
breithauptclan |

I think this is one of the most heavily debated system of the Playtest. There seem to be three camps.
1. The current playtest rules.
Pro: This is really good for the premade campaigns and Pathfinder Society. It means that no matter what the campaign throws at whatever characters the players bring, the players will have, at minimum, a moderate chance of success.
Con: It makes people feel like their characters aren't earning the proficiency in the skills that they have. Everyone gets everything for free.
2. The PF1 style. Players paid for bonuses to their skills when they level up. This results in +1/level in the skills that they constantly put ranks into.
Pro: People feel like they are developing their character's skills as they level up.
Con: It is easy to end up wasting ranks on skills that aren't needed. Or if you only partially put ranks into a skill, you will fall behind on the total modifier needed in order to actually use the skill for level-appropriate challenges.
3. A flat power curve like what I have heard D&D 5e described as having.
Pro: Characters of vastly different levels can still play together. Also, monsters can be a threat to the party for a much broader range. So you can have a group of low level monsters be the main antagonists of a story without having to level them up first.
Con: Players don't feel that their characters are getting more powerful as they adventure.
At least, that is my understanding of the debate.
What I find cool is that all three of these playstiles can be had by changing just the one mechanic.
If you like the current playtest rules, no changes are needed.
If you want the PF1 style, just remove the -2 and the +1/level for all untrained proficiency modifiers. No need to change anything else. With that, the players can buy training for the skills that they are interested in and will get the +1/level that they are used to for buying skill ranks at level up.
If you want the flat power curve, it will take a bit more work. Remove the +1/level from all proficiency modifiers. Monsters and NPCs will also have to have their modifiers recalculated to take that change into account also. And the DC by level table will need to be recalculated or replaced with static DCs.
I expect that the current rules will be kept for the final product because of its benefits to the pre-built campaigns and Pathfinder Society play. But the PF1 style houserule is an easy change. I honestly hope it would become an official alternate rule for home use.

Draco18s |

D&D 5E, Con: Players don't feel that their characters are getting more powerful as they adventure.
One 5E game I was in was run by someone who didn't understand "necromancy spells deal double damage" correctly and ran the entire adventure with "all enemies deal double damage." So he two-hit-killed a 8th level character (my friend and I were in this at level 5, the adventure was listed when we signed up, as 5-10, the adventure as written was 5-15 and average party level was about 8 to 9).
During the boss fight the boss&minions took down the barbarian. The other caster PCs: 1) healed him up as best they could (healing was at half, too) 2) polymorphed him into a T-rex (so 130 hp)
He was outright dead before he got his next turn.
(I'm still not sure how we won)
So yeah, I can see that as being a thing.

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1. The current playtest rules.
Pro: [...]the players will have, at minimum, a moderate chance of success.
I honestly don't think the playtest is bearing this point out as it is right now. In Scenario 2 of DD, my players decided to make a stealthy approach for a certain part. They each needed to roll stealth against DC23 to succeed. The PC that was optimized for stealth had a +9. The rest were significantly worse. They failed, of course, which would have been alright if they'd been expected to fail, but the scenario is written as though stealth was a valid, achievable tactic.
Now, if they also fix the DCs to not be quite so insane, sure. However, the numbers are currently messed up.
The design with the current system should be that you have two types of challenges.
The static challenges are those that are just part of the world. They shouldn't get harder, so a group of PCs that is increasing their skills every level will become more and more able to circumvent them. Climbing a rough rock wall? A real challenge at level 1. A trivial event at level 20.
The dynamic challenges are those presented by leveled threats like monsters and traps. These are currently savagely overtuned as I mentioned above. These are the things where players shouldn't really get much better, in relative terms, by level.