I don't have my Playtest book on me to actually compare the two, but I'm curious what the differences are. Do I effectively have two copies of the 2e core rulebook now? Are there just a few names that need to be changed? Or are there significant mechanical differences in the versions of the game?
Significant mechanical differences. Many changes, big and small. Here's just a few:
- No more Resonance. New systems to limit alchemists and magic items.
- More healing during exploration mode.
- Proficiency is Untrained 0, Trained L+2, Expert L+4, Master L+6, Legendary L+8. (No more adding Level if you're Untrained.)
- Death and Dying recovery checks are easier
- More class feats, more spells. Higher-level ancestry feats added
- 10th-level spells gained automatically
- No quality levels on items. Weapons and armor get their pluses purely from runes. The math, pricing and levels of magic items have been reworked.
It would have been a pretty pointless playtest if they didn’t alter anything. Your old playtest books are now just collectors items you can put on your shelf.
It would have been a pretty pointless playtest if they didn’t alter anything. Your old playtest books are now just collectors items you can put on your shelf.
So basically, there's no "companion book" to help playtest book owner to play a "normal" game without look into the official CRB or internet?
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It would have been a pretty pointless playtest if they didn’t alter anything. Your old playtest books are now just collectors items you can put on your shelf.So basically, there's no "companion book" to help playtest book owner to play a "normal" game without look into the official CRB or internet?
Correct.
In general, you should never expect such a thing to exist in any context because playtest material should be (and in this case is) vastly different from the final product. A companion book would be approximately half the length of the final book, if not more, and cost nearly as much.
It would have been a pretty pointless playtest if they didn’t alter anything. Your old playtest books are now just collectors items you can put on your shelf.So basically, there's no "companion book" to help playtest book owner to play a "normal" game without look into the official CRB or internet?Correct.
In general, you should never expect such a thing to exist in any context because playtest material should be (and in this case is) vastly different from the final product. A companion book would be approximately half the length of the final book, if not more, and cost nearly as much.
Plus it'd be much more difficult to compose or sift through such a book as you're constantly having to restate the playtest baseline in order to address the change, when instead one could simply state the new baseline rules...which amounts to the CRB. IIRC the playtest rules were sold at minimum price; I believe only to cover the printing costs. And Archives of Nethys is free, a generous gesture by Paizo.
I might be wrong, but I think spellcasting actions were "linked" to VSM components in the playtest.
Probably the biggest mathematical difference: proficiency and item bonuses kind of swapped places.
In the playtest, the difference between trained and legendary was only +3, and item bonuses ran up to +5.
In the final version, trained and legendary is a difference of +6 and item bonuses only go up to +3.
The game might have been better balanced if proficiency had stayed at the original values but the community didn't enjoy it. And item bonuses shrinking contributed to the alchemist winding up weaker upon release.
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The original Pathfinder 2nd Edition playest book lacked the Treat Wounds Medicine skill activity. That was added in the first playtest rules update.
Treat Wounds was a significant departure from the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 style of play. With the Medicine skill, the PCs could restore themselves to full hit points after a minor encounter. This lead to a major shift in dungeon design. Throwing a series of minor encounters into a dungeon in order to wear down the adventurers was no longer effective, because they could restore everything except spell slots with a couple of ten-minute breaks. The Pathfinder 1st Edition Wand of Cure Light Wounds workaround was no longer necessary (nor possible due to changes in wands) because Treat Wounds filled that niche, but was easier for the GM to control via wandering monsters or smart opponents that could interrupt a ten-minute break.
The ten-minute break to Treat Wounds soon was extended to several other ten-minute activities between encounters. For example, the playtest Paladin began each day with a pool of Spell Points that filled up every morning to the Paladin's Charisma bonus in order to cast Lay on Hands and other paladin spells. The final PF2 Champion (renamed from Paladin) instead had a Focus Pool that began the day with one focus point. And a ten-minute Refocus activity, spent in prayer or another religious activity, restored the focus point. Some feats that grant more focus spells also increased the maximum number of focus points that the focus pool could hold. Other classes, such as Sorcerer, that had their own Spell Point system switched to Focus Pools and Refocus, too. A multiclass character with two different sets of Focus spells cast both from one single focus pool. A fighter with a shield damaged from Shield Blocking (which no longer has the playtest system of Dents) could engage in a ten-minute Repair activity.