Initial Reactions


General Discussion


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Going through the playtest rulebook while jotting down notes and thought I'd post some of my thoughts. Currently just finished reading through the classes section (skimming many class feats) and then jumped ahead to archetypes/multiclassing. I'll post initial thoughts about spells/skills/feats/etc after I actually read them (maybe tomorrow).

General:

Rarity being displayed as just a color isn't good. Not only have some posters mentioned that they are colorblind, but even as a person who isn't I find the differences between common and uncommon options to be easy to miss while quickly going through.

Rarity being applied to languages is great.

Proficiency progression seems a bit off. Skills can get Master at 7th lvl and Legendary at 15th level. Saves seem to have a similar progression in classes that boost that specific save. But spell proficiency doesn't even hit expert until 12th level (shortly before skills hit legendary) and the barbarian doesn't hit expert weapon proficiency until 13th level (when the fighter has a legendary group).

Not only does this feel a bit inconsistent, but thematically saying that a mage can't be considered an expert in magic until 12th level feels wrong & means that the majority of levels only have a difference of trained/untrained when it comes to magic. It also feels wrong that a Cleric/Wizard multiclass who dabbles in magic can get expert magic proficiency at the same level as the main Cleric/Wizard classes, even if they only have the ability to reach master (at 18th level rather than 16th).

Ancestry:

Vision: Kinda dislike the continued theme of "everyone except humans(/halflings) has some type of special vision." I can understand Dwarves having darkvision due to associations with subterranean work/life, but I don't really see why the other races have it or low-light vision. I don't want to return to games where things like torches / other light sources are unnecessary because practically every expanded race has darkvision as a default. It ruins the appeal of expanded vision being special when so many have it.

Classes:

Energy Pools: What is the point of having a consolidated system of spell points when these still exist? Clerics have channel energy, Druids seem to have a special Wild Shape pool, and even Universalist Wizards have a sort of pool being 1 per spell level. Heck, the character sheet at the end of the rulebook doesn't even include a space to record these special pools! It just has spell points, which should really be the only extra pool for class abilities in my opinion. It makes the whole spell point system feel only half-implemented, like the designers were unwilling to break away from the old system we're trying to replace.

Reprinted Feats: After constantly hearing that the CRB has a limited page count, I have to wonder if it is really worth it to reprint certain class feats in their entirety for multiple classes. This is especially true for things like metamagic feats, but I also things like Sudden Charge (+Sudden Leap) being under both Barbarian and Fighter. It'd save space to just put all classes that can take it as a class feat as part of the feat's traits and then just have later class entries refer back to the first printed version.

Barbarian:
Why does Acute Scent (p56) require darkvision and low-light vision? Having a better nose is not reliant on sight, this just unnecessarily punishes certain races (human) who play the class.

Cleric:
Love the Deadly Simplicity feat (p73) improving the damage dice on a deity's favored (simple) weapon. Gives clerics more reason to actually use their deity's weapon (though considering many of my homebrew deities have 2+ favored weapons, I wish the wording for a bit more precise to say that only simple favored weapons are improved).

Hate the way domains are constrained to an initial power and advanced power, cutting off design space to give more abilities later. Even worse, advanced powers can be gained as early as 4th level? While I haven't gone through all the abilities yet due to them being listed in the spell section, this makes me doubt that any are really powerful/special and instead are just petty tricks on the side. Which is exactly what I want to avoid with such a thematic and important feature to the class.

Make domains bigger and more important to Clerics please! At very least, open them up so domains have room to add more powerful feats later - something like the advanced power feat saying you can select an advanced power from your domain as long as your level is at least twice the advanced power's spell level. Don't limit them to just one advanced power equivalent to a 2nd level spell in effect.

Fighter:
Interesting to see the Power Attack is a Fighter-only feat. I have the feeling that if I went through the feats more closely, the new division of feats might have varied effects on play.

Paladin:
Still dislike this being an alignment-restricted class. Considering they get more martial feats/abilities (like being the only class other than Fighter to have Attack of Opportunity as an option), and have access to Cleric Domains, they basically serve the thematic niche of religious warrior (Warpriest) that doesn't focus on spells. Except they then limit that niche to LG-only.

Think the class should specifically say they get proficiency in their deity's favored weapon in the same block as their other class-based proficiencies. Also, instead of having faster weapon proficiency based on a selected group of weapons (like the fighter) - it'd be more thematic and make more sense if they gained that faster weapon proficiency with their deity's favored weapon instead.

Oaths seem to be done well. 2nd level Feat to opt-in and have powerful 14th level feats with a passive effect they can expand into... though it does make me even more bitter that Domains and School Powers are capped at 4th/8th level feats in terms of power.

Detect Evil getting nerfed and becoming an 8th level feat is a great change in my opinion. No more trigger-happy paladins detecting evil on every person they meet so they can get smite off as a surprise round.

Ranger:
Getting faster proficiency with a group of weapons seems to be the only thing replacing combat styles? It's not bad, but it isn't really special other classes do the same and fighters do it better.

Sorcerer:
Eschew Materials really needs to be called out better. After seeing the Wizard had it as a feat, I actually had to scroll back and specifically search before I realized Sorcerers could still do this. Except Sorcerers have the additional word of "usually" added into this ability, meaning Wizards can technically do it better if your GM feels like abusing that wording.

Still feels like a downgrade for Bloodlines to have less powers associated with them compared to PF1. But considering they actually get 3 powers which extend to 10th level strength, they are still far better than Domains/Specialty Schools.

Wizard:
RIP Specialty Wizards. Seriously, getting an extra prepared spell of your school isn't impressive when specialty wizards of multiple schools can prep the exact same spell lists. And Sorcerers cast the same number of spells each day (bloodlines give an extra spell slot per day with no restriction on casting). And Universalists can make up the difference with the ability to drain arcane focus for every spell level in a day.

And as for specialty School Powers? Again limited to 2 and appearing to be more tricks on the side rather than anything defining, though unlike the Cleric there is thankfully at least room in the formatting for expanded feats and options in the future. Though as given, the powers gained from a school are limited to 8th level effects, which while better than Cleric Domains is still not enough in my opinion.

I'd really love to see specialty Wizards actually be masters of their chosen school, but my first impression is that they'll be, once again like PF1, barely distinguishable from any other Wizard. In my opinion, they should at least gain faster spell proficiency progression with their favored school (like fighters with weapon groups) or something to really feel special. As it is, the only class that really cared about schools of magic will probably care even less as universalists become more prominent.

Cavalier:
Ha! I knew that cavaliers would make a good archetype. That said, I wish the order/challenge/banner stuff was in a separate archetype from the mount stuff. If I just want to be part of an order and focus on the challenge ability, then I have to waste a feat slot to get a mount I won't use (especially if it can't follow me in the adventure's terrain).

Not to mention that the prerequisite for Cavalier Dedication is being trained in Nature? That makes sense for a mounted archetype, but again, if I want to focus on the knightly order and challenge ability it makes no sense. I'd say Society would be a better skill for a knightly order considering you need to know about the order's role in society, relation to nobles/king, etc.


I really haven't read any classes much other than Paladin, since that's what I have made for my upcoming game with my friends, But I must say, I absolutely agree with you about the Paladin changes, aside from the alignment restriction.

I must ESPECIALLY agree that the nerfing of detect evil is one of my happiest changes I've noticed thus far.


Charon Onozuka wrote:

Cavalier:

Ha! I knew that cavaliers would make a good archetype. That said, I wish the order/challenge/banner stuff was in a separate archetype from the mount stuff. If I just want to be part of an order and focus on the challenge ability, then I have to waste a feat slot to get a mount I won't use (especially if it can't follow me in the adventure's terrain).

Not to mention that the prerequisite for Cavalier Dedication is being trained in Nature? That makes sense for a mounted archetype, but again, if I want to focus on the knightly order and challenge ability it makes no sense. I'd say Society would be a better skill for a knightly order considering you need to know about the order's role in society, relation to nobles/king, etc.

Agreed with most of your post (I'm still holding a wait and see on specialist wizards, since they do still get 1 extra highest-level spell per day over universalists), but I want to highlight cavalier, especially, since I think it's something I feel will get lower level of response in the playtest, simply due to it not being a core class, but everything you've said here is spot on, in my book. I've long championed the notion that the cavalier is a class that seemed like a collection of mechanics that sort of maybe fit together, but not by necessity, but because each of the separate concepts (Mounted combat, Bestowing teamwork feats, Order/Challenge) is not enough to hold up a class. With archetypes, that is no longer an issue, since they don't need to hold up a class, and it would make perfect sense to separate it out.

At least the dedication leaves an optional 'if the GM allows, you don't have to be stuck with a mount, but can maybe pick up a different animal companion' but even that's not as open as I'd like (though at least I could have an order of the lion cavalier with an actual lion)

Scarab Sages

I think my only beef with the issue of the playtest is the scope of the classes. Too many abilities at high levels are based on having previous abilities, which grants the illusion of complexity without actually providing it. There are so many "Requires X, Y, and Z" abilities that it seems, with the playtest, there are several premade builds that people are expected to play rather than customize characters. (Druids have this problem in particular). I get that the playtest isn't the full scope of the final, but I feel like from a design perspective some of the narrow abilities may need to be opened up.

Also, Magical Striker looks WEAK. I would much prefer something like the Starfinder version that let you expend a spell slot to boost your attacks for a round. I get that they're trying to tone down the math, but you've got all these keywords! Play with them! Where's my higher level version that adds elemental keywords to the attack? You could build a whole class-feat tree and even archetype, around just this one ability. It would make a lot of the magus players happy. :P


Still making my way through the CRB while tracking what I'll need to know / update to complete my custom character sheet. Got through the Skills, Feats, Gear, and Equipment sections while reviewing a few parts of the Classes section.

Wizard:
Looking back, I realized there are only 2 feats which interact with the Wizard's arcane focus, and one is a variation of "get extra uses." Maybe I was mistaken, but I kinda assumed that there was going to be a bit more to the arcane focus mechanic this time around. After all, the only things giving the PF Wizard flavor beyond "most generic caster" are their arcane focus and specialty schools, and yet both seem to be even less influential now. The arcane focus isn't even a unique item anymore, but rather whatever you feel like at the start of the day (which means same meta of cheapest ring so you never risk getting it disarmed).

Suggestion: Give Wizards something like the Cleric's Emblazon Symbol feat to turn an item into their arcane focus beyond just saying "this is my focus now" & have more wizard feats that interact with and/or require the arcane focus. Make it an actual class feature rather than an afterthought, as the current writing might as well say that Wizards can just use Drain Arcane Focus as an innate ability without needing an item.

And speaking of schools being less influential, I realized that Universalists can take a feat (p140 Universal Versatility) which not only lets them steal the 1st level school powers from specialty Wizards, but can even change them around during the day. So the ONLY unique power to a specialist wizard is the optional 8th level feat. That's... utterly pathetic. Heck, a Universalist with this feat actually becomes better at using the 1st level specialty school power than the actual specialist because they can swap it around as needed.

Skills:

I like the table for skills with their untrained and trained uses, but I notice that some skills simply do not have any trained uses. This feels wrong, and makes me wonder if it'll make those skills inherently less valuable in the future since everyone has access to all of their abilities regardless of training.

Considering that all actions/feats/etc. have a box for traits now, I feel that "trained" should just be listed as a trait on the action rather than creating separating headings between each set of untrained/trained actions within a skill. (And come to think of it, traits seem like the perfect place to put non-common rarities too, rather than relying on colors)

I am really liking the added depth of having critical success and critical failures on skills. Though I'll have to wait and see how effective Assurance is for crafting, since it'd make no sense for a master craftsman to fail a common job 5% of the time.

Arcana's Recall Knowledge is what is used to remember things about Alchemy? I thought we were trying to separate the two from each other. It'd make more sense to me if recalling information about Alchemy was an untrained use of the Craft skill, to be it alongside the trained use of Craft to Identify Alchemy.

The Identify Magic action seems to be the exact same for all 4 tradition's skills. It'd be nice if it got some type of bonus regarding the identification of magic related to the skill used.

The critical success for High Jump feels off, as you increase a vertical jump from 5ft to only 8ft. Considering all boxes in pathfinder are measured in increments of 5ft, it’d make more sense if high jump increased the distance to 10ft rather than an odd +3ft.

Not sure yet how I feel about Perception replacing the uses of Sense Motive. Social skills are one of the few things I’m cautious about simplifying, since social encounters already had much less focus in rules when compared to combat.

Noticed that the only restriction on repeated uses of Demoralize seems to be during a crit fail? I’d at least like to see a normal failure either give a penalty on further uses of Demoralize that round (or 1min), or restrict another use on the same target until the following round. As it is, I can imagine an Intimidate build attempting to spam demoralize in attempts to get the crit success of inflicting the fleeing condition.

Notice that there seems to be a lot of “GM determines the DC,” and “GM may require higher proficiency for certain uses,” written into the skills. It would be nice to have some more solid examples to establish a base expectation which the GM can them modify based on circumstances.

Overall, I do like the role of proficiency on skills having more effects than just +1s, being a prerequisite for certain skill feats and being needed for certain uses of the skill.

General/Skill Feats:

While I like having a nice reference chart to start the section, said chart really needs to include page number references to make it easier to find things.

General feats seem to be less numerous than I’d hope, but that’s probably the result of having less general feats overall and many things that would’ve been general now moved into class and/or skill feats.

The level requirements of feats seem to be a bit flat. Level 2 if it requires Expert proficiency, level 7 if requires Master proficiency, level 15 if it requires Legendary proficiency, and level 1 otherwise. Unsure if this is a good change or not, as it seems a bit jarring coming from PF1.

General feats seem to only have a single level 7 feat and some skills don’t seem to have higher level feats of their own. Ideally, I’d like to see every skill have at least 1 Master and 1 Legendary proficiency feat at base, with room to expand into more later. Otherwise, I feel that certain skills will be devalued as not having high proficiency options – meaning the only benefit of higher proficiency is the +1s. I am very against this being the case, as in my opinion Legendary proficiency needs to be worth more than just a +2 above Expert, or else there isn’t much point in having proficiency in the first place.

Adopted Ancestry (p 161): While I love the theming of this feat, it seems to devalue the human race even more since none of their ancestry feats would be reliant on physiology not possessed by every other playable race.

Arcane Sense (p 162): Okay, I LOVE this feat. I had houseruled similar as an innate ability for any caster in my home games, but I am okay with it being a level 1 skill feat. That being said, I worry that the feat seems to be explicitly for non-casters, since a caster spamming the cantrip is better. Also, the flavor of the feat seems to conflict with the mechanics a bit, “you sense the presence of magic instinctively” vs. “you must spend 2 casting actions (verbal, somatic) to ping the area around you.” Perhaps the feat could be made to only take a single focus action (or even free/passive) to better align with the theme, be made into something you can do stealthily, and make it worthwhile for casters to pick up as well?

Assurance (p 162) being a skill feat rather than a general rule feels weird, but I’ll probably get used to it.

Battle Medic (p 162) seems to be worded in such a way that having a higher proficiency means that you could fail to do anything if you attempt a better check, but fail the higher DC even if you would have passed the trained DC. I’d rather have multiple grades of DC which just improve the healing if you have enough proficiency for that effect, so that a legendary medic doesn’t completely fail when they get a 29 on their check. Also, it seems like it shouldn’t be limited to only one use per target per day. Maybe a restriction of they have to get wounded again before it can be used a second time? Or have the healing be less effective the 2+ times it is used within the day? Because the current wording makes me imagine the following situation:

Barbarian: “Doc, patch me up!”
Doc: “Sorry, I already bound your wounds today.”
Barbarian: “But I just got stabbed again! Surely you can bind the new wound that’s bleeding everywhere?”
Doc: “Nope, everyone knows gauze stops working for 24hrs after it is used once. Only magic can heal you now.”
Barbarian: “But… but I’m superstitious! I hate magic!”
Doc: “Then drink a magic potion or something, mundane healing can’t help you anymore.”

Recognize Spell (p 169): I can get behind this being a skill feat now, but using up your reaction is terrible. It should be a free action in my opinion, so that you can use your reaction to actually respond to the spell if applicable. And the horror of the GM having to ask for 4 different bonuses from a character if they don’t want to reveal what tradition the spell is from. While I like the theming of only being able to identify spells related to tradition’s skill, it looks like running this will be a mess in practice.

Spell Thievery (p 171): Dang this is cool. I’m not sure if I’ll ever see it happen since stealing the scroll / spellbook would probably be easier in most situations, but the concept is awesome and I want to try it.

Equipment:

I like the in-universe description for Items having level. It still feels a bit gamey, but it helps.

Coin Bulk seems easy enough to understand/track. My group always had problems trying to remember/figure out how much coins weighed in PF1 and commonly threw away those rules as a result.

Only 1 Dent to break most items? On one hand, I like the simplicity of this. On the other hand, I worry that it will make destroying some things too easy (like doors, because what Barbarian uses the doorknob when they have a Greataxe?). Also Shields, because I worry that there are too many punishing taxes on shield use to make it appealing to players. Yeah, shields realistically break with use, but so does armor, weapons, and just about everything else. Most groups hate the idea of having to track, maintain, and replace all their gear - especially with the dreaded D&D/PF economy making high level items nearly impossible to replace without gimping a character’s wealth progression.

Armor / Shield proficiency appears to only determine bonus and having you use the lower of the two if you have a shield raised. Weapons appear to be basically the same. Dislike. I’ve already said that if proficiency doesn’t give more than +1s, then it is useless as a system and should be removed. Skills did it well enough, there should similar things attached to armor, shields, and weapons as well.

My opinion: Higher Armor proficiency should at least do things like lower the check penalty, lower bulk when worn, and maybe have legendary let you just ignore the speed penalty (you are so used to wearing armor that it doesn’t limit you). As for weapons, I’d remove critical specializations from ancestry/class and turn it into an ability for anyone with Master proficiency in Weapons. As for Legendary, there probably wouldn’t be room for this in CRB, but I’d like to see special weapon techniques or something that was limited to legendary status.

Armor traits seem a bit lacking. They were advertised as a way to help avoid the problem of “best armor for each category,” but I’m not sure there are enough to fully accomplish this, especially if more armor is included in the future. That said, it does seem to have more tradeoffs included compared to PF1, but that may partially be because the armor list seems fairly small.

Shields… only have Hardness of 3-5? I’m having trouble imagining shields lasting a single combat, even at 1st level. Personally, I’d jack the price of steel shields up and give them more hardness so that a goblin with a stick can’t easily break them with 1-2 decent hits. Alternatively, special rules allowing shields to take more dents by default would help a lot. I do not want 2 handed weapon supremacy to be a thing again, but what I’ve seen of shields so far doesn’t inspire me to think that’ll change.

Volley seems to be a nerf for longbows to make shortbows actually have a niche? Not sure what I make of it, but it is interesting.

Saying it again, but I love the application of rarity with having uncommon weapons. That being said, since there aren’t common exotic weapons, I wonder if the exotic tag could just be removed in favor of just making weapons uncommon or even rare.

Gear:

Sad to see there doesn’t seem to be any mention of a distinction between having an item be worn, ready, or stowed like the separation shown in the previewed pregen characters. Something like “ready items need a worn item to carry them in an accessible way (sheath, pouch, etc.) and take 1 action to retrieve, while stowed items are less accessible (backpack, satchel, etc.) and take 2 actions to retrieve.” This seems to be implied with the changing equipment chart, but clarifying it by giving an official status to Ready/Stowed categories of items would be nice.

Formula Books and Spell Books take 1 Bulk? These seem like items which would only be Light Bulk in my opinion.

As someone who actually owns lockpicks (don’t worry, they’re legal in my state), I kinda wonder what the huge difference in price between the thieves tools set and replacement picks is for. You only really need a torque wrench, a couple picks, and maybe a couple rakes if you want to pick a lock. As for the picks, outside of improvised/poor quality picks or untrained use (which isn’t even possible in this system), these should not be breaking when you’re dealing with a lock.

Formulas: So it looks like these are applied to more than just alchemy, and actually include mundane and magic crafting? I LOVE this. Craft Wondrous Item in PF1 was OP partially because it gave PCs access to crafting nearly everything under the sun, especially when new books kept adding items for them to craft at a whim. Now it seems like this will give the GM some level of control as to what formulas can be found/purchased in a settlement, especially when combined with item level and rarity. That being said, I think that Reverse-Engineering a formula should be something that is limited to Expert or even Master level proficiency in Crafting.

Lodging, meals, and especially transportation still seem to be ridiculously cheap. Cost of Living looks better, though I really which there was more elaboration on what qualifies as “Subsistence, Comfortable, Fine, and Extravagant” and maybe included some mechanics.

Renting/Purchasing animals also looks to be not too expensive. That said, I love the change to barding considering it always seemed like abuse to stack heavy armor levels of barding onto a creature which already had high natural armor (looks at the druid).

Still like item quality, though I don’t see the increase to hardness being enough to make shields viable by the time you can get them.

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