Pathfinder

Nope, deities were never released under the OGL.

Considering 'Amnesiac' is a valid background in pathfinder, what do people think would be a good way to play one without falling into cliché, cheesy, or unimaginative territory?

As long as the amnesiac isn't literally a baby for the most part and they've got something that ties them into the plot they're typically fine.

Honestly worrying about your character being a cliché isn't something I'd be all that concerned with as long as they're fun to play with and as.

A funny twist on it might be to have them just... be some random shmuck who hit their head a little too hard once. Subvert their expectations and those of the other players at a pivotal moment, no cool mysterious past, just what they choose to make of themselves from then on.

Edited by Chortleous on Sep 27th 2023 at 10:13:06 AM

So, I haven't really followed development of PF 2's revision. Any idea what barbarians, monks, paladins, and sorcerers aren't in the new book? Are they coming later? Too D&D?

Paladins, now called Champions, and the other classes you mentioned are coming with another book next year. There's a bunch of errata on their site here to make them all work right now where needed, but thanks to removing alignments and the mechanics they've put in place to replace them, re-writing at least Champions to put them in line with the Remaster will take a bit of time to do elegantly.

As to why these re-writes wasn't part of the Remaster now? Who knows. The Optimist says it's to ensure each class gets their proper playtesting and balance time. The Pessimist thinks they're stretching things out to sell more handbooks.

Edited by Hashil on Nov 16th 2023 at 1:38:07 PM

You want to know real reason?

Because usually pre production to release of book takes at least full year(I think I've heard somewhere two years, there is the pre production, production, printing, shipping, etc lot of phases) and in this case its about 7 months because they rushed out new core book after OGL debacle

What they did was that they used the remaster as excuse to do more than normal heavy amount of errata to classes from core book(because some of the classes already needed it, like wizards due to wizard schools being removed and alignment related classes) and advanced player's guide because just reprinting core book with everything ogl removed and replaced would have been kinda business suicide. But there is no way they could do 16 classes in 7 months.

(note that its not exactly good for business either because they are trying to preserve the original book lineup as well as they can, starfinder suffered most from this hence why the two final hardcover ap books got delayed, but likely we are going to see more editing errors in upcoming pathfinder 2e and lost omen books during this remastering period.)

Edited by SpookyMask on Nov 16th 2023 at 1:13:17 AM

They still sell the old books on their site, too, which is already confusing given the remaster's release yesterday is split between two books with the unhelpful names of "Pathfinder Player Core" and "Pathfinder GM Core", with no mention of a remaster in their titles. Figuring out what you need to buy to get started if you want to begin with the Remaster is a headache that's evidently only going to get worse with time.

So production time and costs aside, everything about their handling of the Remaster, at least in terms of getting it into customers' hands, is clumsy at best, right now.

Edited by Hashil on Nov 16th 2023 at 3:38:25 AM

Ye. And its not like they can stop selling old core book pdf, they can stop printing new physical hardcover books of it, but I'm pretty sure customers would be kinda mad if it was outright "banned" completely.

I think the removal of alignment is really about getting rid of Always Chaotic Evil, more than anything else.

That's a Tough Act to Follow, though. Menzoberranzan was a masterwork that essentially defined the D&D dark elf. I think that Paizo did it right by taking dark elves back to basics. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel on Menzoberranzan's unique culture, byzantine politics and utter thrall to Lolth, they focused on the core generic elements and made them demon-worshipping dominatrices. Boom, there you've got an easy-to-use generic evil race that can be slotted into any setting.

Edited by Ramidel on Nov 18th 2023 at 7:08:11 AM

I made them be gender role reversed underground cowboys with Dustwands at their hips and Desperados lurking in every corner.

That or mafioso.

Edited by God_of_Awesome on Nov 18th 2023 at 8:41:06 AM

So mechanically, anything different with the new book? I got the 2nd Ed PDF a few years back on Humble before anyone I knew was going to play it. Now I have a valid reason to own a physical book but don't want to be creating confusion with the GM if things have been rebalanced or reworked. Was it purely divorcing from the OGL or did they make a 2.5 book?

Its basically big errata book of removing OGL stuff and updating classes and some feats a bit and making adjustments to some rules.

Basically if you compare 3e and 3.5, it'd be "3e with big nice errata" rather than whatever 3.5 was.

Like honestly removal of alignment and D&D spell schools related mechanics is biggest change, stuff like "adjusting how recall knowledge works" is nice but isn't truly big change(its basically how some gm already run it, except its less vague than how it used to be), but there are lot of small neat stuff like armor/weapon profiency general feats scaling to expert. Most of classes play the same, though there are neat adjustments to them like with witch patrons.

Setting has bigger adjustments since there is split between "outright removed creatures, creatures that exist but aren't referred by specific D&D name, creatures that exist but will never be directly referred again"

Edited by SpookyMask on Dec 10th 2023 at 10:23:51 AM

"Creatures that exist but will never be directly referred to again" in a book where they're actually pulling some creatures? Huh.

I can give you examples of all three tbh.

1) creatures that are straight up removed from setting is drow

2) example of creatures that exists, but not referred by name is things like red dragons. Like Dahak the evil god of dragons is red colored dragon, but not Red Dragon.

3) Example of creatures that exists(because they haven't been retconned) but will never be directly referred to again includes stuff like inevitables. Like you can presume that pathfinder 2e still has owlbears, but they won't ever mention them again because that's D&D OGL thing.

I think some of those might get more Pathfinder branding at some point, but Monster Core basically seems to exist to include replacements for lot of OGL monsters.(stuff like there now existing some level gap with devils and demons)

Edited by SpookyMask on Dec 10th 2023 at 12:26:52 PM

Have drow been completely cut from Golarion now? Any replacements? Haven't gotten the book yet

Dayum, OGL just genocided drows.

Ok, thanks. Was thinking of picking up the book, the GM has the remaster too but the other players don't. I just wanted to make sure we weren't going to be quibbling over different rules.

Hehe, we're playing a published adventure and he kind of got mad at me for looking up the swimming combat rules. There's a sea drake by an underground lake so I let the table know about the penalties, but I brought them up for the monster as well and he seemed to get really offended that the monster would have penalties within its environment.

Which does seem very silly, I admit. But it had an acid attack that is weaker against swimming targets like the entire party. So maybe eating some penalties and being "sub-optimal" for where it's fought was part of the encounter design.

I'm personally very interested to see what sort of creations Paizo will conjure to replace the OGL ones. The new dragon types based on the types of magic are already quite interesting, I'd like to see what else they come up with.

I wonder if this will make Legendary et al into the true custodians of P F1e. Maybe they'll make a true PF 1.5 with their own setting and experience table and we'll have another fracturing of the 3e fanbase, while P F2e speciates into its own thing rather than D&D (and hopefully falls to irrelevance).

@Libraryseraph: Drow have been retconned with "Actually, serpentfolk empire isn't as shattered as we thought, the new information reveals old information to have been incorrect and majority of Sekamina is actually ruled by serpentfolk. Except that one weird city that serpentfolk avoid for unknown reason(because its the drow city from Second Darkness AP so apparently writers decided to be cheeky)" (they also added new cavern elves to darklands which basically replace things like Chaotic Neutral drow community from abomination vaults aka add more safe settlements in darklands). This is actually detailed in sky king's tomb ap articles.

(for record, Duergar got changed to Hryngar who instead of slavery have theme of pyramic schemes, they are basically nightmare capitalism whose culture is based on exploiting people below you for maximum profit. Deep gnomes' replacement is about the same but different name iirc.)¨

Yo, what the frick? Why are you edition warring? xD That's so rude

Edited by SpookyMask on Dec 11th 2023 at 4:35:00 AM

There's a difference?

Not really tbh

The difference between slaver raids and "how about you sign up this contract and we'll 'protect' you for small fee *holds knife to your throat* " is pretty small

(reminds me of the total warhammer orc laborer memes)

Edited by SpookyMask on Dec 11th 2023 at 7:55:27 AM

Edition war me in the parking lot.

But yes, I hope that P F1e continues as a line through third-party material.

As nice as that would be, it would probably have to be under the same OGL 1.0a license as Pathfinder 1e, and Hasbro has made sure nobody wants to keep publishing using that license.