The most boring and most important part about the playtest: Formatting


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Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Hey everybody,

So with signature skills now out of the game as of update 1.2 and more base trained skills for almost all of the core classes I have had one of my biggest gripes with the playtest addressed. That being said I still think there is plenty of stuff that can or should be discussed mechanically and otherwise.

My biggest issue now as the title of this thread suggests is formatting, the sexiest topic.

A bit of my background first, I have been a tabletop fantasy player for approximately seven years. I'm young compared to many D&D or Pathfinder players but in the time I've played I've almost exclusively played Pathfinder 1E as a player (with some GMing experience in my time).

That being said, my concerns are primarily in first time player experience and clarity/density of info for mechanics and game rules.

I spend most of my day at work on the day to day formatting nice emails, charts, and word documents to various people that make a lot more money than me so they can understand at some level the goings on of the people under them.

I'm a data analyst of sorts. The rulebook for a tabletop game is a kind of business project that informs a team of people how to follow a set of rules so that everyone can work together toward their common goal. In the case of Pathfinder 2E the goal of the group (the party and GM) is to have fun. The rulebook is the guide by which everyone operates to ensure fairness to some extent and fosters common understanding.

The problem I have with the rulebook as it currently stands is that the layout is not conducive to finding things in a quick, easy, or sensible manner. I know this is the playtest book and as such it's a WIP, but I mostly want to provide some suggestions both large and small to reduce the pain of flipping through a physical rulebook. I know that some of this surely will be planned going into the final stages, but I would be remiss to not voice my concerns regarding the topic.

Firstly, my hands on experience with the playtest so far is with homebrew content. More specifically, the world, dieties, and characters. So far our GM has been using the bestiary and the already existing equipment to kit us out. We try as best as we can to stick to the rules to the best of our knowledge (especially since we've started livestreaming our games) but it's difficult to know every rule in a system you aren't yet familiar with.

That being said, I'll start with our character creation.

I'll be honest, character creation was downright painful. The timing of our first planned session wasn't ideal mind you. Our first session was planned in person the Saturday after the playtest release because all our players (and our GM) were going to be visiting me from out of town.

Because of the timing none of us had really gotten a great chance to read through the rulebook. Because of the timing of it all the GM planned a good portion at the same time of our character creation.

I said creation was painful because of the amount of time it took us all to do it. There were five of us including the GM. I had my tablet, Our GM and one of the players had laptops, and the other two only had their phones to scroll through the rulebook to find things. Circumstances weren't ideal but everyone was willing to help each other out when it came to rule lookups.

All in all I'd guess the character creation took us approximately four hours including breaks we took. We had to use what we had gleaned of the system from the weekly previews to guess at what we wanted to play or do with our character concepts. Once I had finished my character creation I did my best to help lookup powers, feats and rules for the others because I finished a bit before the others.

Generally speaking I think the guide on creating a character is well constructed. Below are my thoughts on the good parts and the parts that need work for this first hurdle toward gameplay.

The Good:

1.) The boosts/flaws to ability scores because of Ancestry, Background and Class make sense from the perspective of roleplay and game mechanics. This is a great way to onboard new players and it's probably one of the best designed systems in the whole book. Speaking in terms of boosts and flaws is a great way of translating numbers into something the player can contextualize as a bonus to their modifiers. A boost at level 1 character creation is +1 to that ability score mod! Simple, clean, love it.

2.) The tables giving quick summaries of the Ancestries and classes are great. This can give new players a good idea of what they might be interested in playing.

3.) Tables and chapters are appropriately referenced for the full descriptions on their respective pages. This is good, though it is as expected.

The Bad:

1.) The base character backgrounds don't have their own table like the Ancestry and Class. I'm not sure if this is just oversight or by choice, but I'm of the opinion that the backgrounds should get their own table alongside Ancestries and Classes. Since backgrounds affect character creation so much now with both trained skills baked in as well as ability boosts, this is a must have for easier character planning. This would help reduce flipping between pages 13 and 38, and it might help more veteran players plan characters more easily from the rulebook itself.

2.) This may be personal preference, but typically I am the type to choose my class first as my character's defining trait. If it were up to me, I would be placing the Choose A Class paragraph BEFORE ancestry. I think advising a first time player to choose their Ancestry first is somewhat of a misleading pull. Typically when I'm playing a character in a tabletop I use the Class of the character as a defining trait first. The content of my character's personality is first and foremost informed by their chosen "career" path. IMO your ancestry plays more into how other characters/NPCs will respond to your character.

It's sort of like the character Class you choose for your character is indicative of your character's personality and interests. Your character's Ancestry and Background are more indicative of his or her history and experiences. If Class is recommended as a new player's first choice, that player will be more likely to make an informed decision of how they want their character to play both mechanically and socially (as in RP).

If somone looks at the Wizard class and decides "I want to be a Wizard, but not the high tower kind of guy. I want to be a rough and tough traveling wizard!" They can be informed by the three key things that inform the basis of their character in an order that would not require them to go back if they have regrets about the earlier choices they made in regards to stat boosts. (Class, Ancestry, and Background.)

3.) Class Feature flipping. This drove me nuts. I rolled a monk for our current campaign, and since the monk is one of the character classes that gets a choice of key ability (STR or DEX) I went to look at the class feats for the monk to determine which stat I should be picking. The core class features didn't tell me a whole lot about which stat I would want to pick. So I scrolled down to the class feats...

Lord help me here. In order to figure out which stat I wanted to go with as my primary I had to read through all the first level class feats. That's a lot of choices to choose from for a new player. The Monk adavancement table on page 98 was useful in that I knew I would get another class feat at level 2 if I made a sub-par choice, but I still had to read into the class feats to get an idea, as well as looking at equipment when considering monastic weaponry, and considering the pros and cons to each of the stances with both their attacks and traits.

All of this was just so I could decide which key stat I would prioritize!

This doesn't account for the issue that some of the more supernaturally inclined classes have some (or many) powers in addition to any spells they may get. The monk at level one has access to Ki Strike, the class feat. In order to determine what Ki Strike the power does you have to look at the powers section in the back half of the book, just to see if that power/class feat fits your character

So, that being said! TL;DR thoughts on how to address some of these issues.
1.) Problem? Lack of table for the Backgrounds in the character creation guide (page 13)
Fix? Add a table for the Backgrounds. Columns would include: Background (name), Description, Ability Boosts, Feat Gained, Skill Trained.
Function? Helps keep clarity of information and reduce amount of flipping required between the creation guide and the background descriptions on page 39.

2.) Problem? Character creation order recommendation (page 14)
Fix? Change the character creation order of operations. Class then Ancestry then Background.
Function? To reduce second thoughts and confusion when choosing core character traits. (Class, Ancestry, Background)

3.) Problem? Class features that give class powers require the reader to flip to the back of the book to see what the power does, whereas any non-power related action (like stances or doubleslice) are already imbedded in the class feat itself.
Fix? Place the power description and mechanism of action (how many actions, what it does, etc) alogside or below the class feat. If needed for purposes of multiclassing you could have the power in the index of spells/powers in addition to having them listed under the class feat that gives access to it.
Function? This would reduce flipping between the class feat proper and the power in question. If this change was implemented it would allow the player to more easily compare class feats of the same level. It would also help reduce the amount of searching that player would have to do when trying to find out what their power does.

4.) Problem? This isn't an issue I brought up in my previous description of some of the issues I had with the way the book was laid out, but I think it may be one of the most vital changes for ease of use. The problem is as such: There is no delineation in the book to differentiate flavor text and game mechanic text.
Fix? There is a distinct lack of bold text in the PF 2E book! I pose the Following scenario. What if in the base formatting for reading the book (page 7), we added that when bold text is used in the body of a description of a feat, power, ability, etc, it indicates that line or those lines as relevent to the core game mechanics that define that feat, power, ability, action or otherwise.

As an example, let's take a look at Dragon Roar, a 6th level Class Feat for the Monk.
{Action} Dragon Roar FEAT{6}
Prerequisites: Dragon Stance
Requirements: You are in Dragon Stance
You bellow, instilling fear in your enemies. Enemies that you’re aware of within a 15-foot aura must succeed at a Will save against your Intimidation DC or be frightened 1. A creature that critically fails is also fleeing for 1 round. A creature frightened in this way can’t reduce its frightened value below 1 on any turn it begins adjacent to you. All creature(s) are bolstered.
Your first attack that hits a frightened creature after you roar gains a +4 circumstance bonus to damage. This extra damage must be triggered before the end of your next turn or it’s lost.
After you use this action, you can’t use it again for 1d4 rounds. All its effects end immediately if you leave Dragon Stance.

In this case we've expanded the use of bold text to include the primary function of the action of dragon roar, what benefit it gives the PC, and how often it can be used. By doing this, we've broken the description for Dragon Roar into a paragraph that has highlighted key features and minor features without breaking the flow of the description. The bolded text is then indicating the key features the player will use most often.

Small changes like this to some of the more complex actions or powers would help draw the player's eye to the most important functions of any action, power or other functional effect. Any questions about something the player or GM is not aware of in regards to that action can be clarified by checking the primary points at a glance. If that doesn't suffice a full reread of the action or power can be done to identify the rule pieces outside of the primary functions.
In the case of dragon roar it's unlikely that the monk would be using the action and then changing stances immediately afterward. The niche circumstance where a player would roar and then attempt to switch stances before striking the frightened opponent would be left to the secondary text. I imagine that most monks will be roaring and then using a Dragon Tail lash for maximum damage.

In conclusion, I don't think these changes are the be all end all of how to fix the formatting in the rulebook. I also know that since the rulebook is not final that some of these may already be under consideration, but as I stated previously I think it's important to voice.

With Pathfinder 2nd Edition being a step towards a new system I think one of the core/most important things for the life of the game is to reduce player stress with improved player AND GM experience when parsing out what rules do what. Character creation is the most vital part of retaining a new player. If the pathfinder community is to grow I think this is another great place to start by taking the opportunity to onboard potential new or longtime players better.

These are my thoughts. Apologies for the verbosity. I love this game a lot and I would love to see it's popularity explode beyond measure. Some small tweaks to the fundamentals could seriously help that along by simplifying those first few steps before the official rulebook is printed.

If the designers already have something of this sort cooking, feel free to correct me. I would love to hear any thoughts or considerations on these matters.

Regards,
CC

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