Scythia's page

I finally got around to taking a look at the playtest book for the new edition and 2E honestly seems... really confusing. I didn't really understand a lot of the changes I was looking at. Why are Half-Elf and Half-Orc no longer races? Why were magic items nerfed so hard, especially when martial classes were already at a disadvantage compared to casters? How do action types work in the new action system? Why are there now critical successes and failures on noncombat rolls? Admittedly, I've only skimmed the book so far, so I may understand parts of this better after I've had an in-depth read, but I'm struggling to understand the thought processes behind some of the decisions with the new edition. At first glance, a lot of it looks... well, honestly, not fun.

I would suggest you look over the older topics, nearly everything you asked about has been discussed, often more than once.

Any time my Cleric tried to attack. Lower than 11 on a roll meant a miss and the only way I could improve it was Bless adding a +1 to make it 10.

I like that silver is made the standard currency, but I HATE that pricing uses more than one currency. I'm dyslectic and liable to misread this A LOT. Of course, that could give me some hefty discounts on magic items...

I'm not dyslexic, but I still agree with this wholeheartedly. I remember looking at the special materials and thinking "wow, these sure are cheap" before realising they were in gold rather than silver.

Dex can still be used for initiative, by using Stealth for initiative. If you had a rogue in your group, they could have been doing this pretty regularly to get the drop on enemies.

Charisma is more important than Wis for a healing Cleric currently. Wis gives a +1 to Heal casts, Cha gives an extra auto heightened Heal cast.

Please let characters feel heroic and competent without having to rely on spell/power buffs, item bonuses, or fighting weaklings to do so. It's very discouraging to have a character that feels like they can't be good without the right buffs or their magic stone.

Not only that but "I am functional in heavy armor" is for some reason genetic and therefore mutually exclusive with "I am hard to poison" and "I am magic resistant" and "I live in the desert."

To be fair, heavy armour and living in the desert are pretty incompatible.

Scythia wrote:

dice

It looks like from 1st through 8th level or so, if you really want to heal, your best bet is to invest in both Wisdom and Charisma, since the ability modifier is especially relevant for the three-action healing.

Besides, what we have seen from the Resonance Test's fire ray suggests that Sarenite pure caster clerics are not going to be wanting for damage on the spot.

Until level five, every +1 you're adding from Wis (aside from the one gained by it being primary stat if you don't play an ancestry with a Wis penalty) could have been a complete extra casting of Heal. No matter which action version, that blows a +1 out of the water.

Matthew Downie wrote:

Rob Godfrey wrote:

Kings teleport, oligarchs get resurrected

A game with this kind of routine magic shuts down a lot of stories. Escort mission? Over in six seconds. Assassins targeting the king? Big deal, he'll just come back to life again. A mystery to solve? We'll just use magic divination to get the answer.

So, what types of stories are opened up in a common-high-magic game? I'm sure there are some, but my imagination tends to think in terms of "Lord of the Rings" or "Game of Thrones" where these magical things might happen, but they're not routine or reliable.

Assassin is totally possible, kill and steal the body is the easiest option, but disintegration, sime spells and abilities that make resurrection impossible etc, mystery is also possible, it requires planning on both sides, and can be a bit CSI:Divination but counters exist etc, also the setting tends to be interesting, in a way that other fantasy doesn't cover, as Magitek becomes a thing, dungeins make sense, as bunkers, protected against scrying, teleportation and physical threat, actually for a prime example of how this works, The Malazan Book of the Fallen series does it perfectly.

"The Bleak Blades were assassins feared by even the richest merchants and most powerful nobility, for they were known to use weapons that trapped the souls of those they killed, thus preventing resurrection or even questioning the spirit to identify the assassin." Things like that.

The Summon Rune hazard as written is harmless. It specifies that the summoned creature gets three actions and a reaction, unlike regular summoned creatures (limited to two actions). It does not specify that the rune summoned creature acts independently, so just like any summoned creature now does it will do absolutely nothing unless commanded by the summoner (the rune in this case I suppose).

- NPCs following totally different rules. Monsters are one thing, but it bafffles me that an NPC fighter can do the same damage as a PC fighter with a +3 weapon, only without the weapon. Why are they so much better than the PCs? It's immersion killing when the world doesn't have internal consistency.

This is a big one. The PC Fighter is wholly dependent on their Potency runes for damage, but the NPC is such a master that their damage is a matter of pure skill with the weapon. That's kind of the reverse of how heroic fantasy usually works.

Did you mean the "Dabbler" maybe? (As in dabbling in different things)

Bardarok wrote:

I like the flat ten for resonance though that seems like a good change relative to PF 1.

I like it...but I think they should ditch the name Resonance. Just call it what it is -> magic item slots.

Picture Mister T. See all those necklaces? Ten of them can now be amulets.

Pg 8 fails to deny the player the right to take feats multiple times on the grounds that the word "usually" predicating the statement creates the induction that it is not always the case that the special heading has been included in feats that can be taken multiple times.

Pathfinder isn't a deny-based ruleset, it's an allow-based ruleset.

Maybe this is the question they're referring to?

Quote:

I would prefer no potency on weapons and armor at all. Attack roll bonuses and AC bonuses would come from item quality, damage would come from my character's inherent martial ability, and any necessary saving throw bonuses could come from elsewhere.

edit: It's near the end of the rules survey. It seems pretty clear, but knowing what it meant before reading it makes me a poor choice for evaluating clarity.

I remember seeing that in the survey and thinking it needed a "yes to some no to others" response. That was too much to group into one question.

You know what would be a cool Thievery feat? At Trained you gain the ability to pickpocket, at Expert you can attempt to pickpocket in combat so long as you're unseen, at Master you can attempt to pickpocket even when the target is on guard, at Legendary you can attempt to pickpocket an item in use.

I think more skill feats ought to have scaling effect based on degree of proficiency (like Catfall).

I'm all for metric, but Celsius is rubbish. The vaunted benchmarks Celsius is based on are of highly questionable practicality, and the fact that what is a 100 degree difference (0-100 in Celsius is nearly a 200 degree difference (32-220) in Fahrenheit shows that Fahrenheit allows for nearly double the precision in describing changes in temperature.

As much as I don't like the direction of PF2, I don't think I'd go this far. It's not a matter of trust, just realising that they are going a different way than I would like. That's how it works sometimes in a world with different people that have different wants and ideas.

Given the power of the ability, I feel that it should take two actions.

After all the golem is not just moving, it's doing something like moving while punching/kicking like mad. At least, that's how I figure it.

It's just charging forward like a train, using mass + momentum to do damage. That's why Blake's suggestion that it should be limited to a straight line makes sense.

I support increasing both the numbers and the actually good skill feat options.

I'm a fan of removing dailies. They've already done so for stunning fist & rage, with different tradeoffs as balance (2 actions for 1 attack and fatigue respectively). Especially because of this problem:

Matthew Downie wrote:

Want to use magic to Fly past the obstacle? You can, but it'll cost you combat ability later.

Is the party going to be in combat "later" (without opportunity to rest)? And how hard will that combat be? Will fly in that combat be a slight bonus or absolutely necessary? Or is fly in a slot that a more combat oriented spell could be cast from? Will lacking that slot actually be a limit, or does the caster have enout other spells that there wasn't really a loss by casting fly now?

Daily resources ask the party to make decisions based on information they (probably) don't have. You could argue for scouting with the rogue or using scry, but that also eats up table time, potentially a lot of it. And you don't know if scouting will be a useful use of time or if you can brute force your way through the encounters.

If a player is making a decision without relevant information, it's not a meaningful decision. It's a guess.

It's the 'elixir paradox' that will be familiar to any old school Final Fantasy player. Elixir were the most powerful healing item in the game, and you only found a limited amount. Because they were both powerful and limited people usually saved them, but when situations came up where they'd be useful, people were still reluctant to use them because they worried a worse situation might arise in a later battle. The most common result is that they would end the game with a stockpile of elixir they never used for worry of needing it more later. This is neither fun nor good design.

Mark Seifter wrote:

dwaisley wrote:

I think in this case, since it is confusing enough to warrant a FAQ entry, that the entry should be change for production to include a note about AC being included. Frightened should also include extra wording

Part of the reason for this inclusion is the wording "Gives a penalty to your checks and saving throws" does not lend itself to including your AC. Your AC is not a check YOU make, it is the DC for someone elses check. With the inclusion of saving throws in the wording (which is also a check) it could be misconstrue to not include your AC as you never make checks against your AC.

The wording could be changed to the following to make it more understandable

"You take a conditional penalty equal to this value to your checks, including your AC and saving throws"

Yep! We've added a "this includes DCs" to our files for all of the "all checks" conditions.

Either AC should be renamed Defense DCs or should include "This includes ACs and DCs". Because it'll still be missed.

Defense DC has a nice sound to it, and so much is being changed already.

I would just have two casting times

* Action casting time (e.g. in combat) - duration 1min
* 10min casting time - duration 8h

Be careful, a 10 minute cast time in Exploration mode means you'd turn into a fatigued animal.

The Archive wrote:

Like... regardless of I think of PF2 as is, I can only think of perhaps one or two PF1 games out of many that would have been at all similar using PF2. And that's including APs. The same stories just cannot be told.

Can you name an example of a Pathfinder AP story that cannot be told with the Pathfinder Playtest rules?

Rise of the Runelords. Not only is pre buffing not nearly as much of a thing as it was in PF1 (and many of the bosses in RotR rely heavily on pre buffing), but also they'll be far less threatening using so many of their actions to concentrate on maintaining their buffs (the absolute minute duration cap on many will also be very limiting to them). Summon Monsters now require an action to command or just stand around doing nothing, so they're not nearly as useful to provide quick minions. Spells per day being reduced will also reduce their threat. Basically, a fellow like 'Karzie' is the epitome of the sort of epic heights of power PF1 allowed. PF2 playtest allows competence.

Yes, you can hand wave all of that, give them enemy only spells that work completely differently, and otherwise allow them to break the rules, but by breaking the system to make things work you're only proving that PF2 currently can't tell those kinds of stories.

The biggest market for Paizo is new tabletop roleplayers. Many of these potential customers balk at the wall of crunch needed to create a Pathfinder 1st Edition character. I have walked people through character creation, but that is at a rare setting, such as a game store table, where I have the opportunity to meet new players. We want new players to start games without experienced players.

I keep hearing people talk about how PF2 character creation takes hours per character. I didn't have that experience when my group made characters, but that's because I made several characters to test it out when I first got the book. In other words, the only reason my group didn't have the problem is because I was there as an experienced person to assist. The same situation you're saying they want to avoid.

To see such effort made to create a distinction between nothing and zero (the mathematics representation of nothing) is just inspiring. How appropriate that this appears in the playtest forum, as it does so much to explain why PF2 feels the need to be exceedingly granular on traits of feats, actions, and spells. Seeing this amazing analysis, it's apparent they may not have gone far enough. Perhaps an even more technical language approach is needed.

Paizo, I suggest you make it clear in alll materials PF2 that if an entry describing how much penalty something applies lists no penalty, that no penalty is also zero penalty. This is somehow a matter which is unclear. Please also specify that "not applicable" is abbreviated as NA or n/a, as it has somehow come to confusion that "-" means not applicable. Thank you.

I did a long list, and I doubt I can recall them all easily. A few were Squire, Wizard's Apprentice, and Feralite (child raised by animals). Given that I'd like to see more depth added to backgrounds, I didn't suggest mechanics to go with.

For 8, there are no "one or two handed" weapons in PF2. There are one handed weapons with the two-hand trait to increase damage when used with two hands, but those are one handed weapons.

pogie wrote:

I don’t understand this mentality of “it’s your loss” if you don’t participate in the playtest.

This concept is central to any process involving representation, whether it be politics or consumer feedback. It's the cornerstone of how change occurs in an egalitarian society. Being absent from the discourse means your interest are not heard and then never acted upon.

There are times that the desired outcome of an individual is so different from the process that no amount of participation will result in a meaningful adjustment in outcome.

No matter how many campaigns they volunteer for, how many election cycles they vote in, or which candidates they talk up to friends, a Monarchist will never see their goal of returning a democratic republic to kingship by participating in democracy. Likewise, a a DM or player who has goals opposed to balance at all costs and tight maths is unlikely to ever get what they want out of this playtest no matter how much they participate.

The veteran gamer Decades of playing and sometimes STing White Wolf, dabbled in AD&D, years of 3rd and PF(1), occasional forays into the Buffy and Witchcraft games, tiny amount of BESM, and a few random one shot games in systems like Elric or Project A-ko.

Played a Goblin Alchemist, and was excited for it initially. Interest waned quickly over first three sessions. Was excited when I called for a game change after the sixth session. He found the inability to get better at his bomb throwing frustrating, felt like his combat options otherwise were very limited, and was hoping to be a healing and support type with alchemy only to find the class ill suited for such. Did enjoy role-playing up the goblin character, portraying him as an atrocious gormand.

The Impulsive
Eight or so years between D&D 4, PF(1), and D&D 5, some White Wolf, always a player.

Played a halfling rogue (classic, no?). Was consistently the best damage dealer, and rolled less than 14 maybe three times in six sessions. Was fine with the playtest system, although he did think skill feats looked mostly boring. He would frequently end combats with ten or less HP. Played just short (no pun intended) of Kender style, regularly taking everything that wasn't nailed down or under direct observation.

The Reserved One
About six years mixed experience with White Wolf, D&D 3, and PF(1) all during games I ran.

Played an Elf Sorceress (dragon), with a half blaster spell selection. She was frustrated by constantly missing with her cantrips, frustrated by trying to line up her leveled spells that didn't require an attack roll, and was the first character to use the Dying rules (pre first fix). As the story went on, her ancestry became more consequential than her class.

The First of Her Name (me)
Decades of experience STing and rarely playing White Wolf (WoD, Exalted, and Aberrant), combined decades of DMing AD&D, 3, and PF(1), some Star Wars (WEG and the first d20), L5R 1st ed, and short excursions into Deadlands, Shadowrun, CoC, Elric, the Angel rpg, and In Nominae. One shots in too many systems to recall.

Played a DMNPC Human Cleric (of Sarenrae, healing domain of course). I was impressed by the sheer healing potential she had, was completely underwhelmed by her near complete inability to hit enemies. Found the character satisfying from the standpoint of keeping the party alive effectively, quite unsatisfying in other regards. Found most of the Cleric class feats uninteresting, so tried multi class to Fighter. Liked the multi class feat system. I liked the character concept and may reuse it for another game in a different system.

Overall, everyone liked the chargen system, finding it more interesting and personal to the character than point buy or random rolls.

After my third session, I started making changes, usually one or two per session.

The first change was doubling proficiency modifiers, and I would fully suggest it to anyone who's dissatisfied with characters that don't feel like they're really improving.

The next session I scrapped the ever increasing heights of 10-2 for a stable formula (regular task DC lv+14, difficult task DC lv+18, extreme task DC lv+20). This allowed characters who invested in skills to perform reliably with them rather than barely break even.

A further session saw adding general feats that improve proficiency one step with a weapon group, armor category, or shields. The otherwise inability to improve that is a serious design defect. This, coupled with the increased proficiency mods, gave players a real way to improve at combat. I also reduced multi attack penalty based on proficiency. The third attack was still a waste, but a second attack was far more likely to succeed for a skilled combatant.

By that time it was almost a game I could stay with... If I had been willing to fully rebuild the bestiary (or wait for them to).

I wonder how much this would be improved if the +10/-10 was kept but the system was balanced around +1/2 level instead of +level?

It would be identical, aside from it taking a +6 monster to wipe the floor with the party, and the party only being super effective vs -6 or lower monsters.

The +level is there to give the appearance of advancement without actual advancement (because everything else scales at the same rate or higher). You could swap it for 1/2 level, 1/4 level, 1/10 level, or no level adjustment and the only difference would be how much higher level creatures are a threat, and how stompable lower level creatures are. Equal level creatures would remain the same regardless.

If we forget skills for a moment and talk about combat instead, what you are saying is: since I'm levelling up and investing in combat feats, I expect that level-appropriate fights become easier and easier. It doesn't work like that, and for good reason.

Investing resources in becoming better at combat shouldn't make you better at combat? That's a bold idea.

I don't see getting +5 speed and lowlight vision from a single feat (if only more ancestry feats were that good) as much of a burden, but to each their own.

I think the chart is fine the way it is, due to the interaction with the ordinary tasks charts.

Since ordinary tasks fall to the point of eventually not being rolled, I don't think that Table 10-2 is even going to effect us as often as we thing it is.

Climbing a Cliff is the best example of this. It's a level 2 task according to chart 10-4. Depending on the adjustments that you apply the DC can range from Easy (9) to Ultimate (19).

At level 8, the task of climbing a cliff become trivial meaning you are no longer required to even attempt the roll.

The act of Climbing the Cliff requires a mostly static check, adjusted by circumstances. It doesn't use a scaling DC.

If that's the intent then they didn't present it very clearly. You're the first person I've seen mention this ordinary tasks chart in all of the discussion about skill DCs.

shroudb wrote:

Adnd we played we 3d6 in order for like a year before switching to 3d6 (min 6) but picking where to put what.

But Adnd was a ton more narrative than anything 3rd and later editions managed to pull.

You really can't compare 3rd and later editions to 2nd (before tomes) stat wise, because the former are a lot more boardgamey and a lot less narrative.

My 2nd edition experience was very different than yours. 3rd as well, apparently.

3rd, in general, had a significant increase in narrative.

1st and 2nd largely centered on
'behind the door is a corridor'
traps/monsters/treasure
next door

My 2nd edition players only managed a game every three months at most and couldn't be bothered to remember character sheets or storyline, so while I came up with narratives, each game session always turned into a loot quest one shot. It's not an issue with the system, only the players I had back then. By the time I got reliable players I had also moved to World of Darkness games, so 2nd never got a chance at redemption.

I know it's pronounced the same as demon in the real world.

It's that the tradition of neutral evil feinds being "daemons" dates back to 1st edition D&D. That's important to some of us, if only from a nostalgia viewpoint.

That said, renaming them to something else WOULD allow us to move away from Wizards of the Coast's IP and do some new stuff, but doing so would pretty much require us to abandon the daemons that are D&D's property we're able to use via the Tome of Horrors. Would folks still be okay having them be renamed knowing that old classics like the derghodaemon, the hydrodaemon, the piscodaemon, and the Oinodaemon would more or less be written out of Pathfinder continuity?

Renaming them kinda comes with a price. I MIGHT be willing to pay that price to go somewhere new with them, maybe even make Divs the de-facto neutral evil fiend race, but it's not all up to me...

Now, all THAT said, the tradition of using similar monsters or similar monster names is an important one. It's good for the game to have a wide range of monsters, to keep things from being repetitive. And the more monsters that get created, the more repetition there is. So you have to be comfortable with at least a certain amount of thematic overlap... or else be comfortable with using the same creatures in every campaign.

Sorry, I once had an English teacher who insisted that "victuals" wasn't pronounced 'vittles', so I don't assume even when I otherwise think a person credible.

I can relate to the nostalgia angle, although I started in 2nd Ed. after the Panic had seen the creatures renamed to their less biblical sounding versions. As such, it seems strange to me to use the names that are both original and in PF. It's strange how the era one gets into the hobby can have such an influence.

Dr Styx wrote:

Demons are Chaotic

Leedwashere wrote:

You're missing the fact that, barring a pronunciation guide, the default pronunciation in English for the first two are exactly the same, which gets confusing.

So the topic of the OP that there is no reason to have two names for the same type of creature.

Which I think is incorrect,because they act differently, making them two different creatures.
Your problem is that the names are confusing.
Which is to my thinking what a Chaotic creature would do on purpose.

Let's try this:

Alternately, they could be tied to percentage. 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50%. That way the numbers scaling doesn't really get out of hand, and improved HP gain doesn't obsolete any tier.

Something I saw in a Reddit thread that really made me think: Pathfinder 2 is a good basis to build a Dark Souls tabletop game with. The monsters are always tougher than you, an enemy crit can end you easily, self healing is both rare and limited per day, your struggles result in little statistical improvement & what you do get is already accounted for by the system scaling, even the active shield/shield block system is more souls like (absent the shield fragility). The only things missing are a dodge roll and a hollow/humanity system.

Let's look at a lv 15 character. At 15, the DC for a level appropriate skill check is 35, basically 20+level. So, before we factor in ability mod and proficiency rank bonus the PC would have to roll a 20 on the die to succeed. Let's add in +6 for ability mod, say they really wanted to be good so they began with an 18, and used at least two of their ability bonuses on the stat (three wouldn't matter due to the minimization of increase after 18), and they have a potency item. This brings the needed roll to 14 or higher. Let's say they're legendary at the skill, so add in the 'legendary' +3. That brings the needed roll to 11 or higher. Literally doing everything they could to be good at a skill gives them slightly less than half a chance to succeed. Anyone who hadn't focused every bit of available resources on that skill would have an even worse chance. Additionally, 11 or higher means that the +10 = crit rule is effectively meaningless to the character.

Now, it's true that some skills have high quality tools that can add a bonus, and there are buff spells that can help, but applying those still only gets you to around 8 or higher (7 might be possible, but I haven't seen the stars align perfectly yet), which means it takes special tools and/or your allies buffing you to get to where you really ought to be on your own when you put so much character resources and effort into being really good at something.

Yugoloth is already taken

They aren’t pronounced the same, actually.

Demon is Dee-mon.

Daemon is Day-mon.

It uses the Greek style ae, where only the e is vocalized, just like aegis or aetna.

I really can't find the words to explain it which is why I fall back on "you need to experience it".

Aid works great on lower levels when the check is an actual check and is in doubt. On higher levels, players will roll to see if they get a critical success or a critical failure and success being the only other option. You simply cannot fail an Aid check on high levels. Something that succeeds 95% of the time feels wrong in play.

If I had to guess, I'd suppose it was because nearly every other PC check or roll in PF2 is balanced for 50%-60% chance of success, and as such DC scales by level. Having a static DC in this system is exceedingly rare (aside from flat checks, which also gain no bonuses), so it sticks out as unusual.

For actual creature style monsters, like giant scorpions, hydrae, or dragons I'm fine with them working differently. They are different after all. My issue is with humanoid creatures using humanoid equipment. Those are things that clear and plain rules exist for. If a Drow Noble Cleric attacks with a rapier, that rapier can only do 2d6 damage if it is a +1 rapier. That's the rule. Their stats skills and everything else might be made of wacky nonsense, but if their equipment is the same equipment the PCs use, it works the same way.

Now, if they want to make bonus damage dice a function of level rather than potency runes, that's okay, but again it would apply to all equipment, regardless if that equipment was held by a PC or NPC. (In fact, such a thing would be preferable to having it tied to magical properties because it would be growth of character over growth of equipment). It's also a fine idea to not balance the system around increasing multiples of damage dice and keep things simple. What isn't a fine idea is to give rules for how equipment works, then ignore those rules in a blatantly unfair way. (Sure, life isn't fair, but a game isn't real life.)

I can honestly say were I, as a player, to encounter a humanoid opponent of the same type as myself or another party member, experience them doing an amount of damage that would require a magical weapon, then be told after defeating them that their weapon was mundane, I would probably not return to playing that system. I don't enjoy being lied to.

Fights are usually groups of creatures a couple levels below, if not more.

Such great stories are told of heroes who ever pick fights with the weak. Glory to those who decline to fight their equal, and instead punch down to those less powerful.

Scythia wrote:

Pathfinder came about because of players that didn't want the big changes that switching to 4th would entail. They wanted 3.5 to continue on with refinements. That's what Pathfinder was, recognizable as 3.5 but with improvements. So, when Pathfinder 2 was announced, what were players likely to expect? Pathfinder with improvements, still recognizable but refined. What I feel was put out for the playtest was more akin to big changes, like those that originally gave rise to Pathfinder. This could attract a new player base, but seems pretty unlikely to retain much of a base that was with the prior product specifically to avoid such changes and preserve a sense of familiarity. In fact, this would provide an excellent opportunity for some ambitious studio to emerge with the 'true' successor to Pathfinder, much as Paizo itself did before.

The parallel is not congruent. At this point, PF has little to loose and all to gain. 5e dominates the market, literally with its own movie stars. PF has been contracting since 2014. If a third party wanted to carve out a 3.75 niche, it would, at this point, attract a percentage of an already ailing market - perhaps appealing to those uninterested in change, but hardly able to reproduce the coup PF orchestrated in 09. If it were a viable route, Paizo would not be abandoning it.

I wouldn't be so quick to make sweeping assumptions. I would imagine many similar statements were made about the beginning of Pathfinder. Sticking with/improving on 3.5 was clearly a winning formula, yet WotC abandoned it.

Pathfinder came about because of players that didn't want the big changes that switching to 4th would entail. They wanted 3.5 to continue on with refinements. That's what Pathfinder was, recognizable as 3.5 but with improvements. So, when Pathfinder 2 was announced, what were players likely to expect? Pathfinder with improvements, still recognizable but refined. What I feel was put out for the playtest was more akin to big changes, like those that originally gave rise to Pathfinder. This could attract a new player base, but seems pretty unlikely to retain much of a base that was with the prior product specifically to avoid such changes and preserve a sense of familiarity. In fact, this would provide an excellent opportunity for some ambitious studio to emerge with the 'true' successor to Pathfinder, much as Paizo itself did before.

The first question would have benefited from an indifferent option, for those who don't think resonance affects fun one way or the other.

If you're going to have an automatic scaling by level, 20 is the default. It's a d20 system, the level cap is 20. Scaling to 20 is the expected progression. Using 1/2 level scaling means every other level you aren't improving by a measurable amount.

A better question would be, why use 1/2 level scaling?