Pathfinder 2nd Edition Brings Refreshing Change to the Fantasy RPG Genre

Like many people who weren’t so enamored with the fourth edition of the world’s most popular role-playing game, I played a lot of Paizo’s Pathfinder after it was released in 2009. The game was built from that same distaste for Dungeons & Dragons’ fourth edition, based off of D&D 3.5’s rules, which were published under the Open Game License and available for reuse. I found Pathfinder to be more mechanically sound than the prior edition of D&D and also found it significantly more fun and interesting than the subsequent edition.

As I spent more time with the system, however, Pathfinder’s first edition lost some of its appeal. Other games came out, offering similar gameplay without all of the number crunching and mechanical complexity. When the playtest of Pathfinder 2nd Edition was announced in 2018, I was interested, but I didn’t really know what to make of the rules. It seemed somewhat haphazard, and I wasn’t convinced of a cohesive vision. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like the final product and put it out of my mind until I was notified about the final release in August of this year.

Boy oh boy, was I wrong. Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules, and it rules hard.

Paizo Inc.

When I went into this system, I was expecting either a further refinement of the classic 3.5 rule set upon which Pathfinder’s first edition was built or a similar retooling of D&D’s current fifth edition—a sort of “5.5” that would once again just add to a familiar formula. What I was not expecting was for a company that built its first game on the back of another to instead construct a brand-new rule set based only spiritually on its predecessors. But that is exactly what Pathfinder 2nd Edition is, and it absolutely soars, thanks to the brand-new engine under its hood.

Of course, the basics are all present. There are dwarves and elves and gnomes, there are barbarians and fighters and rogues, and there are classic monsters galore. But Paizo set out to subvert some of these basics. Thus, goblins are featured in their first start as a character ancestry (which would be called a race in another game), half-blooded ancestries like half-elf or half-orc are now just variants of the human ancestry, and a new core class—alchemist—has been introduced alongside the classics. Much to my delight, ethnicities for all ancestries are described at length (and are divorced entirely from mechanical effect), and the character sheet features a place for players to describe both their character’s gender and their pronouns.

This spirit of subversion—that is, fundamentally changing how players look at the sword-and-sorcery genre of tabletop RPGs—permeates the entire system. While each character progresses along the familiar “earn experience, level up” path, each of those levels brings a bevy of choices for a player to make for their character, which are represented by feats. In similar games, a feat would generally be considered an optional add-on ability that some characters gain, which might give some small mechanical effect. In Pathfinder 2nd Edition, feats are the backbone of every character, gained as they progress in levels and awarded by general character level, class, ancestry, and skill proficiencies.

The staggering range of customization presented by an open system like this means that very few characters will ever be the same, and it serves as one of the strongest elements of Paizo’s new game system. Players who have hard-coded the definition of the word “feat” into their minds might need to relearn how they look at them, but this is not a negative in my book. Even multiclassing, a staple of the genre, is accomplished through 2nd Edition’s feat system.

Both D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder’s first edition suffered from complicated math, thanks mostly to the “skill ranks” awarded as characters progressed in those systems. Pathfinder 2nd Edition puts skill ranks to bed in favor of a fixed math that I find really delightful. Proficiency—a character’s ability to use a piece of equipment or exercise a specific skill—is now measured in four steps: trained, expert, master, and legendary. A combination of class, ancestry, and feat selection will award these proficiencies as characters progress in level, granting a base bonus of character level plus 2, 4, 6, or 8 respective to the listed steps. It makes for a tighter math that still allows characters to feel specialized without enabling game-breaking skill bonuses.

But for me, 2nd Edition’s most compelling new feature is its action economy. Pathfinder 1st Edition embraced some of the worst parts of D&D 3.5’s mechanics, leaving characters with a dizzying array of action types at their disposal. Second Edition ditches the various flavors of action, thereby streamlining the process. Now, characters and monsters alike all have three actions on each turn. Moving, attacking with a weapon, casting a spell, using an ability granted by a feat—all of these things cost somewhere between one and three actions, depending on their complexity. Actions like Raise a Shield (yes, shields only grant a bonus if a character spends an action to use them), Trip, Aid, Feint, Shove, Administer First Aid, or Tumble Through make combat a tactical and textured affair, and players will never find themselves without options.

Spellcasting also greatly benefits from this three-action system. Certain spells, such as Heal, now have variable effects based on the number of actions a character wants to spend casting them. A one-action Heal spell is a touch-only cast, while a three-action Heal sends the effect to all targets within range. Spellcasters in Pathfinder Second Edition now have much more to think about with both their spell choices and their action consumption.

Adding to this tactical complexity is the removal of the Attack of Opportunity rule, which is now bound to a feat only available to certain characters and monsters. Like a lot of people, I think I’ve always just taken attacks of opportunity as a default for this sort of game, but removing it is an absolute eye-opener. Combat is so much more fluid and mobile; moving away from an enemy is now a valid choice that forces them to burn one of their three actions to give chase.

There are a number of other new features that also help to give Pathfinder 2nd Edition a unique feel. Initiative has been removed—players instead roll Perception to determine turn order by default, but some situations may call for other skills to be used, such as Stealth for an ambush or Intimidation for a social conflict. Item weight has also been removed; instead of weight, items now have a “bulk” rating, and characters have a maximum bulk derived from their statistics. It’s a little hand-wavy, but anything that prevents players from dithering over tenths of a pound is a benefit for this reviewer.

Pathfinder takes place in Paizo’s unique Golarion setting, which has been described and lived in for over 10 years now. I won’t go into great detail about the setting, but suffice it to say that Golarion has something for everyone, from gothic vampire horror to alien robots. No, I’m not even remotely kidding about the second one. The setting is diverse in a really cool way, meaning every gaming table will find a fun and interesting home in Pathfinder’s huge and wild setting.

Paizo could have opted to once again make a game with the mission statement of, “It’s like D&D, but better!” Instead, the creators chose to do something new and interesting and take a big risk. They made a point to build a system that subverts expectations, encourages diverse and interesting characters, and streamlines gameplay without removing player agency. But most importantly, they honestly just wrote an excellent game, one that borrows some of the spirit of its predecessors while taking a bold step into a future all its own.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition is available in game stores near you and online from Paizo. Published under the Open Gaming License, its rules are also officially available online (for free!) on the Pathfinder System Reference Document.