WhiteMagus2000's page

The most random thing to zero in on on your post I'll admit, but Unseen Servant being able to cook is a lot more than what it could do previously, which was basically push/pull/open/carry and clean.

As for altering the all-or-nothing instant lose spells to be more commonly debuffs than fight enders, that's healthy for the system and games.

I've never seen a martial break the game either, in the way that spellcasters can anyway.

Anyone who refuses to play along with the rest of the group or go on the adventure that you planned can break the game. I've had more difficulty, over the decades, with a first level rouge or bard trying to pick every pocket in town or seduce the nuns at the local monastery than I've had with a wizard breaking reality.

I think "bottlenecking" is a term that frames the discussion rather heftily. How many feats do you need to be a viable archer ranger? 1-2.

The "bottleneck" I think is a push to actually make it harder for all archer rangers to be duplicates.

I thought I had made my question clear in the first two posts, but it appears I failed.

In PF1 I commonly split feats between a couple different areas without spreading myself too thin. Many people online complained about not having enough feats.

In the PF2 playtest my players felt so underpowered that they didn't dare spend feats on anything other than their core specialization. This was something that other people mid to high level play testers also mentioned commonly.

I was asking if that was still a problem since it's been fully released, but it appears to have been fixed. I didn't mean to the topic to only be about rangers, that was just the first example off the top of my head that everyone fixated on.

Let me rephrase my question: In PF1 a ranger could use a great sword, a longbow, a companion, and spells at the same time well enough to keep up with everyone else.
If I try to diversify characters in PF2 will I just end up with a character that is awful at two or three things? Can I get away with spending 50% of my feats in one area or does it require 80-100% to be viable.

"Perhaps you're referring to the fighter 7th-level feature that gives them +2 circumstance to Perception for initiative only? Fighters being as fast or faster than rangers to react to combat seems right to me; they still won't notice the details on their opponents' clothing any better."

Being able to be just as good as a ranger, but better is being better.

I played in beta, but haven't gotten a book yet, I've just been reading from the SRD to feel out the fully released system, so there is probably a lot of changes I've missed.
First I looked up a ranger (one of my favorites) and saw that they get 10 class feats (same as everyone else as far as I've seen). I was trying to design a typical 3.5 bow ranger, where I would have spent half my feats on bows, 1 on animal companion, and happily accepted the utility spells I got; still leaving some wiggle room for defensive feats or flavor feat or two.
So now if I want to get all the bow feats it'll use 10/10, if I want a decent companion it'll use 3-5/10, and having about the same spellcasting as PF1 would take 4/10. Obviously I can only take half of these. (Did anyone else notice that fighters get better Perception than rangers until level 15?)
Theoretical builds for druids were the same and alchemists even worse. Wizards and Fighters look like they might have a bit more wiggle room, but wizards sure look bland compared to a fighter that can inflict debuffs every round and never run out of swings per day.
Anyway....seems like multiclassing or even dual specing would really gimp the core class most of the time. Is this right? Did miss something?

I mean, even calling it "Mother May I" to begin with is talking down about the whole concept.

The fact that you're acting like the GM is some strict parent you have to beg and plead to have permission to have fun kind of indicates there's a really toxic and unhealthy mindset about the relationship you have with the GM (or the relationship itself is toxic, hard to tell what's perception and what isn't).

I basically disagree with you there. I GM my games and I have 1.5 players that try to abuse the game and bring in broken/OP feats, spells, and items from 3rd party sources, so we've had a no 3rd player stuff rule for years. Now it's tough to say, yes Bill can have his optional rules that he wants but Josh and Diane can't.

And when I was playing a bit during the beta it was annoying for me, because I couldn't just plan out a character, now I had to personally ask the GM if I could take such OP spells as protection from evil. Or I could just pretend that those spells didn't exist and take ones that I knew for sure were going to work.

Even I find it very annoying that the players will have to personally beg the GM to use spells right out of the players handbook. Seems like they made another problem for me that never existed before. I agree that "uncommon" spells are basically the designer's house rules.

Monsters do still have ability scores, they just print the bonuses, so you just have to convert it if you really want to bring it up. +2 str = 14, +3 con = 16, etc.

To the OP and his buddy.

You seem to have stumbled into a heated debate that's been going on for the last ten years. How to fix fighters. People have suggested that fighters just get a few more skills and bonus skill feats but, were told that that would make them too rogue-like. There were other options that let them make alchemist preformance enhancers, but this made the too alchemist-like. There were options to make them educated combat tacticians, but this made them too bard-like. When asked "what do you want", the answer was usually MOER DAMAGE!

Fast forward to PF2 play test. Fighters have the best consistent damage output and the best feats to control combat, such as Sudden Charge and Swipe. Fighters are currently the best (or one of the best) classes in the game. As a long time fan of rangers and alchemists (which are currently much weaker than fighters), it's really hard to emphasize with your point of view and agree that fighters need to be even stronger.

If you really are looking for versatility, then I have good news for you. Multi classing. You can make your fighter more rogue like, or bard like, or wizard like. I'm not sure if they'll make you more powerful, but they certainly add new abilities.

So basically it's there to punish newbie players and/or veterans who don't metagame and make the game less fun for them?

By level 12 you shouldn't be a noob anymore. Unpleasant conditions happen and by that point you should have something to fix it. Like the old saying goes, if you fail to prepare then you prepare to fail. Even at level 1, you should prepare for as much as possible. What if you run into a sealed vault and have no one to pick the lock? What if you have to get up a smooth stone wall and no one remembered to bring a grappling hook? What if you contract ghoul fever? The GM shouldn't have to remove challenges from the game because you didn't expect to run into challenging problems.

I like the idea of Assurance being a "take 10" type of thing. I would say take 8 at expert, 10 at master, and 12 to legendary. Just because I don't think anyone would take a feat that only let's you take 4. But that seems like a good and simple way to actually be useful.

I would greatly prefer buffing the weak ones. Once my players thought about how cantrips take two actions, they quickly changed what they use. Now they only use Ray of frost, the electric one, and short bows. They have stopped using cantrips nearly so often (except the electric one) once they noticed that they can just shoot a short bow and cast a spell on the same turn. RIP acid splash, produce flame, and sometimes Ray of frost.

Likes
1) Three action economy.
2) Cantrips scale with level.
3) Multi classing that feels both fair and useful.

Hates
1) Martial damage tied to weapons, not character.
2) Arcane casters have been over nerfed.
3) The rule book reads like a math textbook.

House rules
1) Animal companions get 1 action per turn, if undirected.
2) Very few, if any, hidden rolls.
3) Might use traditional weight system, instead of bulk system.

While not fully worthless, I think Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will, and Great Fortitude fall into this weird catch 22 area that makes them far less useful. Each makes you expect in the relevant save, no more, no less. And each requires a 14+ in the associated attribute. So to get Iron Will you need to have a pretty decent will save, but not a good will save.

I've already had a couple of players with poor saves want to take one, only to find that they don't have good enough attributes. And the ones that already have good saves don't need or can't use it. Even with the tight math in PF2, I seems reasonable to just give a flat +1 to the save.

Some people hate the idea that magical weapons are actually magical. They want them to slightly help with accuracy and add eh, a slight bit of damage.

I hated this in PF1 and earlier editions.

Even my beloved Paladin has this:

1d8+10(str x 1.5) +12(Power Attack) +3(magic weapon)

The difference between a normal sword and a supremely expensive magical weapon of great power is... 3.

1d8+25 vs 1d8+22

That is silly.

Some people hate, in PF2, that a +3 weapon would be 4d8 rather than 1d8+3

I don't understand that.

"If a commoner picked up a..."

Yes. A commoner would hit hard, but would have no chance vs the high level fighter because the commoner couldn't hit him.

In PF2 its realistic to a point. You can only do so much damage with muscles and skill. Magic is the force multiplier and I, for one, am happy.

I don't want to play a story of the heroic magic sword and the farmhand that carried it. I want to play the story of the heroic warrior with a sword that burns with holy fire.

This is actually a deal breaker for me. It is a very unheroic feeling to know that if you lose or drop your sword then your damage goes down the crapper. It also puts a huge burden on the GM to make sure that everyone has exactly the weapon that they are supposed to have at the exact level they are supposed to have it. I've read APs where a level 2-4 fighter can find a +3 frostbrand. That's strong but not game breaking. Now if a level 1 Barbarian happens to find a +1 ghost touch dagger (and transfers the rune to a greataxe), all of a sudden he's doing triple the damage of anyone else. Now that is game breaking and if it remains in PF2 then I'll remain in PF1.

WhiteMagus2000 wrote:

A really amusing scenario would be when a high level player fails to roll a DC 30 to climb a tree, only to watch a child climb it a few minutes later.

Player: "What? How did he roll a climb check of 30?"
GM: "Well, he's only level 1, the DC is 11 for him and he rolled a 13."

Well then, it's a good thing PF2e doesn't work like that. Like, at all.

I wasn't being literal. It's the "non listed DC for anything so just assume that you can do it on about half the time" that is the problem. Identifying a rabbit nest should be a nature or survival DC of about 10. Peasant hunters do that kind of thing every day. Assigning a DC 27 to a task that a 14 year old farmer could do is just artificially inflating the numbers and most players are going to be smart enough to notice that.

Agreed. I don't really play high fantasy RPGs for the realism. If you want realism, gurps is good, but a single shotgun blast to the face is likely to take you out for days or weeks.

thorin001 wrote:

Evilgm wrote:

A 5th level character using Ray of Frost is 1d8+4, with +8 to hit vs Touch (usually a 2 point difference) for two actions.

A 5th level character using a +1 Crossbow is 2d8, with +9 to hit vs AC for one action, with an additional action to reload.

A 13th level character using Ray of Frost is 3d8+5, with +17 to hit vs Touch for two actions.

A 13th level character using a +3 Crossbow is 4d8, with +20 to hit vs AC for one action, with an additional action to reload.

Those numbers seem fine to me, and put Cantrips in the position of being the main attack option for casters who don't want to invest in better fighting options. They're going to be worse at fighting with them than a Martial character, but fortunately they're generally going to be better at healing, flying, turning invisible, mind controlling and a host of other things they can do when needed.

I would like to see some Feats to boost them just to allow that as an option for players who want to focus on them, but as it stands they're a free alternative to the Crossbow the character would likely otherwise be using.

You do realize that you are comparing the cantrip to a primary weapon. At 5th level you will only have the one +1 weapon and at 13th level you will only have one +3 weapon. It is at 9th or 10th level that you will be able to have a backup +1 weapon, and probably 16th or 17th level that you might have a backup +3 weapon.

What Thorin said, over and over again. Cantrips are *not* comparable to primary weapons and should not be compared to the top-end damage of classes dedicated to landing hits. Your spell slots and the trickeration you can create with them ought to be compared to those primary tactics of martials. Cantrips are what you'd compare to a Fighter gearing down, using his ranged weapon despite being a high-strength melee character.

This issue is that fighters can use there preferred melee attacks the large major of turns of combat. A wizard can only use their preferred actions (spells) the minority of turns of combat. Even when they do use one of their few spells, there's only about a 50-60% that the spell will hit or the target will fail to resist it. So a wizard uses their mediocre option most of the time and fighter's use their mediocre option only rarely.

The result in my group is that everyone agrees that the least valuable party member is the wizard. They feel they absolutely need a tanky martial, a healer, and a skill monkey, but the wizard offers low damage, unreliable battlefield control, and not a lot of utility out of combat. I imagine some of this will get better with higher levels, but it feels like wizards/sorcerers have been over nerfed.

If they A) increased their spells/day, B) Made cantrips at least as good as a shortbow, or C) increased the DC of spells so that they would do the thing that they are supposed to do most of the time, then arcane casters would feel more useful.

Didn't know that you couldn't strike an object. I let my players break down a door and just assumed it had a hardness of 5 and made a lot of noise (alerting monsters in the next room).

This is silliness of about the same magnitude as when your animal companion just sits there while it's master gets beaten to death.

By the rules couldn't you check for mimics by attempting a strike against all suspect objects, and if you can actually roll an attack, then it's really a disguised monster?

Treat Wounds seems like a decent fix to a really bad problem. It's not quite how I would have done it, but it works alright and adds about 3 hours to the 15 adventuring day.

As far as difficulty;
A level 1 a barbarian with 12 wisdom and a healer's kit would have a 50% of hitting a DC 13 medicine check (+1 from level, +1 wisdom).

A level 1 a cleric (or druid) with 18 wisdom and a healer's kit would have a 60% of hitting a DC 13 medicine check (+1 from level, +4 wisdom, +0 item quality).

A level 20 barbarian with 14 wisdom, a master healer's kit, and expert medicine proficency would have a 50% of hitting a DC 36 medicine check (+20 level, +2 wisdom, +2 item quality, +1 expert)

A level 20 cleric is going to be much higher (70%?)

Each attempt takes 10 minutes. Half may fail, increasing the time spent, and when you critically fail (5%), you are locked out for the rest of the day. Additionally it requires a modest investment of player resources, but that certainly seems reasonable to me.

Some people are saying Treat Wounds is too weak, some are saying it's too strong, so I guess Paizo isn't going to be able to make everyone happy.

Maybe this changes at high levels, we've only played in the first two adventures so far. What I've seen is that cantrips hit about as frequently as the barbarian, but take two actions instead of one and do about half the damage (or less). With the barbarian frequently making a second or third attack, she is inflicting at least three times the damage as the wizard. Yes, the wizard has a few real spells, but with the current 50/50 system, they only stick about half the time.

Yes cantrips can sometimes take advantage of weakness, but many more monsters seem to have unexpected resistances that reduce incoming damage much more than boost it.

I could easily see the wizard being dropped from the group without a major problem, while the loss of the cleric or tanky martial would be devastating. Again, maybe this changes with higher levels, but wizards currently feel kind of weak and with cantrips being their default action, lackluster cantrips just showcase the issue.

The problem is that firing a crossbow into the crowd is now better than cantrips.

At level 1 a hand crossbow does 1d6 compared to a produce flame that also does 1d6 (and takes 2 actions)

At level 20 a hand crossbow +5 does 6d6 compared a produce flame that does 4d6 + (Ability modifier) (and takes 2 actions)

The term "caster level" may not exist anymore, but a level 5 wizard still casts spells as if they were a level 5 wizard.

I believe the assumption was that the feat meant you would cast the spell as though your were a wizard or druid of 1/2 your level.

Like feats with the "press" descriptor, if the majority of players are misinterpreting the rules, then the rules need better clarification. In fact counter intuitive writing of the rules and poor book layout is about 1/2 of my group's complaints.

Excaliburrover wrote:

EberronHoward wrote:

Clerics don't get damaging cantrips, but domains offer a lot of good weapons to use. And an Elf or Gnome divine caster can poach a damaging cantrip with their Ancestry feat.

But yeah, having GMed for Sombrefell Hall, an all-Divine party is going to be severely lacking in consistent damage output.

Your post has some imprecision: clerics have Chill Touch as damaging cantrips.Cantrips you take with ancestry feats scale at half level and thus are even worse.

For clerics, resorting to weapons to do damage is ok but i'd like to have more choices.

They are heightned as a full spell

** spoiler omitted **

The cantrip is heightened to a spell level equal to half your level rounded up.

So if you are level 11 : 2 = 5.5 = heightened spell level 6. The only difference it's that use you use your Charisma modifier as your spellcasting ability.

100% of my players misread this to mean 1/2 caster level. (Paizo staff attempts to craft clear rules. They rolled a natural 1, what happens).

WhiteMagus2000 said wrote:

With Assurance, expert in Medicine, and level 20, you can take an automatic 35. For only 200 SP you could get an expert healers kit and never have to roll again.

Actually seems too easy, now that I think about it.

That's not how assurance work. The result would simply be 15 no modifiers.

Is that seriously how that feat works? You don't get a 10 and add modifiers, it's just plain 10? That is so awful that I never would have assumed that it was supposed to work that way.

I don't really see the big problem with the treat wound system. I does have a cost, it's just character development rather than gold. The target for level 1 is DC 13. The parties cleric with medicine +5 can get that more than half the time. Even a martial with only 12 wisdom and an expert kit could get that half the time. At level 20 the DC is 36. With +20 (level), +2 (wisdom), +2 (skill increases), and +2 (master work healing kit), you'd still have that same 50% chance from first level. This seems like a reasonable cost for the party to pay for not needing a devoted healer.

I personally would make the target DC based on the level of the patient, and make HP healed = (doctor's level) x (patient's Con).

Cheap effective healing between encounters is a bad thing.

Free effective healing between encounters is a good thing.

Color me confused.

Is this exactly how I would have fixed the problem. No. But I'm guessing that each of us here would have a different fix and then we'd be complaining about that one. I'll just say "good enough" and worry about other issues.

The cost is essentially time, rather than gold. Can you sit around in the lobby of a keep, after killing the guards, and heal up for an hour without someone interrupting? That's up to the GM, but I certainly plan on wandering monsters being a consequence for healing this way. I also plan on house ruling that a healing kit has 10 uses, so you'll need to stock up with several before each dungeon.

I'd just say that the target DC is based on the patient, not the doctor. As for a cost to make it slightly less unlimited, just give healers kits a number of charges before they run out of supplies, like in PF1. It would still be cheap and most of the cost would be time spend, but not actually free.

Still, I'm very happy to have the new option. I think fixes far more problems than it causes.

I can sometime be a fairly pessimistic person, but I wanted to thank the Paizo team for all the fixes in 1.3

This update solves at least a third of my groups issues with PF2. There is still a lot I'd like to see changed but this is a great step forward.

My favorite changes include:
1) The -4 to untrained skills, but a generally reduction in target DCs.
2) Treat Wounds w' Medicine. I would even be on board with healer's kits having 10 charges. With repairs time and reduced identification time, a 20 minute power nap should keep players in the game without having to retreat and rest for the day.
3) Basic fixes to Alchemist and Ranger. Now they look playable and I can probably get my players to play them.
4) Multiclass options for all the classes

Things I'm hoping to see in the future:
1) Bonus damage dice be a quality of the character and not tied to weapon +.
2) Some kind of "at will" ability for alchemists
3) A big buff to ranger snares. The idea for a martial class with battlefield control is awesome, but it has to be much faster, much cheaper, and effect a larger area. Also, did you intend rangers to lose 1 skill? Seems weird.
4) Maybe have ancestry start you with 2 or 3 feats, but move the stronger ones (like +5 move speed for elves) to level 5.
5) More general feats.
6) More user friendly book. Adding one line descriptions to feats and spells. Adding an appendix for conditions. Stating how things normally work for feats that alter normal rules (Furious Focus, I'm looking at you).

Thanks again. I look forward to trying out the new rules this week with my group.

While a martial character with battlefield control would be awesome and give rangers a unique purpose, that would be making rangers awesome.

Currently they cost far too much, take far too long to set, and effect far too small of an area. They certainly are traps, but only for the character that wastes feats on them.

Crossbow should never have been a ranger's signature weapon. Let it be the weapon for non martial folks, like wizards and clerics.

Steve Geddes wrote:

The Once and Future Kai wrote:

Ecidon wrote:

Luckily for us, Paizo do keep an archive of these discussions.

I see a lot more negativity here than in those boards...

It's telling that the archive includes threads complaining about negative overly dramatic posts...but few to none of those posts themselves. For instance I distinctly remember Frank Trollman's exit thread but can't find it in the archives. Not accusing Paizo of whitewashing - they only have so much server space - but let's not pretend that the alpha period wasn't contentious.

It’s probably a function of the more egregious posts being deleted and threads being locked (meaning they drift to the bottom).

I found the PF1 playtest ugly but I think this one is worse. I don’t think it’s a function of how well the rules are being received, I think people are less concerned with being polite now than they were then.

We shouldn’t object to people posting negative opinions - that’s useful and almost the whole point of the process. There ware ways to say it though.

I really don't know where are you coming from because since the playtest dropped I've seen maybe two threads locked. There has been a fair amount of flamewaring during the previews, but I think the atmosphere currently is one of debate. An i remember the i avoided the Paizo forums because of serious flamewaring during the playtest even though I was lurking because i was interested in the rules. The amount of negativity is a different thing altogether, and IMO signals that the rules are not in a good place right now.

Agreed. The pre play test comments were quite toxic, but the vast majority of the current threads don't feel mean spirited to me.

I posted my own, careful to be organized and constructive in my criticism, because I want the problems fixed far more than I want to just rage. I think this represents the majority of posts these days.

My group's current frustrations can be best summarized as 1) Poor layout of the book and 2) Breaking stuff that wasn't broken before (such as rangers, alchemists, and reducing the 15 minute adventuring day to only 10 minutes). I want to like the new version, but the current version fixed problems that didn't effect our group and created problems that never afflicted us before.

I know the devs have considered changing Double Slice for Rangers

Did they find out that rangers have one viable build? They are going to Nerf it into the ground, aren't they.

Love the idea in general. I'd like to see a one hour ritual with medicine as it's primary skill, with nature, religion, or alchemy as a secondary. Costs a little bit of rare herbs (maybe gold = to highest effected character level). Success heals 50% HP, failure heals 25%, crit success heals 75%, and crit fail heals 0.

Honestly, there are probably dozens of variations that would work, but this would fix both the cure wand problem and the mandatory heal bot problem. And the time and gold cost would be enough to discourage abuse.

The current magic weapon system is the feature of PF2 I hate the most. At the end of the first dungeon the players get a +1 ghost touch dagger. They instantly had it transferred to a great axe for the barbarian and now she does more than double the damage of anyone else.

Not only does it feel super non-heroic to realize that 3/4 of the damage that a level 20 fighter does is his awesome sword and not him, the responsibility now falls on the GM to make sure that everyone has exactly the weapon they are supposed to have at the levels they are supposed to have it. Previously the difference between a MW great sword and a +1 great sword was trivial, now it's night and day.

My solution is basically the same as your; +1 dice to all weapon attacks, bombs, and cantrips when they get each new attribute bonus. Magic weapons will still give bonuses to hit and have secondary properties (like ghost touch), so players will still want them. It's not an elegant solution, but it seems both noob and munchkin proof.

My group's experience has been pretty similar to yours.

Especially the frustration with alchemists and rangers being so underpowered, dislike of magic weapons in there current state, and wands.

One of my players actually laughed at me when I told him they got a wand of produce flame. He said, "So it has charges AND it costs resonance AND it just does a cantrip that I can do all day for free? Wow, what a piece of s!+%! Guess it's PF2 vendor trash."

I see post after post in the feedback about people having total party kills.

I'm wondering how many of the party deaths are from people making PF1 assumptions in their PF2 game.
When I ran part 1 of Doomsday Dawn, I lost count of how many times the players started to move their character's mini, then stopped and said, "Oh, wait... is that gonna incur an attack of opportunity?"
So, basically, they were doing or not doing things based on their perception of what would or wouldn't happen, because of what they were used to from the old rules.
I wonder if a fresh, clean slate of rules understanding would provide different outcomes?

.

I reminded my players of no AoO in the second to last fight. Then in the last one, against Drakkus, the rogue tried to circle around him one to be AoOed for 1/3 of her HP. " I thought you said no AoO". Yeah, well except for the ones that can. " How can you tell?" You can't. Then Drakkus used his action to crit her for the other 2/3.

The biggest issue for my players was just dumb luck. If I hadn't played a couple of the fights kind of dumb,they likely would have gotten a a death or two. The monsters had a hit bonus of +6 to +10, so they hit a lot. Two crits in a round and someone was going down.

Perhaps the alchemist could be granted an option for channel like healing from elixirs?

In PF1 healing bomb basically did that. I wouldn't mind seeing it back again. But you are right, in it's current state, only clerics are any good at real healing. They really need to fix that.

Vic Ferrari wrote:

WhiteMagus2000 wrote:

* I really hate magic weapons. Not only does it feel non-heroic when you notice that most of your melee damage is from your magic sword and not from you, it has some negative mechanical effects too.

Great post, and yes, I really detest extra weapon damage dice coming from magic (and to hit from item quality/magic bonus), if it is integral/expected, it should be tied to Trained proficiency and character level, something like:

Level
2-4: +1/2 x weapon damage dice
5-8: +2/3 x weapon damage dice
9-12: +3/4 x weapon damage dice
13-16: +4/5 x weapon damage dice
17-20: +5/6 x weapon damage dice

I agree that its not good to have this absurd reliance on magic weapons, but they may have painted themselves into a bit of a corner with this one.

If you tie it to level alone, then we are even further down the homogenization railroad and martial characters seem even less well.. good at being martial in comparison to their allies? I don't know, both options feel bad to me.

If you tie it to proficiency then you create a severe problem for any class that isn't fighter.. because you can't just choose to increase proficiency in weapons. It effectively down-grades barbarian, paladin, rogue or any future class that wants to use a weapon pretty immensely.

Previously the bulk of damage came from a concordance of feats, items, ability scores, class features, etc... so there were lots of character building resources that went into increasing damage output. This new simplification that puts it all into one source, means that the source has to be universally accessible, and I think since a magic item at least has some opportunity cost associated with it, they felt this was the only way.... because a feat tree, for example, would also feel mandatory and kinda bad.

Realistically, I think that the attribution of proficiencies being unlocked might be necessary, but then the optimization mindset will make it very hard to see why not to always take...

The problem is that the character's damage is supposed to be homogenized, but just through the quality if equipment rather than the quality of character. After finishing the first dungeon, it's even worst than I initially feared, because now it's going to be the duty of the GM to make sure that all the martial characters have exactly the right quality of weapon at the right time. At the end of the first dungeon the player's get a +1 ghost touch dagger, which they instantly had transferred to a great axe. Now the barbarian is doing triple the damage of anyone else because they got a weapon that they aren't scheduled to get until level 4 or 5.

At least if it's a trait of the character then they'll all get it when they are supposed to and not too soon or too late.

Having owned several different bows in the past, including crossbows, a compound bow, and a traditional single piece bow that was about 5 feet long (you know, a longbow), the thought that it's easier to hit beyond fifty feet is absurd. Just straight up absurd. Yes, all bows fire in an arc (so do bullets), but when it's that close the arc is so small that you don't even bother taking it into account. It's when the target is 150 feet back and you have to aim several feet above the target, that's when things get hard. This is simple a curse being placed on longbows for being too good.

*Also, while I haven't had a chance to see it in action yet, the multi-classing looks really good overall. It seems like a very fair way to build-an-archetype to get abilities you normally wouldn't. I'd like to see all the main classes get an archetype.

My group (consisting of 2 very experienced players and 2 moderately experienced casual players) just finished our first 2 sessions of the playtest and here are our thoughts so far.

General Character Creation:
* I like the race, background, and class all contributing to your attributes and skills. The current method makes sure that all character's will have good attributes, nothing OP, nothing awful. Also feels like it gives backgrounds a bit of weight and depth.
* Some of the races feels really underwhelming compared to others (I'm looking at your dwarves). Elfs can get the best speed and an at-will cantrip or weapon proficiencies in some of the best weapons in the game. Dwarves can get a +1 against derro and durgar. Most campaigns I never see a single one of those things!
* While the races include the optional feats right there, the backgrounds don't even give a page number. This made finding an ideal background take much longer, as they had to check what each bonus feat did, then go back to the backgrounds, then look up the next mysterious feat. The backgrounds added about 1/2 an hour for the first two players. The third and fourth just picked ones and took whatever it happened to come with.
* All the looking up of definitions, skills, feats, and rules made character creation take about 2 hours per character. Even then, every player had at least one misunderstood rule. Again, none of them are noobs. The current character creation don't come off as "user friendly". If paizo wants to appeal to new players, this is going to have to be addressed. I think just adding one line of definition for the feats, spells, and conditions (when they are mentioned in the character creation), instead of making them look it up elsewhere would fix most of that problem.

Classes:
Alchemist: Our support player, not really wanting to just run a heal-bot cleric, rolled up an alchemist. After three fights we could see the writing on the wall and he re-rolled a cleric.
* Damage and accuracy was consistently lower than the barbarian. Looking at the progression of bombs vs the progression of weapons, it looks like this will always be the case.
* It takes resonance for anyone else to use elixirs already created with resonance. Beyond first level, this is going to make alchemist healing, just not viable.
* Poisons and mutagens look bad, but we didn't have a chance to try them.
*At the very least I would make poison DC (created with resonance) = class DC. Make the first unmodified bomb per round, created with quick alchemy, cost no resonance. Make consuming alchemical buffs and heals not cost additional resonance and increase the dice healed to d8s. Make mutagens have no onset time.

Cleric: Feels like the only viable healer.

Ranger: Feels lackluster. With no spells and most nature related class features being the weak option, they just feel like a pen and paper version of a WoW hunter.
* Two early crossbow only feats, despite the fact that crossbows are still not very good and one longbow only feat at level 18. Looks like it's dual wielding hunters only, or play something else (my players opted for a rogue and barbarian after reading over rangers).
* Pets need some better autonomy. At the very least, keep attempting basic strikes against the target you assigned them to attack 6 seconds ago! Also they should at least defend themselves and you if you can't take actions (like when you are knocked out or asleep). Seriously, the thought of your guard wolf sitting idly by as it's master gets beaten to death seems like more of a joke than a serious ruling. (Timmy falls in a greased pit and yells for lassie to go for help. Lassie takes two move actions away from the pit then stops and stares blankly at the wall for the next 12 hours).
* Snares are awful. One player, while reading the rangers said, "They cost GOLD, and take ten minutes each, and only cover a five foot square? I'd have to lay a whole mine field to guard the camp for the night!" They need, at the very least, to have a trigger area of a 5x5 square, a 10x10 square, or up to a 20 foot line, even if they only effect the first creature to trigger them. And the price for the simple snares should be close to zero. A very basic snare to entangle or make a loud noise should just cost some fishing line and anything that's loud when dropped.

Skills:
*Lore. WTF is this thing? My players have no idea what kind of lore they should take and I have no idea what I should suggest. I understand that Profession seems to be rolled into lore, but what kind of goofball lores are we expected to take and under what situations are they going to be relevant? This was why I didn't like profession in PF1. It was usually useless expect in say Skull and Shackles where everyone needed profession: sailor. I would really like a list or guidelines for this thing. Is evil outsider lore legit? Does it have to be demons only? Does it have to be quasits only? Who knows?
*Medicine. Does medicine work for anything other than bleeding, poison, and disease? How about any kind of continuous damage? In first aid I was taught how to treat acid burns, regular burns, and frostbite. Surely we aren't assuming that a trained combat medic is less educated than your average 14 year old boy scout. Also, did anyone else notice that at first level your chance of critically failing a DC20 heal check is about the same chance of being successful? This contributed to the alchemist re-rolling as a cleric that can actually heal as advertised.

Feats:
*More general feats please.
*PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE add a one line description of what the feat does one the feat index, like in PF1. Without that help it makes finding good feats for your character much harder. I even had a hard time after I read a feat that looked good, but had a hard time re-finding it for a player who might want it, because it had a name that was similar to several other feats. Selecting feats currently feels like a chore, when it used to be to most fun part of building your character.

Equipment:
* Longbows: -2 to hit under 50ft range. Really? Can rangers at least get some kind of exemption from this, seeing as how it's there most iconic weapon in lore. Robin hood? Not using a crossbow. Legolas? No crossbows. Aragorn? Nope, no crossbow. Drizzt? Still no crossbows.
*Clumsy seems to be REALLY bad, unless we aren't reading it right. A breastplate gives the save AC as chain mail, but also includes a -4 to all Reflex saves. Seriously? Well, I guess breastplates and full plate are going to be a thing of legend now.

Spells:
* I like it improvement of cantrips from mostly worthless to at least initially being decent. Helps make up for the loss of spells per day and other overall weakening of most spells. I would like to see cantrips damage increased to be closer to an actual weapons, past level 4. A Ray of Frost doing 4d8+int sounds good, until you realize that a fighter will be doing 6d12+str at the same level and will be hitting more often and usually with secondary effects.
*PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE add a one line description of what the spells do to the alphabetical spell list. By the time we got here in character creation my two caster's were so tired of looking stuff up, that they just grabbed the same spells they would have grabbed in PF1 and hoped for the best.

Magic Items:
* I really don't mind resonance. I sometimes bugs me when players will use a bunch of disposable magic items to over-buff before what should be a tough fight or cure light wounds wand to take away any tension from being injured.
* I really like the merging of armor and resistance cloaks. Feels like the streamlining that I really want to see from PF2.
* I really hate magic weapons. Not only does it feel non-heroic when you notice that most of your melee damage is from your magic sword and not from you, it has some negative mechanical effects too. First, due to limits of resonance and gold, you aren't likely to have backup weapons. In PF1 (any all other RPGs) I always have a backup weapon or two in case you get swallowed or disarmed or have to fight something that is resistant to your favorite weapon. Not only this, but the players are going to quickly notice that NPCs don't abide by this rule. A gnoll captain gets 2d8 from his scimitar, but when defeated, it drops down to only 1d8 in your hands. I recall in AD&D how an NPC elf's damage was 1d10 or by weapon, while an elf PC could only punch for 1d3 damage. Players notice when the game is rigged against them and generally don't enjoy it. The solution seems extremely simple; everyone adds +1 dice every 4 levels (When you are scheduled to get the next tier of weapon anyway). I'd also apply this to cantrips (instead of their normal progression), because a 6d12+str damage sword swing that takes one action is still better than a 6d8 Ray of Frost that takes 2 actions and doesn't get any bonus to hit. Magic would still apply bonuses to hit and secondary effects (such as holy and flaming), so they would still be desirable over non-magic, but wouldn't be the foundation of the martial character's damage.

Other:
* Hero Points: None of us are really fans of hero points, but a get out of death card is certainly handy these days.
* RNG. While it might just be 1st level blues, I get the impression its not. With skills, attacks, and spells appearing to work about 50% of the time, at all levels, bad luck looks like it can be pretty dangerous. In a couple of fights where the monsters rolled poorly, the players just demolished them. Then in the next fight, against CR 0 centipedes, they got unlucky and someone ended up losing their full HP in damage from a single poison bite. Not a huge deal, but I recall reading back in college that the most addictive % of success (to keep gamblers gambling or gamers gaming) was 70%.

Doomsday Dawn:
* Seems like the enemies have lots of poison and high hit rates. Skeletons +6 to hit, goblin +6, centipede +6, quasit +7. The best to hit bonus in my player's party is +5. From the ooze, centipedes, and quasits they had to make saves about 10 times, each with about a 50% chance of success. They got lucky and only got poisoned twice (inflicted 15/17 HP to the cleric and 12/15 HP to the wizard).
* I thought we were going to NOT have magic items by the bucket full anymore? Still a couple minor magic items, 4 scrolls/potions, a wand that I can't really see anyone using, and a +1 ghost touch dagger. Of course, since runes are basically just magic stickers that can be pealed off and pasted on other things, the barbarian now has an axe that does 2d12+7 damage (w' rage), while the rogue is still doing 1d6+4.

I want to like PF2, but in it's current state, we'll probably just stay with PF1. Some issues with bland customization, but I'm less worried about that as additional books always add lots of options. I'll cut this up and put each topic on it's own page, but since issues touch on more than one topic at a time, I wanted it all together.

Nope. And to phrase it in a less rude way, they think much of the new speak is dumb.

I'm not saying Cleric who choose to be healers shouldn't be the best healers.

I'm saying (positive energy) Clerics shouldn't be automatically the best healers no matter what choices they make.

A Cleric of Sarenrae absolutely should be an awesome healer. But a cleric of Desna? Or Calistria? Or Abadar? Like "blaster wizard", "healer cleric" should be something you build for, instead of something handed to you on a silver platter because Channel Energy is the strongest level 1 class feature in the game.

And even more importantly, a party shouldn't need to have a cleric to have competent healing. A Healing Domain cleric should be the best healer in the game. But a Sorcerer, or a Bard - or a Fighter who spends a bunch of skills and feats on it - should all be able to be viable healers to the extent that the party doesn't constantly wish they had a cleric.

People being pressured to play Clerics is objectively bad for the game.

I absolutely agree. My player's party started out with a alchemist for healing (remember how we were promised that that would be viable?), but after 3 fights they could already see the writing on the wall, and re-rolled a healbot cleric.

I don't think a cleric needs to be nerfed, I think the non-cleric options need to be stronger.

If a whole team of rule lawyers (us) is needed to figure out how to use a simple, first level feat, then it might need a rewrite.

Stop making weapons the real source of player's damage. As Iron Man said, "If you are nothing without the suit, then you shouldn't have it."
Add the bonus damage by level and not from being magic.

There has been a fair amount of PF2 changes that I like, such as the character attribute building and improved cantrips as well as some things I don't like. But so far there is only one thing that I really truly hate with every fiber of my being and that is the current magic weapon system.

Making the majority of my character's damage come, not from them, but from their gear feels extremely non-heroic. Also feels like a cheap rip off of a WoW gear system. As Iron Man said “If you are nothing without the suit, you shouldn’t have it”. Mechanically this makes martial character's absolutely addicted to magic weapons. In PF1, a +1 Greatsword was so slightly better than a MW Greatsword that most people wouldn't know the difference. Even MW vs +2 wouldn't be a huge change in damage output. I even played in a AP where we found a +3 light mace very early on, but just gave it to the heal-bot cleric since all that martial character's needed, well not a mace. I always have a backup weapon, such as a short sword (or something of a different damage type) in case of DR, getting disarmed, or getting swallowed. All my player's now do that too. The current system really punishes them, both in gold and resonance, for having the gall to follow the boyscout motto "Be prepared".

I think the bonus damage dice should just be linked to level (4,8,12, etc.), rather than magic weapons. Magic weapons can still provide bonuses on hit rolls and property runes, and will still be important, just not the true source of your character's value in combat. Applying these bonus dice to cantrips too (instead of their current bonus dice) might be the nudge they need to not be so underwhelming.

While I'm sticking to the letter of the rules for the playtest I am NEVER going to use the magic weapons, as currently written, in actual play. I'd rather quit PF and play a game where I can be a hero, rather than a farmhand who carries the truly heroic magic sword.

I strongly agree the rulebook is not pleasant to read. If I am looking up something after I understand the game, this organization is good, even great. However,while I'm trying to learn the game? It's complete suffering. Having to flip to the spells section and back to compare my wizard school powers or cleric domain powers is just unenjoyable. Is it more consistent to have them with the spells? Honestly, yes. But is it better for a first read? Hell no.

In general, the rulebook has a lot of things not-where-they're-relevant, but instead has them in a database of all the things of that kind, and you're constantly told to refer to that database. It's very logical but exceedingly dense and frustrating. On a first read, it violates the same design rules that make web designers try to make everything take as few clicks as possible. It's exhausting to read through even a single class, because you're sent to the far corners of the book -multiple times- to read even a single page. I do not like it very much.

This. I started making a character last night, but never finished. Many of the ancestral feats feels super weak while some feel pretty sweet, but at least they tell you what each one does. Okay whatever, I'll go with an elf. On to the backgrounds. Whats this one do? Whats that one do? No idea. Gotta look one up, digging it out from among the general feats. It certainly feels like having to jump some hurdles to even begin playing the game. I'll do it; I don't mind reading all that things before playing the game, but for casual players, this could be a big "Don't bother playing" sign.

I was going to mention this myself. I think it would be better to call ancestral and background feats, traits. And call class feats, talents. I would prefer that "feats" be reserved for non-class specific options, like in 3.x and PF1. Currently it feels very cumbersome and confusing when you are using feats as a blanket term for at least 4 different things.

I can't give you exact 80% data, but I've seen ranger as one of, if not the, most frequently picked classes for new players. With a little bit of GM guidance a ranger can be decent at a number of different things, so they always have something to contribute to almost any situation, compared to some more specialized classes that might sit out entire scenes (fighters out of combat or wizards in non-boss combats).

Been gone for a few months, but I see that forums are as caustic as ever.

I personally dislike CLW wands for the following personal reasons. Your campaigns may vary.
1) It trivializes damage. The party tank nearly gets beaten to death, literally 36 seconds later and he's full power again and ready for another boss battle. In areas of APs, like the first books in Skull & Shackles and Strange Aeons there are no stores, so my players had to be cautious and not burn resources carelessly. Having a keg of extra HP just ruins any tension.
2) On the same line, I also award levels when the AP says so, so the players feel no needs to kill everything they see. With limited healing and no need for endless blood-lust, they tend to talk their way out of some fights or avoid pointless encounters. Once they get a CLW wand and like 50 cure potions, they tend to get stupid way more often.
3) I've always hated in PF how the players can just go down to the corner magic shop and pick up a CLW wand, pearls of power, and scrolls, like it's just pizza and nachos. If they want to invest in Craft Wand, that's fine, it feels like a part of their character that they have spend precious resources on, but I don't like magic items by the bucket full feel in PF.
4) I don't think its intended for game balance.

I"m not saying you can't have fun with an Everyman group. I'm saying that if the rest of the group is having to carry you, they might not find it fun. And they shouldn't have to accommodate you to have their fun.

If the whole group goes into it knowing someone is playing Jimmy Olsen, and they're cool with it, and the GM makes the game suitable for having a character like that then it could work just fine.

I agree, an Everyman group can be fun, but everyone has to be on board for this to work. So long as everyone is a powergamer, then its fine. So long as everyone is super RP heavy, then its fine. If everyone wants a low power or high challenge game, then its fine. Problems arise when everyone else is doing one play style, except one person.

So beyond the standard magic items, and stat boosters, i'd really like to see some of these other magic items bite the dust. Leading off with the ring of sustenance and all of its permutations. It should take more than a couple grand to kill sleep requirements and eating requirements dead. Cheap magic that removes environmental threat, supply management, and time management needs to go. PC's should have to think a little before traipsing off to the uncharted wilderness for an adventure.

I (as politely as possible) disagree. Food is generally a trivial obstacle to deal with. There have been some exceptions, but fortunately we had a ranger to completely negate it with a single spell each day (allfood).

Sleep is a bit more important, but again a level 4 ranger with Keep Watch negates that too.

It seems like a fair exchange to me, instead of using a ring of protection or resist energy or something like that.