![]() The term “Race” being pretty archaic and not altogether appropriate, it’s nice that the designers took the time to pay attention to terminology and use “ancestry” instead. A Class to determine their adventuring archetype and special abilities background, the character’s upbringing (which will be familiar to D&D 5E players) and ancestry – heritage and lineage.Mechanically, player characters are made up of: Therefore in Chapter 1 you learn all about the basics of your character. Chapter 1 helps establish the basics of the game, giving you all the general rules before you leap into the fleshed-out details and exceptions throughout the rest of the book. It helps the veterans know what to look out for and it helps the newcomers know to pay attention to those terms. ![]() ![]() I, as a long-time gamer, might think references to downtime are just references to when you’re not actively involved in an adventure, but there are rules governing what happens between adventures. Key terms are bolded to draw attention and note them as being…noteworthy. I’d say that in general, you get a solid idea of what a roleplaying game is, how it plays out, what’s expected of players, and the basics play concepts. The chapter is twenty-something pages and it’s pretty in-depth. If you want to make things easier on people picking your book up off the shelf of a Barnes & Noble or equivalent, it’s actually pretty critical. With the popularity of the Pathfinder brand it’s also pretty important to include – I’m finding lots of games don’t dig too deeply into this section these days. This is the “What is a roleplaying game?” and “how-you-play” section, which makes sense as an opener. Hopefully I won’t make too many assumptions about reader’s foreknowledge of D&D and F20 games, but it may happen. To be truthful, that’s a major reason why I’m doing this review – I’m interested in seeing if Pathfinder 2E might become my preferred go-to F20 game. If you’re reading this review, it’s also possible you’re at least familiar with the basic ideas of class/level F20 RPGs and are looking around for an alternative to D&D that hits the same notes. That’s not a criticism nor endorsement, as Pathfinder‘s roots are in D&D 3.5, so comparisons are inevitable. I don’t know how well I can avoid holding it up in comparison to D&D. ![]() ![]() Honestly, if there are Amazon reviews griping about it being “woke” then I’m definitely going to at least look at it. Where Pathfinder 2E really piqued my interest was reading about the more progressive elements that were being included, the (I’m told by those more mathwise than I) well-balanced classes and character options, the highly inclusive art, and more. So actually, if it strikes the chords I like, then I would “need” another F20 game. Now the thing is, I like F20 games (Class/Level fantasy adventure.) For all that I love narrative or simulationist games, percentile systems and dice pools, personal supernatural horror, gritty fantasy, or historical gaming, I still get a real kick out of increasing my character level, finding a fun combination of abilities to pull off an awesome attack, tactical “dungeon crawling”, and epic adventure. When I initially heard of it, I thought “Well, I have D&D 5E and Fantasy AGE already, do I need another F20 game?” Of course, then over the years I peeked at the Pathfinder SRD, talked to people who played it, and thought there were certainly parts that sounded interesting, but there was too much – too many options for me to cope with at the time.įast-forward to the arrival of Pathfinder 2E. Without cracking what looked like a mammoth book (I saw the tomes my coworker was carrying around), I pre-judged it as being “not what I was looking for” and stuck with the “ease of GMing” of D&D 4E. When it came out I’d played and run more than my share of D&D 3.0/3.5 and felt burned out by it. I’m going to admit that I never played Pathfinder 1E. ![]()
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