why hello there, and welcome back to
Let's Make Us A Character and in this episode I am finally getting
around to Pathfinder second edition as mentioned in my previous video, Pathfinder 1st edition
is a game that I have a lot of experience with and Pathfinder 2nd edition is something
I am checking out for the first time and as such there is going to be a bit
more running commentary than usual so let's make us a Pathfinder 2nd edition character things are quite a bit different right from the beginning all of our attributes start at 10 and we get a number of
adjustments to those throughout the character creation process we begin by choosing an ancestry
which is what they've renamed races which wasn't really the best term to be using
but I've yet to see a really good alternative ancestry is okay our options are dwarf, elf, gnome, goblin, halfling, and human I will say I do have a bit of an issue with the inclusion of goblin like I understand that Paizo has kinda made goblins their thing and while I do like goblins, very much, I just don't
really like the idea of monster races as player races it's the same problem I have with tieflings and dragonborn okay i just plain don't like dragonborn anyway each ancestry provides a +2 bonus to two attributes
-2 to another and +2 to one of the player's choice except humans who just get +2 to two attributes of the player's choice so let's go with human and assign our
ability boost to Dexterity and Charisma then we must also select a heritage, and as a human
our options are half-elf, half-orc, skilled, and versatile so yeah, they're still there they just got rolled into human so let's go with half-elf, which gives us
low-light vision, the elf and half-elf traits and allows us to select from elf and half-elf
ancestry feats in addition to human ones and speaking of, we get one ancestry feat
and let's take advantage of our half elf heritage and take the Nimble Elf feat, which
increases our speed from 25 to 30 our ancestry also gives us 8 hit points, which is actually
something I've thought should be a thing for a while since reasonably a human would just happen
to have more hit points than say a halfling and also gives us our starting languages, but we can't do those just yet next we select a background which is more or less
our profession, and we are going to go with entertainer because it's pretty obvious where I'm going with this character our profession gives us a +2 bonus to two attributes
one of which must be Charisma or Dexterity so let's go with Charisma and Intelligence our background also gives us training in the Performance and Theater Lore skills almost every background has a unique Lore skill associated with it and while I don't know when you'd ever use
Theater Lore, I would be really excited if it ever came up and just since this is going to come up a lot I will now
explain how proficiencies and training work in the system things can be either untrained, trained, expert, master, or legendary each of which provides a bonus, and for trained or higher, your whole damn level now you may recall from my 4th edition video that i felt
adding half your level to everything was just artificially inflating the numbers for no reason
so you can probably guess how i feel about this anyway we also get the Fascinating Performance skill feat and now on to classes, our options are alchemist, barbarian, bard, champion which is like a paladin except they don't call them that cleric, druid, fighter, monk, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, and wizard so basically all the options from first edition plus alchemist each class gives a +2 bonus to their key ability score,
and obviously we're going with bard since I don't really like the direction they went with
in 5th edition, so I want to see if this one is better but before we get into all of our bard stuff we get four more +2 ability boosts
which we will put in Strength Dexterity Intelligence and Charisma and now that we have our final ability scores
we can determine our modifiers and choose our starting languages which are common and one plus
our intelligence modifier additional languages our class also gives us an additional 8 hit points we are trained in Fortitude and Reflex saves, and expert in Will saves to which we add our Constitution, Dexterity, and Wisdom modifiers we are also expert in Perception and
trained in Occultism and Performance plus an additional number of skills equal
to four plus our Intelligence modifier and since we already had training and Performance
from our background, we get to select a different skill and then of course we add our attribute modifiers
to each skill to get our total skill modifiers and i would just like to draw specific attention to the Athletic skill the combat maneuver bonus and defense are gone from this edition
and now the combat maneuvers are uses of the Athletic skill and are rolled against the target's Fortitude
or Reflex DC, which is the save bonus plus 10. we also gain occult spellcasting so we are
trained in occult spell attacks and occult spell DC both of which are equal to our Charisma modifier and
proficiency bonus, and in the case of the spell DC +10 we get two level 1 spells per day and spells known
so let's take charm and summon fey which just seems like a terrible idea we also get five occult cantrips which are
spells that we can use unlimitedly and we also get composition spells, which are special spells
that more or less replace the bardic performance ability the composition spells cost focus points to cast
which are then regained after a short rest we start with one focus point and the counter
performance spell which is basically countersong as well as inspire courage, which more or less
functions the same as the bardic performance version and is a composition cantrip that does not require focus points
so we can cast it unlimitedly, and I will get a little more into that later we also gain a muse which i guess inspires us
in our bardley ways, there are three options and we're gonna go with maestro, which grants us the
soothe spell, as well as the Lingering Composition feat which gives us one additional focus point
and the lingering composition focus spell and now we need our equipment, all characters
regardless of class start with 15 gold so let's get a whip, shortbow and 20 arrows,
studded leather armor, and an adventurous pack which is always an incredibly convenient thing to have
and contains all of our adventuring essentials and finally a flute, which is my go-to adventuring instrument
they are easy to carry, don't have a bunch of strings to tune and the sound carries really well, especially in a dungeon items now have a bulk rating, which is an
abstract measurement of their size and weight and we can carry an amount of bulk equal to 5 plus our
Strength modifier without penalty so, no problem there and now that we have all of our equipment
we can determine our armor class which is equal to 10, plus our Dexterity modifier up to
the cap allowed from our armor which is 3 so no problem plus our proficiency which is +3 since we're trained in
light armor, and of course the armor bonus which is +2 our armor also has a -1 check penalty and a Strength rating of 12 which means that if our Strength score is 12 or higher
we negate the check penalty, which it is so we do the attack bonus for our whip and shortbow is +5
3 from our proficiency and 2 from our Dexterity melee weapons usually add Strength, but as a
finesse weapon we can use Dexterity with our whip however we still add Strength to the damage, and of course
we can use it to make trip and disarm attempts and then just as usual all of the miscellaneous stuff and our class DC which we are not trained in
for some reason and I will complain about later and this character is done now I would like to briefly discuss the
changes made to the actions from 1st edition instead of having standard, move, swift, and immediate actions
you just have three actions, and one reaction and the various things you do take one,
two, or three actions, or one reaction so now for example if you wanted to, you could
use your three actions to make three attacks taking an increasing penalty on
each attack after the first and I bring this up because now instead of
activating bardic performance as a standard action and then maintaining it as a free action
with limited rounds per day inspire courage now requires you to spend an action
every round to use it, but also has no limit of rounds per day I like this way better, I like the idea that
it's a thing I can activate every round I can switch to a different bardic
performance easily and then switch back it's not going to take my whole turn
so that's just my take on it I obviously have strong opinions on bardic performance but hey let's uh let's level up this character
which also brings me to something interesting you now level up at every 1000 experience points with combat-based experience awards being determined by
the difference between party level and adversary level which is a bit more complicated, but also makes
giving out non-combat experience rewards much easier since 30 experience points is always
going to have the same value at any level so yeah level two our proficiencies all go up
and we gain our 8 class hit points also this is the last time I'm going to mention
those two because they happen at every level we gain one bard feat, and we are going to go with Bardic Lore which gives us the Bardic Lore skill, which
we can use to recall information on any topic so basically all of the knowledge skills, including
all of the ones specific to the various backgrounds and ones that they didn't even think of putting in the book we also get a skill feat, and we'll take Impressive Performance which lets us substitute Performance for
Diplomacy when trying to make an impression and we gain one more level one spell per day and spell known at level three we get one general feat
and we will take Incredible Initiative which gives us a +2 bonus to initiative rolls which are now made with our Perception
or other skills in specific circumstances which is another thing that's kind of
weird but kind of makes sense we also increase our proficiency in
Reflex saves from trained to expert we gain two level two spells per day and known and we get the signature spells ability, which I guess
means that spell levels are now a thing that i have to explain so spells and Pathfinder 2nd edition can be cast at
various levels, just like in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition however, each level of the spell must be
learned individually as a separate spell now signature spells allows us to
choose one spell of each level and be able to cast that at all levels of the spell
without needing to learn additional versions of it so let's select summon fey for level 1, and sound burst
for level 2, since they can both be heightened to any level we also gain a skill increase which
allows us to gain training in a new skill or increase an existing skill from trained to
expert so let's just go to expert in performance at level 4 we get an additional level 2 spell
plus a bard feat, so let's go with Triple Time which gives us the composition cantrip of the same name and a skill feat, so why not Virtuosic Performer, which
gives us a +1 bonus to a specific performance type and finally level five, we get two third level spells
and of course select a level three signature spell another skill increase, and since we can't
choose Performance again we'll increase Athletics an ancestry feat, and once again we're
gonna go with elf and take Ageless Patience which gives us a +2 bonus to skill checks
if we take twice as long to do them and four more ability boosts so let's put those
in Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma however, since our Charisma was 18, the boost
only gives us a +1 bonus instead of the usual +2 which I understand the purpose of but if they hadn't done that they could
have just gotten rid of the ability scores and just had the modifiers since
everything else is either a +2 or a -2 and that's it, a Pathfinder 2nd edition character it does feel somewhat like they were trying to simplify things but also while still wanting to be the more
complex alternative to Dungeons & Dragons and while some of the stuff works like having a static value for
hit points gained and xp to level up and breaking up the feats into groups and
restricting your options at different levels to cut down on... over specialization and also they put a lot more functionality
into skills, which I know I didn't really get into but trust me they did and overall it's a pretty cool thing but then there's also stuff like adding your level
to everything to artificially inflate the numbers and taking the multi-level spells from 5th edition but making them function just like the
old multiple versions of the same spell stuff that just isn't very good and then there is the class DC, which as far as I can tell
is basically just the DC for non-spell casting classes abilities but then why not just also make that the
spell DC for spellcasters? and I will tell you why because the champion uses the class DC and spell DC they made everything more complicated for a single class and it's the paladin class so that's even
worse also the book is kind of not good in the writing and organization like it's not horrible, but certainly not what you should
expect from the second biggest fantasy role-playing game honestly I'm not even that confident that i did everything right since so many of the rules are just scattered throughout the book like once you get used to it, or have someone
who is to help you then yeah I assume it's fine but just opening the book and making
a character is not a fun experience also this is one of the ugliest character sheets i have ever seen honestly I think the big thing here is I'm kind of disappointed like, I am a known Pathfinder fan, and
I just expected this to be really good but it's more so just okay, like there's
nothing here i can point to and say "this is why this game is better than fifth edition" other than Paizo never claimed to
own a trademark on the word kaiju but that's not really about 5th edition
that's about Wizards of the Coast but as always these are very much just
my first impression opinions of the game I'm sure things go a bit more smoothly once you
get into it and learn everything, and I will say I do like the direction they took the bard keeping them performance-focused, while
also expanding their spell casting instead of whatever it was 5th edition was trying to do so that's it, I'm sure lots of people are gonna
be super happy with me in the comments but thank you for watching, and especially
for making it all the way to the end if you enjoyed this video, make sure to hit
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