I decided shortly after the announcement of the Pathfinder Playtest that I would be running it almost nonstop. When not working, sleeping, or friending, I would push this system to its absolute limits. Why? Because I love Pathfinder. For the past several years of my life it’s been my passion, something I’ve tried to turn from a hobby int a career. However, for all the love I have for Pathfinder, and for Paizo, I’m also aware that they’ve let some serious issues slip through the cracks in recent years, most notably the DCs of starship combat in Starfinder and just… like… literally everything about the shifter class.





It's like they don't want me to be Beast Boy or something.





I have many plans for testing, including playing with and pushing the rules to their limits. First things first, I’m going to run stuff by the book. This will a) give me plenty to tell Paizo about through their official channels and make recommendations, and b) give me a good base point for what might need to be revised and should be looked at. And it all starts, as with everything about this playtest, at GenCon. As I write, I’m currently on a train home from around 40 grueling hours of running the official demo. I have run somewhere between 16 and 20 tables (I honest to god lost count), and while I didn’t take the level of notes I plan to take for more personal sessions (I didn’t want to keep people hanging around in the middle of the convention, and I also didn’t really want to keep anyone else waiting to play), I did get a lot of observations.





The Test

The Pathfinder Playtest demo. This is a short 1 hour session not designed in and of itself to test anything, but to teach people to play and show off some of the new mechanics.





The Players

Oh god, so, so many players. I swear I talked to more people over GenCon weekend than I did in the entire year beforehand. They ranged from complete newcomers to roleplaying games, to 5e players giving Pathfinder a shot, to experienced Pathfinder veterans, making a wide range of experience that was both pleasing, and at times irritating. When I say it’s always a d20 roll, it’s always a d20 roll guys. Stop asking me what die to use.





The Characters

For the GenCon demo, we had on offer: Valeros, human sword and board fighter, drunkard, and all around dudebro; Kyra, devoted cleric of Sarenrae and literally the best possible pregen to bring into a PFS scenario for about a decade now; Amiri, the barbarian with the biggest, swinginest sword in all the land; Merisiel, the elven rogue who was twice Forlorn, both by her backstory and by the players who sat at my table and did not pick her; Seoni, a blaster sorcerer of great and versatile power that wasn’t used much because standing still in the back being a magic missile turret usually seemed like the best choice; and Fumbus, the new goblin alchemist who I’m pretty sure did more damage over the weekend to his friends than to his enemies, as well it should be.

Pictured: 100% Maximum No Chill





The Game

Over the course of three and a half days, I ran all these players through this brief challenge, a mix of combat and traps that brought my players close to death on more than one occasion. The following are the major observations that I had in the course of the game.

The New Crit System

Let me give you some numerical background on Amiri. She has a base of 16 armor class. However, her particular specialization, the Giant Totem, means that when she wields her weapon of choice, her iconic Large bastard sword, she’s taking a -1 penalty. In addition, rage, aside from making her damage absolutely monstrous (but we’ll get to that later) cuts that down by another 1. Now, show of hands, about how often do you think I rolled in that 14-15 range and just barely hit her-or worse, got the exact 24 I needed to score a critical, something that would’ve only been possible on a nat 20 otherwise? If you answered very often, you answered correctly! It turns out that much like in 1st edition, all else being equal, if you want to hit things you simply cannot go wrong with adding another +1 to your hit stat. And on the flipside, Valeros, loveably drunk bastard that he is, prevented a ludicrous amount of damage with his shield, not from the shield block reaction (although we’ll also get to that later), but from that +2 AC he got whenever he raised it. I missed so many attacks and fell short of so many crits that it’s not even funny.





Now if only heavy armor didn't suck.

st edition, if your AC wasn’t top notch it was basically ignorable at mid level and higher. When your attacker is swinging at a +20 to hit, the difference between a 15 and 25 AC is pretty negligible, he’s still probably going to hit you. In PF2, however, particularly with the tighter numbers, that negligible difference could be a lifesaver. In effect, what I noticed was that the difference between your attack and the defender’s armor class set a critical range. My skeletons only had a 20 crit when attacking Valeros, as even without his shield their +6 didn’t stand up to his 17 base AC. But against the raging Amiri, it was the equivalent of an 18-20 crit range, 16-20 if they were able to get flanking on her (spoiler alert: they were, because Amiri charges straight in and has about as many fucks to give as a honey badger on PCP). That kind of crit range is something that a lot of characters in PF1 would kill for even with confirmation rolls being a thing, and this was coming from the crappy mooks. As a result, having low AC is a very bad thing. This is both a good and bad thing, I think. On the one hand, it means that your numbers are no longer pump or dump. That is to say, in 1edition, if your AC wasn’t top notch it was basically ignorable at mid level and higher. When your attacker is swinging at a +20 to hit, the difference between a 15 and 25 AC is pretty negligible, he’s still probably going to hit you. In PF2, however, particularly with the tighter numbers, that negligible difference could be a lifesaver. In effect, what I noticed was that the difference between your attack and the defender’s armor class set a critical range. My skeletons only had a 20 crit when attacking Valeros, as even without his shield their +6 didn’t stand up to his 17 base AC. But against the raging Amiri, it was the equivalent of an 18-20 crit range, 16-20 if they were able to get flanking on her (spoiler alert: they were, because Amiri charges straight in and has about as many fucks to give as a honey badger on PCP). That kind of crit range is something that a lot of characters in PF1 would kill for even with confirmation rolls being a thing, and this was coming from the crappy mooks. As a result, having low AC is a





belt of giant strength or anklets of celerity). Everything else will inevitably come after that. On the flipside, just by the raw numbers it means that Paizo has not only failed one of their stated goals, getting rid of “The Big 6” and the sense of mandatory items. Granted, not entirely failed. They’ve succeeded in that there won’t be a Big 6 anymore. There will be a Big 3: magic armor (to keep up that AC), weapon potency runes (to keep up that to-hit, and saving throws with the added damage honestly being just a bonus), and a potent item in your to-hit stat (specifically theor). Everything else will inevitably come after that.





Realistically you'll probably only have, like, three or four of these slots filled.









To be clear, I actually love the way the new crit system plays out. The removal of confirming makes things feel much smoother and those high rolls much cooler. The addition of special qualities on crits also makes things feel really fun; that combined with sneak attack now being crittable meant I looked forward to every high roll from Merisiel, whose rapier crits dealt 4d6+1d8+8 damage. But if not crits, something has to change to keep the to-hit vs. AC rat race from getting out of control.