Pathfinder 2nd Edition

[Totenkindly]

http://paizo.com/pathfinderplaytest
Paizo Announced Pathfinder 2nd Edition!!

Just shy of 10 years ago, on March 18th, 2008, we asked you to take a bold step with us and download the Alpha Playtest PDF for Pathfinder First Edition. Over the past decade, we've learned a lot about the game and the people who play it. We've talked with you on forums, we've gamed with you at conventions, and we've watched you play online and in person at countless venues. We went from updating mechanics to inventing new ones, adding a breadth of options to the game and making the system truly our own. We've made mistakes, and we've had huge triumphs. Now it is time to take all of that knowledge and make the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game even better.

By now, you've probably read all about the upcoming launch of the Playtest version of the game set to release on August 2nd, 2018 (but just in case you haven't, click here). In the weeks and months leading up to that release, we are going give you an in-depth look at this game, previewing all 12 of the classes and examining many of the most fundamental changes to the game. Of course, that is a long time to wait to get a complete picture, so I wanted to take this opportunity to give you insight into the game, how it works, and why we made the changes that we made. We will be covering these in much more detail later, but we thought it might be useful to give a general overview right now.

So the playtest is coming in August 2018.

When Pathfinder came out, I jumped to it from AD&D and never really looked back for some years -- it was like AD&D 3.75 so to speak, improving on the free core roles with its own flair. But it did have some problems of its own... one being scaling, as characters got higher in level the inequities between certain classes would grow, you'd get AC and damage and save problems (basically a huge arms race scenario), the need for a litter of magic items to compensate, and so on.

D&D 4 ended up being mostly disastrous, but when 5e came out, my group switched back to test and were pretty amazed at how WotC finally managed to streamline the gameplay while making sense. (And currently we will be staying in 5e for a bit.) This isn't a promo for DnD, just saying their 5e release was a huge improvement and made them competitive with Pathfinder again. Which is why I think Pathfinder is moving forward with revising their own rules as well, they have to stay in the game.

Anything about current Pathfinder that you really love and wish they would keep, or that you really hate and wish they would change for a second edition? I really appreciated when they revised / updated a few of the more broken classes a few years ago (like rogues, monks, and barbs). The rogue had become somewhat obsolete -- every class did part of what the rogues did better than the rogues, so the class got upgraded. Monks stopped being "flurry of misses." And so on.

 

[Totenkindly]

Oh, here's these bits from their FAQs:

What are the main differences in the new edition?
At its core, the story of both games is essentially the same. You still build your own character, venturing off on daring adventures, risking your life for a chance at fame and glory, defeating deadly foes that threaten your friends, your family, and perhaps the very world itself. Beyond the narrative, there are many things that have changed, but mostly in the details of how the game works. You still pick a race, even though it is now called your ancestry. You still decide on your class—the rulebook includes all of the core classes from the First Edition Core Rulebook, plus the alchemist. You still select feats, but these now come from a greater variety of sources, such as your ancestry, your class, and your skills.

Where the changes really shine through is in how the game is played. Gone are the confusing action types like move, standard, swift, and immediate, instead replaced with a simple system of three actions and one reaction each round. All of the varied systems and formulas for determining your character's bonuses and statistics, like saving throws, attack bonuses, and skills, have been unified in a single, easy-to-use proficiency system based on your choices and your character's level. You no longer need to collect a specific set of magic items to be a balanced character, relying on specific magical statistic bonuses. Instead, you get all of the bonuses you need from your regular armor and weapons, allowing the rest of your items to be truly wondrous.

Reducing the amount of actions that can be taken would be helpful (or categorizing them more simply). This is one of the benefits of DnD 5e -- basically you get one move action, one regular action, and depending on your abilities/class, you could have a bonus action and/or a reaction. it simplifies things immensely.

Does the new version of Pathfinder find a better balance between spellcasters and martial characters?
We certainly hope so. Many of the changes made to the game attempt to address this issue by adding versatility and power to martial characters. At the same time, spells have been redesigned to ensure that they are of the right power when first acquired, but diminish in utility over time, giving spellcasters the tools they need to contribute, while giving other characters a chance to shine with their abilities. Ultimately, we need you to tell us how well we have solved this issue. That is what playtesting is all about!

Basically in current Pathfinder, you can separate the classes into various tiers based on overall power over the course of 20 levels. I think everything in the top (Tier 1) is a full caster or close to it. At low levels, martial classes have an advantage, but once you reach the upper limits of the classes, your full casters basically dominate situations and the straight martial classes cannot compete. So this is what it looks like they are trying to remedy here.

This is all holdover from D&D as well ... casters would start as squishies but would have superpowerful spells if they survived to high levels, which could make things difficult for fighting classes.

 

[Totenkindly]

Preview of the Fighter class 2nd edition
Fighter Class Preview For Pathfinder 2nd Edition!!

This all looks kind of interesting, although I need to understand the overall system changes in order to get past the complications of reading it...

Mark Seifter weighs in on the fighter --

Weapon proficiency -- "Fighters' proficiency in weapons is earlier than most characters gain mastery in anything else. Fighters are just that awesome, and it also allows other martial classes to gain expertise while the fighter is ahead."

Power Attack -- "Power Attack gives you one (and actually, eventually two without taking another feat to improve it!) extra damage die and does not penalize you on accuracy; and you don't want a penalty on accuracy. For a d12 two-handed weapon that might have gotten +3 damage (+3 more every 4 BAB) in PF1, that's 6.5 damage on average, going up to 13. It wasn't until BAB 16 that you would do more damage than that in PF1, and that was at a cost of -5 accuracy."
On Power Attack's power level -- "It's quite powerful, but it does use more actions, so your +1 greataxe character might be moving in and swinging once for a mighty 3d12+bonuses while my build might be several quick attacks for 3d6+bonuses that work out to more potential damage if I get very lucky and a little less vulnerable to bad luck. They wind up feeling more different too. Basically, it helps build different niches that make the various weapon styles wind up feeling a lot more different to use for me, whereas in PF1 I enjoyed different weapon styles, but ultimately they came down to a similar routine of full attacking whenever I could."

Comparing PF1's Power Attack to PF2's -- "PF1 Power Attack is worse in all but extreme edge cases where you can barely hit at all or where you hit by a mile... If you run those numbers, you will find that PF1-style -1/+3 Power Attack nets you roughly 1 expected damage over an entire round compared to not even doing anything special, and PF2-style Power Attack dramatically increases your damage."

Feat chains -- "As mentioned in I think one of the interviews, you should expect prerequisites to be based on things that your ability actually builds off, not other unrelated feats. So you wouldn't have a giant chain like that to take Whirlwind Attack."

Variety of builds -- "One of my favorite moments of the playtest in that regard was when Starfinder Developer Jason, Keeley, Software Test Engineer Erik Keith, and I all built 9th-10th level fighters who used sword and board and wanted to deal damage, but we all built in different ways. Erik built a character who used abilities like Power Attack to get in one big hit. I built a character who used agile weapons to get in a series of hits with a more favorable multiple attack penalty. Jason Keeley built a TWF sword and shield using Double Slice. And they all worked and played differently (my build was pretty powerful against some enemies but just didn't work like theirs did against high resistance foes)."

Handling unusual challenges [flight, underwater, extra planar locations, invisibility, damage immunity to weapons] -- "There are several class-specific options that could help with each of these (except underwater is covered well enough by skill feats that the fighter doesn't really focus class feats on the matter)."

Ripostes -- "As I mentioned in another thread, there is a PC ability somewhere to strike back at an enemy as a reaction if they critically fail to attack you. Sounds kind of like a riposte, eh?"

Spells usually trigger attacks of opportunity -- "So, the blog might not have made it clear, but most spells require the kind of fine manipulation that triggers an AoO (somatic gestures, material components)."

One neat thing in there is that different builds might seem to play more differently now. As well as Fighters become more of the martial skill wonks.

 

[Merced]

Have yet to see anything that is displeasing with this. I'm very excited for it. My friends and I got into Pathfinder with the mindset that it'd get us more comfortable with D&D. I find that in both games, I care much more for the roleplaying than the math and precampaign set up. I'm definitely going to want to try it when it comes out.

 

[Totenkindly]

Have yet to see anything that is displeasing with this. I'm very excited for it. My friends and I got into Pathfinder with the mindset that it'd get us more comfortable with D&D. I find that in both games, I care much more for the roleplaying than the math and precampaign set up. I'm definitely going to want to try it when it comes out.

I do enjoy character design and getting the "most bang for my buck" when it comes to builds... but at the same time, I enjoy the story and developing my character more than the mechanics for tabletop RPG. So I'm happy they are simplifying the whole thing and making it easier just to roleplay my character. In the end, when I look back at a game, what I remember is the story we told together.