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They made sure to make clear ideas about comfort and consent around the table right away. This is fantastic.
Character sheets look interesting, I'll probably design my own because that's how I learn games, but coolest beans.
Bulk is entirely determined by 5 + Strength MODIFIER, and 10 + Strength MODIFIER. Why are there still ability scores in the game, as far as I can tell they don't DO anything. Just vestigial limbs. Confusing for new players.
Sign Language is a selectable language <3
Even though the game assumes Golarion as the setting, there's still notes like in Dwarves' "Racial Hatred" ability, telling GMs if there are other ancestries dwarves commonly fight they can be added as choices to the list.
Ability mods for smaller races have been improved to differentiate gnomes, goblins and halflings better. Very rad they already took that feedback in.
Half-Orcs went from Darkvision to low-light vision. Interesting.
Humans can get an ancestry feat called "Haughty Obstinancy", which I'm pretty sure is a fancy way of saying "Go Eff Yourself" lol.
Giant Language renamed to Jotun. I like it, it's a flavorful change.
Cute symbols for classes!
Class tables take up a column instead of a page width. Which is cool.
They've tied ability score boosts in with the class table (similar to 5e), but because they changed multiclassing, it means you'll get your ability boosts at the expected levels.
Class Feats are listed on a table along with their level pre-requisites. Can't wait to see a sortable table for each class as a tool down the line.
The alchemist gives a starter formula book. A godsend for rapidly getting a hero to the table.
Rage gives a number of temp hp equal to level + con mod, rather than level*con mod wonder how the math will shake out on that.
Dragon Totem is rad, eventually you get so mad you turn into a large dragon.
PF2 explicitly states that Bards replace Verbal, Somatic and Material components with their performance which is cool. It explains their spellcasting in a way 1e did not.
Rangers gain Hunt Target instead of Favored Enemy, the only issue I see is that the target needs to be within 100 feet, which makes their extra tracking powers a bit useless (it's rare foes will escape). I hope that changes to: "Or a target who's name and ancestry are known to you" so a ranger can hunt someone by their liege lord or whatever.
I really wish effects were listed:
Critical Failure
Failure
Success
Critical Success
(Most effective to least effective, easier to track).
There's been multiple instances of secret checks. Which I'm not a fan of as a player or as a GM. It means I need to have a copy of every player's sheet on my end too, and it removes yet another layer of transparency between GM and player. If you remove all the stuff about Secret Checks and instead have a section about metagaming and dramatic irony that would be more productive I think.
The DCs for various things like the Grab Edge action aren't listed in the skills. Again this is moving more of the responsibility of verisimilitude to the GM. Mixed feelings on this, GMs are fallible and if I give one character a DC 20 and a different one a DC 15 on a different turn because I forgot what I set the difficulty at could cause headaches.
Yet the DC for Identifying or learning spells IS listed in the skills chapter. That's weird.
"Ezren is a 5th-level wizard and an expert in Crafting. He has a
Crafting modifier of +10 and the Magical Crafting feat. With 13 days
of downtime ahead of him, he decides to craft bracers of armor 2nd,
a 4th-level item. The GM secretly chooses a DC of 17."
WHY IS THIS A SECRET? This is going to be my biggest bugbear in this playtest I know it. As a GM I hate this s*&$, do I decide the difficulty class based on how likely it is I want an individual character to succeed, or base it on some universal constant or formula. And what does making the DC a secret accomplish in this situation?
Secret rolls for Dwarves and Elves for racial feats they might take. I don't like it. I thought we might be able to move beyond this, because one of the things I liked about Pathfinder is that players knew what to expect of the universe in some sense. But because I'm fallible, and I might forget the difficulty I made up a week ago during the last session of a game there might be weird difficulty spikes and dips for similar situations based on how I'm feeling at the time. Anyway, back to the skills section...
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Why do wands still have charges?
We have Resonance now, if Wands still have charges then we don't need Resonance, we just need item slots.
Charges shouldn't be a thing when players have their own resource for charges. I mean it's not even like you just invest in the wand and can spend the charges. This is some hot nonsense and you need to choose: Resonance or Charges. You can't have both. I'm not tracking two things.
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Okay, I've hit the end of the document. Even though many of the above are complaints, overall I'm actually impressed with the PF2E playtest document. This was just a quick skim, and there are some good Best Practices stuff for GMs and Players, and some interesting rules elements that I can't wait to see at the table.
I especially like how invisible, unseen, concealed, sensed and seen function to clearly define things for the players and the GM. I like that Bards have real flavor for their magic, I'm curious to try out the various hazards and afflictions on my unsuspecting players.
I might go into a more thorough read-through tomorrow, but it's nearly 3 AM in Australia so I gotta hit the hay. Catch you on the messageboards y'all.
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So step two of grokking the system is building a character.
I thought I'd see if I could approximate Hollow Graves, my favorite ethical necromancer.
First major stumbling block:
There is currently no method for a necromancer to create undead or command/control intelligent undead without multiclassing into cleric.
Animate Dead is neither a spell nor a Ritual in the playtest.
It's not like undead could really get out of hand, even if a necromancer controlled 4 undead them they'd need to take actions to command them to do stuff. Although it's not clear if characters can use a single action to order multiple minions to follow one command (say you somehow get lucky enough to cast Bind Undead on 4 skelemans), can you yell: "Get them!" And that counts to all 4, or do you need to spend separate actions for each minion?
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Building another character based on Shepherd Grim my halfling Paladin of Erastil.
1) Making a ranged halfling Paladin is very frustrating in this system.
2) Where are the riding dogs? Yes it makes a difference.
Paizo there is so much to love about this new system, but I am almost immediately running up against the edges of it with characters I could make fairly easily in Pathfinder 1st Edition with just a CRB.
When I play a character against type, it doesn't mean I'm picking Botany as a skill, it means I want to use a character's strengths (for halflings that's ranged combat, and riding dogs) to express the class I'm playing.
Necromancers who can't create skelemans, and Paladins who are bad at range because they must be clad in heavy armor to benefit from their class features are some stumbling blocks I'm having with character generation here.
Building another character based on Shepherd Grim my halfling Paladin of Erastil.
1) Making a ranged halfling Paladin is very frustrating in this system.
2) Where are the riding dogs? Yes it makes a difference.Paizo there is so much to love about this new system, but I am almost immediately running up against the edges of it with characters I could make fairly easily in Pathfinder 1st Edition with just a CRB.
When I play a character against type, it doesn't mean I'm picking Botany as a skill, it means I want to use a character's strengths (for halflings that's ranged combat, and riding dogs) to express the class I'm playing.
Necromancers who can't create skelemans, and Paladins who are bad at range because they must be clad in heavy armor to benefit from their class features are some stumbling blocks I'm having with character generation here.
According to the Animals table on pg. 189, Riding dogs cost 40 sp. :)
ok i was just reading druids... you might as well have precon characters for it in the chapter. sure there are a few other options like ancestry and background, and the metamagic feats and the leaf ones but your giving up the power of your choice
how about we just swallow the pill and have a choice that is an "Archetype" and we can still chose some fun flavor options instead we get to "choose" a class feat that is literally predetermined due to the CLass feat trees.... this is sad. what happens if you are in a situation that your choice is just not useful.. i mean we have all had that issue at some point in time, but at least you could fall back on somehting, but here.. nope sorry... wow.. just bad.. at least from what we had to what we have now
You mean anything like you had to choose a sorcerer's bloodline, and if the first level power isn't useful in a situation, you do something else? Anything like that?
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Just to be clear, my gripes are small.
I love the new action economy (I actually like that minions take actions to control too).
I like that weapons feel distinct from each other.
I like spell heightening.
I like that many options gained stronger flavor tied to them.
I like that representation exists in the game for deaf characters.
I even like that various classes have some measure of niche protection, even ignite it makes it harder to play against stereotype.
I look forward to my actual play experiences.
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...
I even like that various classes have some measure of niche protection, ...
I, on the other hand, hate this, and I hate it because of the sort of content Paizo traditionally releases.
5 years down the road, we are probably going to have 20+ classes and a whole bunch of multiclass options/dedication feats that all let character roles overlap quite a bit, and as a result sooner or later niche protection is going to die in a fire, whether it is the Dev team's intention or not. I would rather toss it from the outset than leave it in as an assumption that CRB classes depend upon for balance when that assumption will almost guaranteed be completely wrong in the long term. We don't need another 3.0/3.5/PF1 rogue situation, where the only justification for the rogue's existence is trap-finding, but a bunch of better classes can do trap finding better while being infinitely less sucktastic.