Pathfinder 2 Blog: Critical Success and Failure

[Kurald Galain]

The blog about proficiencies just says:

Yes: according to the blog, having "mastery" doesn't give you a perk, but it unlocks a perk. This suggests that you still need to spend something to actually get it.

[Psyren]

It´s more the specific view on how D&D/PF should work and what the actual game play should look like that Cosi preaches that gets widely rejected.

Yeah, there's such a fundamental difference in philosophy there that for me, even reading it is wasted effort, much less engaging.

Complaining about the echo-chamber caused by an easily made typo is missing the forest for the trees, since "Legendary bonuses" are a mere +3 bonus. Allusions have been made on the preview blogs in comments to other bonuses that can be stacked up, but in absence of published rules for that math, we can only glare at Paizo with incredulity at the thought of being asked to accept the idea that a +3 bonus is on par with other uses of the word "legendary"

The words "in addition" mean there is more than one thing going into the use of the word than the DC calculation. Like the Legendary Survival example of being able to live in a "featureless void" without needing any spells or magic items. That's not numerical, and seems pretty legendary to me, whatever your opinions of +2/+3/whatever are.

In fact, I would go so far as to describe all the PF2e previews as a trick mirror that reflects whatever your own opinions of Paizo are.

That's literally everything they announce in any form it seems.

[Morty]

Yes: according to the blog, having "mastery" doesn't give you a perk, but it unlocks a perk. This suggests that you still need to spend something to actually get it.

The way I read it, a master-level proficiency gives you perks, which for skills are skill feats you can pick, but for saving throws are things like Evasion that you simply get.

[lesser_minion]

Yes: according to the blog, having "mastery" doesn't give you a perk, but it unlocks a perk. This suggests that you still need to spend something to actually get it.

You get at least some sort of feat every level, so if you get to a given proficiency rank and have nothing to show for it except for a negligible numerical bonus then you presumably chose to do that. Given that we know that proficiencies are also used to gate abilities, the fact that the bonus is negligible merely suggests to me that the bonus is not the point.

Would your complaint survive if they changed the scheme from -2/+0/+1/+2/+3 to -2/+0/+0/+0/+0?

[Deadkitten]

To me they seem to be weighing the bonuses from proficiency higher than the numbers appear. With their proposed critical failure system the could be valuing a +3 bonus more like we would value a +6 bonus in P1, since it raises the floor of your checks and potentially makes it harder if not impossible to critically fail something in addition to being more likely to critically succeed at a check as well.

I'm not saying its the best extrapolation from the information they gave us, but it seems to me that their new edition will be DEFINED by their critical success/failure system so dramatically that the game will live or die by how functional it is. And currently we just dont know quite enough of the factors for me to have a strong opinion either way honestly.

I have been keeping up with this thread, but just didnt have much of a voice to give. ;p

[Alent]

The words "in addition" mean there is more than one thing going into the use of the word than the DC calculation. Like the Legendary Survival example of being able to live in a "featureless void" without needing any spells or magic items. That's not numerical, and seems pretty legendary to me, whatever your opinions of +2/+3/whatever are.

The bar for "Legendary" is going to have to be a lot higher than "You don't need to eat or drink while in the Astral plane where you don't need to eat or... wait a minute..."

Snark aside, I am giving them a reasonable benefit of doubt here. I see a lot of balancing levers that can be used a multitude of different ways. The class feat structure very clearly is an attempt to replace archetypes with something less arbitrary. The Skill feat concept is similar to things I've seen in lots of homebrew, my own included. They need to be demonstrating those levers in depth and not sitting back and trying to avoid revealing information while doing Games Workshop style "leaks". The longer they avoid giving us sufficient information, the longer people will unsuccessfully try to extrapolate meaningful data from it, draw bad conclusions from what they aren't sharing, and sideline the system before it's even released.

If they'd even just show a single "complete" example where they show how the math works from the bottom all the way up at levels 1, 6, 10, 16, and 20, which should be possible in a system they're pitching as "complete even before the playtest", all these criticisms could be either refuted or confirmed. The thing is, given the way Paizo's development process works, we won't be able to make such conclusions until some time after August 2019 when they start releasing errata for the then fully shipped product.

To reiterate, all we can see is "+3 is legendary" and "Being legendary gives you perks". Since they won't give us a full exploration of what the perks are, all we can see is a miserably small number in a system that's being sold as the successor to a system where big numbers mean defiance of reality itself. My bar for "legendary" in D20 is set by things like the Arseplomancer, not winning the argument with my DM that by RAW "Survival lets me forage for food and water anywhere".

They wouldn't have this problem if they had waited until closer to August to begin doing sneak peeks. They jumped the gun and now they have to reveal so little per peek that it will invite more criticism than it can possibly answer without releasing the playtest early.

That's literally everything they announce in any form it seems.

No, this is different from their usual. They've done quite a bit to earn their reputation as bad developers over the years starting with the Vital Strike nerf all the way to the most recent ill considered forum posts turned official Errata, but to use a woodworking analogy:

This is like a woodworker bragging about this beautiful table he's made and all he'll let you see are the jigs and clamps he used to make it. He won't let you see how they're used, he won't let you see what he made, he won't let you see his tools, which leads to everyone that sees the jigs and clamps to imagine how they THINK he's using them... and depending on if they like or dislike him, they conclude he's a genius or a fraud respectively. You have to wait until next year to actually see the table, by which point you won't even care.

I find this incredibly disappointing, because I actually want to know more about this system and see meaningful discussion on it.

[Psyren]

The bar for "Legendary" is going to have to be a lot higher than "You don't need to eat or drink while in the Astral plane where you don't need to eat or... wait a minute..."

Other planes exist?

They wouldn't have this problem if they had waited until closer to August to begin doing sneak peeks. They jumped the gun and now they have to reveal so little per peek that it will invite more criticism than it can possibly answer without releasing the playtest early.

Eh, I'm pretty confident we were going to spend all this time bickering anyway. Might as well do it with some mystery.

No, this is different from their usual. They've done quite a bit to earn their reputation as bad developers over the years starting with the Vital Strike nerf all the way to the most recent ill considered forum posts turned official Errata,

You know, some of us actually like the idea of developers clarifying things in multiple ways, using whatever medium/technology is most convenient for them as long as the message gets out. Hell, 5e is using Twitter to issue rulings. You may want to get used to that idea, it's not going away.

[P.F.]

5e is using Twitter to issue rulings. You may want to get used to that idea, it's not going away.

And here I had been considering trying out the 5e system ... nevermind. I really hope Paizo doesn't do this.

[Psyren]

And here I had been considering trying out the 5e system ... nevermind. I really hope Paizo doesn't do this.

Young people, on my lawn? It's more likely than you think!

[Ignimortis]

And here I had been considering trying out the 5e system ... nevermind. I really hope Paizo doesn't do this.

Eh, it's basically Sage Advice from the old magazines. Same stuff, it's not really errata or something, just a dev ruling, which might as well as not exist at your table.

[Scowling Dragon]

Young people, on my lawn? It's more likely than you think!

Thats...Really a dismissive way of looking at people.

Twitter is horribly organized and hard to use well. Your limited to tiny snippets of text. Its not a forum, or even a reddit thread. Its twitter.

Finding TWITTER a bad way to discuss rulings doesn't mean your a horribly poo poo dumb dumb face that hates change as they chuck spears from inside their poo wart cave with their ugly stupid faces.

[Cosi]

Maybe. Do you have a suggestion you believe to be a more suitable nomenclature for the five proficiency levels?

No I don't, but that's because that's not the place you should start. "What should we name these things" is not a question that you answer with a playtest. The question that should be asked, and the one for which Paizo has not (to my knowledge) provided an answer, is "why do we need five proficiency levels"? Why not just have unlocks key off of ranks? Why specifically five? What's the advantage of having proficiency levels at all? That's what you should be talking about when you're promoting your new ruleset.

Again, it's like I said in the first thread. You can't say whether something is working or not until you've defined what "working" means. The first thing Paizo needed to do was explain what a 10th level challenge was supposed to be (and a 3rd level challenge, and an 8th level challenge, and 17th level challenge, and so on). From that you can deduce what abilities characters can, can't, and must have. Then you can do testing and regression analysis to ensure characters fit the implied power curve. Then you can start deciding whether a 13th level Rogue's stealth ability is "legendary" or "masterful" or whatever other adjective. Seriously, it's an adjective. Why are they showing it to us before the nouns or the verbs?

I'm surprised to hear that. There are a lot of people in this forum that appear vehemently opposed to anything from <edition>, only it varies from user to user which edition it is.

Seriously, go browse The Gaming Den for a while. It's much more aggressive about criticism of bad design.

It´s more the specific view on how D&D/PF should work and what the actual game play should look like that Cosi preaches that gets widely rejected.

Yes, the radical positions that "if you sell a product, it should work well and not require the customer to do work before it functions" and "if you play a game with other people, you should consider the feelings and opinions of those people." Those positions may be controversial, but if they are I don't really think I'm the one it looks bad for.

Thats...Really a dismissive way of looking at people.

Twitter is horribly organized and hard to use well. Your limited to tiny snippets of text. Its not a forum, or even a reddit thread. Its twitter.

Finding TWITTER a bad way to discuss rulings doesn't mean your a horribly poo poo dumb dumb face that hates change as they chuck spears from inside their poo wart cave with their ugly stupid faces.

Obviously it's dismissive. There isn't a good reason to have rules disputes be settled on a platform that is intended to promote quick, off the cuff responses that are rapidly memory holed. The comparison to Ask Sage is not exactly inspiring either. So to maintain his position that the designers are always right, Psyren has to resort to personal insults.

[Scowling Dragon]

Yes, the radical positions that "if you sell a product, it should work well and not require the customer to do work before it functions" and "if you play a game with other people, you should consider the feelings and opinions of those people." Those positions may be controversial, but if they are I don't really think I'm the one it looks bad for.

Im close but not 100%. I don't like Rules Light Systems. But I can understand the APPEAL.
A Good Rules Light system is a box of Legos or maybe a set of processed clay. A Bad Rules light system is like the unmelted plastic pellets or a box of mud.

[Alent]

Eh, I'm pretty confident we were going to spend all this time bickering anyway. Might as well do it with some mystery.

Eh, fair enough.

You know, some of us actually like the idea of developers clarifying things in multiple ways, using whatever medium/technology is most convenient for them as long as the message gets out. Hell, 5e is using Twitter to issue rulings. You may want to get used to that idea, it's not going away.

You realize, my complaint isn't that developers are choosing to communicate, but instead about their unprofessional conduct and a lack of quality control, right?

Before these games are games, they're products created by established processes being followed. Ask yourself: If the Ultimate Equipment nerfs had happened to any new MtG set, would MtG still have a tournament scene? The answer is no, it would have killed the competitive scene and likely taken huge chunks of the casual scene with it. You cannot have any kind of organized play without consistency, and MtG has a strong commitment to keeping the text on the card accurate enough that you can play without a copy of all your cards' oracle text cut out and stuck inside the card protector.

And, technology marches on. Consider Eternal, which is effectively MtG in a digital format where all modern software development methodologies can be used. If a card doesn't work right, you don't get a judge's ruling, you file a bug report. The future here is apps where the rule updates are applied on a consistent basis directly to the app, with proper versioning and QA processes. (It tells you a lot about Paizo's lack of commitment to PF2e as a product that they aren't talking about first party app support this early in the process.)

Communicating intents and logic is fine, and helps build community. People will appreciate it if you let them know something is going to be addressed in the next update... But there is zero reason to actually change your game in a forum post. (Especially when those changes are overwhelmingly bad for the martial types everyone likes to play)

Young people, on my lawn? It's more likely than you think!

Twitter is a collection of unprofessional behavior, meme to meme combat, and marketing types trying to astroturf some viral marketing to justify their hanging out in an online chatroom all day. There will always be a better place to reach your audience than that cesspool.

If you went back in time to the 90's and posted on usenet to tell people that the D&D developers of the future were going to issue rule clarifications on twitter in the world's largest AOL chatroom and instead of compiling them, let fans track them all and post compilations on wordpress blogs on livejournal instead of compiling everything themselves as errata or a new book, you'd be laughed off the internet for how ridiculous the idea is.

Edit:

No I don't, but that's because that's not the place you should start. "What should we name these things" is not a question that you answer with a playtest.

It reminds me of how every few posts on the D&D Next blog could be summarized as: "Is this artwork a D&D enough dude?" The dev team had such a thin idea of what the audience actually was that they were just fishing with blog posts.

The question that should be asked, and the one for which Paizo has not (to my knowledge) provided an answer, is "why do we need five proficiency levels"? Why not just have unlocks key off of ranks? Why specifically five? What's the advantage of having proficiency levels at all? That's what you should be talking about when you're promoting your new ruleset.

Again, it's like I said in the first thread. You can't say whether something is working or not until you've defined what "working" means. The first thing Paizo needed to do was explain what a 10th level challenge was supposed to be (and a 3rd level challenge, and an 8th level challenge, and 17th level challenge, and so on). From that you can deduce what abilities characters can, can't, and must have. Then you can do testing and regression analysis to ensure characters fit the implied power curve. Then you can start deciding whether a 13th level Rogue's stealth ability is "legendary" or "masterful" or whatever other adjective. Seriously, it's an adjective. Why are they showing it to us before the nouns or the verbs?

This. Absolutely this. There are telltale signs all through the blogs that these are things that they just recently created, and they aren't even sure why they made the change, themselves.

I would love to watch the Paizo dev team running a Same Game Test at those levels, because it would tell us so much more than the blogs are telling us. We'd get to see their play assumptions in motion, something so important to understanding the system that I would pay to watch it, even.

Yes, the radical positions that "if you sell a product, it should work well and not require the customer to do work before it functions" and "if you play a game with other people, you should consider the feelings and opinions of those people." Those positions may be controversial, but if they are I don't really think I'm the one it looks bad for.

I'm in agreement with you, which is not something I can often say. I think that means we're both probably in the right here.

[P.F.]

It tells you a lot about Paizo's lack of commitment to PF2e as a product that they aren't talking about first party app support this early in the process.

This. As heavily as I rely on apps for Pathfinder, I'm astonished Paizo isn't involving themselves directly. They clearly got the memo about a web-based rules reference, but missed the boat if they are imagining we're not all going to be looking up spells and feats on our smartphones and tablets.

What concerns me most is the apparent assumption that the core business will be selling print books. While I love books and personally prefer having a print reference, the trend is moving the opposite direction. Indeed, for a while d20pfsrd would regularly be down on Sunday afternoon because the traffic exceeded their server hosting allotments.

What's more, the print-more-splatbooks business model is what drove me away from buying the physical books: by the time my 3.pf group had fully moved over to Pathfinder, the "good" spells, feats, classes, etc were spread across so many texts that it would have taken a small fortune to buy them all, and multiple reams of bookmarks and tabs to find the rules I needed.

When I was in college I could blow money on all the various sourcebooks ... now? I just use the app.

[GilesTheCleric]

I've been following this at a distance for a month or more, however long it's been since it was announced. I have to throw my hat into the ring with the folks saying that the marketing blogs just aren't doing it for me. They're too vague for me to do anything but hypothesise wildly, which is really making me more confused than hyped. As someone before mentioned, if they instead focused on their design philosophy, or just showed me one really cool, discrete mechanic, then I would probably be far more excited than I am now.

A note on turning now being a feat: I approve, since this will help to differentiate Clerics who care about undead or not. It's a bit of a sacred cow, but not one I mind sacrificing to the deities. However, I can't really take the change into context without more details. Will it be worth a feat? Will non-turning Clerics have something else to grab to emphasise the demesne of their deity? I don't know. The only concrete thing I can say I like is how fiddly the interaction between turning, channelling, and casting sounds. They may eschew turning check and damage tables, but as long as there's some old-fashioned extra complexity, I'm happy.

[Sayt]

This. As heavily as I rely on apps for Pathfinder, I'm astonished Paizo isn't involving themselves directly. They clearly got the memo about a web-based rules reference, but missed the boat if they are imagining we're not all going to be looking up spells and feats on our smartphones and tablets.

What concerns me most is the apparent assumption that the core business will be selling print books. While I love books and personally prefer having a print reference, the trend is moving the opposite direction. Indeed, for a while d20pfsrd would regularly be down on Sunday afternoon because the traffic exceeded their server hosting allotments.

What's more, the print-more-splatbooks business model is what drove me away from buying the physical books: by the time my 3.pf group had fully moved over to Pathfinder, the "good" spells, feats, classes, etc were spread across so many texts that it would have taken a small fortune to buy them all, and multiple reams of bookmarks and tabs to find the rules I needed.

When I was in college I could blow money on all the various sourcebooks ... now? I just use the app.

I think it was Erik Mona who noted on a Know Direction interview, that Paizo is focused on producing rules content and adventures because that's what they're good at (whether you, the reader, or I think so or otherwise) and what their staff has experience in. Paizo don't have experience creating apps or managing their development. The PFSRD run by the Open Gaming Store and the Archives of Nethys are better than the PRD on Paizo.com, by and large. Paizo recognise that. Why would they spend work-hours and capital building an maintaining something that their fans/the people who use their game will do anyway? (Plus, if they tried to recoup any cost, on say, a mobile app, they'd be accused of money-grubbing)

[Pex]

I've been following this at a distance for a month or more, however long it's been since it was announced. I have to throw my hat into the ring with the folks saying that the marketing blogs just aren't doing it for me. They're too vague for me to do anything but hypothesise wildly, which is really making me more confused than hyped. As someone before mentioned, if they instead focused on their design philosophy, or just showed me one really cool, discrete mechanic, then I would probably be far more excited than I am now.

A note on turning now being a feat: I approve, since this will help to differentiate Clerics who care about undead or not. It's a bit of a sacred cow, but not one I mind sacrificing to the deities. However, I can't really take the change into context without more details. Will it be worth a feat? Will non-turning Clerics have something else to grab to emphasise the demesne of their deity? I don't know. The only concrete thing I can say I like is how fiddly the interaction between turning, channelling, and casting sounds. They may eschew turning check and damage tables, but as long as there's some old-fashioned extra complexity, I'm happy.

This is nothing new to Pathfinder. Turn Undead is already a feat. What clerics get by default in P1 is the ability to damage them through Channel Energy. I was at first put off by this, but then I changed my mind to approval. Not every campaign is heavy with undead such that you have a class feature of Turn Undead but hardly ever use it. Making it a feat means if the campaign has subjectively enough undead in it you can take the feat. If it doesn't you're not losing anything because Channel Energy can still be used for healing. As a feature it heals multiple people and at a range. Ironically it helps clerics not be healbots because they can afford to cast more non-healing spells yet still have healing ability when it's needed.

[Cosi]

Im close but not 100%. I don't like Rules Light Systems. But I can understand the APPEAL.
A Good Rules Light system is a box of Legos or maybe a set of processed clay. A Bad Rules light system is like the unmelted plastic pellets or a box of mud.

I'm not against ruleslight systems. I'm against rules that are bad or incomplete. I don't dislike 5e because it doesn't have as much crunch as 3e. I dislike it because it's poorly designed, incomplete, and breaks genre assumptions.

This. Absolutely this. There are telltale signs all through the blogs that these are things that they just recently created, and they aren't even sure why they made the change, themselves.

I would love to watch the Paizo dev team running a Same Game Test at those levels, because it would tell us so much more than the blogs are telling us. We'd get to see their play assumptions in motion, something so important to understanding the system that I would pay to watch it, even.

Yes, absolutely. Well, maybe not pay to watch. But I would like to see some actual testing happen at some point.

A note on turning now being a feat: I approve, since this will help to differentiate Clerics who care about undead or not. It's a bit of a sacred cow, but not one I mind sacrificing to the deities. However, I can't really take the change into context without more details. Will it be worth a feat? Will non-turning Clerics have something else to grab to emphasise the demesne of their deity? I don't know. The only concrete thing I can say I like is how fiddly the interaction between turning, channelling, and casting sounds. They may eschew turning check and damage tables, but as long as there's some old-fashioned extra complexity, I'm happy.

As mentioned, I think it's the right problem but the wrong solution. The Cleric doesn't work terribly well as a priest type, because different gods want priests that do different things. It's not just that not every Cleric needs to turn undead, it's that the priests of the Fire God and the Water God don't need the same (or even particularly similar) abilities.

[Scowling Dragon]

I'm not against ruleslight systems. I'm against rules that are bad or incomplete. I don't dislike 5e because it doesn't have as much crunch as 3e. I dislike it because it's poorly designed, incomplete, and breaks genre assumptions.

Agreed. It doesn't even break them its just stupid about them. 5e characters are both rediculiusly fragile and extremly tough. Being downed to 0 is easy but being killed is hard. So as long as you have a meat shield to fall and come back every turn your all set.

So you neither feel like cool invulnerable badasses, but neither feel like fragile people who need to play smart.

[Acanous]

This honestly looks less fun than normal PF. Why would I want to jump systems to this when I can play PF or 3.5? Or combine the two like cake and ice cream. Mmm ice cream cake.

Wizards failed to answer this question with 4e and paizo cashed in. What does paizo think will happen if they fail to answer here?

[Pex]

This honestly looks less fun than normal PF. Why would I want to jump systems to this when I can play PF or 3.5? Or combine the two like cake and ice cream. Mmm ice cream cake.

Wizards failed to answer this question with 4e and paizo cashed in. What does paizo think will happen if they fail to answer here?

They won't admit it, but I think this is their reaction to 5E. They cashed in on the animosity 4E wrought at the time. Despite its fans 4E crashed and burned, hyperbole speaking if you will. 5E is a success. Those who outright hate it are not in enough numbers. Paizo figures it needs to do something to get people hyped. The buzz will hopefully get players new to RPGs who tried 5E to try Pathfinder. Because it's a new edition with new rules they wouldn't have to know about all that came before. When P2 is published in its final form 5E will be old hat. P2 will be the New Thing to compete with the new to RPG players of the time and those whose only experience has been 5E and may want to try something else even if just for the sake of trying something else. Of course they want to keep those who have been playing Pathfinder since forever and as long as they don't screw it up as WOTC did with 4E they will, but there will always be some grognards who refuse to play along, just like there were grognards who did not switch to 2E from 1E or to 3E from 2E or to 4E/Pathfinder from 3E and so on.

[Scowling Dragon]

Again there are not enough design decisions behind anything they list to really constitute a point.

[Acanous]

They need to give me a reason to look at this though, like “it has rules for more kinds of adventures” or “it speeds play and is more fun for quick games” or even “its more complex allowing for a greater degree of intricacy”. “We made this give us your money” is a **** reason, and “real fans will buy it and anyone who doesn’t is a grognard that we couldn’t please anyway” is a self fulfilling excuse.

[Kurald Galain]

They need to give me a reason to look at this though, like “it has rules for more kinds of adventures” or “it speeds play and is more fun for quick games” or even “its more complex allowing for a greater degree of intricacy”.

That's a very good point.

Paizo's blog posts so far are mostly filler, but if you dig into designer comments in the discussion thread they do actually answer this. Specifically, their design philosophy is that high-level characters can do physics-defying stunts automatically (i.e. the opposite of 5E's bounded accuracy), that gameplay has a big emphasis on tactical combat, and that their new action economy is easier to learn and speeds up gameplay (i.e. having only two action types where comparable games have six to twelve different action types for no solid reason).

[skaddix]

Reading the blog post seems Cleric will be fun.

Although Anathema could be really annoying.

[137beth]

The biggest concern with clerics as they have been presented so far is: how hard will it be to use without the Golarion gods? In Pathfinder 1, if I want to introduce a pantheon from another game or work of fiction, all I have to do is decide on domains for each of the gods. Now, they plan on giving clerics a bunch of powers based on deities. I like that idea, as the generic cleric spell list never made much sense to me, but only if it is done in a way that isn't tied to one campaign setting/pantheon.

To see an example of what I do want to see, take a look at the Divine Channeler class in The Secrets of Adventuring. The abilities of the Divine Channeler are heavily tied to their domains. Instead of the simple, underwhelming domain powers that clerics get, a divine channeler gets a bunch of unique domain powers throughout their career. The divine channeler also starts with two domains at level 1 can gain more as they level. Also, most of their spells come from domains.


The drawback to this approach is that writing new domains takes a lot more effort, since you have to create new domain powers at each level. However, this isn't usually a problem, since the domains in the Core Rulebook are broad enough that they can be used in most games. The upshot to basing everything on domains is that using deities other than those in the Core Rulebook is a cinch. Do you want to know which divine channelers can use, say, a water-domain power? Just decide which deities should have the water domain, and you are done.


From what they've said about PF2, though, clerics are going to get a bunch of feats tied just to deities, and those feats are going to make up a lot of the cleric's class features. That means that if you want to use the cleric class outside of Golarion, you have to write a sufficient quantity of deity-specific feats for each god in your setting. The real kicker is that this entire fiasco could have been avoided by simply tying the new cleric powers to domains instead of deities. This entire thing seems like another case of Paizo seemingly going out of their way to make their game harder to use without their campaign setting.

[Kurald Galain]

The biggest concern with clerics as they have been presented so far is: how hard will it be to use without the Golarion gods? In Pathfinder 1, if I want to introduce a pantheon from another game or work of fiction, all I have to do is decide on domains for each of the gods. Now, they plan on giving clerics a bunch of powers based on deities.

The blog post states they're giving clerics a bunch of powers based on domain, and three non-cleric spells based on deities. So yes, this would be easy to port to any non-Golarion campaign.

[Pex]

They need to give me a reason to look at this though, like “it has rules for more kinds of adventures” or “it speeds play and is more fun for quick games” or even “its more complex allowing for a greater degree of intricacy”. “We made this give us your money” is a **** reason, and “real fans will buy it and anyone who doesn’t is a grognard that we couldn’t please anyway” is a self fulfilling excuse.

They have to be careful with this. They don't want to make the same mistake WOTC made with 4E bashing and insulting 3E. To promote P2 they can't do it by criticizing P1. No offense intended, you might be one of the grognards who doesn't play along and won't switch. The DM of my Pathfinder game is the same. He's hating on the idea of it and won't switch. A fellow player in the game on the other hand is hopeful P2 will fix his personal issues with the system, specifically the fighter in comparison to other warrior classes.

[137beth]

The blog post states they're giving clerics a bunch of powers based on domain, and three non-cleric spells based on deities. So yes, this would be easy to port to any non-Golarion campaign.

The blog says

Each domain has a basic power and an advanced power, and because domain powers work as spells, creating a new domain that's perfect for your world is as simple as adding two spells.

It sounds like there won't be a lot based on domains.