Pathfinder 2 Playtest Preorders, Podcasts, & "Pathfinder 1.5"

In today's Pathfinder 2nd Edition news roundup, the playtest book preorders go live, Bulmahn and Radney-McFarland appear on a podcast, and what it would take to make "Pathfinder 1.5". As always this information will be added to the Pathfinder 2nd Edition Compiled Info Page!

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• The Pathfinder Playtest book preorders are now open! You can per-order your playtest book, adventure, and flip-mat between now and May 1st. Of course, you'll b able to grab them for free in August as PDFs if you don't want the physical playtest books.
• At Gary Con, Jason Bulmahn and Stephen Radney-McFarland hosted a seminar about Pathfinder 2nd Edition. You can listen to it on the Plot Points Podcast. The podcast is about 90 minutes long.
• In response to how much information the Paizo preview blogs contain -- "The blogs are not going to be dropping huge excerpts of the book. There is a very simple reason for this... it is still in edit, and layout. Then it needs to be copy fit and go through a few more rounds of edit. To top it off, we are still making changes and will, much to our publishers chagrin, continue to do so until the very last moment. That said... we also had to announce it if we were going to let retailers and stores have a chance to participate in the release. Thats just how the distribution system works. So... the best we can do right now is to give everyone an idea of how things work. We've already leaked things that have been changed and I am trying to keep that to a minimum so that the game we are talking about is the game you are going to get to playtest. It's not ideal... but it is the best we can do right now. I hope that helps understand where we are at." (Bulmahn)
• Vic Wertz talks a little about what it would take for a third party publisher to use the OGL to produce a "Pathfinder 1.5" (or "D&D 3.85") -- "There's an inherent difficulty in that concept, though. If you've been reading playtest feedback—or even if you haven't, but you just know a bunch of gamers—you will know that there's a spectrum of desire here. On one end, there are players want no changes whatsoever; on the other, there are players who want changes to anything and everything to be considered. Most people are somewhere in between. Paizo has staked out a spot on that spectrum. Playtest feedback might move us one way or the other a little bit, but as far as broad strokes go, the playtest will show you where we stand. (In our opinion, it's not all that far from 1st Edition.) Any "3.85" concept has to have SOME changes—otherwise, it's just First Edition, and there's no point republishing that, because we're keeping it in print in softcover and PDF. So 3.85 cannot capture the "no changes" audience. A successful 3.85 publisher would therefore need to capture a viable number of people who think 1E needs to change, but who also think that 2E is changing too much. Are there enough of those to form a viable audience for your work? Even if there are enough, here's where it gets really challenging: By definition, that group of people has strong opinions about what they want. But they will not be of a single mind—that is, even if they generally agree on how much things should change, they won't necessarily agree on what should change, or on how each of those things should be changed. There's not some magic set of precise changes you can make to capture them all. Some of the choices you make will lose some of them. Can you make enough of the right decisions to keep enough of them (assuming there were even enough of them to start with)?"
• Mark Seifter on "flipping" enemy criticals -- "The best part comes when you're cruising along doing pretty well with your combo and punishing enemy crits (maybe even with a paladin buddy to also hit and debuff when they crit your druid), only to come across an opponent who does something extra and really nasty on a critical hit! Flips it back around for a double flip. Jason was the main designer of these kinds of flips, where you punish an enemy critical."
• Seifter talks some more about rules language and terminology -- "We want language that can both be quite precise, with rules terms used consistently, but also sound plain, natural, and elegant rather than clunky. We think we've figured out a way to have our cake and eat it though, thanks to Logan's masterstroke of making certain rules elements act as nouns, certain rules elements (like actions) act as verbs, and certain rules elements act as adjectives and then allow natural language usage. So for instance, the blog mentions the Stride action, so we can say "whenever you Stride, you ignore difficult terrain" or "While Striding, you gain concealment against any reactions" or "Whenever an enemy in your reach Strides" or any other form of the verb. Like many of these wording-based decisions, this is the kind of thing that might seem like it could be "obvious" in hindsight but still takes inspiration to realize."
• Seifter comments on the rogue's Instant Opening ability -- "Instant Opening might not seem as cool as it actually is because it might be easy to assume that it requires some kind of check (or a failed save, or a roll of some kind) in order to work. But it actually works automatically. So one action from you equals two rounds of AC debuffs and all your sneak attack-related favorites. And it's not flanking, so all-around vision-type abilities won't help them."
• 30-40 class feats to choose from? "Compared to '3 or 4' class feats, the fighter alone has more than 10 times that number (not going to be more specific because, as Jason has said, we aren't through with copyfitting, so we don't know how many are going to fit)." (Seifter)

 

[TwoSix]

I don't think anyone was arguing that the options were equal... but when you make the claim that all martials in 5e do is move and attack... well you should expect some push back on the veracity of said claim. Backpedaling into arguments of "common parlance" and shifting goalposts into "mostly that's what they do", IMO, just means your original argument was overblown.

If I said "My kid spends all his time in his room playing video games" and your response is "Actually, he left 3 times to go the bathroom, 4 times to retrieve snacks and beverages from the refrigerator, and actually spends 10.5 hours per day in their room sleeping, not playing video games," you've done two things.

1) Prove my common parlance is in fact just a rhetorical embellishment, and that my original argument is overblown and factually inaccurate.
2) Done absolutely nothing to advance the conversation.

To paraphrase something I read a long time ago that I try to apply on messageboard discussions, "Don't defeat the current argument of your opponent. Defeat the best argument that your opponent could have made."

Yes, martial builds do have other options than move and attack. But they have a paucity of options compared to spellcasters. What I'd like to hear an argument is an argument that it's a good thing for the game to have classes with a limited menu of options, or that there are actually options available to martials I'm not aware of, or some other line of thought. Those are interesting discussions to have. "Your obvious hyperbole must be exposed as obvious hyperbole" is not.

 

[Imaro]

If I said "My kid spends all his time in his room playing video games" and your response is "Actually, he left 3 times to go the bathroom, 4 times to retrieve snacks and beverages from the refrigerator, and actually spends 10.5 hours per day in their room sleeping, not playing video games," you've done two things.

1) Prove my common parlance is in fact just a rhetorical embellishment, and that my original argument is overblown and factually inaccurate.
2) Done absolutely nothing to advance the conversation.

To paraphrase something I read a long time ago that I try to apply on messageboard discussions, "Don't defeat the current argument of your opponent. Defeat the best argument that your opponent could have made."

Yes, martial builds do have other options than move and attack. But they have a paucity of options compared to spellcasters. What I'd like to hear an argument is an argument that it's a good thing for the game to have classes with a limited menu of options, or that there are actually options available to martials I'm not aware of, or some other line of thought. Those are interesting discussions to have. "Your obvious hyperbole must be exposed as obvious hyperbole" is not.

Okay since that hyperbole doesn't need to be pointed out tell me this... It's also self-evident that martials have less overall options than spellcasters in 5e... so how in fact is conversation advanced by stating the obvious along with a dose of hyperbole? I'm failing to see what constructive or interesting conversation or debate is spawned by stating that? Is it up for debate? Were homebrew options asked for?

 

[Aldarc]

For those that want this ratio I'm hoping PF2 meets their needs as well.

The wall-of-text back-and-forth aside, what ratio are you hoping for out of PF2?

 

[houser2112]

I don’t necessarily want more Feats to exist, I want characters to get to pick more than 5 of them.

I agree with most of what you say, but this is a curious stance to take, assuming we're talking about 5E. You want to increase the number of feats characters can take without increasing the variety? There are already not many feats you could possibly take, increasing the number you can take without an increase in variety would make every character the same, more or less. People already complain about certain combat feats (Great Weapon Master, Polearm Mastery, Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter) being too common; if you decrease the opportunity cost of taking those feats, they will become even more common.

 

[Imaro]

The wall-of-text back-and-forth aside, what ratio are you hoping for out of PF2?

I'll be upfront, I'm probably not their primary audience... and not because i don't like character options but because I mostly DM and rarely play. Out of the 6 players in my group only one really enjoys the whole character build part of the game at the level of granularity that PF seems to be striving for, most just want to play the game and aren't looking for a multitude of decision points at every step of play. I think maybe 3-4 is the upermost limit most of my players want at a point and time and even that's pushing it. So what I would hope they'd do is something along the line of 5e and feats where they are optional... or there is some kind of streamlined option for those who just don't find that level of granularity rewarding... But given the fact that this was asked for by fans after the Beginner Box came out and Paizo chose not to pursue it... I don't think that's the market they want.

In all honesty my biggest worry for Pathfinder is it's accessibility, if I present this to my group as an alternative to 5e and leveling up takes hours... I'm going to get groans, sighs and why can't we just play 5e because for them playing the game not character building is the key. If they have 20 choices every time they go to attack they are going to remember 2 maybe 3 and always fall back on those because 20 is just overkill (Or again they will sigh, groan and ask why aren't we playing 5e). I feel like I'm rambling but I hope this gives a little insight into why I'm torn about PF2 being for me and my group.

EDIT: 5e IMO is a remarkably easy game to get new players in and have them playing without feeling lost... PF just has never been that game to me, at least not without ignoring huge swaths of it or purposefully limiting it. I want PF2 to be great for those who want options but I think there needs to be consideration around grabbing and retaining the less hardcore players of RPG's...

 

[Sunseeker]

I'll be upfront, I'm probably not their primary audience... and not because i don't like character options but because I mostly DM and rarely play. Out of the 6 players in my group only one really enjoys the whole character build part of the game at the level of granularity that PF seems to be striving for, most just want to play the game and aren't looking for a multitude of decision points at every step of play. I think maybe 3-4 is the upermost limit most of my players want at a point and time and even that's pushing it. So what I would hope they'd do is something along the line of 5e and feats where they are optional... or there is some kind of streamlined option for those who just don't find that level of granularity rewarding... But given the fact that this was asked for by fans after the Beginner Box came out and Paizo chose not to pursue it... I don't think that's the market they want.

In all honesty my biggest worry for Pathfinder is it's accessibility, if I present this to my group as an alternative to 5e and leveling up takes hours... I'm going to get groans, sighs and why can't we just play 5e because for them playing the game not character building is the key. If they have 20 choices every time they go to attack they are going to remember 2 maybe 3 and always fall back on those because 20 is just overkill (Or again they will sigh, groan and ask why aren't we playing 5e). I feel like I'm rambling but I hope this gives a little insight into why I'm torn about PF2 being for me and my group.

EDIT: 5e IMO is a remarkably easy game to get new players in and have them playing without feeling lost... PF just has never been that game to me, at least not without ignoring huge swaths of it or purposefully limiting it. I want PF2 to be great for those who want options but I think there needs to be consideration around grabbing and retaining the less hardcore players of RPG's...

I mean that's cool and fine and all. Personally I think it's great that PF2 is sticking to a much crunchier route. All the people who like complexity and crunch can have PF2 and all the people who like simplicity can have 5E.

My initial concern with PF2 was that they were going to pull a typical corporate maneuver and make their product "just like that other guy" to capitalize on WOTCs success and directly compete with 5E. The only reason I ever really moved from 3.5 to PF1 in the first place was that I got in 3.5 late and PF1 was in active production and actively supported. But really there was too little change between the systems to provide any other incentive for me to switch.

I moved to 4E because I really liked the system more than 3.5 or PF1. I moved to 5E because there was so much rampant hate for 4E I couldn't find a game (to run or play in). And I may move to PF2 because it's looking to have everything I like about PF1 mixed with the few elements I enjoy from 5E.

But ya know, that's me. If crunch wasn't really ever your thing and you kinda skipped through editions until 5E, I can totally see why you don't want to move over to PF2, and reasonably, you probably shouldn't.

 

[Charlaquin]

The design of the game wasn't tried and true. As an example outside of TTRPG's many videogames combine gameplay aspects of other successful videogames games but don't succeed... combining past mechanics of disaparate games (including a n edition that didn't in and of itself do well) is a risky design proposition not a guarantee for success. It's not the same as say taking a popular system with an established fanbase and putting a fresh coat of pain on it with a few minor tweaks like Pathfinder 1 did.

Combining past successful elements does not garuntee success. Dictating your design completely by the results of extensive and mass focus testing significantly (but not completely, since you insist on taking everything I say completely literally) reduces risk, and almost completely eliminates foreseeable risk.

But if the formula for success was to give the people what they wanted this shouldn't have been able to happen... that's my point. It doesn't matter how it happened if you're claiming there's no risk involved it just shouldn't have been possible.

If that’s your point then it isn’t a strong counterpoint to the assertion that Wizards of the Coast didn’t take any risks with the design of 5e. Yes, of course it’s always possible that a safely designed product can fail due to circumstances beyond your control. That doesn’t mean that designing a product as safely as possible is “taking a risk,” except in the sense that all business endeavors involve some degree of risk. Unpredictable and unavoidable risk aside, WotC actively worked to design 5e in the least risky way possible.

What were these new ideas, and lets hold this to the same standard you seem to be holding 5e to where it can't be an iteration on an idea from a previous edition and it also cannot have appeared in another roleplaying game?

Ok, fair point. Most of the design of 4e was not particularly innovative when you take into consideration design and mechanics from outside D&D, and a lot of it was just natural evolutions of ideas that were already present in D&D. It was by no means a revolutionary design, but it was still a big risk because it challenged a lot of assumptions about D&D, like what “class” actually means, the power attrition economy D&D had been built on, and most of all, assumptions about how to present its mechanics.

I'm not claiming they predicted 5e would fail... I'm arguing against the claim that no risk was involved...

Then you’re arguing against a straw person instead of me. I’ve repeatedly said that all business involves some risk, but that 5e’s design prioritized keeping risk to a minimum over presenting a clear and consistent creative vision.

With the split state of the fanbase it wasn't a safe design process. At the time of it's design the fanbase was all over the place. Some were playing OSR games, some stuck with 4e... others with Pathfinder and some had abandoned D&D for other rpg's... taking all of those groups and designing a game that satisfied the majority of them, even with the ability to poll the online portion of the community (which for the most part is not representative of the D&D community as a whole) along with a design that has pulled in a multitude of new players was a big risk. Creating a successful whole out of those separate pieces (along with the new mechanics that were introduced) that spoke to their fanbase just as well as their potential market was creative genius. Again it may not speak to you personally but that's neither here nor there.

You’re doing a wonderful job of explaining why extensive and broad polling and focus testing was the smartest and safest decision for WotC at the time. The audience was at its most fragmented, so anything remotely divisive could have killed the brand. Designing based on a single creative vision would have been very likely to even further fracture the fan base, so the LEAST risky move was to make sure at every step of the way that nothing went into the game unless it was approved of by the majority of the audience, and not disapproved of by a significant portion of the audience, even if they were in a slight minority.

And this is where we diverge in our opinion, IMO creating a game that has speaks to all the disparate D&D groups and is able to pull in a significant new player base takes creativity and risk... otherwise someone using the OGL would have done it long before now. It seems to you this was safe, entailed no risk and took no creativity... it was the lowest bar and yet it hadn't been met by any company even when D&D dropped off the scene to create 5e.

Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said it took no creativity. The designers still had to come up with ideas to present to the audience for approval, and they had to iterate on the ideas that were received well enough not to scrap but not well enough to include as-is. They took very few risks in their design (yes, I said “no risk” at one point because I was using a conversational tone and I figured it would go without saying that as a business venture there was of course some risk involved). And no one could have done what WotC did with 5e using the OGL because no one else had the reach WotC did to poll and playtest as broadly or extensively. It wasn’t the lowest bar - the lowest bar, design-wise, would have been yet another cleaned-up retread of 3e mechanics, or even just disavowing 4e and going back to actively supporting 3.5 - but it was the safest move financially. Going back to 3e would have alienated the 4e fans, which despite popular opinion was a pretty big demographic, and it would have put them in direct competition with Pathfinder. The safest thing for them to do was to put together a new edition based on the most successful designs of all previous editions and focus test the out of it so that any remotely controversial ideas could be stamped out immediately.

You keep saying this... but...

But what? But I concede when you present me with convincing counterpoints, like above where you pointed out that I was not evaluating the innovation in 4e’s design by the same standards that I was 5e, and I conceded that you were right about that and revised my position?

So hyperbole, got it. I'd say loose it, it makes your argument unclear and doesn't really help support your claims only make them seem silly and overblown.

I’d say stop focusing on my word choice and start focusing on the actual content of my arguments. Nitpicking about word choice is a tactic used when someone doesn’t have a strong case against the opponent’s actual point, so they go after the presentation of that point instead. It doesn’t counter my argument and it makes your position look weaker than it actually is.

I disagree the rogues I've seen in actual play are trying to avoid getting hit and use Cunning Action extensively... again maybe it's encounter design on your part that you only see move and attack.

So you’re just going to ignore the part where I said that when it is worth it to use Cunning Action, the optimal choice is usually obvious?

And yet unless the creature is fire resistant... guess what that wizard is going to attack with because it does the most damage?? Meaningful choice remember??

Yes, when the creature is fire resistant, the subset of a spellcaster’s options that involve dealing fire damage are no longer meaningful options. This is the same principle that makes the majority of Cunning Action options generally not meaningful. But even after taking Fire Bolt and Burning Hands out of the Wizard’s list of meaningful options, they still have more than twice as many meaningful options as the fighter does.

Will they? You seem to think cantrips all offer the same amount of meaningful choice when in fact they don't...

The value of the options is situational, yes. This doesn’t change the fact that more options > than fewer options. Even after discounting the options that are not situationally relevant, the 4e character still has more viable options than the 5e character.

How haven't these created decision points?
You now have a better chance to locate traps and secret doors successfully... so you now have the decision to search for these things and succeed in harder circumstances?

That’s not creating a new decision point, that making an option you already had more likely to succeed.

You now have the ability to resist damage from traps... you now have the decision point to risk taking the damage from a trap since you can shrug a portion of it off? You now have the ability to better avoid traps... do you risk setting it off since you now have a better chance of avoiding it?

That’s making an option you already had less risky to fail.

See your problem is you see a bonus and don't recognize that with 5e's philosophy of everything falls under checks and it's set DC's that bonuses work as an enabler of new decision points.

Bonuses don’t enable new decision points, they strengthen options.

Ah, I see... by new options you seem to be talking about "powers". I don't see powers as the only enabler of new decision points so we'll just have to agree to disagree here.

I’m talking about mechanics that give you options you wouldn’t have otherwise had. That doesn’t have to mean powers necessarily, though it can. Compare the Feat in question to the Wild Magic Sorcerer’s Tides of Chaos. Both can be used to give you Advantage on a saving throw against a trap. The Feat does so automatically and at no cost. There is no decision involved, you just always automatically get Advantage on the save. With Tides of Chaos, the sorcerer can expend a limited resource to gain Advantage on the save. Every time they make a save, they have to decide if they want to use that resource now or save it for later. That’s the difference between a decision and a bonus. One is automatic and requires no active decision making, the other must be actively chosen over other options.

 

[Charlaquin]

Okay since that hyperbole doesn't need to be pointed out tell me this... It's also self-evident that martials have less overall options than spellcasters in 5e... so how in fact is conversation advanced by stating the obvious along with a dose of hyperbole? I'm failing to see what constructive or interesting conversation or debate is spawned by stating that? Is it up for debate? Were homebrew options asked for?

Because we’re discussing PF2, which has the opportunity to provide martial characters with more meaningful decisions to make in combat. In fact, the Fighter preview showed many such options. This is something that excites me about PF2, as opposed to 5e where martial characters do not have enough such meaningful decisions to keep me engaged. Don’t tell me you’ve been too busy trying to defend 5e from attacks by straw people to keep track of what we’ve actually been discussing here.

I agree with most of what you say, but this is a curious stance to take, assuming we're talking about 5E. You want to increase the number of feats characters can take without increasing the variety? There are already not many feats you could possibly take, increasing the number you can take without an increase in variety would make every character the same, more or less. People already complain about certain combat feats (Great Weapon Master, Polearm Mastery, Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter) being too common; if you decrease the opportunity cost of taking those feats, they will become even more common.

Well, that’s why I said I don’t “necessarily” want more Feats rather than I don’t want more Feats. To me, the number of Feats available is incedental, what I’m invested in is the number of decision points involved in character building. 5e doesn’t have enough for my taste, and releasing a 5 book with a thousand new feats wouldn’t solve that problem. PF2 interests me not because of how many Feats it will have, but because of how many times players will get to choose Feats.

 

[Ancalagon]

So, last night I missed a PF game. My character was not in great shape (level-drained at level 2 sucks). I get a message that my character died. Now I knew that they were probably messing with me (they were) but there was a non-zero chance that my character was actually dead, and I was going to have to make a new one.

Because I wasn't sure if this was real or not, I didn't start making a new character... but it did make me think about the process of making a new character. And one of the thing that made me kinda loathe the idea wasn't just the overwhelming amounts of options there are in PF, is how "forward looking" you have to be. In 5e (or some older editions, retroclones etc), you don't really have to think about what your character will be doing at level 9 when making a low-level character. The most you may have to do is consider what subclass you will take at level 2-3 to guide some of your choices (the exception I guess would be a more complicated multi-class build I suppose). But in pathfinder, because of all those choices at almost every level, and how these all interact, forming feat chains, trait-feat combos, etc etc, you have to start laying the foundations at level 1-3 for what your character will be at level 9! Make the wrong feat choice now, and that cool combo may only become "live" at level 12 instead of 9 (for example).

 

[Charlaquin]

So, last night I missed a PF game. My character was not in great shape (level-drained at level 2 sucks). I get a message that my character died. Now I knew that they were probably messing with me (they were) but there was a non-zero chance that my character was actually dead, and I was going to have to make a new one.

Because I wasn't sure if this was real or not, I didn't start making a new character... but it did make me think about the process of making a new character. And one of the thing that made me kinda loathe the idea wasn't just the overwhelming amounts of options there are in PF, is how "forward looking" you have to be. In 5e (or some older editions, retroclones etc), you don't really have to think about what your character will be doing at level 9 when making a low-level character. The most you may have to do is consider what subclass you will take at level 2-3 to guide some of your choices (the exception I guess would be a more complicated multi-class build I suppose). But in pathfinder, because of all those choices at almost every level, and how these all interact, forming feat chains, trait-feat combos, etc etc, you have to start laying the foundations at level 1-3 for what your character will be at level 9! Make the wrong feat choice now, and that cool combo may only become "live" at level 12 instead of 9 (for example).

I agree, this is one of the things I don’t like about PF1 and I hope PF2 manages to avoid. More build choices after character creation don’t count if you have to make them at character creation to make sure you meet all your prerequisites at the right times. That was why I didn’t like Prestige Classes in 3e either. Fortunately, it sounds like they’re toning Feat chains down so that the only Feats that use other Feats as prerequisites are the ones that directly build on what the prerequisite Feat does. I do worry that Skill Feats could lead to this problem though, where you need Skill X at master by level Y so you can take Skill Feat Z that you need for its synergy with Class Feat N, etc.