I analyze the Pathfinder Core Preview PDF! (Rules Lawyer)

hi I'm Ronald the rules lawyer and paiso has just released a PDF previewing the changes in the Pathfinder remaster what I'm calling version 2.1 the first two books are coming out in November so I'm going to go over the major things that stood out to me and were the most interesting things to me and have some editorial comments as well so to remind us all it is a new addition as I call it however a 2.1 because the fundamental math is unchanged one major motivation for it is wizards of the Coast's policy towards the open gaming license and the danger of and the need to protect themselves by moving away from language and other things that could be a basis for accusing paizo of violating Wizards of the Coast intellectual property rights it appears to me they're following a lawyer's advice to be very safe if there's no reason not to make yourself safer why not do it but this occasion has also been seen by the Pisa designers as an opportunity to revisit the design and make incremental improvements to the game are they succeeding well we can't really know until the books come out in November but this is a preview of what we'll see so we have some tidbits to evaluate and get upset over as some folks clearly are being uh I saw the discussion on the Pathfinder subreddit and there was a prevailing opinion that the preview is going to Nerf spellcasters are they well I'll cover that when I get to those parts of the PDF but I'll say this for now it reminds me of some of the upset and uh anxiety around an early play test for the next Edition for DND removing Feats that gave martial characters plus 10 to damage they were saying it was a nerfing of Martial characters I thought that reaction was premature but I also thought Wizards of the Coast needed to be clearer and conveying their design goals and why they're making those changes I think there is some deficit here as well that paiso could be a little more transparent on what they're trying to do with some spells so we'll see what I'm going to cover is largely going to be in the order of what is covered in the PDF basically changes in terms the removal of alignment changes to focus spells the removal of wizard schools changes to spells and changes to creature abilities alright so here's a list of a lot of the words are going to be changing in the remaster first ability modifier strength dexterity wisdom is now going to be called attribute modifier I see their justification which is to make them more obviously different from the term abilities which is used throughout the game I like this ability rolls off the tongue better but then you kind of have to say ability score for someone to know what you're talking about in the game attribute is shorter so thumbs up a tack of opportunity is is now going to be called reactive strike flat-footed is now going to be called off guard which I think makes more sense to people new to the game and I think is more in keeping with the fact that it lowers your AC but not your reflex saves I like it the material plant is now the universe metamagic is now spell shape which I think is more evocative negative and positive are now void and vitality respectively and they give an explanation for this but when I ran a game recently four people new to Pathfinder and I said they took negative damage they joked that they were healed so I can see the reason for this change that negative and positive we may be used to these terms but for new players not necessarily I am unhappy though that they both start with the letter V generally I don't like opposites having some kind of superficial similarity spell level being spell rank is a welcome change no longer will level refer to two scales within Pathfinder and counteract level will also be called counteract rank there's a lot of other little changes to move away from the ogl but other small practical appreciated changes that you can see if you look closely but this is a summary so I'll move on for attribute boosts if you already have a plus four or an 18 in the current system and you get one boost that doesn't increase your modifier it would increase your 18 to a 19. it looks like there will be a box to check on the new character sheet to indicate that you have a partial boost something I was also surprised by was I thought that ancestries were all going to be universally having two free boosts like humans currently but that does not look like like what's going to happen it says dwarves will get an attribute boost to their constitution and wisdom and it says that attribute flaws will still exist and will likely come from your ancestry alignment will be removed and be essentially replaced by edicts and anathema no longer will Every Creature need to be placed on these two abstract Universal metaphysical axes so law and Chaos are gone as opposing abstract forces arguably you can say good and evil are now represented by holy and Unholy however that status is reserved to select creatures such as Devils celestials or clerics who choose to sanctify and sanctification is the process by which a character who worships a deity can make it so that they're more effective against the opposite so let's say a holy cleric wants to be more effective against Unholy creatures but there's a trade-off in that Unholy creatures also are likely to do more harm to that cleric also some deities will say that you must choose to sanctify whereas others will say that you can choose Gods like Kate and kalian edicts and anathema are also voluntary and you're encouraged to take them they're kind of like backgrounds from DND 5e they give guidance and prompts for your role play and it looks like ancestries will have some listed for them so for example popular edicts for the orc ancestry would be to become even stronger share knowledge you run through pain destroy the undead for most characters these are entirely optional and it doesn't sound like there's any limits to how many you can take but as is implied there is no mechanical consequence to violating these edicts or anathos since alignment is going away so is alignment damage which under the current rules had the problem of doing zero damage to creatures that are not of the opposite alignment limiting its use they are now replaced by Spirit damage which affects spiritual Essence and what I found interesting here was the example they give it said that Spirit damage does not harm creatures that have no Spirit such as constructs and that made me think to myself huh we already have damage that only affects the living which currently is called negative damage and will be called void damage so how is this different well this obviously affects ghosts who are not alive it's going after the spiritual Essence even to the point that if you are possessed by somebody else and someone casts Spirit damage on you it only affects the possessor not you but anyway that stood out to me that this idea of spirit is different from being alive so I thought that was worth pointing out but the key thing about Spirit damage is that it now affects all creatures and spirit damage many effects that do it also have the Sanctified holy or Unholy trait meaning that if you are Sanctified you will do extra damage when dealing with the opposite so while The Limited usefulness of alignment damage is gone the ability to trigger weaknesses is not it is now clear that archetypes will require you to take a total of three Feats in that archetype before you can get a dedication feed from another one because it's now part of the dedication trait itself Druids no longer have an anathema against metal and their anathema is now replaced with the idea of not consuming more natural resources than you require to live comfortably so basically be a conservative invasionist no fanatical superstition about touching metal that only happens to be about wearing metal armor but not holding metal weapons whatever it was weird the eight spell schools are being removed so that does away with the Arcane school choice that Wizards currently get they now get a different kind of school that gives a curriculum they look like they operate much like Arcane schools currently except that you now get instead of a can trip and one first rank spell you get one can drip and two first-rank Spells at level one and this is one of the controversial things being discussed the school gives you a list of spells that are essentially in one paragraph instead of the many more spells that the Arcane schools currently give I personally think that this is a positive change I think part of the negative reaction is the belief now that they're nerfing casters due to some of the spell changes we're about to see people seem to be okay with this before like here we have something that's pretty thematic and focused here it's to befuddle lesser Minds with figments and Illusions currently those spells would be enchantment spells but the enchantment school also has other spells that do other things like zone of Truth or removing fear from an ally another example being the school of conjuration being about summoning creatures but also being about teleportation I kind of like how this makes you more thematic by limiting your choices relatively to what we have now and also they can make a lot of new cool schools that are not limited by the number eight I also imagine it's been a design headache they have needed to keep the four magical Traditions balanced in terms of their spell selections and to have to juggle that goal with keeping the eight Arcane schools balanced is probably too much from a design perspective also it says you're not strictly limited to those spells the GM might allow you to swap or add other spells if they strongly fit the theme on the one hand and maybe this leaves things open to argument however strongly fits the theme is a pretty clear directive it's like The Uncommon trait like you really have to argue to the GM that it strongly fits the theme the GM has the back of the of that wording so no I don't think your zone of Truth spelled with befuddle Minds however it is a little frustrating that the current ogl word of Enchantment and this word mentalism that switching those two words is probably more accurate to describe what they respectively do plus there's the fact there's a lot of spells that you can't really pigeonhole into one of the eight schools it honestly kind of feels like alignment to me in that it's a bit vestigial and if we're only keeping it to accommodate the wizard maybe we got to come up with something else for the wizard I saw some discussion about people wanting to Tech magic to still detect the school of the spell well that's one of the Spells we're about to see so I'll get to that as we go through the Spells next is focus spells now it no longer requires a torturous reading of forums and rules to figure out how many Focus points you have the number of focus points you have is the number of focus spells you know I assume that excludes focused cantrips also you can if you have two or three Focus points get all of those back if you have enough time between combats this is going to be an increase in power of those classes that have Focus spells which I think is being lost in the current Panic about nerfing casters anyway we'll get to that I do Wonder though what the fate of the psychic is going to be who is the only class currently that can restore two Focus points between combats I wonder if there's going to be anything to compensate for the fact that they no longer have that Niche alright so now we go through the spells that are presented here I think many of them to demonstrate changes in the names of spells but also to demonstrate how they no longer are going to say verbal somatic material Focus instead they just give us the underlying traits that come up in combat it's important to know whether you manipulate in order to provoke many reactions however what's not said here and is unclear to me is whether you need to be able to speak while casting the spell having the verbal trait clearly answered that question if you are in a magically silent area you couldn't cast that spell but now that that trait's removed it's not clear whether you have to speak in a strong voice while casting a spell which is important if you're setting up an ambush and pre-buffing before a fight I would like to get some clarity on that augury is essentially the same blazing bolt is the new version of scorching Ray I'll move on to the next one basically if I don't say anything about a spell from my reading of it and I did read it and compare it to the current I did not see any changes I may miss something here or there but let me know in the comments breathe fire is the renaming of burning hands Clint's Cuisine currently is purify food and drink this is a cooler name I'm gonna say that now and it now has a range of 10 feet instead of touch plus it makes your food delicious so not only is it healthy and not poisoned but it tastes good they've also added the ability to affect more food detect magic we have the removal of spell schools so in the third ranked version we no longer detect the spell School of the highest rank magical effect instead you actually learn what the rank or level of that effect is which is very useful when trying to determine whether you should try to counteract something and this is only two actions you can use this in combat and remember you can ignore those effects that you're aware of another subtle change is that the wood trait is added to some spells as part of our expanding to six elements with range of elements and tangling Flora is the new version of entangle environmental endurance was endure elements and falling stars is the remaster's version of meteor swarm and unlike meteor swarm you now have a choice of different damage you're not limited to a fire burst you can which are asteroids you can do Air Bursts for Sonic comets for cold and plasma for electricity so it has expanded in its versatility figment used to be ghost sound but it's no longer limited to sound Illusions it can also do visual Illusions so this is DND 5es minor illusion can trip that has been nicked and combined with ghost sound this seems like a pretty useful can trip to me especially since according to my reading of the rules you have to actually interact or seek um something to detect whether it's an illusion and you're not necessarily going to know it might be an illusion to begin with fire Shield has a little change currently it surrounds you with fire and if any creature hits you with an unarmed attack or is adjacent to you and hits you in melee they take fire damage however they have turned this into a shield so they've taken the current name and actually made it literal it says you can raise a shield which will require yet another action apparently and you have access to the shield block reaction even if you normally don't it's only a plus one circumstance bonus to AC and only when you Shield block does that attacking creature take the fire damage now the sounds at first like it's a Nerf but I'm not sure it is honestly because now you're able to absorb 10 damage of each strike and it has 40 hit points and there's no broken threshold I looked up the stats and this is basically the sturdy Shield of your level at this time so its Effectiveness has been less about doing fire damage and more about soaking damage howling blizzard used to be called cone of cold and it does 10 D6 damage instead of 12 D6 however they've given it a new version that costs three actions that lets you do a 30-foot burst within 500 feet because it's no longer named cone of cold it doesn't have to be a comb a little less damaged but a little more versatility you might be able to fit more people in a burst first of all and it's bigger than a fireball it also puts it in line with the fireball in terms of damage next is ignition which is our new version of produce flame where you can do a range or melee attack with fire and this is where a lot of the argument and controversy has come up currently produced flame does a 1d4 plus your spellcasting modifier so if you max out your casting stat which most cast remains will do it will do an average of six and a half damage however it's now reduced to 2d4 fire damage for those characters which is an average of five if you do a melee attack it is seven which is almost the same but still a little less and people are saying that they are trying to Nerf casters and casters were already nerfed and um they hate casters they love Marshalls uh those are the kinds of comments I'm seeing I think that is an overreaction again I think paiso needs to be clearer on why they're making some changes but we also need to ask ourselves why the change is being made before we jump to conclusions and if I were to surmise I think part of what's going on is that Focus spells which are more powerful than cantrips normally are getting buffed and we're going to be leaning more towards the idea that spellcasters use their focus spells in combat and rest in between that is my theory I don't know if I'm right I would like to hear from paizo because they should address these concerns but that is what I'm thinking and also I think it also makes it more viable for somebody to dip into a Caster you may not have 18 or 16 even in your casting stat but you'll do some decent damage with the cantrip next we move on to Inner planar teleport which is our version of plane shift it's essentially the same however it did raise a question in my mind because it says you need to have a certain item so this will be represented under the current rules with requiring a material component for that you need to have a free hand under the current rules what's unclear to me is whether items that require a material component or a focus component now called Locus whether you need a free hand it simply says you need to have a planner key and I'm thinking well certainly hold it next is invoke Spirits which seemed unchanged to me compared to the current version then know the way this is no Direction which currently tells you what North is however they've added the ability to know the direction of some previous point you've been some point in the last 24 hours so they've added to the utility in addition to changing the name to be a little more appropriate to it manifestation is now well you can call it a renamed wish however what wish currently does has been split into this spell and a ritual this is the spell that lets you cast any lower rank spell of your choice within your tradition or of any other tradition if it's seventh rank or lower this replaces all the similar spells like miracle and the others for the other magical Traditions however what wish has historically been in a DND has been preserved and restored I would say in the wish ritual which is a 10th level ritual it costs a hundred thousand gold historically a wish was usually a um pretty uh adversarial experience between the player and the GM where the fates where the GMS is expected to um make the fates cruel towards that player who must word their wish very carefully and the fates often pull some kind of cruel joke if they weren't careful enough with their wording this is now all resolved via the four degrees of success and I am all for this basically what I just described would be the critical failure effect failure does nothing success your wish is granted but there's going to be some unintended consequences or side effects and it gives some examples that don't completely screw you over such as taking riches from a well-known criminal to become super rich critical success has no drawbacks so this is a nice use of the four degrees of success and also brings us back to making wish that truly awesome spell to kind of just change reality at a win examples they give are to be very rich or to destroy an entire Kingdom or Ascend to Divinity we now can by rule if the GM allows it but by rule we now have in writing a way to become a god obviously a hundred thousand gold is going to be not something you come by easily this could be a huge perhaps Pinnacle event of an entire account pain but I'm glad that the awesomeness of old wish is preserved within Pathfinder 2E then we have Mirage which is hallucinatory terrain Mountain resilience is Stone skin Mystic armor is Mage Armor Nature's pathway is tree stride though it has the mental trait I'm not sure why that's the one that lets you go into a tree and exit another tree Oaken resilience is bark skin one with plants is tree shape which currently lets you turn into a large tree that's still here turn into a plant it doesn't have to be a tree now but now it lets you merge with a plant probably a tree that is big enough to accommodate you and like a dryad and they've actually created some uniformity between this spell and one with stone this is the meld into stone spell now they have made these two spell act identically including having one with stone turn into a large Rock they both have this identical effects one is plant the other is Stone peaceful rest is gentle Repose petrify is flesh to Stone and I said this on the Pathfinder subreddit I like the fact whenever I hear flesh to Stone I have to think for a second oh is it the opposite and petrify is crystal clear that you are turning something into stone also it's no longer limited to flesh moving away from that ogl term means it can be any organic material so you can turn a plant creature or anything else I'm not thinking of into a statue planar seal is dimensional lock Revealing Light is glitter dust however they have Incorporated part of the utility of fairy fire instead of just debuffing invisible enemies concealed enemies no longer can be concealed now runic body and runic weapon can be considered together these are a magic weapon and Magic Fang not only do they make your strikes as if they have the plus one striking runes but there are heightened versions to make them plus two greater striking and plus three major striking see the Unseen is obviously seen visibility but it has more usefulness now it's not simply to ignore invisibility and making them concealed to you but it also lets you see incorporeal creatures who are phased through an object from within 10 feet of its surface as blurry shapes hiding in the Stone and also it looks like you have a plus two status bonus in disbelieving illusions that is new and another case where no longer using the old name allows them to expand its usefulness here are the speaking spells next we currently have speak with animals and speak with plants and stone tell now speak with stones they now all act the same way speak with plants was Rank 4 now it's Rank 3 speak with stones was ranked six now it's rank five and they also have had their durations increased from 10 minutes to one hour they also have heightened versions that let you make them eight hours long but they did not do that would speak with animals which I think was an oversight next is the spell that I hate this is longstrider it's now called tailwind and I've banned it in my campaigns first context I the rules lawyer tend to surprise attract players who think tactically and optimize their characters I wonder why but longstrider is a way to become if you heighten it to second level have a plus 10 foot status bonus to your speed for 8 hours now granted has to be on yourself but any character with trichomon magic item can buy a magic wand 160 gold it's a level five item to essentially have plus 10 status bonus to their speed for pretty much the entire adventuring day it kept coming up in my campaigns after characters got to a certain level because if you think about it you just need a skill feat trick magic item to get a plus 10 bonus to your speed a permanent one whereas the fleet spell requires one of your general Feats to get a five foot increase in speed plus given how important increases in speed can be Fleet is one of the strongest and may be the most popular General feat somebody correct me if I'm wrong this just seemed like an auto pick for players who were optimization minded and I don't like having Auto picks in my pathfinder so I'm disappointed to see there hasn't been a change to this honestly I think it's valuable as a 10 minute spell for comparison the greater cheetahs Elixir gives you the same bonus but only for one hour and it costs almost 75 percent as much as as this permanent item as the wand of longstrider or now Tailwind anyway rant over moving on tanglevine is our tangle foot telekinetic hand is Mage hand thunder strike seems to be our version of shocking grasp now this has a superficial resemblance to shocking grasp currently which is a touch spell currently you have to do an attack roll it does two D12 electricity damage and if they have metal armor you have a bonus on your attack and they can take persistent electricity damage here the spell is basically reimagined as a lightning strike it does one D12 electricity damage instead of two D12 but it adds Sonic damage 1d4 so it does less damage on that initial strike however it has a 120 foot range now and a calls for a reflex Save which even if they succeed on their save they'll take half damage so if they have a weakness to electricity you're golden or sonic damage which I don't know if many do never mind but gone is the persistent electricity damage however for those wearing metal armor or made of of metal you do make them clumsy one for one round which you know some people would say is really good so I think this is a wash in terms of it being a Nerf or a buff it's just a different spell now and it doesn't require if you're a spellcaster for you to be in something's face to affect it translocate is now our version of dimension door true speech is tongues vapor form is gaseous form wrathful storm is Storm of Vengeance those spells all read the same to me when I compared them with the current version Oh my God it has a 1000 foot burst I've never noticed that before that's pretty crazy so with the items with their highlighting here is that they no longer require the traits for items currently to activate them which are Envision interact and command just like with spells are just going to put in the traits like manipulate whatever is needed to do the activation action which will have a game effect however this does bring up the same question I had before here I'm willing to accept that they don't have to speak in order to activate an item this is not an anime necessarily now with the talismans I'm not quite sure what we're supposed to see here in these examples they do say their goal is to make them more useful powerful and straightforward mesmerizing opal is to help you faint in combat what it currently does is when you faint you can as a free action get these changes to your action what it does now is it's a single action to do that faint with these changes to the faint action I don't see the um practical difference between the two I suppose the intention is to make you not forget to use them but I don't know if an actual play having to decide to use it before you say you faint is actually going to help in that department the potency Crystal which lets you do more damage and be more accurate with a strike has more powerful versions just as with our runic body and runic weapon spells shark tooth charm this is the one that helps you escape the big news here is that the prerequisite to be an expert in acrobatics is gone and that was a common complaint that people had that items that improved a skill often required you to be quite good at the skill in order to have it and people wanted to give it to the low acrobatics person in the party for example to help give them a leg up this removes that restriction which is welcome however the actual effects of the talismans do still look like they are the same okay here's a big change creature abilities grab is no longer an automatic grapple of a PC I thought it was interesting that they say it's mostly to benefit the PCS because some of the discussion I saw online well first of all now the monster has to roll a check to Grapple a party member so that sounds on the surface like it is helping the party members also they said another goal was to not negate the Feats or other ways to resist the listed abilities that did not function well under the current version I'm not sure exactly what abilities they mean even freedom of movement doesn't prevent a grapple it lets you escape a grapple without a check but it doesn't prevent a grapple so I'm assuming they're talking about abilities that increase your defense scores but anyway uh what's important here is that an enemy like the Kraken some boss creature that has the grab ability they not only are still almost certainly going to Grapple you but they now have a fair chance of restraining you which means you can hardly do anything on your return including cast spells or make attacks you're pretty much limited to escaping and thinking recalling knowledge it's actually a change I welcome I like the monsters and the PC stats mattering and that a character let's say a dwarf fighter who's very indomitable will not be grabbed easily and they can point to their score as being like huh you thought you could but you can't because I'm me but I do think it's also going to make those higher level creatures more dangerous that do grab and do knock down and do push it's basically being extended to these other abilities next is the stuff on Genies which unless there's something I'm missing does not really show things that will change to the system in the remaster if there's something I'm ignoring I apologize someone to put it in the comments and I'll highlight it but that's it that's the preview we got of the remaster that comes out in November so were there things I missed were there things uh opinions I expressed you disagreed with are there changes you think are good or those that are bad please comment below and also like And subscribe while you're at it I hope that this was informative um I plan to put out another video soon um talking about the changes to names I've put up a poll on my Discord server asking people to vote on whether they prefer the new remaster names versus the original names join my Discord if you haven't yet is a great Community where we get to vote on polls talk about Pathfinder 2E talk about gaming and we also have Pathfinder 2 e-games that are organized from the server including in our drop in Pathfinder to e organized play system and also people who run the beginner box lastly today was a time sensitive video I wanted to put it out right away but most of my videos are released first to people who support my patreon you get seven day early access to my videos including videos like my recent monk series and my kineticist series which is already up there so if you haven't yet definitely consider supporting the patreon also ring the bell my kineticist videos are gonna come out soon and I'm also going to have a live chat about DND 4th edition when my group completes that later this week after having played we will have played six sessions of it so that's it I have been Ronald the rules lawyer thank you for watching I'll see you next time [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: The Rules Lawyer

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Keywords: rules lawyer, rpg, dnd, d&d

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Length: 33min 42sec (2022 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 25 2023