When I practice conversations in my head about why I'm switching from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pathfinder Second Edition, they always go the same way. Hypothetical people ask me, "what does Pathfinder 2 offer than D&D doesn't?" And my answer is always the same: player options. Character customization.
And that's what the Advanced Player's Guide is all about.
Pathfinder 2e's APG is overflowing with new character concepts for anyone who's outgrown the (many) options in the Core Rulebook, and is going to inspire any player with a dozen new character concep🐠ts before they're even halfway through the book.
Note: As of this writing, there's still time to buy the Pathfinder Second Edition Humble Bundl⛎e until August 5th.
Teaching Old Classes New Tricks
The four new classes offered in the book - Investigator, Oracle, Witch, Swashbuckler - are varied enough that an effective party could be made up of just them. They vaguely mirror the classic "thief, priest, magic-user, warrior" archetypes, though you wouldn't get that from their preferred ability scores. You won't find any Strong (with a capital Str) characters among them, but you'll certainly be passing a lot of Intelligence-b𒀰ased checks.
They're each as well fleshed-out as the classes from the Core Rulebook, though that actually still puts them at a disadvantage. See, with the older classes also getting new abilities and feats in this book, one can't help but feel like these new classes will always be a bit behind in terms of options. Will some future Advanced Player's Guide 2 add more abilities to the Witch, the Investigator? Time will tel👍l.
Speaking of content for original classes, my personal favorite new feats for older characters both involve throwing things around. Alchemists gain the ability to create special healing bombs they can hurl at allies around the battlefield; meanwhile, Barbarians get straight to the poiꦰnt and can pick up and launch friendly creatures while in a rage.
An Archetype For Every Occasion
While new classes are the first major selling point of the book, the second is clearly the 42 new Archetypes available for just about anyone to add to their existing characters. Archetypes, for those who don't know, are sort of secondary classes - you spend class feats to gain entry into an Archetype, and from the🐷n on as you level up you can either take feats from your class or your chosen Archetype. Archetypes let your character become even more unique, and they aren't ever tied to classes; t♓here's no reason your Wizard can't take a few feats of Assassin.
There isn't anything especially wild about the new Archetypes in the APG; you won't find any that are drenched in lore. You'll want to go to one of the setting books or an adventure path for those. But they are certainly functional, all the way from the tumbling Acrobat to the clever🦹 and brutal Weapon Improviser.
The Vigilante and Beast Master are the two big standouts, each getting le𝔉ngthy entries that detail how they bend the rules of the game. The Vigilante essentially lets you fulfill the masked superhero fantasy by playing two characters in one; the Beast Master lets you lead a wholꩵe pack of animal companions, swapping them out on the fly for the situation.
The Scroll Trickster is a personal favorite, large🍌ly thanks to one especiall꧙y flavorful feature that says you always have scraps and shreds of loose scroll detritus hanging around, "leaking energy like a sieve," and you can kluge these together into a functional scroll once per day.
Everything A Player Would Want
Also included in the book are new Ancestries and Heritages, as well as more Ancestry feats for those in the CRB. Tꦫhe Tengu, inspired by Japanese folklore, are corvid-like humanoids that are said to eat bad luck; Tieflings can be of any original Ancestry, but clearly bear the ma🐲rks of a diabolic bloodline.
There are a variety of new Backgrounds for players to choose from, which give access to the many new skill feats found later in the book (like the Barber, which grants players the well-named Risky Surgery feat). Like the Ancestries, there are some Rare Backgrounds, which means it's up to the Game ﷽Master to determine which are available to players.
There are fun new items, and plenty of spells, including a few returning favorites like the ever-popular⛎ Animate Rope.
What This Book Isn't
There are a few things worth noting. For one, the book offers 🍒little to GMs except f🌼or inspiration. Of course, the new spells and items could end up in the arsenals and treasure hoards of NPCs, respectively, but that's not reason enough for a GM to splurge on this book for themselves.
Two, while the book will be fun to peruse for the titular adv༒anced player, it is definitely going to cause some decision pꦦaralysis in new players. It's not at all necessary to pick this up until you've got a few characters under your belt and you're ready to try something a little bit different.
That all said, the book does what it sets out to do, and is successful at it. Overall, the book is a veritable cornucopia of new player options and offers a lot to chew on, buܫt don't tuck in until you've had a chanꦍce to digest what the base game has to offer.
5 Out Of 5 Stars