Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder To Get New Core Rulebooks Soon

It's not just D&D that's getting a 'revised' set of core books--Pathfinder is also getting 'remastered' books! The core rulebooks are being replaced by a new set of books, with new names, but like D&D it is being reiterated that this is not a new edition--"With the exception of a few minor variations in terminology and a slightly different mix of monsters, spells, and magic items, the rules remain largely unchanged."

The existing Pathfinder Core Rulebook, Gamemastery Guide, Bestiary, and Advanced Player’s Guide are being replaced with Pathfinder Player Core, Pathfinder GM Core, Pathfinder Monster Core, and Pathfinder Player Core 2.

These books appear to focus on re-organization and consolidation of existing material rather than substantive changes. They also represent Paizo's move away from the Open Gaming License and towards the new Open RPG Creative (ORC) license. Paizo says "This transition will result in a few minor modifications to the Pathfinder Second Edition system, notably the removal of alignment and a small number of nostalgic creatures, spells, and magic items exclusive to the OGL. These elements remain a part of the corpus of Pathfinder Second Edition rules for those who still want them, and are fully compatible with the new remastered rules, but will not appear in future Pathfinder releases."

Pathfinder 2E - Paizo Reveals Wayne Reynolds' Pathfinder Remastered Cover Sketches

While the final colour pieces won't arrive for a few weeks, Paizo's Erik Mona revealed the cover sketches of the upcoming Pathfinder Remastered core rulebooks while at the GAMA industry trade show yesterday. In an unsual move, you will actually be able to buy special 'sketch' editions of the...

www.enworld.org

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Something that bothers me about all this - which I couldn't quite put my finger on until just now - is how Paizo is distancing Pathfinder from D&D. I mean, yes, that's what they've been saying they're doing, but the realization of what that means just hit me.
For me (and I'm sure many other players over the past almost 20 years), Pathfinder has been a stand-in for D&D. When we weren't playing 4E, we could still be playing "D&D" if we were playing Pathfinder. Same thing with PF2 when I was getting bored with 5e.
These changes now (and the direction of the game moving forward) means that it's going to be getting that much harder to tell the stories we'd tell in D&D. The monsters aren't going to be the same. The spells and magic items will be different. The veneer of D&D history will be stripped away.
Previously, if you squinted hard enough, you'd think you were still playing D&D. For a former D&D player jumping into a PF 2.125 game in 2 years, they'll be hit by so many different terms that they won't know what's going on. And you might as well be playing Shadow of the Demon Lord or Forbidden Lands.
We'll have a Nephilim Thaumaturge slinging Force Bolts against Calamity Dragons.

Alongside their Fighter, Ranger, and Cleric friends which are more or less untouched, is my perspective-- most of what makes DND, DND, are ironically things that DND doesn't really own as a brand but permeate the actual adventures and fantasy worlds we've all been playing in. So while you might not have like, beholders or something really specific like that, most of my time playing DND hasn't relied on them-- my players have been fighting zombies and wraiths, fire elementals, mischievous fey, an eclectic slew of dragons, enormous monster spiders. So if I think of my time spent playing DND, Pathfinder still feels like DND in the important ways.

 

[mamba]

(For example, magic missile is in the 5.1 SRD which is CC. They could add a CC addendum and keep the name

if they did that, they could not license it under ORC

 

[Justice and Rule]

I mean, given that there is a new Zelda game coming out, putting "Calamity" dragons at the forefront is probably not a bad thing...

But really, while it's a long list of "changes", most of them are going to be aesthetic rather than actually mechanical. I do hope they do a few small tweaks to other classes (Would really love to see the Warpriest Doctrine get something more to give it a little more pep), but I am very interested in seeing what they do with the ones they have said they are tweaking. The Witch and the Oracle are definitely functional but just didn't outperform other classes in a meaningful manner. Very interested in seeing what they do with those because their gimmicks are very interesting to me but their classes previously didn't grab me.

 

[Retreater]

But really, while it's a long list of "changes", most of them are going to be aesthetic rather than actually mechanical. I do hope they do a few small tweaks to other classes (Would really love to see the Warpriest Doctrine get something more to give it a little more pep), but I am very interested in seeing what they do with the ones they have said they are tweaking.

I'm not against the changes. The revised classes won't matter to me - because I'm a Forever GM and don't really look at the player-facing content.
What I really want (and I think I've seen this elsewhere) is for Paizo to take this opportunity to refresh their product line deeper than the rules. Give us a really solid, newbie-friendly AP.
The adventures aren't really there. If you don't like Paizo's style, you're out of luck. 3PPs are also not providing (even on Pathfinder Infinite - it's a desolate wasteland for adventure content). I think there's one AP from Legendary Games (which was clearly converted from another system and doesn't really feel like it belongs as a PF2 adventure). There's another AP from Roll for Combat where you play as parrot people having silly hijinks.
I want a good, old-fashioned, meat & potatoes, epic high adventure campaign - and I don't think Paizo is offering that. I'm a middle-aged guy with a job, teenager, going back to college, etc. I want something easy to run, not an AP that's honestly more work than a Master's course.

 

[Remathilis]

if they did that, they could not license it under ORC

Fair enough, I'm not versed with the different legal agreements, but I didn't think CC and ORC conflicted. If it does, that's going to make it very hard to mix D&D and other systems (like PF or BF).

Sigh, WotC why'd you have to go and mess up a good thing?

 

[Retreater]

Sigh, WotC why'd you have to go and mess up a good thing?

Greed. It grew too big. Business people who don't love the hobby were put in charge and killed it to try to get a few extra bucks for shareholder dividends.
But honestly, since WotC was bought by Hasbro, it's been mostly bad things: the rapid 3.5 release and less stuff coming out in the OGL; 4E and its failed online VTT, subscription pricing, and restrictive GSL; later day 5E releases that failed to meet expectations, followed by all the stuff going on now.
Hasbro has been bad for D&D and its fans.

 

[mamba]

Fair enough, I'm not versed with the different legal agreements, but I didn't think CC and ORC conflicted. If it does, that's going to make it very hard to mix D&D and other systems (like PF or BF).

I would not call it conflicting so much as not mixing.

If they included CC material, they would have to continue licensing it under CC and could not license it all under ORC

 

[Velderan]

I'm not against the changes. The revised classes won't matter to me - because I'm a Forever GM and don't really look at the player-facing content.
What I really want (and I think I've seen this elsewhere) is for Paizo to take this opportunity to refresh their product line deeper than the rules. Give us a really solid, newbie-friendly AP.
The adventures aren't really there. If you don't like Paizo's style, you're out of luck. 3PPs are also not providing (even on Pathfinder Infinite - it's a desolate wasteland for adventure content). I think there's one AP from Legendary Games (which was clearly converted from another system and doesn't really feel like it belongs as a PF2 adventure). There's another AP from Roll for Combat where you play as parrot people having silly hijinks.
I want a good, old-fashioned, meat & potatoes, epic high adventure campaign - and I don't think Paizo is offering that. I'm a middle-aged guy with a job, teenager, going back to college, etc. I want something easy to run, not an AP that's honestly more work than a Master's course.

Not sure this is what you're looking for, but I find Abomination Vaults to be a very straightforward dungeon crawl style adventure. It was appealing to me since I'm new to PF2e and none of my players have played it either so we needed something easy to get our feet wet.

 

[Velderan]

Archives of Nethys sent out this to their patreon members a couple days ago, figured it's worth sharing:

Lastly, to address a common question we've had recently surrounding the recently announced Pathfinder Remaster project: we will be maintaining both the original pre-Remaster versions of the rules alongside the new Remastered versions on the Archives. No matter which version you wish to play, the Archives of Nethys will support you.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Archives of Nethys sent out this to their patreon members a couple days ago, figured it's worth sharing:

Yup, they announced it publically over on r/Pathfinder2e as well.