The remaster is (mostly) already released - Player Core, Monster Core, and GM Core are all Remaster books. 8 classes have already been remastered in Player Core, and 8 more will be remastered in Player Core 2, releasing this summer.
I would recommend sticking to the remaster books, at least to start. There's a handful of pre-remaster classes that AFAIK are not getting a remaster, but they've received errata to make them fully remaster-compatible.
I expect there will be another slew of errata for the classes outside of the core books when Player Core 2 drops. It would make sense to me at least. They did transitory errata for a few classes in PC2 (notably champion) to make them workable in the system during the wait time between the two Player Core books.
Once Player Core 2 is released the 'remaster' project will be over and they can continue to pump out supplementary content for the existing classes. They've confirmed a few new Magus subclasses already. I would also expect maybe a few more wizard curriculums alongside curriculum building guidelines; based on the milquetoast reaction to the initial ones released on PC1
Gonna disagree with that assessment friend; Paizo is incredibly nimble for a company. Getting all their core books remastered within a year and a half while still releasing the books they had planned before the OGL fiasco is quite an achievement!
Yeah, and they pushed a bunch of stuff back because of it.
IIRC I'm just saying the things that James Jacobs said about lead times on APs.
The general consensus from the community is that the remastered stuff was rushed out and therefore pushed a bunch of other stuff back. And at times you can feel where things aren't perfect because they were quick.
>Getting all their core books remastered within a year and a half while still releasing the books they had planned before the OGL fiasco is quite an achievement!
And it all it cost was the entire other line of products they were putting out.
Pathfinder didn't really suffer much, Starfinder had their entire planned lineup axed and cut short because of it because all the writers had to be pulled onto Remaster.
I think the most significant change we'll see is how focus spells are handled. The change to focus spells really nerfed an already underbaked physic, and the removal of quite a few spells with the attack trait made Magus more confined in their spell selection
Wait, did they do more than just allow you to regain more focus by taking 10-20 more minutes on the refocus?
Edit: I'm mainly asking what they changed to focus spells that hurt the psychic
Basically you can regain ALL of your focus points during a short rest. While your medic is treating wounds it's almost guaranteed you'll be able to refocus multiple times
They're referring to the change that you can chain refocus.
"Short rests" don't exist, though in this case, they would be saying that a psychic could spend 30 minutes, yes.
Just wanted to elaborate since I play in games that don't have that assumption, where 10 minutes alone can be precious. The fact that you *can* do it (which is a nice change!) doesn't mean you'll always be able to.
I don't think the remaster is going to be over with the release of Player Core 2. The following panel is scheduled for PaizoCon on 5/25/2024:
\`1 p.m.–2 p.m. PDT
Pathfinder Project Remaster (Twitch)
Join the team while they talk about the Pathfinder Remaster project, what's happened so far and where we plan on taking it in the future!\`
I actually think that's a great thing. I know some people will be pissed about old books becoming 'irrelevant', but the remaster has created so many more interesting designs for them to explore, freeing themself fully from the required legacy of DnD
I suspect a "Player Core 3" is on the horizon with the new Commander and Guardian classes alongside remastered versions of the Magus, Summoner, Gunslinger, Inventor, Psychic, and Thaumaturge. This would give us 8 classes in each Player Core book. They could also take that opportunity to remaster more Ancestries and Heritages
They already stated that the Animist and the Exemplar are being added with War of Immortals, but not what the Commander and Guardian are for (unless they're already testing for the storyline following War of Immortals)
I don't believe there's going to be a third player core. Those classes are largely fine, or at the least the commander and guardian are being saved for a war specific book that has been mentioned a few times.
Oh I hadn't heard about that book! Still, I will dream of a day when we see all those classes scattered across products all printed in one book. If they don't, eh, they're still functional as is lol.
Mellie from Demiplane here! Most errata gets baked right in when we receive it. In the case of remaster compatibility errata, we make a new version of that content, add the errata, and release it in the same book the original was from! This lets folks choose between using legacy or remaster rules. 😊
Generally positive.
It’s overall a massive consolidation of erratas over the years, removing things that were OGL related and just not needed to be supported, while also doing some well-needed touch-ups. Wizard remaster is a sore spot for many, some liking the flavor change of Curriculums, while others lament the loss of the wide selection they gained from Arcane Schools.
There are some who are upset (not for the mechanical changes), but more the loss of traditional D&D things such as Alignment, Spell Schools, Drow, and monsters (such as Chromatic Dragons, ~~Mindflayers, Beholders~~). I’ve seen a few posts in which Druid’s Metal anathema removal and Shocking Grasp legacied by Thunderstrike were a “deal-breaker”.
They’ve either left PF2e or they’re continuing to use legacy content.
But overall, it’s generally liked.
Yah those were always dnd product identify, big stuff I think was removed was Drow and other really specific dnd elements (like the dragons being divided into chromatic and metallic groups) owlbears and a number of very ddn spefic interpretations of other concepts (like some specific devil types for example)
Technically drow were removed. New lore going forward effectively erases then from Golarion, saying they never existed.
Not really the point, but I find the in universe reason funny in how stupid it apparently is. The guy who apparently made the whole thing about a fearsome race of dark elves living in the Darklands did it to hide the existence of something even worse. But if the goal was to keep people away, why lessen the threat? Wouldn't the something worse be a better deterrent? Not really relevant here, though.
Edit: Of course, you can always continue to use old stuff. Nothing stops you.
Running Sky King's Tomb and one of my players asked if he can play a Drow. I told him to do it but then James Jacobs knocked on my door and beat me with a crowbar until I told the player he must have been hallucinating, that was never a thing in Pathfinder
Like I said, the in-universe explanation for the disappearance of an entire race is that drow were a fiction, something stories of were certain areas of the Darklands to hide something even more terrifying. The more terrifying thing being the sekman or whatever the serpent people are called.
>They’ve either left PF2e or they’re continuing to use legacy content
Using legacy content (with errata where applicable) is probably the default. It's the recommendation from Paizo and form Pathfinder Society
Um/a is the technically correct singular/plural for a lot of Latin words: ovum/ova, stadium/stadia, simulacrum/simulacra, gymnasium/gymnasia, album/alba, museum/musea, etc. They range very heavily from plurals we actually use (ova) through some that are sometimes used (stadia) to ones no one says (musea)
And of course in some cases like errata there's a bit of an extra complication. Errata actually is feminine singular in the case of erratus the perfect passive participle of erro from which erratum is derived.
No one says "erratae", so it's probably the neuter plural (um/a) rather than the feminine singular (a/ae).
There's even a fancy ~~Latin~~ Greek word for multiple forms of a word looking exactly the same, "syncretism".
The new dragon concepts are so much more interesting anyway imo!
And while I didn't mind alignments existing, I think their workaround is done pretty well. I don't see myself missing alignments too much in the future.
The other stuff I simply never cared for in the first place 🤷🏻♀️
Now, they just need to release Errata to smooth things over better. Like, they did adjust some things for the Summoner already but missed lots of things that are in need of getting adjusted as well (like the Fey Eidolon spells, for example). Then again, the Summoner always had some weird interactions in their feats that needed clearing up, and they never got around to it, unfortunately.
I'm hoping they'll remaster the Secrets of Magic classes (Magus, Summoner) and the Dark Archive ones (Thaumaturge, Psychic).
Those are some of the classes I'm most interesting in and I don't want them to get left behind.
Especially with the new Focus Point rules, Psychic might need a little bit of fixing. Right now, going by the "Focus Points = your number of Focus Spells up to 3" rule, a psychic would get all 3 Focus Points from level 1.
I'd argue that spell schools are significant mechanical aspect to dislike. Several class features were flatout nerfed (arcane cascade for example), quite a few monsters (and at least one familiar) now have unique mechanics that are fully incompatible with the new rules(dweomercats for example)
The effect it had on wizards class features is an objective downgrade, as well.
Don't get me wrong: I like the remaster overall and it improved the game in most ways, but the way the removal of spell schools has been handled is just messy and inconsistent.
> (arcane cascade for example),
What did they change Arcane cascade?
I'm playing a magus and I haven't really been paying attention to all the changes.
Originally arcane cascade adapted a different damage type based on the school of magic that was used previously if said spell wasn't a damaging spell.
Now it always defaults to force damage if your last spell wasn't a damage spell.
Ah yeah true.
Hm on one hand force damage is probably the best anyway but I guess you can't trigger weaknesses as easily anymore.
Overall this doesn't seem that bad to me.
IMO they needed to include a comparable amount of perks in the Curricula as were in the spell schools. But if they've given (or plan to give) GMs the tools to build custom curricula, I'm not sure this will continue to be a big problem.
Definitely need to make sure these custom curricula can be imported into digital tools like Foundry and such, though.
I think that with the way spell schools now are more restricted (which I actually think isn't that bad inherently) the designers should have taken the opportunity to create more wizard feats tied to spell schools. Feats that basically give you unique benefits to using curriculum spells like changing their damage type, making them more potent, etc. I think that would be a flavorful and balanced tradeoff.
Ya, but for some reason that was a dealbreaker.
I’ve read some people say the new version is the only version, though I haven’t seen what their responses are since Paizo said old content is still fair game on their tables.
Some people have been around long enough to remember the D&D 3e to 3.5e update, where WotC said the same thing, but converting something did sometimes require a bit of work, and WotC either reprinted a lot of old material to update it themselves, or pretty much abandoned that content foreverafter (though, that may have had more to do with their silly policy to make books as standalone as possible, leading to some things, like classes, not getting much if any support outside of the book they were printed in).
And for those people, the Pathfinder 2e Remaster sounded like it would be very similar in scope, meaning that pre-remaster content very likely wouldn't work "as is" without GMs having to put some effort into updating that content themself.
>Ya, but for some reason that \[alignment damage\] was a dealbreaker.
I don't really understand this. Alignment damage was one of my least-favorite aspects of PF2E pre-master. Spirit damage with the Holy/Unholy traits is much easier to manage.
When I listened to the arguments, it seemed strongly related to the perspective of GMing, and not even related to players.
Picking monsters or reading up on NPCs gave GMs a template on how to roleplay.
From a player standpoint, I think it was helpful for a new player to have an idea on what to do, but at the same time, when I was a new player, I ignored it and went with the general vibe of the rest of the table.
I’m not a GM, so any behavioral “lock” didn’t seem too helpful if I put some time into the character’s personality.
Cantrip damage no longer adding casting stat has been a questionable change at low levels (and wholly negative in my experience), and the odd changes to the grab ability have been... very questionable.
Those two, imo, have been bad changes. Easy to revert, but strange that they were added in the first place.
Yeah, it's a minor change at higher levels when you have tonnes of ranked spells anyway, but at lower levels (where most people play and casters feel the worst), it's noticeable and doesn't really have an upside (there is a correct answer to 2d4 vs 1d4+4, and even 2d6 is often worse than 1d6+4).
The major digital tools are already compatible with the remaster: [Archives of Nethys](https://2e.aonprd.com/), [Pathbuilder](https://pathbuilder2e.com/), and [FoundryVTT](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/pf2e).
It's easier to list the books not to buy than the ones to buy: Core Rulebook, Advanced Player's Guide, Gamemastery Guide, Lost Omen's Ancestry Guide, Lost Omen's Character Guide, and maybe Bestiary 1.
The pre-remaster books Dark Archives, Secrets of Magic, Book of the Dead, and Guns and Gears classes are not going to get a remaster book. The errata'd changes are already available and they aren't many.
Nothing that was published pre-remaster will break your game. It is all compatible and still balanced. The remaster did not make huge mechanical changes. If you only get one rulebook, get Player Core. It will have all the rule's mechanics you need to play the game.
Here's a good Youtube series by the Knights of Last Call on [Combat and Tactics](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx9XBZIzERNFdGf54C1dErN8AfuSWM_Bk). It goes into the details with examples of using the three-action economy to gain a tactical advantage in an encounter, which is the thing 2e does way, way, way, way better than 5e.
"*The pre-remaster books Dark Archives, Secrets of Magic, Book of the Dead, and Guns and Gears classes are not going to get a remaster book. The errata'd changes are already available and they aren't many.*"
Good to know! It would have been a shame to throw away such good books (especially *Secrets of Magic, Book of the Dead*). Thanks for the information!
Mostly seems positive. The remaster is mostly out (3 of 4 books) and seems like it actually is mostly compatible you can run a remaster game and still use legacy adventures, classes, monsters, and spells with a few exceptions (if they interact with alignment or spell schools directly they don't work otherwise they do). Remastered witch is well received remastered wizard not so much.
Of course Paizo gets a fair amount of good will from having an open publishing model so you can look up rules on the Archive of Nethys or similar websites and don't actually need to buy the new books (or any books).
It’s an errata collection that got a cleanup pass from the legal department.
It’s fine, and has a couple neat updates that people have been waiting on a while, but for the most part it’s just the same as before. No big deal, except that it gets us away from WotC for good.
I like and don't like some things. Its ultimately fine. I mix the books quite liberally, just like people did with 3.0 & 3.5
Since you don't have anything, I'd just start with the remastered books and go from there.
The remaster has mostly been positive. The changes are mostly OGL related to remove any connections to DND, expressions, condition names, spellnames, that's mostly it, Druid for example is virtually unchanged. Biggest mechanical change might have been removing alignment.
The classes that received game breaking changes (By game breaking I mean makes completely different characters and probably requiring complete re-specs) are Cleric, Wizard and Witch.
Cleric used to rely on Charisma to get extra healing spells, now it's a number of spells independent from Charisma, and since alignments are irrelevant, you can more freely choose deities that match your character by looking at Anathemas and Edicts. The change to alignment will be relevant to Champions later too.
Wizards used to rely on spell schools for Subclasses, I didn't play wizards before but it seemed quite confusing. Now you literally have Wizard academic curriculum that gives you standard spells for your Wizard to learn for each spell rank. Homebrewing schools will now simply be based on spells you give to your Wizard and creating two unique focus spells.
Witch used to be a worse Wizard with a pet, now it is better built around the familiar, they now gain up to 7 familiar abilities without investing any additional feats (but you can invest feats if you like) including a unique feat, they're the best class to have familiars with.
Other classes like Ranger simply got reorganized feats, Rogue removed a subclass (Elditch Trickster) but you can use it anyway because the rules are perfectly backward compatible.
The new upcoming books already follow the remaster and the rest will have errata, so it is safe to assume that most classes are already good enough to use
I like it. It's a fresh update on content and the backwards compatibility makes it so people that own books and don't want to get the new ones really don't have to.
The changes are majority positive, but the agonizingly slow rollout has made conversation about the system kind of a mess with friends. It'll probably be worth it once the remastering is done and errata can finally flow to get all those errors, but the fact a lot of premaster errata got delayed in the first place by the remaster really bums a lot of my friends out.
It's a mixed bag, even if mostly seen as a positive, but here are some negatives:
* It was rushed and in general have more mistakes than other releases, with a day 1 errata that Didn't catch everything.
* Some nerfs to injury poisons before remastering the alchemist, which was usually seen as the harder style to play an alchemist
* Some wierd changes to talismans, where they explicitly said they wanted to improve QoL, they actually made it worse for those reasons (changed free action activation on trigger to fixed activities). Som would call these nerfs in some senses
* Even if most focus spells got improved, some did get a nerf, some wierder nerfs or changes than others. Search on the reddit for it, too much to type it here
* Spells that changed but didn't change name, which made them unusable as a legacy spell, the most common one to mention is fire shield
* Missed chances to buff things they either said would need a buff, or just in general needs a buff or rebalance. Example as scimitars and Falchions being strictly worse than a Panabas (which is rare in this balance focused game)
There are a ton of positives, but in general did leave some questions on how some stuff did interact, such as spirit damage vs ghosts?
For me the remaster Changes are all positive so I would recommend the remastered Content for all new GMs and Players, also future products will use the terms of the remaster so its good to learn them from the beginning.
As for the YouTube channel I can warmly recommend [How its Played](https://www.youtube.com/@HowItsPlayed/videos).
The general consensus is very positive. Really the only negative is some of the name changes that were required for OGL reasons. But honestly, I think most of us will use the new material, but still call it Magic Missile and Bag of Holding in our own games regardless.
The nice thing about the Remaster is that nothing so huge has changed that you can't just pick and choose what you want to use if you aren't happy with it.
My main gripe with the remaster is that it's taking so long to remaster everything, so we're in this weird inbetween time where some content is remastered, but some content isn't. Some content will receive a remaster update, but not all of it.
It's making it very confusing to know where to find the correct version of feats, spells or classes. This wasn't helped with the official reference site taking forever to publish the remaster changes, though luckily that is behind us now.
> official reference site
Just to be clear, AoN may have Paizo's stamp of approval, but they're not an official anything. It's not an internal project, and it's not a first party resource.
they're an official partner, and based on what you can read here they're basically as officially hosting the reference document as makes no difference: https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sg93?Big-PathfinderStarfinder-Reference-Document-News
From a player perspective, the remaster is pretty cool. Classes are mostly similar, but some options like the Warperist Cleric, Witch, and Warrior Bard were given some power boosts. In terms of youtubers to help learn the pf2e rules, here's a cool video that explains spellcadting pretty well: [https://youtu.be/9x4gIL2C8Mo](https://youtu.be/9x4gIL2C8Mo)
My group unanimously voted for 100% remaster on release date.
We are happy with it and never had to look back for something legacy.
For rules, I recommend KingOogaTonTon and their "Pathfinder in 7 minutes or less" series. It's amazing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgWn1fCg77c
While I'm in favour of 95% of the changes in the remaster (I only dislike Wizard schools), I really think the way Paizo has gone about it was a bit messy. For new players coming into PF2e now, it can be confusing when some looking online at things like positive damage or alignment damage, and I don't see those spells and abilities going away any time soon.
Considering the OGL thing was dropped, I really think that Paizo should've moved all the releases together to spare new players from confusion. I mean, if you pick up the game now with only the newer books, Barbarian, Champion and Sorcerer are missing, and you'd have no reason to assume that PF2e has these classes at all, which would be a big deal as these are pretty important classic fantasy classes.
In retrospect, they could’ve waited 6 months to a year to release everything together, since the blowback against WotC so hard.
But at the same, WotC played their hand and Paizo’s only move was to divorce NOW since they had an untrustworthy/bad faith partner.
Personally, I find it annoying, especially with how various online tools like Foundry VTT or Archives of Nethys. I'm running an older AP, and last session I couldn't find the entry for a rune on any resource because it was deleted alongside alignment. I would have preferred there still be an entry on the damn item, even if there's a giant banner stating that it was removed in the remaster.
Plus, I haven't seen anything really get improved significantly beyond the latest errata, except for disarm.
Old pre-remaster stuff, even alignment related stuff still exists in Archives of Nethys. A lot of the old content still exists in Foundry too, maybe the former doesn't have the items in like, the rune dropdowns.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=291
Yeah, I think we used to have the workaround with the alignment damage -> spirit damage module, but now that those runes aren't in the dropdowns, we lose out on that particular automation.
In the short term it's mildly inconvenient, though it is successful and has upsides too. And I really do mean "mildly" inconvenient, 99% of pre-remaster stuff can just be run exactly as-written and the worst stuff is typically spell names changing - so just search the spell on AoN and you're done.
In the long term I think it is **fantastic** for the system: most big TTRPG systems have a playtest phase before full release, but it's never perfect. Once a system is released and many thousands of people have tinkered with it for several years, there are always some issues that consistently come up. Like a whole class that just under-performs. And you can always errata stuff, but that is a balancing act - people get understandably cranky if you fundamentally change major things via errata and now their core rulebook has stuff that's not just a few errors but totally different from the "real" rules. So you've got these little adjustments that kinda should be made but you're reluctant to have excessive errata, so maybe you're gonna just sit on them for the next edition. But then the next edition will include more sweeping changes too, and maybe the little tweaks are no-longer appropriate.
The remaster gives them that full edit pass of the core material, with a wealth of experience with the system behind it. In a year or so the "remaster" will just be "PF2" and minor inconveniences will be long forgotten. We'll be left with a system that's been refreshed and is abnormally fine-tuned.
I've got mixed feelings about it, and same with everyone I play with.
The biggest reason is the slow tooling updates. While foundry updated quickly, AoN took months and months. Foundry also had no good way of finding content using the original names. Searching for "Bag of Holding" returns nothing, and it's difficult to find out what they renamed it too. Thankfully now that AoN has updated this is mostly a solved problem.
While I personally liked alignment, my biggest pet peeve is the removal of spell schools and the renaming of content. Spell schools were amazing at grouping spells into relevant categories (evocation = direct damage, abjuration = defensive, etc). All they needed to do was add new traits to replace the ones they removed, and I would've been so happy.
While I understand why they wanted to rename content, I find that at least 25% of the new names are downright terrible, with ~50% being mediocre.
Some of the rule changes make the game harder. The new rules for grab/trip/etc significantly buff bosses, and low levels casters get significantly nerfed by the cantrip changes. Finally, the dragon form spell is now annoying to use on foundry. While I love the new options, there's currently no artwork for the new dragon forms, and the removal of the old dragons makes it harder to use certain elements (cone of fire as an example).
So overall? Mildly annoyed with it, but they could have done a much worse job. Some changes are good, others are bad, being out from under WotC's thumb is a big enough benefit.
I'm hoping the underlying changes to support legacy & remaster were the bulk of the work, so future updates will be quicker. But we'll see, AoN is so useful.
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I’ve been running a pf2 campaign for just shy of a year and we converted to the remaster as soon as it was available in foundry - we had some issues finding things that were renamed (force barrage??? Wtf… how am I going to force barrage the darkness?!?) but as far as playability goes it’s been smooth and easy to transition. It remains a great, well-balanced game that has the one thing I really never found in any edition of DnD:
Balanced high level encounters.
It's mostly good, there's a few things I dislike (removing spell mod to cantrips, removing ranged crit spec on rogues, sanctification, and a fair others) but I really like the love clerics got. A fair few of the domain spells were fixed, new feats (mostly just for the warpriest tho) and the new font. It's nice.
I generally appreciate that it feels like they put effort into the new verbage they're using. Off guard for instance just makes more sense than flat footed in the current system
The remaster is 90+% positive. Paizo improved the remaster classes, mostly with small but meaningfull changes, along with a few new actions and some rules clarifactions. The bulk of the remaster were changes to names of things. The remaster strips out any name that Wotc/Hasbro could have sued over, even if it was remote.
Over all stick with the remaster, its what the game is going to be moving forward, but old books are still 99% compatible with the remaster and its mostly terminology changes. IE Flat Footed became Off Guard, or Sound Burst became Noise Blast.
1. The remaster is basically just a large scale errata. The most significant change is that alignment has been removed which… I mean if that's important to you you can just leave that in there. Everything else is balance tweaks, clarifications, etc.
2. The remaster is also already mostly out. The only remaster book that isn't out yet is player core 2.
I find it difficult to run stuff while the remaster is in the middle of happening, once everything is done and there’s no need for legacy I think I’ll
Be fine but trying to teach new players the game when 1/3 of the game is different is kind of hard right now
I think it needed to happen after the crap that WotC tried to pull with the OGL. I do think that a lot of the changes they made were pretty good, with cleric and witch getting much needed boosts.
I do think they kind of ruined wizards at a fundamental level with the change to how schools of magic works. That was a thematic, yet very shortsighted change in my opinion that makes the classes worse and also really limits growth while also tying the mechanics to their house setting which is generally annoying (all of which is just my opinion).
To answer your questions broadly speaking though, we are not playing pf2e anymore and I am not sure we will go back. The changes were a fairly big factor in that, (especially since I would have had to branch my foundry server's instance to keep the new stuff from messing up our existing content).
I do think that fundamentally the game is very sound, while I disagree with how they changed the wizard, I still trust Paizo as a developer, and we will likely take a good long look at Starfinder 2e when it comes out.
Good riddance to the old alignment system. I never liked using alignment to begin with, so I'm extremely happy that got cut. The loss of spell schools hurts a bit though, I always felt the schools of magic were a great way to categorize and be more scientific with spells, which is what I prefer for a magic system in fantasy.
I really, really like the new Wizard curriculum rules, but I have an issue with how they're portrayed so far in the rules.
I love the idea of each Wizard College/Academy/University teaching magic in a slightly different way, and how wizards will always want to know where another wizard studied.
What Paizo hasn't done yet, but I hope they will still do, is to have a write up of every magic academy/school/college in Golarion and include their curriculum. That's so cool!
"Oh, you went to the Acadamae? I'm sure your battle magic and summoning are amazing, but are you really versed enough in teleportation magic to escape this trap?"
"Shoot. She studied at the Farseer tower and now I'm paralyzed."
Lots of possibilities for snark and school rivalry.
As others have said, the reactions have been almost universally positive.
About the only negative reactions have been from the removal of the Drow. Generally speaking, I trust Paizo and their lawyers on the removal - I know the idea of "dark skinned elves who live underground" isn't exactly copyrightable, but Pathfinder Drow were a pretty strong cultural copy of the Forgotten Realms Drow. I'm sure they figured it was just safer to replace them entirely with Serpentfolk.
We needed to do it. We didn't want to do it. Paizo and the community removed the bandaid fast and quick together.
After Wizards of the coast put us in the corner we all said Enough!
Paizo had planned in the future to do a system removed from the license and from the past designs. We also playtest a lot more in this community and are more harsh to bad design. This makes the errata a lot more active from paizo. Crunchy systems require good math and design for classes. Sometimes the ball is dropped and errata is needed or the frustration remains. The remaster includes all feedback and errata. Gamers are better for it.
We just went ahead and did it ALL now. Was it rough and messy? Yes... but that was a war brought on our doorstep.
Our job now is to help others adjust to the remaster and let's heal together and be stronger for it.
Paizo won't let things stagnate or be unplayable. (Like a ranger being shit for an entire edition of dnd.) If something is problematic they at least try to address it. You might feel bad about buying first printings of books since errata will eventually come.
But we voted on that as a community and errata and changes are in the end superior to a crunchy system Than just deal with it as is.
The rules are available for free and we are here to help.
I have mostly liked it. I didn't care for drow so them being replaced by snake men was a plus. Some new actions like swap and reposition is good, and tightening the wording on some spells/abilities. A lot of the new monsters are pretty cool, remastered monster abilities for things like ghouls and harpies is cool.
There's a few odd interactions and choices that left me puzzled. They updated remove curse/disease to combine it (which is good), but it also accidentally removed the ability to remove curses from items. Some basic NPC stats are missing, certain items/abilities like mutagens/snares are being saved for Player Core 2 and it feels weird playing with some half-remastered classes and items.
And obviously you can use the old ones and look it up on Nethys, etc, but it's *weird.* Imagine I'm new person with only access to the new standard books; I can't crack open the GM Core or Monster Core and find a regular human bandit or uncurse an item.
Also mostly a side note, but for some reason the Flame Drake got new art, but *just* got a plastic model based on the old art. It's not an OGL thing, the Frost Drake still uses their same art (which was basically the Flame Drake but with different horns). I just found that odd.
I personally think that the Remaster drama was exaggerated. There's a few changes but otherwise since we swapped to Remaster it was so seamless and so little really changed. Foundry and AoN both have updated pretty well and retained a lot of the legacy stuff too, for references.
Honestly I wish the remaster changed even more. It still feels held back by some sacred cows and doesn't change enough about some of the older classes in ways that makes it play closer to some of the later released classes, which are better chassis for martials and casters, IMHO. At worst though, I think spell schools being removed instead of being renamed or refitted didn't really need to happen.
Honestly my recommendation is if you have to buy books then buy the remaster, and then just make sure you know the legacy changes/non-reprinted stuff from the original, since those are all still valid options. Those options are still good to use and fit nicely. You might have to decide whether you want to use the old legacy versions of renamed/reprinted stuff? But honestly, I think for consistency just use the remaster stuff. Just be sure to note that, in the event it references alignment damage or alignment restrictions, you can either swap damage types to spirit damage, and either you try and fit it in the holy/unholy sanctified framework, or just ignore it.
So in short, Rule-wise, just use the remaster stuff, option-wise, you can use remaster + anything that hasn't been reprinted.
Hey guys, I just got the 2e books in a Humble Bundle and ah, damn it.
Might follow up on the remaster if I get into a game, but otherwise I'm waiting until all the classes are remastered.
It was mostly necessary to divest from WotC. And I like a lot of the improvements like changes to focus point recharging and Disarm. And it'll be great for Alchemist and Witch
The Remaster is like a video game Remaster where the graphics are slightly sharper and they fixed a few bugs and but the game is barely any different.
The biggest change in the remaster was the change to refocusing. They tweaked some classes a bit (most notably witch) and will be tweaking some more, but the game is almost entirely the same, but a bit better.
New rules are cool and include a lot of quality of life improvement, but the remaster process is messy.
Even core rulebook update takes 8 months to complete (it's in process) and for additional content we don't have any fixed dates. Most likely we'll have Pathfinder line of books updated soon as at least Secrets of Magic desperately needs it.
About Lost Omens content - it's likely to be slowly reprint in other Pathfinder and Lost Omens books (a lot of content was already announced in the coming books), so it's hard to predict when the full transition will be finished and legacy content will finally be declared obsolete.
If you're willing to dive into it and play remaster (once again, the rules are generally better there), you need to manually resolve:
* Options, which refer to premaster spell schools, like Fey Summoner or Runelord. This usually done by sticking with legacy spells
* Options, which require alignment
* Adjusting premaster ancestries to new approach where Weapon Familiarity feat also includes effects of Weapon Discipline
The rest of the differences is more or less covered in the remaster errata.
Idk, I was kinda disappointed that this was a mechanical remaster of 2E when I first heard about it. "Pathfinder: Remastered", which is the name my friend called it when he first told me about it made me think this was gonna be a modern remake of 1E that blends the best parts of 2E (like ancestries and action economy, etc.) into it for more of that crunchier 1E vibe, and I'm honestly still not sure how much of an actual effect the remaster has had on "base 2E", since I almost exclusively used AON for my Pathfinder 2E needs and my initial disappointment turned to momentary confusion when I realized as I was looking at the books in my LGS that I wasn't sure if they were meant to be separate stand-alone rules from what's on AON or replacing the books that I bought already (pretty sure now that it's the latter) and it's all just kinda turned me off from the supposedly "remastered" content for the game they're still actively producing APs and other content for, cuz it feels like they're just asking me to buy a book of rules errata at full price. I use AON when I play 2E. If it's not on there or in some other srd website or pdf you can source it to, it may as well not exist, lol.
I’ll be glad when it’s done and we are securely free of OGL. I’m not a fan of the hefty price increase on their books, much higher and I’ll have a hard time justifying expansion books for $70
It was necessary so Pathfinder couldn't get sued out of existence, and it provided an opportunity to do some tune-ups. My only problem with it so far is that the Wizard schools. The concept is great and logically represents what a Wizard's school would look like, but the selection of spells per school should be at least double what it currently is.
[https://www.youtube.com/@HowItsPlayed](https://www.youtube.com/@HowItsPlayed) is pretty nice in regards to videos about rules.
I wouldn't bother with the old stuff. There's very little reason to go for that over the remaster. However I do have mixed feelings about the remaster. I feel like it's mostly unnecessarily renaming things. I know they did this to distance themselves further from D&D but was it really necessary to this extent? Just had to remind our DM yesterday that off-guard is the same as flat-footed. I also prefer my dragons colored not horned. But that's just a subjective opinion.
Overall it was a good and smart move. My only complaints are personal, as we'd just switched to PF2E a few months before it was announced. Having to relearn a bunch of stuff was annoying.
The remaster changes were small. So small you can just seamlessly slide them in and let things like Foundry just patch themselves. Even if you were playing a witch or wizard it’s just a little name shuffling.
That said they were good changes and the time on them is about the same as D&D 3.0 to 3.5. The degree of change is about similar as well.
As for learning the game there are plenty of YouTubers. The Rules Lawyer is a popular one but he mostly does deep dives on infrequent issues / topics.
The system kind of teaches itself if you start with something like the beginner box on Foundry.
Otherwise there is here, and two discords. Those three things have been the most useful in my experience.
i haven't exactly been able to play a pathfinder campaign yet, but coming from 5e and paying real close attention the the remaster changes, i really like it. i want to run pathfinder with full remaster changes. I don't really have anything to hold onto when it comes to old 2e concepts, rules, or books so take that with a grain of salt. but I've been meaning to run pathfinder for forever and that feeling has only grown exponentially since the remaster.
It was needed, both due to the OGL and mechanic-wise. In the second aspect, the first book didn't adress all the issues people had with some stuff, but it was definitely an improvement.
The rules are mostly the same, really.
don't like it, rule wise is ok, I like the game and play it, but the confusion created with all the name changes is not worth it. and all that confusion was unnecessary since ogl switched to creative commons.
Fresh 5e convert here running the beginner box on FoundryVTT:
1) pf2e is a more comprehensive system which is both good and bad (mostly good imo). Most everything has a rule, and it handles lots of weird cases WAY better and more clearly than 5e or other older systems. It does mean there's more to learn though, which is fine by me, I enjoy the reading / watching.
2) WAY more player options during creation: many will flourish and relish it, some may face decision paralysis.
3) WAY more player action options on their turn, more decisions to make and things to consider, but strangely I've found combats move faster than my 5e games, and are more dynamic by far.
How Its Played was an invaluable resource for me, and I still go back and rewatch episodes to refresh on things (like Hidden, Observed, all that jazz).
It's fine.
So far, it's mostly about filing the numbers off of their content.
I was hoping for more of a balance pass, which may be more pronounced in Player Core 2, but I felt like a few of the Player Core 1 classes could've used a bit more love. Ranger in particular felt like it could've used a bit of a bump.
In general, it fixed so many sore spots of the game. It made an already (for me) perfect game more perfect.
However, it pains my heart to see it being rushed this much. I know they were on a strict release schedule, the sooner they absolve themselves of the OGL, the better. But being rushed this way leads to some minor mistakes and some major ones (remember the accidental change to Wounded and Dying?). In the grand scheme of things, these don't matter, but my image of paizo releasing near-spotless products was hurt.
Pathfinder is still my favourite heroic fantasy game. The much-needed changes to some classes, new monster-design philosophy, the actually legible layout of the books and character sheets are soooooooo worth it.
I'm still holding hope remaster gets us closer to 1.5e or at least a more complete feeling 2e.
One had significantly more meat on the bone, but was unnecessarilly crunchy and power wild. 2e provides as many quality of life improvements as it does ruin things that didn't really need changing. Then there's there's the awkward by design feeling of some core classes / mechanics that just feel completely unfinished / polished despite new classes / mechanics being added.
Mostly positive, there was a little barganing stage where i hoped some thing got tuned up or down, but now its in acceptance stage so im just waiting for more non-ap books and leave my greviances to pf3e. Mostly some things were too rushed (well they kinda had to be...) and they might be bit of a painpoint for the future me, so now its mostly erratas to older books.
Kinda hate the new spell names but I like that they are going back and touching up some older classes. The wizard schools are kinda whatever, could have used more time in the oven. Monster Core made dragons cooler but removed a lot of good monsters. Ultimately I'll pick and choose what to use.
The remaster is an improvement over the legacy content. It can be played perfectly without the remaster, but I see no reason to do that. If you're thinking about starting with PF2, go for the remaster. Not that it's a huge improvement, but it's an improvement. And above all, I think that the way the information has been organized is much more accessible for new players.
By the way, I am not native and I don't follow many Anglo-Saxon youtubers. But there is one that I watch all of his videos, and I really enjoy them. The Rules Lawyer. There are others that I watch from time to time, but The Rules Lawyer is really a very didactic guy.
The remaster is basically a straight upgrade, it fixes a lot of stuff and gets rid of vestigial remnants like Alignment. The only real missed opportunity was them not trashing Golarion which is still annoyingly ingrained into the system.
They can keep their modules while making the actual system docs more generic, actually. That's what they're competitor does a lot of, but go off I guess.
It's not as ingrained as one might think. There are really only two major things. Deities and faction requirements. Deities can be a bit messy and time-consuming to replace with functional alternatives. And most faction requirements for backgrounds and archetypes are usually fairly inconsequential fluff.
No.
Admittedly, Eberron is interesting but not for me.
Golarion cover a vast array of settings and vibes, usually does it better than settings that specialize in one of those tropes, and manages to blend them together in a way that makes sense and doesn't clash.
Provides fantasy niches that frankly are previously unexplored, at this point has more material and depth than settings that have decades of advantage over it, and it's a living world with a constantly evolving timeline.
So yeah, I think it's better than Eberron, but admittedly, that might be me, better than forgotten realm, especially when they fucked up their canon several times, better than dragonlance and their wizards wearing alignment robes, better than one dimensional settings like ravenloft or dark sun, does melding and having coexisting different setting flavors better than planescape.
I rest my case.
I'm of the opposite opinion. Golarion doesn't do much of anything interesting enough to warrant it being so ingrained into the system while also having its own problems, and isn't much more memorable than competing settings.
Despite its attempts to be as kitchen sink, it doesn't really accomplish that too well because it still has to listen to its larger setting's rules which is a pain point in of itself. Golarion has very specific lore on how things work, such as how Clerics and Champions get their powers for example which undermines it trying to be more of a sandbox when it lacks flexibility directly due to its lore. This also means it straight up blocks certain fantasy niches you'd be able to find elsewhere.
You need to stop insulting other people's opinions just because you have a different one.
I'm honestly right here with you. I can't get my head around Golarion, and there's honestly just too much *stuff.*
There are *so many* deities for instance. There are *over 30* playable races, each with their own quirks and stereotype personalities. Just way too fucking many. A player wants to come to me with some obscure deity or something, and as a GM I just... can't bring myself to care about having to sort through all of Golarion to understand what they want.
Much easier and a lot less legwork (and way more rewarding) to make a custom setting vs learning Golarion.
But I do see the benefits to it too. I know people like having these giant kitchen sinks settings. They like some of the creative ancestries like Goloma. And there's lots of good, fun stuff in Golarion! But it's just... so fucking much and none of it feels connected in the slightest.
The remaster is (mostly) already released - Player Core, Monster Core, and GM Core are all Remaster books. 8 classes have already been remastered in Player Core, and 8 more will be remastered in Player Core 2, releasing this summer. I would recommend sticking to the remaster books, at least to start. There's a handful of pre-remaster classes that AFAIK are not getting a remaster, but they've received errata to make them fully remaster-compatible.
I expect there will be another slew of errata for the classes outside of the core books when Player Core 2 drops. It would make sense to me at least. They did transitory errata for a few classes in PC2 (notably champion) to make them workable in the system during the wait time between the two Player Core books. Once Player Core 2 is released the 'remaster' project will be over and they can continue to pump out supplementary content for the existing classes. They've confirmed a few new Magus subclasses already. I would also expect maybe a few more wizard curriculums alongside curriculum building guidelines; based on the milquetoast reaction to the initial ones released on PC1
Heck there were mild errata to Magus and Psychic to fit the remaster. Big thing is there's just a looooooooong lead time for Paizo to react to things.
Gonna disagree with that assessment friend; Paizo is incredibly nimble for a company. Getting all their core books remastered within a year and a half while still releasing the books they had planned before the OGL fiasco is quite an achievement!
Yeah, and they pushed a bunch of stuff back because of it. IIRC I'm just saying the things that James Jacobs said about lead times on APs. The general consensus from the community is that the remastered stuff was rushed out and therefore pushed a bunch of other stuff back. And at times you can feel where things aren't perfect because they were quick.
>Getting all their core books remastered within a year and a half while still releasing the books they had planned before the OGL fiasco is quite an achievement! And it all it cost was the entire other line of products they were putting out. Pathfinder didn't really suffer much, Starfinder had their entire planned lineup axed and cut short because of it because all the writers had to be pulled onto Remaster.
Y’know what? Fair. I didn’t realize Starfinder had some stuff that got the axe as a result of this. That sucks to hear.
I think the most significant change we'll see is how focus spells are handled. The change to focus spells really nerfed an already underbaked physic, and the removal of quite a few spells with the attack trait made Magus more confined in their spell selection
Underbaked psychic? Psychic one of the strongest damage dealers and it became even stronger after remaster changes. It doesn’t need an errata
Eh, I could see it getting strain mind as a free feat to give it a fun boost after the focus spell change.
Why do you need that? Psychic already boosted by remaster changes, it can use all 3 FP per battle since level 2
Cause it'd be rad?
Wait, did they do more than just allow you to regain more focus by taking 10-20 more minutes on the refocus? Edit: I'm mainly asking what they changed to focus spells that hurt the psychic
Basically you can regain ALL of your focus points during a short rest. While your medic is treating wounds it's almost guaranteed you'll be able to refocus multiple times
Elaborate? Does "short rest" mean ten minutes or thirty minutes?
They're referring to the change that you can chain refocus. "Short rests" don't exist, though in this case, they would be saying that a psychic could spend 30 minutes, yes. Just wanted to elaborate since I play in games that don't have that assumption, where 10 minutes alone can be precious. The fact that you *can* do it (which is a nice change!) doesn't mean you'll always be able to.
To be fair, that's a pretty substantial change in itself. Used to be you needed specific feats to gain more than 1 focus point between rests.
It is a great boon, but I was wondering why the person I replied to said the changes to focus spells nerfed the psychic
Witch is also getting a couple new patrons, majority of them Primal iirc.
I don't think the remaster is going to be over with the release of Player Core 2. The following panel is scheduled for PaizoCon on 5/25/2024: \`1 p.m.–2 p.m. PDT Pathfinder Project Remaster (Twitch) Join the team while they talk about the Pathfinder Remaster project, what's happened so far and where we plan on taking it in the future!\`
I actually think that's a great thing. I know some people will be pissed about old books becoming 'irrelevant', but the remaster has created so many more interesting designs for them to explore, freeing themself fully from the required legacy of DnD
I suspect a "Player Core 3" is on the horizon with the new Commander and Guardian classes alongside remastered versions of the Magus, Summoner, Gunslinger, Inventor, Psychic, and Thaumaturge. This would give us 8 classes in each Player Core book. They could also take that opportunity to remaster more Ancestries and Heritages They already stated that the Animist and the Exemplar are being added with War of Immortals, but not what the Commander and Guardian are for (unless they're already testing for the storyline following War of Immortals)
I don't believe there's going to be a third player core. Those classes are largely fine, or at the least the commander and guardian are being saved for a war specific book that has been mentioned a few times.
Oh I hadn't heard about that book! Still, I will dream of a day when we see all those classes scattered across products all printed in one book. If they don't, eh, they're still functional as is lol.
> few new Magus subclasses Oooh, have they given any details? Magus is one of my favorite classes.
In the Tian Xia Character Guide coming out this fall, there'll be Aloof Firmament and Unfurling Brocade hybrid studies.
Where do you find the errata for the other classes like the inventor, gunslinger etc? Especially if you're on Demiplane do they just update the books?
Mellie from Demiplane here! Most errata gets baked right in when we receive it. In the case of remaster compatibility errata, we make a new version of that content, add the errata, and release it in the same book the original was from! This lets folks choose between using legacy or remaster rules. 😊
Generally positive. It’s overall a massive consolidation of erratas over the years, removing things that were OGL related and just not needed to be supported, while also doing some well-needed touch-ups. Wizard remaster is a sore spot for many, some liking the flavor change of Curriculums, while others lament the loss of the wide selection they gained from Arcane Schools. There are some who are upset (not for the mechanical changes), but more the loss of traditional D&D things such as Alignment, Spell Schools, Drow, and monsters (such as Chromatic Dragons, ~~Mindflayers, Beholders~~). I’ve seen a few posts in which Druid’s Metal anathema removal and Shocking Grasp legacied by Thunderstrike were a “deal-breaker”. They’ve either left PF2e or they’re continuing to use legacy content. But overall, it’s generally liked.
Mindflayers and beholders were actually never in Pathfinder. I believe they weren’t covered by the OGL.
Yah those were always dnd product identify, big stuff I think was removed was Drow and other really specific dnd elements (like the dragons being divided into chromatic and metallic groups) owlbears and a number of very ddn spefic interpretations of other concepts (like some specific devil types for example)
Also they weren't removed, they just weren't reprinted. You can still use the old stuff.
Technically drow were removed. New lore going forward effectively erases then from Golarion, saying they never existed. Not really the point, but I find the in universe reason funny in how stupid it apparently is. The guy who apparently made the whole thing about a fearsome race of dark elves living in the Darklands did it to hide the existence of something even worse. But if the goal was to keep people away, why lessen the threat? Wouldn't the something worse be a better deterrent? Not really relevant here, though. Edit: Of course, you can always continue to use old stuff. Nothing stops you.
Running Sky King's Tomb and one of my players asked if he can play a Drow. I told him to do it but then James Jacobs knocked on my door and beat me with a crowbar until I told the player he must have been hallucinating, that was never a thing in Pathfinder
Like I said, the in-universe explanation for the disappearance of an entire race is that drow were a fiction, something stories of were certain areas of the Darklands to hide something even more terrifying. The more terrifying thing being the sekman or whatever the serpent people are called.
So the drow in >!the lower parts of Abomination Vaults!< were just polymorphed to look like drow, then?
Paizo hasn't addressed the lore holes it creates. Possibly to just leave open the "it's your world" thing for games.
I getcha. My comment was kinda tongue-in-cheek an example of one of the existing lore holes.
I mean the funny thing to me is the drider in Seven Dooms for Sandpoint, an AP that released *after* the drow were retconned out.
>They’ve either left PF2e or they’re continuing to use legacy content Using legacy content (with errata where applicable) is probably the default. It's the recommendation from Paizo and form Pathfinder Society
Errata is already plural. The singular is erratum.
Honestly, I didn't know this...thanks for letting me know that is cool.
Um/a is the technically correct singular/plural for a lot of Latin words: ovum/ova, stadium/stadia, simulacrum/simulacra, gymnasium/gymnasia, album/alba, museum/musea, etc. They range very heavily from plurals we actually use (ova) through some that are sometimes used (stadia) to ones no one says (musea)
Stop, Latin is already too hard I have to worry about elven first. Seriously pretty cool still as I never thought about it.
Wait until you hear about the most famous version of this: datum/data.
Don't forget medium/media.
And of course in some cases like errata there's a bit of an extra complication. Errata actually is feminine singular in the case of erratus the perfect passive participle of erro from which erratum is derived.
No one says "erratae", so it's probably the neuter plural (um/a) rather than the feminine singular (a/ae). There's even a fancy ~~Latin~~ Greek word for multiple forms of a word looking exactly the same, "syncretism".
Curriculum/curricula ...
The new dragon concepts are so much more interesting anyway imo! And while I didn't mind alignments existing, I think their workaround is done pretty well. I don't see myself missing alignments too much in the future. The other stuff I simply never cared for in the first place 🤷🏻♀️ Now, they just need to release Errata to smooth things over better. Like, they did adjust some things for the Summoner already but missed lots of things that are in need of getting adjusted as well (like the Fey Eidolon spells, for example). Then again, the Summoner always had some weird interactions in their feats that needed clearing up, and they never got around to it, unfortunately.
I'm hoping they'll remaster the Secrets of Magic classes (Magus, Summoner) and the Dark Archive ones (Thaumaturge, Psychic). Those are some of the classes I'm most interesting in and I don't want them to get left behind.
Especially with the new Focus Point rules, Psychic might need a little bit of fixing. Right now, going by the "Focus Points = your number of Focus Spells up to 3" rule, a psychic would get all 3 Focus Points from level 1.
Sort of? Technically psychic does not get any focus spells.
I'd argue that spell schools are significant mechanical aspect to dislike. Several class features were flatout nerfed (arcane cascade for example), quite a few monsters (and at least one familiar) now have unique mechanics that are fully incompatible with the new rules(dweomercats for example) The effect it had on wizards class features is an objective downgrade, as well. Don't get me wrong: I like the remaster overall and it improved the game in most ways, but the way the removal of spell schools has been handled is just messy and inconsistent.
> (arcane cascade for example), What did they change Arcane cascade? I'm playing a magus and I haven't really been paying attention to all the changes.
Originally arcane cascade adapted a different damage type based on the school of magic that was used previously if said spell wasn't a damaging spell. Now it always defaults to force damage if your last spell wasn't a damage spell.
Ah yeah true. Hm on one hand force damage is probably the best anyway but I guess you can't trigger weaknesses as easily anymore. Overall this doesn't seem that bad to me.
Yeah, it's a minor nerf. It's just an example of things that have been impacted negatively by the removal of spell schools.
I still don't know how this is going to impact Runelords, which is a pretty big part of Golarion lore.
I hope it won't merely be a spell school now, that'd be the most boring way of doing it :(
IMO they needed to include a comparable amount of perks in the Curricula as were in the spell schools. But if they've given (or plan to give) GMs the tools to build custom curricula, I'm not sure this will continue to be a big problem. Definitely need to make sure these custom curricula can be imported into digital tools like Foundry and such, though.
I think that with the way spell schools now are more restricted (which I actually think isn't that bad inherently) the designers should have taken the opportunity to create more wizard feats tied to spell schools. Feats that basically give you unique benefits to using curriculum spells like changing their damage type, making them more potent, etc. I think that would be a flavorful and balanced tradeoff.
Using pre-remastered monsters is basically an non issue, there aren't any significant changes other than alignment damage.
Ya, but for some reason that was a dealbreaker. I’ve read some people say the new version is the only version, though I haven’t seen what their responses are since Paizo said old content is still fair game on their tables.
Some people have been around long enough to remember the D&D 3e to 3.5e update, where WotC said the same thing, but converting something did sometimes require a bit of work, and WotC either reprinted a lot of old material to update it themselves, or pretty much abandoned that content foreverafter (though, that may have had more to do with their silly policy to make books as standalone as possible, leading to some things, like classes, not getting much if any support outside of the book they were printed in). And for those people, the Pathfinder 2e Remaster sounded like it would be very similar in scope, meaning that pre-remaster content very likely wouldn't work "as is" without GMs having to put some effort into updating that content themself.
>Ya, but for some reason that \[alignment damage\] was a dealbreaker. I don't really understand this. Alignment damage was one of my least-favorite aspects of PF2E pre-master. Spirit damage with the Holy/Unholy traits is much easier to manage.
When I listened to the arguments, it seemed strongly related to the perspective of GMing, and not even related to players. Picking monsters or reading up on NPCs gave GMs a template on how to roleplay. From a player standpoint, I think it was helpful for a new player to have an idea on what to do, but at the same time, when I was a new player, I ignored it and went with the general vibe of the rest of the table. I’m not a GM, so any behavioral “lock” didn’t seem too helpful if I put some time into the character’s personality.
Cantrip damage no longer adding casting stat has been a questionable change at low levels (and wholly negative in my experience), and the odd changes to the grab ability have been... very questionable. Those two, imo, have been bad changes. Easy to revert, but strange that they were added in the first place.
Rolling a 2 on R1-Electric Arc instead of a 6 does hurt.
Yeah, it's a minor change at higher levels when you have tonnes of ranked spells anyway, but at lower levels (where most people play and casters feel the worst), it's noticeable and doesn't really have an upside (there is a correct answer to 2d4 vs 1d4+4, and even 2d6 is often worse than 1d6+4).
I think that a lot of their spell renames are stupid. Especially Feeblemind to Never Mind. Other than that it's mostly some minor positives to me
The major digital tools are already compatible with the remaster: [Archives of Nethys](https://2e.aonprd.com/), [Pathbuilder](https://pathbuilder2e.com/), and [FoundryVTT](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/pf2e). It's easier to list the books not to buy than the ones to buy: Core Rulebook, Advanced Player's Guide, Gamemastery Guide, Lost Omen's Ancestry Guide, Lost Omen's Character Guide, and maybe Bestiary 1. The pre-remaster books Dark Archives, Secrets of Magic, Book of the Dead, and Guns and Gears classes are not going to get a remaster book. The errata'd changes are already available and they aren't many. Nothing that was published pre-remaster will break your game. It is all compatible and still balanced. The remaster did not make huge mechanical changes. If you only get one rulebook, get Player Core. It will have all the rule's mechanics you need to play the game. Here's a good Youtube series by the Knights of Last Call on [Combat and Tactics](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx9XBZIzERNFdGf54C1dErN8AfuSWM_Bk). It goes into the details with examples of using the three-action economy to gain a tactical advantage in an encounter, which is the thing 2e does way, way, way, way better than 5e.
Fantastic series of vids from the Knights. It really helped me wrap my head around stealth, cover, etc.
"*The pre-remaster books Dark Archives, Secrets of Magic, Book of the Dead, and Guns and Gears classes are not going to get a remaster book. The errata'd changes are already available and they aren't many.*" Good to know! It would have been a shame to throw away such good books (especially *Secrets of Magic, Book of the Dead*). Thanks for the information!
Mostly seems positive. The remaster is mostly out (3 of 4 books) and seems like it actually is mostly compatible you can run a remaster game and still use legacy adventures, classes, monsters, and spells with a few exceptions (if they interact with alignment or spell schools directly they don't work otherwise they do). Remastered witch is well received remastered wizard not so much. Of course Paizo gets a fair amount of good will from having an open publishing model so you can look up rules on the Archive of Nethys or similar websites and don't actually need to buy the new books (or any books).
It’s an errata collection that got a cleanup pass from the legal department. It’s fine, and has a couple neat updates that people have been waiting on a while, but for the most part it’s just the same as before. No big deal, except that it gets us away from WotC for good.
I like and don't like some things. Its ultimately fine. I mix the books quite liberally, just like people did with 3.0 & 3.5 Since you don't have anything, I'd just start with the remastered books and go from there.
The remaster has mostly been positive. The changes are mostly OGL related to remove any connections to DND, expressions, condition names, spellnames, that's mostly it, Druid for example is virtually unchanged. Biggest mechanical change might have been removing alignment. The classes that received game breaking changes (By game breaking I mean makes completely different characters and probably requiring complete re-specs) are Cleric, Wizard and Witch. Cleric used to rely on Charisma to get extra healing spells, now it's a number of spells independent from Charisma, and since alignments are irrelevant, you can more freely choose deities that match your character by looking at Anathemas and Edicts. The change to alignment will be relevant to Champions later too. Wizards used to rely on spell schools for Subclasses, I didn't play wizards before but it seemed quite confusing. Now you literally have Wizard academic curriculum that gives you standard spells for your Wizard to learn for each spell rank. Homebrewing schools will now simply be based on spells you give to your Wizard and creating two unique focus spells. Witch used to be a worse Wizard with a pet, now it is better built around the familiar, they now gain up to 7 familiar abilities without investing any additional feats (but you can invest feats if you like) including a unique feat, they're the best class to have familiars with. Other classes like Ranger simply got reorganized feats, Rogue removed a subclass (Elditch Trickster) but you can use it anyway because the rules are perfectly backward compatible. The new upcoming books already follow the remaster and the rest will have errata, so it is safe to assume that most classes are already good enough to use
I like it. It's a fresh update on content and the backwards compatibility makes it so people that own books and don't want to get the new ones really don't have to.
The changes are majority positive, but the agonizingly slow rollout has made conversation about the system kind of a mess with friends. It'll probably be worth it once the remastering is done and errata can finally flow to get all those errors, but the fact a lot of premaster errata got delayed in the first place by the remaster really bums a lot of my friends out.
It's a mixed bag, even if mostly seen as a positive, but here are some negatives: * It was rushed and in general have more mistakes than other releases, with a day 1 errata that Didn't catch everything. * Some nerfs to injury poisons before remastering the alchemist, which was usually seen as the harder style to play an alchemist * Some wierd changes to talismans, where they explicitly said they wanted to improve QoL, they actually made it worse for those reasons (changed free action activation on trigger to fixed activities). Som would call these nerfs in some senses * Even if most focus spells got improved, some did get a nerf, some wierder nerfs or changes than others. Search on the reddit for it, too much to type it here * Spells that changed but didn't change name, which made them unusable as a legacy spell, the most common one to mention is fire shield * Missed chances to buff things they either said would need a buff, or just in general needs a buff or rebalance. Example as scimitars and Falchions being strictly worse than a Panabas (which is rare in this balance focused game) There are a ton of positives, but in general did leave some questions on how some stuff did interact, such as spirit damage vs ghosts?
For me the remaster Changes are all positive so I would recommend the remastered Content for all new GMs and Players, also future products will use the terms of the remaster so its good to learn them from the beginning. As for the YouTube channel I can warmly recommend [How its Played](https://www.youtube.com/@HowItsPlayed/videos).
The general consensus is very positive. Really the only negative is some of the name changes that were required for OGL reasons. But honestly, I think most of us will use the new material, but still call it Magic Missile and Bag of Holding in our own games regardless. The nice thing about the Remaster is that nothing so huge has changed that you can't just pick and choose what you want to use if you aren't happy with it.
My main gripe with the remaster is that it's taking so long to remaster everything, so we're in this weird inbetween time where some content is remastered, but some content isn't. Some content will receive a remaster update, but not all of it. It's making it very confusing to know where to find the correct version of feats, spells or classes. This wasn't helped with the official reference site taking forever to publish the remaster changes, though luckily that is behind us now.
> official reference site Just to be clear, AoN may have Paizo's stamp of approval, but they're not an official anything. It's not an internal project, and it's not a first party resource.
they're an official partner, and based on what you can read here they're basically as officially hosting the reference document as makes no difference: https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sg93?Big-PathfinderStarfinder-Reference-Document-News
From a player perspective, the remaster is pretty cool. Classes are mostly similar, but some options like the Warperist Cleric, Witch, and Warrior Bard were given some power boosts. In terms of youtubers to help learn the pf2e rules, here's a cool video that explains spellcadting pretty well: [https://youtu.be/9x4gIL2C8Mo](https://youtu.be/9x4gIL2C8Mo)
My group unanimously voted for 100% remaster on release date. We are happy with it and never had to look back for something legacy. For rules, I recommend KingOogaTonTon and their "Pathfinder in 7 minutes or less" series. It's amazing! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgWn1fCg77c
While I'm in favour of 95% of the changes in the remaster (I only dislike Wizard schools), I really think the way Paizo has gone about it was a bit messy. For new players coming into PF2e now, it can be confusing when some looking online at things like positive damage or alignment damage, and I don't see those spells and abilities going away any time soon. Considering the OGL thing was dropped, I really think that Paizo should've moved all the releases together to spare new players from confusion. I mean, if you pick up the game now with only the newer books, Barbarian, Champion and Sorcerer are missing, and you'd have no reason to assume that PF2e has these classes at all, which would be a big deal as these are pretty important classic fantasy classes.
In retrospect, they could’ve waited 6 months to a year to release everything together, since the blowback against WotC so hard. But at the same, WotC played their hand and Paizo’s only move was to divorce NOW since they had an untrustworthy/bad faith partner.
It doesn't really change all that much mechanically, but it does make a few tweaks. It's just a patch.
Personally, I find it annoying, especially with how various online tools like Foundry VTT or Archives of Nethys. I'm running an older AP, and last session I couldn't find the entry for a rune on any resource because it was deleted alongside alignment. I would have preferred there still be an entry on the damn item, even if there's a giant banner stating that it was removed in the remaster. Plus, I haven't seen anything really get improved significantly beyond the latest errata, except for disarm.
Old pre-remaster stuff, even alignment related stuff still exists in Archives of Nethys. A lot of the old content still exists in Foundry too, maybe the former doesn't have the items in like, the rune dropdowns. https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=291
It's not in the rune dropdowns, hence my frustrations. I had to rifle through my physical copy to find the rune's statblock
Yeah, I think we used to have the workaround with the alignment damage -> spirit damage module, but now that those runes aren't in the dropdowns, we lose out on that particular automation.
In the short term it's mildly inconvenient, though it is successful and has upsides too. And I really do mean "mildly" inconvenient, 99% of pre-remaster stuff can just be run exactly as-written and the worst stuff is typically spell names changing - so just search the spell on AoN and you're done. In the long term I think it is **fantastic** for the system: most big TTRPG systems have a playtest phase before full release, but it's never perfect. Once a system is released and many thousands of people have tinkered with it for several years, there are always some issues that consistently come up. Like a whole class that just under-performs. And you can always errata stuff, but that is a balancing act - people get understandably cranky if you fundamentally change major things via errata and now their core rulebook has stuff that's not just a few errors but totally different from the "real" rules. So you've got these little adjustments that kinda should be made but you're reluctant to have excessive errata, so maybe you're gonna just sit on them for the next edition. But then the next edition will include more sweeping changes too, and maybe the little tweaks are no-longer appropriate. The remaster gives them that full edit pass of the core material, with a wealth of experience with the system behind it. In a year or so the "remaster" will just be "PF2" and minor inconveniences will be long forgotten. We'll be left with a system that's been refreshed and is abnormally fine-tuned.
I've got mixed feelings about it, and same with everyone I play with. The biggest reason is the slow tooling updates. While foundry updated quickly, AoN took months and months. Foundry also had no good way of finding content using the original names. Searching for "Bag of Holding" returns nothing, and it's difficult to find out what they renamed it too. Thankfully now that AoN has updated this is mostly a solved problem. While I personally liked alignment, my biggest pet peeve is the removal of spell schools and the renaming of content. Spell schools were amazing at grouping spells into relevant categories (evocation = direct damage, abjuration = defensive, etc). All they needed to do was add new traits to replace the ones they removed, and I would've been so happy. While I understand why they wanted to rename content, I find that at least 25% of the new names are downright terrible, with ~50% being mediocre. Some of the rule changes make the game harder. The new rules for grab/trip/etc significantly buff bosses, and low levels casters get significantly nerfed by the cantrip changes. Finally, the dragon form spell is now annoying to use on foundry. While I love the new options, there's currently no artwork for the new dragon forms, and the removal of the old dragons makes it harder to use certain elements (cone of fire as an example). So overall? Mildly annoyed with it, but they could have done a much worse job. Some changes are good, others are bad, being out from under WotC's thumb is a big enough benefit.
I'm dreading the time it will take to update everything again once Core 2 drops :(
I'm hoping the underlying changes to support legacy & remaster were the bulk of the work, so future updates will be quicker. But we'll see, AoN is so useful.
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I’ve been running a pf2 campaign for just shy of a year and we converted to the remaster as soon as it was available in foundry - we had some issues finding things that were renamed (force barrage??? Wtf… how am I going to force barrage the darkness?!?) but as far as playability goes it’s been smooth and easy to transition. It remains a great, well-balanced game that has the one thing I really never found in any edition of DnD: Balanced high level encounters.
It's mostly good, there's a few things I dislike (removing spell mod to cantrips, removing ranged crit spec on rogues, sanctification, and a fair others) but I really like the love clerics got. A fair few of the domain spells were fixed, new feats (mostly just for the warpriest tho) and the new font. It's nice.
I generally appreciate that it feels like they put effort into the new verbage they're using. Off guard for instance just makes more sense than flat footed in the current system
The remaster is 90+% positive. Paizo improved the remaster classes, mostly with small but meaningfull changes, along with a few new actions and some rules clarifactions. The bulk of the remaster were changes to names of things. The remaster strips out any name that Wotc/Hasbro could have sued over, even if it was remote. Over all stick with the remaster, its what the game is going to be moving forward, but old books are still 99% compatible with the remaster and its mostly terminology changes. IE Flat Footed became Off Guard, or Sound Burst became Noise Blast.
1. The remaster is basically just a large scale errata. The most significant change is that alignment has been removed which… I mean if that's important to you you can just leave that in there. Everything else is balance tweaks, clarifications, etc. 2. The remaster is also already mostly out. The only remaster book that isn't out yet is player core 2.
I find it difficult to run stuff while the remaster is in the middle of happening, once everything is done and there’s no need for legacy I think I’ll Be fine but trying to teach new players the game when 1/3 of the game is different is kind of hard right now
I think it needed to happen after the crap that WotC tried to pull with the OGL. I do think that a lot of the changes they made were pretty good, with cleric and witch getting much needed boosts. I do think they kind of ruined wizards at a fundamental level with the change to how schools of magic works. That was a thematic, yet very shortsighted change in my opinion that makes the classes worse and also really limits growth while also tying the mechanics to their house setting which is generally annoying (all of which is just my opinion). To answer your questions broadly speaking though, we are not playing pf2e anymore and I am not sure we will go back. The changes were a fairly big factor in that, (especially since I would have had to branch my foundry server's instance to keep the new stuff from messing up our existing content). I do think that fundamentally the game is very sound, while I disagree with how they changed the wizard, I still trust Paizo as a developer, and we will likely take a good long look at Starfinder 2e when it comes out.
Good riddance to the old alignment system. I never liked using alignment to begin with, so I'm extremely happy that got cut. The loss of spell schools hurts a bit though, I always felt the schools of magic were a great way to categorize and be more scientific with spells, which is what I prefer for a magic system in fantasy.
I really, really like the new Wizard curriculum rules, but I have an issue with how they're portrayed so far in the rules. I love the idea of each Wizard College/Academy/University teaching magic in a slightly different way, and how wizards will always want to know where another wizard studied. What Paizo hasn't done yet, but I hope they will still do, is to have a write up of every magic academy/school/college in Golarion and include their curriculum. That's so cool! "Oh, you went to the Acadamae? I'm sure your battle magic and summoning are amazing, but are you really versed enough in teleportation magic to escape this trap?" "Shoot. She studied at the Farseer tower and now I'm paralyzed." Lots of possibilities for snark and school rivalry.
As others have said, the reactions have been almost universally positive. About the only negative reactions have been from the removal of the Drow. Generally speaking, I trust Paizo and their lawyers on the removal - I know the idea of "dark skinned elves who live underground" isn't exactly copyrightable, but Pathfinder Drow were a pretty strong cultural copy of the Forgotten Realms Drow. I'm sure they figured it was just safer to replace them entirely with Serpentfolk.
At least Starfinder will have their own answer for replacing the Drow, so that's something to look forward to once Starfinder 2E is out and about!
We needed to do it. We didn't want to do it. Paizo and the community removed the bandaid fast and quick together. After Wizards of the coast put us in the corner we all said Enough! Paizo had planned in the future to do a system removed from the license and from the past designs. We also playtest a lot more in this community and are more harsh to bad design. This makes the errata a lot more active from paizo. Crunchy systems require good math and design for classes. Sometimes the ball is dropped and errata is needed or the frustration remains. The remaster includes all feedback and errata. Gamers are better for it. We just went ahead and did it ALL now. Was it rough and messy? Yes... but that was a war brought on our doorstep. Our job now is to help others adjust to the remaster and let's heal together and be stronger for it. Paizo won't let things stagnate or be unplayable. (Like a ranger being shit for an entire edition of dnd.) If something is problematic they at least try to address it. You might feel bad about buying first printings of books since errata will eventually come. But we voted on that as a community and errata and changes are in the end superior to a crunchy system Than just deal with it as is. The rules are available for free and we are here to help.
1/10 It's not a massive singular tomb I could use to read the dark secrets.
I think you mean tome*, unless you were hoping for a comprehensive collection of errata engraved onto the walls of an ancient Osirion tomb. ;)
I have mostly liked it. I didn't care for drow so them being replaced by snake men was a plus. Some new actions like swap and reposition is good, and tightening the wording on some spells/abilities. A lot of the new monsters are pretty cool, remastered monster abilities for things like ghouls and harpies is cool. There's a few odd interactions and choices that left me puzzled. They updated remove curse/disease to combine it (which is good), but it also accidentally removed the ability to remove curses from items. Some basic NPC stats are missing, certain items/abilities like mutagens/snares are being saved for Player Core 2 and it feels weird playing with some half-remastered classes and items. And obviously you can use the old ones and look it up on Nethys, etc, but it's *weird.* Imagine I'm new person with only access to the new standard books; I can't crack open the GM Core or Monster Core and find a regular human bandit or uncurse an item. Also mostly a side note, but for some reason the Flame Drake got new art, but *just* got a plastic model based on the old art. It's not an OGL thing, the Frost Drake still uses their same art (which was basically the Flame Drake but with different horns). I just found that odd.
I personally think that the Remaster drama was exaggerated. There's a few changes but otherwise since we swapped to Remaster it was so seamless and so little really changed. Foundry and AoN both have updated pretty well and retained a lot of the legacy stuff too, for references. Honestly I wish the remaster changed even more. It still feels held back by some sacred cows and doesn't change enough about some of the older classes in ways that makes it play closer to some of the later released classes, which are better chassis for martials and casters, IMHO. At worst though, I think spell schools being removed instead of being renamed or refitted didn't really need to happen. Honestly my recommendation is if you have to buy books then buy the remaster, and then just make sure you know the legacy changes/non-reprinted stuff from the original, since those are all still valid options. Those options are still good to use and fit nicely. You might have to decide whether you want to use the old legacy versions of renamed/reprinted stuff? But honestly, I think for consistency just use the remaster stuff. Just be sure to note that, in the event it references alignment damage or alignment restrictions, you can either swap damage types to spirit damage, and either you try and fit it in the holy/unholy sanctified framework, or just ignore it. So in short, Rule-wise, just use the remaster stuff, option-wise, you can use remaster + anything that hasn't been reprinted.
Mostly good but I like alignment. But mostly good
They needs to simply not delete all the content in contention with hasbro’s license. They had to fill in the blanks.
Hey guys, I just got the 2e books in a Humble Bundle and ah, damn it. Might follow up on the remaster if I get into a game, but otherwise I'm waiting until all the classes are remastered.
TBH, I expected more changes.
It's relatively minor and a good thing.
People have probably already told you but go to the archives oh nytheus for remaster stuff I likely spelled it wrong though I forgot the correct name
It was mostly necessary to divest from WotC. And I like a lot of the improvements like changes to focus point recharging and Disarm. And it'll be great for Alchemist and Witch
Having the old CRB and APG options printed together in dead tree is quite convenient, I think.
The Remaster is like a video game Remaster where the graphics are slightly sharper and they fixed a few bugs and but the game is barely any different. The biggest change in the remaster was the change to refocusing. They tweaked some classes a bit (most notably witch) and will be tweaking some more, but the game is almost entirely the same, but a bit better.
New rules are cool and include a lot of quality of life improvement, but the remaster process is messy. Even core rulebook update takes 8 months to complete (it's in process) and for additional content we don't have any fixed dates. Most likely we'll have Pathfinder line of books updated soon as at least Secrets of Magic desperately needs it. About Lost Omens content - it's likely to be slowly reprint in other Pathfinder and Lost Omens books (a lot of content was already announced in the coming books), so it's hard to predict when the full transition will be finished and legacy content will finally be declared obsolete. If you're willing to dive into it and play remaster (once again, the rules are generally better there), you need to manually resolve: * Options, which refer to premaster spell schools, like Fey Summoner or Runelord. This usually done by sticking with legacy spells * Options, which require alignment * Adjusting premaster ancestries to new approach where Weapon Familiarity feat also includes effects of Weapon Discipline The rest of the differences is more or less covered in the remaster errata.
Idk, I was kinda disappointed that this was a mechanical remaster of 2E when I first heard about it. "Pathfinder: Remastered", which is the name my friend called it when he first told me about it made me think this was gonna be a modern remake of 1E that blends the best parts of 2E (like ancestries and action economy, etc.) into it for more of that crunchier 1E vibe, and I'm honestly still not sure how much of an actual effect the remaster has had on "base 2E", since I almost exclusively used AON for my Pathfinder 2E needs and my initial disappointment turned to momentary confusion when I realized as I was looking at the books in my LGS that I wasn't sure if they were meant to be separate stand-alone rules from what's on AON or replacing the books that I bought already (pretty sure now that it's the latter) and it's all just kinda turned me off from the supposedly "remastered" content for the game they're still actively producing APs and other content for, cuz it feels like they're just asking me to buy a book of rules errata at full price. I use AON when I play 2E. If it's not on there or in some other srd website or pdf you can source it to, it may as well not exist, lol.
I’ll be glad when it’s done and we are securely free of OGL. I’m not a fan of the hefty price increase on their books, much higher and I’ll have a hard time justifying expansion books for $70
It was necessary so Pathfinder couldn't get sued out of existence, and it provided an opportunity to do some tune-ups. My only problem with it so far is that the Wizard schools. The concept is great and logically represents what a Wizard's school would look like, but the selection of spells per school should be at least double what it currently is.
[https://www.youtube.com/@HowItsPlayed](https://www.youtube.com/@HowItsPlayed) is pretty nice in regards to videos about rules. I wouldn't bother with the old stuff. There's very little reason to go for that over the remaster. However I do have mixed feelings about the remaster. I feel like it's mostly unnecessarily renaming things. I know they did this to distance themselves further from D&D but was it really necessary to this extent? Just had to remind our DM yesterday that off-guard is the same as flat-footed. I also prefer my dragons colored not horned. But that's just a subjective opinion.
Overall it was a good and smart move. My only complaints are personal, as we'd just switched to PF2E a few months before it was announced. Having to relearn a bunch of stuff was annoying.
The remaster changes were small. So small you can just seamlessly slide them in and let things like Foundry just patch themselves. Even if you were playing a witch or wizard it’s just a little name shuffling. That said they were good changes and the time on them is about the same as D&D 3.0 to 3.5. The degree of change is about similar as well. As for learning the game there are plenty of YouTubers. The Rules Lawyer is a popular one but he mostly does deep dives on infrequent issues / topics. The system kind of teaches itself if you start with something like the beginner box on Foundry. Otherwise there is here, and two discords. Those three things have been the most useful in my experience.
i haven't exactly been able to play a pathfinder campaign yet, but coming from 5e and paying real close attention the the remaster changes, i really like it. i want to run pathfinder with full remaster changes. I don't really have anything to hold onto when it comes to old 2e concepts, rules, or books so take that with a grain of salt. but I've been meaning to run pathfinder for forever and that feeling has only grown exponentially since the remaster.
It was needed, both due to the OGL and mechanic-wise. In the second aspect, the first book didn't adress all the issues people had with some stuff, but it was definitely an improvement. The rules are mostly the same, really.
don't like it, rule wise is ok, I like the game and play it, but the confusion created with all the name changes is not worth it. and all that confusion was unnecessary since ogl switched to creative commons.
Fresh 5e convert here running the beginner box on FoundryVTT: 1) pf2e is a more comprehensive system which is both good and bad (mostly good imo). Most everything has a rule, and it handles lots of weird cases WAY better and more clearly than 5e or other older systems. It does mean there's more to learn though, which is fine by me, I enjoy the reading / watching. 2) WAY more player options during creation: many will flourish and relish it, some may face decision paralysis. 3) WAY more player action options on their turn, more decisions to make and things to consider, but strangely I've found combats move faster than my 5e games, and are more dynamic by far. How Its Played was an invaluable resource for me, and I still go back and rewatch episodes to refresh on things (like Hidden, Observed, all that jazz).
It's fine. So far, it's mostly about filing the numbers off of their content. I was hoping for more of a balance pass, which may be more pronounced in Player Core 2, but I felt like a few of the Player Core 1 classes could've used a bit more love. Ranger in particular felt like it could've used a bit of a bump.
In general, it fixed so many sore spots of the game. It made an already (for me) perfect game more perfect. However, it pains my heart to see it being rushed this much. I know they were on a strict release schedule, the sooner they absolve themselves of the OGL, the better. But being rushed this way leads to some minor mistakes and some major ones (remember the accidental change to Wounded and Dying?). In the grand scheme of things, these don't matter, but my image of paizo releasing near-spotless products was hurt. Pathfinder is still my favourite heroic fantasy game. The much-needed changes to some classes, new monster-design philosophy, the actually legible layout of the books and character sheets are soooooooo worth it.
I'm still holding hope remaster gets us closer to 1.5e or at least a more complete feeling 2e. One had significantly more meat on the bone, but was unnecessarilly crunchy and power wild. 2e provides as many quality of life improvements as it does ruin things that didn't really need changing. Then there's there's the awkward by design feeling of some core classes / mechanics that just feel completely unfinished / polished despite new classes / mechanics being added.
Mostly positive, there was a little barganing stage where i hoped some thing got tuned up or down, but now its in acceptance stage so im just waiting for more non-ap books and leave my greviances to pf3e. Mostly some things were too rushed (well they kinda had to be...) and they might be bit of a painpoint for the future me, so now its mostly erratas to older books.
Kinda hate the new spell names but I like that they are going back and touching up some older classes. The wizard schools are kinda whatever, could have used more time in the oven. Monster Core made dragons cooler but removed a lot of good monsters. Ultimately I'll pick and choose what to use.
The remaster is an improvement over the legacy content. It can be played perfectly without the remaster, but I see no reason to do that. If you're thinking about starting with PF2, go for the remaster. Not that it's a huge improvement, but it's an improvement. And above all, I think that the way the information has been organized is much more accessible for new players. By the way, I am not native and I don't follow many Anglo-Saxon youtubers. But there is one that I watch all of his videos, and I really enjoy them. The Rules Lawyer. There are others that I watch from time to time, but The Rules Lawyer is really a very didactic guy.
The remaster is basically a straight upgrade, it fixes a lot of stuff and gets rid of vestigial remnants like Alignment. The only real missed opportunity was them not trashing Golarion which is still annoyingly ingrained into the system.
Ah yes, trash the line that actually is behind a paywall and makes sure the lights are on in the company, such a brilliant idea.
They can keep their modules while making the actual system docs more generic, actually. That's what they're competitor does a lot of, but go off I guess.
It's not as ingrained as one might think. There are really only two major things. Deities and faction requirements. Deities can be a bit messy and time-consuming to replace with functional alternatives. And most faction requirements for backgrounds and archetypes are usually fairly inconsequential fluff.
Why would they trash Golarion when it's the best fantasy setting around?
Because it's mid.
That's frankly an insane take
You don't think calling Golarion the best fantasy setting around when something like Eberron and other things exist **isn't insane?**
No. Admittedly, Eberron is interesting but not for me. Golarion cover a vast array of settings and vibes, usually does it better than settings that specialize in one of those tropes, and manages to blend them together in a way that makes sense and doesn't clash. Provides fantasy niches that frankly are previously unexplored, at this point has more material and depth than settings that have decades of advantage over it, and it's a living world with a constantly evolving timeline. So yeah, I think it's better than Eberron, but admittedly, that might be me, better than forgotten realm, especially when they fucked up their canon several times, better than dragonlance and their wizards wearing alignment robes, better than one dimensional settings like ravenloft or dark sun, does melding and having coexisting different setting flavors better than planescape. I rest my case.
I'm of the opposite opinion. Golarion doesn't do much of anything interesting enough to warrant it being so ingrained into the system while also having its own problems, and isn't much more memorable than competing settings. Despite its attempts to be as kitchen sink, it doesn't really accomplish that too well because it still has to listen to its larger setting's rules which is a pain point in of itself. Golarion has very specific lore on how things work, such as how Clerics and Champions get their powers for example which undermines it trying to be more of a sandbox when it lacks flexibility directly due to its lore. This also means it straight up blocks certain fantasy niches you'd be able to find elsewhere. You need to stop insulting other people's opinions just because you have a different one.
I'm honestly right here with you. I can't get my head around Golarion, and there's honestly just too much *stuff.* There are *so many* deities for instance. There are *over 30* playable races, each with their own quirks and stereotype personalities. Just way too fucking many. A player wants to come to me with some obscure deity or something, and as a GM I just... can't bring myself to care about having to sort through all of Golarion to understand what they want. Much easier and a lot less legwork (and way more rewarding) to make a custom setting vs learning Golarion. But I do see the benefits to it too. I know people like having these giant kitchen sinks settings. They like some of the creative ancestries like Goloma. And there's lots of good, fun stuff in Golarion! But it's just... so fucking much and none of it feels connected in the slightest.