Pathfinder 2E Why No Big 3PP Support for PF2?

[Retreater]

So people always bring up that 5e has dominating the 3PP support. What they often fall to mention is the 3PP support for systems like OSE, Mothership, Mork Borg, and other "small systems."
You'd think that PF2 could at least get as much 3PP support as Mork Borg.

 

[Parmandur]

So people always bring up that 5e has dominating the 3PP support. What they often fall to mention is the 3PP support for systems like OSE, Mothership, Mork Borg, and other "small systems."
You'd think that PF2 could at least get as much 3PP support as Mork Borg.

I mean, I'm sure it has more.

 

[Staffan]

I wouldn't be looking at homebrewing an ancestry or class. It's more being able to homebrew my own monster stat blocks properly without screwing it up, especially creating challenging boss fights. It's probably easier than I think, I just haven't done it yet so there's always that hesitation I guess.

The GMG has some pretty good guidelines on how to homebrew creatures, which are conveniently online at Archives of Nethys. I have found them to be pretty easy to use.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I wouldn't be looking at homebrewing an ancestry or class. It's more being able to homebrew my own monster stat blocks properly without screwing it up, especially creating challenging boss fights. It's probably easier than I think, I just haven't done it yet so there's always that hesitation I guess.

I seem to recall some guidelines, but I could be mixing it up with a different game (too many stuck in my head).

 

[zedturtle]

I seem to recall some guidelines, but I could be mixing it up with a different game (too many stuck in my head).

The Gamemastery Guide makes it super easy, with a 'choose a level, choose easy, medium, or hard (and sometimes super-hard)' approach. The best part? The numbers are just the numbers, unlike 5e, where you pick the numbers in one area (Constitution, number of Hit Dice) to get what you want somewhere else (total HP, Regeneration amount, saves, etc.).

 

[Thomas Shey]

The Gamemastery Guide makes it super easy, with a 'choose a level, choose easy, medium, or hard (and sometimes super-hard)' approach. The best part? The numbers are just the numbers, unlike 5e, where you pick the numbers in one area (Constitution, number of Hit Dice) to get what you want somewhere else (total HP, Regeneration amount, saves, etc.).

Thought I remembered something like that, but I've looked at the GG less than the Player's book.

 

[Kichwas]

Paizo publishes a lot of material, much more than WotC does.

Yep. Paizo themselves nearly floods the market. I have 4 pathfinder subs (you need 4 to get the 15% discount.
Rules, Lost Omens, Adventures, Adventure Packs.
- Beyond costs, that's a lot of reading to keep up with.

Personally I've only bought 1 3pp for PF2e, the Battlezoo Ancestries: Dragons book. I enjoyed the book enough that I just backed the current Kickstarter they're running for the Indigo Isles setting. Worth mentioning I'm not sure I'd be interested in their books if they didn't have Mark Seifter as their Director of Game Design.

There was a 'third party con' early in the year, right in the middle of the OGL fiasco. So I used that to buy a huge pile of books at almost no cost.
...
And I have yet to have the time to read most of them.

Of those I did read - a lot of those publishers made the mistake of using it as an opportunity to offload some lower end short works. Items that do not tell me to go buy more from them...

As a buyer I have another concern that really hurts these publishers.

I got burned really hard during the d20 days. While there were some publishers I really liked but I also would buy things that looked interesting. Some of these ended up being expensive mistakes with very poorly balanced books.

When I look at PF2E, other than the new Rage of Elements book it's fairly tightly designed and well balanced. Before about 2 weeks ago my concern would have been breaking the game by introducing an imbalanced mess to my table.

I no longer have that concern. Paizo beat me to the punch.

BUT... historically this worked to keep me from wanting to add in anything with new rules or character design options. Adventures I'm OK with. I can always adjust an encounter. But a new ancestry, feat, class or whatever - could end up breaking the game. Never did I imagine Paizo would do that so hard that I could pretty much introduce a Mutants and Masterminds character and feel more balanced than an official 'common' class... but we're there now.

 

[MockingBird]

Yep. Paizo themselves nearly floods the market. I have 4 pathfinder subs (you need 4 to get the 15% discount.
Rules, Lost Omens, Adventures, Adventure Packs.
- Beyond costs, that's a lot of reading to keep up with.


There was a 'third party con' early in the year, right in the middle of the OGL fiasco. So I used that to buy a huge pile of books at almost no cost.
...
And I have yet to have the time to read most of them.

Of those I did read - a lot of those publishers made the mistake of using it as an opportunity to offload some lower end short works. Items that do not tell me to go buy more from them...

As a buyer I have another concern that really hurts these publishers.

I got burned really hard during the d20 days. While there were some publishers I really liked but I also would buy things that looked interesting. Some of these ended up being expensive mistakes with very poorly balanced books.

When I look at PF2E, other than the new Rage of Elements book it's fairly tightly designed and well balanced. Before about 2 weeks ago my concern would have been breaking the game by introducing an imbalanced mess to my table.

I no longer have that concern. Paizo beat me to the punch.

BUT... historically this worked to keep me from wanting to add in anything with new rules or character design options. Adventures I'm OK with. I can always adjust an encounter. But a new ancestry, feat, class or whatever - could end up breaking the game. Never did I imagine Paizo would do that so hard that I could pretty much introduce a Mutants and Masterminds character and feel more balanced than an official 'common' class... but we're there now.

Can you elaborate on what has unbalanced the game? I don't know anything about PF2e just genuinely curious.

 

[Kichwas]

Can you elaborate on what has unbalanced the game? I don't know anything about PF2e just genuinely curious.

This response has an extremely high chance of completely derailing the topic as this issue is one of extreme disagreement in the PF2E community right now. I recommend that if we continue this tangent - it get forked into it's own topic.

So PF2E is Vancian Casting.

You have x slots per day.

If you're a Prepared caster, like a Wizard, Witch, Druid, Cleric, and maybe some others - you prepare what you can cast that day. In your highest slot you might have only 2-3 spells of that rank per DAY. 1 down slot, maybe close to the same. By the chart it's 2 for highest, 3 for ranks under. But there are things that boost this. Some of these classes can swap to any spell in their spell list during daily prep, and some only from those in their spellbook or known by their familiar, or etc.

If you're a spontaneous caster, you lean specific spells. You can't swap what spells you know except during retraining, and when you level where can can change 1 out for something else. What you get in exchange is 1 more spell per rank per DAY than a prepared caster.

Kineticist...

Just came out. In an official Paizo book.

Gets a pile of extra feats more than normal. Each 'impulse' they know is gained from a feat, save for the first 2 that everyone gets: a Blast power and a manipulate power. The manipulate power just does random little effects with that element - including calling it into existence or making it go away. The blast... can be used in range or melee, 1 or 2 actions. 1 action version adds your Str bonus if in melee. 2 action version adds your Con bonus. If you use 2 action in melee - you're getting both Con and Str bonus.

Kineticist has the attack roll modifier of a caster, which is weaker than a martial at key levels. BUT unlike casters they have a magic item that can boost this to be... about midway between a martial and a caster before level 10, and the same as a martial past that (I may have this slightly wrong).

Kineticist's core ability is CON, and they have the hit points of a 'flanking martial' (8/level). But since CON is their main stat, they're always going to max it... So, a level 1 Hold Orc Kineticist will usually start with 24 HP. A hold Orc Barbarian will have 27. A Hold Orc Wizard will probably have 18. Whereas a Human Wizard will likely have 14.

One of the Kineticist impulses gives them the AC of breastplate armor at level 1, but with ALSO the armor specialization trait. At level 5 this goes up in AC and gets Bulwark - a highly desired armor trait because it gives you damage reduction against AoEs...

Another level one impulse gives them the ability to turn the 'blast' into any weapon as a free action, and swap around it's traits. In PF2E that trait flexibility is a massive boost. Especially given that they don't drop the weapon, ever, don't need ammo, but they do need to spend 1 action turning on their powers - which lasts forever unless they 'overflow' or choose to turn it off.

Now the real problem:

All of their 'impulses' have unlimited uses. In terms of raw power, they're somewhere between a caster's top and next down rank of spell.

So in a party where a caster can cast up to rank 3 spells like fireball. The Kineticist has unlimited casts of essentially rank 2.5 "powers". One of which is more or less a version of fireball.

So as your wizard burns that last top level slot to cast a fireball... the kineticist just stands in the back randomly tossing fireballs left and right at the air because... why not?

The balancer? If the cast an impulse that has the overflow trait - which most AoE ones have - their 'elemental gate' shuts off. It takes one action to flip it back on. You get 2 actions per turn. The usual overflow ability costs 2 actions...

Half the classes in the game have 'action tax' like this just to get a die roll bonus... The kineticist gets it to just stand there with a conal flamethrower coming out of them... forever...

So the other balancer? They need to spend feats to get these things. BUT... They get more class feats than most classes, and this is most of what they will spend those class feats on. They can also spend them on adding more elements and some boosts... but in the end they will be able to get a full combat 'suite' by level 1, and then from there it's just getting bigger and bigger guns.

They will have a lot LESS versatility than a prepared caster. In exchange for being able to use their powers 24/7. But they will only have marginally less if not even more powers than a spontaneous caster - depending on how you build one.



Now... it's a great system. And as a long time MMO player I prefer 'unlimited spells per day' style casters. BUT when present in the same game as a Vancian caster... then there are some issues.



A very large portion of the PF2E community does not agree with me on this. Seeing no problem with this being side by side with a Vancian caster.
.

 

[Voadam]

Never forget intellectual overhead though; a lot of 3PP producers started producing for PF1e after producing for D&D3e, and they were pretty similar, so there wasn't a lot of need to relearn things.

I think this is a big one.

Pathfinder 1e is OGL D&D 3.75. Everyone who did 3e and 3.5 had the core d20 system down and Pathfinder 1e is just small tweaks throughout the system with so much of the core Pathfinder 1e easily accessible for free online through the PFSRD. Adventure design is the same and monsters and magic and feats and magic items are very compatible requiring only a slight tweak to go from a concept in one system to the other.

I used plenty of 3.0, 3.5, d20 Modern, Pathfinder 1e, and other 3e OGL based variant d20 systems together all the time in that era.

I have a bunch of PF2 stuff from various bundles but I just have not put in the time to learn the new system. It is its own thing. And the encounter and adventure design has a different baseline premise so it would not as work well to just do the same types of things in PF2 with only some system mechanics translations the way that worked seamlessly in going from 3.5 to PF1e.

On top of that throw in OGL 5e which is mostly a simpler system that is easier to pick up and learn and super popular and the adventure design baseline seems fairly compatible with 3.5 and I see why a number of publishers chose to not go with PF2e.

I see that Frog God Games for example does most things in 5e, Pathfinder 1e, and Swords & Wizardry versions now.

Legendary Games is one of the bigger 3pp companies that includes regular PF2e content now. They usually do their big monster books in three versions, 5e, PF2e, and PF1e now.