Pathfinder Second Edition

Interesting concept. I'm excited to see exactly how they are changing things. Some of it certainly have a strong 5th edition feel to them.

I literally was just coming here to post this! I am so excited right now

General Mechanics and Miscellaneous
Playtest Announcement
Actions
Leveling Up
Proficiency
Modes of Play
Critical Success and Failure
Spellcasting
Backgrounds
Building Monsters
Monster Stat Blocks
Downtime
Skills
Skill Feats
Conditions
Archetypes
Traps

Seminar About Pathfinder 2e

Classes
Fighter
Rogue
Alchemist
Alchemist Pt 2: Items
Cleric
Cleric Pt 2: Domains
Paladin
Wizard
Barbarian
Monk
Ranger
Sorcerer
Miscellaneous Class Information

Races
Goblins
Elves and Dwarves

Equipment
Weapons
Adventuring Gear
Treasure
Potency and Potions

I haven't watched the announcement but I'm pretty comfortable taking a strong original-is-better position in the ensuing edition war, haha.

http://paizo.com/PathfinderPlaytest

Personally, I think 3.5 belongs in the past and PF with it. I've never been a huge fan even though it's so hugely popular in my in-person group. The rules are just too complex and convoluted. I know they are trying to simplify, but PF 2E is not likely to change my opinion much.

Their proposed changes sound a lot like 5th edition, except they will have all the experience of what has and hasn't worked in 5e to go from.

That's a good point. Pathfinder was really just house rules for 3.5. Maybe PF2 will be their "house rules" for 5e.

That's kind of what my thought is. I'm really excited to see how they approach Ancestry, honestly. I'm curious if they will maintain the pluses and minuses to stats or if they are going more 5e style with all pluses. In addition to that whole "proficiency based on level" as the sole addend for stuff instead of the myriad things PF1 used (because 3.x used it).

Well, we might as well start planning the playtest session! I'm a fan of Pathfinder, but the game has been around long enough that the frayed edges are very visible. A 2nd Edition is a good idea, but it makes we wonder how they'll handle the first edition. Hopefully they keep supporting it. They'd have to right, since most Pathfinder players picked up the game after a D&D edition change. At any rate, this could be very cool.

I'm curious why people feel that it's going to mimic D&D 5E. My first thought when reading was that it was going a way that is very unlike D&D. "Race" and "Background" are the prime generation method as opposed to Ability Scores, Race, and Class. In fact, it read very much like Ability Scores will be predetermined, which is antithetical to D&D.

I can see some of the Ability Scores being a bit pre-determined by your Ancestry/Race and then getting modified by your class selection, background selection, feat selection, etc. But that's the only part that seems to be not in line with D&D. They are moving away from complicated formulas towards a single character level based proficiency based formula, like 5e did. They are introducing the concept of a "pre-adventuring" background (more than just 1 or 2 traits) to give more definition to the person you are now, like 5e did. The reading of selecting skill proficiencies feels much more like a 5e model as opposed to the ever-swelling skill ranks model that PF1/3.x used for skills.

Beyond that creation aspect, the ongoing leveling process with your class selection opening up specific feat chains for you to consider is much closer to the subclass feel in my head than the PF1 version of feats that made creation super crunchy and such.

Finally, with the game-play style, they are moving away from different categories of actions and instead going into a pooled theory. 5e moved in this direction a bit from the 3.x days where you had movement, action, full round action to Movement, Action, Bonus Action, Reaction. PF2 looks to have 3 actions per turn. Anything you want to do will use 0-3 Actions. Want to move? Spend an action. Want to run far far away, spend three actions moving. Want to focus on just beating on someone, spend three actions to attack. I'd be surprised if something like the fighter class didn't get a feature that allows you to swing twice with an attack Action.

I'm really intrigued by the change to the initiative system where it seems like your initiative is based more on what you are doing than a flat dexterity based thing.

Obviously a lot of this argumentation is based purely on two posts with not a ton of content. But I definitely got the same kind spirit of change for PF1 -> PF2 that 5e offered: streamlining gameplay, lowering the barrier of entry to playing through simplification of some aspects, making choices in the game more meaningful in some way. Not quite sure how this will impact the normally very math/crunch heavy feel that PF1 had. Hopefully there is still that spirit of highly configurable characters.

Thank you for the well thought out post, Dramasailor. I appreciate that explanation. I guess my problem is just one of perspective. Many of the things you've associated based on the info (which we both agree is not much so far) I see many of the same things as differences.

The change to initiative being another example that you brought up. Also, what you call subclasses came across to me as a furthering of the archetype system that was already PF. In fact, I felt that D&D only added it because it was one of the most popular parts of PF.

Also, I don't correlate background in PF2 with the one from D&D because in my experience backgrounds in D&D are largely inconsequential. They offer some proficiencies with tools or instruments or open up skills that perhaps were not available for some classes. The PF2 version, to me, came across as vital during character creation and very defining for the character throughout.

In any case, after reading your very informative post from that perspective I can see where people make the comparison now. I still am not a PF fan, so I can't say that I'll follow future news releases closely. It will be interesting to see how it develops as more info comes out, though.

Blog post about actions in 2e Pathfinder

Personally, disgruntled by the many inequities of AD&D 2e, I switched in the mid-1990s to other, more crunchy and flexible fantasy systems like Rolemaster where your character on paper could be radically altered from another similar implementation.

3.0/3.5/PF brought me back into D&D, but 4e and 5e seem to have moved away from that flexibility in exchange for other considerations, and so my IRL troupes have stuck with 3.5/PF.

What I want from PF2 is maintaining that very high level of meaningful customization, rather than picking a couple things from a couple lists. A dozen feat trees per class instead of one or a handful of fully fleshed out subclasses; weapons with vastly different effects than just damage dice, etc.

We'll see what they do. If it moves toward the simplicity of 5e rather than away, I'll save a lot of money not buying books, haha.

This blog post was pretty illuminating on what to expect in terms of mechanics.

Another Paizo blog post. This time about Leveling Up

Hmm. I'm interested to see how the same XP every level part works out. Will they lower the XP that individual monsters give at higher levels to keep the inverted pyramid of leveling speed?

Feats at every level sounds intriguing. I'm really excited for some of that information to start flowing.

Here's what I've seen other games do and what might possibly end up happening in PF2.

For same XP every level, maybe they'll drop the monster XP altogether and go with session XP instead.

The whole feat every level sort of reminds me of Dungeonslayers' talent system. Perhaps feats will be in a "stacked" format, where most, if not all feats ca be taken more than once, with better effects, or more uses per day per rank of feats taken? For example, let say they make multiple ranks of Power Attack, perhaps each rank of that feat could allow for a -1 attack roll for a +2 to damage roll, with a BAB requirement for each rank taken?

They had mentioned that fighting monsters was a source of XP still. Granted, I wouldn't put it past Paizo to leave the experience gain as a super mathy formula (even if everything else seems to be simplifying).

For example: Monster gives X experience to the party. Divide the experience up by how many people (P) there are. So you get (X/P) per player. Then, check the differential of monster level to player level to see how much of that you get. If you are within a level or 2, you get 100% of (X/P). If you are more than that above it, you get 50% (X/P). If you are more than that below level, you get 150% (X/P).

I am, of course, making all of this up out of nothingness, but leaving that level of crunchiness wouldn't surprise me. :-P

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As a side note, it also looks like they may be doing away with 1dX/level of hit points and going to a flat amount (reading from the 8+Con for Clerics, rather than 1d8+Con for Clerics)

They could instead just award xp based on the Challenge Rating as related to they party level.

For example, CR same as party level, 300 xp. One or two less, 150 xp, one or two more, 600 xp.

Something to that effect. It would make static monster xp irrelevant.

That would make sense Qralloq. I like that quite a bit, actually.