A pile of old characters, is it worth trying?


General Discussion


The plan was that I would go through and make conversions of the PCs and major NPCs for campaigns I have been involved with, to test out what the system can accomplish.

I'm not sure it's actually worth the effort, it seems loud and clear that these aren't well-supported under the playtest rules. Heck, the first character I made once I got ahold of the PF1 CRB is a sorcerer of a bloodline that isn't around (elemental, for the curious). I don't want to go through the effort just to mark off 30 failures.

Silver Crusade

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I agree.
I think it’s horrid decision by Paizio. It would not take a lot of work to convert characters over.
I have read through 2E and while I think 1.0 could have used a few tweaks I think 2.0. changes significantly the game so much that unless there is considerable rewrites I am just not on board. I am doing some play testing in a week and I will make my final determination then. I really hope Paizo is listening cause what I see right now is why I didn’t go to 4th and 5th E DnD.

The is Pathfinder for Lazy GMs and PCs with attention spans of attention of a may fly.

In a single year, every I invested in will become increasingly obsolete every year.

Multi Classing is dead as we know it

Character unique customization is gone.

Half Orc and Half Elf not worth playing.

Scores of editing errors in the book. Does the editor play pathfinder? Go look at the sorceror Draconic bloodline and tell me how to figure out damage and abilities. HLO fortunately solves that question but I didn’t pay to pre order all this stuff, to the still not defective my printer copies, to have a subcription based 2nd party app a sweet my questions.

I think I like so far how combat will conducted, but why you could not incorporate this into 1.0 makes me wonder.

Wands and other items over use? Why not look at CR ratings and perhaps make a rule change where you have to be a caster of that spell type to use or something down those lines.

Magic pretty nerfed up.

Sorcerer bloodlines are a cool adjustment.

Overall unless the play test at my hobby shop shows me something I am missing I think while well intended 2E falls flat as is and the coup de grace is not being allowed to convert characters.


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Yeah, I have a character I played that was very impatient, very hyper, and wanted to learn everything. She ended up at the end of the game having about 5 classes...bard, ranger, paladin, wizard, horizon walker. Because she wanted to learn things that she thought was cool. She took a level of ranger when the ranger in the party took her to hunt. She took a level of wizard when she saw our party wizard kick ass by dropping a maximized fireball on a crocodile.

I've played her several times over the last 10 years because she comes out a little bit different each time depending upon the game we play and the characters in the party. She's unoptimized as hell...in the above example, she sucked as a wizard..., but she is by far my favorite, most memorable character ever.

And under this new system, I'm not going to be able to build her.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

The playtest document is just over 430 pages. It has to explain how the game works, what environmental hazards do, rules for countless magic items and spells, and even hash out all the terminology (both new and old). This playtest was never going to be able to convert more than a small percentage of character concepts from a system with 10 years of content, and I personally think holding it to that standard when the game's core rules haven't even been set in stone yet is a premature judgement of its value.

There are countless concepts that the PF2 playtest rules cannot possibly support, but there are also many concepts that simply did not work well in PF1 that PF2 enables (functioning multiclass caster combinations, a mobile ranged damage dealer, a spontaneous nature caster, etc). I for one plan on testing what the system enables rather than focusing on what can't be ported over to what is essentially an unfinished core rulebook.


Well, to be fair, I don't think anyone is actually going to stop you from converting characters (outside of organized play or individual GMs), but it's probably not a good idea as the two editions have very little in common apart from certain aesthetic choices.

Liberty's Edge

Haywire build generator wrote:
The plan was that I would go through and make conversions of the PCs and major NPCs for campaigns I have been involved with, to test out what the system can accomplish.

Based on the huge differences between PF1 and the playtest, "Converting" probably won't work, and "reimagining," as they say in Hollywood, is probably your best bet.

Quote:
I don't want to go through the effort just to mark off 30 failures.

Forget about failures, even if you manage to satisfactorily port over 30 characters, that work will be wasted a year from now when the actual PF2 hits the streets. I see little point in creating much in the way of NPCs and such for the Playtest for that very reason. My playtesting will be done with the pre-built advenures and if I go beyond that, with the stat blocks in the free Bestiary.

Dark Archive

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I'm currently running a group through Strange Aeons, and I experimented with converting their characters to level 1 playtest characters.

Strange Aeons Party:

Emilia "Books" Charles
Before: Occultist with the Reliquarian archetype for Sarenrae
After: Cleric of Sarenrae with aspirations for wizard dedication

Heolster Interitis
Before: Psychic with a focus on damaging spells like mind thrust
After: Sorcerer with the aberrant bloodline

Vadaline Zhantre
Before: Medium who almost exclusively uses the champion spirit
After: Barbarian with the spirit totem

"Chef" Brougha
Before: Melee Geokineticist
After: Monk with aspirations of cleric dedication for the Earth domain

Lucien Zalentie
Before: Mesmerist who goes into melee or uses enchantments
After: Arcane sorcerer with aspirations for rogue dedication

My players were generally happy with the way their level 1 2E versions looked, although we don't plan to play with them or do any sort of conversion of the Strange Aeons material. I wouldn't give up on old characters, even if the classes and archetypes don't exist yet.

Liberty's Edge

LuniasM wrote:
The playtest document is just over 430 pages. It has to explain how the game works, what environmental hazards do, rules for countless magic items and spells, and even hash out all the terminology (both new and old).

That's what the eventual PF2 Rulebook is going to have to do, too, and presumably won't be much bigger than the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. It seems unlikely it will have room to support many more character concepts than the Playtest Rulebook supports, so either we're going to end up with the same selection, of some will go and others will take their place. I see no reason that members of the player base shouldn't make it known what character concepts they'd like to see covered.


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LuniasM wrote:

The playtest document is just over 430 pages. It has to explain how the game works, what environmental hazards do, rules for countless magic items and spells, and even hash out all the terminology (both new and old). This playtest was never going to be able to convert more than a small percentage of character concepts from a system with 10 years of content, and I personally think holding it to that standard when the game's core rules haven't even been set in stone yet is a premature judgement of its value.

There are countless concepts that the PF2 playtest rules cannot possibly support, but there are also many concepts that simply did not work well in PF1 that PF2 enables (functioning multiclass caster combinations, a mobile ranged damage dealer, a spontaneous nature caster, etc). I for one plan on testing what the system enables rather than focusing on what can't be ported over to what is essentially an unfinished core rulebook.

It's strange that every other edition of this game except PF1 and PF2 and many other table top RPGs solved the page count issue by having half this information in a separate book for GMs so that the "Core" rule book could be focused on being a "player's hand book".


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Luke Styer wrote:
LuniasM wrote:
The playtest document is just over 430 pages. It has to explain how the game works, what environmental hazards do, rules for countless magic items and spells, and even hash out all the terminology (both new and old).
That's what the eventual PF2 Rulebook is going to have to do, too, and presumably won't be much bigger than the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. It seems unlikely it will have room to support many more character concepts than the Playtest Rulebook supports, so either we're going to end up with the same selection, of some will go and others will take their place. I see no reason that members of the player base shouldn't make it known what character concepts they'd like to see covered.

There's nothing wrong with stating things like "Hey, I really like [x character concept], but it's not possible to convert in the playtest rules. I'd really like to see it covered in the official release." But that's not where the thread was going - it was mostly defeatist "A lot of concepts don't convert well to PF2, therefore the game is bad." Which, as I've made clear, I feel is a premature judgement of the system.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Nathanael Love wrote:
LuniasM wrote:

The playtest document is just over 430 pages. It has to explain how the game works, what environmental hazards do, rules for countless magic items and spells, and even hash out all the terminology (both new and old). This playtest was never going to be able to convert more than a small percentage of character concepts from a system with 10 years of content, and I personally think holding it to that standard when the game's core rules haven't even been set in stone yet is a premature judgement of its value.

There are countless concepts that the PF2 playtest rules cannot possibly support, but there are also many concepts that simply did not work well in PF1 that PF2 enables (functioning multiclass caster combinations, a mobile ranged damage dealer, a spontaneous nature caster, etc). I for one plan on testing what the system enables rather than focusing on what can't be ported over to what is essentially an unfinished core rulebook.

It's strange that every other edition of this game except PF1 and PF2 and many other table top RPGs solved the page count issue by having half this information in a separate book for GMs so that the "Core" rule book could be focused on being a "player's hand book".

I can't speak for everyone, but I personally dislike the Player / GM split most games use. One of the big selling points of PF1 for me was that all the rules were in one book, so I could purchase one product and be ready to play or run a game. Beastiaries get a pass due to the sheer amount of information required, but I would rather wait for additional player options in future books than be required to purchase another book at the initial release of a game.


Nathanael Love wrote:
It's strange that every other edition of this game except PF1 and PF2 and many other table top RPGs solved the page count issue by having half this information in a separate book for GMs so that the "Core" rule book could be focused on being a "player's hand book".

Mind you; you look at the RPG industry as a whole and DnD is kind of an outlier on that front. Most of the other RPGs I've looked into has had the core book do both player and GM content. Eclipse Phase, Shadowrun, Exalted, Cyberpunk 2020, Elite Dangerous RPG, Iron Kingdoms, the various Cypher System games...

Probably a bunch more that I haven't looked at that do the same.


ShadowFighter88 wrote:
Nathanael Love wrote:
It's strange that every other edition of this game except PF1 and PF2 and many other table top RPGs solved the page count issue by having half this information in a separate book for GMs so that the "Core" rule book could be focused on being a "player's hand book".

Mind you; you look at the RPG industry as a whole and DnD is kind of an outlier on that front. Most of the other RPGs I've looked into has had the core book do both player and GM content. Eclipse Phase, Shadowrun, Exalted, Cyberpunk 2020, Elite Dangerous RPG, Iron Kingdoms, the various Cypher System games...

Probably a bunch more that I haven't looked at that do the same.

Idk, most of them have a separate GM book- the old WoD line had the Storyteller's Companion series, Shadowrun most editions has a core book and then a Companion book (besides rigger and decker and magic specific books which are basically required to play or GM a rigger, decker, or mage).

Monte Cook's new Invisible Sun has 5 books in the box- one for players and several for GMs. . .

The PF1 Core book being so thick that it burst through the seems on the spine routinely was always problematic.


Kinda sad that goblins are not proficient in Slings, I was using a goblin to replace my Pathfinder Ratfolk for the time being.

Also, having the Mess Kit back would be nice. :)

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