… why the name/language changes? To distance from D&D and align with ORC instead?
Pathfinder 2e General Discussion
To distance from D&D and align with ORC instead?
Yup, exactly.
In some cases they're changing the terminology purely to avoid using the OGL and move towards ORC. In some other cases it seems to be more as though they're using the opportunity of all these changes happening to make a change away from terminology they thought was unclear or not as good as they'd like.
Essentially yes, they are removing any SRD components due to the licensing debacle created by WOTC earlier in the year. Then there's some other changes like ability scores being removed and then just using the modifiers, which makes sense tbh
Attribute modifiers function like ability modifiers. Ability scores have been removed.
Do we know yet how this will work with scores >+4? Like how currently it takes 2 boosts to get from 18 to 20. That's an important balancing feature to help MAD characters keep up with SAD characters.
Components for spells and item activations are replaced with the relevant traits.
So spells will have [Audible] [Manipulate] instead of verbal and somatic? How does this work for material components?
Do we know yet how this will work with scores >+4?
To the best of my knowledge, no, we don’t. Only that we’ve been told that they "have a solution" (to paraphrase).
Oh, that's pretty exciting!
All of these changes are honestly great IMO. They're mostly renaming, and as mentioned somewhere else ITT, it's clearly because of WOTC being absolute hacks with their licensing; Consequently, though, it makes all of the language so much more...natural. Clear, even. The few mechanical changes I'm sure will be well-received(dunno about the wish one, but the new ideas for genies, attribute modifiers instead of ability scores and ESPECIALLY removal of alignment are just good), so I think it's actually going to be a huge improvement, even if it was only out of necessity.
attribute modifiers instead of ability scores
Honestly I'm kinda disappointed in this one. Not that they're doing it, that much is great. But the "just tick a box when you've got a half-upgrade" for boosts above +4 is such a lazy approach. It feels like a hack, because that's obviously what it is, and it's not something that they ever would have done if the system were designed with that in mind.
I'm not particularly sure what they should have done instead (they're the designers, not me!), but they really should have done a better job with this.
One suggestion I've seen made is the idea of just restricting the increase of any ability to certain character levels, much as becoming a master or higher in a skill is restricted to certain levels. That would've made higher level characters increase their less-used skills more than they currently can, without increasing their advancement in their primary skills. Which I haven't put a lot of thought into, but I'm not sure it would have been the worst thing in the world.
just tick a box when you’ve got a half-upgrade
Really? They went with the most obvious and lame solution? Damn.
I do like the suggestion of restricting the boost the same as or similarly to skills, but regardless you're right - one is going to come across some sort of issue no matter how you do it, because they didn't design the game with that in mind. Perhaps it's the only glaring symptom of this change being sort of a last-minute get WOTC-off-our-backs?
Oh, I just realised where you commented! Here's the Lemmy thread discussing the full release of the 19-page rules update preview (sorry, the link is to the post on my instance, since Lemmy doesn't yet have a way to link to a post in an instance-agnostic way, like you can link to a community or user agnostically). Or here's a direct link to the PDF. It's not complete: so far they've only done enough to get you by if you're buying Rage of Elements.
There have also, of course, been multiple hour+ long videos from various creators (including former Paizo employees) discussing their thoughts on these changes, if that's your thing.