I wrote a long post on my initial thoughts for a similar topic on reddit, so thought it would be worth sharing here too.
Overall I'm reserving judgement until we know more detail or actually see the changes. I think many of the changes need to be seen as part of the overall remaster, not in isolation. While it may not seem like it based on my comments, I generally trust Paizo to make great content so I am optimistic. My current feelings on announced changes:
Pros
- With the scope of the changes Pathfinder should feel even more like Pathfinder, not alt-D&D.
- All the little balance pass stuff. PF2 is basically better designed than any other game of this type/scope/complexity, which made a bunch of the small things stand out really badly (e.g. shield HP, poisons, talismans, crossbows etc). Was easy to gloss over or houserule these when necessary, very much looking foward to not having to.
- Removing alchemist from the 1st core book. The first class people see, thematic as f+$& and a little unusual so many new people want to pick it. In practice, a bit of a nightmare to teach to newbies or casual players.
- Class reworks. Witch is a big one, the Druid anathema stuff sounds good too. Wizard simple weapon proficiency. I hope some of the Oracle mysteries also get some love (please improve Tempest Oracle mechanical support!).
- Dropping 'dice roll' numbers from attribute boosts. This would be my first choice for a sacred cow to send out to pasture. I would prefer a more elegant solution than continuing to require two boosts per point increase after 4 though.
- Refocus changes. Hell, I'd love if they rename it to something other than Focus spell entirely (the term is used in other similar contexts in the rules). The refocus rules are akin to bonus action rules in 5e for me, I understand them but my players rarely do and it is unintuitive for new players. I see this small change as a multi-faceted pro. Simplifying a rule that is problematic and used by many players, reduced feat tax on casters, a decent buff to combat power and daily sustain for many casters in the early game.
- Ancestry feat balance pass/expansion.
Cons
- With the scope of the changes Pathfinder should feel even more like Pathfinder, not alt-D&D. (yeah both a pro and a con imo)
- Removed the Open trait, fighters barely had any constraints on combat actions as it was. I feel like there was design space for more actions to use this trait not fewer. That said, I can understand the reasoning behind this change. A very minor con.
- The overall scope of the lore changes. I fully understand why these changes are necessary. Mostly it'll just take a lot of getting used to. - Ultimately listed this as a con because of how it sounds certain aspects seem to be getting handled (e.g. Drow). Not a big deal, but I'm sure Gnolls, Tieflings, etc will still be called such at our table for a while at least, old habits.
- The timing of the rule changes for the influx of new players that just invested in books or prospective new players who might lose interest while they hold out for new books. Quite unfortunate even if the reason for the influx is the same thing driving the revisions
- Full martial weapons for rogues. Rogues are a very good class already, I would've liked to have seen it revised to be tied to a set of weapon traits per racket.
Optimistic
- Spell revisions. Some statements made these sound quite widespread, others seemed to actively walk back expectations. I liked things like light/dancing lights being consolidated, hopefully a thorough balance pass on cantrips. The condition removal spell revision sounds great too. Greatly expanding variable action cast options would be the dream but it sounds like this isn't going to happen.
- I've got removing alignment as a concern but I'm really optimistic that it will lead to a good boost for neutral divine characters. I've wanted to play a cleric or champ of Nethys for a while and this should help :)
- I'm one of the people that thought warpriest was very good already. My concern with it currently relates to the MADness of the class narrowing viable build options, leading to traps for new players that can't know when starting out what will be optimal. Need more info to judge the changes.
- Improving access to under-represented traits, it sounds like this might be happening for spells in some capacity? Need to know more.
Concerns
- My current game has 4 characters with classes from APG and SoM. In our most recent session I could already see heaps of cases where the specific rules are going to conflict or not be well supported under the revised rules. APG will get a good overhaul in the next 12 months but I'm worried about there being many grey areas with legacy rules from SoM, G&G, DA, adventure paths etc, that take a long time to address or never get addressed properly.
- Removing alignment. This seems like a big pro for most people, and I'm not ready to really judge this change. The reason I'm worried is that for me PF2 made really good use of the traditional alignment system both in lore and sometimes in mechanics. It has played a big role in many of our games in the system (one party has a home base on Axis, another has had a great long-term RP interactions in part driven by the idealistic differences of a NG/LN buddy cop duo in Edgewatch). There's other ways to do provide guidelines for good roleplay obviously, and I've played many RP systems with systems in this space that I prefer. But I've found with new players, particularly those drawn to heroic fantasy, that pairing character motivations to a traditional alignment grid works well to stop brand new players going full murder hobo with otherwise 'good' characters. I've always found alignment quite effective at categorizing factions, characters etc from fiction in a way that can be easily parsed into game terms by new players.
- Changes to spell schools. A few of our regular players come from D&D 2e or 3e backgrounds, so our vocabulary for discussion of magic is deeply tied to the old schools. Again need to see the new system to really judge how it may play out for our groups. I actually wanted improvements in this design space (better magic trait tagging on items for example). RIP to the Abjurer character I've been planning to play for years but haven't yet as I'm a near-forever GM.
- The scope of the revisions are far wider than I think most of us assumed on the initial announcement, and the timeline for release feels quite tight. This has me worried that there will be heaps of little quality issues with the new content that will need errata, or that some changes will unintentionally make balance worse or create new issues, etc. Will we need to wait for Player Core print run #3 to get a polished version of the revisions?
Wishlist - I either didn't see discussion of these or it wasn't mentioned
- Reduce the frequency of damage type immunity. So many creatures are immune to precision or poison. Why go from 0 to 100 when the game has built in options for scaling resistance? Doing a full pass of this in the revised bestiary would greatly improve a lot of existing content, currently entire classes/builds are crippled by common creature properties.
- More skills feats/actions for skills that lack options
- Auto proficiency scaling for all Lore skills regardless of how the Lore skill was acquired. Probably less than 1% of characters willingly increase Lore proficiency using a skill increase. Just make it scale like it does with some of the existing sources of Lore. Would need to compensate the feats that reward this, but a small amount of work in the scheme of things.
- General feat balance pass, was this discussed? I don't really want nerfs here, just buffs to some that don't see play, perhaps a few new options in the core book too.
- Maybe a review of Aid? I say this as a cooperative nature wit swashbuckler, but it is probably too unreliable at low level and too good at high level.
- Treat wounds. Really minor, but I'd like a codified cost to restocking materials.
- Stamina rules, as written I feel they are a trap for most parties.
- Layout/clarity of the Runes section for the CRB. The rules aren't particularly hard, I just don't think the current layout or writing communicates it well.
- Change the critical rules so all damage in the base attack/effect damage doubles (i.e., splash). At the moment not doubling splash damage is an unnecessary exception.
- Bonus wish, come up with better names and branding for the new books than 'core'.
