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

 

[Xohar17]

Having engaged with them more lately, as I'm playing a Gunslinger who's also a semi-Alchemist because of feat choice, I can see why.

Where was the second pass at them?

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

@The-Magic-Sword that's an impressive collection you've got.
What do you think would be a good physical book for me to pick up for pleasure reading and inspiration? Any suggestions since I don't really need a lot of crunch (because I use Foundry and AoN)?

The Lost Omens Books are generically full of more lore than rules, and there's a fairly wide and thematic selection, all Golarion lore. Firebrands/Knights/Absalom are all niche but great deep dives into certain kinds of organizations/a whole city, Gods and Magic is more broad with some good lore entries that aren't on AON. Monsters of Myth has some really cool concepts and entries about specific entities. So I'd say one of those, depending on what you want. Grand Bazaar gets a lot from the details about all the shops that surround the magic items and pairs well with Absalom's city book because that's where it's located.

In the rulebook line its obviously a lot more crunch but Dark Archive is uniquely evocative, with the case records and presentation being what it is where each section is a case file about lore, with a mini adventure and some rules content to back it up. Book of the Dead in the same vein is on the crunchy side, but there's some great stuff about undeath in there, all written from Geb's perspective. Secrets of Magic has essays on how magic works and feels in Golarion which is nice (but again, lot of rules.)

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Where was the second pass at them?

Treasure Vault has the variant crafting, which offers options that 'fix' some concerns people had (they also talk about the rationale for why you might stick with the basic one.)

 

[Velderan]

Here's my collection of books from my Paizo subscriptions that I've only physically used once for a short-lived Malevolence game, to play we mostly use the complementary pdfs from the subs, Pathbuilder, Foundry, and AON depending on what's intuitive at the moment. I would absolutely drop it if my financial situation was worse, though, and I'd probably use them more if I had an IRL group. We play the system weekly and I love it, so I pay for Pathfinder 2e products, so that I don't have to go through losing it like I did 4e.

How's Battlezoo Ancestries: Dragons? It sounded interesting, like a better thought out Council of Wyrms.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Where was the second pass at them?

I'd guess following initial playtest. I came to PF2e relatively late, so I couldn't say, personally.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

How's Battlezoo Ancestries: Dragons? It sounded interesting, like a better thought out Council of Wyrms.

I enjoy it, you take on the role of Dragons who use a special ritual-- in the short term it drops their power to level 1 adventurer level, including turning off some of their natural abilities, but in allows them to grow their power at turbo speed instead of hundreds of years. You buy their natural powers back at your discretion (or skip them, they're feats after all) as you level. There's a huge amount of variety to the kinds of dragons you can be, and the archetypes for focusing on your dragon powers in place of class feats are quite good too.

 

[glass]

I enjoy it, you take on the role of Dragons who use a special ritual-- in the short term it drops their power to level 1 adventurer level, including turning off some of their natural abilities, but in allows them to grow their power at turbo speed instead of hundreds of years. You buy their natural powers back at your discretion (or skip them, they're feats after all) as you level. There's a huge amount of variety to the kinds of dragons you can be, and the archetypes for focusing on your dragon powers in place of class feats are quite good too.

The Rogue Genius Games Dragonrider class for PF1 uses a similar same premise - dragons giving up abilities in the short term to gain power more quickly in the medium term as (in that case) your rider levels up. I thought it was a pretty cool idea then, too.

 

[Velderan]

I enjoy it, you take on the role of Dragons who use a special ritual-- in the short term it drops their power to level 1 adventurer level, including turning off some of their natural abilities, but in allows them to grow their power at turbo speed instead of hundreds of years. You buy their natural powers back at your discretion (or skip them, they're feats after all) as you level. There's a huge amount of variety to the kinds of dragons you can be, and the archetypes for focusing on your dragon powers in place of class feats are quite good too.

Sounds like something I should buy then, could be fun for a short campaign. Looks like there's a Foundry integration for sale too, so win-win!

On your previous comment, I'm in a similar boat. I use the books I buy to skim through for an initial reading, but Foundry, AoN, and PDFs are mostly what I end up using on game night. But mostly I buy the books because I want PF2e to stick around and hopefully Paizo can do something with better sales to keep their talent. I'm glad AoN is a thing (it's on my monthly Patreon list), but I also wonder how many people fail to consider Paizo needs revenue to keep the lights on and while it's great people have access to free material, it also makes it that much harder for Paizo to operate. It's a double-edged sword for sure.

I think that's something that seems to be getting mostly lost in the shuffle here; Erik Mona said it wasn't financially viable to keep printing a 600+ page book for $50 with how much costs have risen in the past few years. The OGL issues definitely got them to move up their timeline, but this was going to happen anyhow for PF2e to have a long life.

 

[mach1.9pants]

That's me, buy and read the books, but don't use them for actually gaming. No way you can, I might photocopy some bits so I can scrawl notes on them.

I'm also a collector, and I love beautiful books.

I think the reason is that while in theory Paizo is in the publishing business, the product we actually buy from them is crunchy, customizable, rules content. The more the playerbase accepts that digital is pragmatically a better way to deliver that content, due to errata and tool support, the less the physical products make sense to actually use, and since AON is free the books don't have actual utility as a physical product for most of us, but we all know that the actual content that makes AON valuable stops being produced if no one's buying the books because that's the only vector of monetization Paizo has available to them. So like, it is kind of getting to the point where a bunch of people are buying the books as a de-facto patronage system-- paying for the content to exist rather than to own the product, with the art and the layout being the best reasons to actually read them like a book.

In some ways, it's actually a great arrangement, some of us buy the books because we want the game to exist and enjoy playing it, people who can't afford to can still take part, the updates to the system aren't actually constrained to not invalidating the print because few people care about referencing their books instead of AON which makes the game intuitive to fix.

 

[Rushbolt]

That's more on WoTC for being stupid and pretty much handing those sales to Paizo on a silver platter. Plus, If WoTC didn't do the crap they tried to do with the OGL, the Remastered Core set wouldn't be in existence right now.

Once again let me make this clear. I don't have a problem with Paizo publishing new books to avoid entangelment with Wizards. I have a problem with Paizo's misleading January 12 announcement where they stated in writing on their blog, "our designers and developers wrote the new edition without using Wizards’ copyrighted expressions of any game mechanics." If they couldn't make enough changes then to be comfortable that Wizards would not sue them, what makes people think they will make enough changes in the Remastered books? Even if they publish under the ORC license, the problem with having an obviously derivative game is still there.

I actually think it is time for Paizo to really make their own game. Walk away from everything in the SRD and just balance the massive amount of content created for 5e created outside that document. Paizo prides itself on it's players being able to create new characters based on combinations of options you just can't get from D&D. Now stop using the spells, monsters, and other game elements inherent in D&D and you might find even more players interested in your game.