In the darkness of the forest, a group of brigands splits the booty of another bloody ambush – but their crime spree has drawn the ire of the local merchants guild, who have in turn, hired a group of Pathfinders – oddball mercenary adventurers with a diverse set of skills.

An elf runs one pale hand don the length of his arrow, imbuing it with lightning before taking aim. A human reaches out with senses no mortal creature should have, touching the seeping darkness between the stars and calling it forth to tear his foes apart at the atomic level. A dwarf sets a poison snare while her raven keeps watch. Then a goblin drops out of a tree into the middle of the camp, setting itself on fire as it hurls improvised explosives in all directions and cackling wildly as it does so.

Pathfinder 2nd edition is an evolution of Pathfinder, the table-top RPG based on Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. It cleaves quite strongly to “traditional” Dungeons and Dragons, but seeks to make character more flexible, able to pick and choose class features to suit the character rather than getting the usual “generic power attack fighter #37897.” As such, if you like parts of Dungeons and Dragons but wish it was more flexible, this is for you. It could potentially work quite well for someone new to role-playing as well – if you can get past the complexity of the system.

The entirety of the system is available on (https://pf2.d20pfsrd.com/) or (https://2e.aonprd.com/) thanks to the Open Gaming License, and you can buy the books or pre-made adventures (https://paizo.com/pathfinder) should you wish. There’s also organised play events to be found around the world (https://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety) using a standardised set of rules.

The Good: Pathfinder 2 relies on a system of feats to build a character – each feat unlocks some kind of special power, whether it’s the ability to passively search for traps, to instantly identify spells or to, at the highest level, scare someone to death. Each character you make is really defined by the feats you’ve chosen, meaning one “ranger” could be a sturdy dwarf with a crossbow, a great-axe and a variety of clever traps to deeply in combat, while another could be a fire-spitting goblin that bounces into battle on the back of giant frog.

Plenty of Races & Classes: Pathfinder 2 has a decent number of races in the core book, with more added over time by supplements. To broaden things even further, each race has heritage, granting them extra abilities and unlocking further feats. For example, you might choose to be a goblin of the charhide heritage – meaning that you gain a small amount of fire resistance on top of the normal goblin abilities of dark-vision and small size. This also allows you to take heritage feats based on dealing or receiving fire damage.

Classes follow a similar pattern, each giving you a small amount of core class features and letting you pick a subclass that gives you a few more – for example, a rogue comes with a lot of skills, the ability to dodge out of harm’s way and deals bonus damage with light weaponry if they catch an enemy off-guard. To this you add your “Rogue Racket” which might be Scoundrel, enhancing any feints you perform, Eldritch Trickster to give you a little magic or Ruffian which lets you deal your bonus damage with heavier weaponry like clubs and maces.

Modular Characters: Character progression in Pathfinder 2 comes mostly through “feats” gained with levels. Each level grants you some kind of feat (i.e. skill, general and heritage) but the most important ones are the class feats gained every second level. These alter the core abilities of your character, perhaps adding spells or build-defining attacks like cleave or power attack. They are also what you use if you want to “multiclass” i.e. add a little bit of sorcerer to your barbarian, swapping out a barbarian feat for the ability to cast minor spells.

This is a pretty nice feature, blending traditional dungeons and dragons with more free-form roleplaying games. Quite often you’d end up with class abilities that you simply didn’t care about, and this system means you only need to take the ones you are interested in.

Feats for Fun: The skill, heritage and general feats are good for fleshing pout your character, and are quite a good way of making your character different without being ineffectual. If you were playing a fighter in Pathfinder 1 or D&D 3.5 you probably took power attack as your 3rd feat – in Pathfinder 2 you take it as a class feat, which leaves you with a general, heritage and skill feat to spend. These are nowhere on par with class feats, but can give you little things that round out your character – want your barbarian to also be a skilled cook? Skill feat. Want your lizardman to climb up walls like a gecko? Heritage feat.

Decent Setting: The canonical Pathfinder setting (Golarion) is a fairly well thought out world with a lot of different sub-settings inside it. Cheliax, a nation ruled by devil worshiping nobles with laws enforced by the Judge Dredd emulating Hellknights, stands in contrast against the savagely-heroic Norse-barbarians from the Lands of the Linnorn Kings or the pharaonic grandeur of Osirion.

There are a huge number of deities and faiths included in the setting as well, spanning from the the traditional gods of commerce, love and battle to darker concepts such as the impermanence of flesh, the glory of pain or even simple, relentless hunger. Paizo Publishing are also clearly fans of the H. P. Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos, as many creatures based on his work have appeared in the bestiary!

The Bad: It’s not all rosy though, as the modular nature of character creation can make things a bit complicated. You could also argue that the system leans a bit too much towards rules and balance than fun.

Not Beginner Friendly: While the flexibility and modular nature of characters in Pathfinder 2 is a strength, I would argue that it can also be a weakness. The sheer number of choices available can be a bit overwhelming if you’re not used to role-playing games. For example, making a Pathfinder 1 wizard meant you’d pick a race, stats, a couple of spells and a familiar or bonded item, done. Pathfinder 2 has all that along with picking a heritage, a heritage feat, a background and an “arcane thesis” that modifies your class.

Utility vs. Combat: The other major complaint is that many of the spells and abilities perform poorly out of combat, either by having a very short duration or very limited uses. For example, a low to mid level druid might struggle to take the form of a wolf for more than a minute without needing a 10 minute rest – meaning that turning into a wolf to track something out of combat is pretty hopeless.

Now I can see why they wanted to limit many of these abilities – they are certainly powerful in the right circumstances. That said, I think it would have been better to allow all spell and special ability durations to last longer outside of combat.

Opinion: Overall I like Pathfinder 2nd edition. It seems to build on the strengths of the predecessor, and feels close enough to D&D 3.5 that it avoids the problems D&D 4 suffered. The flexible nature of the system lets you put your own spin on characters without leaving you at a disadvantage, and I like the way multi-classing has been done.

All that said, this is a D&D derivative and thus can take a while to resolve combat or create a character – and the amount of customisation available to players exacerbates these issues. When you get right down to it though, the entirety of the system is available for free use under the Open Gaming License, so it will cost you nothing but time to give it a spin.