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

 

[Morrus]

Raise your hand if you have actually played a game, even a single encounter, of PF2 at this point.

Me! Me! Played a demo at UKGE in June.

 

[zztong]

Raise your hand if you have actually played a game, even a single encounter, of PF2 at this point.

I've made around 15 characters and I play for the first time tonight. I can say from experience that I don't like PF2e character generation, but I really think I'm going to like the action sequence.

 

[TwoSix]

Raise your hand if you have actually played a game, even a single encounter, of PF2 at this point.

It's been 6 days. I doubt a whole lot of people have yet. I certainly don't get to game every week.

 

[Parmandur]

But they aren’t making 5E. They’re making Pathfinder. That’s a bit like saying “I’d be more excited about ice cream if it was a steak”.

The analogy is more like "I'd be more excited by this ice cream if it was Strawberry rather than Macha Green Tea flavored, or the Chocolate that WotC is producing" They are making D&D, the comparison is like to like, just differing in details.

Haven't played any, probably won't. I was interested in the life path character generation, but that has proven not to be very fun at all, and not at all streamlined. Still better than abstract point buy systems, but half-baked.

What I really love, however, are the Archetypes, and how they replace multiclassing and Prestige Classes entirely.

 

[Arakasius]

I wouldn't go that far. The bundling of bonuses into the advantage/disadvantage system is wildly different than PF2e's approach. PF2e has nothing like the concentration system to prevent the layering of spell effects. And the 3 action system, where so many options can consume 2 or 3 actions, and other effects can spend a variable amount of actions to determine potency, is way more complex than 5e's action-move-sometimes bonus action system. Those are little changes, they affect the entire playstyle of the game.

I’m not sure why I should argue with someone who hasn’t read the rulebook. That being said.

1. Pathfinder 2 does have concentration, in fact most buff spells have it.
2. 5e does not fully lack buff spells. Bless, guidance, magic weapon, bardic inspiration, etc all give buffs. Many of those don’t even give a +1, they instead make you roll additional d4s and d6s
3. The list of PF2 spells that give buffs is very small. Bless, guidance, celestial brand, heroism, magic weapon/fang and that’s it. So it’s basically the same list with heroism/brand added. Also note that they all give conditional bonuses which means they don’t stack. As compared to 5e where they do. So this means buff stacking is actually lower in PF2 than 5e.

Anyway this is what makes it hard to debate here (and it’s worse on Paizos forum) with all the misinformation going around. It’s not like concentrate is hard to miss, it’s in the first couple pages of the spell section as well as littered over the spell options.

 

[Arakasius]

As for playing I’ll be DM’ing my first session on Sunday. I’ll let you all know how it goes.

 

[Shasarak]

Appealing to people just like CapnZapp has to be Paizo's goal, though: people who play D&D but want something more intricate and involved than 5E. He is quite possibly their ideal potential customer.

Is someone too paranoid to sign up for a Paizo account really Paizos ideal potential customer?

 

[CapnZapp]

1. I've already shown you how to get around that. 2. Paizo is not Facebook or even remotely close to being Facebook or its ilk. It doesn't have the numbers, variety of people, or platform style to be useful to advertisers in the same way that Facebook and its ilk are. 3. It clearly doesn't really bother you, or you wouldn't be here. You've given that information out already.

Maybe you missed that part but I gave out the burner email account provider I used.

So I'm good. And no, I didn't give out any personal data.

I'm here to contest the usage of "free" where strings are attached, that's all.

 

[CapnZapp]

And I've already shown you how your uselessly broad definition of "free" means that "gratis" doesn't exist. Literally everything you do costs time, the most precious resource we have.

You too can relativize all you want. Changes nothing.

 

[CapnZapp]

Why and how so? It seems as if CapnZapp already has his pitch perfect game in 5e, with 1+ last thread on balancing it. His main criticism of Pathfinder 1 and Pathfinder 2 so far has been that it is not 5e. It's not criticizing that New Coke isn't Coke, but that New Coke isn't Cherry Pepsi. I'm skeptical that you can please that sort of customer or that these should be your target audience. If that customer is hellbent on wanting the other game to be 5e, then there is no point on making that game into 5e just to appease them when they already have 5e to play.

I don't want to disturb your argumentation, except to emphatically declare I hate Cherry Pepsi.

That is all.