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I’ve been semi-active on the forums since the playtest dropped it’s been several weeks since the playtest started and I just wanted to share my overall thoughts in a hopefully non rant format and simply state my thoughts, I REPEAT THEY’RE MY THOUGHTS, if you disagree with anything in this post it’s not a slight against anyone just how I feel.
1)Character creation: Lets start with the good, the new character generation makes it so you can for the most part have the numbers you want it’s a touch counter intuitive to PF1 players but not a hard sell, backgrounds are ok but lack depth, ancestries are unfortunatey rather shallow deciding starting health and move speed with not much else.
2)Martial Classes: This is honestly a mixed bag on the one hand I think the fighter having the highest to hit bonus with weapons and being the most flexible in combat is fine the martials are a real mixed bag, for starters the Ranger is a mess with hunt Target just being painfully mediocre they also lost double slice after the last errata and got two knew feats, so they failed to understand that hunt target is bad and got rid of a perfectly good feat and replaced it with 2 new feats that only work with hunt target, additionally snares are a cool concept but are very hard to use effectively and just don’t really seem to be worth the hassle, moving from the ranger we reach the Paladin who unfortunately is still alignment locked in the playtest, they also have their code and deities edicts unfortunately this results in the same problem of them not meshing with so many adventure groups, however despite me not liking them in 1st edition due to their strict code they at least had power as a trade off, the paladin is more of a defender in the playtest which would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of their feats are mediocre and their role as defenders is undermined by the simple fact that breaking shields and running past the frontline has never been easier, right now the paladin seems to be suffering an identity crisis it doesn’t know what it wants, the monk has honestly had little exposure at my table but I’m happy they can as of the latest errata use more than just fists, finally the barbarian my playgroup always found the 1st edition barb to be a little too good so we typically avoided it unless we wanted to min max, however in the playtest we ran into the opposite problem, barbarians retain their poor ac while raging but lose a large chunk of the damage and extra to hit they used to have, this has left them feeling like an aggressive frontline who doesn’t have the power to back up their own hype, that being said the totems are interesting and give a nice touch of flavor.
3)Specialist classes the Rogue and Alchemist: Hoo boy not gonna lie I was excited for the Alchemist but after reading resonance rules my interest quickly died they have since lessened the amount of resonance they use however the class itself still feels weak when compared to other utility options like the bard or cleric, moving on to my favourite class the rogue I can honestly say I’m not impressed, the once unparalleled skill monkeys of first edition are a pale shadow of their former selves with monsters and npcs often being just as good as they are sometimes even better, unfortunately it doesn’t get better the rogue has always gained the majority of their damage from sneak attack in pathfinder however many creatures had immunity to this type of damage, unfortunately the playtest didn’t change this for most of the monsters and also reduced the damage making it even less appealing to put yourself in harms way, while rogues have easily the most mobility it’s made into a bittersweet affair when you realise your damage output is even less than it was in first edition.
4)The casters: let me be clear I have never been a fan of how casters overshadowed marshals at high levels, however I’d always hoped martials would receive improvements however it appears paizo decided the best fix was to instead gut casters and punish them rather than improve martials, with the exception of the Cleric I dunno what’s going on at paizo but someone loves clerics, they’re pretty much a mandatory choice if you want to have a longer adventuring day, while sorcerers and druids gain healing and buffs as well the cleric does it better and does it more, unfortunately this makes them easily the best caster class since damage spells were unfortunately rendered pale imitations of their former selves, I haven’t seen the bard in action but have been told they’re ok, the sorcerer and Wizard need help I honestly never thought I’d see the day where I’d be more scared of an enemy with a dagger than fireball.
5) Resonance) If you want to keep it in let it be a measure of how much magic GEAR you can own, don’t make magic itrms and consumables use resonance I already paid gold or crafted the items it’s ridiculous that I have to use another resource to make my MAGIC items work, pathfinder has always been a high fantasy game it’s part of why I love it but the playtest has constantly reinforced the idea that magic and magic items aren’t allowed to be fun, it also feels like half the problems paizo talks about with things like cure light wands and such aren’t really problems, it’s a FANTASY game why wouldn’t I heal with magic if magic healing is unrealistic you may as well take out everything that isn’t human or that doesn’t exist in the real world.
6) Magic gear) The new sytem has given everything an item level this is a little hit and miss on the ond hand the GM slways knows how strong you SHOULD be, however on the otherhand it feels very video gamey like when you find an axe and the game says you don't have enough strength to wield it, a lot of items require that you invest resonance in them each day just so they function and then ask for more resonance to use their special abilities, again the game seems to be telling us that this is not a high fantasy game and that if you came expecting one it won’t be found here.
7) Proficiencies and skills: Honestly skills are a joke in the playtest you are always competing with NPC’s and creatures who typically have better numbers than you making things like stealh more trouble than they’re worth, the errata has since made untrained skills worse but specialists still gain little and often feel on par with NPC’s at best and flat out inferior the rest of the time, I get they want you to always have a chance of failing but it honestly just feels like your characters are side characters in someone else’s show.
8) Monsters: are honestly ridiculous half the fun things that were taken off of players are still readily available to monsters making them tactically better but they also have superior numbers on average leading to slogs with players doing nothing while the monster of the week tears into the party with little resistance, in short monster felt like they were designed with the soul intention of giving GM’s the ability to bully their players easily.
My final thoughts on the system are that the new action system is nice, it’s also nice that barbarians were given more flavor, sorcerers having different spells based on bloodline was a very nice choice too, however with these great diamonds in the rough we had to dig through a lot of mud, I honestly hope second edition turns out well but in it’s current state I doubt myself and the rest of my group will ever recognise the new game as pathfinder but instead see it as a pale imitation trying to garner popularity from its predecessors name to gain easy attention, this doesn’t feel like it was made for pathfinder fans but rather for people who dislike pathfinder, I truly hope the data paizo recieves is listened to and it turns out great but those have just been my thoughts overall, if you like the new system it’s perfectly OK power to you and thank you for taking the time to tespond in these forums I don’t always agree with everyone but the variety of opinions and different views makes for a good read please comment your own thoughts.