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I'm sorry but I heavily disliked almost everything that I read.
All feats, be they general, class, or skill, are very underwhelming, it seems Paizo let the Nerf Hammer completely loose. I can only specialize to legendary into three skills, but it seems Paizo determined that the skills I like aren't worth it, so they get only one or two skill feats that I can select, despite my desire to specialize in them, but skills like Athletics, Acrobatics, and Society get a ton of skill feats. I can't craft magic items using Arcana (1ed's Spellcraft) anymore, so I'm forced to invest in Crafting instead of a more flavourful skill that I'm actually interested in. Lore skills outside Arcana, Nature, Religion, and Occultism are mechanically unatractive despite me wanting to invest in them because of the flavour, why do I have to be punished for wanting to become Legendary in Lore: Planes? If I want to focus in one Lore skill I have to say goodbye to a whole third of all my skill advancement, and as much as I love being the knowledgeable guy it is just too much investment for little return, it's much more advantageous to just have it Trained, after all, being Legendary at it is numerically just three points more. As a matter of fact, I'm hard pressed to find something good about even Arcana, Nature, Occultism, and Religion, Nature being the only one with more than one skill feat. Still on skills, they said during the playtest previews that they were augmenting the number of skills the classes get, citing the Fighter going from 2 + Int to 3 + Int, but they actually reduced the number of skills the Alchemist gets, and the Wizard stayed the same. Also, way to dump Int right? It has no bearing on skills being 1st level, what a waste.
Zero organization, why aren't wizard spells at least organized into Schools of Magic?? That was a flaw of 1ed's supplements in relation to the Core Rulebook, and they made it worse by eliminating the short preview phrase of the spell. Why didn't they put the spell's spell list in its description?? I have to keep going back to the lists to see where they belong to, it's very bad. Who had the brilliant idea of putting the description of powers mixed with the descriptions of spells? That was awful, I have to keep jumping up and down the book to see what my class does. Turning everything into spells just to clarify 1ed's SLAs and Su abilities is bland and boring, just like the gamey term Spell Points, and as pointed out above it screwed the book's organization.
Not only that, now domains and bloodline abilities not only have been reduced but have become just spells, and nothing more, No longer will we get passive domain and bloodline abilities, like the super flavourful Woodland Stride, that now has become a limited Spell Point spending power/spell. Making the Bard an occult spellcaster is just a forced excuse to have the "occult" concept in the game from the get-go in the Core Rulebook. And what's even the difference from Arcane and Occult magic? Why should there be such a difference?? At least with the psychic classes it was a little more fleshed out, but this is just lazy and forced. Why aren't sorcerers arcane spellcasters by default? It's horrible, sorcerers should be the masters of dramatic fireball-slinging spellcasting just like wizards, not of Divine magic, for instance. I mean, I love for them to get spells from other lists based on their bloodline, but to change the whole spell list?? No! It should be arcane just like 1ed, even though I think they should definitely get more spells from other lists than they did in 1ed. If anything, changing their list but reducing their bloodline abilities is less flavourful, so is having class feats that focus on their list instead of focusing on the actual bloodline, damn it.
NASS (Non-Automatically Scaling Spells) is a needless bog of boring choices, I don't want to choose at which level I wanna cast the spell, I just want to cast it. And NASS also had a terrible effect on the sorcerer, because it either makes spontaneous casters too powerful or too weak, in the end the playtest design chose the second option, where the class has to give up one of its known spells for each version of the spell the character wants to pick, automatically scaling two known spells being an ineffective and lazy fix.
They murdered some spells, like Haste and Glitterdust, instead of just making them higher level if they felt they were too powerful in 1ed. 10th level spells are a complete joke, they are glorified 9th level spells that were actually nerfed in relation to their 1ed version, and on top of that you must spend your capstone feat to get them, which allows you to choose TWO from a incredibly long list of THREE. Metamagic feats are few and far between, and although I like the "add one action" mechanic, they are very underwhelming, just like I said of the other feats.
Familiars actually got weaker and less customizable, which is crazy. I'm not saying I wanted them to be combat animals (that's already the role of animal companions), but in 1ed. I wanted to at least get to choose some extra feats for them as we level up, now that's not even in the agenda anymore to save familiars.
Ancestries are just sad, you get minimal physiological traits from your ancestry and then ONE ancestry feat. The idea of getting ancestry-related abilities for free as we level up and not just at 1st level is great, however it becomes completely void if we don't get the normal racial abilities we got at 1st level in 1ed.
Resonance is another joke, they said that resonance was supposed to be a single system to keep track of magic item uses, and yet they didn't get rid of the old systems as well, so I have to spend 1 resonance and 1 charge to activate staffs and wands?? Great Corellon! It should be either one or the other. Also, they want to make the game more streamlined for new players, but having to spend 1 Resonance to activate a one use item, like a potion, is one of the most counter-intuitive things I've ever saw in an RPG
Retraining as part of the core rules is nice, except they aren't really much in the way of rules, since they don't assert how much money you have to spend to retrain a certain ability, only time, and barely.
I think the playtest has some great ideas, like the way encounters are put together, using more silver pieces at the begining, xp awarding, poisons, traps, and other hazards being actually meaningful and not trivial, creating new monsters faster, skill feats if all the skills got the proper treatment they deserve, etc. but its content is awful.
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Yeah, I can be long winded, but dang. I got lost very quickly in trying to read anything constructive in what starts off as a "I don't like it, I'll never play it" feel of post.
Yeah, I can be long winded, but dang. I got lost very quickly in trying to read anything constructive in what starts off as a "I don't like it, I'll never play it" feel of post.
Sorry, fixed that, it's because I started writing about 2nd edition in a comment section and decided to recycle the text so I could use it here. Also, I will DM it to two to three parties in the sheer hope of providing feedback to avert the catastrophe of this playtest.
While I'm no a fan of PF2, I feel some of these critiques are a bit unfair:
Since, as you say, most Feats are underwhelming, who cares if spending them on a particular item is, effectively, mandatory?
Likewise, since Skills scale automatically now, there's no reason to use Skill Increases unless you need to qualify for a Skill Feat so using them on a Skill you selected for flavour is just silly.
Individual abilities getting weaker all around is probably required in light of the stated design priority of increasing overall competency of starting PCs.
Well that's because I actually like the Skill Feat mechanic very much, even if the feats are underwhelming they can still be fixed, what bummed me out was that really don't have the options (Skill Feats) necessary to invest in the skills I like. So really wouldn't need to get Arcana to Legendary, because as I said only one skill feat available for it, and as you pointed out no need for that. But the thing is I want to get Arcana to Legendary, and I want some cool skill feats to go with it, but nope, we don't get any of that.
As for the weak abilities, well I much prefer to be a weaker starting PC and get super awesomely heroic and powerful at later levels than this dragged down progression that feels like you're always at starting levels.
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NetoD20, this thread has some tips about how you can provide your feedback in a way that's more useful to Paizo and to the community.
