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We've played a few sessions and created characters a few times now. I've been trying to keep track of and note down my players' feedback so far, positive and negative.
The Book itself
- People really like the sketch art style!
- The step-by-step example of determining ability scores on page 19-20 was incredibly helpful. They wish there were more examples / walkthroughs like that for other things.
- The book reads like a textbook. It is too dry and technical and doesn't convey a sense of energy or adventure. One of the players was in the 5E playtest and noted even their alpha was better at natural language and making it "feel" fun.
- The book is poorly laid out. Having to constantly flip back and forth to various sections deep in the book while you're just trying to create a character was frustrating for them, especially the first time around while brand new to the system.
- Corollary to above, the Alchemist requires this a lot and is probably not a good idea to have as the first class players encounter when reading.
- Also corollary to above, players strongly wish the powers for each class were listed with the class, instead of buried in the magic chapter.
- Players kept looking for a "base advancement table" with the ancestry feats, skill feats, etc. I had to keep reminding them all of that was printed on each class's individual class table.
- The index is not comprehensive. There's a lot of stuff missing from it.
Ability Scores, Ancestries and Backgrounds
- Positive feedback on all scores being even numbers / a full step in ability modifier at character creation.
- Negative on ability boosts over 18 dropping down to 1 instead of 2. They were meh on this in Starfinder as well.
- Having some sample arrays of what ability scores you're likely to end up with after character creation might be helpful as a double check.
- Without exception, every time we've done character creation all of the players have chosen to pick background and class first, and then go back and pick ancestry last for the numbers because it was the least interesting and impactful part. This is a reversal from my PF1 experience where players did spend some time thinking about the races first.
- Players very strongly preferred the new term Ancestries to the old use of Races, without exception. While I'm indifferent either way, I would call that a win.
- ENORMOUS frustration with the imbalanced ancestries, the general lack of intrinsic abilities, and only getting one ancestry feat.
- Strong like for the concept of ancestry feats, but they all thought it was going to be furthering the concept of an ancestry or improving abilities the ancestries come with - the "dwarfier dwarf" concept - and strongly dislike that in actual practice it's spending your career just becoming what was previously a baseline member of the ancestry.
- Fairly strong gravitation over several rounds of character creation to Human as the clear best ancestry.
- Halflings are just the worst.
- Frustration over only getting one ancestry feat especially reared its head with half elf and half orc players.
- Players otherwise seemed fine with half elf and half orc being feats, but there were a couple comments that half elf and half orc should be presented as their own ancestry sections even as a feat gate, and as able to be attached to non-human ancestries.
- Calling out the 2 hit points you can pick as a half orc being a trap.
- Comments on many ancestry feats being way too anemic. There are clear best choices for each ancestry, and the other feats should be brought up to that level.
- Curiosity why there are only a few level 5 ancestry feats and none above level 5. I suggested there will probably be more in the final book and that satisfied them for now.
- Players liked the concept of backgrounds but were meh on an uninspiring execution.
- Desire for backgrounds to give training in a couple skills and then a skill feat of the player's choice from one of those skills.
- Confusion over how specific did a Lore have to be, and ridicule of some of the worst examples like Circus Lore.
- The player who came from 5E felt the PF2 backgrounds were anemic by comparison to 5E backgrounds which can give skills, languages, some equipment and a role playing ability.
- No one likes how few languages you can get now.
Alchemist
- A player is finally creating an Alchemist for the next adventure so we'll get some more feedback on this later.
- Have been asked where mutagens went, then after explaining about how the formulas work and such, wondering why there aren't 1st level mutagens.
- Wondering why the class is mandatory bomb focused.
- Wondering why there aren't higher level bombs, and that the Alchemist could just get bonus dice with bombs similar to sneak attack dice, instead of the strange multiplier system.
- Concerns about the resonance dependence of the Alchemist.
- Concerns that it doesn't get stuff it can do "at will" like the cantrips of other caster classes.
- Strong concern over limited number of skills.
- Strong concern over DCs not scaling with your class level like everyone else gets to do.
Barbarian
- Overall like of the concept, picking a totem, and rage now not being limited to rounds per day.
- Positive on removed alignment restriction.
- Concern over slow proficiency advancement.
- Strong concern over insufficient skills.
- Ridicule of Superstition totem.
- Strong concern over the sluggish condition that comes with anything Giant totem does, which is especially punitive with the lack of proficiency advancement and the tighter math.
- Wishing the anathema were more flexible / could be chosen. However, I haven't heard a complaint about the fact of getting anathema, just the execution.
- 2nd level Barbarian feats are worthless. Player just picked an extra 1st level feat instead.
- Desire that the 4th level Barbarian feats were the 2nd level feats, and that the totem feats from 6th level were available at 4th level so they could have been tried out for Pale Mountain, also especially as the 6th level feats don't seem like they're necessarily good enough to belong at 6th level.
Bard
- General feel that maybe the bard could be an archetype but that as a class it was okay.
- Overall like of the idea of picking a muse.
- Conceptually liked that you could go back and pick abilities from other muses, in practice some frustration that it's not productive to do so because of prerequisite chains.
- Strongly liked that inspire courage is an at will cantrip, and that as written it applies to magic attacks as well.
- Strongly liked them being a full spellcaster.
- Back and forth whether Occult fits the "feel" of a bard and maybe it should just be Psychic or Mentalism. This tied into the feel that maybe the bard could be an archetype instead of a class, with a different class being the Occult caster if Occult keeps its current thematics.
- Curiosity where the various sound-based abilities went.
- Bard feat prerequisites feel arbitrary.
- Martial players felt like their classes should get the number of skills the Bard has.
- While we haven't played high level yet, players aren't happy about spellcaster classes losing feats for casting proficiency at high level.
- Hate for how heightening works for spontaneous.
Cleric
- General agreement that the cleric is very solid overall.
- General agreement that the party probably would have TPKed in Lost Star if not for the cleric. It felt mandatory.
- Where are philosophy clerics?
- Players liked spells by deity instead of by domain. Should maybe be one spell per spell tier though instead of only a few scattered spells.
- Frustration over powers being in the magic chapter instead of the class came to a head with the cleric and its domain powers.
- Feelings that domains should also come with a passive or secondary ability. Feelings that domains with weak / situational powers should be balanced by getting stronger secondaries.
- Irritation that Channel wasn't a spell point ability and was instead a separate pool to be tracked.
- As before, players don't like casters losing feats at high level for casting proficiency.
- ENORMOUS frustration with old school Vancian casting.
Druid
- Agreement that the Druid has the best overall structure as a class - as in, pick a path, and you get bonuses for picking abilities in that path, but aren't locked into that path. The specifics need to be ironed out, but had a couple comments agreeing with me that this is how all classes should be designed.
- Positive on removed alignment restriction.
- Ridicule of anti-metal restriction.
- Unhappiness with post errata number of skills.
- Animal and Storm orders were strongly preferred.
- Wild order is clear least favorite, especially with it being worthless at low levels and high levels.
- Too many feat taxes for Animal order and Wild order.
- Primal spell list may be unsatisfying. In particular, player had trouble finding spells they would actually want to pick at 2nd tier. A lot of this came down to spells which should have been / used to be good, like Flaming Sphere and Web, now inviting disappointment.
- As before, players don't like casters losing feats at high level for casting proficiency.
- Confusion why some feats are being reprinted for each class and led to a feeling that there should be some shared feat pools, like metamagic, which can be dipped with class feats.
- ENORMOUS frustration with old school Vancian casting.
Fighter
- General agreement that the Fighter is strongly improved overall from PF1.
- Strong concern over limited number of skills.
- People were curious why the Fighter advances so much faster in weapons than other martials. General feeling that it's okay for Fighters to be ahead in proficiency but only by a couple levels, not the monumental disparity currently on display.
- Players wish each fighting style (sword-board, two weapon, etc) got equal amount of feat representation, with ranged maybe getting more because most other feats don't work at all for ranged.
- As corollary to above, a lot of the feats which specifically say "melee" don't need to say "melee" so that they can be used with ranged. As currently printed, it was generally agreed a ranged Fighter should just multiclass at 2nd level.
- Confusion why moves shared with the barbarian or etc (e.g., Sudden Charge) are more limited / have more restrictions when used by a Fighter.
- As corollary to above, this contributed to general feeling there should be some shared feat pools (combat feats, metamagic feats, etc) that classes can dip with their class feats.
- Why is Point Blank Shot a stance?
- General feeling that this class needs a "path" you can choose like the Bard's muse or Druid's order. More than just being locked into a chain of feats for a weapon fighting style. We liked the Soldier in Starfinder so something like that would work well.
- A couple comments that every martial should get AoO and that non-fighters have no ability to control the battlefield at all.
Monk
- Mixed feelings on Monk but overall felt mostly okay.
- Positive on removed alignment restriction.
- Confusion why Monks don't even get simple weapons.
- Strong concern over limited number of skills.
- Lack of defensive options made Str based Monk feel like a trap.
- Confusion why save advancement for Monk is handled differently and why saves don't just automatically get "evasion" etc as an intrinsic feature of Master+ in a save and why that has to be specified as a class ability.
- Ki Strike was agreed to be worthless.
- Indifference to monks not coming with Ki abilities baked in, just preference that if you have to feat in to Ki that it actually be good.
- Felt like a monk should be motivated to have multiple stances and switch according to the situation, but that the current rules do not support this. Giving 1-2 stances for free up front might help this.
- General feeling that this class needs a "path" you can choose like the Bard's muse or Druid's order.
Paladin
- General discomfort with the reactive nature of the class, it's not proactive anymore.
- Speaking of reactive, player didn't like how many things were competing for that one reaction per turn.
- ENORMOUS ridicule and disdain for the archaic Lawful Good Only restriction.
- Lay on Hands is extremely weak. Warded Touch should definitely just be baked into the ability.
- Feeling that Righteous Ally should be moved to 1st level as a counterpart to Druid Orders.
- Monster type oaths are worthless.
Ranger
- So far everyone has outright refused to play a Ranger, even for Pale Mountain. :p This class is worthless.
- Strong dislike for basically everything about the class from beginning to end except the basic abilities / proficiencies sidebar on page 113.
- Hunt Target should be completely reworked, and if kept in something like its current form should at least become a free action and/or benefit the first attack.
- Agreement that thematic favored enemy-based abilities should be implemented. Not PF1 style, where you pick a creature type, but rather 5E style, where you get broader abilities that make you good against larger foes, or good against mobs of mooks, or good against flyers, etc.
- The people who didn't give up on Rangers immediately and instead looked into them more before dropping them like snares in concept but hate them in execution. There should probably be a ranger "order" to get them at 1st level and be really good at them.
- Where is archery?
- Why do companions eat basically all of your feats if you go that route?
- Apparent indifference to lack of spellcasting.
Rogue
- One of the more favored classes. People generally like this implementation, especially due to the huge number of skills / skill feats.
- Maybe grant a player chosen weapon group instead of a few specific martial weapons.
- Surprise Attack should probably be made a general fact of going first in combat again and reworked with a more Rogue-specific ability.
- Some frustration that this class is the only way to get Dex to damage with Agile / Finesse weapons. This should probably just be a general feature of these weapons rather than a class ability. The monk in particular could benefit from this.
- Some concern that damage won't keep up at higher levels due to the magic weapon paradigm and how few sneak attack dice you get.
- General feeling that this class needs a "path" you can choose like the Bard's muse or Druid's order. Even the Starfinder Operative's paths, as somewhat anemic as they are, at least give something over this implementation.
- Coming from PF1, people were confused why Uncanny Dodge was renamed just for the sake of renaming it.
Sorcerer
- There is general unhappiness with this class and so far no one has wanted to play it, though one player did begrudgingly agree to try a divine sorcerer for when we get to the Sombrefall Hall adventure.
- General agreement that the sorcerer should get cleric HP, light armor, a martial weapon group, and maybe absorb the Magus or Kineticist.
- ENORMOUS hate for the limited number of feats the sorcerer gets and that the worthless bloodline abilities and the spellcasting proficiency come in place of feats.
- ENORMOUS hate for how Sorcerer spellcasting is less versatile and useful than wizard, being limited to the same number of spells per day but having a locked in number of spells known with nothing to compensate for it.
- ENORMOUS hate for the restriction on heightening spells.
- Where are all the class features and powers to make up for all these restrictions?
Wizard
- Generally agreed to be better than the Sorcerer in every conceivable way other than the limited skills and weapons.
- Discomfort with the limited number of skills. Should just get all simple weapons already.
- Generalist widely agreed to be directly superior to specialists in every way.
- Wide agreement that specialists should get access to all spells of their school regardless of class list.
- As before, confusion why metamagic feats aren't a general pool that can be dipped with class feats by caster classes.
- Reach Spell is MVP on the low level feat list and players feel other feats should be brought up to its level.
- School powers generally agreed to be worthless, another contributing factor to Generalist being better.
- ENORMOUS frustration with old school Vancian casting.
Skills and Skill/General Feats
- Players generally liked the skill list but feel a few skills were overcombined (Nature) and/or misthemed (Thievery).
- My group likes skills and generally feel most classes should get more skills.
- Several suggestions along the line of posts I've made before, that Handle Animal and Ride should just be together as their own skill.
- Several players don't like Sense Motive being rolled into Perception, others are fine with it.
- Several comments that if using non-Perception skills for initiative is made easier and more robust, Perception could just be a skill again.
- ENORMOUS hate for Take 10 being taken out of the game.
- Strong preference for example skill DCs to be put into this chapter.
- Huge displeasure with the way picking locks worked. After the first few times in play I broke my "no houserules for the playtest" vow and agreed to let them bypass a lock with just one success when not in an encounter.
- Complete ridicule for secret checks. Players want to roll their own skill checks. I as GM also don't want the burden of rolling everyone else's skill checks on top of everything else I already have to do running the game.
- A general feeling that getting to Expert, Master etc in a skill should do something and not just be +1 and access to more skill feats.
- ENORMOUS hate for Signature skills in published implementation. Literally every player initially thought Signature skills were bonus Trained skills. A couple people commented that if Signature skills have to be a thing, they should be granted as bonus skills trained and allow you to go one step higher than would otherwise be allowed at your level: Expert at 1st, Master at 3rd-5th, Legendary at 7th-9th.
- Everyone feels skill feats should be listed with each skill, like how class feats are listed with each class.
- Multiple comments that General feats should be listed by level and then alphabetically within level, instead of a giant undifferentiated alphabetical list.
- ENORMOUS hate for how things like Alertness or Iron Will directly set your proficiency to Expert instead of just bumping proficiency by one step.
- General comments that a lot of skill and general feats are disappointing or over specialized.
- Why do some skills barely have any feats?
- General agreement that Cat Fall is the benchmark for what a good skill feat should look like. Everyone liked the feats that followed this model.
- Recognize Spell should be baked into the relevant skills and should be a free action.
- Being able to use Recall Knowledge once per turn as a free action a la Automatic Knowledge was agreed that it should be the default. At the very least Automatic Knowledge should not require Assurance.
- General agreement that Assurance is the worst feat in the game.
- Several wishes that there were skill feats for Perception / Sense Motive.
- There needs to be a lot more skill feats, especially mid/high level ones.
- Several players thought General feats could be used to purchase any feat you had access to (ancestry class etc) and were very disappointed to learn otherwise.
Equipment
- Players liked the official shift to a silver standard.
- Players are fine with Bulk in concept, as they were in Starfinder, but feel that bulk limits need to be doubled (up to Str before encumbered), that various items need to be re-examined for their Bulk rating, and that shields etc should not be Light.
- Wide hate for how punitive medium and especially heavy armor are, and a general feeling that they should be outright better than light armor as well as more accessible with starting money.
- Any thrown or projectile weapon with anything other than Reload 0 is considered punitive and is avoided.
- Several comments that d4 weapons should be rare or non-existent and everything should be bumped up a step.
- Several comments that two handed weapons aren't good enough to give up the off hand.
- Not a single person likes uncommon weapons and gear.
- Every weapon group should have a variety of representative weapons from simple to martial to exotic.
- Classes should probably get a choice of (several in most cases) weapon group proficiencies, rather than just "martial weapons" or several specific martial weapons.
- Some of the more fiddly weapon abilities like Backswing should be made better or combined with other abilities. Deadly and Fatal should not be separate abilities.
- Some of the skill kits have way too high a Bulk rating.
Magic
- Everyone agreed that spells should list what spell lists they're on, and that the lists themselves should list spell school and have a short summary of the spell's effect.
- ENORMOUS disappointment that magic was completely nerfed into the ground overall. I am concerned I may not be able to get my group to play PF2 after the playtest on this basis alone, even despite other stuff they do like a lot.
- Multiple comments that they could have just fixed the problematic spells, and tweaked some stuff rather than nerfing almost every spell on every metric.
- Too many spells do nothing significant when the target saves or even when the target fails their save. There can be a middle ground where failed-saves are more impactful than they currently are without being as impactful as a critfail, while successful saves in many cases should just have the current failed-save effect or a slightly weaker version of the current failed-save effect.
- Not a single person likes uncommon spells.
- ENORMOUS hate for the incredibly short spell durations.
- People do love cantrips in concept. However,
- Cantrips and spells should always add ability modifier to damage or healing, with actual die heightening not being delayed so much.
- Calls that cantrips should compare on equal basis to weapons. If a cantrip does roughly the same damage as a weapon, it should only take one action to cast instead of two.
- Cantrips, and way more spells in general, should take better advantage of the ability some spells have to spend more actions casting them to make them better.
- Most or all spells should have heightening options and the heightening options should generally be better.
- Widespread disappointment that basic utility and mobility and quality-of-life magic was severely over-nerfed.
- General agreement that a lot of basic utility spells like Alarm and Unseen Servant could be 4E style rituals.
- People generally like the PF2 style rituals for big ticket magic like Resurrection but feel 4E style is better overall for anything that is not big-ticket.
- Detect Magic is a point of particular confusion.
- The vast majority of cleric domain powers and sorcerer bloodline powers and wizard school powers are agreed to be basically worthless.
Archetypes
- Players strongly miss PF1 style Archetypes.
- Players strongly agree that PF2 style Archetypes work really well as a model for prestige classes.
- Ridicule for the "locked in" aspect of Archetype dedications, and even more ridicule that they felt the need to reprint this text for every single one instead of just as as a one time header.
- Pretty big concern that you can't actually get at all the abilities of your multiclass with the multiclass feats.
- More skill focused archetype / multiclass feats should be able to be purchased with skill feats or general feats instead of class feats.
Companions
- No one likes how companions work.
- Several suggestions that maybe players should just have 3 bonus actions per turn that could be used for minions like companions and summons without having to also use the player's actions to command them, and that would in itself be enough to cap summon spam.
- Companions are made of tissue paper.
- Some animals are just objectively better than others.
- No one likes horses having Mount niche protection.
- Where are tricks and tasks that animals can be trained in? Mount can just be here as an ability you can train an animal with.
- Classes that get companions have to use almost all their feats to keep the companion up to par and this is very frustrating.
- Familiars are generally liked but should get some intrinsic abilities by type on top of the selectable abilities. Players miss things like cats and ravens and whatever actually feeling different.
Playing the Game
- Players are indifferent to the +level paradigm overall. It doesn't increase their enjoyment of the game nor does it harm.
- Several suggestions though that +1/2 level would allow their own proficiency and ability modifiers to feel more significant. They are concerned that level is washing out everything else even as early as 4th level as seen in Pale Mountain.
- Players like the crit success/fail system (margin of 10) for skills.
- Players are less sold on the margin of 10 system for attack rolls and saving throws. Combat seems super swingy because of the crits, especially with how monsters are just directly better than players in every way.
- Some feeling that the game might be healthier and have more fun and meaningful options if the margin of 10 system was kept for skills but scrapped for combat. No one wants confirmation rolls back though.
- Alternative suggestions were that the same expansion of better options and higher modifiers might be permissible if instead of scrapping the margin of 10 system in combat, crits maxed damage instead of doubling it.
- Widespread confusion on what exactly gets doubled on a critical hit.
- People like Weakness. Some disappointment that after I had said resistances and immunities were less common than PF1, a lot of the monsters in Lost Star and etc just turned out to have a big pile of resistances and immunities!
- It's too hard to get healing if you don't have a cleric. People think healing should be completely separated from resonance.
- Not much love for the dying rules, even post errata. One comment that "negative HP up to max HP" would work just fine as a fix for PF1's too few negative HP before death.
- Indifference to hero points except in how necessary they are to not die, and people aren't willing to spend them on anything else just because of the necessity to hoard them against death. All options or at least reroll should probably only cost one hero point, instead of reroll costing 2 and extra action costing 3.
- Gaining new hero points should probably officially be on a milestone system, every few encounters.
- People generally liked me handing out 1 hero point for showing up or 2 for showing up on time.
- Light rules are confusing and incomplete.
- No one likes the lack of a surprise round. General agreement with my suggestion that maybe surprise round should just be 1 action, or maybe 2 on a crit success on initiative vs the enemy, to mitigate how swingy and powerful PF1 surprise rounds were.
- Mild disappointment with the severity of the multiple attack penalty.
- No one likes how the DC of Assist is the same as just making an attack roll to begin with. This should maybe be a DC of the target's AC minus 5, instead of a DC of the target's AC.
- No one likes having to raise a shield every turn!
- No one likes having to spend an action to change grips!
- Why does Size have basically no effect on anything whatsoever other than Bulk and Reach? This was immersion breaking for multiple players.
- Multiple comments that Flanking should be its own thing separate from Flat Footed so that they can stack, and that it's just fine if Sneak Attack has a "target is flat-footed or you are flanking them" stipulation.
- No one wants to deal with the mounted combat rules.
- Ridicule for the exploration tactics and how if you do basic things like talking to someone and keeping an eye out for deception at the same time you become fatigued.
- POSITIVE on downtime being called out as more of a thing, with wishes for it to be fleshed out and expanded more.
- Confusion on whether any conditions can stack, with general feel that applying the same condition again should get a higher number (e.g., Frightened 1 going to Frightened 2) rather than only the more potent one applying.
Treasure
- The way character wealth by level works has not exactly been a hit with creating higher level characters for the playtest. It should be a lot more flexible.
- No one likes Resonance, ESPECIALLY for healing, ESPECIALLY after the utter brutality of the playtest campaign and how enemy monsters crit players almost every single round without fail. This might go down better if healing was unrestricted.
- No one likes heavy armor being more expensive / higher level to enchant than light / medium, especially when heavy armor is just directly worse than light / medium armor.
- Some concern about the magic weapon paradigm and how it is probably going to warp and break the game at higher levels and make low die weapons useless.
- Missing lots of old nostalgic items, especially when trying to find items to buy with those item slots at higher level character creation.
- General feeling that the promise of having less mandatory items so you could go for the more fun and flavorful stuff was an outright lie.
- Widespread confusion at magic items listing prices in GP when the game is on an SP standard.
- Widespread disappointment with how expensive consumable items are.
- Snares are ludicrously weak, expensive and impractical. They are a wonderful idea implemented terribly.
- Flabbergasted that "non-magical" alchemical items still require resonance, even and especially if someone already paid resonance to make them!
- Why can't shields have runes?
- Why are there so few weapon and armor property runes?
- Why are weapon and armor property runes grouped together?
- Why do items with charges like wands and staves ALSO require resonance on top of charges? Why are there charges at all if resonance is going to be the limiting resource?
- Why do staves cost 1 charge per spell level?
- Why are consumable magic items listed mixed in with the nonconsumable items?
- Why aren't trinkets their own section?
- Why do so many trinkets require either high skill ratings? Why do ANY trinkets whatsoever require specific feats?
- Why are high level consumable magic items so incredibly expensive?
- Why do so many items require investment when you have to also spend resonance per use to actually use them?
Terminology
- As mentioned before, all of the players seem to strongly prefer Ancestries instead of Races. The black player especially found this welcoming.
- Everyone hates the term Spell Points.
- Players are still meh on the confusing term Spell Level, as they have been for years, and would prefer a term without the word Level in it. People liked Tier in Starfinder.
- Everyone thinks the names for Hampered and Slow conditions should be swapped.
- The two-action and three-action symbols are difficult to distinguish.
- No one likes the Uncommon system at all, but if it's kept it should be called out in text and not solely by color coding the level box.
I hope this is helpful.
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Well, those were all supposed to be bulleted lists. I guess I'll chalk that up to how badly programmed these forums are.
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Pretty concise rundown of some of the pain points with the Playtest (concise relating to the length of each comment, not the number of comments)! There's a lot of overlap between this and my own list. As for skills and some other mechanics issues your group had, many have already been errata'd by Paizo. Just today they ditched the signature skills concept entirely, for example.
!!! Everyone will be super happy to hear about Signature Skills being gone. That is great news :)
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The new errata also gives more skills trained at 1st level for almost everyone (except Ranger and Sorcerer, you're out of luck with these two).
The part about Rangers and Magic are so eerily similar to comments I had from my own players that I wonder if we actually play with the same people! :P
Some of the Barbarian issues were lessen, though I will not go so far as to say fixed, with today's errata as well.
It gives me hope for the Ranger, though I would indeed appreciate some more love for this class and a good deal of other players who have complained about it too.
Lack of Rangers' specific archery feats was reason number 1 for my players to complain.
D&D 5.0 features an elven archer for the Ranger concept art.
PF 2.0 features a dwarfen crossbowman and my players were upset that this is the way Paizo is trying to enforce playing a Ranger.
Well, that or TWF.
Animal companions being extremely squishy, requiring constant healing and being forbidden any kind of item bonus was also totally an issue.
One of my players used to play with animal companions a lot and told me that he didn't think this could be done now as soon as magic weapons become a thing because of this rule.
Your animal companion will, at best, hit with the equivalent of a +3 magic weapon.
That's at very high levels when +4/+5 magic weapons are common for the rest of the party.
Not that it matters anyway, they'll die way before they get there.
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My group's experience has been pretty similar to yours.
Especially the frustration with alchemists and rangers being so underpowered, dislike of magic weapons in there current state, and wands.
One of my players actually laughed at me when I told him they got a wand of produce flame. He said, "So it has charges AND it costs resonance AND it just does a cantrip that I can do all day for free? Wow, what a piece of shit! Guess it's PF2 vendor trash."
That would also be because that's supposed to be a wand of burning hands.
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Very nice and comprehensive list of things with which I agree to 99%!
Only I would definitly keep the 4stages for attack rolls and lets max damage be the critical effect for weapons and spells. No double damage. It's easier and not so swingy.
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Excellent list! This thread is a very good summary of how most of the rules "feel" to a group that's very familiar with both P1 and 5e. I felt like I was right there in the room with your group flipping through the book. Hilarious how their three response modes are like, hate, and ridicule.
Desire for backgrounds to give training in a couple skills and then a skill feat of the player's choice from one of those skills.
That's a great idea!
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dotting and posting for general support. very well-articulated post.
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Great post. I'll look it up again when I got time, because RL intrudes in the most annoying way at the moment into my reading time.
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People really like the sketch art style!
Honestly, I'm glad to read that! Black and white artworks are woefully underrated in today's rpg books, that's my firm oppinion. Everyone goes for the shiny full-color, even if it's looking bland and not that spectcular. Good black and white, pencil-sketch-style and such have a certain character, which I really like and it'd be good to see it more!
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Pretty much agree with everything said.
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My group had a lot of the same feedback as well. Especially on the healbottyness of the cleric, and the organization issues overall on the rules.
We had less issues with resonance but only because we kept forgetting it existed and pretty much played without it (which I believe had zero impact on the game, except maybe burdened the cleric more for healing).
One exception to what you said is in my group a player played a sorcerer and liked it, though this was only at 1st level. I don't know how much he was comparing to the wizard, though he is the kind of person to do that sort of analysis and didn't mention any concerns. It is possible as we play more (if we are able to, scheduling is a challenge when you're all in your 40s with multiple obligations), it would feel "less" but he performed well. That said, his "good performance" also included some well-timed critical successes or failures (of enemy saving throws) of blasty spells any spellcasting class may have cast.
My own feedback is that a lot of the cross referencing, secret rolls, and other factors make the game very GM unfriendly, and rules and module both seem to presume experienced GMs to inexperienced ones for the most part. If this game is supposed to be a vast improvement for entry level players, they need to do way more to make this game GM accessible, or they won't have any entry-level GMs around to run the entry level players they're trying to attract. While I wouldn't say I am the best GM, I am an experienced one with many systems, and extremely well versed in PF1 rules, and I've struggled to GM this game.
Also, it just doesn't make sense. Very rarely does someone not know how well they are doing at something. (Seeing what they rolled) When you are sneaking and you accidentally bump into a table and knock over a vase, making lots of noise, you realize that you are doing bad at sneaking. When you try to remember something you learned about a topic you know if you are certain about it, or you think you might be miss-remembering, or you have no clue.
There is no reason for the player/character not to know what they rolled.
I will mention Perception as a case where I can't imagine how the character could possibly have any idea how well they are doing.
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There's a whole discussion thread on the secret rolls that I suggest going to to continue that particular discussion, simply because it already hashes out in considerable detail the various pros, cons, and issues of verisimilitude vs flow of gameplay/ease of use.
For ancestries, I think starting characters could take two 1st level ancestry feats and it would have no unbalancing effects on the game.
How the different feats do and don't interact and how confusing it is is a good argument for why perhaps some of them should not be called "feats."
I will mention Perception as a case where I can't imagine how the character could possibly have any idea how well they are doing.Also, it just doesn't make sense. Very rarely does someone not know how well they are doing at something. (Seeing what they rolled) When you are sneaking and you accidentally bump into a table and knock over a vase, making lots of noise, you realize that you are doing bad at sneaking. When you try to remember something you learned about a topic you know if you are certain about it, or you think you might be miss-remembering, or you have no clue.
There is no reason for the player/character not to know what they rolled.
With Perception, I get around the need for a secret check by not permitting metagame rolls. So everyone who declares that they want to roll Perception instead of doing some other exploration task can do so, but there is no second pass; no one who opted out of that first pass gets to step in and roll if the Perceptors rolled badly.
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Fantastic post. I love it.
My group had almost all of the same reactions. In particular, they REALLY hated the lack of surprise rounds.
Only a couple of differences for my group: my group thought that +1 instead of +2 ability points after 18 was fine, they said it "made sense". My group keeps saying "race" even though they don't have any problem with "ancestry". My wife doesn't like the shift to a silver standard, but everyone else is fine with it.
I'm really glad you posted this. It's all of my group's thoughts posted in a much better way than we ever could have. Thank you.
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Very well worked out. Thorough and consistent. I could nitpick some things, but I agree to 95% and its too late in the evening. :)