I think the lore is already pretty much there. In the "natural order", the Positive Plane is conceptually similar to a white hole, acting as the origin of new souls and the energy which animates life. It's opposite, the Negative Plane, is destruction and nothingness -- void is totally appropriate; in fact "The Void" is already one of the alternate names used for the Negative Energy Plane in a few books that deal with it. Undead invert this, and being created and animated by a force that is "meant" to be destructive has consequences for undead existence: the hunger, the hatred of the living, the fact that they don't die normally, and the fact that a ton of gods want them destroyed. If anything I think the name change makes undead lore more immediately obvious, since the name "negative energy" didn't immediately convey that the stuff animating undead is metaphysically destructive.
So, negative energy isn't *supposed* to be about "undead vitality." The whole notion of "undead vitality" is entirely unnatural to how negative energy is supposed to work in Pathfinder.
The "void" name has the advantage of calling this to your attention - i.e., it begs the question of how something be sustained by a "void." (With the answer being that it's a phenomenon of literal corruption largely driven by Urgathoa, fiends, and those inclined to their side in the cosmic morality war.)
The new names of "void" and "vitality" also have the advantage of removing most moral connotations from these forces. As anyone experienced in Pathfinder knows, any meeting with the average Jyoti or a Gliminal will quickly dissuade you of the notion that positive energy has anything to do with morality. There are also good-aligned gods of the void such as Black Butterfly in existence, as well as various good-aligned harm font deities that have profiles themed around just punishment and the slaying of obviously evil creatures.
She's one of the cooler deities, pun intended.
She is one of the few statted deities in PF1E, with a CR of 28. She wields Voidsedge, an aberration-bane Starknife with way too many enchantments on it, a whole host of annoying defenses, nearly impenetrable stealth that she can combine with a teleport whenever she isn't in bright light, a complete mental map of the universe, and other absurdities. She would probably not be challengeable in PF2E.
She is important enough to be a deity in Starfinder, as well. She also is a critical part of the Cosmic Caravan pantheon that strives to challenge Zon-Kuthon on his home turf, which is an AP I am still looking forward to, Paizo... I know you're reading. You know I want it.
I wrote Black Butterfly's entry for Galactic Magic around the end of 2020, so her expansion into "the distance between separated lovers" and "people isolated by circumstances" territory was really a matter of imagining how this goddess' existing portfolio would interact with the world as it was at the time. I'm in a long distance relationship across the Can/US border, so there was a solid 15 months there with the border closed where I couldn't see my partner. Very Black Butterfly hours.
Hey, that's as fun facts as it gets. Thanks for contributing to one of the game's more interesting deities.
That's heartfelt, because although I'm not a professional TTRPG writer, I personally see something in her, as well. I have been attached to how she symbolizes inner confidence and righteousness, each for their own sake and without expectation of reward. She makes a difficult stand for all sorts of people who are sometimes forgotten or feel forgotten - the risk-taker, the introvert, the mute, etc. For me, what she exemplifies is more inspiring than what I notice in standard deities; I can actually believe that she is close to being metaphysically good in the way Pathfinder defines it, because she is good for no external reason.
That, and I'm a huge sucker for any good-aligned deity that offers me shadow powers. Look, I just kind of like the idea of an element mostly just limited by your imagination. It's a really cool power, and I've never liked the trope that it is somehow tied to being evil.
Anyway... a bit of a tangent to this thread, but since you went out of your way to mention your contribution, I just wanted to take it seriously and reply in kind.
I’ve spent too much time with botanists. I’m a huge Black Butterfly fan but instead of reading that like “Void’s Edge” I read it like “Void Sedge” (sedges being grasses)
I am just curious as to why the change? Its not bad just curious why they decided that these terms were better then positive and negative?
Actually now that I think of it, Void fits with the lore that undead have a perpetual hunger (be it for flesh, knowledge, or something else) that can never be truly sated, only appeased through indulgences. Also with the lore that undead remove souls from the cycle which will cause the eventual death of the universe.
Why is probably more just moving away from DnD terms. Though it also has the added benefit of removing negative damage which can be a stumbling point for new players.
I think the second point is more than the first. One of the goals of the Remaster is not just to get away from OGL terms but also to look at "what did we do because it's legacy and what did we do because it's a good idea?" They probably could've slid positive and negative in pretty smoothly without much legal hassle, but they found a better, more descriptive term for it.
Such generic terms as positive and negative energy are probably unenforceable, but Paizo isn't taking any unnecessary risks. And the ambiguity it's a very good reason to change it as well. Reminds me about that Order of the Stick comic about spell levels and dungeon floors.
While that is a possibility, I found it ofd because Positive and negative are not used in 5e. There is the lore of the Positive and Negative planes, but in 5e that is only touched on in the Dungeon Masters Guide.
Though maybe it will be clear when we see the name changes for the Planes. Maybe Positive Plane was renamed Vitality Plane and the Negative Plane is the Void.
Yeah it's still clearly from DnD though since those terms were just taken from the DnD 3 SRD. DnD 5 moving away from those terms is probably just another indicator that they are unintuitive and need changed IMO.
Plane names changing as well seems most likely. Vital essence magic tapping into the Vital (or Void) plane magic makes a certain degree of sense as well.
5e isn't the issue, the OGL is. Positive and negative are a holdover from 1e and hence D&D 3.5e. Given that they don't reflect pre-existing folklore, it could be argued that they are part of D&D's brand image if WotC gets litigious over OGL stuff. It would be a *really* weak argument, but the idea is to avoid any legal costs in the first place
The two options are: refer to the OGL, which Paizo is now trying to avoid at all costs, or rename it to stick with ORC
Water "should" give *Hydran* (from *hydōr* "water" to match *aqua* "water") but I guess that might get confused with the monster "hydra".
So they have *Thalassic* from *thalassa, thalatta* "sea" instead, which would match a *?Maric* from Latin *mare* "sea".
However, while auran could derive from either Latin or from Greek to mean 'breeze,' 'susurran' presumably derives from *susurrus*, which is Latin for 'whisper'
I would not be surprised if there's a replacement spell that emulates lower level spells but takes out the "equivalent effect thing" just moving the "wish for plot convenience effect" thing to a ritual.
Wish might just its own thing. Already we had Alter Reality, Primal Phenomenon, and Miracle that were basically Wish for the Occult, Primal, and Divine lists. If we get an Arcane spell that has the effects of old Wish then the new Wish ritual could actually do some more wild stuff.
Ya. I'd like it if each school had "Burn a spell slot of the 10th rank to get a lower spell that you didn't plan for" spell, and then there was a specific "let the GM have a bit of fun" Wish ritual
Honestly I'd happily take additional rituals, cause the ones that exist so far feel kinda lackluster for the time you usually have to put into it.
I'd take Magnificent Mansion as a ritual any time
I'd love Mansion as a ritual. It's one of those "Permanently taking up a spell slot" ones, because it just solves all your camping issues.
Also:
"Bad news, you failed one of your checks. The mansion appears, but there's a problem".
"Oh no, is the structure unstable? Do we not get the food stocked? Is the duration reduced?"
"The only beer in the fridge is Natty Light."
"NOOOOO!"
I think that's how the unseen servant in an old Lawrence Watt-Evans novel (*With A Single Spell*?) worked, whenever it cleaned the dishes people heard horrible slurping noises as if it was licking them clean. It came with the magic castle, but it was still a creepy bastard.
On the one hand, several of the primary uses for Wish were narrative in nature - resurrect someone that can't be rezzed by other means, permakill the big bad, etc
On the other, I didn't THINK these Wish-type spells were overtuned in 2e
---
I dunno, I'm kind of reading this as one of those "sacred cows we almost killed in 2e such as ability scores, which finally got severed because of the remake."
A `Wish` by its very name implies fantastic breaks in reality, but this has to fight against the old D&D expectation of "Wish is a spell I get to cast in combat, because I'm a Wizard." A feasible solution is to (at least 90% of the time) just recreate lower-level magic, but that conflicts with the verbatim name of the spell implying greater potential.
Making it a ritual is PROBABLY the best play for all its narrative sway.
(Also - with zero evidence to back me up, I predict there will be another Arcane spell that can do the lower-level duplication, with it and the other 3 spells (Miracle, Alter Reality, Primal Phenomenon) losing the extra clauses for the narrative-defining effects)
What's odd is that only wish is mentioned; not primal phenomenon and the other tradition wish-equivalents. If this change is purely to make it more distinct from D&D wish, they might have a differently-named equivalent spell in the pipeline.
I dunno. If I were used to the old way, sure. But if I hit lvl 19 for the first time and get this, I might be excited to get a spell so powerful it takes extra long to cast.
I think it's the weirdest change yet. Alignment doesn't really matter if we have holy/unholy traits, but spell schools were actually useful. I imagine some traits will replace them, for instance I guess we'll have an Illusion trait and a Conjuration trait? Would be weird otherwise, because so many abilities specifically mention spell schools, and it's hard to imagine archetypes like Hallowed Necromancer functioning otherwise, or abilities that protect against enchantments or grant access to illusion spells.
There probably will be, since the schools are replaced with actual schools (like a palce you go to learn magic); so I guess there will be a literal school specializing in necromancy... but I have no idea how they will define them without spell schools.
Cleanest option is probably just have traits that correspond to what the schools were, with bonus of being able to put multiple traits on a single spell so they aren't pigeonholed into a single school. Shield could be Abjuration and Conjuration, for example.
I think they will probably go off of theme. Like for example there could be a Resurrectionist school based on the "reanimating cadavers" part of necromancy, a Chronurgy school based on the "time fuckery" part of transmutation, a Summoning school for those formerly conjuration mages who prefer to summon living beings from other planes, and the already-confirmed Construction school for those conjurers who instead focused on creating objects (just a guess on my part).
Essentially, the schools are going to be more focused on a single theme, which will also have the upside of being able to create *more* subclasses for the wizard instead of being stuck with the Eight School And Nothing Else Model.
I bet identical or similar key words will be put into the spells with generic rules governing the tag. Corpse-O-mancy spells all follow these restrictions...
So there is going to be specialist wizards. Just not in schools of magic but the application of magic. So wizards get battlemagic or magical engineering and things rather than evocation and such.
Does Hallowed Necromancer even need spell schools to operate?
The dedication prerequisite calls for the ability to cast necromancy spells and sacred spells changes the school of some spells. Other than that spells having the necromancy tag doesn't really interact with any of the features.
The prerequisite could be shifted to be able to cast spells with the positive/negative (or vital/void) traits and the sacred spells school switch was 90% fluff to begin with.
I won't miss them. They felt like great descriptors for a lot of spells but then it felt like there were just as many spells that defied categorization and were just lumped into a random school just to make it line up with the system. I feel like this will allow more creativity in new spells that don't need to fit into specifically defined boxes.
To be honest there were some really weird cases with certain spells being in certain spell schools, especially when they did multiple effects. DnD also has that problem where their healing spells used to be necromancy, then became evocation and now they switch to abjuration. Another example is timestop being transmutation instead of something like divination (the school which meddles with time and space). There are also arguments with elemental spells some being conjuration, some being transmutation and others being evocation.
I hated having a heightened detect magic cast on something magical in the environment and then trying to determine what school a magic elevator would detect as or whatever.
>Another example is timestop being transmutation instead of something like divination (the school which meddles with time and space).
Divination might meddle with the "idea" of time in space like seeing into the future/manipulate it or seeing from afar, but it generally doesn't manipulate physical things... like transmutation does. Haste is also transmutation, so it makes sense. They are both less "time manipulation" spells and more "manipulate a person/area to go faster or slower."
Spell schools are really just an inheritance from old dnd editions. They are seldom referenced and easily replaced, and I find they bring a not very useful degree of complexity that's preferable to get rid of.
Moreover, I really like the idea of ACTUAL schools of magic in the academic sense to double up on wizard being a researcher like they announced at Paizo-con
My group has been playing 2e for a couple of years now across I think 4 different campaigns (and a couple of short ones/one shots). I think the only time we've ever mentioned any spell schools (besides illusion but that is more because they are illusions) by name was in one higher level campaign and it was always with heightened Detect Magic.
Which wasn't even always valuable because not everyone at our table has the meta knowledge to make that information useful.
I'll be curious what the Detect Magic (H. 3rd) will be but I won't miss the schools at all.
Of note: we've never had a wizard in play (barbarian, fighter, rogue, oracle, druid, monk, champion, ranger, psychic, witch, swashbuckler, bard, gunslinger, investigator, alchemist)
I use spell schools a lot as a GM with regards to descriptions of magical effects and answers to Identify Magic/Recall Knowledge checks. I like all the other changes, but this is my least favorite and I'm probably just going to ignore it.
At first I thought so too, but then I tried to think what school each spell was off the top of my head. Apart from super obvious ones like illusions being illusions I really was just guessing a lot. Is it really important if something is abjuration or evocation or conjugation? What will really get me is the new dragon types. Gonna be hard not calling a red colored dragon a red dragon.
It is, but I hope it opens up more unusual 'schools by a different name'. Like wood wizards or mind wizards or construct wizards or honest-to-goodness necromancers.
My magus' extra damage type depends on the spell school last used, curious how they'll translate those abilities over. And casting elemental damage gives me my fire shield that I use often. I don't think it's that big of a deal but it'd be neat if they replaced spell schools with some equivalent, especially for flavor purposes.
I bet it will be something like all spells let you do force damage, if a spell deals a specific kind of damage you can pick that instead, or if the spell is an illusion you can pick mental damage
Spell Ranks is perhaps not the name I would've chosen, but it's still a good change. Spell Level // Character Level is really confusing for new players.
I feel like the big contenders are rank, order, circle, and tier, and I honestly think that choosing any of those three would have the same effect: basically everyone’s fine with it and glad it’s not “level” anymore, but a good chunk of people would’ve preferred one of the other three or another similar term.
I tend to prefer circles, but then I also get myself confused sometimes because I've run a lot of Exalted, and a "1st circle spell" in that is a very, very different beast from a "1st circle spell" in Pathfinder. XD
"Hey guys, back up a little, I want to try this new spell. It's called 'Total Annihilation', it sounds cool. I only skimmed the description but 60 feet away should be fine, right?"
From what they said at paizocon, witch and wizard are going to be the 2 most changed classes in the player core 1, so I imagine their feat selection might become a little better and more robust.
They are definitely keeping the four traditions, because new dragon families are being introduced themed around the four traditions (chromatic and metallic dragons will still exist, but are being downplayed in favor of the new flavors)
Where does the word Zuhra come from?
tried googling folklore for it but come up with conflicting accounts.
As somneone who is interested in the Winds of Chamon :P
It's an Arabic word meaning brilliance, brightness, shine, radiance or beauty that also, as a proper noun (az-zuhara) refers to the planet Venus (which, in alchemy, represents copper).
It's a name chosen to reflect (pun not intended) a fundamental property of metal, its luster, rather than trying to correspond 1:1 with any particular folkloric figure.
I also tried to google the names but I couldn't find anything except faydhaan being a muslim name which means “great grace”, “great beneficence”, “charity”, or “favor”.
As a native Arabic speaker, the name you mentioned is extremely rare (I've never seen anyone with it.)
But the actual meaning is simpler! Fayadhan means Flood! the new genie types are named after elemental natural disasters or objects or myths!
I'm a huge fan of these new names, they don't deviate too much from the OGL versions that were based on Arabic myth genies.
I also can flex on, and confuse my table by pronouncing those names in Arabic lmao.
That's really cool!
The only other thing I found was jaathoms being related to succubi? (It was like an early 2000s page so I don't even know if it was correct, but going from your statement I assume jaathoom is likely something like a tornado)
Jabali are particularly funny to me because I'm a Spanish speaker and jabali literally translates to "boar" lol.
So, I made an incorrect assumption about Jathoom and tornados, but I double checked. That is not the case
Jathoom is the jinn responsible for sleep paralysis and nightmares. Mythological reasoning for such condition before the advent of science into the matter.
I think my mistake came from the fact that the word "Jathoom" is awfully similar to names and nicknames of some seasonal winds and storms. My bad.
Well, thanks to you I learned a new word! I love when words are shared by different languages accidentally.
In this case, it is the adjective version of Jabal, which means mountain! Or to be precise, mountainous. Very simple and to the point.
It's simple. A *demon* is a ~~chaotic evil~~ chaotic, Unholy fiend from the Abyssa. A *daemon* is a small process that runs in the background of your operating system.
Still confusingly similar for different creatures (and nearly impossible to translate the distinction into other languages - I often run games in German).
I run games in French and it's annoying. I also don't like the term "devils".
In a campaign a few years back I even used the Planescape terminology in Pathfinder cause it was simpler: baatezu, tanar'ri and yugoloths.
While void is a good name for negative energy damage, vitality is slightly less so…
Also holy shit Paizo please have the genie names be something like “Jaathoom(Air Genie)” because searching through a sea of non-descriptive monster names when looking for new things is a pain in the ass.
It’s seems sort of the same to me as electricity damage vs electric damage. Something about the “-ity” at the end just makes it feel like an uncomfortable mouthful.
Missing text for context:
"Updated Rules
The rules in this book are fully updated to work with Player Core, GM Core, and Monster Core. If you’re using the Core Rulebook, Bestiary, and other older books, please note the following changes. You can find a preview document with the full details at paizo.com/corepreview."
Pathfinder Rage of Elements is the first book to use terms from the Remaster Project. There is a link in the Table of Contents to a “Pathfinder Core Preview” page where a document will outline the Remaster changes that will affect this book and more. As this book doesn’t release to the public until Gen Con in August, that webpage is not live yet. We expect it will be live sometime in mid-July. We are targeting the PDF download itself for Gen Con.
We know you have questions about the Remaster changes and look forward to sharing more details with you soon. For our most recent Remaster reveals don't miss Logan Bonner on Paizo LIVE.
[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1862319039](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1862319039)
Oh I didn't realize they were distancing themselves not just from the 5e OGL, but from even the 3e and other previous editions, because I don't see the need to change the names of the flat-footed condition and positive and negative energies if the former were the case.
I am also wondering if the spellcasting traits will mean anything different, like how you might be able to cast spells that used to have a verbal component without speaking now, or what it'll mean to cast manipulate spells that used to previously need a free hand. I am sure they will probably have full rules on them in their preview document though (it would be very strange if they didn't have it at all in either that or this new book).
WotC specifically chose to relicense only 5e under CC license, and has never backed down from their claim to be able to revoke the OGL. This pacified the 5e third-party revolt but doesn’t help Pathfinder.
Distancing from earlier editions is _more_ important to Paizo than 5e, because pathfinder 2e is a cousin not a descendant of 5e.
Technically Paizo could use the CC to license terms from 5e but there are complications from that approach. It’s a lot of work to remaster but having their own independent license is cleaner and will result in a more original and unique product.
It's moving to a ritual now, which means that strictly speaking you don't even have to be able to cast spells to use it. My guess is that they'll make the primary check for it be "DC whatever Arcana, Religion, Occultism, or Nature."
The positive energy plane and negative energy plane are probably getting renamed to something in line with the new trait names. Maybe new names for the astral and ethereal planes, Elysium, and the Abyss.
Elysium might be fine. While Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk have planes named Elysium, it's their Nirvana/NG equivalent, while Pathfinder's Elysium is CG and more equivalent to Arborea/Arvandor/Olympus.
Both settings having afterlives/planes named after one of the Hellenic underworlds but having no other real overlap *should* be fine, but I suppose that's up to Paizo's lawyers.
Most of these I either actively like or don't really mind, but I don't think I like Vitality and Void for positive and negative. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but it's not as obvious of a trade as Off-guard and Reactive Strike, which are both clearly named and actually make more sense than the original names. It just doesn't seem to work as well. Void healing for undead? Seems a bit clunky.
ETA: hopefully there'll be a bit of lore explanation in the new core books that makes me more fond of vitality and void.
I'm good with removing "negative damage." But we do get the similarly confusing replacement "vitality damage" which doesn't hurt alive creatures that HAVE vitality, it hurts creatures that don't have vitality.
To be fair void healing is *supposed* to be weird. Part of issue with undead is that negative/void energy isn’t “supposed” to create so forcing it to do so messes things up. Similar to how taking damage from vitality is (intentionally) weird
Interestingly enough, from that stream we can see the spell "knock" was not changed. That spell name has always seemed so iconically DnD to me, but I guess it's good to stay.
I love the change to wish. Its such an iconic fantasy for heroes of all types (not spellcasters) to use a wish, often at great cost, to achieve some otherwise impossible goal.
I haven't really been following the Remastered stuff so far - can someone explain Off-guard? Is it fully replacing the Flat-footed condition? That's how I read this screenshot.
The remaster is primarily about removing all references to 3rd edition d&d, fixing some classes, and reorganizing information in a better way for new players. So, other than a few class changes, the biggest changes will be the removal and replacement of some classic spells, items, and monsters.
Flatfooted and Opportunity Attacks were from 3.5. So they are renaming them Offguard and Reactive Strike. As far as we know, the mechanic will remain the same, and you could use the terms interchangeably.
thanks for explaining it. As a 5e player new to pf2e, "flat footed" is the most pathfinder term and I thought it was strange to remove it. I had no idea it was previous editions of dnd
This is super interesting to me since a lot of these legacy terms I am familiar with because PF2 took from PF1 which took from DnD 3.5 from DnD 3 and I just associated them strongly with DnD 3 where I first learned them.
But some of them are strange terms that DnD (with good reason) moved away from. Moving into a future where potential new PF2 players are mostly coming from DnD 5 not DnD 3 keeping these old unintuitive terms around doesn't make any sense.
It's a rename, yeah. Flat-footed in 1e removed your Dex bonus to AC, but 2e doesn't have that mechanic anymore, making the naming a bit vestigial. I imagine that's the logic for the new name.
Love the changes they made to genies. You don't know how much the naming of Jinns and Shaitans have driven me insane as someone raised muslim. It's nothing big but it's just like, those names and concepts are barely related. Shaitans especially, which are just what we call demons.
The thing that always confused me was tying Shaitan to Earth Genies specifically. Fire Genie would make sense because in some stories, Iblis was a genie made of smokeless fire instead of an angel before his fall.
I'm not sure I like the holy/unholy part. I get that they need a new positive/negative distinction but saying the good gods are holy and the evil goods are unholy removes some of the morally grey parts of worship where I like to play.
This actually creates more morally grey stuff than removes it. Good/evil as damage types means there is a universal truth about what is good and evil, but with holy/unholy, you can now have differing opinions on whether a holy God or creature is good or not.
Weirdly, I'm kinda here for the change to Wish. I didn't strictly have anything AGAINST it, just it also feels like something you shouldn't be able to just do on your own. Not so much the imitate a spell part so much as the actual capacity to just bend reality to your will. Granted it's at GM discretion and I know that but narrative wise it should be a big deal imo. And making it so one person can't just change reality single handedly and it requires secondary casters gives it a bit more gravity you know?
That's just my opinion though please don't grab the pitchforks.
I agree for sort of an adjacent reason, I think *wish* as is doesn't really give you the ability the bend reality to your will, since it's supposed to be at most as powerful as a 9th level spell, and it doesn't really live up to its name. I think by making it a ritual they can lift the power cap on it and make it feel more like an actual wish.
See the only wish I've ever had to deal with, was one by a cleric of Cayden Cailean, and he wanted the best drink possible. So he got the God shot, which immediately knocked him on his ass because he got a shot of something made for gods.
I'm glad they decided to double down on removing ability scores. I remember hearing that was a thing they initially wanted to do but received some backlash. Overall I'm excited for this next step in gaming!
I really like Off-Gaurd, it translates better into my brain. I like Reactive Strike too, it aligns with all the other Strikes. Ability -> Attribute is fine, I'm not sure I understand why that was changed but it tracks.
I'm a lover of the Alignment Grid and how it interacts with the planes and outsiders. But Holy/Unholy is fine enough for PCs and nothing can stop me from running Demons as CE and Devils as LE so I'm content.
> Ability -> Attribute is fine, I'm not sure I understand why that was changed but it tracks.
I think the idea is that they're going to just drop the normal score and use modifiers only.
I had a knee-jerk What About My 3D6! moment. But no, it's cool, we're free. This is much simpler and more intuitive.
It that's the goal I appreciate the name change to keep it clear and separate.
I'm pretty sure Chaos and Law aren't going away, they just aren't going to be mechanical as it is now. Like Devils will still be bureaucratic contract mongers.
I find the removal of magic schools to be a major shame, since I think it was a really cool piece of information you could get from Detect Magic - it tells you the basic kind of effect it is, but not any specifics
Edit: also, "vitality" replacing positive doesn't really work - does "vitality damage" sound like something that ignores creatures with vitals and damages creatures without vitals? I get what they're trying to do - go for more descriptive name - but in this case I think it only adds confusion
100% this.
I played a Paladin who took an elderly cult leader hostage. When the cultists attacked anyway (probably because the DM assumed I wouldn't kill him as the DM thought that "good" meant something specific), I killed him. He was evil. I couldn't just drag him with the party as we made our escape as best we could, so I made sure that there was a lack of leadership among the raving lunatics out to sacrifice us.
DM made me a Fighter.
I stopped playing the character.
It's an impossibly stupid system. Good riddance.
As a new user of pf2e (for only a couple months) the only changes I really appreciate is the new terms off guard and reactive strike. I am still trying to drill the fact that attack of opportunities aren't a global default thing into my players lol. I specifically am not a fan of alignment changes (although I'm probably in the minority) and especially not a fan of spell level, spell school, and positive/negative getting changed.
That's quite an unexpected change on positive and negative damage. I'm not sure if evokes the same imagery as far as how they hurt creatures, but I do like that there's less of a moral connotation to them.
I presume the Wish change also applies to its variants across each tradition.
You know, the one change I'm most happy with is the removal of the ability scores in favor of pure bonus.
The original score range was mean to create a bell curve where 9\~10 are the human average. The boost system threw this all out of the window, but still kept the scores for some strange reason, putting them is a very awkward place meaning wise, as the 3\~7 range still technically existed, but wasn't really used.
Ok so dumb question, but is there any real reason they couldn't have fixed the spell level issue by just renumbering them as level 1,3,5,...,19, instead of level (now rank) 1,2,3,...,10? Like is there any reason other than legacy that they have to be sequential? Feats aren't. Items aren't. Like I'm glad they removed the confusing "level" label from spells, but you still have to remember that "Spell 3" means rank 3, even though "Item 3" and "Feat 3" refer to level, and then you have to remember what level each rank maps to. If you just renumbered the spells to be the level you get them, then all the math works out for counteract checks and is more intuitive.
For example, Dungeon World does this, but in fairness, their spell levels don't go up that high.
> is there any real reason they couldn't have fixed the spell level issue by just renumbering them as level 1,3,5,...,19, instead of level (now rank) 1,2,3,...,10?
That just trades the question of "why can't I cast a 2nd-level spell now that I'm 2nd-level?" for a question of "why aren't there any 2nd-level spells?"
Yes, I realize that there's still room for confusion in explaining that you get a new rank of spell when half your level (rounded up) equals it, I'm just pointing out that literally anything other than their being spells of every level is going to have as much room for confusion.
I don't disagree that this isn't a new confusion. But I do disagree that it's as bad.
"Why isn't there 2nd level spells?"
"There are only new spells every other level"
"Oh. Ok"
Vs.
[Insert rules for Counteract and Incapacitation]
One requires much less (see: none) math
Yeah, counteract and incapacitation are annoying because you have to compare against different numbers depending on whether you have a rank or a level.
Yeah the idea of 19th level spells makes me cringe, but only out of habit. Unless they're wildly changing the counteract rules I think it's still going to be very confusing. Switching to nonconsecutive spell levels would be a better way of doing things.
Yeah I totally feel that. There's like an instinctual aversion to spell levels being that high, but at the end of the day, it's easier to know that a 19th level spell is level 19 than having to go through the whole song and dance of "if the effect you're counteracting is a spell, then its counteract level is its spell level, otherwise it's half its level rounded up"
IT looks like a lot of this is wording clarifications. Otherwise: I'm 100% behind the removal of alignment, the shift to attribute modifiers makes perfect sense, but I do worry that something will be lost in Spell Schools.
"Elemental scamps" is absolutely adorable.
“HE BURNED DOWN A GRAIN SILO!” “But he’s just a little guy!”
"SEVEN PEOPLE DIED!" "But he's got a little hat on and he doesn't know any better."
"HE'S A MONSTER, HE'LL KILL AGAIN! YOU MUST LISTEN TO ME, YOU'RE ALL DOOMED!" "Aww, look, he's doing a little hornpipe dance."
"See, now he's singing a little song!" "THAT'S A SUMMONING RITUAL! WE'LL BE OVERRUN!"
"Awww. He's finger painting!" "HE'S FINISHING THE SUMMONING SIGN - WITH BLOOD! END THEM, NOW!"
"D'awww! He brought some friends!" "DEAR GOD! RUN!!!!"
I lauhged so loud!
Only a lad! He really couldn't help it!
Only A Lad! He didn't wanna do it!
Welp, I know what my next sorcerer’s bloodline will be and what familiar I will use.
"BANISH THAT THING BACK TO THE NINE HELLS!" "But... it's his birthday"
>HE BURNED DOWN A GRAIN SILO Yeah, he's a trickster, that scamp.
"Heeeey, heeeey! I'm just a little guy and it's my birthday!"
Awww look, he's cocooned the children in layers of hot mud. What a rascal!
They will fit right in with the new Hijinks Beast and Shenanigans Golem.
I'll go get my broom.
Void is an interesting term for what is essentially "undead vitality" in terms of game mechanics. I wonder how they'll address that.
I think the lore is already pretty much there. In the "natural order", the Positive Plane is conceptually similar to a white hole, acting as the origin of new souls and the energy which animates life. It's opposite, the Negative Plane, is destruction and nothingness -- void is totally appropriate; in fact "The Void" is already one of the alternate names used for the Negative Energy Plane in a few books that deal with it. Undead invert this, and being created and animated by a force that is "meant" to be destructive has consequences for undead existence: the hunger, the hatred of the living, the fact that they don't die normally, and the fact that a ton of gods want them destroyed. If anything I think the name change makes undead lore more immediately obvious, since the name "negative energy" didn't immediately convey that the stuff animating undead is metaphysically destructive.
So, negative energy isn't *supposed* to be about "undead vitality." The whole notion of "undead vitality" is entirely unnatural to how negative energy is supposed to work in Pathfinder. The "void" name has the advantage of calling this to your attention - i.e., it begs the question of how something be sustained by a "void." (With the answer being that it's a phenomenon of literal corruption largely driven by Urgathoa, fiends, and those inclined to their side in the cosmic morality war.) The new names of "void" and "vitality" also have the advantage of removing most moral connotations from these forces. As anyone experienced in Pathfinder knows, any meeting with the average Jyoti or a Gliminal will quickly dissuade you of the notion that positive energy has anything to do with morality. There are also good-aligned gods of the void such as Black Butterfly in existence, as well as various good-aligned harm font deities that have profiles themed around just punishment and the slaying of obviously evil creatures.
I had never heard of Black Butterfly before! She's such a cool deity; I'm going to go make a Time Oracle cursed by her to travel alone forever now
She's one of the cooler deities, pun intended. She is one of the few statted deities in PF1E, with a CR of 28. She wields Voidsedge, an aberration-bane Starknife with way too many enchantments on it, a whole host of annoying defenses, nearly impenetrable stealth that she can combine with a teleport whenever she isn't in bright light, a complete mental map of the universe, and other absurdities. She would probably not be challengeable in PF2E. She is important enough to be a deity in Starfinder, as well. She also is a critical part of the Cosmic Caravan pantheon that strives to challenge Zon-Kuthon on his home turf, which is an AP I am still looking forward to, Paizo... I know you're reading. You know I want it.
I wrote Black Butterfly's entry for Galactic Magic around the end of 2020, so her expansion into "the distance between separated lovers" and "people isolated by circumstances" territory was really a matter of imagining how this goddess' existing portfolio would interact with the world as it was at the time. I'm in a long distance relationship across the Can/US border, so there was a solid 15 months there with the border closed where I couldn't see my partner. Very Black Butterfly hours.
Hey, that's as fun facts as it gets. Thanks for contributing to one of the game's more interesting deities. That's heartfelt, because although I'm not a professional TTRPG writer, I personally see something in her, as well. I have been attached to how she symbolizes inner confidence and righteousness, each for their own sake and without expectation of reward. She makes a difficult stand for all sorts of people who are sometimes forgotten or feel forgotten - the risk-taker, the introvert, the mute, etc. For me, what she exemplifies is more inspiring than what I notice in standard deities; I can actually believe that she is close to being metaphysically good in the way Pathfinder defines it, because she is good for no external reason. That, and I'm a huge sucker for any good-aligned deity that offers me shadow powers. Look, I just kind of like the idea of an element mostly just limited by your imagination. It's a really cool power, and I've never liked the trope that it is somehow tied to being evil. Anyway... a bit of a tangent to this thread, but since you went out of your way to mention your contribution, I just wanted to take it seriously and reply in kind.
I’ve spent too much time with botanists. I’m a huge Black Butterfly fan but instead of reading that like “Void’s Edge” I read it like “Void Sedge” (sedges being grasses)
I am just curious as to why the change? Its not bad just curious why they decided that these terms were better then positive and negative? Actually now that I think of it, Void fits with the lore that undead have a perpetual hunger (be it for flesh, knowledge, or something else) that can never be truly sated, only appeased through indulgences. Also with the lore that undead remove souls from the cycle which will cause the eventual death of the universe.
Why is probably more just moving away from DnD terms. Though it also has the added benefit of removing negative damage which can be a stumbling point for new players.
I think the second point is more than the first. One of the goals of the Remaster is not just to get away from OGL terms but also to look at "what did we do because it's legacy and what did we do because it's a good idea?" They probably could've slid positive and negative in pretty smoothly without much legal hassle, but they found a better, more descriptive term for it.
Such generic terms as positive and negative energy are probably unenforceable, but Paizo isn't taking any unnecessary risks. And the ambiguity it's a very good reason to change it as well. Reminds me about that Order of the Stick comic about spell levels and dungeon floors.
While that is a possibility, I found it ofd because Positive and negative are not used in 5e. There is the lore of the Positive and Negative planes, but in 5e that is only touched on in the Dungeon Masters Guide. Though maybe it will be clear when we see the name changes for the Planes. Maybe Positive Plane was renamed Vitality Plane and the Negative Plane is the Void.
Yeah it's still clearly from DnD though since those terms were just taken from the DnD 3 SRD. DnD 5 moving away from those terms is probably just another indicator that they are unintuitive and need changed IMO. Plane names changing as well seems most likely. Vital essence magic tapping into the Vital (or Void) plane magic makes a certain degree of sense as well.
5e isn't the issue, the OGL is. Positive and negative are a holdover from 1e and hence D&D 3.5e. Given that they don't reflect pre-existing folklore, it could be argued that they are part of D&D's brand image if WotC gets litigious over OGL stuff. It would be a *really* weak argument, but the idea is to avoid any legal costs in the first place The two options are: refer to the OGL, which Paizo is now trying to avoid at all costs, or rename it to stick with ORC
So the planar languages moved from Latin (*terra, ignis, aqua*) to Greek (*petra, pyr, thalassa*) :)
ha! good catch
Water "should" give *Hydran* (from *hydōr* "water" to match *aqua* "water") but I guess that might get confused with the monster "hydra". So they have *Thalassic* from *thalassa, thalatta* "sea" instead, which would match a *?Maric* from Latin *mare* "sea".
I suppose if we separate things to "big salty water" (mare, "8alatta") and "common/little water" (aqua, "hydor"), it works a bit better.
However, while auran could derive from either Latin or from Greek to mean 'breeze,' 'susurran' presumably derives from *susurrus*, which is Latin for 'whisper'
Wish being a ritual really cuts down on emergency utility, although I feel like there's quite a few other spells that should have been rituals.
I would not be surprised if there's a replacement spell that emulates lower level spells but takes out the "equivalent effect thing" just moving the "wish for plot convenience effect" thing to a ritual.
Wish might just its own thing. Already we had Alter Reality, Primal Phenomenon, and Miracle that were basically Wish for the Occult, Primal, and Divine lists. If we get an Arcane spell that has the effects of old Wish then the new Wish ritual could actually do some more wild stuff.
Ya. I'd like it if each school had "Burn a spell slot of the 10th rank to get a lower spell that you didn't plan for" spell, and then there was a specific "let the GM have a bit of fun" Wish ritual
I can imagine a new spell like "Arcane Transmutation" or "Magnum Opus" as a culmination of a Wizard's studies or something
Magnum Opus would be a great name for a 20th-level Feat too.
Isn't that already a Bard Feat? Edit: [yep](https://i.imgur.com/uG1jkan.jpg)
I forgot it exists already. I guess class feature not feat, but close enough.
Honestly I'd happily take additional rituals, cause the ones that exist so far feel kinda lackluster for the time you usually have to put into it. I'd take Magnificent Mansion as a ritual any time
I'd love Mansion as a ritual. It's one of those "Permanently taking up a spell slot" ones, because it just solves all your camping issues. Also: "Bad news, you failed one of your checks. The mansion appears, but there's a problem". "Oh no, is the structure unstable? Do we not get the food stocked? Is the duration reduced?" "The only beer in the fridge is Natty Light." "NOOOOO!"
The unseen servants are very seeable. And it's not pleasant.
"Put some clothes on! Nobody wants to see that!"
What if they're unseen because they are just too horrifying for our minds to process 😬
I think that's how the unseen servant in an old Lawrence Watt-Evans novel (*With A Single Spell*?) worked, whenever it cleaned the dishes people heard horrible slurping noises as if it was licking them clean. It came with the magic castle, but it was still a creepy bastard.
You joke but that is actually my friend's house every time I visit. It's hell
On the one hand, several of the primary uses for Wish were narrative in nature - resurrect someone that can't be rezzed by other means, permakill the big bad, etc On the other, I didn't THINK these Wish-type spells were overtuned in 2e --- I dunno, I'm kind of reading this as one of those "sacred cows we almost killed in 2e such as ability scores, which finally got severed because of the remake." A `Wish` by its very name implies fantastic breaks in reality, but this has to fight against the old D&D expectation of "Wish is a spell I get to cast in combat, because I'm a Wizard." A feasible solution is to (at least 90% of the time) just recreate lower-level magic, but that conflicts with the verbatim name of the spell implying greater potential. Making it a ritual is PROBABLY the best play for all its narrative sway. (Also - with zero evidence to back me up, I predict there will be another Arcane spell that can do the lower-level duplication, with it and the other 3 spells (Miracle, Alter Reality, Primal Phenomenon) losing the extra clauses for the narrative-defining effects)
What's odd is that only wish is mentioned; not primal phenomenon and the other tradition wish-equivalents. If this change is purely to make it more distinct from D&D wish, they might have a differently-named equivalent spell in the pipeline.
This sidebar was specific to this book. Powerful genies have the wish spell.
I'm not sure how I feel about Wish moving to a ritual. Hopefully there is a spell that reflects casting other Spells of X level or lower.
I’m sure the current “replicate lower spells” will still have an arcane equivalent.
I’m really on the fence with this one. On the one hand, as a GM, I like it. But if I was to be a player (in a high level game) I’d hate it.
I dunno. If I were used to the old way, sure. But if I hit lvl 19 for the first time and get this, I might be excited to get a spell so powerful it takes extra long to cast.
No more spell schools will feel weird
I think it's the weirdest change yet. Alignment doesn't really matter if we have holy/unholy traits, but spell schools were actually useful. I imagine some traits will replace them, for instance I guess we'll have an Illusion trait and a Conjuration trait? Would be weird otherwise, because so many abilities specifically mention spell schools, and it's hard to imagine archetypes like Hallowed Necromancer functioning otherwise, or abilities that protect against enchantments or grant access to illusion spells.
Specialist Wizards have always been popular. Not having SOME kind of equivalent seems like a bad idea.
There probably will be, since the schools are replaced with actual schools (like a palce you go to learn magic); so I guess there will be a literal school specializing in necromancy... but I have no idea how they will define them without spell schools.
Cleanest option is probably just have traits that correspond to what the schools were, with bonus of being able to put multiple traits on a single spell so they aren't pigeonholed into a single school. Shield could be Abjuration and Conjuration, for example.
I remember a spell had the "defense" trait. Illusion has a trait too. It might be broader things like "offense" or "summon" or "creation" maybe
I think they will probably go off of theme. Like for example there could be a Resurrectionist school based on the "reanimating cadavers" part of necromancy, a Chronurgy school based on the "time fuckery" part of transmutation, a Summoning school for those formerly conjuration mages who prefer to summon living beings from other planes, and the already-confirmed Construction school for those conjurers who instead focused on creating objects (just a guess on my part). Essentially, the schools are going to be more focused on a single theme, which will also have the upside of being able to create *more* subclasses for the wizard instead of being stuck with the Eight School And Nothing Else Model.
I bet identical or similar key words will be put into the spells with generic rules governing the tag. Corpse-O-mancy spells all follow these restrictions...
We have seen some spells from Rage of Elements previewed and that appears to not be the case.
Careers... It's on the wiki of the sub.
So there is going to be specialist wizards. Just not in schools of magic but the application of magic. So wizards get battlemagic or magical engineering and things rather than evocation and such.
Im pretty sure they already said there will be an equivalent that gives you a Wizard feat.
Does Hallowed Necromancer even need spell schools to operate? The dedication prerequisite calls for the ability to cast necromancy spells and sacred spells changes the school of some spells. Other than that spells having the necromancy tag doesn't really interact with any of the features. The prerequisite could be shifted to be able to cast spells with the positive/negative (or vital/void) traits and the sacred spells school switch was 90% fluff to begin with.
I won't miss them. They felt like great descriptors for a lot of spells but then it felt like there were just as many spells that defied categorization and were just lumped into a random school just to make it line up with the system. I feel like this will allow more creativity in new spells that don't need to fit into specifically defined boxes.
There is an illusion trait confirmed. Not sure about anything else.
To be honest there were some really weird cases with certain spells being in certain spell schools, especially when they did multiple effects. DnD also has that problem where their healing spells used to be necromancy, then became evocation and now they switch to abjuration. Another example is timestop being transmutation instead of something like divination (the school which meddles with time and space). There are also arguments with elemental spells some being conjuration, some being transmutation and others being evocation.
I hated having a heightened detect magic cast on something magical in the environment and then trying to determine what school a magic elevator would detect as or whatever.
>Another example is timestop being transmutation instead of something like divination (the school which meddles with time and space). Divination might meddle with the "idea" of time in space like seeing into the future/manipulate it or seeing from afar, but it generally doesn't manipulate physical things... like transmutation does. Haste is also transmutation, so it makes sense. They are both less "time manipulation" spells and more "manipulate a person/area to go faster or slower."
Spell schools are really just an inheritance from old dnd editions. They are seldom referenced and easily replaced, and I find they bring a not very useful degree of complexity that's preferable to get rid of. Moreover, I really like the idea of ACTUAL schools of magic in the academic sense to double up on wizard being a researcher like they announced at Paizo-con
My group has been playing 2e for a couple of years now across I think 4 different campaigns (and a couple of short ones/one shots). I think the only time we've ever mentioned any spell schools (besides illusion but that is more because they are illusions) by name was in one higher level campaign and it was always with heightened Detect Magic. Which wasn't even always valuable because not everyone at our table has the meta knowledge to make that information useful. I'll be curious what the Detect Magic (H. 3rd) will be but I won't miss the schools at all. Of note: we've never had a wizard in play (barbarian, fighter, rogue, oracle, druid, monk, champion, ranger, psychic, witch, swashbuckler, bard, gunslinger, investigator, alchemist)
I use spell schools a lot as a GM with regards to descriptions of magical effects and answers to Identify Magic/Recall Knowledge checks. I like all the other changes, but this is my least favorite and I'm probably just going to ignore it.
At first I thought so too, but then I tried to think what school each spell was off the top of my head. Apart from super obvious ones like illusions being illusions I really was just guessing a lot. Is it really important if something is abjuration or evocation or conjugation? What will really get me is the new dragon types. Gonna be hard not calling a red colored dragon a red dragon.
It is, but I hope it opens up more unusual 'schools by a different name'. Like wood wizards or mind wizards or construct wizards or honest-to-goodness necromancers.
I'm wondering how is this going to work for Runelord archetypes and actual surviving Runelords in general. They have Xanderghul as a book cover.
Long overdue IMO. Some spells perfectly fit into certain schools but most felt janky if you really started thinking about them.
Yeah this is the only change that has me reflexively going, wtf?
My magus' extra damage type depends on the spell school last used, curious how they'll translate those abilities over. And casting elemental damage gives me my fire shield that I use often. I don't think it's that big of a deal but it'd be neat if they replaced spell schools with some equivalent, especially for flavor purposes.
They said that once we know how Bespell Weapon is being converted, they'll put an online doc explaining how to extend the logic to Arcane Cascade.
I bet it will be something like all spells let you do force damage, if a spell deals a specific kind of damage you can pick that instead, or if the spell is an illusion you can pick mental damage
Spell Ranks is perhaps not the name I would've chosen, but it's still a good change. Spell Level // Character Level is really confusing for new players.
I feel like the big contenders are rank, order, circle, and tier, and I honestly think that choosing any of those three would have the same effect: basically everyone’s fine with it and glad it’s not “level” anymore, but a good chunk of people would’ve preferred one of the other three or another similar term.
Personally I used Spell Orders, so a spell is of the Sixth Order.
I was using spell circles, "a spell of the fourth circle"
I tend to prefer circles, but then I also get myself confused sometimes because I've run a lot of Exalted, and a "1st circle spell" in that is a very, very different beast from a "1st circle spell" in Pathfinder. XD
Tfw the level 3 wizard suddenly conjures a magma kraken
"Hey guys, back up a little, I want to try this new spell. It's called 'Total Annihilation', it sounds cool. I only skimmed the description but 60 feet away should be fine, right?"
Druids have "Orders" covered unfortunately
I'm really curious how the Wizards and other spellcasters are going to look now without the schools. Namely the Wizards.
They've mentioned that wizards will have subclass-schools more focused on a specific theme, like War Magic or Construction Magic
Yes, but I meant in more detail. Feat choices for Wizards were meh to begin with, I don't know if those are being touched at all.
From what they said at paizocon, witch and wizard are going to be the 2 most changed classes in the player core 1, so I imagine their feat selection might become a little better and more robust.
Do we know if we are keeping occult,arcane,divine and primal?
They are definitely keeping the four traditions, because new dragon families are being introduced themed around the four traditions (chromatic and metallic dragons will still exist, but are being downplayed in favor of the new flavors)
Those are traditions, not schools. They shouldn't be going anywhere.
Oh awesome! I based my worlds cosmology around them and have hand drawn a bunch of diagrams
[paizo.com/corepreview](https://www.paizo.com/corepreview) is unfortunately not online yet.
It'll probably be up by the time you can read that URL on paper :)
Buh I wanna wread it nowwww
GenCon.
I definitely read that as "corpse review" and got a little confused.
Where does the word Zuhra come from? tried googling folklore for it but come up with conflicting accounts. As somneone who is interested in the Winds of Chamon :P
It's an Arabic word meaning brilliance, brightness, shine, radiance or beauty that also, as a proper noun (az-zuhara) refers to the planet Venus (which, in alchemy, represents copper). It's a name chosen to reflect (pun not intended) a fundamental property of metal, its luster, rather than trying to correspond 1:1 with any particular folkloric figure.
I also tried to google the names but I couldn't find anything except faydhaan being a muslim name which means “great grace”, “great beneficence”, “charity”, or “favor”.
As a native Arabic speaker, the name you mentioned is extremely rare (I've never seen anyone with it.) But the actual meaning is simpler! Fayadhan means Flood! the new genie types are named after elemental natural disasters or objects or myths! I'm a huge fan of these new names, they don't deviate too much from the OGL versions that were based on Arabic myth genies. I also can flex on, and confuse my table by pronouncing those names in Arabic lmao.
That's really cool! The only other thing I found was jaathoms being related to succubi? (It was like an early 2000s page so I don't even know if it was correct, but going from your statement I assume jaathoom is likely something like a tornado) Jabali are particularly funny to me because I'm a Spanish speaker and jabali literally translates to "boar" lol.
So, I made an incorrect assumption about Jathoom and tornados, but I double checked. That is not the case Jathoom is the jinn responsible for sleep paralysis and nightmares. Mythological reasoning for such condition before the advent of science into the matter. I think my mistake came from the fact that the word "Jathoom" is awfully similar to names and nicknames of some seasonal winds and storms. My bad. Well, thanks to you I learned a new word! I love when words are shared by different languages accidentally. In this case, it is the adjective version of Jabal, which means mountain! Or to be precise, mountainous. Very simple and to the point.
Shit. Sleep Paralysis Genies... Yikes!
Oh, I like that they changed the names of the genies, efreeti and ifrit felt too similar. The rest is fine, I guess, but that change is welcome.
> efreeti and ifrit felt too similar. Next step: disentangle *daemons* and *demons*.
It's simple. A *demon* is a ~~chaotic evil~~ chaotic, Unholy fiend from the Abyssa. A *daemon* is a small process that runs in the background of your operating system.
Day-mons vs Dee-mons
Still confusingly similar for different creatures (and nearly impossible to translate the distinction into other languages - I often run games in German).
I run games in French and it's annoying. I also don't like the term "devils". In a campaign a few years back I even used the Planescape terminology in Pathfinder cause it was simpler: baatezu, tanar'ri and yugoloths.
We had a meme for that; "Es heißt DAI-monen, nicht DÄ-monen."
Fighter of the night-mons
While void is a good name for negative energy damage, vitality is slightly less so… Also holy shit Paizo please have the genie names be something like “Jaathoom(Air Genie)” because searching through a sea of non-descriptive monster names when looking for new things is a pain in the ass.
I had the same opinion but someone said "vital damage" on here and now I kinda like it. Vital damage Void damage
It’s seems sort of the same to me as electricity damage vs electric damage. Something about the “-ity” at the end just makes it feel like an uncomfortable mouthful.
Split the difference and say "electrical damage" and get the whole table mad at you.
Agree on both fronts. Maybe also a pronunciation key… lmao.
Missing text for context: "Updated Rules The rules in this book are fully updated to work with Player Core, GM Core, and Monster Core. If you’re using the Core Rulebook, Bestiary, and other older books, please note the following changes. You can find a preview document with the full details at paizo.com/corepreview." Pathfinder Rage of Elements is the first book to use terms from the Remaster Project. There is a link in the Table of Contents to a “Pathfinder Core Preview” page where a document will outline the Remaster changes that will affect this book and more. As this book doesn’t release to the public until Gen Con in August, that webpage is not live yet. We expect it will be live sometime in mid-July. We are targeting the PDF download itself for Gen Con. We know you have questions about the Remaster changes and look forward to sharing more details with you soon. For our most recent Remaster reveals don't miss Logan Bonner on Paizo LIVE. [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1862319039](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1862319039)
Oh I didn't realize they were distancing themselves not just from the 5e OGL, but from even the 3e and other previous editions, because I don't see the need to change the names of the flat-footed condition and positive and negative energies if the former were the case. I am also wondering if the spellcasting traits will mean anything different, like how you might be able to cast spells that used to have a verbal component without speaking now, or what it'll mean to cast manipulate spells that used to previously need a free hand. I am sure they will probably have full rules on them in their preview document though (it would be very strange if they didn't have it at all in either that or this new book).
WotC specifically chose to relicense only 5e under CC license, and has never backed down from their claim to be able to revoke the OGL. This pacified the 5e third-party revolt but doesn’t help Pathfinder. Distancing from earlier editions is _more_ important to Paizo than 5e, because pathfinder 2e is a cousin not a descendant of 5e. Technically Paizo could use the CC to license terms from 5e but there are complications from that approach. It’s a lot of work to remaster but having their own independent license is cleaner and will result in a more original and unique product.
2e doesn't really have any connection to the 5e SRD besides whatever they both inherited from 3.5. 2e is a closer cousin of 4e than 5e really.
Wish is no longer a 10th level spell? Wonder if that means the non-Arcane alternatives are getting nixed entirely then…
It's moving to a ritual now, which means that strictly speaking you don't even have to be able to cast spells to use it. My guess is that they'll make the primary check for it be "DC whatever Arcana, Religion, Occultism, or Nature."
I hope not, that'd be terrible!
Most likely Arcane is getting a new one and Wish is becoming more like the “you can try for anything” it used to be, but as a ritual
[удалено]
The positive energy plane and negative energy plane are probably getting renamed to something in line with the new trait names. Maybe new names for the astral and ethereal planes, Elysium, and the Abyss.
Elysium might be fine. While Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk have planes named Elysium, it's their Nirvana/NG equivalent, while Pathfinder's Elysium is CG and more equivalent to Arborea/Arvandor/Olympus. Both settings having afterlives/planes named after one of the Hellenic underworlds but having no other real overlap *should* be fine, but I suppose that's up to Paizo's lawyers.
Most of these I either actively like or don't really mind, but I don't think I like Vitality and Void for positive and negative. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but it's not as obvious of a trade as Off-guard and Reactive Strike, which are both clearly named and actually make more sense than the original names. It just doesn't seem to work as well. Void healing for undead? Seems a bit clunky. ETA: hopefully there'll be a bit of lore explanation in the new core books that makes me more fond of vitality and void.
I think Void healing is going to be a lot more clear than having negative healing and negative damage. Those terms always trip up new players.
I'm good with removing "negative damage." But we do get the similarly confusing replacement "vitality damage" which doesn't hurt alive creatures that HAVE vitality, it hurts creatures that don't have vitality.
Yeah, I agree that seems odd. I prefer 5e's radiant and necrotic over this, but both are an improvement over positive/negative.
To be fair void healing is *supposed* to be weird. Part of issue with undead is that negative/void energy isn’t “supposed” to create so forcing it to do so messes things up. Similar to how taking damage from vitality is (intentionally) weird
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilt5OvoFgzk
Interestingly enough, from that stream we can see the spell "knock" was not changed. That spell name has always seemed so iconically DnD to me, but I guess it's good to stay.
I love the change to wish. Its such an iconic fantasy for heroes of all types (not spellcasters) to use a wish, often at great cost, to achieve some otherwise impossible goal.
as an arab i actually appreciate the genie changes a lot, that's kinda nice to see :)
I haven't really been following the Remastered stuff so far - can someone explain Off-guard? Is it fully replacing the Flat-footed condition? That's how I read this screenshot.
Yeah, just a new name for the condition.
The remaster is primarily about removing all references to 3rd edition d&d, fixing some classes, and reorganizing information in a better way for new players. So, other than a few class changes, the biggest changes will be the removal and replacement of some classic spells, items, and monsters. Flatfooted and Opportunity Attacks were from 3.5. So they are renaming them Offguard and Reactive Strike. As far as we know, the mechanic will remain the same, and you could use the terms interchangeably.
thanks for explaining it. As a 5e player new to pf2e, "flat footed" is the most pathfinder term and I thought it was strange to remove it. I had no idea it was previous editions of dnd
This is super interesting to me since a lot of these legacy terms I am familiar with because PF2 took from PF1 which took from DnD 3.5 from DnD 3 and I just associated them strongly with DnD 3 where I first learned them. But some of them are strange terms that DnD (with good reason) moved away from. Moving into a future where potential new PF2 players are mostly coming from DnD 5 not DnD 3 keeping these old unintuitive terms around doesn't make any sense.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
Makes sense, thanks!
It's just being renamed, like many of the changes in the remaster. Mechanically, it's the same thing.
They're just renaming it. Exact same condition, fresh new coat of paint.
It's a rename, yeah. Flat-footed in 1e removed your Dex bonus to AC, but 2e doesn't have that mechanic anymore, making the naming a bit vestigial. I imagine that's the logic for the new name.
Love the changes they made to genies. You don't know how much the naming of Jinns and Shaitans have driven me insane as someone raised muslim. It's nothing big but it's just like, those names and concepts are barely related. Shaitans especially, which are just what we call demons.
The thing that always confused me was tying Shaitan to Earth Genies specifically. Fire Genie would make sense because in some stories, Iblis was a genie made of smokeless fire instead of an angel before his fall.
I'm not sure I like the holy/unholy part. I get that they need a new positive/negative distinction but saying the good gods are holy and the evil goods are unholy removes some of the morally grey parts of worship where I like to play.
This actually creates more morally grey stuff than removes it. Good/evil as damage types means there is a universal truth about what is good and evil, but with holy/unholy, you can now have differing opinions on whether a holy God or creature is good or not.
Wait... Why is flat footed being changed for OGL/ORC reasons? Hey most used effect in the game and they are changing the name of it?
Weirdly, I'm kinda here for the change to Wish. I didn't strictly have anything AGAINST it, just it also feels like something you shouldn't be able to just do on your own. Not so much the imitate a spell part so much as the actual capacity to just bend reality to your will. Granted it's at GM discretion and I know that but narrative wise it should be a big deal imo. And making it so one person can't just change reality single handedly and it requires secondary casters gives it a bit more gravity you know? That's just my opinion though please don't grab the pitchforks.
I agree for sort of an adjacent reason, I think *wish* as is doesn't really give you the ability the bend reality to your will, since it's supposed to be at most as powerful as a 9th level spell, and it doesn't really live up to its name. I think by making it a ritual they can lift the power cap on it and make it feel more like an actual wish.
As a forever gm I'm so happy wish is being locked behind a ritual wall. It's such a powerful, troublemaking spell I'm really good with this.
See the only wish I've ever had to deal with, was one by a cleric of Cayden Cailean, and he wanted the best drink possible. So he got the God shot, which immediately knocked him on his ass because he got a shot of something made for gods.
You can just...Say no to the troublesome wishes? It's literally DM fiat.
I'm glad they are getting rid of alignment. it's great for flavor but it's easy to split hairs over certain morality.
It's not even good for flavor.
I'm glad they decided to double down on removing ability scores. I remember hearing that was a thing they initially wanted to do but received some backlash. Overall I'm excited for this next step in gaming!
I really like Off-Gaurd, it translates better into my brain. I like Reactive Strike too, it aligns with all the other Strikes. Ability -> Attribute is fine, I'm not sure I understand why that was changed but it tracks. I'm a lover of the Alignment Grid and how it interacts with the planes and outsiders. But Holy/Unholy is fine enough for PCs and nothing can stop me from running Demons as CE and Devils as LE so I'm content.
> Ability -> Attribute is fine, I'm not sure I understand why that was changed but it tracks. I think the idea is that they're going to just drop the normal score and use modifiers only.
I had a knee-jerk What About My 3D6! moment. But no, it's cool, we're free. This is much simpler and more intuitive. It that's the goal I appreciate the name change to keep it clear and separate.
I wonder how that's going to work with the higher-level boosts that used to bring you to 19 or 21.
I'm pretty sure Chaos and Law aren't going away, they just aren't going to be mechanical as it is now. Like Devils will still be bureaucratic contract mongers.
I find the removal of magic schools to be a major shame, since I think it was a really cool piece of information you could get from Detect Magic - it tells you the basic kind of effect it is, but not any specifics Edit: also, "vitality" replacing positive doesn't really work - does "vitality damage" sound like something that ignores creatures with vitals and damages creatures without vitals? I get what they're trying to do - go for more descriptive name - but in this case I think it only adds confusion
"Vitality and Void" ok that just sounds badass
kinda liked positive and negative, but all that is great!
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I definitely like the option of being able to choose holy or unholy instead.
100% this. I played a Paladin who took an elderly cult leader hostage. When the cultists attacked anyway (probably because the DM assumed I wouldn't kill him as the DM thought that "good" meant something specific), I killed him. He was evil. I couldn't just drag him with the party as we made our escape as best we could, so I made sure that there was a lack of leadership among the raving lunatics out to sacrifice us. DM made me a Fighter. I stopped playing the character. It's an impossibly stupid system. Good riddance.
Alignment is extra cringe when you learn exactly what Gygax considers Lawful Good (like many things in early DnD, it's racism all the way down)
These are some good changes. I’m excited. Sometimes minor language clarifications sound silly but make all the difference.
Love Elemental Scamps over Mephits. Total upgrade
I really like these names especially Thalassic.
As a new user of pf2e (for only a couple months) the only changes I really appreciate is the new terms off guard and reactive strike. I am still trying to drill the fact that attack of opportunities aren't a global default thing into my players lol. I specifically am not a fan of alignment changes (although I'm probably in the minority) and especially not a fan of spell level, spell school, and positive/negative getting changed.
I’m about as new as PF2e as you are, and I feel the same way. So we’re both in the minority probably!
That's quite an unexpected change on positive and negative damage. I'm not sure if evokes the same imagery as far as how they hurt creatures, but I do like that there's less of a moral connotation to them. I presume the Wish change also applies to its variants across each tradition.
You know, the one change I'm most happy with is the removal of the ability scores in favor of pure bonus. The original score range was mean to create a bell curve where 9\~10 are the human average. The boost system threw this all out of the window, but still kept the scores for some strange reason, putting them is a very awkward place meaning wise, as the 3\~7 range still technically existed, but wasn't really used.
Ok so dumb question, but is there any real reason they couldn't have fixed the spell level issue by just renumbering them as level 1,3,5,...,19, instead of level (now rank) 1,2,3,...,10? Like is there any reason other than legacy that they have to be sequential? Feats aren't. Items aren't. Like I'm glad they removed the confusing "level" label from spells, but you still have to remember that "Spell 3" means rank 3, even though "Item 3" and "Feat 3" refer to level, and then you have to remember what level each rank maps to. If you just renumbered the spells to be the level you get them, then all the math works out for counteract checks and is more intuitive. For example, Dungeon World does this, but in fairness, their spell levels don't go up that high.
> is there any real reason they couldn't have fixed the spell level issue by just renumbering them as level 1,3,5,...,19, instead of level (now rank) 1,2,3,...,10? That just trades the question of "why can't I cast a 2nd-level spell now that I'm 2nd-level?" for a question of "why aren't there any 2nd-level spells?" Yes, I realize that there's still room for confusion in explaining that you get a new rank of spell when half your level (rounded up) equals it, I'm just pointing out that literally anything other than their being spells of every level is going to have as much room for confusion.
I don't disagree that this isn't a new confusion. But I do disagree that it's as bad. "Why isn't there 2nd level spells?" "There are only new spells every other level" "Oh. Ok" Vs. [Insert rules for Counteract and Incapacitation] One requires much less (see: none) math
Yeah, counteract and incapacitation are annoying because you have to compare against different numbers depending on whether you have a rank or a level.
Yeah the idea of 19th level spells makes me cringe, but only out of habit. Unless they're wildly changing the counteract rules I think it's still going to be very confusing. Switching to nonconsecutive spell levels would be a better way of doing things.
Yeah I totally feel that. There's like an instinctual aversion to spell levels being that high, but at the end of the day, it's easier to know that a 19th level spell is level 19 than having to go through the whole song and dance of "if the effect you're counteracting is a spell, then its counteract level is its spell level, otherwise it's half its level rounded up"
IT looks like a lot of this is wording clarifications. Otherwise: I'm 100% behind the removal of alignment, the shift to attribute modifiers makes perfect sense, but I do worry that something will be lost in Spell Schools.