Greetings and salutations. Today I had the pleasure of going through the Alpha Book, and wanted to chime in with my thoughts and reactions. Keep in mind, this isn't having playtested anything, just reaction from reading through.
- I strongly dislike the "Unnatural Beauty" elven racial trait. While it does have a fair amount of fantasy backing, I don't like the taste of it as a basic trait. I think a feat or other ability would be a better option.
- I think Perform deserves a spot on the list of skills for the gnome racial trait "Obsessive"
- It might be a simpler take on racial weapon familiarity if it isn't mentioned in every race, but has a few lines in an equipment chapter. I'm referring to the "*race* treats all weapons with *race* in the name as martial weapons" kind of familiarity. It might be easier to phrase it in the equipment chapter as "All races treat exotic weapons with their race name in the weapon name as martial weapons" or something similar.
- I'm a big fan of adding the deity's favored weapon to the cleric proficiency list.
- Weapon and armor training look like excellent additions to the fighter class. It's so simple and effective, I can't believe I hadn't already stumbled across it.
- I'm uneasy about putting magic in as an option for rogues to pick. To me, that seems like something that should be set aside in multiclassing.
- I like the ideas behind the Combat feats.
- At the same time, I dislike the Dodge-Mobility-Spring Attack chain. To me, Spring Attack would be nicer if it was a two-feat chain. Spring attack lets you move, attack, and move, but limits you to half your movement. Improved Spring Attack would grant full movement with the attack.
- While I like the idea behind the Combat Maneuvers system, I think the math is skewed a little the wrong way. The gut reaction looks like it'll always be harder to attempt a maneuver than defend against one. Especially with each Improved feat granting a +2 to that specific maneuver, yet one feat grants a +4 against all types of defenses. The system seems streamlined to be easier for the players to remember how to perform the maneuvers, yet it looks as though if they try them they'll end up disappointed most of the time.
- On a related, yet separate note, I love the idea of different degrees of grappling, and the less imposing size modifiers. I would like to voice a cry for one thing I haven't seen yet: An annoy option for grappling. I'd like a smaller character to be able to grapple a larger creature, and while not doing damage or restricting movement, be able to distract, such as clawing at the eyes, riding an unwilling dragon, weigh down a giant scorpion's tail.
- I like the broken condition. I think it might even be fun to have it stack with degrees, such as lightly broken, moderately broken, heavily broken, destroyed. Might give a forgiving element to certain monsters while keeping the danger, such as the rust monster. Say each antennae hit to a metal object moves it one step along the broken track, and each metal item striking the rust monster moves it down also. Four hits to destroy something, easily done in a few rounds, yet gives a bit of forgiveness to a normally unforgiving monster.
- Enjoy the new turning system, but I was wondering if any thought went into adding different area effect options? I can easily see a cleric who would rather have a cone, line, or even targeted effect.
I wasn't sure where to post this or what formatting to use. Also, I had difficulty in submitting it, so if there are multiple topics, I apologize.
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Thieves with arcane abilities seems like something that could be done with multi-classing, but I kind of like that option being in the class. It reminds me of the Grey Mouser. At least in this iteration of Pathfinder it gives the player the choice of multi-classing or of using their own class ability. I prefer choices, and don't like arbitrarily taking this from the thief.
Thanks,
Scott