First of all, there have been a large number or angry and derisive post which I find totally uncalled for. The people at Paizo put a lot of work and though into PF2 and made a bold move by bringing us PF2. I want to thank all of you for this.
I’ll put a bit of time into this and wouldn’t want to see this go to waste. Many threads which this post might have fit are now somewhere between post 50 and 400 an unfortunately some have devolved into bickering. I didn’t like my chances just making post 411 there ☹
Also, I didn’t want this to look like an enormous wall of text as this was also a non-preferred option in one of the Paizo sticky threads. I hope this doesn’t get to unreadable but to me I’s worth a try.
1 – don’t chance anything
2 – Unchained is the way to go, update and clean up PF1 and turn it into PF1.1 or 1.5. I happened to be part of this camp
3 – Make something completely new, no this is what PF2 is to me. Unfortunately, this could go into a number of different directions making it the camp with many subdivisions.
And then there are prospective new players…
Of course, I cannot claim to have knowledge of how many all the PF players out there would be in which group. But it gives a rather clear picture that Paizo wouldn’t be able to get all these different wish lists into one edition.
Still I respect Paizo’s decision to go into the direction they chose and I hope that this will turn into profitable business for them.
If you got this far you’ll already have an idea that PF2 might not be for me. Since this alone lets my look like a grumpy old man I’ll elaborate on a few things.
Many features of PF2 have already been offered for PF1 in unchained like:
3 actions per turn
reduced skill lists (multiple options here)
getting rid of the “big six” by automatic bonus progression
proficiency levels trained to legendary are similar to the skill unlocks
Ancestries and backgrounds have been separated in a very similar way in a thread in homebrew into “genetic” e. g. elves have low light vision and “upbringing” e. g. an elve raised among humans might rather have the extra skill point per level instead of weapon familiarity with bows and swords.
To me this would have been the perfect base to include most of the new options into a PF1.1 and clean up some things like make sure to have everything that’s “mind affecting” clearly marked a s such
Everyone having +1 per level takes away the many defining features which I like different BAB, saves, skill points
Grappling & other combat maneuvers have been a bit confusing in PF1 for making sure you got all the right modifiers for CMB and CMD but once you had that it was an action similar to an attack which just got rolled like an attack, just with CMB/CMD. Now you got skills for this and roll against a saving throw. This is rather unintuitive to me. To break out of a grapple you got several options what you roll against depending on how you’re being held (arms, pincers, construct)
The system for backgrounds is reducing options. If you want to be the strong guy with 18 Str you need to come from a background like sailor but not hunter as hunter won’t give you the +2 Str. This is taking away options or puts you in a place where you need you background story to jump some hoops. In the end I’d prefer straight point buy with racial modifiers.
In total the system feels like a completely different game where you’ll have to start learning most things from scratch.
I like the new stat approach from the ancestries by giving out a free +2 which can be used to mitigate the ability flaw. This finally allows you to play dwarf sorcerers much better
Our group consists of friends I have known for the better part of my live. Ten years ago, my job brought me back close enough to meet them again for game night and ~ 5 years ago we changed from board games to roleplaying. At that time, we hadn’t played since AD&D second edition but easily agreed that Pathfinder would be the route to take. Not AD&D 3.5 or 4 or Shadowrun or GURPS. I even brought Paranoia but that was a joke.
Now among us we have spent several grand on PF1 and don’t want to make some part or most of this stuff obsolete.
Long story short, I’m the only one of our group who followed PF2 and even I’m not willing to switch from PF1 to PF2 for reasons stated above. Fortunately, we have all APs (most of them print) and a large number of the smaller adventures.
We’ll keep buying Paizo stuff as long as PF1 things get published and the we’ll probably start buying all the older splat books. There is still a lot of stuff on Golarion 1.0 unexplored by us. Perhaps at some point in time we’ll look for something new and then the new PF3 coming out in 2028 might just be what we’ve been waiting for.
In the end writing this makes me feel sad as it sounds like a farewell. It hope it won’t be forever as I and the group I play with really appreciate PF1 and plan to continue playing Paizo stuff for a long time to come. Perhaps There’ll be some PF1 adaption guides for PF2 AP to play them with PF1
My take on PF2 and why I made a new thread for that
This is an updated version of my original post without all the spoilers and some new content.
First of all, there have been a large number or angry and derisive post which I find totally uncalled for. The people at Paizo put a lot of work and though into PF2 and made a bold move by bringing us PF2. I want to thank all of you for this.
Why I made my own thread (which might have gone sideways)
I’ll put a bit of time into this and wouldn’t want to see this go to waste. Many threads which this post might have fit are now somewhere between post 50 and 400 an unfortunately some have devolved into bickering. I didn’t like my chances just making post 411 there ☹
Why any version of “PF2” would have been a lose/lose scenario
Back in the day, before PF2 was announced there was a lot of discussion about PF2 with at least three distinct camps on of which had many subdivisions.
1 – don’t chance anything
2 – Unchained is the way to go, update and clean up PF1 and turn it into PF1.1 or 1.5. I happened to be part of this camp
3 – Make something completely new, no this is what PF2 is to me. Unfortunately, this could go into a number of different directions making it the camp with many subdivisions.
And then there are prospective new players…
Of course, I cannot claim to have knowledge of how many all the PF players out there would be in which group. But it gives a rather clear picture that Paizo wouldn’t be able to get all these different wish lists into one edition.
Still I respect Paizo’s decision to go into the direction they chose and I hope that this will turn into profitable business for them.
If you got this far you’ll already have an idea that PF2 might not be for me. Since this alone lets my look like a grumpy old man I’ll elaborate on a few things.
Still sad that Unchained wasn’t used as chassis
Many features of PF2 have already been offered for PF1 in unchained like:
3 actions per turn
reduced skill lists (multiple options here)
getting rid of the “big six” by automatic bonus progression
proficiency levels trained to legendary are similar to the skill unlocks
Ancestries and backgrounds have been separated in a very similar way in a thread in homebrew into “genetic” e. g. elves have low light vision and “upbringing” e. g. an elve raised among humans might rather have the extra skill point per level instead of weapon familiarity with bows and swords.
To me this would have been the perfect base to include most of the new options into a PF1.1 and clean up some things like make sure to have everything that’s “mind affecting” clearly marked a s such
Stuff that keeps me from digging deeper into PF2
Everyone having +1 per level takes away the many defining features which I like different BAB, saves, skill points
Grappling & other combat maneuvers have been a bit confusing in PF1 for making sure you got all the right modifiers for CMB and CMD but once you had that it was an action similar to an attack which just got rolled like an attack, just with CMB/CMD. Now you got skills for this and roll against a saving throw. This is rather unintuitive to me. To break out of a grapple you got several options what you roll against depending on how you’re being held (arms, pincers, construct)
The system for backgrounds is reducing options. If you want to be the strong guy with 18 Str you need to come from a background like sailor but not hunter as hunter won’t give you the +2 Str. This is taking away options or puts you in a place where you need you background story to jump some hoops. In the end I’d prefer straight point buy with racial modifiers.
Monsters not having attributes only modifiers seems a bit weird. From the modifier you could easily define a attribute, e. g. +4 is either 18 or 19. This doesn’t make sense from a “make things easier” perspective to me.
With todays options none of my characters so far would have been playable due to lack of available feats, classes and so on. I think over time Paizo will publish more options and splat books but this will take some time.
In total the system feels like a completely different game where you’ll have to start learning most things from scratch.
Of course, not everything is bad
I like the new stat approach from the ancestries by giving out a free +2 which can be used to mitigate the ability flaw. This finally allows you to play dwarf sorcerers much better
Paizo got rid of the big 6 items. This is something that has been boring/annoying me for some time now because with slight modifications this is very repetitive for each and every character you play.
Our group consists of friends I have known for the better part of my live. Ten years ago, my job brought me back close enough to meet them again for game night and ~ 5 years ago we changed from board games to roleplaying. At that time, we hadn’t played since AD&D second edition but easily agreed that Pathfinder would be the route to take. Not AD&D 3.5 or 4 or Shadowrun or GURPS. I even brought Paranoia but that was a joke.
Now among us we have spent several grand on PF1 and don’t want to make some part or most of this stuff obsolete.
There are good ideas in PF2 which we might integrate into our home version of PF1.
Long story short, I’m the only one of our group who followed PF2 and even I’m not willing to switch from PF1 to PF2 for reasons stated above. Fortunately, we have all APs (most of them print) and a large number of the smaller adventures.
We’ll keep buying Paizo stuff as long as PF1 things get published and the we’ll probably start buying all the older splat books. There is still a lot of stuff on Golarion 1.0 unexplored by us. Perhaps at some point in time we’ll look for something new and then the new PF3 coming out in 2028 might just be what we’ve been waiting for.
In the end writing this makes me feel sad as it sounds like a farewell. I hope it won’t be forever as I and the group I play with really appreciate PF1 and plan to continue playing Paizo stuff for a long time to come. Perhaps there’ll be some PF1 adaption guides for PF2 AP to play them with PF1
Now I’m curious whether this will draw a crowd of if it was just repetitive and boring .