I was hoping that there might have been a consolidated thread for all of these, but it seems like everyone started up a new one when they read through it, which is great, but I'm hoping none of them get lost in the shuffle. Here were my initial thoughts after reading through the PDF, as I sent to Jason while I was away from the boards:
That having been said, I took some time to sort out my initial thoughts on the subject. I don't expect a response, as I'm sure you are plowed under with work, as well as the opinions of thousands of others, but I did want to have the chance to throw in my two cents worth, and if you don't have the time to check out this e-mail, especially given that the forum is the preferred format for such discussion, I'll fully understand, but for what its worth, these are my initial thoughts on my third read through of the rules (and after some initial discussion with one member of my gaming group):
Races
The Good: I like the net bonus of +2 for races. While I didn't like the “net bonus” idea at first, the fact that most races still have a negative is a good idea. It still lends itself to keeping archetypes in place, and nudging races to what they are good at.
The fact that most races get a second bonus ability boost helps to make the race more than a one trick pony as well. While its fine to reinforce archetypes, its also good to know that the race isn't hamstrung when they try to do something “outside the box.” As it stands, dwarves are pretty good candidates for fighters or clerics, elves for wizards or rogues, etc.
The bonus hit point for favored class is a brilliant idea. Its a subtle way to reinforce archetypes, as well as providing at least a little more incentive to really look at multiclassing and if its worth giving up the benefits of staying with what you are a natural at.
I really like that half-orcs don't have a penalty to charisma. I like the fact that dwarves have a penalty because they are gruff and dour, rather than because they aren't “attractive,” and I like that elves appearance is kind of covered in its unearthly beauty ability, so that a player doesn't need to feel bound to giving them high charisma scores to fit the elf archetype.
The Bad: I'm not sure its “bad” as in “really bad,” but I was a little surprised to see that the “diplomatic” half elf from 3rd edition is kind of gone. Yeah, you can still make him into a diplomat, but its no more natural to him than it is to anyone else. Also, giving them the full elven immunity to sleep, and the full elven “perception” benefits feels a little strange.
One thing that the half elf change did was to make one backward compatable element not work the way I'd have hoped in my campaign. The half elf bard in my campaign isn't quite as good at his charisma skills as he was, and the optional half elf paragon class from Unearthed Arcana doesn't quite work, because the half elf is already in possession of the elf traits they gain with the class. Not a deal breaker, but it is a “backwards compatable” issue right out of the box.
I'm not sure that the archetypical halfling should have a bonus to intelligence. In fact, I'd argue that charisma might be more natural for them, as they seem to get along with most other races well. I'd also say that I'd make the gnomish bonuses to charisma and intelligence, in order to facility the “new” gnome favored class, bard, and the old one, wizard (illusionist). I get that intelligence might have been avoided to keep from evoking the “tinker” gnome archetype, but I think you can do and still support the classic gnome's talents.
Classes
The Good: I absolutely love the idea of bumping up the hit dice for the classes and tying it to the BAB (and essentially to the combat role of the character, or between front line, support, and back line). While I wasn't a fan of 4th editions rigid role structure, a more subtle reinforcement of it doesn't bother me at all.
Really like the addition of feats to the mix. While I didn't quite like the “feat every level” idea that Monte Cook had in the Book of Experimental Might, it did get me to thinking that a few extra feats might not be a bad idea, and spread out over 20 levels it doesn't radically alter the face of things.
I'll save my commentary on skills for when I get to that section specifically.
Right off the bat I love that the “slow-medium-fast” progression is built right into the game. I have long wanted to run a “slow” or at least “medium” game, and while its not too hard to do, its nice to see it as an option supported right out of the box.
I love domain and school powers, and the fact that they mirror one another to an extent. It makes a specialist feel more like someone that has learned the secrets of his school, and the domain change doesn't feel too radically different from the cleric.
Orisons and cantrips being spell like abilities are a great idea as well. Definitely like that.
Weapon and armor training and weapon and armor mastery are great additions to the fighter. It reinforces that the fighter is a trained fighter, not just a warrior or a survivor, and helps to reinforce his strengths. Also, the masteries provide nice capstone abilities to the class that its never had before.
I like the range of new rogue talents as well. While I didn't quite feel that the rogue needed the boost that the fighter did (since most people I played with loved the skill points and the sneak attack damage and that was enough to make the class worth progressing in), none of them seem deal breaking, and they run the gamut of various abilities.
Again, like the fighter, I do like that rogues now have a sort of capstone ability toward the end of their “normal” progression in master strike.
I really like the bonded object variant wizard, and the fact that every wizard doesn't need a familiar now. I like the idea of a circumstance where the wizard might not be able to cast a spell without making his spellcraft check as well. I have some more thoughts on this, but those are for other sections.
Most of all I liked that most of the class descriptions were familiar except for what was added, rather than loosing anything, or rebuilding the class from the beginning.
The Bad: Adding hit points to first level characters rubs me the wrong way. I know that 1st level characters are fragile, but at the same time, 1st level characters are still more powerful than “the rabble,” and to make them too super right out of the gate makes them seem less like above average, talented, youngsters that have the potential for greatness, and makes them seem more like fated superheroes.
Its part of what I don't like about the 4th edition approach, in that while the PCs should be special, they shouldn't be “too” special. I've always seen PCs as being kind of like professional athletes, a cut above, and able to do what others can't, but not superhuman (well, some classes are, but that's neither here nor there). The 4e sensibility is more along the lines of the PCs being almost like Greek heroes, with the blood of gods in their veins and standing head and shoulders above the commoners, fated for greatness.
At the same time, I understand that its frustrating for a player to make a new character, get attached to it, and then see it die first session because a kobold got a critical hit. I'm almost wondering if a “1st level rule” that says that the PCs can fall to negatives, become disabled, but not die unless the whole party dies. Once the PCs hit 2nd level, the rule goes out the window. I don't know if its workable, but I would rather something like this than a blanket boost of 1st level abilities.
I'm a little gunshy of expanding sneak attack. I know that rogues can become hampered when fighting creatures that aren't able to be sneak attacked, but at the same time, I don't want rogues to just be good at doing extra damage when someone else is pounding on something either.
I have thought that some undead, such as vampires, should have some vulnerability to sneak attacks, and while I have a hard time seeing a stone golem having a weak spot that a rogue can really exploit, I can see, for example, a clockwork golem having a weakness in this regard.
I'm wondering if the solution might not be to have creatures that are fully weak against sneak attack, ones that are partially weak against them, and things that are immune. Partially weak opponents might halve the amount of sneak attack damage they take, for example.
With expanded feats, it might not be too egregious to add some feats that allow a rogue to sneak attack other “banned” monster types, just as the cleric got feats to allow them to turn outsiders and elementals.
I will admit that some of my hesitancy on this issue comes from the idea that I don't want 4e setting the agenda. Its clear that the 4e designers want 1st level characters to be more powerful, and to have rogues sneak attack across the board, and while players may not want to die early or not be able to use their full ability, is this really a problem, or is this just the trade off for building a new character or playing a class that is good at a specific range of things?
Skills
The Good: Its much, much faster to deal with skills under a system like this. Its also much faster for a character to figure out what they are rolling for when they pick up a new skill.
I agree that some skills were particularly useful, and should have been folded into other skills.
Having a set progression on skills makes it easier to set challenges in adventures. Under the current system, its hard to come up with an idea of what is “too hard” when it comes to challenges where PCs may have to jump or climb to avoid hazards, since some characters will take the skills, especially if they don't have many class skills, and others might never touch them and use everything on lesser ranks of cross class skills.
Making this more standard makes it a bit more easily identifyable as to what should happen. If a PC gets a +4 for being trained, a DC 14 check is an average challenge, and its easy to figure out.
At high level, a system like this is almost a neccessity in order to manage what a creature or NPC can or cannot do.
Like the addition of applications in appraise. It will be interesting seeing this in play.
The Bad: I miss the idea of PCs being able to take a few ranks of a skill to show that they had some skills before they adventures, or that they have skills that they know “a little” but don't always keep up on. I have players that often take ranks in Profession, cook, for example, or even Craft, carpentry to show a previous career and to use from time to time.
I'll also miss the idea that a relatively low level character can really pour skill points into what they want to be good at and support skills can be better at something than a much higher level character. The closest one can get to this now is to give the NPC skill focus, for example.
Plus, it does strain credulity to see a fighter that hardly ever uses the skill being one of the best weaponsmiths in a given region by virtue of his level.
While I like the idea of gaining more skills at higher levels, and gaining skills oposite of the levels where you gain feats, perhaps being able to trade in a new skill for skill focus in an existing skill would not be a bad idea, especially since you could only do this once for each skill.
I'm much more in favor of some of the consolidations found in True20. I know that sleight of hand may not be that useful overall, but open locks really should be part of disable device. Game rules and balance aside, it strains suspension of disbeleif that the mechanism in a trap are radically different than the mechanisms in a lock, but if you learn to pick pockets, you can open locks too.
Similarly, I still don't think that search should be part of perception. Noticing something with your senses is different than methodically searching for something, and some people might be better at hearing something or seeing something on the edge of vision, and others might be better and finding cracks and crevices while searching an area.
I honestly think forgery should just be a craft skill, perhaps a subset of Craft, printed material, or something of that nature.
Making sense motive part of deception makes paladins, who in some cases are suppose to be good judges of characters, sub optimal at reading people, and if they do find a way to make deception a class skill, the paladin isn't just good at reading people, but at lying as well!
I think Linguistics works fine without the forgery aspect. It could use some DC listings for understanding related languages that are spoken, for example. Perhaps some sort of rule for being able to speak a language fluently, rather than just proficiently, as well.
Fly has to go. There shouldn't be a separate skill for using a particular set of spells and magic items. I was glad when scry went away as a skill, and I'm not really thrilled with this one. Following this logic, there should be skills for shapechanging to make sure you can change into a given form, or for conjuring to see if you conjure the right creature, or have control of it. Just doesn't seem to gel with the normal 3.5 asthetic.
Feats
The Good: First, I love that there are more feats to play will, allowing a characterr to set up a nice set of feat chains and still not use up every single feat that they might have available.
Really like the extra turning abilities.
The combat feats could be a lot of fun to play with, although I've seen some cons to them as well.
I enjoy that cleave and great cleave now are useful at higher levels, even against opponents that are a challenge, rather than functioning like a lawnmower to get rid of low CR opponents that would never have been a threat one way or another, but would have taken forever to kill without the feats.
I really, really like that Toughness is now Toughness rolled into Improved Toughness (the latter being the main feat I wanted for my characters with durability issues far more than the former).
The Bad: While I like the simplicity of Deadly Aim and Power Attack, I got another twinge of 4e setting the agenda. Did a lot of people really have a problem with Power Attack before 4th edition design deemed it as a broken aspect of 3.5? Are these feats being redesigned to answer flaws that aren't particularly bothersome to those that aren't already interested in the paradigm shift of 4e combat?
There seems to be a bit of a muddy area where combat feats get coined with that phrase. Deadly Aim isn't a combat feat? Why not? At first I thought that it might have to do with if the feat was part of a chain that had to be used first before a later ability was, but some of them aren't part of one of those chains.
One of the things I didn't like about 4e design seemed to be that movement=good, no matter what, and as such, a lot of abilities either trigger movement or are only triggered by movement. Some of the feats that require another feat to be used first feel similar to this. I get logically that you might want a character to use cleave in order to be able to use great cleave next round, but what is the narrative reason (not game rule) for a character to not be able to use two weapon rend until after he juggled his swords around between his hands?
Speaking of Weapon Swap, this just sounds like an awkward way of saying that what you are holding in your off hand doesn't count. And how useful is this if you have two +2 short swords that you are using? I know, in that case, this feat may not seem like a good idea to take, but two weapon rend does seem like a good idea.
Some of these feats, I think, while they should still have prerequisite feats, should have a simpler set up. For example, instead of Weapon Swap, why not just require that the PC hit with both weapons using two weapon fighting the previous round, thus opening up a wound that he tears open with two weapon rend the next round?
Combat
The Good: I like the streamlined CMB system, and the idea of making it a bit harder to perform some of the tricks like trip and sunder. I also really like the broken condition, since it makes things a lot easier to figure out on the fly, as well as giving you a reason to sunder one round and then do something else, instead of wasting multiple rounds trying to destroy a weapon totally, for example.
I love the revisions to turning. I like the healing boost as well. Why turning has remained some kind of cryptic multistep system when everything else in 3rd/3.5 went the way of d20 versus DC has consistently confounded me, and it will be ineresting to see how the healing burst works out in this equasion.
The Bad: Grapple confuses me more now that its simplified. The check to maintain, is this check also a standard action, or something that the grappler does first and then gets to do whatever else? And does grapple no longer allow the grappler to do any damage? That doesn't seem right. Or am I just missing something?
Spells and Magic
Not much to say here, mainly because much of this has to do with the school powers and domains. I want to see them in action before I really make any kind of informed response to them, but at first blush I really like them.
A general caveat. I like that some spells got tweaked because they had to be clarified in respect to other rules that got tweaked, but please, be careful not to change spells too much, take many of them out all together, or radically change how some of them work. I know polymorph needs work, for example, but just, tread carefully. The promise that other spells would be altered worried me just a faint, tiny bit.
Running the Pathfinder RPG
No real negatives to point out in this section either. Really liked the XP chart, the standardized awards for RP and story elements, and the tips on encounter building. I like the promise that the rules won't be too different for me to pick up a 3.5 adventure and run it with PCs from this RPG, and I really, really hope you keep this foremost in mind going forward.
Regardless of any negatives that I might have brought up, I am hoping and planning on running the game as presented, because even though I might have opinions on how some of these rules work, I don't feel it would be fair to assume, without seeing more of it in play, that my out of game read through analysis is particularly valid. That having been said, let me just say that this is the most excited I've been about the d20 hobby in a long, long while. Paizo is great, and you do very, very good work. I hope you are very successful, and I hope that this undertaking goes as planned, if not much better.