End of Edition Counselling

"Here's your happily ever after!"



Well, Pathfinder 2e has been announced. It's been so long that I was starting to believe the rumor that they said they'd never do a second edition. Ten years. I guess it's about time, right? The new edition ostensibly fixes a lot of issues, and even makes some quality of life changes I think are positive. Alchemists and Goblins are in the core now, which I'm calling a win for me and all other Goblin players. In fact, I'm gonna go so far as to declare that the old Elven Alchemist icon, who's just plain gone now, was eaten by Goblins. Yum Yum. So, Ol' Mousetrap is going to rush out, buy the new edition, and press everyone into playing it, right?

Nah.

I know plenty of people who are excited, but at this point me and (most of) my friends are older. The days of jumping to a new edition immediately are gone and frankly, for some of us, they never existed in the first place. I mean, I'm gonna take a look at it. Might play some games of it. There's a lot of reasons I'm never too excited about switching editions. Not just Pathfinder, but any of them.

I guess I should just get the practical concerns out of the way. I own a very large amount of books. When we made the jump to Pathfinder, it was entirely because it's (mostly) compatible with D&D 3.5 source. It meant we could still use all that stuff. Really, if you were to add the two together, Pathfinder is going to be the lion's share of the game's power anyway. But, I digress. This isn't always the case, but D&D 3.0 meant we probably weren't ever going to play 2e again. Pathfinder meant we're never going to play 3.X alone again. Pathfinder 2e could very well mean that for Pathfinder. The more incompatibility there is, the higher that chance is. Nobody wants to start all over buying books, especially when we're not unhappy with the current edition. Hell, if Pathfinder weren't a D20 license game and easy to convert old content to...I doubt we would've made the jump. These books aren't cheap.

But there are plenty of games with fewer books, or work great with just the core. I don't think 3.X or PF fit that bill, but both Vampire games do(Hell, most White Wolf games) as well as Mutants and Masterminds, there's a ton. I certainly didn't refuse the switch to Mutants and Mastermind's third edition because of the cost. But...I did make that refusal. Why?

Well, don't take this as me making a stealth-bash against PF 2e...but the third edition of Mutants and Masterminds isn't a hundred percent better. It's got problems, ones I'll probably save for another post entirely. The point is, if a new edition fixes the problems of the old and delivers a universally better product...great! VTM Revised, Shadowrun 3rd, and Mutants and Masterminds 2e are great examples. But they don't always do that. Sometimes, they fix some problems and cause others. So if all I'm doing is shifting problems to new areas...tell me again why I'm changing editions? We've already fixed a lot of M&M 2e's issues with house rules and altering reward structures. A new edition would just feel like starting over: we noticed several new problems at a glance in M&M 3e and even Shadowrun 4e, so how many more do you think they have that we won't find until later? It took us years to notice Pathfinder's ridiculous and surely untested tie-up rules. Sometimes it can feel like looking back on a field we've cleared of land mines, then deciding to keep traveling into another field full of land mines instead of just camping here.

Every once in a while, though, the new edition may as well be a new game entirely. Dungeons and Dragons 4e is probably the elephant in this room, but it's hardly the only time this happened. Hell, sometimes it being a new game is a good thing.Werewolf: The Forsaken was much more grounded and faithful to werewolf myths than Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Other times, though, it's Shadowrun 4e which ruins the Cyberpunk feel of the game(So much so that it offended 5e's developers) or Vampire: The Requiem which...let's face it, has probably seen less support than the older, supposedly dead edition Masquerade. Masquerade is beloved for a lot of reasons, and without intending to make an inflammatory statement, I'd say it's a fairly well balanced game, presuming your GM knows that skills, subtlety and cleverness can and should sometimes trump disciplines. As for Requiem? I don't fuckin' know, dude. They're only superficially similar. It and Masquerade feel like two wildly different teams were handed the same concept pitch.

But, Pathfinder isn't going to get any more support after August of 2019. No more books. No more cool stuff. Most people would take this as sad, but I'm positive about it. Let me explain why. For one, a game like Pathfinder already has so much source that you can play it for the rest of your life and still find new things you want to do in it, to say nothing of characters always being unique in terms of personality or situation. The end of an edition also means the beginning of a better understanding of the system.

Do you remember when Ultimate Magic came out? I feel like everyone had a pretty good handle on how the game was going to go, then Magus showed up. Magus definitely felt like Vegeta when it was new. An undeniable signal that things have changed, and weren't ever going to be the same again. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but Magus was big. I'm not saying it's overpowered, but it definitely made waves. Then, later on, Arcanist and the other hybrid classes were added. And then, just if you thought it was over, Vitalist and Kineticist in the Occult guide.

I'm not calling this power creep, or even implying Paizo is bad at game balance. Let's leave that discussion for another day. Even if these classes, these feats or weapons are well balanced with the content in the core book, they fundamentally changed the game. They changed your decisions, they changed the advice you gave each other and the way you built. Maybe even the way you played. They made a big impact.

So what does the end of an edition mean? No more waves, no more meteoric impacts. Smooth sailing. Once there's no new content, you can take stock of everything the game has and begin to develop permanent opinions. Solid, permanent advice or house rules. Imagine deciding you want to play a support caster in your next game, a healer specifically. Imagine your group hadn't bought the Occult Guide. Maybe it's not even out yet. You'd make a Cleric, probably. Maybe an Oracle. Now imagine halfway through the game, someone brings over the Occult guide and you read Vitalist. You see its insane action economy and wonderful support spells and you'd probably feel like a sucker for being Cleric.

Edit: Vitalist isn't in Occult Guide. It's a 3rd party class. My point stands, though.

Maybe that's a really stupid example, but closing the book on a game edition means things like that never happening. I enjoy Shadowrun 3e vastly more now than I did when we were still getting new books, looking back on it. I even know enough about the game to speak with authority over its failings and suggest ways to fix it. Newer editions of the game even helped me do that. Thanks, SR 5e! Mutants and Masterminds and Vampire: The Masquerade were the same situation, and Pathfinder won't be any different.


Maybe I'm preaching to the choir. My point is that a new edition doesn't mean you have to switch. It doesn't mean the death of the old game. When something dies, it means all you have left of it is your memories. An edition closing its doors can actually mean the opposite: That your best years with it are ahead of you.