Posted in the Tabletop Gaming Hangout; I'll include here as well.
I haven't gone over everything yet, of course, but I've done a few deep-dives.
There are fewer skills at first glance (yay?). Also, skill proficiency seems to have been simplified to categories: Untrained, Trained, Expert, Master, Legendary. Not sure what those do, but OK, fine. The skill check formula references a "proficiency bonus" but I can't find it (that just might be a problem with the SRD). The skill descriptions are broken down into
actions, which makes some sense because skill descriptions have always included rules for use cases. Now that's been made explicit. Well, these actions have
traits. For example, the Impersonate action of the Deception skill has a "Secret" trait, which just means the DM rolls the check behind the screen so the player can't know the outcome.
You can see what's going on here --
PF2 is built to be modular. This is all confusing at first (Impersonate also has an "Exploration" trait. . . wha? oh, that just means it takes time to use) but with familiarity this makes the system more resilient against future bloat. As you remember the traits, the game can grow considerably just by re-arranging them.
The problem I see is that the system
already feels bloated. The class progression tables are absolutely
packed with features, but a lot of them are incremental. Here's one for cleric, traditionally considered one of the more straightforward classes:
4th-level spells, general feat, skill increase, third doctrine
That's not overly complex if you're progressing a regular PC, but it adds up for DMs. If you're starting an NPC cleric at 7th level, you have
twenty-five class features & upgrades to process. In 5E, it's just seven.
Another case, I went over the weapons list and by far the most important question is, "How much damage does it do?" Well, here are the ones I saw that deal 1d4 damage:
Fist, Clan Dagger, Dagger, Gauntlet, Katar, Light Mace, Sickle, Spiked Gauntlet, Staff
. . . and that's
just the simple weapons. They have different properties such as damage type and "bulk", but these aren't going to be important in most cases, so it's kind of like shopping among 50 different brands of shampoo, all made by Proctor & Gamble. Weapons have traits as well (finesse, reach, etc.), to make one 1d4 weapon distinctive from another. That's fine, 5E does the same thing, but 5E has only ten weapon properties. PF2 has
thirty-five. Some of these are unique; for example, the sawtooth saber is literally the only weapon with the "Twin" trait. They made it a trait anyway in case someone makes a new weapon with that trait, but how often will that be, and in the meantime, who's going to remember what that trait does? In addition, apparently "Deadly" and "Fatal" are distinctly different traits. With my memory being what it is, I'm going to have trouble with that.
To reiterate, this is still rather preliminary, but it feels like longevity was ironically prioritized over what it needs to ensure it'll take off at all -- learning curve and gameplay depth. So far it looks like Paizo has created a very efficient confetti-sorting system, having lost sight of the fact that it's not really fun to sort confetti -- you're supposed to mindlessly toss handfuls of the stuff.
Oh, I'm sure the modular structure is going to pay dividends in the coming years. However, it's not always the simplest approach, so the trait system at times feels less like solid design and more like fealty. See, while the concept is simple, it really comes down to remembering what the traits do. It reminds me of my coding days and object-oriented programming. The concept of object properties & methods is simple, but to do anything, you have to
memorize those properties and methods. I think 35 weapon traits is already overkill for a core release, but will they (and all those 3rd-party sources) have the discipline to not go nuts pushing out yet more traits? Will every unique characteristic get shoved into its own trait, just to conform to the system? What if one splatbook cites a trait that's defined in another splatbook? OK, a lot of this is speculative, maybe even overreacting, but they really set the precedent with that sawtooth saber. One weapon does one thing, boom, new trait, and now you've put the item and what it does in different places.
Robust code isn't always
readable code, and this is a game, not Java.
