I completely understand Jason's strategy in progressing the Beta through stages with each stage dealing with a particular aspect of the game design. I believe this is almost definitely the right way to do it, however, there are some dangers in this and I'd like testers to be aware of it to curb debate that might go overboard.
When testing each part individually, you lose the holistic testing that might achieve different results. For example...
If, during class abilities testing, many people complain that class X's abilities are far superior to class Y's abilities, that might lead to the belief that these need to be balanced. Well, that's not necessarily the case.
One of the things that is definitely evident from the original 3.0 design is that certain game concepts are meant to benefit certain characters in certain situations and that the variety of benefits out there is enough to go around. In other words, not all characters need to have the same variety of abilities for every situation. Fighters have limited ability in roleplaying situations involving Bluff while Rogues might have very good ability. Wizards have limited ability in low-level combat. The things are in place by design. I'm not sure the Pathfinder playtest effort is meant to change these, even if you don't like them.
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You bring up a good point, which is why I believe it's important to actually playtest the rules in a situation representative of a fairly normal game session.
Our group for instance is using the full Rise of the Runelords adventure path, which should ideally highlight all the major components including character creation, advancement, combat, skills, etc.
Providing criticism of a rule by just looking at it on paper often doesn't provide enough context for where that rule may or may not excel.
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I completely understand Jason's strategy in progressing the Beta through stages with each stage dealing with a particular aspect of the game design. I believe this is almost definitely the right way to do it, however, there are some dangers in this and I'd like testers to be aware of it to curb debate that might go overboard.
When testing each part individually, you lose the holistic testing that might achieve different results. For example...
If, during class abilities testing, many people complain that class X's abilities are far superior to class Y's abilities, that might lead to the belief that these need to be balanced. Well, that's not necessarily the case.
One of the things that is definitely evident from the original 3.0 design is that certain game concepts are meant to benefit certain characters in certain situations and that the variety of benefits out there is enough to go around. In other words, not all characters need to have the same variety of abilities for every situation. Fighters have limited ability in roleplaying situations involving Bluff while Rogues might have very good ability. Wizards have limited ability in low-level combat. The things are in place by design. I'm not sure the Pathfinder playtest effort is meant to change these, even if you don't like them.
Agreed 100%. Well said.
As well, there's no reason to say that after each Chapter has been focused on specifically, that then the "big picture" can be looked over again, and any further issues addressed... You know, like how you paint a picture? Obviously, alot of Chapters are crucially inter-related, namely Classes, Combat & Spells & Magic.