Pathfinder 2E Here's A Pathfinder 2E Goblin

Paizo has shared part of its upcoming Bestiary for Pathfinder 2nd Edition with a quick look at the goblin entry.

​

How does this differ from the playtest version? Let's take a look! Generally the layout is much the same with some minor tweaks; the differences appear to be under the hood as various numbers change.

• It's gone from CREATURE 0 to CREATURE -1.
• Perception has increased from +1 to +2.
• Skills no longer have an initial 'blanket' entry; in the playtest goblin skills were "–2; Acrobatics +3, Athletics +3, Stealth +5"; now they're "Acrobaitcs +5, Athletics +2, Nature +1, Stealth +5".
• Con has increased to +1
• AC has gone from 14 to 16, TAC is gone, Fort, Ref, and Will have all increased significantly
• Dogslicer attack has gone from +6 to +8 and now has finesse added
• Shortbow attack has gone from +6 to +8, and various additional info added in parenthesis

 

[JesterOC]

Oof. That "As goblin warrior" reference is a little painful.

That is a fear of mine as well, but after looking at the whole book, they managed to cram a LOT of monsters and art in there, and this must have helped!
We shall see how bad it becomes in play!

 

[JesterOC]

For those who rejected 4e, it wont necessarily matter how dissimilar PF2e is from 4e. Enough of a similarity will be enough to get them to dismiss it out of hand.

It is thinking like this that gives us flat earthers.

 

[Staffan]

This does in no way even address the question of how Paizo should have approached a new edition of Pathfinder...

Neither was it what I was responding to. [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] suggested, I suppose in jest, that the PF1 fans dissatisfied with PF2 would have to take refuge with a new company doing to Pathfinder what Pathfinder did to D&D. I was pointing out that that was quite unlikely to happen.

I think they could have done many things differently with Pathfinder 2. Ideally, the playtest period would have been longer and more iterative. Instead of releasing a complete-but-unpolished rules set and expecting people to stress-test it on a very aggressive schedule, they would likely have been better served by following the example set by Wizards and release it incrementally and ask if each step feels right. The stress-tests are probably handled better internally. But that's irrelevant because (a) that's not what they did, and (b) that's not the suggestion I was replying to.

 

[MockingBird]

Does anyone have concrete evidence as to why the playtest was so short? I dont fully understand the rush because 5e has been out for 5 years at this point. Not to flog the dead horse but doubling down on dual stat APs, or simply releasing 5e conversions of past APs while developing 2e more slowly, listening to gripes some have about 5e and acting accordingly might have been a better approach. Just seems like a stark contrast from how PF playtest was handled to how this was handled.

 

[Parmandur]

Does anyone have concrete evidence as to why the playtest was so short? I dont fully understand the rush because 5e has been out for 5 years at this point. Not to flog the dead horse but doubling down on dual stat APs, or simply releasing 5e conversions of past APs while developing 2e more slowly, listening to gripes some have about 5e and acting accordingly might have been a better approach. Just seems like a stark contrast from how PF playtest was handled to how this was handled.

I don't know about "proof," since anybody in their board meetings isn't talking: but it seems that they had been working on PF2 for a good long while before the public playtest, and the goal of the public playtest was more to stress test the numbers, rather than make big design decisions.

 

[MockingBird]

I don't know about "proof," since anybody in their board meetings isn't talking: but it seems that they had been working on PF2 for a good long while before the public playtest, and the goal of the public playtest was more to stress test the numbers, rather than make big design decisions.

Okay, I guess it was in development for longer than I realized. Fair enough but still seems a bit one sided if the playtest was released more for stress test than straight up feed back. I didnt really follow the playtest so I'm ignorant of how it actually went down and how much feed back was taken. How was it compared to 4e? Was 4e even given to the public to playtest at all?

 

[Parmandur]

Okay, I guess it was in development for longer than I realized. Fair enough but still seems a bit one sided if the playtest was released more for stress test than straight up feed back. I didnt really follow the playtest so I'm ignorant of how it actually went down and how much feed back was taken. How was it compared to 4e? Was 4e even given to the public to playtest at all?

I didn't participate in the playtest past downloading the rules, as it bored me and I didn't have an interested group. I understand that they provided a number of highly specific scenarios and requested detailed reports on encounter results to test game math, which does seem to have been refined in the final product.

4E had zero public playtesting, it was designed, bulit internally and released. TBF, Paizo introduced the giant mass playtest with PF1, believing in open gaming and having the technology.

 

[Staffan]

Okay, I guess it was in development for longer than I realized. Fair enough but still seems a bit one sided if the playtest was released more for stress test than straight up feed back. I didnt really follow the playtest so I'm ignorant of how it actually went down and how much feed back was taken. How was it compared to 4e? Was 4e even given to the public to playtest at all?

Neither 3e nor 4e were publicly playtested. With 3e they touted that they had enlisted a lot of people to help playtest it - I believe "Meet the playtesters" was even a feature on their website in the year between 3e's announcement and its release - but it was still a closed playtest. I don't recall anything similar for 4e.

 

[Zardnaar]

4E was tested internally. Rumors had it RPGA were involved.

PF2 was in development for two years before the playtest iirc. Paizo mentioned it somewhere.

It's evolved out of Starfinder and late Pathfinder material much like every edition of D&D evolving out of late edition material.

 

[Parmandur]

4E was tested internally. Rumors had it RPGA were involved.

Oh, for sure, WotC is very big on internal playtesting: 5E had a large internal playtest going, that had a different purpose from the public test, is my understanding: the public test was for determining if people liked large concepts, while the internal test hashed out the math details once the direction was determined.