The Testing Process...


Product Discussion


Could someone give a run down of the alpha and beta testing process for feats and classes?


The alpha testing is done in house, and I don't think that process will ever go public since it will allow competitors to improve. The beta process normally has things posted on the site. People post any rules contradictions, theoretical issues, and problems in actual gameplay.

Scarab Sages

The betas are generally Paizo releases a subset of material for the community to review. After doing that, they get 50,000 forum posts of people running hypothetical statistic analysis, followed by 75,000 forum posts of trolls. Paizo then sifts through all the responses and garners out the few hundred or so actual play feedback posts, and revises their design on the material based on the data.

The big book's beta was roughly the big book, since it was the transitional year. After that APG was a few previews of classes IIRC. UM had the extensive Magus playtests, where the poor class changed more than a shapeshifter; and the Words of Power playtest, which I think had a lot of positive input compared to the other playtests. UC had the goofy Gunslinger playtest (with its "Heres our broken gun rules, they won't change." testing). The Races guide coming out in spring had a pretty good mechanics testing for the custom race creation.

Besides the big book, I really don't remember much at all of feats being presented in the Beta / playtest phases.

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