What 3 things do you love / hate the most about 2e playtest so far?


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NemisCassander wrote:


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.


NemisCassander wrote:

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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Vic Ferrari wrote:
EberronHoward wrote:

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.

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?

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.


EberronHoward wrote:
Vic Ferrari wrote:
EberronHoward wrote:

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.

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?
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.

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.


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Vic Ferrari wrote:

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.


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EberronHoward wrote:
Vic Ferrari wrote:
EberronHoward wrote:

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.

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?

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.

The only way to make monsters feel like monsters and not stat blocks is to include notes on where it fits in in the environment, social patterns and psychology (if applicable). AD&D had this, which is why I like it. 3.x really toned this down which was a major complaint I had about those editions. Granted, there were a few snippets here and there and the odd monster got a bit more fleshing out than others, but on the whole there was far more space dedicated to stats than creature. P2 doesn't do anything more than 3.x did in this regard. The entries are still mostly mechanics with a line or three of descriptive text.


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EberronHoward wrote:
Vic Ferrari wrote:

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.

Ah, thank you, this I totally agree with. Creature type has way too much impact in 3rd Ed; all Fey have crap BAB, because...

Size also has way too much impact in 3rd Ed, just became something is big does not make it good at grappling, in fact, something really big can have a harder time grappling something small; weird, nonsensical rule.

I have addressed both of those issues via houserules.


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Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:
EberronHoward wrote:
Vic Ferrari wrote:
EberronHoward wrote:

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.

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?

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.

The only way to make monsters feel like monsters and not stat blocks is to include notes on where it fits in in the environment, social patterns and psychology (if applicable). AD&D had this, which is why I like it. 3.x really toned this down which was a major complaint I had about those editions. Granted, there were a few snippets here and there and the odd monster got a bit more fleshing out than others, but on the whole there was far more space dedicated to stats than creature. P2 doesn't do anything more than 3.x did in this regard. The entries are still mostly mechanics with a line or three of descriptive text.

Yeah, that is why whatever edition you're playing, it's nice to have a copy of the 2nd Ed Monstrous Manual or something, nearby.


And Ecology of the X from Dragon Magazines.


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.

Liberty's Edge

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Starfinder Superscriber
Scythia wrote:
NemisCassander wrote:

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.

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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rknop wrote:
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.

Yes, Critical Hits favour monsters, overall; I am genuinely surprised they embraced the concept, and the same time are trying to reduce needing every +1 you can grab.


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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.

Sovereign Court

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
------
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
------

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.

Sovereign Court

Likes
3 actions
spell scaling
4 levels of saves vs spells

hates
resonance
ancestry feats
reduction of spells for casters
4 spell lists


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Things I like:
1) I like the action/reaction system, although I am not sure reactions should stay as limited as current.

2) Archetyping. I love this system both for picking up abilities from "standard" classes as well as for creating more specific and flavorful options.

3) Scaling cantrips work for me, although they may not quite scale as much as they should.

Things I do not like:
1) Stat bumps at 5, 10, 15, 20. Too many at once, too far apart.

2) Lack of Take 10 and Take 20. Out of combat scenarios are fun enough without requiring dice. IMO, we should be encouraging GMs to suggest players Take 10 or even Take 20 if time pressure does not exist. This makes people who invested in a skill feel special and places value on skills. Too many times have I sat at a table where the GM disallows Take 10 and the player who wants their character to appear good at a skill with +12 rolls a 2, forcing other players to roll and someone who doesn't really care about a skill rolls an 18. Yay, the party gets to move on with a success, but instead of a player feeling good about their investment in a skill, they feel upstaged by someone who knows nothing about that skill. Instead of a role-playing game it became a roll-playing game.

3) Difficulties too high. Too many difficulties for skills start at a place that is just too hard. Not by a ton, but ~5 points.

Grand Lodge

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:

3 action system

Some of the skill feats(mainly the ones that allow you to do things you wouldn't be able to do with skills in pf1)

The rogue.

Hate:

I'm repeating myself from other threads somewhat, but...

The caster nerfs, of course. yes cantrips got boosted but cantrips have always been meant to be very basic spells. Between the nerfed durations and reduced spell slots, and severely weakened and reduced quality of life spells it feels like you're a full caster a few minutes a day and then you go back to being an apprentice. If I didn't like the 2e rogue so much, I think I probably would've abandoned the playtest over this.

Obligatory healers. In my experience, people who enjoy playing healers are rare, and people who enjoy playing healers all the time are even more rare. In fact I can count on one finger the number of person in the pfs lodge in my area that plays a healer frequently enough and well enough for any table to have a chance of survival.

Magic weapons doing more damage than the warriors wielding them. We may as well just play floating intelligent swords that go around doing stuff. (Actually, I've sort of always really liked the idea of playing an intelligent magic item anyway. But that's a different thing.)


Corwin Icewolf wrote:
Magic weapons doing more damage than the warriors wielding them. We may as well just play floating intelligent swords that go around doing stuff. (Actually, I've sort of always really liked the idea of playing an intelligent magic item anyway. But that's a different thing.)

Yeah, SWSE has Kinetic Combat, and Improved Kinetic Combat, have up to 3 swords floating around, whacking people.

As for playing Intelligent items, I think I heard something about this, I call dibs on Stormbringer.


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Like

1 - I was going to say nerfing problematic spells such as truestrike and haste, but other spells, like prismatic sphere, have been wrecked, so the two matters cancel out. I've got nothing in this category.

Dislikes

1 - Resonance: A must-track point pool of strategic importance all day every day. Every choice to use Resonance on consumables is now one some players will ponder over in the middle of combat ("Have you decided yet?" "Don't rush me, this is important."). It is unfair to Alchemists. I have read other people's complaints of what led to this, but have never personally seen any of those situations in a game. Try setting wands to 10 charges; 50 chargers in PF1, or 100 in Ad&D, is massively overpowered for an expendable stick. It's my personal opinion that this system goes against all magic-item use back to Chainmail and I viscerally do not like it. Further, the mechanic invades every game milieu; every character must actually decide on and actively use Resonance every time. Every morning: "Hey, everybody got their Resonace set?" "Michael, you set up your resonance so badly yesterday we all nearly died. You need to..." "Shut up!" Followed by the game breaking up permanently. I expect future Pathfinder novels to contain narrative of characters strategizing over how to use their resonance and then actively using it; but I'm not looking forward to it because it will be so awkward. Further, it creates a severe break in compatibility with all prior adventure material (official, 3rd party, and fan). No matter how much you have fallen in love with this mechanic, please don't put this in the game.

2 - New Action System: I find puzzle after puzzle as I read through the actions. Raise a shield? That's not D&D. Point out? That would have been a free action in PF1. Arrest a fall? I was wondering why stopping a tumble down a mountain would be an action when I noticed it was to stop aa uncontrolled fall in mid-air for those who could fly. Flyers do not arrest a fall, they recover control. I see little I'm this system that makes it better than 3.x. Iterative attacks and mobility are still issues, though not quite as big. AoOs are now restricted to fighters, but not really; the example immediately suggests monsters have them.

3 - Layout/Organization: Proficiencies not in the skills chapter. No magic chapter. No combat chapter. Feat blocks underwhelming. Spell blocks absolutely terrible; I can no longer follow a spell back to the class who can cast it; endless repeats of the fully spelled component names and endless action icon repeating with them; I want the rarity as an abbreviation or full word, not a color. Trying to tell he blue, brown, and black apart on the given background is problematic.

4 - My eyes fell upon Aeon Stones and instantly I thought, "Oh! A new kind of magic item." I then saw it was an inexplicable name change from ioun stones. My excitement faded away into disappointment. Was this the result of an unavoidable legal requirement?

5 - Magic: 10th level spells exist solely as a place to move some former 9th level spells and restrict access to them even more than rarity already can restrict them. Yes, there were a handful of new 10th level spells, but they didn't impress me. The uncommon category of spells have restricted so many spells that I consider first-choice for my caster characters that there is not much left behind. Four "traditions of magic" that are the same but for their spell lists, and those lists are not equal; it's pointless as far as I can tell. Prismatic sphere can now only be cast while flying or levitating and with 10' clear in all directions; that is not a 9th level spell.


Vic Ferrari wrote:


As for playing Intelligent items, I think I heard something about this, I call dibs on Stormbringer.

I choose the IG-88 after he installed himself in the DS2 (minus the exploding bit).


Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:
Vic Ferrari wrote:


As for playing Intelligent items, I think I heard something about this, I call dibs on Stormbringer.
I choose the IG-88 after he installed himself in the DS2 (minus the exploding bit).

Nice, IG-88 was one of my favourite original Star Wars figures back in the day (as a little guy), I loved all the bounty hunters; Bossk was the hardest to find.


I got both, fortunately. Two Bossks, actually. Never got Boba Fett, though. Didn't bother me so much when I was a kid but I would have liked one now.


Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:
I got both, fortunately. Two Bossks, actually. Never got Boba Fett, though. Didn't bother me so much when I was a kid but I would have liked one now.

I played with my original Boba (my favourite SW character since I had memories; that Life Day special animated segment was great) so much, the paint wore off and the limbs went so loose I had to get a replacement. I had all the bounty hunters, one of their highest quality moulds was the Deep Sea Diver-looking guy (I forget his name and species), such a cool figure.

There is a limited release Boba figure from when it all started, with a firing rocket, last I saw it sell for over $20,000 at Comic-Con or something (I was not there, saw it on the telly).


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

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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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- (well, likes anyway)

1. As mentioned by a previous post, I like the action system. I like the way there is an action economy to consider, where more actions with a spell (e.g. M/Missile) or an item (Ring of the Ram) add to effect, but have to be counterbalanced against losses e.g. to step back or to raise a/cast shield. The mechanics do seem a bit faster than PF1 as well.

2. I like the fact that Cantrips scale now. They probably don't scale as much as they should in some cases, some that could scale don't and some that do are simply not worth the effort. But its an improvement on PF1.

3. I love the fact that ranged and melee touch spells can use Dex as a stat (your favourite secondary when you are a squishy) rather than the frankly stupid division into Dex & Str based touch spells in PF1.

-Hates-

1. The rule book! You will have had a fair bit of flak about it I am sure, but I don't think it can be over emphasised.
- the poor organisation
- information that should be linked located all over the place (might work with hyperlinks - maybe, but never in a paper book)
- missing information where you have to try and infer what was intended by drawing from nearly unrelated sections (we have had more DM rulings and house rules in the play test modules than when we played a home brew game).

Frankly character creation was a nightmare (more because of the organisation of the information than the system) and I would rather not play the system than attempt to play it with new people or worse, my kids. Get a professional technical writer in to reorganise and rewite it; during the re-write the missing sections / contradictory sections and some of the basic errors should get visible so they can be cleaned up.

2. The nerfing of arcane magic generally. Clerics seem to be doing ok, but a lot of joy has gone out of being a wizard and there is no value in being a sorceror.

3. The scaleability of some parts of the system (not all, just some things). For example the feat Assurance (a mandatory part of the Scholar Background): as a flat 10 + no mods it is great at 1st level and quickly becomes useless as challenge DCs increase with party level, but the feat's flat 10 + no mods doesn't, spells e.g. Bind Undead, that are the slightly useful at low level and near useless after that.
This is not a problem with the system in general, more a problem of not putting enough work into the details - unfortunately there are enough scaling failures that the gems in the system get lost in the dross.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

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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.


Zi Mishkal wrote:
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.

Thank you. Shameless plug below.

Stat Bumps are Too Far Apart


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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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Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Loves
1) Ancestry feats built into character progression, but not the current ancestry system at start (needs more front loading, and if we're doing half-races this way, then they should be feats on the target race (e.g. Half-Elf should be an Elf feat and other races can take the mixed-feat of another race).
2) Nothing comes to mind
3)

Hates
1) Class feats overwhelming regular feats, this is a REALLY bad design
2) The multiclass system in general especially the delay on multiclassing again. There's no room for triple-class characters in this game nor is it possible for a character to change direction mid-stream. If I want to play a fighter who realizes wizardry is his true calling at level 3, I'm SOL, you can't build that character. You can make a fighter, that is OK at wizardry but you can never make wizardry it's primary focus.
3) Stat-generation - bad rolls make memorable characters.


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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

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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Likes:
1: Simplified monster math (the kind of thing you dislike at first, but grow dependant on)
2: simplifying AC, dropping flat footed
3: The new weapon effects and critical specialization

Dislikes: oh boy, a LOT, but condensed
1: Dry, overly pedantic piddly rules that are hard to track

2: The dropping of skill points, and the 50% paradigm. This was the main reason I dropped 4th ed dnd, and it infuriates me. My own campaigns are usually very light on dungeon crawling and combat in general (essentially i play the game wrong), so a robust and diversified skill system is necessary.

3: Mandatory healers. I've written it everywhere I've posted, but my main group refuses to play healers, and has so for 15 years. Me and another guy could sometimes do it if we could without using spell slots or daily resources, but wands of clw or minor regeneration has never been a satisfying solution. A short rest/healing surge mechanic is flat out needed for us to play this.

Liberty's Edge

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Likes:

1) 3 action system
2) familiars for gnomes
3) nothing else

Hates:

1) spellcasters have been nerfed into the floor
2) ancestries are meh, bleaurgh and boring
3) it feels like the design principle has been to eliminate ‘cool’ ‘awesome ‘ and ‘whoah’ Like balance has become an ideology to be pursued at all costs at the exclusion of fun, story or imagination.

(I also hate resonance for consumables but I think that fits in point 3 - it’s en example of defecit-model game design aimed at restricting rather than enabling players)


Talsharien wrote:

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)

Fighting Fantasy! LOL..I loved those gamebooks. I still have Warlock of Firetop Mountain on my bookshelf. Those along with the Lone Wolf gamebooks were my gateway to D&D. Fond memories!


+3: I love the 3 action/1 reaction system and how the rules around it are a lot more watertight than they once were
+2: I love Resonance for getting everyone involved with magic items
+1: I really like how weapons are becoming distinctive, even if it is a tad conservative

+0: I feel indifferent about the new crit system.

-1: I do not like the weird changes that have occurred with large lore implications. You can now resurrect outsiders is probably the biggest one.
-2: I dislike how much longer combats are dragging on. The last few fights I've run have gotten really slow.
-3: I hate that every time I look into people's opinions on the playtest they're so overly negative. It feels like half the posts on this website feature someone saying they're really disappointed and aren't even going to try the finished product. Easily my worst experience with the Playtest.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

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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Pathfinder PF Special Edition Subscriber

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.

Zi Mishkal wrote:


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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I guess I'll chime in:

Likes:

1) Resonance as an idea, but not as implemented. I feel like it should be more intertwined in all things magical, and probably shouldn't apply to potions(I like implementing the Witcher's toxicity system for those), but characters should have more of it to go around. (3 + CHA + Level?)

2) Everything is a feat. The only problem here is that we still have trap feats, feat taxes, and certain feats are gated behind class walls that really shouldn't be. Just open it up and make PF2 a classless system.

3) It's medieval swords and sorcery. That's my favorite genre.

Dislikes:

1) Action economy.

a) I don't like how EVERYTHING is an action, to the point that there isn't any room for improvising. You either have access to the particular action you wish to take, or you can't do it.

b) Some things cost actions that really shouldn't, like changing your grip and taking a deep breath. It sucks when you have to waste your whole turn to prepare to do something cool next turn, when PF1 would let you get straight into the action.

c) Animal companions and familiars don't actually give you more actions, because you have to spend actions to make them do stuff. Even then, they get less actions than everything else. One of the devs said that animal companions only get 2 actions because they aren't "trained for combat", yet wild animals DO get 3 actions, and they DEFINITELY aren't trained for combat.

2) The way spells are handled.

a) Sorcerers should be able to freely up and down cast all of their spells, a la DnD 5e.

b) While spellcasters DID need a nerf (and some of the spells did too) I don't like that they nerfed spellcasters by making spells weaker. Many of the high level spells only feel worth casting if you know the target has a high likelihood of critically failing its save. I wanted my casters to be limited by some mechanic that enforces the in-lore idea that magic is dangerous.

3) The progression system.

a) + Level to everything feels bad. I get that it makes balancing stuff easier, but it doesn't make sense that half of a character's skill at anything is based entirely on how much stuff they have killed. Skill Proficiencies should matter more and level should matter less.

b) The game STILL requires high level characters to be walking magic item museums. Magic items should grant extra powers or some utility. They shouldn't effect your stats, damage, or success rates in such a way that not having them means you lose.

c) Stat Generation feels bad. Characters are, IMO, too powerful at level 1 and, in most cases, there are only 1 or 2 viable stat arrays for a character to take. I feel like I have to pick my stats for mechanical reasons more than RP reasons in PF2. The game might as well just determine your stats for you at every level.


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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!


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Playtest version 1.3

Likes:
1. The four degrees of success/failure
It is nice to get even a minor effect out of limited spells per day when your target rolls to save against them. I'd like to see more of that in skills and feats, which sometimes skip on or more categories of success/failure.
2. Using actions to alter spell casting
I look at Heal as the poster child for this, and I think almost ever targeted spell should follow its lead. So many other spells have room to improve on this idea, like add a action to get resistance to two energy types, or add an action change the area of effect, or add an action to increase the range. I HATE meta magic feat taxes, just build this stuff into the spells instead. Would save so much room and make the limited number of useable spells per level easier to swallow.
3. Property Runes, Crafting, and Item Quality
If weapons and armor could only have property runes, I'd be much happier with the entire system. I really like that you can apply these as you progress in gear or techniques. I like the overhaul to crafting that allows you to work with these runes along with having use outside of downtime. I really like item quality and would prefer that over potency runes and inflated monster HP.

Dislikes:
1. Classes and Archetypes
The classes are video gamey, disorganized messes. Most of the flexible ones railroad you into a "path" because if one person wants to just be wild order druid and ignore the rest, then everyone has to make the same trade off or it isn't balanced. Archetypes are half of the things I want from multi classing and half of the things I don't want, and in both respects are a total let down. Without class feats, all of the classes fail to stand up on their own as interesting or viable, in order to get customization options, you are forced to use them just to have a competent version of your class.
2. The action system
Apparently it is a true feat to walk and draw a sword at the same time over 6 seconds; far beyond mere mortals. Basically the action system is a good premise that is used to beat all the fun out of doing anything too interesting in your turn. I understand that it streamlines a bunch of OP class abilities by enforcing reasonable time limits to doing stuff in your turn, but too many free action tasks have been made into an action. Then X levels later, sanity returns and you can convert those actions to reactions/free actions at the cost of a feat.
3. Economy
It seems like consumables are way to expensive and so are special materials. I would expect to have a lot of tools at my disposal at 9th level, and I still struggle to hold things, afford expert level non-magical equipment, and have a couple of life saving consumables on hand. Equipment has an outsized effect on damage and success instead of class ability and training. It really should be the other way around.

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