Did you tune into the Paizo Special Livestream yesterday for the news about the playtest? If you did, then you already know what the two new classes will be! If not, read on! The new playtest is now live and runs until October 2nd, 2023. The two new classes are the Animist and the Exemplar. Neither one has appeared in either 1e or 2e, so these are original classes to enjoy. Not only that, but the Exemplar is a rare class which means you are probably going to need a few hundred Achievement Points in order to play it. But wait! That’s not all! If you paid attention, Paizo also announced that they are bringing Mythic rules to 2e in the same book, Pathfinder War of Immortals which is slated for publication in Winter of 2024 (probably November).
Let’s take a look at the Animist first. Per the playtest – The animist is a divine spellcasting class with a unique spellcasting progression. They expand their magical abilities by acting as a conduit between the living and spiritual realms, binding to a variety of spiritual apparitions that each have their own spells and powers. This class will be using the Divine spell tradition for its spells. I think it is really neat because on the surface it seems to be a divine form of the summoner where instead of summoning an eidolon, the animist serves as a conduit for apparitions of the spirit world. This makes it unique as this is definitely not a summoner knockoff. Note that the apparition itself does not appear as an additional token like an eidolon. Instead, its abilities are either channelled through the player-character or the apparition possess the player-character. Read more about the Animist in the War of Immortals playtest document!
Now let’s look at the Exemplar. Per the playtest – The exemplar is a potent combatant whose abilities come from their very own spark of divinity. The exemplar can channel this divine power into sacred items, called ikons, to perform supernatural deeds and unleash incredible transcendent effects. The first rare class for Pathfinder 2e, the Exemplar is a martial class with a touch of spellcasting ability. This class has two very unique features. The first is the Ikon. They start with one ikon of the three different types wherein their divine spark is located. These ikons get stronger over time and can be etched with runes like armor or weapons, which is a good thing since they can be those items. The second feature is the epithet. They get epithets at 3rd, 7th, and 15th level and there are several different ones to choose from at each stage. Between the ikons and epithets, along with its other class feat choices, no two exemplars are the same.
The title of this playtest, War of Immortals tells us a lot about these classes and gives us some hints at what the essence of the new rulebook, Pathfinder War of Immortals will be about. We know that the developers have stated in multiple announcements that Golarion’s pantheon of deities will be shaken up at some point over the next year. At least one of the existing core deities will be killed off. In addition, in last night’s playtest stream (click on the link to see it for yourself), Michael Sayres stated that new capstone feats will be introduced that can make your characters immortal. There is going to be a literal war of the immortals taking place and your characters will right in the think of things. I think we know what the theme of Season 6 of Pathfinder Society is going to be about!
Back to the actual playtest! This is now live and open to everyone through October 2nd, 2023. You are to use the rules for building playtest characters on the official PFS2 rules guide (follow the link). Please note that you can build a L1, L3, or L5 character. Also note the rules for applying credit to your characters in the paragraph right below those rules. The playtest is a great way to play something new, contribute to the game itself, and earn credit for your characters and AcP for yourself to use. You can access the War of Immortals playest via this link. I suggest you save that to a mobile device or print it out for use while playing your characters during the playtest.
You can also find some neat stuff online to help you in this process. Demiplane has become an official partner of Paizo in many ways. They have created a character building website very similar to what D&D Beyond is. If you create a free account, you can use it to build characters for the playtest. Just click on the sources tab in the upper left corner and then War of Immortals to learn more about the new classes. To actually build one, you need to click on the Create a Character button and start building one. You will see the Animist class in the Classes section. If you poke around on Demiplane, you will see that you need to pay for additional sources to access most of the content. Fortunately, the playtest classes are free during the playtest. Some of the other CRB content is free as well, but not all. So yes, Paizo and Demiplane are using the playtest for marketing purposes in multiple ways.
Paizo also released the Pathfinder Character Sheet for the upcoming Remaster. This is going to replace the existing character sheet, so make sure you save a copy of the original somewhere just in case. This consists of four pages just like the original one and is basically the same sheet with minor differences. I think the biggest changes are the lack of ability scores. Those are essentially useless now anyway. We are only going by the modifiers. Since we are using boosts for making characters instead of rolling them up like we had done since the Original D&D game way back in 1974 (almost 50 years ago), we don’t need ability scores. Also, note the lack of an alignment box. Alignment is gone! Don’t worry, you are still going to have some guidelines for your characters. This will mostly be in edicts and anathema.
Okay, that’s the playtest in a nutshell. Get in there and read about it, make up a character, and start playing either an Animist or an Exemplar (I’m making one right after I post this). We have games for you to test them out at coming up every Thursday night in Hannibal at Game Arena, September 9th in Columbia at Valhalla’s Gate, and September 10th in Kirksville at the Adair County Annex Building. You can also bring a L1 version over to Fall-Con in Quincy on September 16th at the Quincy Town Center where we are going to be running bounties. I will also be attending Skal Con in Minneapolis, Minnesota September 29 – October 1st where I am running and playing games. I think I am making a playtest character specifically for the Sunday game session.
See you at a table soon!
Xathos
The League of Aroden 