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2) Being able to run a game with coinflips rather than dice rolls rather invalidates the rest of the design. I can very easily run an entire campaign and fairly reliably never need stats for monsters. You rolled over an 11? You definitely hit. You rolled under a 9? You missed. In that wiggle-room range? Look at the situation and adjudicate. But I don't understand why we need statblocks for monsters when this is the apparent design goal.
This is the absolute killer for me I haven’t seen it expressed as well as this before.
Also +-10 seems fairly arbitrary.
It's based around the math which is designed to require an 11+ to succeed on most appropriate level rolls. Using that as a gauge means that if buffing or circumstance can lower it by 2, you essentially crit on 19 or 20. If buffing or circumstance can lower it by 3, you crit on 18 to 20. But usually it won't come into play much... for PCs. For monsters it'll come up pretty regularly, since they nearly always have better bonuses than a PC.
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Likes
- the stat generation approach is fairly interesting (though I wouldn't have personally gone with keeping racial bonuses a thing, genetically smarter X still gives me the wiggins, now matter how you dress it up. Yes, even if X is 'elf.') Downside is the current set up really lends itself to min/maxing and nothing else.
- condensing magic items bonuses a little (armor affecting saves)
- clear advancement tables are really clear on what you get when
Dislikes
- the math. It 'works' but its really constrained and makes everything uninteresting and fairly deterministic. Crits factor in here too, and with spells the progression might as well be almost-never crit fail, failure, minor failure and ultra rare basic success.
- the action system. Sorry, three actions doesn't matter to me, it would have been the same with two or four. The problem is it's fiddly and very arbitrary on what is/isn't an 'action' (see changing/releasing grips). Or 'multiple actions' and it all seems very independent on what they do, or how much time they would take- it's all very gamey. (And some of it pure legacy for some of the single action spells). Oh, and keeping iterative attack penalties around in a new and more terrible form.
- Most character creation choices, including ancestry, skill feats, most general feats and far too many class feats. They're irrelevant junk/trash. Skill feats are the worst, for constraining what people can do and making things impossible if you haven't filled out your TEML report and checked the right feat box at the right level.
I could list several more dislikes (the trivial nature of bonuses and penalties, and the annoyance in tracking them all, resonance, your weapon matters more than you (damage dice edition)), but i ran out of three.
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I am not seeing the AD&D vibe, at all, would love that, where what are you seeing that, and what makes you feel this way?Likes
1) I like that the monsters have an AD&D vibe to them. It feels like they're creatures you can interact with, not just punching bags to hit or stat blocks designed to satisfy someone's love for consistency.
They aren't as simple as the AD&D monsters, but they feel more naturalistic, like if Ptolemy made the Bestiary. They feel like monsters, not just stat blocks. They can represent different kinds of threats by their mythological powers, and "solving" them is the best way to beat them: understanding their weaknesses or knowing what kind of danger they can be to the party.
But that's just my early impressions.
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Right on, but what exactly makes you feel that way, over, let's say, 3rd Ed/PF1 monsters? Why do they feel like monsters, not stat-blocks, to you? Not sure what mythological powers means, in this context, and "solving" them.
In 3ed, I don't like how monster creation is defined so heavily by what monster type a creature is, by its size, and other assumptions that don't always align with mythological creatures. Also, the amount of spells and listed skills seem to be significantly smaller, and more relevant to the creature (Do I need to know that a Balor has a +2 bonus to using scrolls over other magic items for Use Magic Device?).
Experiencing the elementals in PF2, each element feels more different from each other, with larger differences of defenses and offenses to showcase their different roles. Browsing my 3ed Monster Manual, I see that the elementals have very similar defenses and offenses, because they're being calculated through a rote formula where individuality has to be forced.
For statistical purposes here's my 3+/3-.
Liked:
1. Yes, the action system is better than PF1. Even if it looks like it contributes to swarming death it's simpler and better.
2. Multiclassing via feats. It's done well enough to be an improvement.
3. Struggling here. Uh, Crafting requiring formulas is probably a better thing than the wide-open crafting of the RAW in PF1.
Disliked:
1. Crits on +/- 10. It's simple but it contributes to the push to optimisation which push is bad as well as to accidental TPKs. Two strong negatives makes this mechanic an overall negative to the game.
2. Overnerfed spells. Bad.
3. Resonance. If it replaced uses/day, charges or something it'd have a place. As additional complexity which hurts several character types too it should be removed or changed beyond recognition IMO.
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It's based around the math which is designed to require an 11+ to succeed on most appropriate level rolls. Using that as a gauge means that if buffing or circumstance can lower it by 2, you essentially crit on 19 or 20. If buffing or circumstance can lower it by 3, you crit on 18 to 20. But usually it won't come into play much... for PCs. For monsters it'll come up pretty regularly, since they nearly always have better bonuses than a PC.Also +-10 seems fairly arbitrary.
Degrees of success and failure are a thing I generally like. Rolled really well? You blew them away.
However, they tend to be troublesome -- especially for failure, or success by monsters -- with a linear system like d20. It makes critical successes and failures far too common. The "better success for each +5 you succeed by" that shows up with things like Diplomacy in PF1 work just fine, but too-common critical failures, unless your skill is horrible, make a game frustrating.
In a system with a different dice mechanic, this makes more sense. Consider GURPS' 3d6, or Fudge and FATE's 4dF. These are on bell curves. The chances of rolling a flat critical failure are a lot smaller -- just under 2%, compared to Pathfinder's 5%. (And, there, if your skill is high enough, it's down to less than half a percent, which is qualitatively along the lines of "if you would have succeeded on a nat 1, you only regular fail.) GURPS also has a "if you fail by more than 10, you critically fail". However, that's only very rarely going to com into play, and only when you're heavily penalized on the skill roll. It will come into play far more often with a linear system like d20. Each ±1 in a system like that adds 5% to the chance of critical failure. With a bell curve, it adds more and more as things get worse and worse, but there's a limit to how much it can ever be.
I really think that Pathfinder 2 should completely ditch the critical failure rules. Pathfinder 1 did just fine without them. PF2 is going to feel very frustrating (especially, as many people have pointed out by now, with things like lockpicking) with them.
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One additional positive I'd like to add to my list is combat length. I've noticed after doing Part 3 of Doomsday Dawn, and also the previous ones, that combat moves at a pretty good clip. Even when we were getting stomped in part 2, each round wasn't taking forever. There probably were too many fights, but that's a different issue. It can get bogged down by requiring rule lookups or when monsters use abilities to avoid facing us head-on (like with flying or Darkness), but otherwise it tends to move faster. I'm really curious to see if this will hold up at high levels. In PF1, things can take a long time. We'd have fights that rarely went more than three or four rounds, but took like two hours to do. So far, PF2 seems to have more rounds, but less real-world time. Which in my mind is the best of both worlds. Because it's not turning into a real-world slog and I'm getting to have turns and interact with the game more than just waiting for my turn to show up for a long time. I'm not entirely certain why things feel faster, but they do. There was a concern that the three actions might slow things down, but they don't. They might even contribute to the flow.
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Likes:
1. Multiclassing/archetypes this is a better system in general. It has a few problems like working as a feat prerequisite for normalish feats and coming on to late.
2. Degrees of success and failure
3. skill and combat feats not competing for the same feat resource
Dislikes:
1. Class and level restricted feat selection. It's too close to pregen characters for my tastes
2. Everything to do with magic and spells, too weak, too scarce, too short, too boring, too unreliable.
3. The coin flip. Inability to perform a role reliably/too many wasted turns.
There's plenty more of both, but I think that's the top. Rknop has me thinking this system wouldn't look too bad with 3d6 though.
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Likes:
1) Action system
2) Removing the benefit of dumping ability scores
3) More sorcerer options with non-arcane spells (I like the concept but it's not been well executed)
Dislikes (couldn't restrict myself to just 3):
1) Resonance
2) Goblins as core race (enhanced by having a goblin as the iconic alchemist)
3) +1/level approach
4) Shield system (feels very, very videogame-like to me)
5) Claiming that it's an "evolution" when it's not
Okay, so I haven't gotten to actually play yet (I'm signed up for part two of the gameday), but I've been not only playing, but also designing for many years,
Likes,
1) I love the formatting of the book. Not the overall layout, but the small stuff, like the icons, various headers, color coding, shading, etc.
2) 3 action. An AP system would be better in my opinion, but this is like a limited form of it which is still an improvement.
Hates,
A) Strict boardgaminess. 1e and dnd 3.x before it were much more versatile in terms of playstyle. 3.x was clearly, and explicitly, designed more as a toolset for the gm use and not use as needed for the campaign. That allowed a great deal of variety in the playstyles that could easily make use of the rules. The majority of complaints about 3.x stemmed from people treating the rules too much like golden handcuffs, though I suspect some element of human nature is to blame for that.
This playtest however was clearly designed to be played like some sort of boardgame which makes other playstyles much harder, maybe not impossible but harder none the less.
B) Balancing magic. One of 3.x's true problems (though not as big as many make it out to be) was the balance of magic vs everything else.
Magic was balanced in 3.x by treating it as a limited per day resource, and that was singularly it's biggest problem, and also one aspect that 2e still has not fixed.
Magic should be balanced to be the wizard's sword, the thing the wizard does every round, all day every day. That means magic's main advantage should be versatility and utility.
C) No longer simulationist. I do not mean simulationist as in realism, but rather simulationist in the sense that numbers tie directly to the world rather than abstract concepts. There are still a few spots of this left (i.e. jump checks), but for the most part the numbers mean abstract things.
For example, in 3.x, the world milieu could be directly discussed via numbers, and then translation would be from/into the abstract metagame things such as success/failure as needed, with a handful of exceptions. But 2e goes the opposite, with abstract metagame things like success/failure being directly discussed with numbers and then needing translation to/from world milieu.
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First off I have only played a little but hopefully a few games in the next month or two. Gencon was nice and GM was pretty good. I am hopeful with this edition but it does need some work and they seem to have gone overboard with the nerf bat a bit on things.
LOVE
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1) 3 actions is good. Needs more reactions for general use (general access for everybody) and few more specific fighter, rogue, monk, ranger, paladin uses but it is a start.
2) More prevalent use\access for Animal Companions\Pets and Familiars - still needs more work and refinement on the positive side but moving in the right direction although they were OVER nerfed. Give familiars a few choices like Eidolons had (maybe)(+2 to one stat, cast a cantrip as per master ability\effect at will, add an extra reaction ability to pet as it advances, add an extra feat from GENERAL list as it advances, et cetera)
3) Weapon Traits - although Monks need more monk weapons. Hooked Swords, Butterfly knives, DOUBLE WIELDING SAI's ( TWIN )!!! (They are MADE to be dual wielded after all - no brainer here).
HATE
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1) Hate how over nerfed and simplified Pets\Animal Companions and Familiars have become. PLEASE make them more like PF 1st Edition in customization and allow them access to reactions(add more monster\animal reactions available to your pets and companions), actions like players and feats and even reactions just for the animals. There are a few but please allow more and specific ones available. Add MORE "builds" (Companion Types) and "Abilities" for them. Familiars seem really weak right now. Double the number of Master and Familiar Abilities to select from - PLEASE. Pets and Familiars also need gear access to scale with the party otherwise they will fall far behind and be completely useless in 7th+ lvl play. Seriously!! Figure something out!
2) Autoscaling bonuses!!!! ..NO.. !!!!
3) The amount of OVERLAP between spells lists - dear god cut down on the amount of overlap. I would eliminate no less than 20 spells of overlap to make the lists more unique. it REALLY feels like they simply padded the lists with overlap to make up for lack of unique spells and give each list a big enough size. Please just create new\more spells to fill the gaps. Don't put so many spells on 2 or 3 or even all 4 lists. I understand a few spells MAY be listed twice or possibly 3 times but seriously seems like every 5th or 6th spell is on multiple lists (usually 3 if not all 4). I realize some of this may be to limit the need for items and scrolls as you are trying to drive down the item dependency but still! Just eliminate a FEW ...... (just a few examples below!)
Air Bubble on 3 of 4 lists?? (Should be Arcane and Occult)
Alarm 4 for 4?? (Should be 2 Arcane and Occult)
Darkness 4 for 4?? (Should be 2 Arcane and Occult)
Mending 4 of 4?? (Should be 2 Arcane and Occult)
Ray of Enfeeblement 3 of 4?? (Should be 2 Arcane and Occult)
Ventriloquism 4 for 4?? (Should be 2 Occult and Primal)
See Invisable on 3 of 4?? (Should be 2 Arcane and Occult)
Water Walk 3 of 4?? (Should be Primal and Occult)
Remove Fear 3 of 4?? (Should be Divine and Primal)
4) Ancestries are weak and need an extra bit of punch like an extra feat at 1st level - minimum and maybe one or two more unique abilities per ancestry - be creative!!
(Sample )Gnome Ancestry Feat - First World Attraction - gain one extra perk or feat for your Familiar or Pet\Companion due to connection to The First World. They draw more magically connected pets and familiars (+1 to Will saves and automatically speak one language the Gnome speaks or +1 Will saves and can cast a cantrip for free as per caster Master or +1 Master\Familiar Ability or ...)
5) Untrained should be -3, Trained 0, Expert +1, Master +3, Legendary +5 along with NOT autoscaling to widen (slightly) the difference between unskilled and Legendary. Heck even just this would make things a bit better IMO and increase the difference between skill levels even if autoscaling stayed (not recommended)
6) SOME Combat Feats should be accessible TWO ways - by class\lvl and ALSO by skill\Stat + lvl. (Heh my Rogue has a Str of 16 so he can pull off a FEW (Fighter, Rogue, Ranger) feats (ex. Intimidating Strike: requirement of 4th lvl with a 16+ Str or Double Slice requiring 4th lvl, 16+ Str and Dex) even though he doesn't have 2nd or 4th lvl as Fighter because he meets the secondary requirements. OK maybe he can only get them 2 or 4 lvls behind a fighter but get them none the less and it takes the place of their normal Rogue-y stuff so ...). Would cut down on multiclassing in general. It would also add some flexability to builds and unpredictability to characters and NPCs without the added complexity of multiclassing.
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Things I Like:
1) 3 action system
2) Multiclassing
3) As a designer, I can't wait to sink my teeth into this.
Things I dislike:
1) Seriously, can we answer the shield question?
2) Lack of take 10 (Or if you don't want to codify that, make it more clear that a GM should not feel bad for skipping a roll a person is mostly assured to make in a non-distracted environment)
3) Give familiars some not-caster master helpful options, since not-casters can end up with them.
Overall, I want to see more of this. Please keep it going, Paizo. It needs tweaks, but there's something here worth a poke.
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Love:
1 - Three action system
2 - The concept of the new alchemist using alchemical items (but the execution is pretty dire)
3 - Struggling to think of anything else...
Hate:
1 - Tight maths and scaling challenges means you can run the game on coin toss without stats or dice - success is always approximately 50/50 so your characters never get any 'better' in comparison to the challenges.
2 - Resonance / disposable shields / everything else designed to stop you using equipment and magic items in the logically intended fashion
3 - Class locked feats that make no sense (many abilities in life can be learned regardless of your chosen profession...), ancestry feats that make no sense (innate species abilities should be innate, and cultural abilities should depend on upbringing), calling everything a feat...
4 - Spell points are used for everything except spells. Ummm, what?
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We are over 85 contributors. Here's the new top 10 / bottom 10 list:
Top 10:
3 action system. 73.9%
(+/-10) crit system 25.0%
Scaling cantrips 14.8%
monsters are better 10.2%
weapon traits 9.1%
multiclassing 9.1%
modular classes 6.8%
Reactions 5.7%
Bulk rules 5.7%
skill feats seperated from combat 5.7%
proficiency system (U/T/E/M/G) 3.4%
spell components as actions 3.4%
character creation 3.4%
distribution of feats by class level 3.4%
Crafting as implemented 3 3.4%
Bottom 10:
Resonance -28.4%
nerfing spellcasters -25.0%
class-locked restrictions -21.6%
autoscale skills (+1 to all) -21.6%
game is overbalanced / tight math -12.5%
ancestries underwhelming -12.5%
Magic arms/armor dice req'd -11.4%
shield mechanics -8.0%
Healers req'd for party -8.0%
monsters too difficult -8.0%
Alchemist class -5.7%
skill system -5.7%
A couple of things: I've noticed that of the people who have favored resonance, it's been a lukewarm reception - they like the concept (in most cases) but it needs severe tweaking. Glad to hear the devs are looking into it.
The Crit system is by far the most divisive - with 32 people in favor and 10 against. Nothign else has double digits in both categories. So that will be interesting to watch.
Also, a shout out to StratoNexus' idea about stat bumps. The idea of bumping so many stats at a single level is too clustered. Yes, it's great at that level, but it might be easier to bump 2 stats every three levels or so (yeah, i know that's fewer bumps - make the bump only 1 point at 20 instead of 18 to fix that). Cool improvement idea, easy to implement.
Overall, there's a lot of great info in this thread - thanks again to everyone contributing!
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Loves
1) 3-Action System. I made this system for my own RPG way before the Playtest so...I can't avoid this praise.
2) Enemy Abilities. Enemies have all sorts of fun tactical abilities now. Even low level monsters have some cool special abilities that add a twist to combat.
3) Faster character creation. There's also the focus on building characters based on their narrative.
Hates
The following make the game unfun for me to play and run.
1) Class and Ancestry Design. This issue has two parts to it.
1A) Most of the ancestries and classes don't have a strong iconic mechanic to keep them together. As a result, they feel like a loose bag of vaguely related abilities. The paladin lost its iconic smite evil ability. The fighter just gets attack of opportunity. The ranger's Hunt Target is insanely dull. The classes that do have a fun aspect to them tend to not have feats that support it adequately. For example, the sorcerer has almost no feats related to their bloodlines.
1B) Class disparity. Despite each class having the same feat progression, classes are not balanced in how many proficiencies, skills, and spells they receive. Martials don't receive more abilities than classes that get spellcasting and powers. The wizard and sorcerer receive almost no skills and proficiencies and yet their spellcasting is only slightly better than druids, clerics, and bards. You can easily see this with the divine sorcerer, who is basically just a worse cleric in every way.
2) Randomness of low level play. I'm actually making this complaint as a GM. The new proficiency system exacerbates the problems of low level play. Every attack and skill check feels like a total crapshoot. Meanwhile, enemies have almost double the attack bonuses and can reliably hit PCs.
3) Secret Rolls. I hate the abundance of skill checks with the secret trait. It's not fun for the GM. It's not fun for the player. It breaks the flow of the game.
I am also extremely disappointed in how polymorph effects work.
I hope to see the issues resolved. All of us want this game to be amazing, but playtests so far had mixed experiences due to the class design, low level play, and some of the mechanics with skills.
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Loves
1. 3 Action system, I have used an AP system in the past and this works just as well.
2. Crits and the +/-10, excellent and not to everyones taste but make combat that little bit more lethal
3. Scaling cantrips are very good.
-Hates-
1. Magic, not the action side of it which is great, but the application to the character classes. Clerics will only ever one spell memorised (1st heal x3, 2nd heal x3 etc)and arcane casters will never get to play with any of the fun utility spells due to lack of castings ("sorry party I memmed clairaudience today instead of fireball, you burn the trolls"). Or you could play a Sorcerer to get some extra spells with limited picks, oh wait no, just limited picks :(
2. The whole rules hypocrisy. Skills have now been turned into fighting fantasy (even then you have to roll a d6 and add it to 6 which creates some variation). This of course delivers the message that everybody should be able to have a go at everything. Not so, enter the class abilities that restrict the ability to fight with two weapons and make AOO to certain classes. But I thought you just said that we could have a go at anything.......
3. Resonance (I will not harp on about this)
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Loves:
-Obligatory mention of the 3 action system. Everyone has said it, overwhelming consensus is that it is far and away the best part of PF2e. I desperately wish I could reverse engineer this system into the PF1e game I'm running.
-The four degrees of success system. Calling this out separately from the crit system as a whole, because I'm talking about it specifically with spells. "Save or die" spells no longer being "win the encounter or do nothing" is amazing. This I actually have started to backport into my PF1e game.
-Resonance. Going against the grain here, but I love what resonance is designed to do. I think it needs work to do it better, but as far as fixing the imbalances inheirant to consumable items I think it's incredible. And giving people a reason to care about Charisma is great.
Hates:
-Alchemists. I wanted to love this class; I loved PF1e Alchemists. But having no at-will ability, unlike every other class, and having to burn Resonance to power their class features, unlike every other class, sadly just makes them terrible. The class needs a ground-up redesign. Most of all, it needs to power its class features with something other than Resonance, which is a "bonus resource" for every other class.
-Clerics feeling mandatory/15 minute adventuring day. Ironically this is something that Resonance does make worse, but I don't think going back to PF1e's problems is the solution. The game desperately needs meaningful, reliable out of combat healing, ideally tied to the Medicine skill and skill feats so that any character can do it.
-The feat Assurance. Weird thing to call out, I suppose, but this specific feat seems to defy the design principles of the entire rest of the game. A central tenet was supposed to be "no more getting worse as you level", but except for the levels at which it jumps, this feat does in fact get worse each level. And as an even bigger crime, it peaks too early. Assurance is most powerful at level 15, and then only gets worse all the way up to level 20, at which point it is not just worse than it was at level 15, but "50% of my former successes are now failures" worse. That's bad, and Assurance should feel bad.
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Likes
1. Four spell lists and four caster types. Convenient and simple.
2. Scaling cantrips. I mean, 5e already did it, but better late than never.
3. The action system. It needs work, a lot of work, but the concept is solid.
My hate list is so long that I don't even know how to pick a top 3. It's like 70% of the game. But I'll try.
1. Incredibly spread-out and watered-down mechanics that not only feel more designed to be error-proof than actually rewarding smart players, but congest the game with constant referencing.
2. A lot of the class feats or features feel bland or impotent compared to their 1e counterparts, and this is even worse for ancestry.
3. Too many "locked" features. Restricted feats, Resonance limits, skill proficiency feeling generic and un-special, etc.
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Love
1 - Three action system is tops. The way it interacts with spells is fantastic.
2 - Downtime system being baked into the game is excellent, it lets GMs provide more story hooks than "Kill Monsters, Take Their Stuff".
3 - Five pillars of supernatural power: Arcane/Divine/Occcult/Primal and Alchemy.
Hate
1 - Emphasis on secret rolls, secret DCs and generally burdening calculation and story entirely on the GM's shoulders rather than distributing among all players.
2 - Exploration system - is clumsy doesn't flow easily into initiative, and feels limiting.
3 - Not enough ancestry abilities given at low levels.
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Love:
1. New action economy, combined with the removal of the universal AoO. This makes combat so much more dynamic, varied and interesting, compared with the near-static "5-ft step and full attack" routine. There are truly several tactical options to pick from, every turn, for every character.
2. 4 degrees of success. This allows the design to keep save-or-die/suck spells, while giving them a compelling scale of effects.
3. Much improved caster vs martial balance. This remains to be tested a lot especially at higher levels. But the first tests look pretty good so far.
Disappointed by:
1. Resonance. This promised to remove or at least strongly reduce the many per-day counters, items with charges, etc. It didn't deliver, and it still added a level of complexity. Plus, it just feels wrong when it impacts one-use consumables. Hopefully, it's on its way to be fixed or ditched.
2. The alchemist. I'm yet to play one, and I will, but it doesn't flow naturally. It looks complicated and not very attractive. I was in love with the PF1 alchemist at first sight, this new one is a letdown.
3. Ancestries. They aren't well balanced, and at the same time they aren't differentiated enough.
Then there are some more minor issues (layout of the book, especially spells not showing the list they belong to; not enough interesting rituals; must-have cleric; not enough high level, high wow factor skill feats; no high level ancestry feats; restricted fighting styles for many classes) but I'm pretty hopeful the final book will fix these problems.
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I agree with OP's 3 loves, so I'm just reposting those here.
3 Loves:1. Three action system. Its simple, it works.
2. Cantrips that scale.
3. Crits at +/-10 to hit, rather than just on a 20 or 1.
3 Hates:
1. The narrow band of skill floor and skill ceiling.
2. The general slowdown of combat and strange numbersflation.
3. The retention of anti-crit mechanics.
I need to provide some context here as, frankly, I'm probably done with the playtest. Unless there's a substantial mathematical rework, I don't know that I have interest in 2e anymore.
Re: skill floor and skill ceiling, I readily admit that 1st ed has a massive gap between the floor and the ceiling. One might easily say this in martial terms as a scale from Harsk to Crowe - universally, Harsk is regarded as the worst pregen among the martials for having suboptimal choices in favor of flavor. Crowe, on the flipside, is one of the most optimized pregens available while still being interestingly flavored.
Harsk - - - - - - - - - Average Monsters - - - - - - - - - Crowe
Looking at Starfinder - a.k.a. proto PFP - the band narrowed substantially. A large part of that was the way that equipment became more controlled. The common complaint I hear, though, is that there's entirely to much homogenization of characters, which can be described as "You don't have to say Soldier 1/Mystic X, I knew you had a level of Soldier when you said you were playing a Mystic." There are still other factors in there that complicate things, like Starship Combat, but by and large, the skill floor was raised and the ceiling was lowered. It didn't completely close that gap, though. Using our same Harsk/Crowe spectrum, it's more like this:
- - - - - - - Harsk - - - Average Monsters - - - Crowe - - - -
PFP's scaling has created an interesting new problem - lots of flavors of the exact same proficiency. The skill floor is SO HIGH and the skill ceiling SO LOW that it's hard to actually have a scale. Everything is more or less mashed together.
- - - - - - - - - Harsk - Average Monsters - Crowe - - - - - -
This creates an entirely different set of issues than "everyone dips soldier" in Starfinder because there's a degree to which classes suddenly lack identity in other ways. A wizard with 18 starting strength that takes Fighter Devotion at level 2 is functionally a fighter with full spellcasting. You don't need to take more feats for this to work out well. At most, you'll only be down 1-2 points of attack for most of your career and down the fighter-specific class feats (mostly), but you'll be a capable fighter with full spellcasting, wearing full plate if you want and using whatever weapon you choose.
But really, the key thing to look at here is how much design space did you lose? Suddenly, you find that your floor and ceiling are so constrained from 1E to PFP that there's little differentiation to be had. There is currently very little investment you can do into anything that makes you significantly better than someone with no investment at all. Now, to be clear, I don't mind the raising of the skill floor. Building a mechanically terrible character is certifiably not-fun for the majority of people. Having virtually no headroom above that, though, is where the pain truly starts.
Re: combat speed and numbersflation: Aight fam, this is where point 1 starts to hurt. For this, I want you to consider what should be equivalent monsters between 1e and PFP: the CR 3 Medium Fire Elemental from 1e and the Creature 3 Minor Fire Elemental from PFP. Pitting them head to head is generally kinda pointless - AC and attack values vary wildly between the two systems. There's one key indicator of "hold up, what now?" to them, though: HP. Did you expect monster HP to increase by 50% on an equivalent creature between versions? Probably not.
Let's look at another example: Flesh Golems. Again, largely pointless AC and attack values, but the HP goes from 79 to 143. That's an 80% increase, roughly.
In both cases, we see a significant increase in HP that is likely intended to counteract the expected increase in damage from multiple attacks per round. I'm here to tell you, however, that this simply doesn't bear out in actual play. Having run Arclord's Envy (a level 5 PFS scenario for PFP) multiple times this past weekend, I can without a doubt tell you that the increase in monster HP is dramatically felt. A 6 player table spent nearly 90 minutes on an encounter with 4 minor fire elementals + an ifrit ranger, while a 4 player table struggled to take down a flesh golem at all. In both cases, it was not poor tactics, poor builds, or other standard issues. It's that they're swinging relatively limp noodles at giant sacks of HP.
Anti-crit = anti-fun. "Sweet, we get to crit things that have low AC way more?" Yeah, I bet you've heard that from players when they hear the +10/-10 crit rules. This is, in part, one of the mechanics that allows high level players to completely dunk on low level monsters...at least in theory. I have an incredible hatred of immunity effects in every game (I'd rather things be resistant in various ways, such as an automatic increase of success by 1 step on saves against a type of effect), but this one in particular rubs me wrong despite being a holdover. It actually feels worse than PF1.
Remember that Minor Fire Elemental? Creature 3, as you'll recall, with 47 HP. As it turns out, those are still a slog for 5th level characters... and 6th... and 7th... and 8th... only really improving at 9th, when you're expected to have a +2 weapon (let's be real, your first 8th level item will always be the +2 weapon, just like your first 4th level item is the +1). Until then, you're still reliably requiring 3-4 hits with your +1 weapons for each fire elemental. And what do we know about encounters at high level with low level monsters? There are just more of them. Again, crits are supposed to be the mechanism for mopping these things up, along with reliable hits.
What happens as a result is that you're left with compounded disappointment: your relatively advanced characters continue to struggle against old foes (well, at least the sack of HP that they represent, the incoming threat is fairly low) AND that new shiny mechanic of crit range is completely thrown out the window.
So ultimately, I could whittle down the Love/Hate to 1 item each.
- Love: The system is easy to learn.
- Hate: The system is best when you're ignoring the rules entirely.
For me
Like:
-3 action system
-Monster special abilities
-Better role play tools (exploration/out of combat)
Dislike:
-Exploration system bogs down, riding should be easier to understand.
-no take 20, too many dice rolls for actions that should be part of story telling and disrupts the flow of the story.
-Monsters/encounters are over tuned and need better adjusting. Zero lvl Goblins should not be +6 to hit, while heroic specialized 18 str fighters are also only +6. Combat is too swingy, crits favor killing PC's and a bit un fun.
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Like
1. Three Action System: This is the most liked addition to the game for a reason. The action system giveth, and it taketh away. Everyone can attack three times in a row... but you take a cumulative penalty for doing so. You can take feats and select weapons to mitigate the penalty... but you're investing resources that could be spent elsewhere. Spells can require a variable number of actions... but if you don't invest as many actions as possible, you're usually getting less bang for your buck. This change has so much potential.
2. Archetypes: These are fantastic. They're my personal favourite method of multiclassing. Sorcerers can dabble in swordplay, Monks can call upon divine magic... it's just great. They also cover prestige classes and other niche concepts that don't warrant a full new class (like I hope psionics will). I just wish there were more of them. As it stands, there's no way to get Occult or Primal casting from an Archetype, and I'd love to be able to play a Rogue who dabbles in the occult or a barbarian with primal power at her side.
3. Critical Success and Failures: Now to be clear, I do not like everything about this. If you ask me, I think that you should get a Critical Success if you beat the DC by 8 instead of 10. It's become very clear that characters are stuck at around 40-60% success chance at appropriately levelled challenges, so a +/-10 for something exceptional to happen is just too infrequent to matter. Still, I like the concept of this change. It makes smaller modifiers somewhat more important, which takes away half the sting from Training bonuses being so low.
Dislike
1. +1/Level Scaling : Oh boy does this irk me. There are plenty of ways to make higher level characters stronger and more capable than adding their level to everything. This was the thing I disliked most about D&D 4E, and that system merely added 1/2 Level. Instead of higher attacks and defences, characters need to get better options. I look at mid-level Feats and I'm unimpressed. I look at high-level Feats and I'm disappointed. Bigger numbers are not a substitute for bigger adventures, and every remotely interesting feat is so high level as to be unreachable. It's also troubling that character level adds so much to your skill checks, yet training adds so little. Overall the scaling just feels wrong, and there's no way I'd keep it as-is at my table.
2. Resonance: As a concept, Resonance is really cool. Giving all player characters a reserve of inner magical power is both interesting flavour and a neat approach to limiting magic item abuse. However, the current implementation of Resonance is awful. If I could, I would at bare minimum change the following:
* Base Resonance is Level + your highest Attribute modifier. Whatever your character excels at, it is that from which their innate magic springs. In return, I'd be fine with removing Overspending Resonance, or giving it a higher cost for failure such as a persistent condition until you get some rest.
* Wands cost 5 times as much and cost 1 Resonance to invest, like a staff. Unlike a staff, you can have any number of wands invested. Casting a spell from a Wand only costs 1 Resonance point, and only the one who invested it can use it. Perhaps improve potions and/or staves to compensate.
* Alchemists gain additional Resonance equal to their Level, which they can only spend to create alchemical items. Or just remove the Resonance cost entirely and balance it another way. Whatever's fair.
3. Inelegance: The Pathfinder 2.0 Playtest presents a rule system that, for the most part, feels clumsy and counter-intuitive. It's not every rule of course, but they're common enough and wide-spread enough to be a serious problem for anyone new to TRPGs. Bolstered. Blindsight vs Blindsense. Aflfictions vs. Conditions vs. Debilitations. Exploration actions in general. Character Level vs Spell Level vs. Item Level vs. Condition Level. Item costs sometimes being in silver, sometimes in gold. It's not just that these rules are complicated, but that they're not always explained very well. Not even the Devs know how shields are actually supposed to work.
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3 What I like:
1. Three action system.
2. Cantrips that scale.
3. Can't come up with more.
3 What I dislike:
1. Bulk.
2. Proficiencies that autoscale. Want to have meaningful choises..
3. Resonance.
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Hi all,
With the imminent release of 1.3, I'm announcing that i'll no longer be keeping up with the survey. In part, work has become hectic and it's hard to find the time. But mostly because the votes drawn from the beginning of the survey are responding to a ruleset that is signifigantly different from what we have now.
I might do another survey near the end of the playtest if I can find the time.
However, I'd like to think this exercise helped the devs in their decision-making and understanding. (I have no way of actually knowing.) It also gave all of us a chance to express our weightiest concerns concisely and without it being buried in a thread about some minutiae under 200 other posts.
I also cannot stop you from continuing with your top/bottom 3. And maybe it should go on. However, I think that at this point it's important to establish some 'version control'. So I would strongly recommend that from here on out that people preface their lists with the version of the rules they are using. As an example my current list would read as:
Playtest version 1.2
3 Likes:
1. Three action system. Its simple, it works.
2. Cantrips that scale.
3. Crits at +/-10 to hit, rather than just on a 20 or 1.
3 Dislikes:
1. Extra dice of damage attached to weapons. Move that extra damage to proficiencies.
2. Proficiencies that autoscale. Immersion-breaking in so many ways. Give us more skill points and let US decide.
3. Resonance. It's not getting the job done. Pulls the rug out from under the hero in the height of combat. Plus, resonance doesn't affect mobs. (We're always their first combat of the day!)
Thank you all again for your input!