1/ I've had enough people reach out and tell me that this is their preferred venue for design information that, at least for the time being, I'm going to continue posting here. So for today's #Pathfinder2e design ramblings... 2/ I'm going to talk a bit about concepting classes and how we currently do that on my Rules & Lore team here at Paizo.

To start, here's a little hiring anecdote- there are two questions I regularly ask when interviewing candidates for designer positions.

1) #Pathfinder2e design musings-
Having a stat system that uses 6 ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma, Intelligence, Wisdom) or some close approximation thereof has been a staple of d20 TTRPGs for a long time. I think, in part, because it just works. 2) They give you reasonable variation without becoming so granular that you're making choices that are hard for a casual player to grok. Even within these 6 choices, though, there's places the lines blur a bit. Accuracy being something that STR or DEX can adjudicate, for example.

1- In the course of working on #WarofImmortals for #Pathfinder2e, I killed one of my favorite deities. They were relatively obscure and not particularly important to the broader canon of the game (though more important in some of my hombrews) and I never got to do all the things 2- I wanted to do with them, but this was obviously the time and the place for them to go out in a literal blaze of glory. I think that one of the more important things about being a writer and creator of a living game world is that you *have* to be willing to kill your babies.

1/ #Pathfinder2E design rambling: "perfect knowledge, effective preparation, and available design space"

Following up my thread from the other week, I've seen a lot of people talking about issues with assuming "perfect knowledge" or 'Schroedinger's wizard", with the idea that- 2/ the current iteration of PF2 is balanced around the assumption that every wizard will have exactly the right spell for exactly the right situation. They won't, and the game doesn't expect them to. The game "knows" that the wizard has a finite number of slots and cantrips.

1/ An interesting anecdote from PF1 that has some bearing on how #Pathfinder2E came to be what it is:

Once upon a time, PF1 introduced a class called the arcanist. The arcanist was regarded by many to be a very strong class. The thing is, it actually wasn't. 2/ For a player with even a modicum of system mastery, the arcanist was strictly worse than either of the classes who informed its design, the wizard and the sorcerer. The sorcerer had significantly more spells to throw around, and the wizard had both a faster spell progression-

1/ #Pathfinder2e Design Musings- Balance and texture often get conflated but are two very different things. Balance speaks to a system's sustainability and quality; how well and how long can people play this game before they start running into systemic issues that affect (cont.) 2/ their experience, particularly as it relates to their interactions with the GM or other players. Strong math and a consistent and reliable framework can achieve balance and function in a variety of different environments. Sometimes you'll get the complaint that balance (cont.)