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Pathfinder 2E: "The Time of the O.R.C. has come."
Zonugal
(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Team regular
(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Team regular
Welcome to the thread all about Pathfinder second edition, Paizo's fantasy table-top rpg!!
Hopefully that covers any immediately introductory questions!
Welcome to the Pathfinder 2E TTRPG system & community!!
So, you're interested in Pathfinder's second edition, huh?
PF-2E is a fantasy tabletop that utilized the d20 system, much akin to Dungeons & Dragons. Among features in the second edition of this TTRPG are the streamlined action economy. Each round, each character can perform up to three actions on their turn as well as one reaction on their own turn or another character's turn. Most basic moves, such as moving across the ground, drawing a weapon, or making an attack cost a single action, while more complicated maneuvers may require two or three actions.
Another systemic feature is how the TTRPG handles rolling for success & failure. Rather than automatically succeeding on a roll of a natural 20, any time a character rolls 10 more than the target number they achieve a "critical success." This same process works for failing a roll, just in the reverse (when rolling 10 lower than the target number, they achieve a "critical failure").
In addition, the system handles the scaling of skills, armor class, attack rolls, saves, and difficulty classes through a scale 1 to 1 with a character's level plus a stat plus a bonus between two and eight depending on their proficiency.
But what are the rules for character creation & such?
As opposed to feeling systemic pressure to start at a higher level, PF-2E presumes your adventure is starting at 1st-level, by offering up a bevvy of choices (in the form of feats [ancestry feats, class feats, general feats, skill feats] for how you'll design your adventurer. Those choices are:
-- Ancestries: Your character’s ancestry determines which people they call their own, whether it’s diverse and ambitious humans, insular but vivacious elves, traditionalist and family-focused dwarves, or any of the other folk who call Golarion home.
-- Backgrounds: A character’s experiences prior to their life as an adventurer might be key parts of their identity, shape how they see the world, and help them find their place in it.
-- Classes: Your character's primary occupation (in terms of the professional domain of being an adventurer), be it martial roles like Fighters, skillful roles like Rogues, or spellcasting roles like Wizards.
-- Sub-Classes: Your character's distinct style within their class (these differ between the classes but all largely operate in the same manner, except for the Fighter & Monk who do not receive sub-classes [instead opting for class feats to fill that customization role]).
-- Archetypes: Your character's supplementary identity, which provides them with unique abilities not usually accessible from their class.
You mentioned Golarion, what is that?
Pathfinder products are mostly set in what the First Edition rulebooks referred to as "The Inner Sea," and what the more recent Second Edition books call "The Age of Lost Omens" which both ultimately deal with the same basic setting: the Constructed World of Golarion.
Thousands of years ago, the Human empire of Azlant thrived on the surface, while secretly ruled from the deep by the Aboleths, the aquatic monsters that lifted them to greatness. As humanity developed, they grew resentful and resisted against their aquatic masters. Fearing the growing power of the humans, the Aboleths sent a massive asteroid crashing onto their homeland. Azlant was destroyed, and most of the surface civilizations on the nearby continents of Arcadia and Avistan were devastated (but then, so too were the Aboleths.) Meanwhile, the Elves, who had foreseen the coming Earthfall, mostly fled to the sanctuary of Sovyrian on the planet Castrovel, while the underground-dwelling Dwarves took the impact as a sign from their gods to make their way to the surface, beginning the "Quest for Sky," driving their Orc rivals before them.
Eventually, the living God Aroden, last of the Azlanti, appeared. He helped bring humanity out of the Age of Darkness, helping to establish the vast Empire of Taldor. Recently, however, the prophesied return of Aroden instead brought weeks of natural disasters, including a massive storm that continues to blow to this day. The priests of Aroden suddenly lost their powers, and by all accounts, Aroden somehow had died. Thus began the current period in Golarion's history: the Age of Lost Omens, as storms wracked the world and prophecy lost its power.
I'm interested! How do I learn more about this game and its lore?
-- All of the rules published for the system are freely hosted on the Archives of Nethys.
-- The lore of the system, between both systems, can be found on the Pathfinder Wiki
How should I go about getting into the game?
The only two books needed to run the system are the core rulebook and the bestiary, with everything else serving as a supplement to those two base books.
While not a book, the Pathfinder community largely swears by the Beginner Box, which comes with an 80-page Hero's Handbook, a 96-page Game Master's Handbook, an introductory adventure, four premade characters (and four blank character sheets if you want to make your own hero), 100+ character & monster pawns, a full-color double-sided adventure map, four game reference cards to help players remember their actions, and a complete set of polyhedral dice.
Other core supplementary books include:
-- The Advanced Players Guide: a core rulebook expansion with new classes, ancestries, archetypes, etc. that greatly expands characters options.
-- The Bestiary 2 and Bestiary 3: expansions on the primary bestiary, offering more monsters to throw at your players.
-- The Gamemastery Guide: a source book covering new information, tools, NPCs, and rules systems (via variant rules & sub-systems) to add to your game.
-- Secrets of Magic: a magic-focused source book introducing the magus & summoner classes, in addition to a lot of new spells and magic items.
-- Guns and Gears: a equipment-focused source book introducing the inventor & gunslinger classes, in addition to new equipment.
-- Book of the Dead: an undead-focused source book dealing with all manners of undeath.
Alongside those books are source-books tied directly to Golarion, collected together under the Lost Omens line, as well as adventure paths, huge campaigns which consists of several books and could take months of real-time play. Each adventure path have freely available player's guide (designed to help players build fitting character for the campaign). The adventure paths available include:
-- Abomination Vaults: a Megadungeon for levels 1-10
-- Age of Ashes: an adventure path about cultists and dragons for levels 1-20
-- Agents of Edgewatch: an adventure path about guards protecting a city from horrible things for levels 1-20
-- Extinction Curse: a circus-themed adventure path for levels 1-20
-- Fists of the Ruby Phoenix: an adventure path centered around a fighting tournament, for levels 11-20.
-- Kingmaker: a sandbox adventure path for levels 1-20 about building a kingdom in hostile lands.
-- Strength of Thousands: an AP about students of a magical academy, for levels 1-20
Are they any additional tools or resources related to the game?
As character creation can initially seem confusing (especially if you are building a character above 1st-level), utilizing Pathbuilder [a character creation app] is sometimes recommended.
Beyond that tool, there are several Youtubers who cover the system in a variety of ways, offering guidance & insight into the rules as well as how to go about running the best game possible.
Hopefully that covers any immediately introductory questions!
Welcome to the Pathfinder 2E TTRPG system & community!!
Chairman Meow on
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...No Starfinder huh?
Another option for devouring all things PF-2E. My go to when questions come up during a session.
Thanks!
I've never really interacted with Starfinder, so I can't speak to it.
Now, the problem: Every time I look at PF2e resources, it's like looking at the collected works of the Library of Congress all at once. My brain sees holy shit there's too much here, and I nope back out. The problem I have coming from 5e is that, unfortunately perhaps, 5e hits just the right sweet spot for me between having enough mechanical crunch and not overdoing it. I'm an old hand to tabletop RPG play, and would boast I can DM any system given enough time; maybe it's my old age starting to set in but right now PF2e feels like it's just soo much to digest.
I've read that the Beginner Box is an actual, honest-to-goodness spot to start out, so I might pick that up at some point. Is there another place, short of just picking a spot and starting to devour the Archives of Nethys, that I can start to wrap my head around this game?
@Nips, are you having issues approaching the game from a general mechanics position ("what does this game work?") or as a potential player (how do I make a character?")?
I think it's mechanics, yeah. With 5e I had the luxury of playing, off and on, 3.5e into 4e and then getting into 5e at its very beginning. And then going very hard into 5e since.
With this game, I'm not sure where the best starting point for learning the rules and flow of the game is. It's just familiar enough that my brain is like "oh I can just jump in, it's like D&D", but then I look at the character sheet and my eyes roll into the back of my head. It feels like I need to start with a fresh, from-the-ground-up approach to help digest it all. And in my experience, the rulebooks for games like this are absolutely dogshit at that kind of learning.
IMHO the Beginner Box is probably one of the best designed I've seen. It is made more in mind for people completely new to TTRPGs, but if you are looking for a way to ease in I can whole heartedly recommend it as a start. Plus it is fairly cheap and comes jam packed full of stuff.
It also has a Solo Adventure, so you can familiarize yourself with how things work before you introduce it to your group.
edit- I'd also say that while PF2 is more complex than 5e I don't think it is that much more complex. Character creation may seem daunting because of choices, but I feel the everything else is fairly smooth.
For character creation, I think a video like this does a pretty satisfactory job at going over the basics (without delving into too much that might seem overwhelming):
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg)
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If you're used to running 5E, you're going to have a good time catching up quick with PF-2E. The Beginner Box really is a great way to introduce players and game masters to the system.
If you're going to be mostly game mastering, the CRB is where I would start. You only need to focused on chapters 1, 9, and 10 as far as boring reading goes. I would also have pf2easy (website) up while doing this. It is a one stop shop with a better interface than the archives IMO to quickly search any terms you want to learn more about.
For players, I would cut out a few hours and use pathbuiler 2E (app/website) and pf2easy (website), to familiarize yourself with character options. Everything in character creation is one of four types of feats as mentioned in the OP. All items, spells, and feats are comprised of traits. To learn how something works within the system, traits are your guideposts.
Example time.
Sudden Charge
Two actions icon
Flourish
Open
Stride
Strike
Type any of these terms into pf2easy and you have the pertinent details needed in an instant.
I find myself learning how my character interacts with the system a better way to learn the how and why a much better situation than just reading the rules.
-- The Core Rulebook
-- The Bestiary 1
-- The Bestiary 2
-- The Advanced Player's Guide
The next book I want to add is a fight currently between:
-- The Treasure Vault, their upcoming equipment-focused book
-- Lost Omens: The Mwangi Expanse (a setting book I have heard nothing but amazing reviews for)
-- The 20th Anniversary of Crown of the Kobold King (what looks like a solid intro campaign [lvl 1-6] that I could run a new group through)
It does, yes.
I'm not familiar with exact systems, but I've listened to the Dead Men Roll No Crits podcast (doing the Skull & Shackles PF1 adventure path using PF2 rules, really interesting stuff), and they use Roll20 for their combat positioning. It's fairly intensive with tactical positioning. Crits happen (on ANY roll) when you beat the target number by 10, or roll a natural 20. So you can crit succeed an attack, saving throw, skill check, etc.
The game is split into combat and exploration mode (I think there's a downtime mode as well). Exploration mode is where you do most of your skill checks and is stuff like scouting, trap disarming, information gathering, diplomacy, tracking, etc. There's a LOT of skill checks; they replaced having skill points with levels of particular skill mastery giving different static bonuses. There are also skill feats that let you diversify what you can do with your skills (like instead of using medicine you can get an herbalism upgrade that lets you use your Nature skill for first aid attempts).
The problems I run into are usually an ammo issue first, and also that said build isn't really actually as useful as I imagine/want in actual tactical play
Paizo also offers their pdfs for around $10-15, they don’t keep the digital versions the same price as the physical books.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Oh also ... arm mounted ranged weapons?! Do those exist??
I'm not aware of any arm mounted ranged weapons, but there's a new equipment/treasure book due out later this year with 50 new weapons, so there's no telling what the future holds.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Out of the box, no class can do a dual wielding throwing/melee combo like you want. To start with, melee weapons that can be thrown generally only have a range increment of 10ft, so every attack beyond 10ft is gonna have a stacking penalty. Second, and most important, the game is based around distinct 3 Action economy and Drawing A Weapon is an action (an Interact Action to be more precise). Ranger and Rogue specifically have a feat to get around this, Quick Draw, which combines the Draw A Weapon action and a Strike action into one, but that doesn't become an option till level 2. There's also the archetype Dual-Weapon Warrior, that lets you do more of what you're after but you don't get the thrown stuff till level 4. Duel Weapon Warrior is a archetype so you either need to forgo some of your class feats or play with a GM that uses the Free Archetype optional rule.
Outside of those issues and caveats, you can be pretty successful with that style. There are Returning Weapon Runes that you can buy, that return the thrown weapon to your hand after every Strike, and the Dual-Weapon Warrior feats give you most of the combat actions you'll need.
I just completed reworking the first section of my Grand Beast Generator - the Limbs, Locomotion & Asthetics section.
What is it?
The grand beast generator is a tool to produce believable, distinctive and evocative monsters on the fly in a few simple dice rolls. No mechanics are provided - it’s intended that you use the results as a visual overlay for existing enemy mechanics in your system of choice. It’s primary inspirations are the Monster Hunter series of games, Pacific Rim Kaiju, and some of the more believable forgotten beasts from Dwarf Fortress. It’s not a tool for producing Eldritch gribblies or things that man was not meant to know, though these still appear as edge cases! Which is perfectly cool
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tjFUTVmkVfR2U7Qorp9dDMnumATrBpXPFvzkW1XWpZU/
If anyone's got some spare time and feels like rolling some dice, could you take a crack at it and let me know what you think? Anything that feels weird or off? #Limbs is a big one right now on my mind, but i have some thoughts on fixing that. Also show me what you make!
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
I'm still learning the rules for Pathfinder 2E, so to facilitate that learning experience I'll ask the thread: what's a pop culture character you imagine would be relatively low-level that I should make using PF2E?
Therefore, with that in mind, I would pitch Drizzt Do'Urden. We all know what his deal is. What does his low-level incarnation look like in PF2?
This might be too easy, but I think it's a good bench to mark against. (That's how benches work, right?)