Pathfinder Player and GM Core Are Now Available

The new Remastered core rulebooks will serve as a fresh entry point for Pathfinder 2nd Edition under the ORC license.

Today, November 15th, Paizo released the first two books of their remastered line: Pathfinder Player Core and Pathfinder GM Core. They will continue the line in 2024 with Pathfinder Monster Core and Pathfinder Player Core 2.

These books serve as a fresh entry point into 2nd edition while removing any carried over OGL content and incorporating several years of errata and changes to the game. This comes as a response to the concerns brought about earlier this year with the shifting conditions of the Open Gaming License and the huge influx of new Pathfinder players. This explosion of new players saw Paizo selling out of Pathfinder Core Rulebook in Q1 and triggered an unexpected new and final printing of the book.

Paizo used this opportunity to pull content from many of the previous books, along with errata and feedback from the developers and players, to replace the OGL books as they are phased out of production. They also streamlined the organization of the books to make it easier to navigate for old and new players alike.

The design team also took this opportunity to introduce new rules, heritages, and feats, as well as overhauling spellcasting.

We did a review of both books earlier this month. They are available now in standard hardcover, Special Edition hardcover, and hobby-retailer exclusive Sketch Cover hardcovers.

If you want to find out more about the ORC license, you can find it on Azora’s website.

 

[Retreater]

I think I've posted my opinion somewhere that I think Paizo could've applied the brakes a bit once it was clear that the OGL's revocation wasn't an imminent threat. While I understand wanting to get away from reliance on WotC, they had ample time to delay this for playtesting and editing.
In fact, it could've just been saved for PF3. Instead, fans and partners get a half-baked mid edition that likely makes the game worse.

 

[SteveC]

I think I've posted my opinion somewhere that I think Paizo could've applied the brakes a bit once it was clear that the OGL's revocation wasn't an imminent threat. While I understand wanting to get away from reliance on WotC, they had ample time to delay this for playtesting and editing.
In fact, it could've just been saved for PF3. Instead, fans and partners get a half-baked mid edition that likely makes the game worse.

Completely agree. It really looks like things happened so fast that changes weren't really well thought out. And, I'm not a lawyer for WotC, but if I wanted to sue Paizo I'd point out that PF2 is still derivative of D&D and use the example of "strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma." In that specific order. And so many other things.

I'm certainly not trying to beat Paizo up, but the Remaster hasn't, to my mind, improved the game ... at least as far as I've seen so far.

 

[ruemere]

The way I see it, WotC pushed Paizo under the bus of revoked license once, and they probably pulled all the stops to avoid it happening again.

Unfortunately, they - Paizo - probably invested a lot into remaster, and they are unlikely to remaster remastered edition.

Paizo executive mistakes would be:

• going with the print too early, digital editions would suffice during a forced transition period
• narrow vision. Securing safety of existing player base at the expense of potential new followers who still prefer P1 or play 5E.
• not working on improving user experience. You are 30 plus. You have a job and a family. Where do you fit 500 pages of rules in, or how do you convince the players to digest a character sheet?

Band of Blades:
Ref. Roll20 - Virtual Tabletop for Playing D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, TTRPGs

This is a modern character sheet. It contains all necessary character creation steps, character effects, stats.

I am not particularly fond of the system, but I love how it is organized.

Swords of Serpentine
Ref.
That's another take on modern fantasy gaming character sheet. The approach is more focused on stats, but it is still easy to follow the flow of the information, and finding stuff is easy even if your eyes are not as good as they were once.

----
The bottom line would be to ask Paizo dev team to have a mandatory time off from their home system, play and experience other stuff (even dreadful dredges of 5E would show some improvements, like fewer rolls).

 

[Reynard]

Why would a character sheet need character generation information on it? A character sheet should be organized for use in play. The detailed chargen infor related to the character sheet should be the focus of the character generation chapter of the book.

 

[ruemere]

Why would a character sheet need character generation information on it? A character sheet should be organized for use in play. The detailed chargen infor related to the character sheet should be the focus of the character generation chapter of the book.

Ah, but that's the beauty of it. Thanks to these little bits your character background becomes all the more integral part of your character. Your PC gets stats and the story on the same page. This also works wonders for your memory - a GM asks you a few story important questions, you record the answers and in a few easy steps you get a character, and you get to build important parts of your background.

This is of course important for the Band of Blades system, since you flesh out your world and setting by providing the answers. You don't need to follow this particular method under a different system. However, this is just to show an important technique, a way to build a concise yet rich description for your character - your choice of archetype comes with perks and consequences.

Please have a look at how a Band of Blades compaign is built:

Band of Blades: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again - The Indie Game Reading Club

We wrapped up our tenth and final session of Band of Blades this week, bringing our campaign to a close. The Legion arrived at Skydagger Keep for their final showdown with the endless hordes of the Cinder King. We were, perhaps, more excited for the campaign to be over than we were to see how…...

www.indiegamereadingclub.com

Anyway, I am not trying to steer people in this direction. What I want good folks like you to acknowledge that there are different ways to go about creating a sheet, recording stats, and they don't need to look like a cloud of boxes and numbers thrown togther in utter disregard of humane interface flow should work.

And here's a short article on this:

Principles of User Interface Design

An Open Source collection of Design Principles and methods

principles.design

Cheers.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think I've posted my opinion somewhere that I think Paizo could've applied the brakes a bit once it was clear that the OGL's revocation wasn't an imminent threat.

I'll just say I wouldn't have. Once that threat was waved around near my business model once, I'd make damned good and sure it never was again (and no, I don't think trying to use a generic "derivative work" case would have been the same; there's too much other non-enforced cases out there for that to fly, and has been for a long time).

 

[Staffan]

The way I see it, WotC pushed Paizo under the bus of revoked license once, and they probably pulled all the stops to avoid it happening again.

Unfortunately, they - Paizo - probably invested a lot into remaster, and they are unlikely to remaster remastered edition.

Paizo executive mistakes would be:

• going with the print too early, digital editions would suffice during a forced transition period
• narrow vision. Securing safety of existing player base at the expense of potential new followers who still prefer P1 or play 5E.
• not working on improving user experience. You are 30 plus. You have a job and a family. Where do you fit 500 pages of rules in, or how do you convince the players to digest a character sheet?

See, those things are only mistakes if you think that it would be imperative for Paizo to completely upend their flagship line only four years after the last time they did that. But all signs point to Pathfinder selling great. They keep pumping out stuff for it, and people seem to enjoy it.

Pathfinder is pretty good at being Pathfinder. There are things in it I'd prefer were different, but it's still pretty good at what it does, and it seems to be doing all right for Paizo. They have no need to turn Pathfinder into Band of Blades or Gumshoe, it is fairly likely that their designers would prefer not to write for a game like that, and such games generally have much less design space for expansions – which might be good for those customers who prefer to roll their own, but Pathfinder's always been about serving up sourcebooks, rules expansions, and most of all adventure paths.

 

[Velderan]

I think I've posted my opinion somewhere that I think Paizo could've applied the brakes a bit once it was clear that the OGL's revocation wasn't an imminent threat. While I understand wanting to get away from reliance on WotC, they had ample time to delay this for playtesting and editing.
In fact, it could've just been saved for PF3. Instead, fans and partners get a half-baked mid edition that likely makes the game worse.

That's incredibly comfortable to say for someone who has no stake in the outcome.

WotC backed down from revoking the OGL, but there's absolutely nothing that says Cynthia Williams eventual replacement might not come in with less concern about the PR and want it gone. Every book Paizo releases is just deepening their dependency on it, so what happens if WotC decided to challenge the issue in court? The sooner Paizo cuts ties and gets things under a license that isn't a potential future problem, the safer their business model is. Why not just make a 3e? None of us know how many books Paizo is selling, but them deciding to do Starfinder 2e with PF2e's mechanics is a pretty good indicator the system is selling well enough that they see a long future with it. I'm going to trust the folks with a lot more info than us are making decisions based on that information.

Completely agree. It really looks like things happened so fast that changes weren't really well thought out. And, I'm not a lawyer for WotC, but if I wanted to sue Paizo I'd point out that PF2 is still derivative of D&D and use the example of "strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma." In that specific order. And so many other things.

I'm certainly not trying to beat Paizo up, but the Remaster hasn't, to my mind, improved the game ... at least as far as I've seen so far.

I'd guess that given the amount of renaming they did, the ability names were probably deemed safe to use by their lawyers.

 

[Staffan]

I'll just say I wouldn't have. Once that threat was waved around near my business model once, I'd make damned good and sure it never was again (and no, I don't think trying to use a generic "derivative work" case would have been the same; there's too much other non-enforced cases out there for that to fly, and has been for a long time).

I think that once the threat was made, the remaster became a necessity. But I also believe that once it was withdrawn, with the way the online community virtually unanimously condemned Wizards for it, it ceased to be an urgent necessity. They could probably have given the remaster another 6-12 months to cook.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think that once the threat was made, the remaster became a necessity. But I also believe that once it was withdrawn, with the way the online community virtually unanimously condemned Wizards for it, it ceased to be an urgent necessity. They could probably have given the remaster another 6-12 months to cook.

Personnel scheduling and such is not something that turns on a dime. Once they'd committed to it, slowing it down was not likely to be a choice without cost, either.