Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2nd Edition

[RangerWickett]

I think it'd be easy to just design a set of 'Simple Antagonist' statblocks. Pick a CR, determine whether it's a Brute, a Controller, a Leader, a Lurker, a Skirmisher, or a Soldier, and that gives you its AC, saves, CMB, CMD, attack bonus, save DCs, average damage, and hp.

Then have a chapter with, say, 2 pages of special powers or tricks for each of those roles.

Now, you might run into some corner case issues, like if a PC does ability damage to the enemy (but, c'mon, you can handle that change on the fly, right?), or if they somehow use a rust monster to destroy armor and want to know exactly how much that lowers the foe's AC. But for most cases, it would work.

The trick is ensuring that the mechanics feel grounded in the reality of the world. This was a hurdle 4e stumbled with, where monsters would have some mechanically novel attack but there wasn't flavor text explaining what was causing it. "Why does the demon cause you to slide 5 squares and take ongoing poison damage from an attack called 'Tail'?"

When we started writing ZEITGEIST for 4th edition, morrus had the clever idea of including flavor text with each attack. I liked it so much that I found ways to include that text in the Pathfinder conversion.

 

[Shasarak]

Hi all, I was looking at Pathfinder and their release schedule and it looks to me like they might be ready to announce a 2nd edition this year, probably at Gencon.

I would take a piece of that action!

Paizo is no WotC that needs to constantly reboot its line. Mark my words: No new edition.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I think it'd be easy to just design a set of 'Simple Antagonist' statblocks. Pick a CR, determine whether it's a Brute, a Controller, a Leader, a Lurker, a Skirmisher, or a Soldier, and that gives you its AC, saves, CMB, CMD, attack bonus, save DCs, average damage, and hp.

That's not going to fly, for a lot of people who like Pathfinder. One of the major selling points of Pathfinder is the consistency of how the world works, and how it doesn't matter whether someone is a PC or an NPC because everything works the same. If you have a 'simple' statblock, that just has the attack bonus and CMD and whatnot, then there's not enough information to figure out where those numbers came from or how they might change in response to other effects.

The most obvious example from 4E was with magical weapons. NPCs had static values for attack bonus and damage, and those values depended entirely on level and role and nothing else. A level 17 NPC archer has the same attack bonus as a level 17 PC ranger, but doesn't require a magic bow in order to achieve that. So what happens if you give them a magic bow? Are they suddenly better than the equivalent PC, just because they're an NPC? Or does the magic not work for them, inexplicably?

It's shenanigans of the highest order, and Pathfinder stalwarts will have none of it. Simplify the math all you want, but using different math for PCs and NPCs is a complete non-starter.

 

[Jester David]

Hi all, I was looking at Pathfinder and their release schedule and it looks to me like they might be ready to announce a 2nd edition this year, probably at Gencon.

Maybe. It'd probably actually be at PaizoCon. But I'm not sure they will. Starfinder is still new and they're unlikely to want to risk making that their sole breadwinner just yet.

They seem to be mirroring AD&D 1st Edition a little bit...that game wound down with the Wilderness Survival Guide and The Manual of the Planes....and what are Paizo releasing? Wilderness and Planar books towards what will probably be the end of the product’s life cycle...looks like a big similarity to me.

A little. But that's probably coincidental. I doubt they'd purposely do that, and just as many editions of D&D haven't gone down that route.

And Planar Adventures will be (yet) another player focused splatbook with a wealth of archetypes, feats, spells, and magic items. I doubt it will give more than a passing description to the planes themselves. (Much like how the big book of the evil planes had less actual planar content than the three 64-page books and far more options for PCs and NPCs.)

D&D 5th Edition and it’s simplification (for better or worse...not trying to start any Ed’ war here) has captured the imagination and hearts of many old and new players and from a business point of view it would be unusual if Paizo didn’t respond to that with a new edition and some streamlining in my view.

I’ve played some great games of Pathfinder but for my tastes it is a little bit bloated, especially the requirements to use books like the Advanced Players Guide or several bestiaries for some of the mid to late period Adventure Paths.

A slight simplification of some rules would suit my tastes as I am not a very good DM at keeping track of lots of fiddly bits to remember but that is no deal breaker...each game has it’s own dial of complexity I guess.

It's a tricky situation for Paizo.

Pathfinder is bloated. Heck, it was bloated three years ago. Now it's ridiculously bloated in a way that could even give RIFTS a run for its money.
But that bloat means there's a lot of content people haven't used and might still want to use. If they do a new edition, they're just as likely to lose fans wanting to stick around and use what they already have. After all, that's where the original Pathfinder fans came from: people who wanted a minor revision so they could keep using 3e books they had not used to their satisfaction.

They're not really in a good position to relaunch either, not testing new mechanics and the like. Starfinder was new class stuff, but the math of the game stayed the same and remained problematic with lots of number porn and slower play, along with an all but required battlemap for the tactical play. It's not really serving as a testbed for new mechanics. Starfinder was actually a lot less experimental than a lot of other d20 games released in the early 2000s.

5e does have them over a barrel.
It's shown there's a strong audience for the OSR/nostalgia elements of D&D and that a heck of a lot of people like simple play. And simple play also lends itself really well to streaming and online games, which are a HUGE advertising tool while also serving as a how-to-play tutorial.
But Pathfinder, with its complexity, is really falling behind in that regard. However... if they go all simple, they might lose their existing fanbase who likes the complexity while also potentially failing to pull people from 5e. They likely can't beat 5e at its own game; D&D has too much name recognition.
The alternative is doubling down on the complexity to attract the crunch fans dissatisfied by 5e. Advertising it as "D&D for advanced players". But that would be tricky with a content light relaunch. And Paizo has too large of an RPG department not to have people designing lots of books. So even if they do a hard relaunch with a non-compatible game we're looking at a return to bloat in a couple years.

 

[RangerWickett]

A level 17 NPC archer has the same attack bonus as a level 17 PC ranger, but doesn't require a magic bow in order to achieve that. So what happens if you give them a magic bow? Are they suddenly better than the equivalent PC, just because they're an NPC? Or does the magic not work for them, inexplicably?

The best solution, then, is to get rid of all long-term magic things that boost stats or rolls. Have attack bonuses just be based on ability scores, hit dice, and choices in feats. Magic swords and strength belts shouldn't add to it.

So if someone uses a short-term effect to get a boost, it would be easy to apply.

Yeah, I want to get rid of +X bonuses from belts, headbands, rings, cloaks, armor, and weapons altogether. Magic items can do more interesting things.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The best solution, then, is to get rid of all long-term magic things that boost stats or rolls. Have attack bonuses just be based on ability scores, hit dice, and choices in feats. Magic swords and strength belts shouldn't add to it.

As long as it's equal for PCs and NPCs, that's the important thing.

Getting rid of the ability to easily demonstrate the inequality is meaningless unless you get rid of the underlying inequality itself.

 

[PMárk]

In either case, they risk alienating their current (but dwindling) player base.

Is it dwindling?

I know nobody knows actual numbers and that anecdotal evidence is no evidence. However, i'm not entirely sure, I don't have the time to look back at the various charts on the mainpage from the past several years, but I've got the impression, that PF (and most other games too) are actually growning.

They just don't grow as much as 5e and let's face it, they never will, and they doesn't have to either. 5e is D&D and an edition mostly targeted to new and casual gamers and that's a way bigger crowd than the complexity-liking people, for example. Or the true rules-light narrative crowd. Or the horror fans. Or the Cyberpunk fans, etc. So of course it's a league ahead of the rest. But the other games are growing too steadily, they are just generally more nieche. But they don't have to be as widespread as D&D, they just have to be widespread enough to support the company doing them. I don't think Paizo is in a bad place from that perspective.

If anything, I think the fluctuation is more from D&D to the other games' direction, than the other way around. It's just, there are far more new people coming in than leaving.

At least that's my impression.

 

[Shasarak]

Is it dwindling?

I know nobody knows actual numbers and that anecdotal evidence is no evidence. However, i'm not entirely sure, I don't have the time to look back at the various charts on the mainpage from the past several years, but I've got the impression, that PF (and most other games too) are actually growning.

The Q3 Roll20 results had 9411 Pathfinder games and 24778 Players
The Q4 Roll20 results had 9856 Pathfinder games and 25443 Players

 

[PMárk]

The Q3 Roll20 results had 9411 Pathfinder games and 24778 Players
The Q4 Roll20 results had 9856 Pathfinder games and 25443 Players

Yeah, that's an example.

I just got the impression, that it is actually growing steadily, it's just 5e was aimed at a much wider target audience, so it's growing much faster. But they doen't have to compete, exactly, because of that, they have slightly different audiences. 5e, for the most part, isn't growin from siphoning away PF fans in large swaths.

 

[Jester David]

The Q3 Roll20 results had 9411 Pathfinder games and 24778 Players
The Q4 Roll20 results had 9856 Pathfinder games and 25443 Players

Based on the recent numbers:

Pathfinder has been sloooooowly growing. The number of games has increased by 45%.
Which is unlike 3e and 4e, the former has declined by a tenth while the latter has dropped by two-thirds.