Character Creation Session and question

[Harakani]

TLDR Question;
Is it okay to use character creation software in the playtest?

We ended up spending our first session on character creation. We had a group of 5 with something like 150 years of communal experience in a lot of different systems. Three of us were PF1 GMs. All of us have run games.

It took all session to make characters. We had some technical issues, no hardcover books, not enough tablets and some socialising. All up we believe it took 2 hours per player.

Feedback so far was that making a character was hard. Upon reflection it was not intrinsically harder than PF1. We put this down to four things
1. New system meant things had to be looked up more (though a number of us had already read the rulebook)
2. Lack of a Reference Document or even hyperlinked PDF made looking things up cumbersome
3. No automated systems to assist with character creation (we have a number of systems to help with PF1).
4. Some of the sheet formatting choices were not great.

I am very interested in using software to assist, but I want to check that this will not invalidate the playtest feedback. If the intention is to find out just how hard it is to make characters without software assistance then we can push through. Note that we have made the first characters.

As an incidental if five players is an issue then I will ask someone to step out. I would prefer not to do so.

[Xelaaredn]

There are rules in the Bestiary for rebalancing encounters, and I'm fairly certain there's more than a few groups already posting about the first section with 7 people, 5 is fine.

Considering one of the things listed on the tracker is how long it took each player to make their character, it should be fairly obvious that they are wanting feedback on how long it takes to sit down and figure all that out.

(Obviously I'm not anyone important.)