It’s LAUNCH DAY For The Pathfinder 2 Playtest!

Today’s the day! You can now download the Pathfinder 2nd Edition playtest book!

Head on over to Paizo.com to download it for free.

Its tinged with a little sadness for those of us who preordered the hard copy, as issues with Amazon means that our copies have been delayed by an indefinite amount.

’’When Paizo was planning this year's Pathfinder Playtest, we expected to exceed our own ability to fulfill orders on a timely basis, so we decided to use Fulfillment by Amazon. Unfortunately, Amazon's reports indicate that most customers will not be receiving their orders by tomorrow's release date. They shipped 3 orders on July 28, 3 more on July 29, and no orders on July 30 or 31. Today, they have shipped almost 10% of the outstanding orders, and they are continuing to ship through the night and into tomorrow. They have so far been unable to tell us when they will complete shipping.”

However, at least the PDFs are still available for free in the meantime.

Adventure chapters are also available alongside the rule book, with the first being available today. They are as follows:

1. The Lost Star, Aug 7 - Aug 26 (Also available at Gen Con on Aug 2.)
2. In Pale Mountain’s Shadow, Aug 7 - Sep 9
3. Affair At Sombrefell Hall, Sep 10 - Sep 23
4. The Mirrored Moon, Sep 24 - Oct 8
5. The Heroes Of Undarin, Oct 9 - Oct 21
6. Red Flags, Oct 22 - Nov 4
7. When The Stars Go Dark, Nov 5 - Nov 18

 

[mellored]

Good grief, the Paladin is a dumpster fire in this playtest. I could tell it was from reading it, and it's even more evident running one in a recent session. Designing a class around a reactive ability with a limited trigger DOES. NOT. WORK.

I'm glad to see that a lot of playtesters on the Paizo boards think the same. Maybe it'll get addressed ...

I disagree.

I mean, I agree that retributive strike is pretty weak, and some of those feats that boost it are pretty trappy*...
But I don't see paladins as being designed around the one feature. They also get lay-on-hands and righteous ally. And several weak features add up.

Compared to the fighter who only gets opportunity attacks (a conditional reaction), I'd say they are doing just fine.



*Better feats would be things that let you use your strike more often. Making it less conditional. i.e.

Delayed Retribution: When a creature within 30' of you hits an ally or friendly creature, you can use your reaction to mark them for retribution. On your next turn, you can use an action to perform a retributive strike against the target. This applies a multi-attack penalty as normal.

Inescapable Retribution (prerequisite: Delayed Retribution)
When you mark a creature with delayed retributive, that mark does not go away until you hit them, or you use the feature again.

Retributive Step: When an enemy is 5' too far away to use retributive strike, you can move 5' to get into range as part of the same reaction.


Also, why does "litany against sloth" slows people down? It would make much more sense to speed up a slowed ally.
"Litany against haste" would be better for slowing people down.

 

[Kaodi]

One thing that vexes me greatly is that in the navigation table of contents they list every single feat and every single spell and not so much as a letter guide for magic items. ALL of these things should be simply navigated as A page X, B page Y, C page Z, etc. Would vastly decrease the amount of necessary scrolling overall.

 

[Gladius Legis]

I disagree.

I mean, I agree that retributive strike is pretty weak, and some of those feats that boost it are pretty trappy*...
But I don't see paladins as being designed around the one feature.

It's not just those feats though. 2 of the 3 automatic features they get that aren't just armor/weapon/skill stuff are tied directly to Retributive Strike. Including one that's named Holy Smite in what has to be the biggest troll job in table-top RPG history.

They also get lay-on-hands and righteous ally. And several weak features add up.

Compared to the fighter who only gets opportunity attacks (a conditional reaction), I'd say they are doing just fine.

Attack of Opportunity has more triggers, though. Fighters also have a much better selection of feats that have nothing to do with AoO, and its higher-level automatic features also aren't restricted to AoO.

*Better feats would be things that let you use your strike more often. Making it less conditional. i.e.

Delayed Retribution: When a creature within 30' of you hits an ally or friendly creature, you can use your reaction to mark them for retribution. On your next turn, you can use an action to perform a retributive strike against the target. This applies a multi-attack penalty as normal.

Inescapable Retribution (prerequisite: Delayed Retribution)
When you mark a creature with delayed retributive, that mark does not go away until you hit them, or you use the feature again.

Retributive Step: When an enemy is 5' too far away to use retributive strike, you can move 5' to get into range as part of the same reaction.

A lot of these (Retributive Step, especially) read like something that should probably be added to Retributive Strike by default.

I wouldn't have minded Retributive Strike if it was a feat, but making it the defining Paladin feature and hinging two big other features on it and a whole bunch of class feats was definitely not the way to go. It shoehorns the Paladin into purely reactive gameplay, which is an inherently weaker way to play.

 

[Jester David]

From http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2vcc6?News-from-Paizo-Twitch-170818-Mark-Seifter

News from Paizo Twitch 17 / 08 / 18 - Mark Seifter

1) In two weeks we will probably see new rules for "Dying"

Mark said they are not satisfied how the system is making people make several rolls befora waking up, so they will definitely change that. They are working in the new system so will take more than a week until we get it

2) There wasa clarification about Hardness / Dent

You should just apply the damage. If equals hardness they take 1 dent, if double hardness they take 2 dents

3) Sunder

There is no way in the actual playtest to sunder worn items. Mark said that this was a type of attack that players usually don't like so they are testing without

4) Class Feats and general feats

There is no plan currently to make class feats into general feats

5) They will try to launch new erratas weekly, so stay tuned

6) There will be a game of Doomsday Dawn played by the Paizo Staff next thursday

7) There is no actual plan to increase the stats from proficience, since little increases are a lot more meaningful in second edition. A +1 increasing critical chance by 5% and decreasing critical failure by 5% (i think was 5%... Maybe wrong, lol!)

#4 is the big one for me. I dislike being so limited in character options. Such as being unable to build a functional ranged paladin, longbow ranger, or crossbow fighter because all the relevant combat feats are class specific. It just limits characters to what the designers think should be played, while also artificially creating a need for splatbooks that fill out the gaps.

This and the entire design of the feedback survey really makes it seem like this playtest is actually, well, a playtest. Unlike the 5e playtest, which was more of a concept test. It seems like they're not looking to gather feedback on the overall design or making major changes to the system, and are just looking to fine tune subsystems.
It looks very much like final game will look an awful lot like the playtest game.

Which is disappointing as the playtest book did exactly the opposite of everything I wanted an update of Pathfinder to do...

 

[Roadie]

So it just me, or is there no actual distinction between "actions" and "activities"?

Consider, for example, Ready, which is listed as a "basic action" but takes 2 actions (making it an "activity" by definition).

Why are there even two separate words? Why not just have them all as a single category?

Edit:

Compare the Trample activity...

...to the Ready action...

What makes one an activity and the other an action?

 

[Parmandur]

From http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2vcc6?News-from-Paizo-Twitch-170818-Mark-Seifter



#4 is the big one for me. I dislike being so limited in character options. Such as being unable to build a functional ranged paladin, longbow ranger, or crossbow fighter because all the relevant combat feats are class specific. It just limits characters to what the designers think should be played, while also artificially creating a need for splatbooks that fill out the gaps.

This and the entire design of the feedback survey really makes it seem like this playtest is actually, well, a playtest. Unlike the 5e playtest, which was more of a concept test. It seems like they're not looking to gather feedback on the overall design or making major changes to the system, and are just looking to fine tune subsystems.
It looks very much like final game will look an awful lot like the playtest game.

Which is disappointing as the playtest book did exactly the opposite of everything I wanted an update of Pathfinder to do...

I have no PF experience, but I had plenty with 3.x. I was curious when I downloaded the PDF if it could entice me. Instead, it seems to have doubled down on what I really didn't like in 3.x. The lifepath system was promising, but did not help streamline anything. The Archetypes are just about the only thing I appreciated.

 

[CapnZapp]

They are apparently gunning for the 3.x holdouts.

5E is a huge success likely in no small part because it truly and fully did keep the fun from 3.x but without the clutter, wonkiness, imbalance and profound system mastery issues.

The only way I can make sense of Paizo yet again not taking the clue is that they're content with those malcontent with a quick fast simple easy friendly system.

Either that or they don't have a franking clue that they're replacing one cluttery nightmare with another.

 

[zztong]

This and the entire design of the feedback survey really makes it seem like this playtest is actually, well, a playtest. Unlike the 5e playtest, which was more of a concept test. It seems like they're not looking to gather feedback on the overall design or making major changes to the system, and are just looking to fine tune subsystems.

I'm relieved to see I'm not alone in this feeling. I was looking at a list of the survey questions and was upset to see that none of them involved an expression of opinion on major features. The questions appeared to be focused entirely on tuning numbers related to party performance, such as uses per day, healing per day, etc.

 

[houser2112]

They are apparently gunning for the 3.x holdouts.

How do you figure? The find it exceedingly hard to believe that there are players that feel that PF1 is too divergent from 3.x (such that they are actively avoiding it, as opposed to just continuing what they're doing due to inertia), but could be lured to PF2, a game which diverges even harder from 3.x.

5E is a huge success likely in no small part because it truly and fully did keep the fun from 3.x but without the clutter, wonkiness, imbalance and profound system mastery issues.

I think the people that like 5E on its own merits are already playing it.

The only way I can make sense of Paizo yet again not taking the clue is that they're content with those malcontent with a quick fast simple easy friendly system.

"Yet again"? PF2 is the first "misstep" that I consider Paizo to be making. PF1 was, I believe, exactly or very close to what people wanted out of a system at the time. What PF1 fans really want is a cleaned up PF1, not the incompatible mess they're being given now.

Either that or they don't have a franking clue that they're replacing one cluttery nightmare with another.

This is unfortunately what I believe is happening.

 

[Jester David]

I'm relieved to see I'm not alone in this feeling. I was looking at a list of the survey questions and was upset to see that none of them involved an expression of opinion on major features. The questions appeared to be focused entirely on tuning numbers related to party performance, such as uses per day, healing per day, etc.

In theory, they might do those more general surveys later... but given that's the stuff that will require the most work. You'd think they'd want to get that out sooner.
Hopefully they're just trying to give people more than a twenty days to read the book and play the game. (But it didn't take me twenty minutes to look through the book and go "assumed magic items, rapidly increasing number porn bonuses, and equal complexity for all classes... hard pass.")

I worry that they're just getting more general feedback from the forums. Which is probably a huge mistake. Because there's a lot of noise in the forums, and a lot of squeaky wheels. The percentage of players who visit forums and talk there is small, and we are not necessarily representative. Plus, it is really, really easy to just focus on the happy voices agreeing with you and ignore the people disagreeing.
You need to get a survey going that casts a wider net and gives you some hard numbers for who likes what and how popular bits of the design are.