A week ago Paizo announced Pathfinder 2nd Edition. Geek Native has been talking to gamers about the announcement and it seems some people think Pathfinder 2e comes too close to Starfinder RPG. Some people disagree.
Are you a Pathfinder fan? What do you hope to see addressed in this new edition? What changes would you make?
We asked a half dozen popular gamers about this; what they wanted to see changed and what their communities might want to change.
What do you hope to see addressed in Pathfinder 2e? Are there any changes you would like to see?
Ben Milton from Questing Beast suggested;
When I was playing Pathfinder, the tons of different types of actions drove me crazy, and calculating the bonus to all my rolls was just more busywork than I was willing to put up with. It was very fiddly and there was a lot of cruft left over from the 3.5 days that didn’t feel like it needed to be there. Deep tactics and customization doesn’t have to come at the cost of Excel-like character sheets.
D20 Advice‘s Drew Murray said;
I’m a huge fan of modular systems. A wide range of modular incomparables would be nice to see working well. Balance is all well and good, but the usefulness of a thing is contextual, so abilities and mechanics that aren’t comparable in basic numbers but nonetheless provide fun gameplay and storytelling is something I’d love to see done well.
Thoughts from TheDMGinfo;
While crunch is good for some games, too much crunch does get in the way. When Pathfinder’s biggest competitor is a much lighter variant of a d20 system, and it has skyrocketed in popularity, that should be a good indicator of what the market wants.
I personally feel it is important to reduce the amount of time it takes for things to happen around the table. Games would also benefit from more inclusive play. Inclusive in the sense of each player gets to have a turn and it is more difficult for a single player, or a group of players, to dominate a game and marginalise other players at the table. Spread the fun, not the rules.
Juce from RPG Juce opined;
Looking forward to how they handle the 3 actions with leveling up. Also some of the information on their site about monster abilities are interesting.
I really hope that it is an easy system to run and easy for new players to pick up but has a lot of options.
Nate at WASD20 offered;
I’d like to see it simplified in some ways, while still retaining the huge variety of character options players of PF enjoy. For example, the rules for hardness in Pathfinder always seemed cumbersome. Just simplify things like that.
GM Jeff from the Roll Mongers Actual Play Podcast said;
More spells from Paizo’s website 3rd party chums like the integration of 1001 spells book, even as an official web enhancement!
Do you agree? Let us know in the comments below.
What do you think your community of gamers will hope Pathfinder 2e delivers?
Drew Murray from D20 Advice shared;
That’s hard to say. I think the community is split between wanting Pathfinder to remain the way it is because it was the counter-culture departure from the mainstream, some seeing that as a rebuke against releasing new editions and appearing to abandon their fans, and wanting Pathfinder to become something entirely new and different.
D&D 5e has so many great interpretations and extrapolations on the Dungeon Master’s Guild that a D&D 5.5 wouldn’t work, so Pathfinder-as-D&D-upgrade isn’t what I’m expecting. I think leaning towards a 1.5-style mindset of tightening up the mechanics and streamlining things, rather than a whole new system, is what will be best received. Think Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Edition to 3rd, rather than AD&D 2nd Edition to 3rd.
Questing Beast‘s Ben Milton said;
My community of gamers is mostly made out of OSR (Old-School Renaissance) players and DMs. This style of play generally focuses on extremely minimalistic (and often completely randomly generated) PCs, where “build” is basically meaningless, player skill is tested more than character skill, combat is so deadly that it’s usually best to avoid it, and open worlds are prioritized over adventure paths. In other words, it’s about as far from Pathfinder as you can get while still remaining within the general D&D umbrella.
Speaking for myself, I hope that Pathfinder presents a viable third way to play D&D for new players. At the moment, 5e is right in the middle between Pathfinder and OSR. It’s trying to be all things to all players, but it can’t do the tactical combat/high customization thing very well, and it doesn’t do OSR-style play very well either (unless you quite a bit of tweaking). A version of Pathfinder that is easy to learn would give new 5e players who are really into builds something that fits their preferences better, while allowing 5e to be what it was designed to be.
All that being said, I’m really curious about the way that PF 2e plans to make monster stat blocks simpler and more flavorful, as well as their plans for exploration turns and downtime turns, which are very OSR concepts.
Roll Mongers Actual Play Podcast‘s GM Jeff opined;
Accumulation and integration of the more popular variant rules from The Advanced and Unchained books. Such as “Spell Attack rolls” & Stamina, Called shots ect.
Juce, the vlogger from RPG Juce, a channel with over 2,000 followers, said;
My community varies but I think most will want a lot of options and simple to play. My audience is mostly 5e fans and a small portion are Palladium Books fans.
WASD20‘s Nate suggested;
My community is pretty into D&D 5e at this point. I think some of us are interested outsiders, but Pathfinder lost us a couple years back. We’ll pay attention and most of us are certainly open to new systems having things to offer.
TheDMGinfo shared;
My community focuses more on how terrain works within a ruleset. How measurement and miniatures work within the context of a scene and actions the characters take. Minis and terrain are a huge part of the hobby and the rules need to reflect that while not putting constraints on “theatre of the mind” style play for the transitional scenes, or for those who prefer not to play with minis.
