes definitely exists with these archetypes.
One of the things I was watching for in this book was the dreaded power creep. I do not see it present. None of the archetypes seems to overwhelm any of the original classes in terms of raw power while instead they augment them. This was a goal of Paizo from the beginning and it seems to have been met. The APG does what it was intended to do. It expands the options available to players at the initial creation of their characters and as those characters level up over time. Perhaps the best part of that is the APG continues to expand upon building characters as concepts and not as a collection of soulless numbers. While the numbers are important to determining how well a character can do something, the concept behind the character matters more. PF2 put the role back into roleplaying and the APG continues that vision.
Especially, and this is obvious, the Advanced Player's Guide is a terrific resource for players--but that doesn't mean GMs don't have a lot to gain from it!
Just on the strength of classes and ancestries, this book is about 150% the size of the core rulebook. Every existing class gets a major boost of options and feats and the same goes for existing ancestries. Adding in four new classes and five new ancestries on top of that is an amazing boon. True, some get more (or better) options than others, but I would say just on character creation alone, this book well beyond justifies its price point.
And that's just the base.
Add in universal heritages, which seem mechanically reasonable but almost unreasonably bursting with flavor, lore, or character development hooks. Add in the massive chunk of archetypes, which enables so many different nuances of character concepts without always landing on the somewhat clunky multiclassing rules. Add in a shot in the arm to spell lists, item lists, skill and general feat lists, and so on?
I just don't know that more needs to be said. This book is bursting with great content--and it's guaranteed to turn the heads of pretty much any player with at least a couple of its options!
I'm so excited for the Errata, waiting for it is becoming physically painful... I really do wish we at least had some kind of timeline of when we can expect it to drop or what kind of changes we can expect to be in it, so I can stop torturing myself wondering when it's going to happen and over changes that might not actually happen, lol
Yeah I know I'm a crazy person but I can't help it!
Yeah I've been checking daily to see if there is any update.
Daily? I'm checking hourly, basically. Send help, I'm going to go nutty if this doesn't hit soon...
I wrote a long update. It won't give you immediate relief but explains the status of errata overall.
Thanks so much! You're awesome! Don't worry by the way, I don't blame anyone or anything, I'm just excited! Even if I don't get all the changes I want even, but most of my favorite content in the game is in the APG and I'm just super hyped for the stuff that could use a little touchup (even if I only get some of them!). Like Witch hexes, Oracle's Divine Access, Bard Warrior Muse, etc.
Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Thanks for the update, hopefully the process will get streamlined in the future.
I'm just curious about the updates and looking for new info as Book of the Dead and other releases are a ways off
Hoping we see errata soon. I would love to be able to use dragon disciple but waiting to see how scales of the dragon will look, and hopefully DCs on breath of the dragon/disciples breath will be made more clear (pls be able to use class DC)
The Dwarven Ancestry feat "Defy the Darkness" is listed as limited access for PFS. Anyone know where/how access can be gained? There don't seem to be any hints in the APG itself, and I don't think I've seen it on a chronicle sheet up to this point.
Any update on when print copies will be back in stock? (Related: what's the deal with that errata? I imagine it will come at the same time as restocks)
#Soon? All sorts of things are stuck in ports. The reprint of the APG is not yet in the warehouse, as of the last report. Thus the unavailable status. When it is and when we are shipping it, we will release the errata on the FAQ's page. (We have to make sure all our license partners get the errata too.) I'm just waiting on the green light from the warehouse to say they are here and I can promote them.
Any update on when print copies will be back in stock? (Related: what's the deal with that errata? I imagine it will come at the same time as restocks)
#Soon? All sorts of things are stuck in ports. The reprint of the APG is not yet in the warehouse, as of the last report. Thus the unavailable status. When it is and when we are shipping it, we will release the errata on the FAQ's page. (We have to make sure all our license partners get the errata too.) I'm just waiting on the green light from the warehouse to say they are here and I can promote them.
So, ... how's the port situation?
Good new/bad news. My understanding is that we are selling the second printing of the Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide from our warehouse and have been for some time. The PDF and FAQs still need to be updated, but we have the teams working on these. We do not have a precise timeline to share. The PDF should be "soon." But because we are 1 person down in Design, I think the FAQ update will not be soon. Sorry for that. Having the correct games rules are important, we know that.
I only know what the headlines say. China's lockdowns are adding to the supply chain chaos. I do not have specifics about how that is effecting Paizo new releases. We are taking it week by week, month by month. Thanks for your patience and patronage.
Any update on when print copies will be back in stock? (Related: what's the deal with that errata? I imagine it will come at the same time as restocks)
#Soon? All sorts of things are stuck in ports. The reprint of the APG is not yet in the warehouse, as of the last report. Thus the unavailable status. When it is and when we are shipping it, we will release the errata on the FAQ's page. (We have to make sure all our license partners get the errata too.) I'm just waiting on the green light from the warehouse to say they are here and I can promote them.
So, ... how's the port situation?
Good new/bad news. My understanding is that we are selling the second printing of the Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide from our warehouse and have been for some time. The PDF and FAQs still need to be updated, but we have the teams working on these. We do not have a precise timeline to share. The PDF should be "soon." But because we are 1 person down in Design, I think the FAQ update will not be soon. Sorry for that. Having the correct games rules are important, we know that.
I only know what the headlines say. China's lockdowns are adding to the supply chain chaos. I do not have specifics about how that is effecting Paizo new releases. We are taking it week by week, month by month. Thanks for your patience and patronage.
Update: I am happy to be wrong. The APG errata should post today! There was a goblin/kobold/ysoki incident, but it is managed now. :)
Unfortunately, I can't seem to download this 2nd printing version of the .PDF. It seems stuck on the personalizing part, and initially it only downloaded a 151 byte file from the site.
Gonna keep trying for a bit, then I'll see about throwing an email over to customer service and see if they can fix it on their end.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Ezekieru wrote:
Unfortunately, I can't seem to download this 2nd printing version of the .PDF. It seems stuck on the personalizing part, and initially it only downloaded a 151 byte file from the site.
Gonna keep trying for a bit, then I'll see about throwing an email over to customer service and see if they can fix it on their end.
Same problem here, and I'm in a couple of chats where everyone had the same problems, I think it's not just on your side.
Unfortunately, I can't seem to download this 2nd printing version of the .PDF. It seems stuck on the personalizing part, and initially it only downloaded a 151 byte file from the site.
Gonna keep trying for a bit, then I'll see about throwing an email over to customer service and see if they can fix it on their end.
Same problem here, and I'm in a couple of chats where everyone had the same problems, I think it's not just on your side.
Same here. 191 bytes for the File Per Chapter version and 151 bytes for the Single File version.
I get the sense this is gonna be an issue that may take some time to fix, so let's give the staff some time to get it done. I'm looking forward to the Errata-filled book when the staff says it's ready!
I pushed a different, less-shiny button and I *think* I was able to get the new files pushed through the tubes. I was able to download both the single-file (47.97 MB) and file-per-chapter (65.67 MB) versions, and it sounds like other people are starting to have limited success as well.
It may take varying amounts of time for the updates to make it through, depending a lot of things like caching and cookies. Try refreshing your downloads, clearing your cache, or clicking the "Problems downloading this file? Click here." link. Every once in a while if it's being super stubborn, I can still get it to work in incognito mode or a different browser. I apologize that this isn't always the smoothest transition, but I've confirmed that the correct files are in place and folks should be able to access them once things have properly refreshed.
Thanks so much for your patience while I got this figured out! Hopefully folks will be able to peruse the updated PDF at their leisure this evening.
Any idea when the FAQ page will be updated to include the Advanced Player Guide errata? It currently has errata for the Core Rulebook (2 sets), Bestiary 2, and several Lost Omens books, but not yet the Advanced Player's Guide. I would find that more useful than the updated PDFs for the purpose of locating everything that changed.
Unofficial APG errata summary as checked over by me:
Independent Familiar:
This doesn’t work with valet or similar abilities that require a command rather than performing your preferred action.
Dragon Disciple addition:
You become trained in arcane spell DCs and arcane spell attack rolls.
Dragon Scales (Used to be Status)
When you're unarmored, the scales give
you a +2 item bonus to AC with a Dexterity cap of +3.
Eldritch Archer loses the free cantrip if you already cast spells
Ice Storm:
5ft burst, now 20ft burst.
No concealment
Ongoing damage halved.
Numerous sustained spells now only work the first time you sustain in a round.
Heal Companion 2 action traits fixed to Somatic, Verbal
Tempest Form fix lets you use its powers now.
Fix: You can’t cast spells, activate items, or use actions that have the attack or manipulate trait, except those granted by this spell.
Curse Trait: Effects with this trait can be removed only by effects that specifically target curses.
Nerfed Dhampir life span
Old:
These humanoids are the immortal offspring of vampires and
New:
These humanoids are the mortal offspring of vampires and
Additional Minion Restriction:
"A minion can't control other creatures."
Detective kit does the 1 handed thing while worn
I think that's it other than some minor wording fixes
Minor wording changes to Familiar(Tough), Keep Pace, Final Sacrifice, Candle of Invocation.
Any changes to the Witch Multiclass, to clarify the Familiar issue?
None. We still only got the video-answer from Logan on the matter.
Only change to the witch seems to be that the last spellcasting archetype feat now is actally called "Master Witch Spellcasting". Used to be "Master Wizard Spellcasting".
And I think someone on Deiscord mentioned one of her metamagic feats got its Traits sorted out. I think Concentrate was added to Widen Spell or something along those lines.
So yeah... Overall disappointing for an errata 20 months after the release of the book.
Yeah... not gonna lie, waiting for this errata only to have some minor errors corrected is pretty disappointing. It would have saved a lot of people some time if they just updated their FAQ page to show those changes when they were decided instead of making people wait.
Yeah... not gonna lie, waiting for this errata only to have some minor errors corrected is pretty disappointing. It would have saved a lot of people some time if they just updated their FAQ page to show those changes when they were decided instead of making people wait.
Was hoping for better changes to dragon disciple. Staying trained at arcane spell dc means the only classes it will be of any use on is classes that already get scaling arcane proficiency, or who spend a bunch of feats to also multiclass into a caster who does (which is ridiculous). While I understand the dragon scales change, to me the main benefit was getting a +2 status bonus while using shape of the dragon; a line like 'gain a +2 status bonus to ac while using dragon form' would've been awesome.
Being totally honest here, this mentality of "things being slightly too good is a huge problem, but things being bad is not an issue at all" that the designers and a big chunk of the community seem to have is slowly chipping away at all the excitement I once had about the game.