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Silver Crusade

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From Mark's Facebook page:

Quote:
we're finally getting close on copyfitting

From Jason's Twitter:

Quote:

So, doing a bit of math, I figured out that by making only 5 mechanical choices out of the Core Rulebook, none of which are deity, feats, spells, or gear, you can create over 42,000 different characters in Pathfinder 2nd Edition!

By comparison, if I got the exact same point in character creation in Pathfinder 1st edition, using only the Core Rulebook, I would only be able to make around 150 characters.

So hopefully we'll start to hear more soon.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Nice! I'm excited to see what we get!


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That's quite a lot, but i wonder how many are true choices and how many are 'non-choices'. If most of them are not... Well PF2 will be hella fun.

Silver Crusade

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oholoko wrote:
That's quite a lot, but i wonder how many are true choices and how many are 'non-choices'. If most of them are not... Well PF2 will be hella fun.

Yeah. The Playtest was burdened by character options that were highly variable in power/desirability. The designers talked a lot about how they were aware of that problem and that it was a big focus for the revisions. But how successful they've been at making those options all reasonably attractive will be a big determinant of how fun the PF2 core rules are to play with.

Honestly, I'm fairly concerned about this issue, given the Playtest rules and the generally uneven class design we've seen from Paizo in the last few years (ACG and on, say).

So as much as I'm optimistic about the core engine of PF2 (which I think will be a huge, obvious improvement over the ramshackle PF1 engine), I'm worried that if the past is any guide, we'll need a few years of material before the character options smooth out the rough spots and make for a truly well-rounded and fun game.

But I do hope that my fear is not realized, and that I'm pleasantly surprised by a consistently high quality PF2 Core.


Joe M. wrote:
Quote:

So, doing a bit of math, I figured out that by making only 5 mechanical choices out of the Core Rulebook, none of which are deity, feats, spells, or gear, you can create over 42,000 different characters in Pathfinder 2nd Edition!

By comparison, if I got the exact same point in character creation in Pathfinder 1st edition, using only the Core Rulebook, I would only be able to make around 150 characters.

11 PF1 classes * 7 PF1 races = 77 characters, so we need another factor of two. If you count choosing a Wizard's school and a Sorcerer's bloodline, that gets you about 150.

PF2 includes background. Let's assume there's about twenty backgrounds. 42,000/20 = 2,100 choices. 6 races, each with about four heritages is about 24. 2100/24 = 87.5. That's still a lot of class choices, even with most classes having multiple paths available at first level. If it's an average of 4 choices per class (with Wizard and Sorcerer pulling extra weight for classes likes Cleric and Fighter), then that's 48 class options. Leaves us still with a factor of 2 somewhere- maybe double the backgrounds, for instance.


I find it terribly amusing that he says "without Feats" when everything is a Feat in 2nd edition.


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Magus Black wrote:
I find it terribly amusing that he says "without Feats" when everything is a Feat in 2nd edition.

I mean, it's possible they renamed class feat(ure)s.

Liberty's Edge

I dunno what that third choice is in PF1.

That said, in PF2 we already know what 4 of them probably are: Ancestry, Heritage, Background, and Class. That gives 8 Ancestries x 3 Heritages per Ancestry x 19 Backgrounds x 12 Classes.

And those are all real choices with multiple 'best' options, though Background is a bit of a low impact one.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Deadmanwalking wrote:

I dunno what that third choice is in PF1.

That said, in PF2 we already know what 4 of them probably are: Ancestry, Heritage, Background, and Class. That gives 8 Ancestries x 3 Heritages per Ancestry x 19 Backgrounds x 12 Classes.

And those are all real choices with multiple 'best' options, though Background is a bit of a low impact one.

8 Ancestries x 3 Heritages per Ancestry x 19 Backgrounds x 12 Classes x ~7.5 Ancestry feats = ~42,000

So more a restatement from Jason of what is already known rather than new facts.

Liberty's Edge

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Antony Walls wrote:

8 Ancestries x 3 Heritages per Ancestry x 19 Backgrounds x 12 Classes x ~7.5 Ancestry feats = ~42,000

So more a restatement from Jason of what is already known rather than new facts.

He said the 5 choices was not counting Feats, so that can't be the last choice.


Even without backgrounds though, which are not a very large impact, we’ve got a lot more options than PF1 CRB. Getting to make a non-spell choice as a Bard is nice, for instance, and heritages bring in some of the flexibility of alternate racial features to the core book.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Every time I mention the high degree of flexibility 2e has over 1e- specifically the customization options- they have a fit, acting as if 1e is superior in that regard. My /dude/ were we playing the same game?


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Derry L. Zimeye wrote:
Every time I mention the high degree of flexibility 2e has over 1e- specifically the customization options- they have a fit, acting as if 1e is superior in that regard. My /dude/ were we playing the same game?

If you throw the APG in, then PF1 has a lot of extra customization. I know I don’t spend a lot of time differentiating CRB and APG for anything other than classes. And, if you are spending some of your feats on things you used to have, it feels like less customization- even if your Cleric has five free class feats after getting two domains with upgrades, it can feel like the customization isn’t as free of a choice.

I’m expecting the final rule book and the new APG-equivalent to both improve opinions on PF2 customization.


Derry L. Zimeye wrote:
Every time I mention the high degree of flexibility 2e has over 1e- specifically the customization options- they have a fit, acting as if 1e is superior in that regard. My /dude/ were we playing the same game?

Not sure who 'they' are, but I've heard no one reasonable make this claim based on CRBs. People I know who will stick with 1E for customization reasons do so because 1E has been out longer and has an absurdly larger library of content as a result.

Silver Crusade

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Jason wrote:

So, doing a bit of math, I figured out that by making only 5 mechanical choices out of the Core Rulebook, none of which are deity, feats, spells, or gear, you can create over 42,000 different characters in Pathfinder 2nd Edition!

By comparison, if I got the exact same point in character creation in Pathfinder 1st edition, using only the Core Rulebook, I would only be able to make around 150 characters.

Deadmanwalking wrote:
Antony Walls wrote:

8 Ancestries x 3 Heritages per Ancestry x 19 Backgrounds x 12 Classes x ~7.5 Ancestry feats = ~42,000

So more a restatement from Jason of what is already known rather than new facts.

He said the 5 choices was not counting Feats, so that can't be the last choice.

I agree with the general consensus that the 5 factors are most likely: (1) Ancestry, (2) Heritage, (3) Background, (4) Class, (5) Class Path. But the math is a little complicated by the fact (as QuidEst points out) that the number of Class Path options is not standardized. So we have to branch the calculation accordingly.

HERE is a spreadsheet that anyone can copy and tinker with.

We have 21,888 character options using the 1.6 numbers (assuming I counted correctly).

We can hit 42,000 with a couple small adjustments. E.g., 6 Heritages instead of 4 and 25 Backgrounds instead of 19 would give us 43,200 character options.

Silver Crusade

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Jason's Twitter wrote:
Folks, I am so excited for some of the things are brewing right now... It is actually hard to keep this much awesome to myself. I think I might need to start leaking some of it next week!


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Lyee wrote:
Derry L. Zimeye wrote:
Every time I mention the high degree of flexibility 2e has over 1e- specifically the customization options- they have a fit, acting as if 1e is superior in that regard. My /dude/ were we playing the same game?
Not sure who 'they' are, but I've heard no one reasonable make this claim based on CRBs. People I know who will stick with 1E for customization reasons do so because 1E has been out longer and has an absurdly larger library of content as a result.

I don't think many people make this claim explicitly (I am pretty sure I have seen some do it, but it is obviously bananas) but many people don't seem to realize that this is a less than core rulebook. When folks make complain about a lack of options in PF2, they often cite from outside of the CRB as examples of things they are losing. I've seen some really bad arguments to this effect. It's really just a failure to think critically about what they are saying, but I think that's a pretty common foible among humanity at large.


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Magus Black wrote:
I find it terribly amusing that he says "without Feats" when everything is a Feat in 2nd edition.

+5 Insightful


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Lyee wrote:
Derry L. Zimeye wrote:
Every time I mention the high degree of flexibility 2e has over 1e- specifically the customization options- they have a fit, acting as if 1e is superior in that regard. My /dude/ were we playing the same game?
Not sure who 'they' are, but I've heard no one reasonable make this claim based on CRBs. People I know who will stick with 1E for customization reasons do so because 1E has been out longer and has an absurdly larger library of content as a result.

Even when 1E was first released, players weren't limited to just the contents of the CRB, because it was designed to be compatible with existing 3.5 material. So PF2E will actually be the first edition that doesn't have a bunch of supplimentary material available right out of the gate.


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Joe M. wrote:
Jason's Twitter wrote:
Folks, I am so excited for some of the things are brewing right now... It is actually hard to keep this much awesome to myself. I think I might need to start leaking some of it next week!

With February kind of dead on new PF1 player content, I could use some spoilers to get my Pathfinder fix.

Liberty's Edge

Joe M. wrote:
Jason wrote:

So, doing a bit of math, I figured out that by making only 5 mechanical choices out of the Core Rulebook, none of which are deity, feats, spells, or gear, you can create over 42,000 different characters in Pathfinder 2nd Edition!

By comparison, if I got the exact same point in character creation in Pathfinder 1st edition, using only the Core Rulebook, I would only be able to make around 150 characters.

Deadmanwalking wrote:
Antony Walls wrote:

8 Ancestries x 3 Heritages per Ancestry x 19 Backgrounds x 12 Classes x ~7.5 Ancestry feats = ~42,000

So more a restatement from Jason of what is already known rather than new facts.

He said the 5 choices was not counting Feats, so that can't be the last choice.

I agree with the general consensus that the 5 factors are most likely: (1) Ancestry, (2) Heritage, (3) Background, (4) Class, (5) Class Path. But the math is a little complicated by the fact (as QuidEst points out) that the number of Class Path options is not standardized. So we have to branch the calculation accordingly.

HERE is a spreadsheet that anyone can copy and tinker with.

We have 21,888 character options using the 1.6 numbers (assuming I counted correctly).

We can hit 42,000 with a couple small adjustments. E.g., 6 Heritages instead of 4 and 25 Backgrounds instead of 19 would give us 43,200 character options.

I did the same calculation on Excel and got 21,888 if we consider Dragon and Animal as one totem each. If we go on the detail for each (eg, Blue Dragon Totem), I got 30,096 options.

If I do the latter, and go to 8 ancestries with 4 heritage each and 20 Backgrounds, I get 42,240 options.

Obviously, that is not counting ability scores and skills.


Did half-elf and half-orc get moved out to individual ancestries rather than heritages? It’s been a while since I looked at 1.6.

Liberty's Edge

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QuidEst wrote:
Did half-elf and half-orc get moved out to individual ancestries rather than heritages? It’s been a while since I looked at 1.6.

No, they remain Heritages, we're all just screwing up.

Liberty's Edge

Deadmanwalking wrote:
QuidEst wrote:
Did half-elf and half-orc get moved out to individual ancestries rather than heritages? It’s been a while since I looked at 1.6.
No, they remain Heritages, we're all just screwing up.

Well, they were still Heritages (of Human) in 1.6. Who knows what they will be in PF2 CRB ?


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Derry L. Zimeye wrote:
Every time I mention the high degree of flexibility 2e has over 1e- specifically the customization options- they have a fit, acting as if 1e is superior in that regard. My /dude/ were we playing the same game?

Not all choices are created equal. Many of the ones in the playtest were not meaningful and some were downright "this is the least worse choice" which doesn't exactly show off the customization of the system. Hopefully its been improved in the final version.

Silver Crusade

The Raven Black wrote:
Deadmanwalking wrote:
QuidEst wrote:
Did half-elf and half-orc get moved out to individual ancestries rather than heritages? It’s been a while since I looked at 1.6.
No, they remain Heritages, we're all just screwing up.
Well, they were still Heritages (of Human) in 1.6. Who knows what they will be in PF2 CRB ?

I'm pretty sure one if the designers said they're staying human Heritages, but I'm not 100% on that.

Silver Crusade

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Here we go:

Jason's Twitter wrote:
So, in case you missed the show on the Paizo Twitch stream, you are going to want to set your calendars for a special show we are doing on next Thursday, Feb 28th, at Noon PST! Got some big things in store!

I'll have to check the stream to see if there were more details given, but sounds like we have a date & time for those PF2 "leaks" he promised earlier!


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Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Joe M. wrote:

Here we go:

Jason's Twitter wrote:
So, in case you missed the show on the Paizo Twitch stream, you are going to want to set your calendars for a special show we are doing on next Thursday, Feb 28th, at Noon PST! Got some big things in store!
I'll have to check the stream to see if there were more details given, but sounds like we have a date & time for those PF2 "leaks" he promised earlier!

That feels like it's forever from now!


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John Lynch 106 wrote:
Derry L. Zimeye wrote:
Every time I mention the high degree of flexibility 2e has over 1e- specifically the customization options- they have a fit, acting as if 1e is superior in that regard. My /dude/ were we playing the same game?
Not all choices are created equal. Many of the ones in the playtest were not meaningful and some were downright "this is the least worse choice" which doesn't exactly show off the customization of the system. Hopefully its been improved in the final version.

Yeah. There were a lot of false choices in the playtest. Particularly with feats. Either they were all terrible (like most skill feats) or there was one that was required to get your base competence, so it wasn't a choice. If this is fixed, it will go a long way towards making PF2 a good and possibly great game.

I'm also hoping Backgrounds get revamped a bit. They're pretty bland and unimportant in the playtest. And mostly seem to encourage just cherrypicking one for a stat you want, and maybe a relevant skill feat, instead of being based on actual ideas for character background. I've got this contradictory feeling that they're both unimportant, but also too restrictive to let you just pick based on character concept and not mechanics. Considering that's two, generally opposed concepts, I'm not sure there is a possible fix there.

Heritages are another bit I'm uneasy with. I didn't like the way they were done in the playtest at all. It's better than the original ancestry setup, but creates a lot of problems. They were quick-and-dirty hacks, with arbitrary 'heritages' created just to fit some existing feat, regardless of it it made any sense at all. And it gave weird incentives towards playing rare concepts because they had the best abilities. So most elves will be cave dwellers and most gnomes Svirfniblen, because those gave darkvision which is so much better than the other things offered. And the human heritages (other than the halfs) were just kind of thrown together. Hopefully with the game being built with heritages as a part instead of them being a tacked-on feature will result in a more logical spread of heritages that actually represents in-game social/biological divisions instead of things like "Sharp-nosed gnomes" (which apparently are the default gnome), "Skilled Heritage" (extra skills was an option, so here's a supposed heritage around it), and Inflamable Goblins (that word doesn't mean what you think it means). The exclusivity is also something I'd like to see toned down: sharp teeth and the ability to eat everything seem like universal goblin traits, not something that you can have one or the other (or something else) depending on heritage. I want the heritages to reflect the setting and not just be a grab-bag.

I know this comes off as negative, but I'm actually rather cautiously hopeful about PF2. There were multiple serious problems with the playtest, but if those are addressed than it can become a truly worthy successor to PF1. I'm not critical of the playtest out of hate for PF2, but because identifying problems is how you can get them fixed and get a great final product. I'm very curious to see how the final game works out and will certainly give Thursday's stream a watch. Fingers crossed for something I can love.


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Eh. I'm not sold on swapping 2 stat ups and a bad skill feat around counts as 'distinct characters,' and that's all that backgrounds really amounted to.

Even ancestry is a hard sell for the same reason.

---

But of course, on the other side of things, even if I do make the exact same 5 mechanical choices, I'm not convinced I've made the same character. All the RP stuff (history, personality, etc) isn't accounted for. You know, the trivial stuff that makes a RPG character a _character_.


Voss wrote:

Eh. I'm not sold on swapping 2 stat ups and a bad skill feat around counts as 'distinct characters,' and that's all that backgrounds really amounted to.

Even ancestry is a hard sell for the same reason.

---

But of course, on the other side of things, even if I do make the exact same 5 mechanical choices, I'm not convinced I've made the same character. All the RP stuff (history, personality, etc) isn't accounted for. You know, the trivial stuff that makes a RPG character a _character_.

There are honestly much better systems to play than Pathfinder if mechanical diversity isn't a priority. Like, of the systems I've played Pathfinder is the last one I'd recommend for someone who isn't interested in a deep dive into rules and customization and just wants to make a character.

The question is, as you said, how interesting and meaningful PF2's choices actually end up being.

RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32

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Jason Bulmahn, Game Designer wrote:

‏So yesterday I let folks know that with just 5 choices, you could get 42k different characters... To dispel any confusion, I was talking about your choice of ancestry, heritage, background, class, and major class choice!

...

So, a woodland elf leaf druid, who grew up in court would be 1 of the 42k.

As would a razortooth goblin fighter who was raised in the fighting pits.

Hope that helps people see what I was excited about. Just a fun bit of trivia...

Recent tweets from Jason


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I hope this means that all classes are going to get that extra step of "choose a totem, order, bloodline, muse, school, etc."

If nothing else this is a great way to future proof classes so we can replicate the "you are a different kind of these" archetypes from PF1 that only ever made sense if you start out that way.

Liberty's Edge

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PossibleCabbage wrote:

I hope this means that all classes are going to get that extra step of "choose a totem, order, bloodline, muse, school, etc."

If nothing else this is a great way to future proof classes so we can replicate the "you are a different kind of these" archetypes from PF1 that only ever made sense if you start out that way.

That seems very likely. Almost all Classes had them already by the end of the playtest. I think all we're missing as of 1.6 are Monk and Fighter (well, and Cleric if you don't count God), and those seem easy enough to add.


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All Jason's statement tells us is that he knows how to perform multiplication.

How many of those choices are meaningful? How many of them have a concrete effect on how the game is played?

If I'm choosing from fifteen different backgrounds, couldn't this be a barrier to playing the character that I want to play?

If we're bringing up "number of distinct choices" as a metric for system flexibility, my int 10 human barbarian has 1'947'792 different ways of allocating skill points alone.

At first level.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

While some of the character options were poor or required for "basic competence" that isn't really a slight on PF2 customization versus PF1 customization. Unless we really want to argue that picking up Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon focus are exciting true options that aren't bringing you up to what you are meant to achieve.


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PossibleCabbage wrote:

I hope this means that all classes are going to get that extra step of "choose a totem, order, bloodline, muse, school, etc."

If nothing else this is a great way to future proof classes so we can replicate the "you are a different kind of these" archetypes from PF1 that only ever made sense if you start out that way.

The examples above doesn't seem to indicate that is the case. He mentions Leaf Druid, but the second example is just Fighter.

Sadly it also looks like the heritages might still be arbitrary and needlessly exclusive. Razortooth goblin... I thought that was supposed to be all goblins, are the others blunt toothed? It does seem like ancestries are still going to be anemic like in the playteset. This is shame. They're really uninspiring compared to the options in PF1.


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The point that I was trying to make it that "42000 different characters" is a meaningless metric. I think Malk_Content has proven my point.


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Malk_Content wrote:
While some of the character options were poor or required for "basic competence" that isn't really a slight on PF2 customization versus PF1 customization. Unless we really want to argue that picking up Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon focus are exciting true options that aren't bringing you up to what you are meant to achieve.

It's true, there are a few like that. Weapon Focus for any combat character or Selective Channel for a cleric for example. But PF2 should try to improve on the failings of PF1, and instead it seems like there are even more of these required picks. Particularly due to the way classes have much fewer built in abilities, and instead they're all bought back as feats. I'd much rather Class Feats be used for actual customization instead of basic abilities, which should be automatic. They're also more required due to the tighter math. At least in the playtest, you need to be optimized just to have a chance. You can do sub-optimal choices in PF1 and still be viable, even if you're not that great. The math is supposed to be fixed though with no more overtuned monsters. So hopefully this point will be no longer valid.


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Voss wrote:
But of course, on the other side of things, even if I do make the exact same 5 mechanical choices, I'm not convinced I've made the same character. All the RP stuff (history, personality, etc) isn't accounted for. You know, the trivial stuff that makes a RPG character a _character_.

All of that was true in Dungeons & Dragons White Box edition. That has never changed regardless of edition. And Pathfinder 2e doesn't open up more roleplaying compared with Pathfinder 1e because the roleplaying opportunities are endless.

Jason Buhlman was trying to show off the mechanical variety possible in PF2e, and if he thinks that a heritage that changes you from a +1 to one skill to +2 to a type of check really helps do that, then it's not a good sign for the mechanical flexibility that will be offered in PF2e.

If that seems snarky, it is. He threw out a statistic with little context which is how statistics are so often misused in an attempt to quell critics of the new edition.

PossibleCabbage wrote:
I hope this means that all classes are going to get that extra step of "choose a totem, order, bloodline, muse, school, etc."

This is the direction D&D 5th edition went and in most cases it means you make 1 choice at an early level and 5 choices get chosen for you at later levels, really limiting the choices you can make. I hope it doesn't do that and instead unlocks a variety of choices per subclass that you can pick and choose from.


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For customisation. I could play a fighter, a fighter 5/wizard 5/eldritch knight 10 (or whatever the correct combination is), a fighter/rogue or a rogue. Using only 2 base classes and every race in the core rules (all 7 of them) I can play 28 combinations. Alternatively in PF2e I can choose to play a fighter or a rogue. PF2e also has less "races" what with half-elves and half-orcs no longer being races but instead feat choices (I mean, heritage feat choices or whatever language they end up using) which gives PF2e core rules a total of 6 races. That's only 12 combinations (because multiclassing doesn't really exist as we know it. It's just a feat that unlocks other feats).

This isn't an attempt to demonstrate that PF2e has less combinations. It's simply an attempt to demonstrate how using misleading statistics with no context don't really add anything of value to the conversation. Even with Jason Buhlman's additional context, it's still pretty meaningless. Clerics have a crapload of "subclasses" (they're called domains and thanks to getting 2 of them, there is a crapload of combinations), fighters do as well (if we consider each weapon group chosen to be it's own subclass).

What will really tell us how flexible 2e is, are the rules. And I'm going to be honest: In the new area I've moved to 5th ed is king. As much as I like Pathfinder, if PF2e is too much like 5th ed it's going to be dead on arrival (good news, I'm not in one of Australia's major cities. Although there is gaming in public venues on 28 days of the month which is quite ridiculous for 5th edition, vs 4 sessions a month for PFS and 2 sessions of SFS on a good month). I need something that really brings something new to the table compared with 5th ed. Something like PF 1st ed really.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
John Lynch 106 wrote:
Snipped for brevity sake.

I think that is a bit disingenuous. Its true you can't make a Fighter/5/Wiz 5/ Eldritch Knight 10 in PF2E. But that only means there is less customization if you ignore the replacement mechanic. I can have a character who fits that concept fine in PF2E using the archetype/multiclass system presented. Whats furthermore is unlike the PF1 character who isn't actually that viable for most of its career, the PF2 character is throughout. You can say its just feats that unlock more feats, but shouldn't the point be what your character can actually DO not the way you achieve doing it?

Same thing for Half Elf and Half Orc. Really.


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Funny you say that eldritch knights aren't viable in PF1e. Mine certainly was. But I guess we're using different definitions.

And yes, I was being disingenuous. I said as much in the post you quoted. I also ignored the replacement mechanics (feats) because Jason proudly proclaimed that is exactly what he was doing when he generated his number.


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John Lynch 106 wrote:

Funny you say that eldritch knights aren't viable in PF1e. Mine certainly was. But I guess we're using different definitions.

And yes, I was being disingenuous. I said as much in the post you quoted. I also ignored the replacement mechanics (feats) because Jason proudly proclaimed that is exactly what he was doing when he generated his number.

I mean… he also said it was first level? Anyway, I made a thread for customization discussion. Folks probably want to come to this thread for some information.


I mean figuring out the number of potential combinations of characters in PF1 at level 2 is going to be unreasonable since, for example, there are multiple combinations of four archetypes one could stack if they took their second level in core Monk.

My biggest hope is that in PF2 we will have made certain combinations entirely viable when they really weren't in PF1- like gnome barbarians and dwarf bards.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
John Lynch 106 wrote:

Funny you say that eldritch knights aren't viable in PF1e. Mine certainly was. But I guess we're using different definitions.

And yes, I was being disingenuous. I said as much in the post you quoted. I also ignored the replacement mechanics (feats) because Jason proudly proclaimed that is exactly what he was doing when he generated his number.

At which point? Like as a level 20 build yeah its okay. When you start buying wizard levels as your fighter? Those are terrible until you start getting the Eldritch Knight patch online. In PF2 I can pick up that wizardly feel at any even level and it doesn't make my character suck for the next 4 levels while I get it to work.

This goes for a lot of things in PF1. Want to make a character all about Tripping? Well you either don't do your thing or get penalized for it until you hit x level where the build actually comes online. I don't really consider that good customization.

But yeah the whole point of the thread was about 1st level and sans feats. So multiclassing doesn't really come into this discussion. I'll take it over to the other thread if you want to.

Liberty's Edge

Deadmanwalking wrote:
PossibleCabbage wrote:

I hope this means that all classes are going to get that extra step of "choose a totem, order, bloodline, muse, school, etc."

If nothing else this is a great way to future proof classes so we can replicate the "you are a different kind of these" archetypes from PF1 that only ever made sense if you start out that way.

That seems very likely. Almost all Classes had them already by the end of the playtest. I think all we're missing as of 1.6 are Monk and Fighter (well, and Cleric if you don't count God), and those seem easy enough to add.

Actually, Monk and Fighter do get their "major class choice" too through their choice of key ability ;-)


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Doktor Weasel wrote:


Particularly due to the way classes have much fewer built in abilities, and instead they're all bought back as feats.

I've seen this claimed quite a few times but I don't think it really holds true overall. The cleric seems to be the only one its mostly true for. Meanwhile Fighter gets a pretty much analogous ability for each of their PF1 class abilities. I don't think it is endemic to the edition as a whole. And honestly Cleric was strong even before having to "buy things back" (although all the Clerics who were made in my games didn't bother to "buy back" domain stuff so it seems like a pro in my eyes that someone who doesn't care for it doesn't have to get it) but this was before the Channel nerf which was, IMO, a step too far.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

So Jason did elaborate a bit on what these choices were via a tweet. Check out @JasonBulmahn’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/JasonBulmahn/status/1099178680394211328?s=09
Specifically the choices were ancestors, heritage, background, class, and major class choice

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