Hello, I also am a part of the Fear the Boot community as ScoobyThulu.
My wife and I went to one of our LGS to meet with a guy about playing the Playtest. Because why not? I'm not running it and I get to play. He had the book and then the wife goes and buys the Playtest. I was originally opposed to buying a Playtest as it is a Playtest. Anyway...
First impression(s):
The character sheet is ponderous, like filling out a tax return that doubles as the high school ASVAB test.
Not enough space to fill out what you want to fill out. It would be nice if the sheet had a primer (like the pre gens in the PF Boxed Set, great intro set BTW) to explain a few concepts right in front of you.
Such as how the attack "strikes" matrix is spelled out, it looks like the attack stats are one side of the equation and damage on the other. It felt like fill in the blank algebra. "Do the parenthetical first, move to exponents, then multiplacation and division, blahblahblah."
It is a Playtest, few bells and whistles in the actual book. The first part is a numerical ordering of character creation that could use some sidebars to explain new concepts. It's in there but you have to dig for it.
Once I got into the concepts it seems kind of cool.
Resonance:I do not know what to think of this concept. Basically you have to have so much invested in this to use magic items. CHA is definitely no longer a dump stat.
Kind of interesting: Goblins are a character class and for Pathfinder that makes hella sense as goblins are very much the mascot for PF.
Half-orc and half-elf are kind of "sub-classes" of human. That is okay but what about a elf/orc hybrid, I have done that before in games.
Paladins and Rangers no longer get spells at higher levels making spellcasters more special; I haven’t looked at what replaces magic for those classes. I like that idea.
I like the boost based stuff, it puts more people on a more level playing field. I like point based character generation.
By the Horns of the Great Googly Moogly the feats.
The skills are completely reworked, you can be trained, expert, master and legendary and that influences what your roll bonus will be. That seems a lot chunky, don't know how intuitive that sort of thing will be.
Verdict: Undecided. There is a lot of crossing over as to this so you list it here and then fill in a blank here. It’s like the classic Billy comes “straight home” in the Family Circus cartoons.
However.
You guys (and gals) are making enough changes why not really change it and step away from having to OGL with WotC and D&D? Make it your own game altogether.
I am going to play it, I will play anything but as of now I wouldn’t run this with 10 foot pole checking for traps in a 2 in 6 chance.
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The OGL is magic. To step away from it would be to undercut one of the great attractions of the game -- encouraging Third-Party Support.
As for all the changes, the sense I get is that they had some great ideas on how to make the game play in a more dynamic way, with the three-action system, and bardic performances being really modular, and some clarification of conditions. And they tried to balance a few things that were broken, or put limits on stacking stuff in ways that led to imbalance.
All good.
And then they said, "While we're changing that, let's change a ton of stuff no one ever complained about."
Which is why most people can't charge, or wield two weapons in any useful fashion, or take feats to be good at maneuver X, Y, or Z. Or multiclass. Or have a divine grace to protect them from evil, or a holy smite that makes them terrifying against evil-doers.
I really don't understand what problem Resonance is trying to solve.
And finally they thought that strict accounting-style lexicography was superior to natural language, because they wanted to reduce disagreements among gamers and because it would let them fit more content into the same page count, so they stripped out a lot of the charm you'd get from 'normal' writing and instead described stuff in legalese. Lots of tags and traits and such, which works great for the back end code of a video game, but not for the public facing gameplay.
I don't get that second half of the changes.
I agree with some sentiment, why not step away from the OGL.
By that I mean, this game (PF2e) is no different enough from 3.5 D&D I don't think the WoTC OGL really has the weight against it that it used to.
I think they could have it fall under their OWN OGL and be just fine.
There is so little here that I feel is related to the original WotC OGL that I really think that they shouldn't need to print it at the back of the book in that way anymore.
By all means, keep it open with their own OGL for third party support, but I don't think that this version needs to be beholden to the original OGL contract/rules.
And then they said, "While we're changing that, let's change a ton of stuff no one ever complained about."
I'm going to share a story of a conversation I had with a guy who was at Gen Con some years ago. There is a lot to it but I don't want to betray any confidentiality. I live in Indy, the guy is really plugged in to the industry and I don't want a target on his back.
He basically shared that when 4E came out there was a lot of backlash, old news. With that Paizo took up the gauntlet and released Pathfinder. Suddenly the world's original fantasy (or first or whatever) was no longer the best selling RPG. Pathfinder was. In it's at that point 40 (?) year publishing history that had never happened.THIS is NOT edition wanking to be clear.
5E is believed, rightfully so, by industry insiders and fans to be a direct response to the misstep of 4E. I think we can all agree with that, no hate or whatever, it just is what it is. Now, 5E has made D&D (there I said it) to be the #1 selling RPG again AND is becoming something of a cultural zeitgeist.
I believe that PF 2 or Playtest is in direct response to that.
It is a business and I get that. However PF fills a niche for the modern, crunchy gamer. It feels like they are trying to fill that AND be a 5E at the same time. This has the feeling of skipping a 2e and 3 e and 3.5e and going striaght to 4e.
Which is why most people can't charge, or wield two weapons in any useful fashion, or take feats to be good at maneuver X, Y, or Z. Or multiclass. Or have a divine grace to protect them from evil, or a holy smite that makes them terrifying against evil-doers.
But...old-charge is literally just Stride, Strike, Strike, except you can go around obstacles in the way. (This is incredibly important - I cannot count the number of times that's messed up a planned charge, meaning they're stuck too far away instead.)
Two weapons are still completely usable to get a big first attack and more accurate secondaries.Improving maneuvers is literally just increasing athletics proficiencies.
Multiclassing was definitely complained about. I had a Swashbuckler 3/Sorcerer 2 at the time of death who was honestly quite useless for his level. I also have a Mystic Theurge who plays like a Cleric 5/Sorcerer 6. I've also seen a Slayer 5/Shadowdancer 9 who basically was good for being a pile of health and not much more, and would easily lose in a fight to his shadow. The fact that you need to understand the game at a certain level to know what trap options exist and how to avoid them is not a good thing, because it discourages new players.
On the other side of the ballpark, people who dipped Paladin 2 for Divine Grace were also pretty common, and instantly got a portion of an oracle capstone as a result.
And finally they thought that strict accounting-style lexicography was superior to natural language, because they wanted to reduce disagreements among gamers and because it would let them fit more content into the same page count, so they stripped out a lot of the charm you'd get from 'normal' writing and instead described stuff in legalese. Lots of tags and traits and such, which works great for the back end code of a video game, but not for the public facing gameplay.
Let's be fair, part of this is a problem with description - there's no reason the two parts can't coexist. Trying to go full 'normal' writing leads to constant FAQs and arguments about which of the three different interpretations is correct, part of which will vary by table. A clean system is significantly better than having a questionable system that has 'normal' writing.
That doesn't mean the approach can't be improved to smooth things out (I'm especially looking at you, Warded Touch), but it's a significantly stabler system.