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I've walked new players through character creation many times, I think that this playtest character went as smooth as any, having a narrower feat selection at first level really helped. Choosing a background is more grounded in reality than choosing a feat from the general feat list in PF classic, she was easily able to say "I think scout fits my back story."
Where she got hung up at a dead stop was skill proficiency. The check mark gives you your level, extra check marks give you extra, but no check mark gives you your level minus two, which at level one is minus one altogether. So you get a plus 1 if its checked and minus 1 if its not, which is simple enough but trying to explain that the minus 1 was actual plus one minus two went over her head.
If I could go back to yesterday I could explain it better, but PF classic was a lot easier to explain, you get a plus one if you put a plus one in it. Otherwise you don't. If its checked you get +3 more.
As a veteran player I like the current system, but if you increase all the numbers by one it would be simpler to explain, especially at first level.
Unchecked is 0, checked is your level plus one, two checks is level plus two.
You can easily hold up your fingers and say, I'm third level, and I have two check marks, that's five.
Just my .02
Funny... Did the same thing with a person that never ever played any RPG.
Everything went smooth, except the -2 part. Could see she didn't kind get it...
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In that all the DCs are against an arbitrary offset, they could simply say that untrained = +0, trained = +2, expert = +3, etc.
Maybe you're not supposed to do things you're not trained in.
Maybe you're not supposed to do things you're not trained in.
Heh. But applying the +1/level to skills that you aren't trained in means that you can do things that you're not trained in.
And this is why LEVEL needs to be a broken out field.
having a narrower feat selection at first level really helped.
What an interesting insight.
I've been not liking that the lack of first-level general feat, but reading this makes for a good argument why they're absent.
Maybe an option might be to have an "advanced" mode for players who want to start customization at the start and know what they're doing, but still be simple by default for new players. Dunno.
But thanks for the insight.
At a certain level that's what splatbook X, Y, and Z are for right? To give the invested players greater options without forcing new players to wade through stuff they don't understand.
I was commenting on lack-of-general-feat-at-1st. It keeps the scope tighter, splat-books or not. No matter what, there is less content for a new player to contend with.
Again, doesn't mean I like it. I've never been a complainer about bloat, for instance. But I do think it's sort of clever, and appreciated the OP expressing it in a manner that revealed it to me.
It's sort of my way of making up for being... unhappy... with other aspects of the playtest. I'm trying to be honest and balanced.