Argh, the layout.

[QuidEst]

My goodness, it is a hassle to compare/pick anything.

Weighing sorcerer bloodlines? Track down three powers sprinkled throughout the spells.

Want to pick a general feat? Sift through all the skill feats. (I'm guessing this is because some general feats are skill feats without a skill.)

Want to take a feat for Society? Find the table, then individually look up the six trained feats scattered throughout all the general/skill feats.

All in all, I'll be very glad when one of the reference sites gets the contents up.

[Voss]

Hmm. It's not so much the layout that bothers me as the sheer level of cross-reference that is required.

On the page, most things are distinct (except the icons), with tags clear in a predictable place, requirements, and a separation between each.

Having powers separate from the class (and buried in spells) is indeed very strange.

And yeah, comparisons are really ugly to do. I've more questions at this point than initial reactions, because it's such a mess to analyze effectively.

Edit: urgh, the spell descriptions. No (or few, I see 'bard' in a couple places) pointers back to where they come from. So if something looks interesting, I have to consult X classes and 4 spell lists to try to find out how to get it.

--
Related: I'm not sure if you can take skill feats with general feats. The section blurb implies it ("general feats also include skill feats") but I'm not 100% sure its intended. But there isn't much to choose from if they're not.

And skill feats do have the general tag, so...

[QuidEst]

You can definitely take skill feats with general feats. The skills preview stated it.

[Tholomyes]

That is the big thing for me. In 1e, it was bad enough that things were sorted by alphabetization rather than catagory, but at least there it was reasonably necessary, as you did not have mutually exclusive feats, and spells were both not necessesarily the same level for all classes (and thus could not be sorted by level), and did not include things which are now powers.

Were it me, I would do it like so:

Powers, where applicable (which should be true for most things, as they tend to have little overlap), go into their respective classes' listing. If necessary, at the end of the class' listing, but preferably next to where it is granted. For the few cases where I do see overlap, such as paladins being able to gain a domain, those domains already require cross reference between cleric and paladin, so including them in the cleric listing isn't necessarily a problem. For things such as the Bardic performance cantrips, treat these as powers, as they cannot be gained typically by other classes.

General feats are separated into skill and regular general feats, and sorted by levels, and only after the level sort, sorted alphabetically, similar to how class feats are done.

Similarly for non-power spells, Sorted by spell level, with Cantrips first, then by alphabetical. It would also be nice if they had a simple notation as to what spell list it was in.

Lastly, while this is more a formatting thing, rather than layout, I think there needs to be a clearer indication of rarity. While color coding might be fine (though I'd probably want insight from colorblind folks, for this), it took longer than I would have liked to notice what the color coding referred to. Even having read the part where it mentions color coding, it didn't really stick in my brain. A simple color-coding of the words common, uncommon, rare, and unique might have made it more quick to associate in my mind, but unsure. Also color-coding in a box (as with Power [X]) makes it easier to tell at a glance, color coded text (as with Cantrip) makes it hard to tell, so something fixing that would be nice.

[Vic Wertz]

Nothing will rely exclusively on the presence of color-coding in the actual second edition. (That was one of the very first changes we committed to making, pretty much right as we were sending it to the printer.)

[AnimatedPaper]

I agree with nearly every suggested change to the layout you had, except one section.

Tholomyes wrote:

Powers, where applicable (which should be true for most things, as they tend to have little overlap), go into their respective classes' listing. If necessary, at the end of the class' listing, but preferably next to where it is granted. For the few cases where I do see overlap, such as paladins being able to gain a domain, those domains already require cross reference between cleric and paladin, so including them in the cleric listing isn't necessarily a problem. For things such as the Bardic performance cantrips, treat these as powers, as they cannot be gained typically by other classes.

While I agree that powers would be helpful to have separated out from spells, I actually disagree with having them in the class section. It would throw off the layout of that section too badly, and probably would take up too much space. In addition, almost certainly there will be more overlap of powers shared between classes, and I'd rather not set it up to have them reprinted with every class that gets them

Instead, I would place powers in a chapter distinct from spells, starting with a list of powers broken down by what class gets them. Alternatively, I would like such a list in either the class itself, or simply at the start of the spell section if they have to be included in the spells.

One of the things I admired of the spell section was how densely they packed spells in there, even as I knew it would cause issues with finding them later. I'd hate to lose so much of the space saving nature of spell descriptions, but ultimately I agree that SOMETHING has to be done.

Edit: forgot to add, but my kingdom for a simple description of the spell in the initial lists that begins the spell chapter. It took me forever to find the spell that bards use to heal (soothe, by the way).

[Sir Antony]

I'm going to give it a more solid readthrough before making too many comments on layout, but there is one I'd like to make right now. When listing range of success or failure, it should go:

Critical Success
Success
Failure
Critical Failure

Right now they're out of order for no discernible reason.

[Tholomyes]

AnimatedPaper wrote:

I agree with nearly every suggested change to the layout you had, except one section.

Tholomyes wrote:

Powers, where applicable (which should be true for most things, as they tend to have little overlap), go into their respective classes' listing. If necessary, at the end of the class' listing, but preferably next to where it is granted. For the few cases where I do see overlap, such as paladins being able to gain a domain, those domains already require cross reference between cleric and paladin, so including them in the cleric listing isn't necessarily a problem. For things such as the Bardic performance cantrips, treat these as powers, as they cannot be gained typically by other classes.

While I agree that powers would be helpful to have separated out from spells, I actually disagree with having them in the class section. It would throw off the layout of that section too badly, and probably would take up too much space. In addition, almost certainly there will be more overlap of powers shared between classes, and I'd rather not set it up to have them reprinted with every class that gets them

Instead, I would place powers in a chapter distinct from spells, starting with a list of powers broken down by what class gets them. Alternatively, I would like such a list in either the class itself, or simply at the start of the spell section if they have to be included in the spells.

One of the things I admired of the spell section was how densely they packed spells in there, even as I knew it would cause issues with finding them later. I'd hate to lose so much of the space saving nature of spell descriptions, but ultimately I agree that SOMETHING has to be done.

Edit: forgot to add, but my kingdom for a simple description of the spell in the initial lists that begins the spell chapter. It took me forever to find the spell that bards use to heal (soothe, by the way).

If there are duplicated powers, at least so far I haven't seen much overlap in classes, at least more than Paladins getting domains (which requires knowledge of the deities, which by necessity mandates cross reference with clerics). If future books have overlap, then they will require cross reference with the CRB anyway, so I'd accept them referring to the class rather than a separate section, if that makes it easier to build the core classes, by removing the necessity to go to a separate section for the powers.

But that being said, I could probably accept a Powers section, if (and likely only if) it categorized powers by the class that grants them, first, then by the aspect that grants them (i.e. the domain and advanced domain powers are both grouped together and organized in a sensible way), and even then I'd hope that every power gives every aspect of how it is used (most notably absent being the cost of each power in its entry).

But as for your edit, I mostly agree. Though I mostly like the simplified "This is the X list" presentation, I do feel it could be supplemented by descriptions. My main worry would be if the description sections replaced the easy lists (even if the description sections repeated themselves for spells on multiple lists, because I like the fact that there is a (roughly 1 page) list of spells that are available to each spell list. Because for some spells it's really useful. For others, who have either direct antecedents and/or whose name is effectively the description, it's not.

[Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti]

It is even harder to look things up with the pdf. Frustrating.

[AnimatedPaper]

Tholomyes wrote:

But that being said, I could probably accept a Powers section, if (and likely only if) it categorized powers by the class that grants them, first, then by the aspect that grants them (i.e. the domain and advanced domain powers are both grouped together and organized in a sensible way), and even then I'd hope that every power gives every aspect of how it is used (most notably absent being the cost of each power in its entry).

That lack of entry cost is the strongest indication to me that there will eventually be cross-class powers, or at least the devs saw the value in setting themselves up for the option in the future. Different classes might access the same power at different costs and by way of different class feats; most of the powers are written in such a way that the same power could be cast by a druid or a paladin or a bard with no change to the wording. Augment Summons is a notable exception, which is weird because I would have expected that to be class/spell-list agnostic even if most are not.

*shrug* Basically, I disagree with your premise that the powers are, or should be, defined by the class or even feat that grants them. For example, the domain power "Fire Ray" would make sense to be granted by an eventual fire elemental sorcerer bloodline. I'm honestly surprised evocation wizards don't currently have a way to pick it up (which is evidence that I might be totally incorrect, honesty compels me to add), or that bards can't pick up soothing words.

[Seisho]

Some things are hard to look up but two other things bother me way more then that

Redundancy: Word count is important, why has every single class typed that they get skill feats, ability improvements etc when you could have a single table or entry for all classes - if they are abnormalities (for example the different classes getting a level 1 feat) that could be filled in

spell order - i don't mean how they are sorted but there is no sign at any spell which spell lists they are on - when I had the pf1 rulebook i was quite happy with browsing and looking at the spells and then who can do it - now you have to scroll back and forth between the spell list and the spells every f!*@ing time

I agree with powers put into a subsection of spells, would also make browsing easier

[Drejk]

Skill feats should be placed along the specific skill they belong to and improve. That would much improve searching, because you know what skills you have and you know you have a skill feat pick, so you can look by the skills you focus on and would like to improve.

Spells should have something to mark their base spell list as well as written rarity. Everything that has rarity other than common should have it written.

Trait bubbles I found annoying. I would much prefer that feats, spells, everything simply contains a line Traits: xxx, yyy, zzz instead.

I am not sold on action icons and their placement above the feat/ability/etc.

[Darkreaper]

Voss wrote:

Hmm. It's not so much the layout that bothers me as the sheer level of cross-reference that is required.

Agreed that the layout is terrible. Entirely too much cross-reference. There is also too much in the way of story-telling prior to getting to the mechanics of each rule. In addition, the introductory parts carry too much necessary information that does not carry over into each section.

This is just a play test so its not critical but the actual books need to be divided into sections that concisely state all of the information needed for that section. When you go to the Skills section you need everything needed for skills without a lengthy preamble about why characters use skills. Between the cross-referencing and the vague details its a nightmare to work through this document.

[Roymc13]

I have to agree with everyone, character generation is a bit too back and forth for spell casters or heavy skilled characters. Why bother with listing skill trees or spell trees then alphabetizing the rest of the list? It is the same problem with the character sheet. Why not organize skills by ability mod and skills by just level? Just curious am I missing something?

[The Gold Sovereign]

Those are the suggestions for changes in the layout regarding the Spells section and powers.

1) Powers should go in their own section.

2) There should be a list o powers, sorted by class or class feature and ordered by power level.

3) There's no need for the redundant "Casting" in all actions required to cast the spell, as the description section is already called "Casting".

3.5) If casting a spell requires two or three actions, why aren't the two actions and the three actions icon being used? In favor of space economy, it could go like this: "[[A,A,A]] Material, Somatic, Verbal", instead of this: "[[A]] Material Casting [[A]] Somatic Casting [[A]] Verbal Casting.

4) Spells should get the magic traditions from which they hail in their description. Maybe among their traits.

[bugleyman]

After spending several hours on a read-through, I'm forced to agree. While I personally love most of the graphic design, the layout needs work. Ease-of-use during character creation leaves a lot to be desired because everything is so spread out.

And speaking of the graphical design...although I really do thing it is a HUGE improvement over 1E, there are a few tweaks I would suggest:

• The icons for one, two, and three actions should be more obvious at a glance. As it stands they're not quite there. As silly as it might sound, you might look at military rank insignias -- which must be distinguishable at a glance in bad conditions -- as a reference.
• The color choices for rarities are not good...orange is way too close to red. Many people know the grey(or black)-green-blue-purple progression...why change it? Just so you don't hear the "video game!" complaints? Those will come anyway. If it ain't broke...
• Further, the entire name of the element should be in the rarity color (or should have a negative space background in the appropriate color).
• As has been previously pointed out...the first "casting" tag on the spells is redundant.

[ofMars]

Given that hardness is actually important to the primary mechanic of shields, I think it would make sense to include the hardness of a shield in its entry in the equipment chapter rather than having to reference the materials table.

A short description of each spell on the spell list would be great, too, instead of having to constantly go back and forth between the list and the full spell description

[pad300]

There is too much stuff to that ends up capitalized:
"The names of specific statistics, skills, feats, actions, activities, reactions, free actions, and some other mechanical elements in Pathfinder are capitalized."
This gets confusing with actual grammatical capitalization (ie at the start of sentences and for names), and it is pretty easy to miss the capitalization.

I would suggest some sort of varying underline scheme - anything underlined is a "(see above)", but use single underlines for actions, reactions and free actions, wavy underlines for skills, dashed underlines for feats, etc...

[AshVandal]

bugleyman wrote:

And speaking of the graphical design...although I really do thing it is a HUGE improvement over 1E, there are a few tweaks I would suggest:
[list]

The icons for one, two, and three actions should be more obvious at a glance. As it stands they're not quite there. As silly as it might sound, you might look at military rank insignias -- which must be distinguishable at a glance in bad conditions

Bad example, a lot of enlisted ranks (which these icons most look like) are very hard to distinguish in bad conditions. At least for Marines in cammies, telling an e8 from e9 is super difficult, especially if they're d!*@!eads and have cammy blouses that have black splotches on their collars. Navy has it best, but that's only because the whole insignia changes drastically every 3 ranks. e4-6 can still be a pain.

[Angel Hunter D]

pad300 wrote:

There is too much stuff to that ends up capitalized:

"The names of specific statistics, skills, feats, actions, activities, reactions, free actions, and some other mechanical elements in Pathfinder are capitalized."
This gets confusing with actual grammatical capitalization (ie at the start of sentences and for names), and it is pretty easy to miss the capitalization.

I would suggest some sort of varying underline scheme - anything underlined is a "(see above)", but use single underlines for actions, reactions and free actions, wavy underlines for skills, dashed underlines for feats, etc...

Oh god, the mixing of capitalization is horrid. Pick one, not both. I can forgive "net-writing" with no grammatical stuff if capitals are not relevant to mechanics.

[Thebazilly]

I like the layout of individual feats/spells/monsters/etc. but I agree that the organization of the spell list needs a lot of work. It would be much easier to have the spell lists split out into Arcane/Divine/Primal/Occult, move the Powers to their own section, and maybe list things by spell level instead of just alphabetically. The organization of the class feats does this pretty well, but all of the spells are just piled together haphazardly.

[Thundarr the Barbarian]

I agree with much of what is said here; however, I have a couple of other things I would like to address, as well:

I think the skill feats should be placed with the skill chapter next to the appropriate skill. But, if not that, at least organize the feats the same way they are listed on the feats chart at the beginning of the chapter so that we can comparison shop easily without having to flip all over the book.

I would prefer the action icons to just simply be words, but if we need graphic icons, can it be in addition to the words? As it is now, I have to stare at the icon for a bit to understand which one it is. Telling Actions, Reactions, and Free Actions apart is too distracting to me. I have to stare at the internal components of the shape to tell them apart and I have trouble with that. I don't mind the chevron system to indicate multiple actions; that seems clear to me - though it might be better if the second diamond for that second Action were a hollow diamond. But, I think the biggest problem for me is that Actions, Reactions, and Free Actions are all diamond-shaped. Can they at least be different shapes besides a diamond? For example, how about a Diamond for an Action (keeping the chevrons to indicate additional actions as it is now, but with the hollow second diamond I mentioned above), a Circle for a Reaction, and a Square, Triangle, or Hollow Circle for a Free Action.

Another thing (...and this is really minor, I know, but it is annoying to me on the level of a squeaky front door at your place of work when you're stuck at the front desk in a busy office all day,) is two of the watermarks on every page that make me want to claw at the book to get what feels like a food stain or bug off of my book. An example page to find these watermarks I mention can be seen on page 211 at the bottom over the word, "LANGUAGE" in Comprehend Language and to the far left by the "COMMAND" spell entry. They are on every page and they break my immersion/rhythm every time I read the bottom of every odd numbered page.

Otherwise, I agree with most of what has been pointed out above. I think powers should be broken out into its own section adjacent to the Spells section.

[Turelus]

I have to agree with the people saying about too much cross referencing.

I've been reading the book page by page and it seems almost everything I read is telling me to flip all over the book to understand it.
I know this is a rulebook and not a novel, but at the same time I can't help but feel if someone new is reading this they're going to be flicking back and forth constantly.
I would say maybe make sure the reference has to be there, if you don't HAVE To mention Strike (see page xx) then just leave it at Strike (made up example).

I would say personally I am not a fan of the coloured page backgrounds as well, this makes it very printer unfriendly and I just feel text on white (Crimson Throne Hardback) was a cleaner look.

[Vic Ferrari]

As someone that is vision impaired/partially sighted, I am having a problem with the icons/symbols, I agree the 2 and 3 action icon are hard differentiate at a glance, and aside from that, just aesthetically, I find icons/symbols in RPGs cheapens them a bit.

[Fuzzypaws]

Powers being mixed into the spell list is definitely my biggest frustration. Domain powers should be listed under the domain they are associated to, likewise school and bloodline powers; every other power should be listed under the feat that grants it or in a list at the end of the respective class entry.

Spell casting actions need major cleanup.

There is a HUGE amount of redundant text from feats being reprinted multiple times for various classes. Reach Spell etc are printed in full many times and that is a huge waste of word count / space. If a feat is open to multiple classes, just go all the way and strip the class requirement and make it a general feat, and give a general feat at level 1. Each class could have a little sidebar indicating "These are some general feats you might want to consider too."

Skill feats should be listed under the relevant skills, just like feats are for ancestries and classes. That might also help make it more obvious to the designers that some skills really got shafted on feats compared to other skills, and need some more love.

Rituals should be organized alphabetically like the rest of the spells. (Frankly I feel all the spells with expensive material components and casting times of minutes+, like Alarm, should be rituals instead of spells, and they should get rid of the weird requirement that rituals must be 8+ hours with multiple casters. But that's a separate issue from just layout.)

Some important rules elements appear in unexpected and unintuitive places. Most notably, for some reason the text defining multiple attacks and the penalty therefrom appears in the equipment chapter???

-----

On the upside, I do like most feats being listed per ancestry and per class, and then by level and then alphabetical within each level. That is good for finding stuff relevant to that race / class.

I do like the "main basics" for each class being listed in a sidebar at the start of the class instead of in paragraph flow.

[Jib916]

I know its far from the final version, and as much information was meant to be packed into the space provided, but I find the Beastry to be the worse layout of them all.

The monster stats seem like they need some formatting work. They dont look very good,dont seem to be organized well and some are a bit hard to read and understand. 5e does this very gracefully , would like to see it move in this direction.

Though im sure through play testing I will get use to them, just a bit jarring starting out.

[ENHenry]

Sir Antony wrote:

I'm going to give it a more solid readthrough before making too many comments on layout, but there is one I'd like to make right now. When listing range of success or failure, it should go:

Critical Success
Success
Failure
Critical Failure

Right now they're out of order for no discernible reason.

This was brought to Mark Seifter's attention a couple of months ago, and the explanation from Mark was that some "Critical Success" events are dependent on wording from "Success" (and same with Crit Failure/Failure) in order to make sense.

However, looking over the actual playtest, It's hard for me to find examples where they could not be flipped in order to the order you recommend above. Personally, I'd rather have the CS/S/F/CF order as well, because IMO it just makes more sense when referencing a result.

[Fuzzypaws]

ENHenry wrote:

Sir Antony wrote:

I'm going to give it a more solid readthrough before making too many comments on layout, but there is one I'd like to make right now. When listing range of success or failure, it should go:

Critical Success
Success
Failure
Critical Failure

Right now they're out of order for no discernible reason.

This was brought to Mark Seifter's attention a couple of months ago, and the explanation from Mark was that some "Critical Success" events are dependent on wording from "Success" (and same with Crit Failure/Failure) in order to make sense.

However, looking over the actual playtest, It's hard for me to find examples where they could not be flipped in order to the order you recommend above. Personally, I'd rather have the CS/S/F/CF order as well, because IMO it just makes more sense when referencing a result.

They could keep the S/CS/F/CF order if they indent the CS and CF lines. But if they are not going to indent the CS/CF entries, I'd rather it go CS/S/F/CF.

[Meraki]

I started building my first playtest character last night (got almost done, just need equipment), and I have to agree with those saying that having the class powers mixed in with the spells is confusing. I'd vastly prefer them to be in with their relevant class (ideally) or at the very least in a separate Powers section divided by class.

I also had some trouble trying to figure out what a lot of the traits meant. For example, I read the lay on hands feat in the paladin section that says lay on hands "loses the manipulate trait" and it took us about 20 minutes to figure out what that meant.

In general, a lot of the phrasing seems a little...clunky? I know PF2 is trying to be more standardized with its terminology, but some of it is a little much. Things like "operate activation action" (which I know has been mentioned on the forums before, so I won't harp on it) and "use the Cast a Spell Activity" make me feel like I'm doing QA for a technical manual. There's gotta be a middle ground in standardizing the terms that still sounds like natural language people will use at the table. (And eat up less wordcount in the process.)

I'm also having trouble with the icons, as I suspected I might.

Another quibble, though it's pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, is the character sheet layout, which is now horizontal instead of vertical. If you're sitting around a small table (as you might if you, like me, don't have a lot of space to work with), the horizontal sheets will take up more table space length-wise, making it harder to fit multiple sheets in the playing area (especially once dice, books, laptops, etc. are involved).

[Snowblind]

Fuzzypaws wrote:

...

They could keep the S/CS/F/CF order if they indent the CS and CF lines. But if they are not going to indent the CS/CF entries, I'd rather it go CS/S/F/CF.

I think the general problem is that it isn't obvious from the layout what order the results are in. Without some sort of visual cue, I presume that people intuitively assume that the check results are in order of best to worst, and the fact that they aren't causes momentary confusion and forces them to parse each line one by one to figure out which line corresponds to which result. Combine that with the fact that some results lack crit successes/fails so you can't just jump to a line at a glance without counting the number of bolded check results, and it leads to unnecessary disorientation for readers who aren't familiar with the system (which at this stage is pretty much everybody).

Putting a slight space between the successes and the failures or giving "Critical Success" and "Critical Failure" different font/bolding/underline etc might also do the trick, if they don't want to indent anything. Just some form of cue that communicates the order of results in an intuitive matter and that indicates which check in a test with only 3 outcomes is the critical result.

[PossibleCabbage]

So one thing that's bugging me, is that while I understand powers work like spells (they just consume a different resource), so it's fine to have them in the spells chapter, but do they need to be combined with all the spells instead of listed separately as powers?

Like a Sorcerer will never be able to cast "Wholeness of Body" without multiclassing monk, and a Monk will never be able to cask "Wish" so do we need those spells in close proximity? It seems if we're looking something up, we should know whether it's a spell (i.e. "are we expending spell slots to cast it") or a power (i.e. "are we spending spell points to cast it") so grouping them all together doesn't help.

[Ched Greyfell]

I like this thread. It's the first thread I've seen of real, actual constructive criticism (instead of "they nerfed my class, bruh!" or "Fill-in-the-blank is the worst thing I've ever seen!").
I agree all the cross-referencing is confusing. And I'm always not quite sure I made my character correctly. I keep getting feelings that I forgot something, and I go back and reread sections.
It would be super helpful if sections said things at the end like, "Paladin's champion powers are listed on page xx."
Having a class's core abilities listed as a power and slipped in the spell section is super weird and confusing.

[Thundarr the Barbarian]

Something else that I noticed last night while making my first character is that I was filling out the character sheet wrong. Some stuff I could tell was off and did not know where to put it (like my Low-Light Vision from being a Half-Elf and trying to find where I should write that I'm a humanoid, a human, and an elf - it looked to me like the step by step instruction were telling me to do so... so I tried...) or I was putting things in the wrong place. I had to go back to that video of Buhlman making an Elf Barbarian on Paizo's Twitch channel and pause the screen to see how he filled out his sheet.

I think the playtest book should have put a filled out sample character sheet in the book. Ideally, they should display the same character they walk us through the step process of creating. Also, instead of a fighter they should show us something like a druid or a bard so that we can see how armor, weapon attacks, and spells all get filled out, too. We don't get all that with many of the character classes like the fighter they used (and who obviously does not get spells; and a sorcerer does not get armor). They showed us a character sheet in the character creation chapter, but nothing was filled in. I did not know exactly what went where. They did put the step numbers all over their unfilled, sample sheet to tell us that something from that step goes there, but some of those steps have a lot going on and I got confused.

[Arakhor]

Having powers sorted amongst the spells is really time-consuming to check constantly when referencing the classes. If you want to keep them in the Spells chapter, at least put them in their own section, like you did for the rituals.

I'll note that the burgundy and orange rarity indicators are fairly discernable when they're on the same page together, but not so much when they're apart. I occasionally confuse the two-action and three-action icons as well.

[GentleGiant]

The filled out character sheet from the Twitch stream, just in case people can use it:
Front
Back

[Dreams of Steel]

What's been driving me nuts with the layout is the feat or spell entries that start at the bottom of one column and wrap to the top of the next column or from one page to the next. It may not be as big of an issue in the print book but in the PDF it leads to a lot of scrolling.

[graystone]

Arakhor wrote:

I'll note that the burgundy and orange rarity indicators are fairly discernable when they're on the same page together, but not so much when they're apart. I occasionally confuse the two-action and three-action icons as well.

For some of us, those colors are visually identical... Someone had to point out that there was color coating. :P

Total agreement on the symbols: Mine is more than occasional though. I'm having to keep checking if it's free or reaction and the chevrons are far from time saving.

[Greyblade23]

Tholomyes wrote:

Similarly for non-power spells, Sorted by spell level, with Cantrips first, then by alphabetical. It would also be nice if they had a simple notation as to what spell list it was in.

Help the poor specialist wizards out. Sort by level, then by school , then alphabetical.

[Fuzzypaws]

Okay, I'm bugged by the organization of magic items too. Why are armor and weapon runes an undifferentiated mess? Why is everything else dumped into a single giant section that is not sorted in any way other than alphabetical?

I don't mind rings and such being grouped with the rest of the wondrous items, they're really all the same now. But please:

* Magic armor should be one section, with an armor property rune subsection and specific magic armor subsection.
* Magic weapons should be one section, with a weapon property rune subsection and specific magic weapon subsection.
* Potions and oils, if they are going to remain very specific items for some reason when that should really be the province of alchemy, should be one section.
* Trinkets should be one section.
* Staves should be one section.
* Wands should be one section if they get fixed to not be awful and to have their own niche, and otherwise can be merged into the staff section.
* I don't mind too much if the rest of the wondrous items are one giant section like in times of old, but I'd still personally separate it into several groups: stuff you wear, vs tools and miscellany.

[Greyblade23]

Fuzzypaws wrote:

Okay, I'm bugged by the organization of magic items too. Why are armor and weapon runes an undifferentiated mess? Why is everything else dumped into a single giant section that is not sorted in any way other than alphabetical?

So much this. It took me several hours to equip my higher level Doomsday Dawn characters because of this. While we're talking about this, the rules for item quality should also be repeated in these two sections, rather than only in one section some 200 pages earlier.

[AnimatedPaper]

Fuzzypaws wrote:

There is a HUGE amount of redundant text from feats being reprinted multiple times for various classes. Reach Spell etc are printed in full many times and that is a huge waste of word count / space. If a feat is open to multiple classes, just go all the way and strip the class requirement and make it a general feat, and give a general feat at level 1. Each class could have a little sidebar indicating "These are some general feats you might want to consider too."

Skill feats should be listed under the relevant skills, just like feats are for ancestries and classes. That might also help make it more obvious to the designers that some skills really got shafted on feats compared to other skills, and need some more love.

Rituals should be organized alphabetically like the rest of the spells. (Frankly I feel all the spells with expensive material components and casting times of minutes+, like Alarm, should be rituals instead of spells, and they should get rid of the weird requirement that rituals must be 8+ hours with multiple casters. But that's a separate issue from just layout.)

Definetely agree with all of these points, especially regarding rituals. I'd love if alarm became a ritual that anyone with the training could do.

[lordrichter]

I have one layout issue not listed yet (or I missed it).

Action description section (page 7 - Upper left corner of 8) where the icons are explained - due to the layout of the paragraphs the 1-action icon is readily apparent and appears to be the ONLY one actually defined. However when you turn the page, in the upper corner is the Activities paragraph and the last two sentences of that paragraph have the 2 action and 3 action icons in the sentences in a smaller font. (I puzzled the icons out correctly, but it was guess work until I had turned the page for the third time. That time I noticed the Activities paragraph.)

My suggestion: In the Action header show all the action icons, example:
Action <<A>> (<<AA>> - 2 , <<AAA>> - 3)

This way right when I check the 1st page the index sends me to, I can see all the icons. You can repeat them on the next page with the Activities heading if you like. (Personally, the introduction of a second term for Action(s) is a waste and I think you should drop it. They use the Action symbol and you complete them by spending Actions. The explanation of Actions dials you into Actions and how many you get a round. I flip over to fighter and see Power Attack I know how to use it.)

Layout of the Success/Failure results
Fuzzypaws and Snowblind, thank you for mentioning this. This bothered me when we first saw the success/failure block in the playtest blog. I gave some ideas then about what I thought was more readable. That said, I think, the use of an indent for the Critical results below the normal results is a genius use of a tab and easily creates the readability I want without major layout changes.

As always, these are suggestions you may do with as you please.

[xris]

Sir Antony wrote:

I'm going to give it a more solid readthrough before making too many comments on layout, but there is one I'd like to make right now. When listing range of success or failure, it should go:

Critical Success
Success
Failure
Critical Failure

Right now they're out of order for no discernible reason.

I'm on-board with this suggestion. While I can see why Success heads the list, it just seems to read easier if it was headed by Critical Success instead.

[Marc Radle]

I definately concur with folks who dislike the icons. In all honesty, I hate them. I find them to be an eyesore and counter intuitive. Instead of just reading the word Attack or whatever, now I have to look at a symbol and remember what it means? Why add this level of unneccessary complication to muddy up what used to be a clean, easily understood presentation.

I know the icons are pretty devisive, but please put me down as very firmly in the ‘Hate them - please remove for the final book’ camp

[AndIMustMask]

personally i have no problem with the icons, and my newer players quite like how simply it shows what costs what actions to use.

[RazarTuk]

Spells only show their school in the description, so if I'm looking for more evocation spells for my evoker, I have to keep flipping back and forth between the list and descriptions.

[Jeff Deaner]

One of the advantages of the Pathfinder (and 3.5e) layout was that if you weren't playing a spellcaster, you didn't need to read the Magic or Spells chapters.

A new player, playing a monk, can ignore a large amount of the rulebook. With the merging of powers and spells - and the massive amount of cross-references, this is no longer a possibility.

[Vic Ferrari]

Yeah, and telling the difference between the 2 and 3 action symbol arrow thingy at a glance is problematic for me.

I really see no need for any of the colours/icons/symbols, in fact, it makes it seem more cluttered than it already is, and boy, is it byzantine.

[Drejk]

Going through the alchemical items is a pain. They should be sorted by type and level.

[Red Rabbit]

As I have been reading through this I ran into a lot of posts that suggested more than one change ("I like this, but not that and that"). I would like to try something: a vote.