Pathfinder 2nd Edition Playtest Blog Series (Part I)

Someone in the BDSM scene once told me that she thought I was a masochist. The idea of being wrapped in leather and whipped does not appeal to me at all.* In fact, that incident is half the reason I prefer the term GM to DM.

But, I recently got my hands on the playtest rules for the second edition of Pathfinder. Maybe I am an intellectual masochist.

After reading through it, I decided that I am going to do a series of blog posts on it. I am not promising one a day or anything like that, but I am going to try to get through them at a reasonable pace.

First, a little history:

I got into actual tabletop roleplaying with 3.5 edition D&D. Before then, I played the Infinity Engine games on my computer, but never actually sat at a table and played until 3.5. When 4E came out and I played a game of of it, I fled back to 3.5. Then, I discovered Pathfinder.

I thought that this was it: the holy grail of gaming. The perfect tabletop system. It is painful to write these words and I know many will think less of me. I cannot change the past and accept whatever judgment those wise and enlightened fellows who play OSR games and pre-2nd edition AD&D players oass upon me. I have repented and know that I will stand before God with a clean conscience, but I will accept any earthly punishments or penance for this sin.

Anyway, back to Pathfinder. Until I found 5E and eventually the OSR, I though Pathfinder was the best tabletop roleplaying game ever! I was willing to put aside the SJW crap that was introduced over time, because the core game was just that good. I was so, so very wrong.

That’s why I am doing this blog series. To cleanse my soul. If you ever meet anyone who wants to play Pathfinder, I want this series of blog posts to be something you can show them to dissuade them.

Now before I get into the rulebook proper, I do want to point out some good things that the second edition of Pathfinder (and especially the playtest) do well.

1) Offering the whole game to playtest for free with all 20 levels, all classes, a bunch of monsters, and several little adventures to test early, mid, and late game is incredibly generous.

2)The art is a little…busy, but it has grown on me. All the characters are covered in all kinds of weapons, trinkets, etc, but I kinda like it.

3) The “Heightened Spell” feature lets you cast a spell with a higher level slot to get additional benefits. For example, the standard “Cure Wounds” spell heals more hp depending on what level spell slot you use it for. No more having 47 different “Cure Wounds” spells (light, moderate, serious, critical, super important, urgent, it-is-six-thirty-in-the-morning-and-my-wife-NEEDS-coffee-right-freaking-now, etc).

4) This would be a decent system to convert into a computer game like the “Temple of Elemental Evil” game or “Low Magic Fantasy”.

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s go through the book section, by section. We begin, with the “Overview”.

Page 5 and we already have a major problem.

Story? STORY??? If anything, the dice tell the story. Epic tales of strange creature befriending the party through a reaction roll or attacking to the last. Cowardly gnolls who flee after the first death prompted a morale roll and foolhardy goblins who never wavered in their desire to kill the party. We take the results of the dice and create some sort of narrative from random chance. Just like real life, we try to make sense of the random events around us.

Playing a fantasy roleplaying game isn’t about telling a story, it is about kicking in doors and taking treasure. If you survive long enough, you ennoble yourself and become a king or queen! GOLD AND GLORY!

Now I don’t want to dwell on the SJW stuff too much, but this next section needs to be seen to be believed. I present to you (almost) without comment, the player and GM advice:

WTF?!

Surely, it can’t be that hard to make a character, right?

Is this a fantasy game or my taxes?

Character creation will take forever and it just plain wrong. By default, instead of rolling for stats like a proper game, or even a point-buy system, you start with 10 in every stat and add your ancestry (not race…can’t sound like the alt-right!) bonuses, background bonuses, and class bonuses. Only possible way to get negative in the default way to generate stats is via race..sorry ancestry!!!

Next time, I will talk about the ancestry options in Pathfinder. Spoiler Alert: Goblins are a core ancestry, at the same level as humans, elves, and dwarves.

Goblinblood Wars? Alliances with different races? Refugees? Just say it Paizo. Just say that you don’t like President of the United States Donald J. Trump.

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* If you are into that sort of thing, I am not judging you. Just saying that it is not my cup of tea.