Sep 11, 2018 by [ "James R. Miller"
]
Categories:
rpgs
Tags:
pf2
character-creation
I decided to read the Pathfinder 2 Playtest (“PF2PT”) rulebook last night. Here are some brief thoughts on the system regarding character creation.
I think they may have actually fixed character creation. The original Pathfinder practically required a computer character generator since the amount of character options were so expansive and contained in such a large library of official and unofficial content.
At least with these new playtest rules, it looks like character creation will be much more streamlined. You pick your “ABC"s of character creation: ancestry, background, and class.
Ancestry is what we think of as “race” in DND 5e or Pathfinder 1. The game developers think they’ll be able to do more with ancestry as well. I.e. maybe we’ll get into things like humans from region X get a racial boost to something that other humans don’t. Notably absent are half-elves and half-orcs as separate ancestries. They are instead built into the human ancestry and are instead human ancestry feats.
Background is a lot like 5e’s backgrounds, except there are more feats to choose from.
Class looks very different. They seem to have done away with subclassing. Instead you pick from class feats that you get at certain levels.
Ability points can almost be thought of as modifiers alone instead of the classical 18 point ability scale. I’m pretty sure that they could get rid of that entirely and it wouldn’t make a big difference.
The working character sheet looks nice and clean too with a good layout.
I’m actually kind of excited to play and/or run a PF2PT game. Anyone want to play?