RPG Rundown: Interview with Pathfinder's lead designer, Logan Bonner

hey it's Dave and I'm here with Logan Bonner who is lead designer for piso for the Pathfinder game and I'm really interested in hearing about remastered you know I know what most of the public knows which is that it was partially a way to adapt to unpredictability waty around the ogl and things like that uh and also just tell me if I'm wrong about this to really just establish Pathfinder as its own IP so with really uh things that are thought of as very characteristic of the yeah that's right uh yeah we had already kind of built a whole lot more setting around the game U since it started it kind of started very based on 35 d and d and the setting has grown so much and expanded so much um that we already had a whole a whole lot more to work with even if we kind of got rid of some things that were more D andd specific like like the Dr uh like some other you know peoples and places and spell names and that sort of thing sure um so that was kind of the inciting incident that made us decide we needed to do a remaster uh but while we were there we also you know the game came out in 2019 so there had been enough years of feedback on things that people didn't like and wanted changed or just things that we had noticed as we went through and kind of wanted to spice things up a little bit so it was a rough place to start uh kind of a difficult situation to start out in but we also recognize all the opportunities we had so we really like tuned up the game um and kept it backwards compatible as much as we could while we were doing that but really it was like okay this class could use a big revamp um these these spells aren't really working great we're going to swap them out um so it was an opportunity that kind of came out of uh difficulty but yeah we we ran with it so it seems similar to what uh wats is doing with whatever they're calling 5.5 right 2024 think aniversary Edition yeah something one of three names reprint with a little spice yeah yeah as far as tweaking the rules and things like that go uh I did read through the remastered I had never played a red second edition so I'm not going to be a great hand at comparing that I played first edition yeah um but uh that's one thing I wanted to ask is what were the other goals besides uh really separating the IP and by the way that makes a lot of sense to me because it's definitely true Garian is its own world it doesn't feel like it's was is the coast setting it really feels like its own setting a lot of pieces especially early on like there was a Dr Adventure path uh that heavily involved them but they haven't been doing much in recent years so like they were fairly easy to not really talk about anymore um there are some other things like that where a lot of the the dnes or D and drive specifically stuff had already kind of run its course and we had new things we wanted to move on to anyway so a good timing for that um as far as the other goals uh there's that kind of rules tune up um one of the other things we wanted to do is really like amp up the and uh improve the presentation uh so one of the big things is uh we really put a lot of work into giving better book organization it's easier to find things in the book The the playing the game chapter the kind of the main rules part of player core is really refined uh and organized much better easier to find things that was a big Focus uh so one of the things I think people are going to notice if they've been playing Pathfinder second edition especially if it's like a player who's never picked up a core rule book if they look at player core they're going to get a much easier to reference book um I think that's a really big Improvement um another one was like monsters we wanted to get kind of more monsters in Monster core than we had in bester to introduce some new Concepts revamp some old ones um kind of take some things that were really only Hanging On by the by their fingernails from DND tropes uh and kind of use the Pathfinder version I think a good example there is ghouls because they had kind of the ghoul fever and the paralysis and all that stuff from D and D ghouls uh which is like very pretty much impossible to make them balanced for their level if they can do all those things and you know we took our best stab at it um but they didn't really reflect the goals in our setting they were still very D and dbased rules wise um and now that we don't have to necessarily have that tether we could change how they work and revamp them a lot so now they're they have more of a society there's like a big ghoul Society in uh in the setting in Garian so we said like okay what does that mean for the ghouls you know how does it change their look their their uh their backstory and and their statistics as well cool like what kind of things did you remove or add to make the ghoul yeah be better balanced for the level it's at well they they kind of had the like paralysis and horrible disease and everything it's just like it's a lot to put onto a party at like who are encountering them at like first or second level I don't really have the tools to cure those things or prevent those things um one of the good things we were able to do with the original version because of how Pathfinder works we have the the critical and regular success being a big deal and the CR the failure and critical failure being a big deal right so we could kind of put some of those things behind only critical failure to make them less frequent interesting but that was still just really hard to recover from the way they were structured um and they're one of the things where it's like we felt like kind of the weight of the history of them when we were initially doing second edition meant that we couldn't change them as much as we would have liked to uh for balance reasons uh and with the remaster we were able to make those CH oh because you're changing everything yeah another good example is uh the original version had ability scores and ability modifiers but ability scores didn't really do anything on their own right and were kind of just there because they were there there were hand-me-downs from D andd so we removed those and just have attribute uh now so that's kind of the thing the kind of thing we're able to streamline yeah that's one of my favorite things about remastered actually is the removal of the base ability score it's confusing and as far as I can tell historically the only reason for it is to roll up random stats with 3d6 if you're bold enough to say you know what it's not an option yeah gone there's always that thing and I've worked on fourth edition D and and on Pathfinder first edition not at its onset uh but throughout it and then in second edition and when you had the ability scores there's always this thing it's like how can I make these matter is there a way to use these and it's very hard to use them so usually it's kind of a Fool's errand to to try to use them I noticed one thing I've been doing videos about uh D and D 5.5 and I noticed there was one thing that they added at and it's at level 20 or something that uses the actual score ah finally got there if you want to play D up to level 20 which is a whole other conversation that we're not here to talk to you about anyway but yeah rarely used and and when it is it's it's pretty lackluster and uh I think that's friendlier to new players too yeah that's one of the big reasons um that the other one that's very confusing to new people is we changed spell level to spell rank so that you don't have level and level and have to figure out what the difference is between those especially if you're a new and honestly like that's very good for new players you get it mixed up even as an experienced player somebody says level out of contact talking yeah you don't know what they mean so that was another one that was really nice to just be like finally we don't have to stand on on precedent we can just change right yeah that now that I think about it those are kind of sacred cows and as long as you have the opportunity to cut away like this isn't yeah we did a fair amount of that this is not a a forked branch of the D andd source code anymore right yeah exactly that's for programmers and it people out there who might get that reference uh yeah we um that was that was one of the big opportunities we had uh and it was really nice to do that and um like I said we were kind of maintaining as much backward compatibility as we could um so the biggest things that didn't work there were things like alignment which this was another opportunity it's like let's get rid of that we are tired of the convers about it we think it's kind of reductive for understanding a world and the characters in it we want more opportunities for gray morality um and that's so that's one of the things we removed um right so uh there were a few things like that where it's like backwards compati compatibility takes a little bit of a hit um right so but there were things like ability scores where almost nothing gets ruined by removing that you know if you right had a had a feet in a book that were required a strength of 14 and now it requires strength plus two it's pretty much the same right right yeah that's all it ever really did anyway right those would be set at break points where you bump into the new modifier generally yeah that makes sense again it really seems like a great opportunity to cut the ties with sacred cows uh which you know that base ability stat is even uh spell level kind of is you're going to get like if it's if it's actual D and D you're probably worried not you but whoever publishes that is probably worried about the Grog nards you can't do that and yeah Pathfinder in a great spot of not having that problem and I feel like it's been around long enough that you've got loyal players who aren't worried about those SEC we have and that's honestly one of the things we were not sure about when we did second edition because because Pathfinder first edition a lot of its fan base especially initially was coming from D and D 3.5 and that's they wanted extension of that we didn't want fourth edition honestly no offense that you worked on it but yeah that's why we migrated different games for different folks right say we I mean a limited group not all players I mean the players that I was similar to Fair number of players yeah yeah uh so when we got to that point uh of doing second edition was like how much can we really change because we don't want to kind of you know do the same thing right alienate people um but now we have a much better sense of what our fan base is and what it's grown into um I think that they were a lot more receptive to change than we expected them to be that's great um so and we found that out you know over the years and you know a lot of new people came in also the second edition that's great too yeah uh I was going to ask you about that if you've gotten any feedback on remastered it's been out at least the player core has been out long enough that you may have gotten some feedback are yeah are people receiving it well yeah people are receiving it well I I think you know we told people that it was going to be a relatively minor revision you know that most of their old stuff was going to work and I think most people have said like you know they told us that and that is actually what it is I think people were really uncertain how how much the changes were going to you know throw a wrench in their games uh and most people were pleasantly surprised that it was it was pretty compatible um a lot of the changes like removing alignment people were kind of already championed the bit for uh so they were happy to see that happen um obviously not 100% of people but uh we found most of the big changes were were people were pretty happy with good good um we also made a bunch of changes to the classes uh the uh player Core 2 comes out right now uh so that's the one where we get to take some of the classes that really needed the biggest facelift uh and present those in that book uh because we we took the initial um set of classes the first 16 classes that we put out in second edition and split those between player core and player Core 2 uh and that's essentially just a have smaller books at a better price point so it's more affordable for people decision um because we had the giant core rule book um and a lot of we got a lot of feedback on that as well it's just like this is heavy this is expensive people something a little lighter easier yeah if I remember right the GM stuff was also in the second edition core yeah it was but um now that now that we've done a GM core we took the game mastery guide which was didn't have the base rules but had a bunch of supplemental stuff we combined that all into one and I think that was one of the biggest surprises to me working on it was how much nicer it was to have all that in one place because we had a section in the core r book that talked about the basics of building encounters how to structure encounters but then GM uh game mastery guide rather had all the extra explanation of how to do it and having all those in one place is just so much nicer so much easier to reference and especially if you're starting out as a gym it's just way better to have all that context at once one big core makes sense as an experiment to me I mean there there are advantages in the sense that as as soon as this Edition comes out you can play it you don't have to wait necessarily for the GM guide uh and have this staggered period but on the other hand I I think I agree with you that it's better for the ultimately at the end of the day it's better for the GM to have everything under one cover that's cool so if I remember right and I may not because it's been a long time and I'm getting older my memory is starting to not be so good but uh I think that something that I'm also not sure I'm remembering about D and D correctly but I think the idea that you sleep all night and no matter what happened to you maybe you got a finger chopped off you got a black eye you've Fallen twice unconscious maybe you're in a coma for a good 10 or 15 minutes you get a good night's rest I'm having a little fun here I know people like this about d and d i i happen not to and I joke about it a lot of the channel this one thing I don't care for guess what there's no black eye you're fine like you'll if you really go hardcore and you're one of these hard Master dudes like why isn't the cut infected you could die from that that part I don't care about but I do think it's funny that but I noticed that is the case I did that start in second edition in Pathfinder as well I think that's in Pathfinder too right uh it not exactly so okay it is we are much Freer in Pathfinder 2 than in Pathfinder first edition with your healing but you do have to do things in character to heal so you will get some hit points back overnight but if you want to heal up between combats or you really you know you're really beaten up you want to heal you're going to need to use skills or spells to heal um what we did do was made it much easier to use the medicine skill to heal up relatively quickly so if you spend 10 minutes you can heal somebody up pretty well um and with the skill Feats in the game you can pretty quickly say oh well I want to heal more than one person at a time uh and you can go up against higher DCS to heal at higher amount so as your skill gets better you're going to get better at healing people faster uh and easier uh so it does take some some amount of your time but I think most people find that they can usually be up to full relatively quickly but we did want to make sure there was an in character way of doing it I see okay so it's somewhere between the two then somewhere between the two like a decent compromise yeah and that's actually one where when we did the Pathfinder play test for second edition uh we had it being very generous and people are like that's a little too much so that's something we scaled back uh I think originally it was like 10 minutes you heal a bunch of people for a fair amount uh and then we kind of said like okay well we're going to make the base skill healing one person and the skill Feats are how you get uh better makes sense yeah I did misr that because I do remember reading there's a formula in um Second Edition for the overnight rest it's it's not all your hit points back there's some form it's it's yeah it's it's fairly straightforward okay so that uh my remembering wrong does ceue up my greater question not great but I'll but I think it's relevant anyway I do feel that and I don't think it's a bad thing at all but I see in second edition taking some cues from where went wait I I I could be wrong because it's just a wi right I I suspect maybe uh and there's nothing wrong with this second edition took some cues from where D and D went in its development without without being like it's still on its own Branch it's still a Pathfinder but certain things kind of follow what's going on in the RPG World um with remastered it feels like that went in a bolder direction to just carve out Pathfinder is going to be Pathfinder do do I have the right impression there uh somewhat I think it's more um it kind of depends on which uh expansion you're talking about because there's uh Stephen ring McFarland and I both worked on fourth edition sure and worked on Pathfinder second edition um there are very few things we we said oh let's just grabbed this from fourth edition and ped it over but we certainly had enough experience with that and we knew which things people liked about it that we could use those lessons you got to draw your experience for sure Mak sense um and that's kind of the sort of thing where we found having like there's kind of a 10 minutes is how long most out of combat things take uh because we did find it helped having incremental things people could easily understand and you could say okay what's everybody doing for their first 10 minutes and every player could do something rather than like well my thing takes 2 minutes well my thing takes 13 minutes minutes right and uh you know having that that sort of structure um and then fifth edition I think there was a fair amount of kind of like parallel development uh because we were not super closely monitoring fifth edition um you know kind of Pathfinder was mostly derived from like what we thought the game needed rather than kind of what fifth edition is doing but there are definitely some things where we solve the same problems in the in similar ways uh or had like I think we we both called spell like abilities innate spells because spell like abilities is a terrible phrase and what else are you g to call it innate spells is exactly there's things like that but most of it was parallel development there wasn't much that we looked at fifth edition and said like oh let's do that exactly GOA that makes sense I mean yeah it's so there's only so much you can do with the D20 Fantasy game yeah I to the to Counterpoint my own question sometimes I think people push that too far there's certain games coming out that I won't name because I'm not trying to bash him that I I scratch my head and I'm like you're trying to get so far from the way this is always worked that I don't know if it's good like you may have broken it accidentally by trying to be too different you know yeah that makes sense to me um and by the way I don't mean to I'm being playful about fourth edition I don't mean to uh give it too much grief I know like it's undergoing a Renaissance of appreciation yeah it is Matt koville reading that leading that charge a little bit and um I I do appreciate it better than I used to I think I'm not smart enough for it sometimes it's so it's not exactly rules crunchy but when it comes to I'm a forever DM so that's always my perspective when it came to running monsters I had to keep track of so much that other people are good at that it gave a lot of nuance to the game and I think other people had that problem didn't really appreciate what it was doing at the time I I think Pathfinder Tui does have some similarities there there's a fair amount of like condition tracking you know monsters having you know a pretty uh significant Suite of abilities uh but it does have um you know it's informed by fourth edition but it is not really based on it so uh a lot of the things like you know encounter powers and daily Powers sometimes fans say like oh the focus spells are encounter Powers um and they do kind of come from like a similar uh idea of wanting to have something that spellcasters can do that is not crossbow and is not Fireball something you know in the Middle where they're kind of lacking that space but they they were kind of structured to be a little bit different um and in the remaster they got a little bit easier to use uh and so they kind of now feel a little more liking counter Powers than they used to but that was basically just based on fan feedback of like why is this so complicated we want something that's just a little simpler and so we we went that the simpler option is easier for people understand and kind of what they were already asking for I like that and my impression from the outside is that that is The Sweet Spot Pathfinders found it's not yeah an insanely crunchy game where you're going to tear your hair out in frustration but it's also if you're ready for some more Nuance than D and D this is something to look at yeah it's it's we're aiming for a very specific fan base and we we do want people who are in that spot where it's like D and D feels a little flat to them uh but they you know they don't necessarily want to roll on a hit location table every time make right they want something in the middle yeah that's that's that's we think there's an important Market there and people are really going to enjoy that um so there's kind of who we aim for um we are always kind of mindful about um how complex especially Pathfinder first edition got uh with some of its later options so one of the tricky things is kind of like keeping it close to you know the the complexity level we want uh while you know still breaking new ground and trying out new things yeah so that's that's always a bit of a challenge and uh you know sometimes we have to re ourselves in or re Freelancers in or say you know this isn't going far enough right it's it's always kind of a balancing act yeah that's interesting I I don't know if I wonder if that's unique to you again I'm an industry Outsider I don't know but I kind of that makes me think that's maybe a little bit unique to fiso generally gam and Pathfinders specifically getting in getting trying to get into that specific balance you're talking about very challenging part of it is not necessarily unique but there aren't that many games that have that large of a game line um and that's kind of the the big differences because we're putting out so many products um that even companies that have you know an ongoing line that they keep putting out releases for uh most companies are just much smaller so even when they're doing that um the the sheer quantity of products we do is just very vast for a big company uh with compared to a lot of tabletop which really honestly is it's another way of saying you have a broader appeal than more nich games which goes back to that balance right yeah we have enough of a fan base that we can support that many lines which is is really tricky to do um yeah but uh have people are really into the setting have people are really into the rules have people are really into the adventures so uh a lot of it is just kind of like how much of each spice do we put into each dish to keep those people happy right that's interesting well uhis has been doing it for a long time so apparently doing a good job still got customers and plenty of people in this room we in yeah happily playing starfinder and Pathfinder at a minimum I don't know what else they might be playing but uh yeah I think this is mostly Pathfinder and starfinder here yeah we just launched the starfinder play test so I suspect there are some tables of that going on after there too so we are at now with remastered we have the GM core the player core and what am I forgetting monster core monster core yeah and then just 2 just came out what else can we look forward to uh for Pathfinder going forward uh well uh the kind of most recently announced book for the rule book line is NPC Corp which is going to have a lot of non- monery people to fight uh fight befriend romance you know whatever whatever you want gamble with yeah gamble with yeah absolutely um so that's going to be a really fun book uh we also have uh the fairly recent books uh how of the wild uh we have war of Immortals coming up um we the the core line is kind of the more like meat and potatoes books and then something like how of the wild is going to let you play a centur or an awakened animal if you want to be a raccoon Wizard or whatever you can do that people I'm really into that now I've noticed you know that's one where it's like you know what there's a trend happening let's ride this one we think we can do it in a cool way that is still going to be balanced and going to be fun for people at their tables and you know awaken to animal have been in fantasy role playing games and fantasy fiction for so long for as long as fantasy fiction let's do it that makes sense so that was really fun world of Immortals is kind of both a big event and a uh um has a couple cool like Mythic uh it has some cool Mythic rules for playing like over-the-top uh you know folklore based campaigns and it also has two new classes uh that are really fun and exciting and kind of have a big time weird Supernatural Powers uh which is always fun like high level stuff uh they they can play at all levels uh but they do have like some over the top like if you want to do your like Hercules Achilles kind of stunts uh you're you're going to want to look at the Exemplar and then the animist can kind of uh use spirits and kind of put power within themselves for them I like that stuff wrestling with God type of stuff you yeah that's fun uh is there one title you're most excited about that's coming out oh man I mean I think player Core 2 was the big one it was okay yeah um the yeah and that's kind of the one that I work the most closely on of a bunch of those other members of the team were kind of taking a lead on war of Immortals and H of the wild uh so that was kind of my the my baby of the bunch um and it's got some big revamps to our Alchemist class our champion class that I think are going to make those a lot more fun to for people to play and uh get get some excitement around those if you're at the con you want to play Pathfinder starfinder looks like there's pickup room at the tables even if tickets are sold out uh we are in the Sagamore Ballroom here where all this is happening Y and there's product in the ballroom there's also product in the merchandise what do we call it the exhibitor's hall yeah um big old Booth front yeah left corner plenty of piso for your enjoyment and if they're not at the con and they want to check out uh piso and Pathfinder starfinder Where do they go what do they do uh they're going to go to poo.com that has you know a bunch of blogs with behind the scenes stuff new announcements uh it's got uh our store um you know free stuff to download all kinds of cool things uh the other thing is if you're interested in Pathfinder and you're like I don't know if I want to Shell out the money for this if you go to archivesofnethys.com you can see all the rules for free get a preview um I do recommend uh if you're learning the game having the the book either in physical form or PDF is going to help you learn it a lot better but if you're like I don't know if I want to try this class or not from a supplemental book archives nethys is a great place to get a preview and and check it out and that's been a fan favorite I have read praise after praise about that because it's not just an SRD it's everything it is everything the flavor officially licensed agreement no they've got the flavor too oh do they okay uh they formerly um before the license they were excluding well I'm sorry they were not able to monetize because they included the uh the the lore of the world but now there's a licensing agreement uh with them so they've just they've just got everything great cool anything else you uh I think that's it for me okay I didn't mean to cut you off there sorry about that well thank you so much for your time it's great talking to you thank you great to meet you and play some Pathfinder yeah I play a little Pathfinder and I I'll even risk heresy and say that enjoy the 50th anniversary of D if you want to check out the 2024 books but if you're skeptical about Wizards and you've only ever played D and D there's never been a better time to try something like Pathfinder yeah it's there are many things about it that are enjoyably different but at the core at the end of the day you're rolling a D20 you're adding a modifier to hit a monster it's going to be very familiar to you give it a try yeah I don't think you shouldn't play D and D if you're into that go ahead but but now is a great time to explore all these wonderful options that are out there if you want to try out something else and I'll add one thing there which is uh we have a fabulous Pathfinder beginner box uh gorgeous box has battle maps has pawns has dice has pregenerated characters and you can make your own own it's a great product a really wonderful starter set so there's enough in the starter to create your own character too there is yeah that's you just just for the first three levels of play but you can get a lot done in the first three levels of play bunch of monsters in there too to make your own Adventures there you go pick up a starter box