Chatting with my friends, we got to wondering how much more there is to create with this edition. I see that 1E was 10 years old and 2E is only 2.5 years old. My crew was originally introduced to the Pathfinder card game and bought the boxes. Once we heard about 2E in 2019, we made the transition, so we are still somewhat fresh with all of the possibilities with the roleplaying game. Reading through all of the new listed ancestries in the Ancestry Guide, it made us realize that there could be so much more, but we realistically have no idea.
For those who have more knowledge and/or experience from 1E and with 2E, how much more is there for 2E to offer in the coming years? If there are threads about this, please direct me to them; I'm all for reading through them as needed. I'm more of a lurker than poster but I'm not on here often enough to keep up with all of the activity. Thank you.
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Given that G&G is bringing us a new class and several new ancestries not present in 1st edition, the roof is practically limitless. I think many would b hard-pressed to put a cap on when PF2 is "done" with material.
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Golarion has a LOT of stories embedded in, so many it's hard to imagine covering even the epic ones with APs, much less those tied to pirates, courts, intrigue, and other adventurous settings. Add in Tian, unexplored lands, and the Earth lore yet to be represented and we get much more potential.
And the whole kaboodle can be jumbled up more, like with the Runelords presence followed by the Whispering Tyrant's return. And whatever events led to Starfinder!
Golarion draws upon the campaign worlds of several GMs who had ran worlds for years if not decades, so there's that going for it. But I'd say the greatest strength is Paizo's leadership having a lot of independence plus the desire to make a game they themselves enjoy.
If Golarion loses its luster in ten, twenty years, one can always reboot though arguably few would have played ALL the APs, leaving lots of material, some which groups replay years later already.
I hope they don't go the way of D&D, rehashing Against the Giants for the umpteenth time.
It just occurred to me that what might change the most is the format of play as virtual systems become ubiquitous! It's been on the horizon for many decades, so who knows if it's near or far?
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PF1 has a mountain of content in sourcebooks and APs, and I still draw ideas from them for use in PF2. With PF2's vastly improved standardization of rules, lore, publishing practices, polish, etc., the future looks brilliant for this system.
We know there’s four more classes coming at the very least, but I think it would be silly to assume they’ll stop there.
I wouldn't actually measure the system by classes, feats, or other mechanics, but rather in stories and their depth, resonance, and variety.
Golarion gives most every variation imaginable for high fantasy (and touches on many sub-genres as well) and Paizo has provided PC-centric, powerful stories from well before PF1.
So yeah, until dementia sets in the core gang, it should run smoothly, and I suspect the next generations hired have similar skills.
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Also, there's at least one new continent about* to be detailed. Arcadia and Azlant are in the works, and Casmaron has been mentioned.
*For multiple values of 'about', ranging from Soon to Pay Attention At (Paizocon, Gen Con) to Someday.
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One thing that's cool about 2e's design, is that the lego brick feat set up a natural desire for more content, that grows exponentially as other new materials are added.
Basically, think of things like Classes and Ancestries as 'seeds' those seeds have to be fleshed out with options, but they don't stat out with very many, as the game matures and more books release, each seed gets more flesh and more seeds are added.
So like, we just got Kitsune in the Ancestry guide right? the feats it got along with the base ancestry are cool, but there's only one ninth level ancestry feat, and two thirteenth level ancestry feats. So at some point, I'm hoping to see Kitsune get filled out with more options, and honestly even the levels where they already get a bunch of stuff wouldn't be terrible to add more to.
So you can imagine that in tandem with other things in the same book, I'm looking forward to page space devoted to more Kitsune options, and who knows when I'll get them, it could be year 4 or year 5 or something.
Of course, that's just an ancestry, classes tend to have far more options, so all of the core classes, the APG classes, the upcoming SoM and GG classes, I'll be wanting more options for each of them, because they all have additional conceptual space they can flesh out.
Then, there's still more classes to come-- the Inventor is an example of a completely new class Pathfinder hasn't done before, and there are fan favorite concepts from PF1e that aren't even on the release schedule yet (the Kineticist, the Occultist, both come to mind.) Those classes will be seeds in their own right, creating even more space.
Interestingly, archetypes are seeds as well, we could totally see the ones in the APG get more feat options, and archetypes can also be way more specific in concept, so we have room for way more of them than we would for classes.
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Now this can't go on forever of course, at some point the later seeds might be less iconic and therefore interesting to a smaller market, some players start to feel completely satisfied because there's just already so much content. The core rules start to show their warts because they've been out for so long. That last thing I think is going to be less of a problem with 2e, since its so well designed. But the real question is when, when do players start hitting the point where they're like "ok there's really nothing I'm excited to see added to this"
To that, I think we have a while, the Magus, the Summoner, and the Gunslinger were all PF1e favorites, and they're not actually going to all be out until a little while after the game's second anniversary, then people are pretty much guaranteed going to want them fleshed out with additional options, and occult stuff is another big contender for more classes... I'd say we have through year 5 before all the big obvious stuff is covered and nicely fleshed out. From there it comes down to Paizo's ability to create exciting new innovations for their game system, and create more seeds its players want to see cultivated well, which is something they've so far demonstrated they can do well.
Its hard to say where the game will be at that point, since it depends very much on the speed of the release schedule between then and now, and whats actually covered.
But then there's also the separate question of actual player retention, if 2e is booming and growing its player base, there isn't going to be a 3e for a long time. I think that this is going to be the secret of the game's longevity-- we are getting a lot of conversions from 5e in this player base, going off the subreddit polls, and the 5e community is both huge and still growing. There's every reason to think Pathfinder 2e's peak player counts are still well ahead of it, since it's very much the kind of game that grows by word of mouth, and gradual temptation off it having more and better options for the concepts players want to see covered. Look out for spikes during and after SoM and GG release, because of the niches those books are going to cover and how that intersects with the desires of the larger RPG playerbase.
It might be brash of me, but I'd be confident enough to speculate we have at least a decade lifespan from the day the core book came out, I wouldn't expect to see rumblings of a 3e until 2030 approaches.
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Also, I want to add that the Uncommon and Rare tags help a lot!
They allow strange and unusual content to be created without causing bloat to the core system or overload for a homebrewer trying to delineate their preferences.
Also the labels can help with non-playtested material, like most softcover releases, so wonky, unforeseen mechanics interactions don't imbalance the system (or PFS), which should slow power creep.
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Interestingly, archetypes are seeds as well, we could totally see the ones in the APG get more feat options, and archetypes can also be way more specific in concept, so we have room for way more of them than we would for classes.Just wanted to bring attention to this point in particular because of how well it's already been proven. Red Mantis Assassin is a fan-favorite archetype from PF1E that made the jump to 2E in the very first Lost Omens book, Lost Omens World Guide.
Sadly, it didn't have all the features and abilities that people remembered from the original prestige class--but no fear! Lost Omens Legends showed up and was able to slot all those abilities in thanks to the modular feat system, and now I'd make an argument that someone could take up at least half of their overall feats with Red Mantis feats and not be worried about it.
It's a really neat showcase of PF2E's ability to expand and improve itself. Fingers crossed Magic Warrior gets the same treatment.
This.
P1 had an issue of releasing later archetypes that were more or less "like already existing archetypes, just cooler/better".
With the P2 Archetype system, they don't need to do that, they can just slot more thematic feats as they get the chance.
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Interestingly, archetypes are seeds as well, we could totally see the ones in the APG get more feat options, and archetypes can also be way more specific in concept, so we have room for way more of them than we would for classes.Just wanted to bring attention to this point in particular because of how well it's already been proven. Red Mantis Assassin is a fan-favorite archetype from PF1E that made the jump to 2E in the very first Lost Omens book, Lost Omens World Guide.
Sadly, it didn't have all the features and abilities that people remembered from the original prestige class--but no fear! Lost Omens Legends showed up and was able to slot all those abilities in thanks to the modular feat system, and now I'd make an argument that someone could take up at least half of their overall feats with Red Mantis feats and not be worried about it.
It's a really neat showcase of PF2E's ability to expand and improve itself. Fingers crossed Magic Warrior gets the same treatment.
The Mwangi Expanse book would be a perfect place to see it happen too.