One thing that you talk a little bit, but in my opinion is the most interesting part about pf 2e is that most of the spells have been reworked with the critical succes or failure mechanic, so now the saving throw ones are much more dinamic, because they basically can do 4 things instead of 2, for example there is a spell that even if the enemy succes the save stil affect them but only for one round, so you could choose to be secure and cast that or choose a more potent spell, but if they save you dont get as much. And the critical succes, although in a video game could be scary, it makes you feel the difference in power more clearly, and makes working to get a crit much more rewarding, instead of simply having a 5% chance.

I believe the 3 action system would be great for a game. I love 1E for it's crunchyness and many options, but 2E has more exciting turns IMO.

While not in the Core Rulebook (CRB), the coolest part of the Archetype system is that there are non-class based archetypes, generally themed feat groups that replace some of your class feats (at least 1, with your choice between generally 4-8 others). This adds various faction feats via archetypes, like Hellknight Armiger, Pathfinder Agents, or Aldori Duelists. There are also thematic archetypes that just add a new way to play to your character, such as Juggler, Pirate, or Beastmaster. There are also some that let you specialize in a specific aspect of your kit, like Dual-Wield Warrior, Elementalist, Familiar Master or Medic. The book that introduces most of these is the Advanced Player's Guide, which introduces new ancestries, classes, new feats for existing ones, non-class archetypes and lots more.

Another big change to 2e is that not many characters can make an attack of opportunity. For players, usually its Fighters only that start with it at level 1, with Barbarians and other martials taking it as a class feat at level 6. Because of this, combat is much more mobile since you aren't locked into melee with every creature. Great video!

PF2e is less a development of PF1e, and more bringing all of the good stuff that has been developed since D&D 3.5. You can see elements from D&D 5th edition, D&D 4th edition, and Paizo's Starfinder. I think it's stronger for that.

P2e is more complicated than 5th ed D&D. However in a CRPG context, PF2e seems just about right, and indeed rife, for adaptation to a CRPG.

As to the degrees of success & attacks beating AC by 10+ = crit. Coming from PF1e I can see how that would appear to be unbalanced because of min-maxing. But here's the thing Mortismal, PF2e is so well balanced that the difference between someone who builds a character well and a player who min-maxes, is *very* small. There is a ton of customization but it it is all very well balanced. Even the handful of options that are a little over balanced, are only by a small amount.

I've been playing D&D since the 80s. Pathfinder 2E is super great. I personally think Extinction Curse would adapt to the Kingmaker/WotR gather resources and allies while also completing your epic quest style extremely well.

I really like the sound of the 3-action system. Not only is it more realistic than the ubiquitous move->action system (in most TTRPGs, CRPGs, and even squad tactics games), more importantly it opens up greater tactical depth, particularly if they focus on action interactions (i.e. an action is modified by the other actions taken in the same round). I don't know to what extent action interactions are present in PF2e, because I haven't read the handbook (I plan on buying it now), but this could be a breakout system if they do implement them well. It could even shift the entire RPG and tactics genres away from the shallower move->action system.

I'm an avid PF1 player. I've tried 2e a bit and while I didn't hate it, it never grabbed me. I'm not likely to switch to 2e but this video did a great job of making me challenge my thinking and introducing the concepts that changed. This is to say great job and keep up the good work!

I'd like to note that considering magic specifically, low level spells do not become useless in 2nd edition. Since the spell DC for the saves etc is the same for all of your spells you can keep utility and control spells that do not have heightened effects in your lower spell slots and still make use of them (things like grease, gust of wind, telekynetic manoeuver...)

A few points I wanna touch on are: 1. Usually it's advised to not go for the 3rd attack because of the +/- 10 crit system, because in 2e if you roll 10 more (or crit fail if 10 less) than an enemy's AC value you get a crit. And this applies to anything from skills to spell. And Multiple Attack Penalty (MAP) is a thing. 2. While you wouldnt see things like 11 attacks, there are feats that evolve your action economy (which is a very important thing in 2e). Feats that either allow you to attack twice for one action with multiple attack penalty, feats that allow 2 attacks for no multiple attack penalty, or feats that allow a sort of movement and an attack for 2 actions 3. If you wanna get a tad bit deeper in 2e, I would reccomend the Advanced Player Guidebook(APG) and the Secrets of Magic book. Both add new classes and pretty intresting features or lore.

Having played a couple tabletop campaigns of 1E & 2E, I'd say that 1E's advantages are entirely in character creation. PF2E has far more engaging moment to moment combat & general gameplay due to not being able to just min-max your way out of needing to play tactically. Much of the time I was playing 1E I would activate my class abilities at the start of combat then move up to a target and Full-Attack each turn. Combat in 2E is more mobile due to lack of Full-Attacks, attacking as much as you possibly can is discouraged due to stacking penalties, encouraging you to mix in different moves such as skill actions or class feats. Enemy design in 2E is also very weakness oriented, there is usually a better and worse way to approach each enemy. One weakness I would level against 2E is that combat against one single powerful enemy tends to strain the maths - combat against multiple enemies usually feels a lot more fun.

I enjoy the PF2E system, but star finder would make a great setting to change things up

I think item damage for shields specifically might be implemented but streamlined as "gets repaired after the fight". As for the criticals, I think it would work fine in a video game version. Fights would be balanced around what level the party is supposed to be, getting cumulative bonuses to increase attack rolls is much, much harder in 2e compared to 1e.

I like PF2 far more than D&D 5e for tabletop and I would love to see a PF2 video game. Starfinder is too crunchy for me personally for tabletop, but a Starfinder video game would be much more palatable just like D&D 3e/PF1 is easier for me as a video game because there's so much to keep track of I feel like I'd have to be a human computer to run them properly at the table. PF2 is much easier to GM for compared to the other systems mentioned (yes, even 5e).

Best thing about 2E is that while many might object to it. 5E crowd might think it's too complex (looking at you PuffinForrest). Pathfinder one fans think it's too simple or not enough choices yet. In the end, it doesn't really matter because PF2ed is actually really fun to play if you put aside your biases and embrace it's strengths. My groups, coming from either system love the PF2Ed compared to all other d20 systems. It's simply no contest, it's a better designed game. It's not flawless, but it's a way better system than most in the genre, both in terms of balance but also in running and enjoying. So no matter the press or the lackluster start, it's going to win people over. Because it's just fun to play.

I was actually watching some gameplay of Chaosgate, and instantly thought about the PF2E system. I'm not super familiar with the way its coded, but it looks like a lot of the tactical fundamentals are already inline with the ttrpg rules. Both follow a 3 action approach, both have a tactical grid, they have equipment that modify stats (albeit vastly fewer between) and the character progression lends itself toward a more conventional approach like Pathfinder. If nothing else, I think that'd be a good place to start for a potential CRPG version of Pathfinder 2E's system.

Simplified action economy seems juicy for CRPGs on PC for sure. I love 2e.

I really love the 2E system especially compared to DnD, i really hope that we can see it in a video game as well, from what i have seen 2E has a lot more rules and systems in place that allow players and DMs to have a lot of options for interesting gameplay, it is more complex and requires more understanding of the systems so you can fully take advantage of it but when you get it it will be hard to live without it, my personal favorites are the 3 action combat system and ancestory system DnD 5e in comparison is more streamlined, it's relatively simple to pick up and play what probably also made it as popular as it is now but it requires a lot more improvising and homebrewing if you want to do more complex scenarios

The 4 levels of success, the 3 action economy, and the lack of attacks of opportunity on most monsters are in and of themselves revolutionary. Movement matters, turns are varied, bonuses are more impactful.

As someone who has been playing 2e for a while and loves crpgs, you have me stoked for a future where we have a crpg based in 2e. I feel like the combat could feel similar to divinity os 1 & 2 in terms of flow due to the action mechanics.

critting by rolling over 10 will not happen often, since if the CRPG will take rules from the system itself, buffs & debuffs are limited to 3 categories and only take the highest of each. min-maxing will never guarantee crits, because in the system itself has a limitation to prevent that from happening.

Love seeing my Mortismal videos right in front tab. Also, through the ashes is really good so far out of the caves.

Really looking forward to the starfinder video.

Thanks for making this. pf2e is great and it´s made in a way that is fair and consistent across 1-20 levels. It´s modular in nature and that´s much easier to code. I think it all comes to Owlcat wanting to do it. Pf2e has proven that it´s a solid choice.

If you add a "0:00" timestamp in the description, KZfaq will show the timestamps on the player bar too

I'm glad you made this one! Character choice at creation and archetype-multiclassing, and of course the 3-actions system, are the best parts of the system in my opinion. I've always used the basic step-by-step abilities repartition, i find it good after using it (i had my reservations about it at first, before playing the system). In a system quite bound in terms of difficulty of succeeding actions in game, it's best to be able to control and not feel like being useless in a party because of rolling low ability scores.

HOLY. I had no idea you made videos of this length! Intriguing!

Regarding the crit system being abusable, pf2e combat is designed around exploiting that system. Bonuses are conservative and tough to stack, with the main strategic focus of combat being to assemble those bonuses.

Fun fact: I found your channel from me looking for help on how to understand the “rules of the universe” with WOTR. So good point on how it can be hard to learn.

PF2 already plays more like a video game than any ttrpg I've played and I can't wait for a developer to give a direct adaptation of the system a go. Still, lot of lessons that can be learned from the system in general.

Why is this so interesting?? I can’t stop watching!

I have no idea what you’re talking about but it is extremely interesting.

Looks like it could make a solid foundation for a next game. Some streamlined aspects of it have the potential to attract more players. One thing I noticed though is that there are less classes in 2e, but perhaps with enough archetypes, most of the play styles could be covered. Now, if only in the next game they added a Gunslinger class with Spellshot archetype, that would be great!

Yes! I want the next Owlcat RPG to use Pathfinder 2e so, so much. It's an amazing system with excellent balance that doesn't sacrifice any customisation depth ♥️

So, late game experience both running and playing? It holds up incredibly well. Due to things expanding out as opposed to becoming rocket tag, when a party does well it's less on their feat choices and more on just how well they worked together to create a good combat team.

Well I'm convinced. The multiclass stuff is very apealing and such, but really if this can just make it a bit easier to more consistently balance the game so I only need to set my difficulty once rather than having to raise it up for most of the game, and then drop it to something more reasonable whenever I find a boss that is just effectively immune to magic effects at higher levels that would be quite nice.

The crit rule works because you can't min-max 2e, pretty much at all. The game doesn't have a bunch of floating modifiers and what have you. You'll always have level+proficiency+item+ability mod+status bonus+circumstance bonus as the result of your stats. Status and circumstance bonuses really don't go above 2 and are primarily from taking certain actions or casting certain spells. In leveling your primary stat goes from 18 to 22 and then you can equip one item which increases it to 24 and it cannot go higher than that at all. You end up with 20level+7ability+6prof(8 if legendary)+3item for +36 to rolls for every martial but gunslingers and fighters, and +38 for fighters and gunslingers. Spellcasters end up with +35 because they get no item bonuses, and then another +2 and +2 can be gained from spells or actions. Spell DCs end up at 45, and AC for the tankiest character the Champion ends up around 10+6+3+20+8, resulting in 47 without a shield or status/circumstances bonuses. The math is absurdly tight here. You get to these numbers no matter what you pick in terms of feats and what not. Min-maxing is almost non-existent so the crit rule would work

I would love to see Pathfinder 2e's Blood Lords campaign made into a video game. It'd rival tyranny in the whole "You get to be the bad guy" theme

Honestly I can see why this would get 1E fans offside because it changed quite a bit. But these changes sound like they would transfer into a video game perhaps better than 1E. Would be interesting to find out.

PF2E sounds a lot like 5th edition dungeons & dragons. Also, I acknowledge that 4th edition dungeons & dragons was a commercial failure. But I enjoyed it; there was so much to do with each character in combat. Each character would get two or three at will powers, and build up encounter powers and daily powers as they progressed. Even a level 1 fighter would have three or four different attacks that they could make, with different effects and parameters. It's a real shame that it hasn't been adapted into any video games; the rules and mechanics probably lend themselves better to a video game format than they do table top.

Ohhh a longer video. Awesome

I don't know, the community I used to be a part of really got mad when 2E came out because apparently when Pathfinder came out something was said about never needing a new edition, I'm not that naive I know things can be improved and made better, truth is only worry I had with 2E is I hear there isn't much depth and characters all end up the same in the end depending on there class, I haven't played so I don't know.

Appreciate the vid, it's an interesting topic and I'd love to see a PF2E video game someday. That being said, I wanted to respond to some of the history of the tabletop systems you laid out in the beginning, and especially with regards to the perceived popularity of the different systems. I think it's important to keep in mind that things like the popularity of TTRPG systems are very hard to track, and sometimes a narrative takes hold regardless of whether it can be proven to be true. First of all there's the issue of what metric you're using. It is playing time? Number of people playing each system? Books sold? Total revenue? Companies don't release definitive sales data, so there's a lot of speculation. Best metrics we have for games played come from places like Roll20, but there's probably a biased sample there. There is certainly a vocal part of the Pathfinder fanbase that stuck with 1E and rejects 2E, but it seems like 2E is pretty popular overall, at least by the evidence that they continue to release new content at a good rate, plus growth of things like the 2E subreddit.

About the character creation in 1E vs 2E, this might just be myself, but I actually love the complexity that Kingmaker/WotR have due to them being rather rule heavy. To me it's kinda what distinguishes those games from other cRPGs, and also lets them be more replayable than almost any other game in the genre. Not the rules in and of themselves, but the game that came about because they had to adhere to those rules. The complexity is a bit of a barrier for new players, and I wouldn't fault Owlcat for going in the direction of trying to bring in new players; but for me personally, the complex system allows for so much freedom and variety in your character builds, it's just fun. Also I think just the fact that it's a video game rather than PnP means a lot of the tedium that can come from it being rules-heavy is removed because the computer (or console) is doing all of the boring math automatically for you.

The 3 action economy is great, although the trap to attack three times will remain lol. I'd like to see how they would handle being concealed and hiding and taking cover, could be really great in a game

Sounds A LOT like DnD 5e tbh. That said, Solasta uses that system and it works pretty well and is very fun. so yeah, lets try PF2E baby!

Regarding the Degrees of Success system. I don't think it would be as broken in a video game as it may seem at first. The way that bonuses stack makes it so you can only ever really get a plus +3 to your roll and min maxing to make one stat super high like in 1e is not really possible.

Mortismal, understandably having played Kingmaker and WotR you would assume there were means for PC's to get to hit rolls 10 higher than you should have at your tier and crit 80% of the time. PF2e doesn't really work that way. Assuming appropriate tiered magic items for your tier of play your attacks could only theoretically be made up to a roughly 6 higher, 2 for having an ally flanking, 2 for having that same ally use aid (which requires an action, a reaction, AND a roll to grant bonuses), and a divine spell buff I forget the name of that grants a +2. All of that together on a fighter would be really strong for sure but the game is designed around the players doing stuff like that (I call it the "buff the fighter" strat, using probably a monk and cleric with the former flanking and setting up aids and the latter applying buffs for the fighter to do 100+ dmg a turn)

This sounds like it would be a much easier set up. It sounds like there will be other trade-offs but I spend far too much time on the character screen right now.

Sounds good second ed ftw🥳 Good show sir!

I've been saying it for a year now that I'm using the rules in tabletop. PF2 is the perfect set for a videogame if you ask me

PF2e is such a good system.

I'm a huge fan of tabletop rpgs. Played a bit of pathfinder 2e, fun game. I found some of the elements of the game to be a bit cumbersome for play at the table. A computer tracking all of the conditions would be great. I think it's a strict improvement of 1e though. I think forbidden lands would also be a really good game to look at for this sort of thing.

The thing that i enjoy the most about the games is how much you're able to multiclass and make these goofy builds that ended up being more effective than theyd appear. Also, perhaps I missed you saying this, but did they rework the way that feats are given out? It sounds like you need a lot more feats with this system, especially if you want to "multiclass", which sounds like you need to invest multiple feats to multiclass. I don't really have a problem with the other systems, but specifically the character creation and feat stuff sounds negative to me, despite the good points you brought up

THanks for the video Mortismal. I wanted to ask few things about Pathfinder 2E 1) do we still get flat-footed AC touch AC, regular AC, or is it just one type of AC? 2) How does flanking work? Do we need just more than 1 attacker, or does one of the attackers have to be at the opposite direction , as it is with 5e? 3) Do we get advantage disadvantage mechanics? 4) How does sneak attack work? 5) Is the conceilment system simplified as well, or is it the same? 6) if multiclassing is done by feats, does that mean that if we pick another class feat we don't gain any progression in our own class? That is to say, for example if my main class is a wizard and I start picking up fighter class feats, will that hamper my wizzard spell progression levels? Overall the 3 point system sounds really cool and I think it will make the game much easier, because speaking in practical terms it is very difficult to have more than 3 martial characters in one party, since the game forces you to have utility casters in 1E. This leads to the event of being outnumbered in every fight, since most enemies are martial types as well. That 3point system sounds like martial classes get nerfed and spell casters get buffed, which means that enemies will get nerfed as well. (no longer getting flanked by 2 meriliths and eating 20 hits per round, for example...), while at the same time casters will be as strong if not stronger than martials late game, which I personally find a nice touch :)

Great video :D

That proficiency rank reminds me a lot of the ADnD 2E weapon specialization (expertise for non-fighters) , where you invested specialization points in order to get benefits from using a weapon and proficiency levels could go from non-proficient (zero points) that back then actually gave you a penalty when using a weapon that way, proficient (that gave you no bonuses or penalties), to specialized that gave +1 to hit, +2 to damage, all the way to grand mastery, which gave you something like +3 to hit +3 to damage, + 3 to attack speed, + 1 extra attack and increase of damage die by one (say a 1d8 axe would do 1d10 damage).

Paizo watching this going "write that down, write that down"

Great video

There is a lot to like, and if its really as good and balanced in character gen as you'd review, id be all in. I love the idea of mixing and matching a few mechanics from classes together and in most games just struggle to stick to what the core classes because i want to trade out things. Toybox has been very helpful for wotr (as has the greatradiance mod that i struggled with till learning c# cares if its a tab or 4 spaces...) but having a game that not only allows my mix n match but it can keep up with the other 'traditional' builds? Shut up and take my money!

Long. Form. Content. Hell yeah :]

PF2E so far (few sessions deep into a campaign) seem bit more of a system where you have problem hitting monsters when you don't make character with a good idea before-hand.

1e is too unapproachable to beginners, ever since the Critical Role era, who started with pathfinder but switched to 5e DnD because there was so much to track, 2e is way easier to play and introduce to new players, of course it doesn't have the decades of content 1e has but the new things 2e is putting out is great ngl.

I think Archquest uses pf2e. There is a demo out. I saw it on some yt channel, never played it myself.

I play PF2 and its awesome. Will be great in a video game About crits you are kinda right, but big monsters can crit too and it reaaaaly hurt

Now I really wanna play wrath of the righteous in 2E. maybe there will be a mod overhaul someday.

I genuinely want to try out a pnp game of 2E for the experience. Through from the distance there are a few little things here and there I don't likem race is probably the weirdest change and I'm not terribly fond of it. That said im nit against moving on to a new system if it works and isn't like DnD 4E. Honestly I'm surprised Wotr even used 1E as 2E has been out for a while. I guess at least Paizo didn't pressure Owlcat to use 2E as is base, but it's still kinda surprising.

I have been looking to get into the Pathfinder: WOTR video game. Do you recommend reading the 1E rule book first or just learning the rules from playing the game? I have basic knowledge of how cRPGs work but have never played Pathfinder.

it would be nice if owlcat converted their games to 2e.

Sounds like 5ed and 3,5ed mix. Dont know how I feel about it, 5ed is too simplistic and primitive, this might be more fun

I have to disagree on the point that 2E supposedly retains the core pillars of Pathfinder/3.5E. 3.5E - as its predecessor 3E - were still much more concerned about role-playing as a simulation of a world with systems. By that I mean they were more concerned with "fluff" like detailed tables that describe walls, doors, windows, masonry and give so many features of the world statistics to simulate a tangible game world. In my experience 2E (like 5E) is far more of a "super hero" style system that successfully focuses on making every moment "exciting" rather than the more grounded older editions.

I like to read TTRPGs books for fun, to discover new sistems and cool rules to import. I remember reading 2E core and just thinking It was very different, but also the core rulebook was, like "scattered". So many options, around the book, you had to frantically go back and forth multiple times to complete a character . Maybe If you play online and use 3rd party tools it's easy. But I prefer to play with actual pen and paper. I tried to create a test charachter, and after an hour of reading through feats and rules I realized I missed a bunch of things from my race and ancestry and I had to basically start from the beginning, because my ancestry changed some of my skills and so on.

If they would somehow implement this into the WoTR, I would actually try to get into it for like a fifth time and maybe actually succeed at something in the game

I don't like the idea to have to use action to benefit from a shield.

From the video it wasn't clear how PF2e could fix this, but just cut down on the dips into thematically unrelated classes. Like a hunter who also has a single level of vivisectionist. Or a sorceror who is also sneaky... but _also_ has a single level of vivisectionist. It was like someone had offered every character free Skillshare classes on vivisection or something. It made no thematic sense. Basically, you could tell the players who had spent hours planning out their characters before starting from the players who just wanted to get playing. And nobody likes homework.

My cons for Pathfinder is; that it’s a more colorful, lighthearted and also bland experience.. it’s the more goody two-shoes approach, compared to DnD… The pro for me is variety. I love the DnD system, and WoTC has really bothered me lately and it has shown deterioration and I don’t see it getting better. It’s great to have just one true alternative, that still has some grit to it. I personally like a darker, mature, gritty experience, like Baldur’s Gate 2 is. Your companions are complex (despite an alignment system), that has been traumatized by some pretty dark stuff, and you experience how they cope and improve, I’m a sucker for that. If I can get the atmosphere of Bg2 as my standard rpg, I’d be content all the time.

honestly pf1e was always the worst part about the pathfinder games for me and 2e seems to fix a lot of those issues, I really hope owlcat implements 2e in the future

So Casting is dependent on Dex and [Caster Magic stat]? Didn't know that.

I'm a little curious. Is Kingmaker still a buggy mess on Xbox? I want to play it but don't want to waste time redownloading if it's still a mess.

Those mechanics are so hard to completely understand, I play without knowing 70 percent of things. Stil have a blast though

And also there are skill feats…

casters not using dex, please! xD

As someone who's just coming from the perspective of a gamer, in other words from playing Kingmaker and WotR, there's 2 things I really don't like about base pathfinder, or really just one, buff stacking. Like, by endgame if you don't have 10-15 active buffs on every character you're doing it wrong. The rules for stacking are obnoxious too, like, do you have a source of armor AC and shield AC? How many sources of dodge and natural armor AC can you get? 5e completely solves the issue of buff stacking with concentration, it simplifies buffing, but at the same time it adds a strategic layer to combat by making you decide what you really want to concentrate on. Don't get me wrong though, there are definitely things I like more about Pathfinder too. Like there are more archtypes. For example the gith type sword mage archtype isn't very well represented in 5e compared to pathfinder. In Pathfinder I can play a magus (Eldritch scion being my preference) and do a lot of cool things, but in 5e equivalents like the Eldritch knight just feel like slightly spicier versions of their base class. I also happen to like some of the complicated rules, like needing dex for your ranged touch attacks on your mage. Or like how certain types of attacks can bypass some armor, like ranged touch attacks bypass armor AC, or attacks against flat footed opponents bypass dodge AC. I'm not sure from this video if 2e really fixes my main issue with Pathfinder which is the buff stacking, but I'd like to play some 2e games anyways just to see what they would be like.

I think the multiclassing issue is a bit overblown. A lot of the builds that multiclass into a bunch of classes aren't really viable until later levels. So you're either not going to have much fun for a long time or you'll have to use a different build to get to a high level and then respec.

Pathfinder game idea video that’s 30 mins long??? *cracks knuckles*. Let’s do this haha

The only problem I see with 2e, in a vídeo game scenario, is lack of baggage. 1e has close to ten years of stuff, don't remember the exact number now, but it's SO MUCH STUFF. It would be hard to not make it seem like a downgrade from WotR. Unfortunately this is a problem with any "New Edition" and the why 1e was so popular on tabletop, as you could slap 3.0/3.5 material on It with little effort.

PF2E is "Fine", it's a perfectly serviceable game, but it suffers from trying to simplify PF1E but remain more complex than 5E. The hope was probably that they would pull people from both games into this middle point, but I think it more likely that people who like complexity are happy with PF1E and the people who like streamlined play are happy with 5E, and this leaves PF2E as kind of an awkward hybrid. I love PF1E because the mechanics allow you to create characters that are actually good at what their story tells. That includes things like being an athlete, a skilled artisan, and can create characters that are mechanically diverse despite having many points of similarity. I abhor 'dedicated stats' for this reason: Imagine two wizards: One is bookish, studious, a person who exists mostly in the realm of their mind. The other is much more physical, they enjoy field research, collects observational data, and perhaps enjoys sports and nights out on the town. The first may not have the dexterity to lay out precise attacks, and may instead rely on powerful spells to overwhelm the mind or body of their opponents, while the second shoots rays with deadly accuracy, forms and flings blades of elemental force; in short two wizards that may be the same race, same gender, same age... yet are completely different both narratively and mechanically. Dedicated stats just homogenize the game mechanically. If you're a Wizard, pump intelligence... end of story. I do get it though. A lot of people who play PF1E just play it as an optimization game, and I've seen 'rules as written' vs 'rules as intended' arguments completely derail a session or even disband gaming groups permanently, so rules streamlining is something I can see the appeal of. Even Owlcat games, as much as I love Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous (and I do love both), it never fails to amaze me the amount of work Owlcat put into breathing as many options and choices as they could into their games, only to invalidate the bulk of the options through their gameplay choices (especially in Wrath of the Righteous). Their choice to embrace min-maxing and optimization, even at fairly low difficulty settings, makes me think they may not be listening to enough people.

Paizo needs to stop letting the pathfinder games to be developed in Unity, it's not built for a game like that and WotR really suffers for it. Develop an engine, it will be so much smoother.

I like a lot of 2E *on paper.* The three action system is great, and I love the changes to magic weapons and armor. In pracitce... eh. In my experience, you never feel strong or heroic. You will never reach a point where your attacks have a *very good* chance of hitting, or your enemies have a *very good* chance of missing. It feels like you have to min-max in order to have a 50% chance of success at the thing you're supposed to be good at. AC is more about avoiding crits than avoiding hits, and when (not if) you get hit, enemies deal huge damage, which means a healing session after every single fight, which would be unacceptably tedious in a video game (I'm my party's healer). I'm not sure why spells have an entry for when the target rolls a critical failure, because that will never happen. It feels like they emphasized balance so much, they forgot about the fun.

My opinion on 2e is: its fine. I love the 3 action system and success levels with crit etc etc. i like the skill approach and proficiency levels of trained, expert etc etc and skill feats are often cool additions. I absolutely hate caster changes; from my experience no matter the level casters are inferior combat wise to physical builds and before level ~7 they're abolutely useless, especially if theres more than 1-2 combats per ingame rest. Wizard has always been my fav class, but here its so bad :( I also hate the balance. player characters are very limited with hard caps on specific values; bonus to attack, ac etc etc. Monsters arent. you often find monsters at level where lets say maxed out ac for pc is 25, the monster has +19 attack and abilities to attack multiple times without penalties. simply not fun to be critted 2 times every turn as a full ac tank. Saves on mosnters are also realy weird. theres cr -1 or 0 monster (mephis or sth) that has saves of 19! fucking nineteen! my team's sorcerer has not hit a successful spell on non trash(one that does not appear in big groups, like hobgoblin or so) mob last 4 session. sure spells usually have some minor effects even on succesful save but thats a lot of strain on the rest of the team. Also without optional rule of free archetype/dedication feat alongside class feat the character progression and variety of builds is so poor that 5e without supplements felt like a intricate character buildier

Hopefully someone makes a game cause apparently owlcats has no interest in making a 2e game.

The combat system was and still is my main problem with D&D and Pathfinder-based RPGs. Combat success is 95% based on having the most important buffs and debuffs up, which is a chore because many of them only last for a short time, and you can't cast them willy-nilly because of spell slots and the need for resting. Player HP is not a resource but something that ideally shouldn't even get touched. It's fiddly and complicated and doesn't translate well into video games. The most exciting thing for most players is finessing builds to make combat less boring and static.

free comment.

Mortismal, I really like your videos. Don't want to be rude, but do you think 2E's frosty reception has anything to do with all the wokeness talk? Curious, 'cause I think you didn't mentioned anything about that topic

wait! it's a 30-minunte+ video. Well, i'm just gonna say as a long-time ttrpg player, no system is truly great. Developers catering to a specific RPG system simply because they want to capture its audiences nowadays. Pathfinder game series and BG3 as recent examples have shown that in pursuit of a popular system, they are willing to sacrifice its meaningful progressing, pacing. I play these for the story and the experience but when its RPG system brings only monotony, mediocrity to the equation, it will never be the same.

Not a fan of the 2nd Edition rules. It seems to me that Paizo tried to make Pathfinder more like DnD 5E, which I don’t like at all, most of the time. It is also funny that, Pathfinder which was embraced by people who did not like the supposed dumbing down of DnD 4E is now also dumbing down to appeal to the most common denominator. It is telling that most pen and paper groups and Owlcat stuck with Pathfinder 1E.

2e is decidedly more boring and it turned off a lot of the older players that moved from 5e to pathfinder in the first place. Combat is the worse off as it felt like step 1, step 2, step 3 rinse and repeat until you end combat in the majority of scenarios. The lack of character customization also killed off a lot of the RP flavor

2E is repetitive and boring. Same 3 actions. They took the micromanagement and small tweaks out and made it so linier; that you can't really create you own hero.