This is my first post on the Paizo forums, which I'm making specifically to point out that this is the best post I've seen about the Playtest so far. That's not me saying I agree or disagree with everything said, but that the post was well-reasoned, well-laid out, and thoughtfully made. Good job, Chibi!
Now, onto my take.
Ancestry Feats: I always disliked how, both in D&D and Pathfinder, the races were, well, racially stereotyped. Dwarves hating giants and halflings loving slings always seemed like something your racist uncle would say. When I first heard about Ancestry Feats I was hoping that, rather than being baked in stereotypes they would instead become optional cultural choices.
They definitely delivered on that front, though I feel that they swung too far in the opposite direction. Opting into culturally determined qualities is great, opting into genetically determined qualities is frankly kind of weird to me. I understand that the Ancestry Feats marked Heritage have to be taken at first level or not at all, but I think it would be better if the races just came with the hereditary feats out the gate. Elves having good hearing and gnomes having good sniffers isn't game-breaking, but it does help differentiate the Ancestries.
Feats and Character Customization: I love the core idea behind PF2's character creation. Even if you never buy a splatbook, you'll still never run out of different characters to make. I really like how no class has a dead level. Every single level of every single class, you've got choices to make, helping you further make a unique character. Skill feats or general feats or class feats or spells, you get to decide something every level. That's great.
What's not so great is that some of the class feats are kind of... fiddly. They don't seem to add much system-wise to a character. I know part of that is that you're getting so many feats that you should expect the small things to add up to a bigger thing. I don't know how much of that is the 3.5/PF1 mindset of, "My precious feats are too valuable for anything less than pure gold!" that I'm probably still stuck in.
Action Economy: I like that multi-attacking is a thing right out the gate. You probably won't hit much with the last two attacks at first level, but still, you get to try. Having the clear definition of what casting components are and how those effect actions is also great. But...
ChibiNyan wrote:
A lot of things that use to be free or swift actions now suddenly have an action cost. In fact, many things have arbitrary action taxes that ultimately make you unable to do more than you could in the previous edition: Move + do 1 thing. The increased freedom is mostly limited to moving around and performing basic strikes, but that is probably good enough. The action required to reg-rip a weapon or use a shield might need to be looked at, however...
That. Exactly that.
Skill Leveling: I understand the idea behind the 20th-level barbarian knowing about dragons through experience vs. the 1st-level wizard knowing the theoretical, but I don't think it's enough to carry the idea. Skills are where character personality really had the chance to shine through in 3/3.5/PF1. The skill feats, which I like quite a lot, help in that regard. But those only help define what you're good at, and a character, as with a real person, is defined by their flaws as much as their strengths. Maybe adding a few more ranks would help. I think untrained should just be a flat -2 + ability, though. It should be possible to be bad at something at higher levels.
Skill Feats: More than anything else, I want skill feats to make it through the Playtest. Love it, think they're cool, many seem useful, and even if some of them aren't you get so many skill feats that you can just take one that fits your character concept. I would, no lie, buy a t-shirt that says "Team Skill Feat" and wear it around just so I could talk about the skill feats to strangers that ask about the shirt.
