Is there, or will there be, a document or something that provides guidelines to use pre-Remastered creatures while we wait for Monster Core to be released?
I know that most of the creatures will play pretty much the same, but with the dropping of alignment and sanctification, holy and unholy, and the like, there are weaknesses and resistances that might come in play that fiddle with certain monsters, specifically those of The Outer Sphere.
Also, are such beings that are neither good or evil pre-remaster (such as aeons) which had weakness to chaos for example, going to have a different weakness to replace them, are they going to be susceptible to both? Or a stronger weakness toward what sort of material does more damage to them?
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The Remaster Core Preview document might help here. Guidelines are provided in its Holy, Unholy and Sanctified chapter.
Basically, Alignment damage becomes Spirit damage that hurts anything with a spirit (ie, not constructs nor objects).
"Celestials have the holy trait. Fiends and undead have the unholy trait. (As with most things, there are occasional exceptions.)"
Based on the rest of the text, I would give weakness to Holy to those who had weakness to Good and weakness to Unholy to those who had weakness to Evil.
Monitors (Neutral outsiders) are not mentioned as having any particular weakness to Holy or Unholy.
Alignment damage is the big one, but generally things have just been renamed. Use the suggestions abve for celestials and fiends. Use the new Grab/knockdown rules if you like, it probably won't drastically change things. And for golems, remove golem antimagic, and give them damage resistance to spells equal to their physical resistance (except for whatever type of magic could hurt the golem originally.)
The only thing I've found that is messy is the kineticist against wisps because impulses would get shut off by their magic immunity with no way to bypass. So just don't rub kineticists in Abomination Vaults.
Also, are such beings that are neither good or evil pre-remaster (such as aeons) which had weakness to chaos for example, going to have a different weakness to replace them, are they going to be susceptible to both? Or a stronger weakness toward what sort of material does more damage to them?I'd go with no weakness, and compensate by dropping their hit points by double the value of the weakness.
Why double? I used the Theletos as a base, a level 7 creature with 125 hp and weakness to chaos 5. The normal medium hp range for level 7 is 111 to 119, or 115 on average, so it appears having a weakness to chaotic damage is worth a hp increase of double the weakness. I have not looked at other monitors to see if they have a similar ratio of weakness to hp boost.
GMG suggests using four times the weakness value IIRC.
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I recommend not rubbing kineticists, whether you are in a dungeon or not, at least not without permission.
The Remaster Core Preview document might help here. Guidelines are provided in its Holy, Unholy and Sanctified chapter.
Basically, Alignment damage becomes Spirit damage that hurts anything with a spirit (ie, not constructs nor objects).
I guess, since it says to change alignment damage to spirit damage, that, with the exceptions of good and evil planar immortals (outsiders) is to give those with lawful and chaos weaknesses a weakness to spirit damage.
The good and evil ones already get that weakness toward holy and unholy.
Wish they had kept something of the lawful and chaotic side of the balance. That often was a more important dichotomy. Where good and evil fought often over 'who gets to rule' law and chaos fought over "rights to exist" with the far chaos leaning ones being "no thing" as their answer to that question.
They could have used apoptotic to replace axiomatic, and nihilistic to replace anarchic if they felt they couldn't use them, and it wouldn't have ben that difficult to implement.
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Is there, or will there be, a document or something that provides guidelines to use pre-Remastered creatures while we wait for Monster Core to be released?
I know that most of the creatures will play pretty much the same, but with the dropping of alignment and sanctification, holy and unholy, and the like, there are weaknesses and resistances that might come in play that fiddle with certain monsters, specifically those of The Outer Sphere.
Also, are such beings that are neither good or evil pre-remaster (such as aeons) which had weakness to chaos for example, going to have a different weakness to replace them, are they going to be susceptible to both? Or a stronger weakness toward what sort of material does more damage to them?
I love Pathfinder 2e. I think Paizo is a fantastic company. I am excited about many of the Remaster changes, and understand the felt need to rush out a de-OGL-ified edition (despite, as a non-lawyer, not understanding how the SRD being placed under Creative Commons didn't completely end those legal risks).
But to be honest it is shocking to me that the answer to this question is not being released concurrently with the Player Core book.
IMHO this is just one of a number of fundamental problems with staggering the release of the Remaster over a 9 month period. There are questions about how whole classes are meant to work now. In cases of post-APG classes, we don't even have an official line about whether (let alone when) they will get an Errata update to bring them in line with the Remaster rules!
Let's be honest: if WOTC had done this, people would be going wild.
They answered the question of how law and chaos will be handled before publishing the cores. Check out the player core preview that came out after Rage of the Elements:
"Holy, Unholy, and Sanctified
New traits let you dedicate a character to the grand
battle between holy forces—such as celestials—and
unholy forces—such as fiends and undead. You’ll note
chaos, law, and neutrality don’t have equivalents as their scope was far more limited and they matter much less in the game world."
The concepts of law vs chaos may have been cool background, but those creatures mattered way less than good vs evil did for adventure writers. And for player characters, really. There's a a reason why the champion causes were defined primarily by good vs evil. Or why you didn't say an angelic, demonic, and diabolic bloodline but not one for monitors.
Law vs chaos is an interesting abstract concept, but when you try to apply it too hard to people (see: player characters) it just doesn't feel meaningful compared to stopping evil from hurting people. It is simply too far removed from the human condition for people to care. Why are four disparate player characters passionate enough about proteans vs monitors to wage war for them? And how well does that group even mesh when law and chaos on a personal level is barely understood? (See: my character lives by their own code. Are they lawful or chaotic?)
I also don't think there are very important questions about how whole classes will work. The closest thing to a problem is the oracle curse progression, and that's pretty dang easy to house rule out until player core 2. Champion codes can continue to work as written. Sorcerers and barbarians can continue to work as written. The magus already had a couple wizard feats we can copy, like bespell strikes, which show how easy it is to make Arcane Cascade work in a post-spell school world.
Oracles and psychics are benefitting much less from the new refocus rules, as they essentially got what everyone is getting for free as part of their class budget. But they are still entirely functional.
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I also don't think there are very important questions about how whole classes will work.Can a Champion become Sanctified? If so, do they do this the same way as Clerics?
and that's pretty dang easy to house rule out until player core 2With the greatest respect, this is literally making the Oberoni Fallacy. The fact that we can come up with house rules does not negate the fact there is a problem with absent or unclear rules.
I think the larger point is that either, you can figure out how to make champions work at your own table in whatever mix of PF2 and remastered rules you want, or you can wait until the player core 2 is published before having champions be a part of your game, since the remastered version is a class not yet published.
I also don't think there are very important questions about how whole classes will work.Can a Champion become Sanctified? If so, do they do this the same way as Clerics?
and that's pretty dang easy to house rule out until player core 2With the greatest respect, this is literally making the Oberoni Fallacy. The fact that we can come up with house rules does not negate the fact there is a problem with absent or unclear rules.
1. Yes, and yes.
2. Yes, and so? It is still super easy.
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Can a Champion become Sanctified? If so, do they do this the same way as Clerics?I would tend to assume that a Champion must be Sanctified, and equally, must choose a deity that allows this. Certainly that's how I would rule in my game at the moment, if I had any players who wanted to be champions. Unless at some point we ever get rules for Champions of Neutrality, which... doesn't really make a lot of sense. Champions were always more about alignment and only incidentally about worship, just as most clerics were primarily about worship and only incidentally about alignment. But we'll see what actually happens with them when Player Core 2 comes out next year.
If a champion had to be sanctified then there can be no champions of gozreh or pharasma and probably more in the future that have no options for sanctification and while sure I could see that for gozreh maybe, I do not see champion of pharasma being something that could not happen
If a champion had to be sanctified then there can be no champions of gozreh or pharasma and probably more in the future that have no options for sanctification and while sure I could see that for gozreh maybe, I do not see champion of pharasma being something that could not happenCan a Champion become Sanctified? If so, do they do this the same way as Clerics?I would tend to assume that a Champion must be Sanctified, and equally, must choose a deity that allows this. Certainly that's how I would rule in my game at the moment, if I had any players who wanted to be champions. Unless at some point we ever get rules for Champions of Neutrality, which... doesn't really make a lot of sense. Champions were always more about alignment and only incidentally about worship, just as most clerics were primarily about worship and only incidentally about alignment. But we'll see what actually happens with them when Player Core 2 comes out next year.
Champions of Pharasma were already a mess because they could only be Redeemers despite Pharasma giving zero toots about redemption.
Paladins of Pharasma who hunt undead make more sense. And now you can just have them deal spirit or vitality damage without the Sanctification.
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“How does this class work that hasn’t been published? “ isn’t something Paizo can tell you what “officially” to do with, until they publish the class. So either house rule it or don’t use it. Like what is a dragon sorcerer going to look like? We don’t know yet. Don’t use the remastered rules until the player core 2 is published if classes unpublished yet are unsatisfactory to you.
Yup. Pick whatever answer floats your boat. Beyond PFS, that's all that matters. None of these things impact the game's math or have profound implications like house ruling the dying rules do. Yeah, there's going to be some table variance, but really who cares? The champion class can be resolved at any given table with very minimal consideration.
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Is there, or will there be, a document or something that provides guidelines to use pre-Remastered creatures while we wait for Monster Core to be released?
I know that most of the creatures will play pretty much the same, but with the dropping of alignment and sanctification, holy and unholy, and the like, there are weaknesses and resistances that might come in play that fiddle with certain monsters, specifically those of The Outer Sphere.
Also, are such beings that are neither good or evil pre-remaster (such as aeons) which had weakness to chaos for example, going to have a different weakness to replace them, are they going to be susceptible to both? Or a stronger weakness toward what sort of material does more damage to them?
I love Pathfinder 2e. I think Paizo is a fantastic company. I am excited about many of the Remaster changes, and understand the felt need to rush out a de-OGL-ified edition (despite, as a non-lawyer, not understanding how the SRD being placed under Creative Commons didn't completely end those legal risks).
But to be honest it is shocking to me that the answer to this question is not being released concurrently with the Player Core book.
IMHO this is just one of a number of fundamental problems with staggering the release of the Remaster over a 9 month period. There are questions about how whole classes are meant to work now. In cases of post-APG classes, we don't even have an official line about whether (let alone when) they will get an Errata update to bring them in line with the Remaster rules!
Let's be honest: if WOTC had done this, people would be going wild.
About the SRD: technically, yes. However, WotC is a subsidiary of Hasbro, a multibillion dollar company. While they would eventually lose the case on its merits, Paizo would run out of money first.
As for the staggering, there isn't really a clear answer here. They got the ball rolling almost as soon as the shock wore off. The process was well underway by the time WotC/Hasbro was made to cave. They couldn't trust that they wouldn't pull anything any time soon. Remember the MtG/Pinkerton fiasco? That happened the same week Paizo announced the Remaster. They had to start publishing ASAP because the company could well have been at risk if they didn't. They had to divvy the necessities so that they could get things out quickly. That meant a cross-section of classes and spells (Player Core) and either monsters or new terminology, updated rules where applicable, and magic items. They decided that the latter were more important to running the game, so GM Core was the second book.
I understand the frustration. Believe me, I understand. I also understand why the situation has unfolded as it has, and where the blame lies. There aren't really any good answers here. It would be nice if we get a preview document in the next month or so (some traits, a couple Remastered monsters, a couple brand new monsters), but I don't expect one.