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

 

[Shasarak]

If Paizo thought they could produce 5e APs, even 5e conversions of older APs, and make a net profit, I have no doubt they would. Whether it is wanting to focus on PF or not grow too big or whatever, they have decided that sticking with PF (and adding Starfinder) is better for them than supporting 5e. Who am i to second guess that?

Remember that last time when Paizo supported another company who changed the rules of the game and did not renew their license? Yeah lets do that again.

 

[Parmandur]

Who am i to second guess that?

This seriously calls into doubt this entire message board endeavor.

 

[Aldarc]

The relevant questions are:
- will the PF2 market be big enough for Paizo?
- could Paizo have gained market share by moving with the times and declutter its upcoming game, taking inspiration from how WotC in 5th edition finally and truly fixed a lot of issues with D&D that has plagued the game for decades?

quoteI'm afraid I believe the answers to be "no" and "yes", respectively.

Your assessment would have been far more credible and your questions far more "relevant" if you did not feel obligated to insert your raging bias in the bold.

 

[ZickZak]

So far very few options presented that actually matter to me. This could be very good and potentially much better than 5e when a lot more books are out with a lot more options.

PF to me was always about creating a character exactly how I wanted it. There were classes, then archetypes which you could have multiple of, tons of specific feats that - depending on which were chosen - changed how one plays the character...
In PF2 there really isnt anything like that and so far it's an interesting concept, but nothing I'll ditch 5e for as of yet.

 

[CapnZapp]

Beyond just the Byzantine organization, they have also changed the rules significantly enough that it then moves from "D&D" to going against the other fantasy hearbreakers on the market. This engenders the question "why PF2 instead of Runequest, DCC, Savage World's or Genysys?"

Exactly. Now we're getting somewhere.

And of course my point is that if Paizo thinks they're more than a heartbreaker that would be because they're piggybacking on the market leader.

It doesn't appear Paizo has realized this. They apparently believe they can compete head to head.

But they have never done so in the past. They successfully competed with WotC at a time when they decided to
1) abandon their successful product
2) yet allow clones like Pathfinder
and in addition
3) offered a completely new and strange product that crashed and burned.

To me, that does not scream "we can take them". It sounds more like hubris.

IMHO Paizo needed to analyse what 5E does well and less well, and then offer a product that improves on the latter while not throwing away the former.

PF2 does not shape up to be anything of the sort.

It looks more like "now that we have our own Pathfinder brand and market we can do anything, and people will be faithful to us"

But my point is, most people turned to Paizo because WotC shat in their own bowl, not because they're inherent Paizo fans.

If PF2 doesn't offer anything to the d20/PF1 crowd, and doesn't look anything like 5E... is it more than any other heartbreaker in that case..?

 

[CapnZapp]

If you go by that, then well, next to nothing is truly free. "Not such a thing as a free meal" and stuff. (In my case, well they already had that by virtue of me buying from them in the past)

Thank you for finally understanding.

Hopefully now you too will reserve "free" for its intended meaning "gratis" instead of the marketing siren call of "it's free just sign here".

 

[CapnZapp]

I freely admit that's quite possible. I'm not really sure what the optimal volume of crunch is for PF2, honestly, I think that's one of the ideas they should be crowdsourcing to find out.

I think that misses the point.

I think they should offer a baseline level of 5E compatibility and then add player-side crunch from there.

The ONLY reason Paizo is more of a household name than the dozens of companies that offer DnD:ish gameplay is because they piggybacked onto the 500 pound gorilla.

 

[CapnZapp]

Except 5e ia a currently supported version of the game. Pathfinder exists at all because WotC's policies on Open Gaming in the 4E era necessitated it in order for Paizo to continue to operate the way it was doing so at the time. Pathfinder appealed to 3.5 players, for sure, but had 4e been as open as d20 ig probably would have benefited from broad 3rd party support (many companies did support it under the much stricter GSL) including Paizo. It's even reasonable to postulate that Paizo support might have made 4e more successful and thereby changed what D&D currently looks like. In any case, the lines diverged significantly enough it doesn't make any sense to suggest Paizo is trying to chase 5e players with its Pathfinder 2e or that it would be successful in doing so. If Paizo wanted 5e dollars all they would have had to do was abandon PF in favor of 5e when that game came out and completely dominated the 5e 3PP market with their APs.

Yes, the hubris argument.

We'll see how it goes. I am very pessimistic a bloated mess of fidliness can compete with 5E, crunch or no crunch.

After all, if PF2 does take off, WotC can kill it by releasing an Advanced Player's Handbook. (Nothing suggests they plan one now, but I'm talking about a future where Paizo is looking like a serious competitor)

 

[CapnZapp]

It's more complex than that, the restrictive license was a big deal, but not by itself the dealbreaker. The loss of the magazines and that they didn't get a wide enough preview of 4e were more important. There is a lot of writing about that time.

I'm betting they thank their lucky star they couldn't jump on the 4e bandwagon...

They would probably not exist today if they did

 

[CapnZapp]

Your definition of "free" is utterly useless.

It might seem that way, but only if you have been brainwashed by Facebook and their ilk.

I urge you to think again.