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Comment by djur | Hacker News Reader

Unbelievable that Hasbro is doing this again after how badly screwing over third parties went the last time. D&D 4th Edition had much more restrictive terms than 3.5e; one of the big selling points of 5e was the return to the OGL. I guess they're confident that they don't need third-party content or the goodwill of the broader tabletop community anymore. But if recent efforts like the Spelljammer book are any indication, they're dead wrong about that.

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I don't think they're confident at all. The opposite, in fact. They're trying to kill off Pathfinder because, anecdotally, it seems like they're hemorrhaging players to 2e. They're trying to stop that, then I can guarantee they'll incorporate everything they think made 2e good into D&D 6.0. Basically this is just them trying to extract more profit and screw over their biggest competitor.

Pathfinder 2e seems to me like it was designed to only retain superficial elements from the D&D SRD. I wouldn't be surprised if Paizo had a plan for how to jettison the remaining content right from the start. So if this is meant to take PF out I think it's a foolish error (just like the existence of Pathfinder itself was due to their foolish error with the 4e licensing!).

I hope so, as I prefer what Pathfinder is doing a lot more. I first started getting interested in TTRPGs with 3.5e, and, to me, 5e has completely lost the feel of customisation that it had. They have finally released new races, but for the most part it's just sub-classes and "change the flavour text". PF 2e already has more ancestries and classes than 5e, and more fun ways of putting them together, and I absolutely love that. It makes the world feel more diverse, and really makes you feel like you can be what you want to be and find any class/race combo to fit your character idea as opposed to the opposite.

That said, I think PF will still have to reword quite a few spells, and possibly rename more than a few creatures and spells as well. Probably enough for a 2.5e, but I also wouldn't be surprised if they're working on it especially after this leak dropped.

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