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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Schmoe" data-source="post: 7755285" data-attributes="member: 913">I'd like to preface this by saying that I don't have extensive experience with PF.  I only played a bit, though I own a number of the books and have read a bunch of adventures.  I also haven't made a character or played PF2 yet, either.  So take what I say with a grain of salt.As someone who lived through all of those changes (except 4e->5e, because I never switched to 4e), I thought the 2e->3e shift was the best analogy for a few reasons.  First, 3e was a big shift from 2e.  Wide collections of random sub-systems were largely consolidated into just a few, vague rules omissions or voids were codified and standardized.  It introduced a new class (the sorcerer) and made some big changes to others.  On the other hand, it still felt very much like 2e D&D.  In a large sense, it felt like 2e but just bigger and bolder.  3e either took existing subsystems and unified them, or took part of the game and evolved it and fleshed it out.  The rule-set was a larger-than-life 2e rule-set.By contrast, the 1e->2e shift was, as you say, more of a slight re-organization and tidying up of the rules.  It made proficiencies official, which was neat, but most everything else looked like 1e with a small facelift.3e->3.5e was even less of a change than 1e->2e.As for 3.5e->4e, that was another thing entirely.  4e felt like a completely different game.  It no longer supported TotM.  All classes were just different collections of powers.  Monsters, equipment, and powers all conspired together to make the math the same across all tiers, just with bigger numbers.  I loved some of the innovations in 4e (minions in particular), but it was so much more gamist than previous editions that it felt like it sprang from an entirely different family of games.  It was decidedly NOT the D&D I was familiar with.  With 1e through 3.5e, I could play in my simulationist fantasy worlds and find a way for the rules to provide some sort of internal consistency to the game.  With 4e, I just couldn't do it.  It was unabashedly a game, not a toolset for creating adventures, and it wouldn't let me forget it.So when I look at PF1->PF2, I get the impression that it is significantly expanding the design space in some of the areas that were introduced in PF1.  It is also consolidating some disparate systems into a more unified set of mechanics.  But at the end of the day, it still feels like Pathfinder.  There are some big innovations, for sure, but I can see the ties between the two systems.  PF2 feels like a bigger and bolder PF1, where they have doubled-down on what PF1 was all about.  It's not a radical departure from what PF1 was at its core.Does that help?</blockquote>

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