Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Pathfinder 2nd Edition Playtest Announced


Just in time, too...I had been seriously thinking about jumping back in to Pathfinder at least every other Friday (Starfinder is a gateway drug I guess)....those Pocket Rulebooks demand to be played!

I might still run some Pathfinder 1.0, and plan to migrate over to Pathfinder 2.0 Beta when it becomes available in August.

If you're even remotely interested in Pathfinder, D&D alternates, or game design in general then check out the announcement, here and the blog announcement, here. There's a lot of interesting information to unpack.

Most interesting to me is the discussion on the new action economy. Maybe it's just because I've been running Mythras lately, but this sounds a little....familiar....:

"After initiative is sorted out and it's your turn to act, you get to take three actions on your turn, in any combination. Gone are different types of actions, which can slow down play and add confusion at the table. Instead, most things, like moving, attacking, or drawing a weapon, take just one action, meaning that you can attack more than once in a single turn! Each attack after the first takes a penalty, but you still have a chance to score a hit. In Pathfinder Second Edition, most spells take two actions to cast, but there are some that take only one. Magic missile, for example, can be cast using from one to three actions, giving you an additional missile for each action you spend on casting it!

Between turns, each character also has one reaction they can take to interrupt other actions. The fighter, for example, has the ability to take an attack of opportunity if a foe tries to move past or its defenses are down. Many classes and monsters have different things they can do with their reactions, making each combat a little bit less predictable and a lot more exciting. Cast a fire spell near a red dragon, for example, and you might just find it takes control of your magic, roasting you and your friends instead of the intended target!"

I doubt it's anything truly like the action point/combat action mechanic in Mythras, but it bears some interesting similarities...and to be honest, the new concept outlined above sounds like a major improvement to the mechanical process of the D20 system.

Either way, this is pretty exciting. The only game I've run more of than D&D is Pathfinder, and that's without analyzing the lineage of those systems, so seeing Pathfinder get a 2.0 upgrade is going to be really exciting. Official playtest books in August!

4 comments:

  1. Honestly, their new action economy reminds me of D&D 5E. The Initiative system sounded interesting too, if it's truly cool then at the very least I'll steal it for 5E.

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    1. You're the second person to mention that but I'm not sure I see it....D&D doesn't require you to spend 3 actions to get three attacks, for example (or allow it; you get iterative attacks on a single action). You can double move, but your third action in 5E is reserved for a reaction and/or bonus action, if you can get it. But it's almost exactly like mythras, just less nuanced (where Mythras makes you spend 1 action to shoot an arrow, 2 actions to re-notch, etc.)

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  2. I'm very interested in this announcement. I played/DM'd a ton of Pathfinder, but in recent years found the crunchiness of the system to be too much. 5E while fun just doesn't quite "do it" for me. I'm hoping PF 2nd edition will be what I am looking for!

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    1. Yeah same here, that's exactly how I feel....Pathfinder 1.0 is a bit too crunchy,D&D 5E is not crunchy enough. I think PF2.0 could fit a middle ground really well.

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