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This build mostly stayed intact from the playtest to the launch. I introduced my group to an NPC Champion/Paladin. Throws hatchets with returning runes (divine ally) and stores them in gloves of holding. So it looks like she's a walking tin can with no weapons. Plus, with Ranged Reprisal and Exalt, _everyone's_ getting reaction attacks all the time. I also gave her the Barbarian Dedication feat to add to her Vengeful Oath so those hatchets often get described as going _through_ someone's chest, not sticking into them.

I've tried to hide it from my players as they're not active on the forums or other places we're all frequenting to glean new knowledge. But they're also not stupid and they've taken to asking if they should roll or just flip a coin when I have them make a check.

So, in general, what appears on the surface to be choices and decisions galore are actually numerous linear decisions that you have to commit to at early level if you want to keep up.

-Linear progress and number scaling. (If you keep up, you maintain ~50% chance to succeed a medium DC for your level, at any level.)
-Linear skill choices. (Choose 1-2 skills only to focus on and just be ok with your success rate of everything else dropping dramatically.)
-Linear skill feats. (Because of linear skill choices, your options for new skill feats are limited and have circumstantial use at best. Usually it's assumed you take the highest level feat option you have unlocked.)
-Linear class feats. (Commit early which subpath [TWU, Shield, Storm Druid, Stances, Bows, etc] you're taking and reluctantly take the only feat that pertains to your subpath at each level it's available.)
-And I guess in a way, linear multiclassing. (Class dedications give you armor/weapons and smell faintly of a class but only in the way that my visiting a farm will make me smell faintly of cows but doesn't make me a farmer. You have to take 2-3 level dips into any one dedication to have even the faintest hint of being that class. So either you commit to some kind of 50/50 split or just avoid multiclassing altogether.)

I said this months ago before the revisions even started rolling out. I'm fully on board for all of the concepts that PF2e has promised. They're steps in the right direction and keep me interested in the potential for a d20 system that I actually enjoy. I'm just still extremely hesitant about the implementation of any of them.

Alright, so I'm actually fairly impressed by the ingenuity here, but the Bard in my party took Shadow Walk as a 5th level spell and according to our interpretation of the spell and the adventure parameters, the group can pretty much travel to any point on the provided map within the 8 hours duration of the spell with relative ease. Aside from throwing in random encounters on the shadow plane just to trip them up, any suggestions on how to run the rest of the scenario?

Or is this just one to chalk up to "high five the players, report it on the survey, and move on?"

I'm in favor of spontaneous spell heightening getting fixed to a more workable and less restrictive situation, situational feats allowing cantrips to be only 1 action, and a lot more spells in general having multi-action options. A lot of the issues mentioned in this thread are sorted with those three things.

For logistics, the playtest is a hectic time, especially given that they're also publishing starfinder products, simultaneously, so it can't even be a all hands on deck activity. So I wonder if there are the manhours to update the PDFs for every update. Even for just DD, this probably involves at least a couple passes through, to ensure it's fit for distribution.

CTRL-F about 30 times with a few minor numerical/text changes is absolutely less time than typing up "Pale Mountain's Shadow: Page 29—In the second paragraph, in the first sentence, change “DC 25 Arcana, Nature, Occultism, or Religion” to “DC 23 Arcana, Nature, Occultism, or Religion”. (The text concerning the DC’s reduction to 20 does not need to be changed.) In the third paragraph, in the first sentence, change “DC 19 Thievery” to “DC 18 Thievery”. In the seventh paragraph, in the first sentence, change “DC 29 Perception” to “DC 27 Perception”." for each separate entry needing changed. There's no question about that. I kind of get the not changing the master document ruleset, but Doomsday Dawn could absolutely get tweaked in about 20 minutes. And formatting wouldn't really change either because the spacing to go from "29" to "27" doesn't change.

For Clarity, which is probably the major consideration, How will this affect the data? By going off an errata PDF, when surveys ask "are you using update 1.X?" it's easy to say yes or no. With an updated DD or CRB PDF, it's harder to say. The CRB is especially an issue, because what of groups playing with different copies of the rules. Or people on the forums or other avenues of feedback, who might specify page numbers or rules that don't correspond across updates.

If you're claiming to use Update 1.3, you'll be using the new DCs. If you're using 1.2 or lower, then it's also implied you're using the old DCs. I'm not sure how this affects anything in regard to an updated DD pdf. The surveys already start off by asking which update you're using.

For a Full Released version, yeah, updating with each errata is the right way of doing things, but for a playtest, I don't think it's the best idea.

I would normally be inclined to agree, but Doomsday Dawn has repeatedly been said to be designed for purely playtesting reasons. They wouldn't format it with such rigid design rules, major level skips, and

The two pages of DC changes listed in the update file are great, but I can't help but think that it would have taken half the amount of time to change a few numbers in DD itself and push out a new download.

Admittedly, I'm not accustomed to running premade adventures as it is, but the last thing I want is to now have a fourth or fifth file open to tab back and forth between to run the playtest. Inevitably, I'm going to miss something, somewhere.

In general, my loves/hates all revolve around the same two things. I love the _concept_ of nearly everything introduced. The ideas and intentions behind them are great and it's what got my group interested in trying a d20 system again (even though we're not huge fans). What I hate is the _implementation_ of most of those concepts.

So here's the list.

Love:
1) Choices. The flexibility of 3 actions, non-linear class options, archetypes replacing class feats, 1-3 actions on spells affecting the result, etc. My daughters, who sometimes play with our group, both made multi-class characters and had a blast.
2) Tiered Success/Crit/Fail system keeps everyone on their toes.
3) The dedication to the Paizo team to actually listening to feedback and not coming in looking to steamroll the new system into existence. They get that not everything is perfect yet and are willing to work with the community to get it right.

Hate:
1) The illusion of choice. While the blogs seemed to refer to the myriad of options and ways to build your character, I'm not seeing that play out. Instead, whether you want to go multi-class, archetype, or simply build a cohesive single class character, you need to plan out at least the first 8-10 levels ahead of time to make sure you meet all prereqs by the time you're able to take the things you want. Even the basic single class characters are shoehorned in on most options to choosing a path early on and sticking with it to get optimal results in later abilities. This is a far cry from blog posts that assured us that nearly anyone could have a familiar/animal companion if only you spent the Feat on it (as just one example).
2) The handbook reads like a technical manual. Repetitive language, terminology everywhere that points you to another page halfway across the book, dry textbook descriptions. I get that pictures will help, but I usually can consume the general idea behind an entire new system book in a day or two. I found myself falling asleep reading this one.
3) As stated a number of times, I love the ideas attempted here to create choice options for unique, memorable characters. But when those options are virtually identical to other classes (sometimes with different names, sometimes literally identical), circumstantial or situational abilities, or just plain boring, it makes one wonder if maybe less choices might be better after all. If there's 100 options but only 10 good ones, you can save everyone the trouble and eliminate the other 90.
4) Bonus hate- I recall reading that there was an attempt to reduce artificially inflated numbers from PF1 but the automatic proficiency level bonuses do exactly the opposite. We're not playing Final Fantasy and if the DC is only going to scale up anyway, this is just a waste of everyone's time. Keep the numbers down and the scaling to a minimum.

In short, the big picture systemic creativity and ideas show promise. But the detailed, focused implementation is holistically lacking in that same creativity and turns a beautifully sketched outline from a potential masterpiece into something boring and entirely uninteresting.