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It took me around 30 minutes to figure out what the proficiency bonus was for skills (your level if trained) - that's not really an exaggeration - the problem I think was I was trying to follow the 'build your character' section and it never explained where that info was - so I had to search and kept missing it.
There is no entry in the index for skill proficiency by the way.
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Share the characters?
(I have mine on this alias's profile in a spoiler)
As a bit of an advantage, I already understood the proficiency system. A little table for what's at the top of page 9 to start off the "Skills" section on page 142 would probably help tremendously.
It took me about 30 minutes to bang through a fairly generic human rogue and I promise that I was quickly decisive at every decision point with a crystallized fantasy concept out of the gate. I also skipped buying equipment beyond the sword and armor (the math for purchases would've probably taken another 15 min).
There wasn't really that much of an opportunity for pause. I think the biggest moment of hesitation was when I saw a rogue could maybe go for a maces/clubs vibe or a "cocky threatener" vibe with their 1st class feat.
Outside of that, not much decision-wise to make in terms of options, but it takes a while to look everything up and get it written down.
I'm still trying to figure out what I'd be most looking forward to in the rogue as it levels up. Footpad's Focus at 2nd? Sabotage at 4th? Evasion at 7th? Debilitating Strike at 9th?
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Share the characters?
(I have mine on this alias's profile in a spoiler)
As a bit of an advantage, I already understood the proficiency system. A little table for what's at the top of page 9 to start off the "Skills" section on page 142 would probably help tremendously.
I missed that - I skipped the first few pages and jumped straight into 'step by step build a character' - so I guess my feedback is - it'd be useful to have a blurb about trained and expert in the 'calculate your skill bonus' section - at least so people can jump right in.
/shrug - some of this stuff is only a bother for the first time or two you need to look it up - but for a new person it can make or break the game.
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One of the 1st pages in "Creating Your Character" needs to be a sample character sheet with everything filled out. I ended up going to Paizo's YouTube channel and looking at their "how to create a character" video again.
If I had a sample character sheet, it would have made things easier.
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I'll elaborate further on my above comments - where I sit today is all the campaigns I'm involved in are still running under non-PF-3.5e or PF rules. Nothing in 5e yet.
Ultimately when we sit down with any of these systems, it's because we are looking for a fantasy roleplaying game, which means a bunch of people who are planning to sit at a table and pretend they're really haughty elves or holier-than-thou paladins or feytouched sorcerers.
My impression is when the kinds of players I know get their hands on a fantasy roleplaying game, they flip to the race or class of the kinds of characters they like to play. For particular folks I'm thinking of - that means flipping to bard, ranger and paladin chapters.
If I were to give a player 5 minutes to flip through:
1) the PF2e Playtest Paladin (pg 104-111)
2) the 5e Paladin (pg 82-88)
3) the PF1e Paladin (pg 60-64)I feel like PF2e is sorely lacking on what I'd refer to as marketing "fantastical inspiration" that motivates a prospective player to immediately starting rolling up a character.
This has nothing to do with the underlying mechanics of the system (and the fact that a PF2e paladin who dedicates to cleric or fighter paths could be more interesting than their counterparts in other systems, for example).
Consider a prospective player who is weighing their judgement and enthusiasm of a system solely to fulfill their paladin fantasy based on the Playtest pgs 104-111. There's not enough focused on marketing to them, seeding them with ideas and luring them into the PF2e universe to begin play. There's very little that stokes your imagination within the class section and leaves you staring at your buddy saying "Daaaaamn, dude wait 'til you see what I'm gonna make!"
This is because PF2e spends way too much space on pages on very bland concepts. For paladin, this is:
a) (proficient) access to deific weapon
b) a retributive strike if an ally is hit
c) general education about champion...
I noticed this too. I think that this is a combination of the general feats and skill feats being listed in the class table, and class features being more sparse because they did not want to force build-defining choices. This exacerbates the problem of feeling lame because the class features that you do get are important but bland +1s.
I also feel that some classes' feats are less exciting then others. Compare the paladin to the monk. The paladin's options are all extremely bland, but the monk's choices are awesome:
a) A defensive stance + better jumping
b) a "two handed" unarmed strike and the ability to ignore difficult terrain
c) lame ki strike or weapon proficiency
d) Unlimited use debuff attack
e) a style that gives you a bleed effect on crits and a 10 foot step!!!1!!
f) a meh style.
And the feats get more awesome as you go.
Oh and the first ability you get is a double strike for one action...
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This is the one who breaks the game with clever, essentially min maxing, so he loves systems and he said “sounds like too much work for the fun after”.
I also enjoy min-maxing -- or, both alternatively and in conjunction, playing with a system's options to do strange and wonderful things. In PF2's current state, there's no support for that kind of fun; you get more customization out of any generic MMO's skill trees. There's a lot of work learning the new system, I agree (even if only because you have to flip to twelve different pages to read about any one mechanic in its entirety), but there's actually no payoff for your son, for me, or for others who enjoy that aspect of tabletop RPGs. In that sense, we're going from chess to tic-tac-toe.
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Took me about an hour to make my first Paladin in PF2.
I got access to the playtest book a day and a half before the pdf came out and I've tried several times to make it through the whole thing: as such, I'm 4+ days into making my first character... :P
I'm STILL trying to wade through the collection of feats/powers/ect that are ALL just tossed into a pile with NO separation for level, type, ect making it next to impossible to tell who gets what unless you get the list and then look up EACH and EVERY feat, spell, ect individually out of order: so I have to sort through for ancestry and for skills and for class and for ... and now I'm screaming and pulling out my hair. Let's not even talk about the odd symbols for actions and classes and the random words that may or may not be a keyword and then I'm told there is also color coating I can see and...
I couldn't make something this hard to parse/read if i tried... :P
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Class feats are all organized by level, as are skill feats. Only thing that's all mixed together is "spells", which I agree are a nightmare.
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Class feats are all organized by level, as are skill feats. Only thing that's all mixed together is "spells", which I agree are a nightmare.
There is a list at the start of feats that are by level but with NO info. When you start looking through general feats, it's ALL alphabetical. For instance you go from bargain hunter [2], to battle cry [7] to battle medic [1].
So either you hop back and forth from the list to the individual feat back to the list OR you wander through list with no coordination of similar feats but instead listed in the most unuseful way to find them unless you ALREADY know what you're looking for.
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Some more complex systems require a reading of all the crunch before the game is started. Starfinder was easier because it is not as big a departure from Pathfinder, a game you're used to.
Not to sound cruel, but the whole rulebook should probably be read before starting character creation.
Now does this warrant a reordering of the book so that some things are more clearly spelled out before the creation section? Perhaps. But also maybe take it a little easy on the playtest, organization for new players is actually one of the hardest things to do for a designer.
Think about it. You designed the game. You know precisely how it works. Everything seems logical to you because you made it, it's all so simple in your head. You can't possibly be objective about certain things. That's the whole point of a playtest, to get fresh eyes and see things that you can't see with experienced ones.
Saying things like "saying it is just a playtest is not really good enough" is extremely unduly impatient. Make no mistake, this test is meant to help Paizo make a better product, it's not there for your benefit so you can play the new edition early. If you'd like to participate in making it better, great. If not, it might be prudent to reserve judgement until the product is, you know, finished.
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Can we pick lower level class or racial feats if we dont like the options higher levels give?
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One very definite piece of feedback that I will already give is, Any "Power" type spell that is unique and only available to one specific class should be stripped out of the spell section, and put into a section at the end of the class write-up.
Lay of hands, all the Litanies - Paladin after the feats
All spell-like Ki powers - Monk after the feats and that spell that is a Stance should be printed with the feat that grants it (Yes print it twice, with the feat AND in the Monk spells).
and so on.
I feel like it should just be in the class section if it's limited to a single class - with a reference in the spell and feat section that say 'see page x'.
I don't know precisely why the book feels so jumbled to me - but it does - it was frustrating me making my first character - and that's with 30+ years of experience playing role playing games. (I've played basic, 1e, 2e, 3e, 3.5, pathfinder, 5, gurps, mutants and masterminds, star wars, middle earth, rifts, fate accelerated, and shadowrun (v2).) This isn't a brag list - it's an attempt to show that 'confusion reading the rules' isn't something that's happening because I don't know how to pick up a new system and learn it. There is something fundamentally 'off' about how the book is laid out currently - I just don't feel comfortable putting a finger on it and saying 'THIS'.
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I think that the original poster has brought up a number of good points here.
The book is currently organized to be able to reference things if you already have an idea of what you are looking for. It isn’t nearly as good for someone coming in fresh and trying to understand the system.
It is a very dry, mechanical read. It feels more like a specification than something that ignites the imagination. There are some things that can be done which I think would help quite a bit.
A section for those familiar with RPGs
This should be a quick start for people who have played other RPGs and want to jump into this one. It should give a high level overview of character creation and what ‘knobs to turn’ when making your character.
This section would not assume that the reader is familiar with Pathfinder, but would assume they know general RPG concepts and don’t need dice explained to them. It should point out where they can read a description of the jargon specific to this game.
This section can send people off to different areas of the rules, but it still needs to be careful of how much page flipping it causes.
A better section talking about building the character
This should start out with things that help you decide the A, B, Cs.
It should include the strengths of each of the classes, and the basics of what you can achieve with them. Table 1-1 and 1-2 on pg. 13 is likely supposed to provide this, but I didn’t find it very useful.
Table 1-2 at the very least needs statements like ‘Fighters are the very best at weapons’, ‘Paladins are the very best at armor and have defensive combat abilities to support that’, ‘Monks are the masters at unarmed combat. Some wield mystical powers while others focus on physical combat’ and other such phrases.
The designers intended each class to be the best in one particular area. That should be clearly spelled out in Table 1-2. They need to give people tropes they can latch on to while avoiding poor stereotypes.
Sample character outlines
One of the better things that Starfinder did was the two page spreads for each character class showing the breadth of characters that could be created. It included feat and skill suggestions that helped direct people to what they were looking for.
The feats section would work a lot better if there were these sort of character briefs in each character class. Make it so people can put together a character by copying the elements in one of the outlines.
A section before the classes explaining common elements
It might even be titled something like common elements.
This is where you tell people to look at the class table for when they get general feats, ancestry feats, and some of the other repetitive text that currently exists. It would be a good place to cover proficiency increases and where to look on each class for when those happen.
It would also likely be good to include something here about what can be done to modify some of those elements if the class doesn’t have exactly what they are looking for. Things like feats that would change each type (weapons, armor, saves, skills) of proficiency, a forward reference to multiclassing, etc.
Make it clear what can be customized in the common elements if what is presented in the class isn’t exactly what you wanted.
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Some of the above is already in the rules, just not in a very accessible manner.
Other things I am still looking for. As an example, when can the Rogue improve armor proficiency from Trained to Expert, Master or Legendary in light armor? There are skill increases noted on the tables, but I don’t see a consistent notation for weapon and armor proficiency increases.
The Paladin class has it hidden by calling it Armored Fortitude. It seems to be fixed for them, I’m not sure if their proficiency with the lighter armors ever does improve.
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Why were people trying to insult the OP by pretending that PF2 is 'crunch heavy' and that his kids are just too dumb to get it? What?
PF2 isn't crunch heavy. It just feels, and is, bloated and overcomplicated, and presented in a confusing fashion. If there are less modifiers and tags and different names for the same thing and same names for different things in a splatbook enabled 3.5 than in a playtest document for PF2 then something is really wrong. PF2's CRB is more confusing than the entire Complete Series read as a single block, and it doesn't have enough things in it to make you really excited about what you're doing.
When your big thing is Smite Evil and Lay on Hands and you get a bunch of other, less consequential stuff, you feel good about Smite Evil and Lay on Hands and then think "and to think, there's even more". When there are fifty things presented in a manner that makes them feel equally important then you don't feel very good at all because everything feels trivial, especially if some of them are just straight up mechanically bad and even boring. Who the hell cares about improvising a snare at 18th?
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Still got to read through about half the book, but I'm alright with the layout. The info density seems high but, bar the lack of page references for domains, general/skill feats being placed in alphabetical, and all spells in alphabetical with powers mixed in under the same category, I actually think it's fairly easy to read with a pretty layout.
That said, the last crunchy system I touched and memorised chunks of was Shadowrun 5, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that doing so has given me access to some sort of dread talent.
Can we pick lower level class or racial feats if we dont like the options higher levels give?
That would definitely have to be the case with the ancestry feats, as none of them seem to have a level higher than 5.
But I am pretty sure that the feat levels are intended to be minimum levels. If you couldn't take them at higher levels, there would language like what is given for the Heritage keyword in some of the ancestry feats:
"Ancestry feats that have the heritage trait are feats that your character can select only at 1st level."
Why were people trying to insult the OP by pretending that PF2 is 'crunch heavy' and that his kids are just too dumb to get it? What?
Yup.
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I agree that PF2 playtest CRB reads quite technical and that its organization must be redesigned to ensure fluid character creation
However I feel that comparing it to finished and polished products is not that relevant. It should be more fairly compared to 5ed playtest CRB or Starfinder playtest CRB if such were available
That said, it is useful I think for the devs to know with as much detail as possible what makes the reading experience and the creation process difficult or complicated and what, in your opinion, could be ways to improve it
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Conversely, the basic rules section could go first, but if you’re talking excitement, it’s definitely the worst part. You don’t get someone excited for programming by explaining advanced logic arguments, you show them what that can do. But, for making a character, I almost feel that as what you need to do to know how to really make a character.
This seems familiar. I started building a PF2 character, stopped shortly into it and instead built up a chart of all available actions and how they interacted with one another. There's a few skills with lots of feat support that could be meaningfully built into a character, but many skills seem to be dead ends. I've just started on folding the class feats into the chart. Next, I need to do the same with proficiency growth to see which feats will actually help which classes. Then after that I need to look at specific debuff effects and where those can be generated which will probably include looking at critical specialization effects, weapon types and effects that emulate them.
In the end, when I'm done reformatting all the info, I'm not expecting it to be worth the effort. I'm slowed down a bit now while I look for rules regarding what to do with attacks that don't have the attack descriptor, so it'll take awhile to finish.
I agree that unpacking the rules and formatting them into an "effect first" format would be much better. The game would be much better served by an online resource than a book at this point. You aren't able to read through due to the level of modularity breaking up the reading. It makes for a better game, but it suffers without a quick reference page or being able to endlessly reprint conditions and what not without cost.
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This is extraordinarily simple I think. I'm unsure what players Paizo was trying to appeal to but they made a mistake no matter who it was.
1. If Paizo wanted to draw in new players, they made a mistake. This system, especially with the bloat of feats no nub is going to be happy reading through, is far too complex for newbies to really get into. Even with an experienced DM (of such there are non as of now for PF2) this system is not going to run smooth.
Sure, PF1 with thousands of feats and spells, hundreds of archetypes is far smoother and all those trap options and class imbalances in the Core Rulebook help much! /sarcasm
2. If Paizo wanted to try drawing people away from 5th ed or other games, they made a mistake. Most 5th ed players are happy with the system. I've tried it, it's actually not bad, though I still prefer PF1. No one is going to convert for a system that is this wonkey from a system that is fun, easy and established.
Paizo has stated that drawing people away from 5ed is not their goal. Besides, even if it's isn't, Pathfinder has far better setting/adventure support than 5e will ever have, so that's one draw that remains no matter what.
3. If Paizo wanted to appeal to their primary audience, the PF1 crowd, they made a mistake. You've taken the name of a game We all loved very much, and it's face and slapped it on something not at all like it. Even if we were all expecting a totally new system, its not what most of us expected I think... And it's wearing grandma's clothes! Welcome back to 4th ed, the reason most of the PF1 ppl are here in the first place.
.... Just a thought...
What you call "primary audience" is a dwindling metric of people who are steadily leaving for 5e or other games. The signs are everywhere - the shrinking number of PFS games, the signs of declining sales, the traffic on this very forum (which is a fraction of what it used to be 5 years ago). Heck, Paizo announced several new PF1 books at GenCon and nobody noticed. That's how diminished the community is.
If you want Paizo to keep making PF1 or to slightly update it, you'll end up with Pathfinder gone or relegated to a publishing schedule slower than Starfinder.
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It went well at first, taking her through the various ability bits, the choosing feats for ancestry (elf). Despite the annoyances of jumping back and forth for the feats and overview, then off to spells to learn lay on hands (rather than be written in the class), working out the weapon property options for righteous ally, we were going well until we got to one of the class feat choices, which stated something along the lines of “lay of hands loses the manipulate trait”.
She looked at me and asked “what the hell does that even mean?”. No idea, probably something related to attacks of opportunity was my guess. I wasn’t even sure where to go looking.
She lost interest immediately....
And that, right there, was about the most predictable thing in the world.
"Make the game an engine," I counseled half a year ago; "No, really, it'll be awesome!" I said.
Instead, they threw the game away to make a new game with the same name, in which nobody will have any years of accumulated system mastery to quickly jump-start a campaign and teach a bunch of newbs (including themselves) how to play.
<Picard facepalm meme>
I just can't see this ending well: the announcement of PF2 means that sales of PF1 products will take it in the shorts, and if PF2 goes over like a lead balloon, what does Paizo do then? Double-down and blow-up, or eat crow and shelve PF2, and hope PF1 sales tick up again? Either way, it's going to be unpleasant.
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Here's where PF2e really struggles vs PF1e, 3.5e or 5e. There's too much "foreign stuff" in the way and not enough sensationalizing why your paladin will be so exciting to play.
Grab the 5e handbook and just the way the written word is presented can get you kind of psyched to play a paladin. The way they present the choice of Oaths. Reading flavor text in order like "you can cause spectral vines to spring up and reach for a creature..." just after you read your Tenets of the Ancients. And because there's not all this ugly formatting and keyword baggage, you keep reading about how you can "utter ancient words that are painful for fey and fiends to hear".
Now compare to PF2e...
Deific Weapon : "If your deity's favored weapon is uncommon, you gain access to it..." Yawn.
Retributive Strike : "You are a stalwart protector of those under your charge..." Yawn.
Champion Powers : "Divine power flows through you, and you have learned... Spell points, blah blah." Yawn.
Skill Feats / General Feats / Skill Increases / Ability Boosts / Ancestry Feats / Weapon Expertise / Armored Fortitude ... SUPER YAWN.
All of this. I second ALL of this. There is too much thick terminology and too much scavenger hunting around from definition to definition before you find out what an ability actually does.
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Paizo has stated that drawing people away from 5ed is not their goal.Improving marketshare should be the goal of all companies that move product.
Pathfinder has far better setting/adventure support than 5e will ever have, so that's one draw that remains no matter what.
All that "support" is PF1 product.
Frankly, what Paizo is doing to itself is about the best possible news for Hasbro/WOTC, because the 3e OGL has been their biggest loss of potential review for over a decade. WOTC will never again be as big as they were under 3rd edition & Living Greyhawk, and Paizo & PFS will similarly dwindle by abandoning the time-tested game everyone loves rather than refining it.
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This is extraordinarily simple I think. I'm unsure what players Paizo was trying to appeal to but they made a mistake no matter who it was.
They tried to appeal me. They succeded.
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Paizo has stated that drawing people away from 5ed is not their goal.Improving marketshare should be the goal of all companies that move product.Pathfinder has far better setting/adventure support than 5e will ever have, so that's one draw that remains no matter what.All that "support" is PF1 product.
Frankly, what Paizo is doing to itself is about the best possible news for Hasbro/WOTC, because the 3e OGL has been their biggest loss of potential review for over a decade. WOTC will never again be as big as they were under 3rd edition & Living Greyhawk, and Paizo & PFS will similarly dwindle by abandoning the time-tested game everyone loves rather than refining it.
Who is everyone? How many of them are there? How many were there 10 years ago compared to now? Do you have any, as much as "I talked to the FLGS owner and yeah, he says Pathfinder is going strong" data as to how "everyon" is a number big enough to keep a company growing?
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WOTC will never again be as big as they were under 3rd edition.
5e is the best selling DnD of all time.
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Paizo has stated that drawing people away from 5ed is not their goal.Improving marketshare should be the goal of all companies that move product.Pathfinder has far better setting/adventure support than 5e will ever have, so that's one draw that remains no matter what.All that "support" is PF1 product.
Frankly, what Paizo is doing to itself is about the best possible news for Hasbro/WOTC, because the 3e OGL has been their biggest loss of potential review for over a decade. WOTC will never again be as big as they were under 3rd edition & Living Greyhawk, and Paizo & PFS will similarly dwindle by abandoning the time-tested game everyone loves rather than refining it.
The more my proficiency with PF1 grows, the less fun I have with it because there's just so many things that break on contact. I spend more time planning to avoid those things than I do playing Pathfinder.
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5e is the best selling DnD of all time.
Frankly, what Paizo is doing to itself is about the best possible news for Hasbro/WOTC, because the 3e OGL has been their biggest loss of potential review for over a decade. WOTC will never again be as big as they were under 3rd edition & Living Greyhawk, and Paizo & PFS will similarly dwindle by abandoning the time-tested game everyone loves rather than refining it.
Yeah, back in 2017 5ed PHB sold more than each 3e/3.5e/4e PHB indivdually. So much for "will never be as big again", it already is, if not bigger.
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You don't need to be sorry for not liking a system. No system will please everyone. If, when playtest ends, this is not the system for you, the so be it. You don't have to keep buying Paizo products out of sheer loyalty, you don't owe them a thing. And they don't have to keep doing games exactly as you want forever, they don't owe you a thing either
They sell books. You like, you buy, you dislike, you buy something different.
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Yeah, back in 2017 5ed PHB sold more than each 3e/3.5e/4e PHB indivdually. So much for "will never be as big again", it already is, if not bigger.5e is the best selling DnD of all time.
Frankly, what Paizo is doing to itself is about the best possible news for Hasbro/WOTC, because the 3e OGL has been their biggest loss of potential review for over a decade. WOTC will never again be as big as they were under 3rd edition & Living Greyhawk, and Paizo & PFS will similarly dwindle by abandoning the time-tested game everyone loves rather than refining it.
I don’t see much value in these debates over the various editions’ popularity, but it’s worth noting those were probably nominal sales figures.
(They were from a Hasbro presentation to shareholders so would have been dollar value, not “number of nerds”). He’s looking for a good story to tell - I’d be astonished if he had adjusted for inflation.
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You don't need to be sorry for not liking a system. No system will please everyone. If, when playtest ends, this is not the system for you, the so be it. You don't have to keep buying Paizo products out of sheer loyalty, you don't owe them a thing. And they don't have to keep doing games exactly as you want forever, they don't owe you a thing either
They sell books. You like, you buy, you dislike, you buy something different.
They need to put this on a big gold plaque and post it everywhere.
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I pre-ordered the PF2 set with the module because I was so excited at the idea of a new game!
What I want is for them to make a functional, well balanced, playable fun game.Instead I received this. A way-too-overhauled, overpowered, clunkey videogame in a book.
Forgive me if this is obvious, but you were aware this isn’t the finished product when you bought it, right?
(I’m not criticising your views on whether you like it or not, but I don’t think anyone should have bought it with the expectation that it wouldn’t need serious work).
If they were done, with just a bit of spit and polish required, it would mean they’d left the playtest process too late to be truly valuable for answering “the big questions”.
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It's 2018 and "video game" is still an insult?
Inasmuch as roleplaying games are supposed to be the medium where you're free to interact with the setting however you want and video games remain the medium where you must interact with the game bits exactly in the ways the designer prescribes. Yes.
People want their characters to be able to do what they want without the game censoring them within the bounds of reason and the tolerances of all those at the table. Games that unreasonably restrict what characters can do for reasons that are entirely gamist...yeah that's, if not an insult, a complaint at least
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In that case, Amber, FATE and several RPGs which didn't start off as a wargame (which is about as video gamey as you can get offline) are ---> that way.
D&D in every edition from 3rd on is a terribly rules-heavy wargame with some role-playing bits sprinkled on the top. Heck, 3/3,5 was designed with grid and minis in mind in order to have synergy with DDM and expand into wargaming. The differences between 3ed, 4ed, PF, 5ed and PF2 are insignificant in that regard, they're all basically rulesets for tactical medieval fantasy warfare with varying degrees of non-combat activities governed by rules and the vast majority of such activities left for GM to wing, improvise and make up on the spot. The retro editions were at least quite clear about that.
Which is perfectly fine, I like playing that just as I like Ten Candles or GURPS. But looking at the grand scheme of things fans of PF1 accusing, say, 4e of being video gamey is like fans of Warmachine and Warhammer 40k arguing which of these two is more of a "silly wargame with silly toy miniatures".
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Right now, this game has too many things you have to reference, a crazy amount of things to keep track of even compared to 1E, the layout is terrible, the proficiency system is bland and makes everything samey...the game just feels very poorly conceived overall.
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Well as far as layout goes I suspect that has something to do with it not being the final product. That would be my guess anyways. Still letting them know We don't like the current layout isn't bad. I won't comment on the rest cause frankly its to exhausting and doesn't really get anywhere.
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All of this. I second ALL of this. There is too much thick terminology and too much scavenger hunting around from definition to definition before you find out what an ability actually does.
Omg yes. This book is dry, awkward, terribly organized, and nothing feels interesting or exciting. I swear it's like the writers of PF2E had no idea what makes an RPG fun or appealing.
But then again, they did make Starfinder, which my entire gaming circle rejected utterly.