There seems to be a bit of confusion about the nature of Pathfinder 2nd Edition, with some folks believing that it will be based on the D&D 5E rules engine, in a similar way to how the original Pathfinder was based of the D&D 3.5 rules engine. The evidence points to it not being so.
In accordance with Betteridge's Law of Headlines, the quick answer is "no".
Paizo's Erik Mona says "While it's reasonable to assume that developments in other games have gone into some of our thinking with this new edition, it'd be wrong to assume that we're explicitly trying to make the game more like 5e, or like any other game. What we're trying to do is make the very best version of Pathfinder that we can."
But decide for yourself! The demo game on the Glass Cannon podcast doesn't sound much like D&D 5th Edition at all, certainly not to me. But give a listen and draw your own conclusions.
Pathfinder 2nd Edition will surely borrow concepts from a whole range of games, and 5E will almost certainly be notable amongst them. But even from the little description we have so far, I'm seeing influences from things like Cubicle 7's The One Ring, and other games.
While Paizo has said that Pathfinder 2nd Edition will be release under the Open Gaming License (the OGL) it's important to note that the OGL has been around for nearly two decades, and dozens of games are released under it (Pathfinder 1, Fate, Mutants & Masterminds, WOIN), none of which have the slightest thing to do with D&D 5E. There isn't a "5E OGL"; there's just the OGL. It doesn't contain any rules; it's just a way to license content to third parties. Paizo uses the OGL to license its game engine to its large array of third party publishers, and will be continuing to do so, whatever form that game engine comes in.
So why release it under the OGL? No matter what the system looks like, even if it diverged so far from D&D as to be utterly unrecognisable, many of the "nouns" of the system are rooted in D&D history -- spell names, monsters, and so on. "Magic Missile", for example, or "Ankheg", or a thousand other terms which were irrevocably made Open Gaming Content nearly twenty years ago and are a fundamental part of Pathfinder's identity as much as they are a part of D&D's identity. Pathfinder's "story" elements - those names - requires continuing access to those terms. That doesn't mean that the game system has anything to do with it, though, or that it needs to resemble 5E (or 4E, or 3E, or Fate, or WOIN, or any of several dozen OGL games). The OGL is a convenient and easy way to access those terms safely. There's no good reason not to use it.
I think it's safe to say at this point that Pathfinder 2nd Edition isn't a variation of D&D 5E. It's more likely to be an evolution of the 3.x ruleset, diverging from the path WotC took significantly, but influenced by many game design evolutions across the industry in the last decade. I'm sure you'll be able to see some 5E DNA in it, mixed in with the DNA of various other things, but it looks like Pathfinder 2nd Edition is very different to WotC's current game.
I mentioned that I'd be surprised to see Pathfinder 2 using even a single word from the 5E SRD. Erik Mona confirmed this. "It doesn't. This thing is far less 5e-inspired than people are assuming based on the first day of information we've dropped and the use of some similar terminology."
I mentioned the question of backward compatibility yesterday. Paizo says "While many of the rules of the game have changed, much of what made Pathfinder great has remained the same. The story of the game is unchanged, and in many cases, you can simply replace the old rules with their new counterpart without having to alter anything else about the adventure. As for individual rules, like your favorite spell or monster, most can be added with a simple conversion, changing a few numbers and rebalancing some of the mechanics."
In accordance with Betteridge's Law of Headlines, the quick answer is "no".
Paizo's Erik Mona says "While it's reasonable to assume that developments in other games have gone into some of our thinking with this new edition, it'd be wrong to assume that we're explicitly trying to make the game more like 5e, or like any other game. What we're trying to do is make the very best version of Pathfinder that we can."
But decide for yourself! The demo game on the Glass Cannon podcast doesn't sound much like D&D 5th Edition at all, certainly not to me. But give a listen and draw your own conclusions.
Pathfinder 2nd Edition will surely borrow concepts from a whole range of games, and 5E will almost certainly be notable amongst them. But even from the little description we have so far, I'm seeing influences from things like Cubicle 7's The One Ring, and other games.
While Paizo has said that Pathfinder 2nd Edition will be release under the Open Gaming License (the OGL) it's important to note that the OGL has been around for nearly two decades, and dozens of games are released under it (Pathfinder 1, Fate, Mutants & Masterminds, WOIN), none of which have the slightest thing to do with D&D 5E. There isn't a "5E OGL"; there's just the OGL. It doesn't contain any rules; it's just a way to license content to third parties. Paizo uses the OGL to license its game engine to its large array of third party publishers, and will be continuing to do so, whatever form that game engine comes in.
So why release it under the OGL? No matter what the system looks like, even if it diverged so far from D&D as to be utterly unrecognisable, many of the "nouns" of the system are rooted in D&D history -- spell names, monsters, and so on. "Magic Missile", for example, or "Ankheg", or a thousand other terms which were irrevocably made Open Gaming Content nearly twenty years ago and are a fundamental part of Pathfinder's identity as much as they are a part of D&D's identity. Pathfinder's "story" elements - those names - requires continuing access to those terms. That doesn't mean that the game system has anything to do with it, though, or that it needs to resemble 5E (or 4E, or 3E, or Fate, or WOIN, or any of several dozen OGL games). The OGL is a convenient and easy way to access those terms safely. There's no good reason not to use it.
I think it's safe to say at this point that Pathfinder 2nd Edition isn't a variation of D&D 5E. It's more likely to be an evolution of the 3.x ruleset, diverging from the path WotC took significantly, but influenced by many game design evolutions across the industry in the last decade. I'm sure you'll be able to see some 5E DNA in it, mixed in with the DNA of various other things, but it looks like Pathfinder 2nd Edition is very different to WotC's current game.
I mentioned that I'd be surprised to see Pathfinder 2 using even a single word from the 5E SRD. Erik Mona confirmed this. "It doesn't. This thing is far less 5e-inspired than people are assuming based on the first day of information we've dropped and the use of some similar terminology."
I mentioned the question of backward compatibility yesterday. Paizo says "While many of the rules of the game have changed, much of what made Pathfinder great has remained the same. The story of the game is unchanged, and in many cases, you can simply replace the old rules with their new counterpart without having to alter anything else about the adventure. As for individual rules, like your favorite spell or monster, most can be added with a simple conversion, changing a few numbers and rebalancing some of the mechanics."
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