Overview + HOW TO USE the Pathfinder Remaster books, Player Core and GM Core! (Rules Lawyer)

my coverage of the Pathfinder remaster continues today I have an early copy as a content creator for Pathfinder 2E the street date for these books is November 15 given that these are the new core books for Pathfinder 2E and the fact that recent events with Wizards of the Coast have convinced many people to check out other systems including Pathfinder many people have been waiting for these books to be the occasion for them to check out the system or transition that's why I'm doing this particular video to welcome people to give an overview of these two books not only for new players but also veterans and give a quick guide to learning the system to new players and game Masters or GMS I plan to make a lot of videos before the street date on the remaster so like And subscribe and ring the bell to be notified about these videos as they come out I'm going to be producing them as quickly as I can and also consider supporting my patreon where you'll get early access to many of my videos including hopefully these videos hopefully I can make them quickly enough that they can be available in advance but also you get exclusive access to videos including me me and others going through for 3 and 1/2 hours through the player core and GM core books so why are they doing a remaster well the first reason is the open gaming license crisis where Wizards of the Coast made clear that thirdparty Publishers who made content compatible with Dungeons and Dragons including piso the company who makes Pathfinder were not assured of their ability to continue to do so this prompted piso to want to continue to publish its rules but under a different license its own license but this required making some changes to the rules to protect themselves so that Wizards of the Coast would not haul them into court piso hired a legal firm that drafted the orc license the open RPG creative license that other tabletop roleplaying game Publishers are going to publish under where Publishers rules go into a ecosystem that other Publishers can borrow from and develop this is also occasioned by the fact that piso went through 8 months of inventory in 2 weeks during the ogl crisis and so they sold out of their they're old books the second reason is that the designers a Pathfinder already had ideas in mind of making some improvements to the game a new addition as I call it would be the perfect occasion to do what they have called era plus they wanted to make incremental revisions while keeping the system compatible with the previous books and I've been calling it Edition 2.1 and the third reason was that the core rule book is too damn big at 640 Pages it is much bigger than the initial book you get for other systems if this had statistics it would be a marshall weapon but it's too intimidating and repels people who might otherwise try the game and lastly to generate hype there's a lot of interest in other systems besides D and right now especially in Pathfinder 2E which was an offshoot of D and D's Evolution and what better way to generate hype than to publish new books with improvements to the game before I summarize what's in the books what overall is changing with this new addition well there are four books at Kao has called the four table legs of the system the core rule book for players and game Masters the game mastery guide which gives more tools to GMS the best tiering and the advanced players guide which has more classes and player options while the contents of these four books is now being rearranged and revised in these new four core the player core the GM core the monster core and the player Core 2 player core and GM core will come out this November 15th monster core next spring and player Core 2 next August so these four books being replaced are the remastered project leaving untouched all of the other books that Pathfinder 2E has so far released beastiary 2 and 3 secrets of magic guns and gears Book of the Dead dark archive treasure Vault and rage of elements these books are going to stay current and be compatible with the revised rules and by the way you may want to check out the video I made which is is a guide on what to buy for Pathfinder 2E and why you would want this or that happily you don't need to buy books in order to enjoy the full rules of the system because all of the rules are free online in a partnership piso has with archives of nethis because there are some changes to the rules between the original second edition and the remaster archives of nethys plans to have a toggle in the corner that lets you switch between Legacy rules and remaster rules you can even have a default setting B1 while switching the specific thing you're looking at inside the window if it has any differences between the two versions which is a great Arrangement so I'm calling this version 2.1 and I've been doing coverage of the remaster I have a playlist on my channel the playlist will be linked in the video description and also at the end of this video and I just put out a video on the 10 most important changes in the remaster the most well-known changes are that Pathfinder is removing alignment and is removing the eight tradition magical schools there's also a substantial number of names that have changed in order to separate from the ogl they've also done a balance pass buffing some weaker options and removed or cleaned up some clunky rules the basic math of the system is the same as I say in that video my assessment is that 98% of the game is the same even in Pathfinder Society the organized play system which will adhere to the new remaster rules you can bring a current character under the current system into such a game and by the way at the end of this video I'll talk about how the remaster books are to be used with material from the older books so let's talk about what's in the player core book well let's look at the table of contents basically what used to be in the core rule book that was for the game master has now moved over to the GM core book The Core rule book had 12 classes this now only has eight some of those classes moved over to player Core 2 to and the witch has moved over from from what used to be the advanced players guide to this book also magic items have moved to the GM core book this all seems to have been necessary to slim down the book from what it was before as in keeping with the history of D and books you have some short introductory section the rules for creating a character and then playing the game which we've gotten to a point now where playing the game is the last chapter in the book which I don't think is a good thing in the guide to this book section it even says this is an important chapter and it's right before the appendices anyway this is strange and I think maybe in the future we can put playing the game rules at the front since a lot of the character creation options refer to the rules in this chapter however that criticism aside there are improvements real improvements to the layout and organization and presentation in this book The playing the game chapter has near the beginning this excellent two-page spread which is like a crash course on Pathfinder 2E with page references to other parts of the book however it is on pages 398 and 399 so for ancestries we have the six ancestries from the core rule book plus they've added the intelligent plants lesies and Orcs which is in keeping with the orc license that this is being published under the other reason why they have the orc is to give full rules supp including Feats for half orc characters we also see that they have versatile heritages this is new for the first rule book of the game every character gets An ancestry and also gets normally a Heritage within that ancestry you can optionally get a versatile Heritage so a changeling being the child of hags a neim having somehow Angelic or fish blood or Origins for your character and also there's rule support for mixed ancestries this is where you'll find the half elf and the half orc and there's also rule support for creating your own mixed heritages which are pretty straightforward then we have 40 backgrounds that you can choose from it's the same 35 from the core rule book but they've added a few more we have the basic core four from dnd's history we have the fighter the Rogue the cleric and The Wizard and we have representatives of the remaining magical Traditions there are four traditions there's the Wizard's Arcane tradition and the cleric's Divine tradition the occult tradition is represented by The Bard and the Primal tradition by the Druid we also have the ranger who is a marshall character who is a specialist in honing in on single foes and we have the witch who can at character creation choose from one of any of the four magical Traditions they also have a powerful Supernatural animal or other small creature called a familiar I think they've included the witch because it's a very popular theme and they wanted to Showcase it in their first core rule book there's also rule support for Animal Companions with many animals to choose from and also there are rules for having a magical familiar familiars are not strong and direct combat but they can have a lot of useful support and utility abilities then we have archetypes which is Pathfinders version of multiclassing where as you level up instead of taking Feats in your own class you can get abilities from another class like the core rule book this book only has the archetypes for the classes presented in this book there will be dozens more archetypes that are class agnostic in player Core 2 and if you're a Pathfinder 2 e player already and scanning my screen you'll find that this archetype is I think identical to the B archetype in the core rule book like I said there hasn't been a whole lot that has changed maybe some terminology but 98% of the game is the same next is the skills chapter in Pathfinder there is mechanical support to make your skills meaningful and also to make them quite legendary as you level up and improve them there are defined ways to use your skills that are not the only ways you can use your skills and there's this Nifty chart as a reference and this is new to the remaster there's this column telling you on what page you can find each skill which is nice also the right hand sidebar comes to our rescue very easy to flip through and go to the specific skill you're looking for because this highlighted bar will travel as you flip the pages next is the Feats chapter which I think should be renamed General Feats by the way because there are other kinds of Feats in this game including class Feats and skill feeds much of it is the same as what's in the core rule book however there are some notable changes including the addition of the pet feed which lets any character regardless of what class you are to get a small animal friend then there's the equipment chapter where you'll find mundane equipment like weapons armor Shields adventuring gear the right hand sidebar is very well done here makes it very easy to find exactly what you're looking for and we also have these quick equipment packages if you don't want to peruse the entire list of items you can just get one of these for your character depending on their class the Spells chapter is it presents the spells in lists for each of the four magical Traditions with use and this is a complaint I have about D and D fth Edition by the way this list includes a little phrase or sentence telling you what each spell does very useful for shopping and similarly every spell tells you in the spell itself which spellcasters can cast it after the spells that all spellcasters can get by virtue of their magical tradition you have the focus spells which are obtained via your class and are powered by your Focus Point Pool which you can recharge between combats after the focus spells are the rituals those are those Fantastical things that any character can do you don't have to be a spellcaster and multiple characters can team up so long as they have the skills they can succeed at doing something like the wish ritual which hearkens back to old days of D and of having no limits but also at the same time uses the four degrees of success and gives more guidance to the game master on how to adjudicate it in a fair way which I like this by the way is new to Pathfinder 2E with the remaster then at the back of the book we have the revamped character sheet which is a much cleaner design than what was in the core rule book then the GM core book gives the game master advice and a lot of tools to run adventures and create their own Adventures here is the table of contents so all of the gming rules from the core rule book has now moved over to this book Plus we have the magic items and most of the material from the current game mastery guide the book is 336 pages so it's comparable in size to the 5e players handbook and the dungeon Masters Guide and I have to say that it is more useful than DND D's dungeon Masters Guide which a lot of DMS have used sparingly in their games a lot of the advice in this book is concrete and practical so I'll just kind of give a tour of the subdivisions of each chapter for running the game in addition to the general system agnostic advice you'll find in these kinds of books about getting a group together setting expectations dealing with certain kinds of players and problem players we get specific advice and procedures even at times on how to run the Pathfinder 2E system in the three modes of play when running encounters running exploration and running downtime there's a whole section on setting difficulty classes the goal numbers you want to roll on your dice and here's some sample paragraphs to give you a sense of the quality of the advice that you're given you have advice on the session zero how to run secret checks that are a thing in this game where the GM rolls a die secretly for the player on their behalf behind the GM screen how to determine initiative and awareness when you have hidden enemies at the start of a combat using safety tools to make sure that all are comfortable at the table how to adjudicate characters that use the recall knowledge action on various topics in mechanical ways and other suggestions to adjudicate creative ideas that come from the players there are guidelines on how much treasure and how many magic items of various levels to give to parties of a certain level another shout out to our sidebar you may want to pause the video to see how the running the game chapter is organized to give you a sense of how it actually teaches you to run a game the next chapter is is for building games this is for people who want to customize their game build their own adventures and worlds this is where you'll find the encounter building rules which notoriously in Pathfinder 2E work pretty accurately in fact there are sample configurations of enemies to quickly make up encounter groups here we also find the most popular variant rules from the game mastery guide and we get tools for creating your own traps which are a type of Hazard your own creatures replete with statistics for what are appropriate numbers for a given level and also creating and designing your own magical items including mechanical guidelines then we have about 40 pages on the age of lost Omen campaign setting which used to be in the core rule book which focuses on various regions of the inner SE region next we have subsystems which give structure to various things that GM might want to try in their games we have influence on non-player characters researching topics Chase scenes infiltrations improving your reputation having Duss having leadership organizations exploration on a map and also rules for vehicles and many stat blocks for vehicles we also get stats for many afflictions which include curses diseases and you get many hazards that you can plop into your adventures and the last big section is on magic items at 1002 pages it's a bit larger than what we have in the core rule book even though we don't have snares and it looks like the majority of alchemical items are moved to the player Core 2 book where we're going to find The Alchemist part of the reason why this chapter is a little Hefty is because they have brought in from the game mastery guide artifacts intelligent items cursed items and Relics those magic items that grow in power as your character grows in power all right some quick tips for Learning and how to navigate these books well first of all the best way to learn Pathfinder 2E is not from these books it's from the beginner box which apparently is out of stock I've heard but you can get it in PDF form and there's a premium virtual tabletop module you can get of it but it teaches even a brand new player and brand new game master how to play this game holding your hand going through an adventure that is designed to teach you the rules progressively maybe they're working on a revised beginner box maybe that's why it's out of stock maybe it's just sold out because there's all this interest Pathfinder I don't know but this is the Premier way to learn the system also there's a free computer game on Steam that I have a video about that I'll link to in the description and show on screen and also show up your own rules knowledge but of course these books are well done and are a sound way to learn the system also my advice with learning from the player core book is to read chapter one that sounds like strange advice but in the ttrpg world a lot of people skip chapter 1 thinking that it's just an explanation of what a role playing game is and some general setting the scene but not only do we have character creation but before that there are explanations of foundational mechanics including the three Action System the proficiency system at least go through and make sure you understand all of the Bold words in that part of the book the rest of the book is mainly a reference book mostly about character creation with character options so the next thing you want to do is skip to the end go to playing the game there's an excellent rules Overview at Pages 398 and 399 which has page references to other parts of the book before your first game I would advise that you look at the actions section which goes over the basic things you can do in the three action economy I also have a video about that that you may find helpful I'll have that on the screen and in the video description and you will find more actions that are derived from your skills in the skills chapter from that Nifty chart I showed you earlier that showed all of these defined ways to use your skills another thing to look through would be the conditions appendix at the back of the book so that you can familiarize yourself with the shorthand this system uses to describe the effects on creatures in this game and if you're a game master my tips for learning from the GM core book are also to read from the beginning specifically the introduction and chapter one and that is the foundation you need for game mastering in this game chapter 1 just walks you through what you need to run your table and handle the most common situations this is the meat of running a game the other chapters basically Branch off from there so what will happen of the old books well the four core books that are being replaced by the remaster four books are not going to be very useful on their own if you get the remaster however if you don't get the remaster books you're still all right the remaster rules are online but also the rules are not wildly different now what if you do have the remaster books what if the character options and spells and other material you have in these books well I think it's useful to look at what Pathfinder Society the organized play program for Pathfinder 2 is doing because they are officially switching entirely to remaster rules so they're removing alignment so let's go through what they're doing and this gives us a model for how we may want to run our own tables first game rules are going to be the remastered rules period so recall knowledge and refocusing and special monster abilities will work like they do in the remaster however you can still use your characters using the class chassis from the core rulebook in a Pathfinder Society game and therefore in also in any game that uses the remaster rules there are these relatively simple guidelines to deal with the absence of alignment and the eight traditional magical schools that tells us how compatible the pre remaster and post remaster worlds are also this is important if a character option has been reprinted in the remaster with the same name use the new version as if it were aada basically the previous version would not be available again we can run our tables any way we want however this tells us that all of the things and I'm not talking about rules I'm talking about spells Feats magic items they can live together the material from previous books and from the remaster books so long as you don't have two different versions of something with the same name in which case the remaster version Will trump so as an example the Divine Lance cantrip in the core rule book does alignment damage but in the new version it does not not surprisingly they have the same name so therefore we ignore the original version in contrast they say in this blog post that to produce flame cantrip is still legal in Pathfinder Society together with ignition from the remaster which is quite similar to produce flame but has a slightly different effect and a different name so they can live side by side and hm people who've been following the Pathfinder 2E online uh discussions this year uh we'll need to laugh a bit it's pretty clear why they chose these cant trips as examples to show that produce flame is still allowed and no they're not trying to Nerf cantrips in this game for those who don't know what I'm talking about ignition does somewhat less damage on ranged attacks than produce flame does and there was a firestorm um on the internet about this but produced flame is still a legal spell so that's my overview of the player core and the GM core books just a couple of criticisms I have of the remaster so far which I think overall is a Improvement to the game and very welcome first is that the book does not mentioned the beginner box and I'm wondering if that's because the beginner box is out of print at the moment but that seemed strange to me in a book that is an introduction to the game why not Point people to the best way to learn the game and it also doesn't mention archives of nethys which was also weird to me the player core is after all going to be missing some classes that some people are going to be looking for who come from d and d and it's not going to have magic items either it just seems strange to me for people to have to find other people on the Internet or do their own research to find valuable resources for the game the other thing is that the NPC gallery from the game mastery guide is not in the books and maybe because some NPCs will be in the monster core there were some hints that I heard that suggested that some NPCs would be in that book but the monster core book is not substantially larger than the current bestiaries and let me just say that I found the NPC Gallery useful and also there are cool stat blocks like the surgeon who did medical malpractice as an action maybe they wanted to slim down the GM core book the NPC Gallery was 50 pages after all or maybe they're saving it for some future product which would be a good idea I think to give us an NPC codex just like we had in first edition Pathfinder days so that's an another video I've been making these videos as fast as I can to cover the remaster like And subscribe and ring the bell if you want to be notified about the next videos in this series also check out my coverage of the remaster so far I did several in-depth deep Dives based on the preview materials previews of what actually will be in the remaster on my channel I'll link to this playlist in the description and if you are new to Pathfinder and want to know what to buy check out the first of my pathfinder law school series where I talk about which books to get for different reasons lastly if you haven't yet join my Discord it is a now over 4,000 people in our community people who like to talk Pathfinder 2E talk about games people also play Pathfinder 2E because of the drop in organized play System we have also support my patreon it makes it possible for me to do this channel you'll get early access to my videos including these remaster videos that I'm shooting out as fast as possible and also o exclusive access to videos including the 3 and 1/2 hour recording of me and others in my Discord going through the player core and GM core books together so that's it I hope you found this useful I have been Ronald the rules lawyer and I'll see you next [Music] time [Music]

Channel: The Rules Lawyer

Views: 33,797

Keywords: rules lawyer, rpg, dnd, d&d, pathfinder, pathfinder 2e, pf2, pf2e

Id: OCO9IlNjGKA

Length: 26min 34sec (1594 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 31 2023