What you should know about Pathfinder 2E (Second Edition)

and then they died the end hello i'm gianni and this is what you should know about pathfinder second edition with your brand new to tabletop role playing or a seasoned adventure i'm going to take you through the basics of getting into the game this is not a review nor will i be going to the details of how to play the game but hopefully by the end of the video you'll have a good idea of whether or not it's something that you want to check out further and it'll be a good one to share with your friend if you've been trying to convince them to play we'll begin with the basics of tabletop role playing using powerplant though if you're experienced with dnd or first edition already you may want to skip ahead to the time stamp below where we'll actually go into detail about how second edition is different from those games pathfinder is a tabletop role-playing game which is to say that a bunch of people sit around a table make pretend and use a game system to determine the outcomes of their actions in essence a tabletop role-playing game gives you a way for you and your friends to tell a story together collaboratively depending on the game setting and your group this could be very silly and relaxing very serious and dramatic or somewhere in between most importantly it is a fun and creative way to share an experience with your friends in pathfinder one player will take on the role of the game master or gm and all the other players will take on the mantle of a character in the world it is the role of the gm to prepare the scaffolding of the adventure the major plot points the places to go people to see and villains to defeat and the players will encounter these things decide what their character would do in the moment and use the game mechanics to determine the outcomes of their actions in pathfinder you're all diced to determine whether you succeed or fail at whatever your character attempts there are many different types of dice used for different things depending on the number of sides a four sided dice has four outcomes one two three and four whereas a ten sided dice has one through to ten they refer to as a d4 for a four sided dice a d6 for a six sided d8 d10 d12 and most importantly the d20 whenever your character does something where success is not guaranteed such as climbing a cliff face or striking an enemy down or sneaking past a guard they make what is known as a check the gm will have a target number in mind known as a difficulty class or dc of the check and your role will need to meet or beat this number in order to succeed on the action the more difficult the task the higher the dc and the more challenging it will be for that character the player then rolls their d20 and this is where it gets interesting adds a bonus or penalty to the role depending on how good they are at that activity an athletic character will have a better chance at scaling a cliff due to their bonus to climbing a master swordsman will land their hits more often because of their bonus and a trained thief will be much more likely to sneak past that guard due to their bonus to stealth there are a number of different ways to improve your odds of success through levelling up and getting experience through better equipment magic items magical spells and so on but the biggest factor in determining what your character is good at is their class this is a way of broadly defining what their talents are and what abilities they have access to for example a wizard like gandalf will have access to a great deal of knowledge and powerful magical spells but likely isn't as good when it comes to straight out strength tasks whereas a ranger like aragorn may rely more on natural instincts and martial prowess normally different players will play as different classes to make sure that each person has a role to fill ultimately the game is about cooperation and working as a team to balance these strengths and weaknesses now if you've been playing first edition pathfinder or d d for a while and want to stretch your wings a little bit pathfinder second edition could be an excellent fit but there's one piece of advice i would give you forget everything you know while you will see similarities innovations and inspirations from these games try to fit second edition into their moulds just won't work very well so here are the things you need to know if you're thinking about making the switch the first is proficiency and scaling pretty much all of your numerical scores and pathfinder your skills saves spells weapons and armor rely on your proficiency in that area unlike with dnd's proficiencies there are multiple ranks to each proficiency score where you can go from untrained to trained to expert to master and sometimes even legendary in something each giving you a numerical boost and unlocking your abilities one of the distinguishing features of second edition over its predecessor and dnd is that you actually add your character level to your proficiency score this creates a much more significant power gap between things of lower level and those of higher level and more than just extra hp enemies just a couple levels higher than your party will pose a serious challenge due to their higher scores on the flip side though once your party advances a few levels things they used to find challenging will feel a lot more routine reflecting your character's growth and this ties into the next big thing to know which is degrees of success despite there being some very large numbers in the late game math the pathfinder remains very tight throughout first edition veterans may have to come to grips with the fact that modifiers are much rarer because every plus one is now that much more impactful and this is because of the reworked degrees of success system similar to first edition and dnd there are four degrees of success success failure critical success and critical failure but unlike these games where you normally only score critical on a natural 20 or natural one in second edition if you get 10 above the dc you score a critical hit if you likewise get 10 below the check you suffer a critical failure this has many implications on the gameplay namely crits will occur more often and your level and modifiers will affect how often you crit and many things in the game now have a lot more design space for a range of outcomes rather than just success and failure for example that sleep spell you cast if the enemy fails their save they'll be down for a minute that increases to an hour if they critically fail even if they succeed on the check they're going to be taking a penalty perception due to the drowsiness they only suffer no effect if they critically succeed on the save but don't fear the thrill of a natural 20 and the despair of a natural one are still in the game only now they increase or decrease your degree of success by one step respectively and for a typical check this will normally mean a critical anyway next up feats and modularity one of first edition's greatest strengths has always been its customization particularly when it comes to advancing and creating your characters second edition has really leaned into this idea with a huge emphasis on modularity classes and pathfinder are more like a chassis in which everything else is built off at first level and every level or after you get to choose from a selection of feats which expand their options and abilities these feats can come from various pools such as the ancestry feats like very sneaky for goblins you can get skill feats like risky surgery for medicine and specific class feats like mirror shield for the fighter and on top of that you may wish to mix in an archetype by dedicating yourself to something outside of your class you gain access to a unique pool of feats these may be multi-class archetypes which lets you swap out some of your class feeds for those of another class or you can choose from a long long list of other flavors you could be a druid bounty hunter a wizard pirate or a barbarian ghost ghost hunter really all of this allows you to keep up with the chord progression of your class but mix in whatever spice you want to make truly unique characters and finally we come to what has grown to be the darling of pathfinder second edition the three action system gone are the days of move actions standard actions bonus actions swift actions immediate actions no second edition you get three actions to use on your turn however you like you could move attack move you could move then cast a two-action spell you could cast a two-action spell then attack you could open a door draw a weapon and move inside you could lie down try not to cry and cry a lot you can even attack three times at level one on your turn if you want though i wouldn't normally recommend this but you can do it which is the point you also get one reaction to use per turn which you can use for any ability that can get triggered as a reaction such as our old friend attack of opportunity which i should mention not everyone gets in this edition this really opens up the play space to have more meaningful and interesting turns and a lot of your character's progression will give you new ways to use your actions and that's really it the basics of what you need to know to get into pathfinder second edition i'd highly recommend you check it out and all the rules are available online officially for free and if you're interested in seeing in action be sure to check out realignment our actual play series using pathfinder second edition in the meantime tell us in the comments below what your favorite thing about pathfinder second edition is or if you haven't had a chance to play it yet ask us a question see you next time since you made it to the end of the video consider subscribing for more tabletop hygienes we're very excited about starting this journey and hope you'll come and join us this could be very silly and relaxed very serious and something else [Music] dramatic thing second edition does differently to its predecessor and dnd is that each and that's really it the basics of what you need to know to get into pathfinder well my hand is so like free [Laughter] guys guys are you seeing this it's so sweaty whenever your character does something where success is not guaranteed such as climbing a cliff face or striking down a guard or sneaking past an enemy

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Length: 9min 35sec (575 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021