Game News Archquest is an upcoming Gold Box-inspired RPG based on the Pathfinder 2nd Edition ruleset

[Infinitron]

Tags: Archquest; Pseudodragon Studios

For the past few years, esteemed Codexer The Avatar has been quietly working on a personal RPG project, which he occasionally shared details about in our Workshop forum. Two weeks ago he decided to finally reveal it the world. Archquest is a classic RPG inspired by the Gold Box games and in particular Pool of Radiance, with first-person exploration and isometric tactical combat. However, the game's most interesting aspect may be that it's based on the Pathfinder 2nd Edition ruleset. Bottom line, it looks really cool and it's got a Steam page now, so it's time for a newspost. Here's the announcement trailer and description:

Gather your party and venture forth to the city of Evertide, where invading monsters have risen from the ruins of the old city. Liberate the city block by block as you uncover the mysterious origins of the ancient city and what lies beneath.

• Create your character - based on tabletop RPG rules. Choose your class, feats, skills, and spells, and then customize your appearance by selecting your hair, beard, and skin.
  
• Explore the world in an immersive first-person view with grid-based movement. Each character in your party gets to choose an exploration activity, such as Search, Scout, Sneak, or maintain a Detect Magic spell.
  
• Engage in tactical turn-based combat. Execute reactions like Attack of Opportunity. Smash your enemies with Power Attack. Apply status effects with spells like Sleep, Grease, or Color Spray.
  
• Converse with your Diplomacy, Deception, or Intimidation skill against NPCs in a full-featured branching dialogue system.
  
• Manage your inventory and equip yourself with a paper-doll system. Craft magic items by grafting Potency Runes to weapons and armor.

Additional details about Archquest are available on its official website. The Avatar plans to release a splayable demo of the game later this month.

 

[Sin2x]

Where are the comments?

 

[Falksi]

Really like the look of this, although it does look a bit too generic though.

Will keep my eyes on it.

 

[Abu Antar]

Where are the comments?

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/archquest-alpha-demo-now-available.138705/

 

[ArchAngel]

Looks interesting but it will need much better sounds.

 

[dacencora]

This looks very promising

 

[Grunker]

This looks awesome

 

[ERYFKRAD]

splayable

 

[Tacgnol]

I'm a bit dubious about the choice to use a PF2e inspired ruleset. In my experience it's pretty much the worst elements of 5e and 3e combined, with none of the advantages of either.

I guess if it's OGL then the author/dev may be able to round off some of the rougher edges.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

I'm a bit dubious about the choice to use a PF2e inspired ruleset.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1664450/view/5392478663047311468

Let’s take some time to talk about the rules in Archquest– namely the PF2 RPG rules which Archquest is based on. You are probably already familiar with the OGL 3.5 SRD rules or PF1 rules. While PF1 was an incremental update to 3.5 that fixed some perceived problems of that ruleset, PF2 goes much further to distinguish itself from its predecessors. Here are some of the most important changes from the perspective of a video game-

• Action Economy
  – Instead of having move actions, attack actions, full-round actions, and other manners of actions, Archquest has a simple and easy system where you get three actions to do with you’d like with. Moving is an action, and attacking is an action. Some actions use more than one action, while most spells take two actions. Some spells allow you to spend a variable amount of actions of the spell, with greater effects the more points you put into it. Some spells, like Haste, give you more actions. In many ways, this could be considered an Action Point system, and when I first read about it, Divinity: Original Sin 2 immediately came to mind. If you like systems like that, you’ll feel at home in Archquest.
  
  
  
  
  The action point pips
  
  
  
• Scaling
  – Instead of having Base Attack Bonus(BAB) and a chart for saving throw advancement, almost everything you can do is based on Proficiency. If you are at least Trained in a given ability, you get to add a bonus based on proficiency level, plus your level to the roll or DC. This applies to attack rolls, saving throws, skills, and AC. This means that the system scales very well into higher levels, and should be easier to balance at all levels.
  
  
  
  
  A typical tooltip
  
  
  
• Feats
  – You may remember the mountains of Archetypes and Alternative Class Features in PF1. This will no longer be a thing, as most class abilities now have to be taken in the form of class feats. This allows you to customize your class considerably. There are a few class feats that can be taken by different classes, but most are unique to a specific class. There are still General Feats to be taken, but the pickings are much slimmer there now.

There are many other differences. I should point out that while Archquest is based on the rules of PF2, it will not be the same. The most obvious one being the “race as a class” system, which allows me to constrain the scope of the project while also maintaining an old-school vibe. One idea I thought would be interesting is experimenting with a full-blown action point system, where the number of AP you have is higher, and depends on your ability score, and different weapons cost different amounts of AP. Think Fallout meets D&D.

The game is still in the early stages of development of this game, so any feedback would be welcome.

 

[Tacgnol]

I'm a bit dubious about the choice to use a PF2e inspired ruleset.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1664450/view/5392478663047311468

Let’s take some time to talk about the rules in Archquest– namely the PF2 RPG rules which Archquest is based on. You are probably already familiar with the OGL 3.5 SRD rules or PF1 rules. While PF1 was an incremental update to 3.5 that fixed some perceived problems of that ruleset, PF2 goes much further to distinguish itself from its predecessors. Here are some of the most important changes from the perspective of a video game-

• Action Economy
  – Instead of having move actions, attack actions, full-round actions, and other manners of actions, Archquest has a simple and easy system where you get three actions to do with you’d like with. Moving is an action, and attacking is an action. Some actions use more than one action, while most spells take two actions. Some spells allow you to spend a variable amount of actions of the spell, with greater effects the more points you put into it. Some spells, like Haste, give you more actions. In many ways, this could be considered an Action Point system, and when I first read about it, Divinity: Original Sin 2 immediately came to mind. If you like systems like that, you’ll feel at home in Archquest.
  
  
  
  
  The action point pips
  
  
  
• Scaling
  – Instead of having Base Attack Bonus(BAB) and a chart for saving throw advancement, almost everything you can do is based on Proficiency. If you are at least Trained in a given ability, you get to add a bonus based on proficiency level, plus your level to the roll or DC. This applies to attack rolls, saving throws, skills, and AC. This means that the system scales very well into higher levels, and should be easier to balance at all levels.
  
  
  
  
  A typical tooltip
  
  
  
• Feats
  – You may remember the mountains of Archetypes and Alternative Class Features in PF1. This will no longer be a thing, as most class abilities now have to be taken in the form of class feats. This allows you to customize your class considerably. There are a few class feats that can be taken by different classes, but most are unique to a specific class. There are still General Feats to be taken, but the pickings are much slimmer there now.

There are many other differences. I should point out that while Archquest is based on the rules of PF2, it will not be the same. The most obvious one being the “race as a class” system, which allows me to constrain the scope of the project while also maintaining an old-school vibe. One idea I thought would be interesting is experimenting with a full-blown action point system, where the number of AP you have is higher, and depends on your ability score, and different weapons cost different amounts of AP. Think Fallout meets D&D.

The game is still in the early stages of development of this game, so any feedback would be welcome.

PF2e has awful damage scaling as spells and melee attacks barely get any significant increases as you level. It also has extremely inflated numbers on HP, saves, AC and attack rolls because of the proficiency system. It's actually the total opposite of 5e in that respect.

I don't have anything against big numbers per se, but I don't see the point of them when everything has bigger numbers. The numbers felt inflated just to differentiate it from 5e.

PF1e/3.5 had faults but I don't think Paizo needed to make a new edition.

 

[gurugeorge]

Huh, Pathfinder games seem to be like buses, you wait for half an hour then ten come along at once

 

[MicoSelva]

As soon as I saw exploding kobolds, I was in. Thanks for posting this, Infinitron .