Pathfinder 2e Advanced Players Guide Review

If you are reading this then chances are you are already playing Pathfinder 2e and either looking to build your collection and understand advanced options, or you are looking to buy a starting collection and ascertain whether it’s worth that little extra expensive to pick up the Advanced Players Guide at the start of your Pathfinder 2e journey. Either way the Pathfinder 2e Advanced Players Guide is an excellent addition and spoiler alert, it is worth buying!

With the core rulebook, you already have a great introduction into the roleplaying world of Pathfinder 2e and the game world of Golarion. As I have written elsewhere, it is a comprehensive and detailed sourcebook and more than enough to get you started. The Pathfinder 2e Advanced Players Guide, however, takes you even further!

What Do You Get?

At this point I’ll mention that Pathfinder 2e is a level-based system that allows you to build characters according to set framework of options. This contrasts with RPG systems that allow you to create characters without frameworks or levels and essentially you build your characters with an allotment of character points. Both are great and time-tested ways to play, but within the framework of Pathfinder 2e ensuring a good range of character-building options is a key feature of the Pathfinder 2e system.

To supplement the basic core rulebook then, the Advanced Players Guide is a 271-page tome of additional content on an impressive range of character-building content. Let us look at this in more detail.

Ancestries And backgrounds

The Advanced Players Guide offers a variety of new ancestries or races, like catfolk, kobolds and orcs. For each of these entries you get the expected background lore as well as details on heritage and ancestry feat options. As usual, there is a good, flavoursome variety.

Next up is a section on versatile heritages. In this section, you have guidelines on playing characters of one ancestry who have a heritage not normally associated with that ancestry. In the Advanced Players Guide there are three to choose from, namely, changeling, dhampir and planar scion. For players who something unusual, these give food for thought and again the section continues with highlighting the various options for feats available to each versatile heritage.

After this section, comes an additional few pages giving more ancestry feats for core rulebook ancestries and then you have a section on common backgrounds such as cook, outrider, scavenger and teacher. Here each option comes with its own ability (stats) boost variant and a variant starting set of skills, lore and feats. It is a great little section to give more themed variation and can play very well into a character’s background. There are also several rare backgrounds to choose from for your character, including feral child and haunted. All the background options reward players in some way with a variant to starting skills etc.

Classes

The next section in the Pathfinder 2e Advanced Players Guide is for classes (professions). It is an extensive section with four new classes, namely, investigator, oracle, swashbuckler and witch, complete with comprehensive details on character building including lore, class features and feats as you might expect. With this combination you can craft specific character roles. For example, with the investigator class you could choose to be a coroner or chemist.

Following this is a large section with additional options for the core classes and then finally, to complete this section are guidelines for additional animal companions, from apes to sharks and then additional familiars.

Archetypes

The next section gives more options on expanding your character concept. Do you want a character that is just different from the stereotype? Here you will find options to allow just this.

If a player wants to take advantage of an archetype, then they will need to select an archetype feat instead of a class feat. Once this is done, you will have access to feats or skills not normally available to your chosen class.

There is an impressive select in the Advanced Players Guide of archetype options, ranging from acrobat, celebrity, loremaster and scout. Starting with the above-mentioned new classes and their respective dedication feats, opening pathways to utilise related feats, the section lists the various archetypes.

Feats

In the Advanced Players Guide is a further section on feats. These additional feats are available to any character regardless of their ancestry or class. These are divided into general feats and skills feats. Feats are great, in addition to giving your character some good benefits, they also flesh out your character and add depth.

I really like how there are so many options and they are graded according to level. Players can still feel even at low level that they are useful yet the feats become more powerful as you level up. What this means is that you don’t get the feeling that a character is over powered by some feats or under powered by others. The danger, without this structure, is that the more powerful feats are the ones that would always get chosen whereas the lesser ones, rarely if ever would.

The feats are very thematic as they should be, but even the low ranked ones are useful. It is a key feature of Pathfinder 2e I find, as I am continuing my play experience with this system, that there is an emphasis on the character rather than the mechanics, so that you feel a) that you can be rewarded for building perhaps a non-optimal build for combat, yet the character still works well and b) the framework of options allows a greater depth of crafting that would otherwise be the case; and this means better, more enjoyable characters and a better roleplay experience.

Spells

The section up next covers spells with a list of new spells and then following this a more detailed description of each new spell. I am finding spells in the Pathfinder 2e system are both detailed and flavourful, with spells having in-built heightened versions as magic-users advance up the levels but also spell have a greater degree of variation according to different levels of success and failure.

Items

Finally, the last key section covers new item options. This includes new weapons and armour, class kits, treasure tables and alchemical items. A great feature again with Pathfinder 2e rules is the detail.

The treasure table has a good array of items with costs to buy and similarly with the alchemical items it is impressive. The additional content is detailed, priced and is conveniently listed in different levels of potency.

Overall

If you are looking for additional, useful content for character building for Pathfinder 2e then the Advanced Players Guide is a must. It is not absolutely necessary, but it is a great addition, at a good price point to enhance your rules collection and quite frankly I love having physical copies of books to read at leisure. Whether you are a seasoned veteran of the game or a novice, I would recommend this tome and once again the level of detail impressive with no useless content.