Off-guard will take some getting used to, but it kinda makes more sense - being flat-footed to a particular creature was always a bit of a weird concept.
"Ability scores have been removed" YES! FINALLY!
Except now we've lost the ability to slowly invest in attributes over 18. Not good imo, and having ability scores didn't raise problems
Paizo originally wanted to get rid of ability scores and just use modifiers with 2nd Edition, but they were afraid of a D&D 4th Edition schism happening and didn't make the change when they were releasing it. Now they have the perfect opportunity to make the shift without angering the playerbase.
What I have heard is that they haven't quite finished working out how the change from attributes to modifiers will be implemented, but it is something being handled with the official changes of the remaster. What they have said so far is that we will still have the ability to raise ability modifiers above 18, we just don't know how it will work yet.
There will still be the ability to do this, I don't know the exact mechanic, but it was asked and answered when Paizo was doing their Livestreams regarding the remaster
Instead of gaining +1 ability point, could just gain +0.5 modifier, with fractions rounding down on rolls. That would require that people spend two of them in the same ability to see a mechanical benefit though.
Vitality and void, huh? I approve of the alliteration.
I'm not sure about vitality for positive though, "vitality damage" doesn't sound to me like something that only affects undead
I agree. While I do like some changes I disklike some others. Though I am very much not angry at Paizo, I don't want to know how difficult it was to find everything potentially copyrighted and then come up with sensible alternatives.
Anyone know what's the meaning of the spell schools one?
The 8 spell schools are very D&D so they have to go in the Remaster. For specialist wizards, they'll instead have actual schools that they studied at, with various themes like the "School of Battle Magic", with a predefined list of spells they specialise in.
Spell schools were invented for Dragonlance in the lead up to the 2e era. The idea of an Illusionist is probably demonstrable enough outside of D&D, but the rest are pure TSR lore.
Other fantasy worlds slice up magic differently. I personally would like to see the concept of magic schools stick around in some form but the D&D schools always felt a bit arbitrary in their divisions.
I feel like necromancy could definitely be split up into "actual NECROmancy" and "Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise!"
Enchantment also feels like it could stay, though maybe with a different name; although realistically it's already kinda covered by the [Mental] trait. Anything that previously referred to "enchantment spells" could be changed to refer to "mental spells"
Abjuration, Conjuration, Transmutation, and Evocation were always the ones that felt the weakest in terms of having well-defined boundaries.
Most of this is good, but I think renaming the geniekin heritages is a bit much. The old names are older than D&D and common enough in culture that there's no way there's a copyright issue
As far as I can tell the only geniekin with a name change is ifrit. All other changes are to the actual genies. And at least in principle I think the changes are good: ifrit and efreeti are just different ways to transliterate the same Arabic word, as are (and this is much worse) djinn and genie. AFAIK there is nothing relating to earth in the word Shaytan or to water in the word Marid. I don't know much about the new names, but at least the duplication was surely only there for continuity reasons (which are now a detriment rather than a boon).
It's more an issue of if there is a risk of litigation, or potential avenues of it. Having less things potentially be targets helps differentiate a products identity more and have less 'weight' if it is used in court as evidence thereof.
Another benefit is this allows them to deviate from past/common tropes that people would expect from a "Shaitan" or any other renamed creatures based on knowledge from other systems or analogous creatures of myth in future writing - even if they still borrow from the latter in most creatures cases.
