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

 

[LrdApoc]

I guess I was one of the lucky 3. I got both copies I pre-ordered through Amazon today.

 

[Mercurius]

Haha, four responses and three very different answers. But thanks! Interesting stuff. The play test looks really nice and my first impression is that I can see what [MENTION=6951223]thekittenhugs[/MENTION] means, although it seems the “4edification” is relatively surface level.

In that sense, I see similarities between 1e and 2e: taking the same basic game but cleaning it up and organizing it a bit.

What makes folks say 2e to 3e? That’s a pretty big jump.

Also, I’m sure this has been discussed but it seems formatted for digest size.

 

[TwoSix]

As someone who hasn't played Pathfinder or followed 2e's development but is still curious, what is comparison of P2 to P1, relative to D&D editions? Is it more of a smaller organizational change like AD&D 1E to 2E or 3E to 3.5 a massive change like 2E to 3E, 3.5 to 4E or 4E to 5E?

I think the fact that PF1e is just a slight evolution from 3.5 makes the 3.5->4e comparison kind of unavoidable. PF2e has a lot of modular options on a more structured base chassis, and simply looks more "designed" than 3.5/PF, which also makes the 4e comparisons easier.

The real big design iteration for PF2e is the degrees of success built into attacks and spells, where getting a crit success(which is a nat 20 or success by 10 or more) gives a bonus effect, and getting a crit failure (a nat 1 or failure by 10 or more) has a stiff penalty.

 

[TrickyUK]

I'm in the UK and preordered the hardcopy 2e playtest from Leisure Games - my order is now showing as fulfilled which i think means it shipped today. Yay!!

I ordered from Games Lore. They say that the Hard Cover Rulebook arrived, but not the adventure. As I ordered both, I am waiting on the latter to arrive before both are shipped. Seems odd that all playtest products didn't arrive together.

 

[Jester David]

As someone who hasn't played Pathfinder or followed 2e's development but is still curious, what is comparison of P2 to P1, relative to D&D editions? Is it more of a smaller organizational change like AD&D 1E to 2E or 3E to 3.5 a massive change like 2E to 3E, 3.5 to 4E or 4E to 5E?

It’s a pretty big change.

Glancing and skimming through the PDF I have no idea how a lot of things work. Such as attack bonuses, what certain feats do, and the like. There’s a lot of unfamiliar jargon that I cannot parse yet. I’m pretty adept at Pathfinder 1 and didn’t have many problems with Starfinder, but this is a step beyond.

It’s like reading an entirely unfamiliar rules system. And a crunchy one at that.

I’d likely compare it most to 3e to 4e. I imagine the base rules and play is similar, but how classes work has radically changed.
Monsters seem mostly unaffected, although there’s some minor changes to formatting and feats have been removed. But it looks like they’ve largely retained the math.

 

[thullgrim]

3e to 4 e for me but I like 4e so it isn’t a problem.

 

[ronaldsf]

Pathfinder GM here. To add some perspective, there are people on the Paizo boards complaining that "if they wanted to play 5th edition D&D, they would've play 5th edition D&D." Ha!

I would say that the jump from 2E to 3E of adding order to a bunch of ad hoc systems and the uniform d20 mechanic, is more extreme than the shift from PF1 to PF2.

The jump from 3.5E to 4th Edition would be more drastic than this; 4th Edition seemed to start from scratch, and get its inspiration/roots from places outside D&D.

I would say it's similar to 5th Edition, in that it draws inspiration from all editions. There is some math-flattening and power-flattening and some reining in of the casters and buffing of martials, like 5th edition. But the end design goal is to preserve character customization, while the design goal of 5th edition seemed to be more ease of play / ease of DMing. And there is some shifting toward the "powers" of 4E and streamlining with keywords to make it run more smoothly.

 

[R_Chance]

I guess I was one of the lucky 3. I got both copies I pre-ordered through Amazon today.

That makes two of us. Lucky that is.

My Amazon pre-order Hardback shipped yesterday, is in route, and scheduled for delivery Friday. ​

 

[Stacie GmrGrl]

[MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION], PFRPG2 to PFRPG1 is like 3.5 to 3.0. Same base system, new mechanics. The changes are _nowhere_ near jump from 2E to 3E.

To me the changes are much bigger than a simple revision that was 3.5 to 3.0.

These are pretty big, when taken as a whole. I'm in agreement with others who see it as a 2e to 3e jump.

PF2 is now looking a lot like Radiance and 5e, where everything is split into different categories of Feats and Proficiency levels and an increased level of Tactical simulation.

This game looks like a true evolution on the d20 fantasy system that 4e wasn't able to be.

 

[RangerWickett]

3.0 to 3.5 was some rebalancing and a few new abilities.

2e to 3e kept the same flavor but fixed a bunch of math and made mechanics more consistent and logical, instead of ad hoc.

3.5 to 4e was designed to make the game playable on a digital platform, and often felt mechanics-first, flavor-second.

5e really felt more like starting with 2e, and then using 15 years of game design experience to do what 3e wanted without requiring as much cognitive load to run the game.

...

PF1 to PF2 is its own unique change, but if I had to pick one other edition switch to compare it to, I'd say 2e to 3e. It wants the game to feel the same, but have more finely-engineered mechanics.