Oh boy, Pathfinder 2e playtest rules are out, time to see if it's just D&D 3.875E or if they've done something even mildly radical with it.
If you've struggled through the character creation process in another D&D-derivative RPG before the character creation process will be familiar and comforting.
If you haven't you'll wonder why the book is out of order and doesn't work.
If you haven't you'll wonder why the book is out of order and doesn't work.
"Race" is replaced with "Ancestry." Shadow of the Demon Lord uses this as well, and it's a change that I think all RPGs should adopt.
On page 25 I first crossed the term "ancestry feat" and my blood ran cold remembering the absurd mechanical granularity 3E derivatives in particular get into with Adjective Noun systems tacked onto the body.
Reflexively I'm anticipating separate resource pools for Radiant Feats, Lethal Feats, Martial Feats, Combat Feats, Academic Feats, and Culinary Feats.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu~
Surprising no one, Pathfinder 2e is unabashedly a system that expects you to understand the whole before you can really start, and its attempts at tutorials are... uh...
"Confused about how to do your ability scores? Don't worry, here's a simple step-by-step tutorial where we alternate between two different examples in a five step process that takes a page and a half to explain." 
No, see, it *is* point buy, it's just the points are ablated through a 5-step process with a marginal decision tree built into several steps! (see pages 23, 24, 27, 39, 57, 87, 122, 123, and 132 for more information)
Aside from being very poorly taught, folding the point buy and all the miscellaneous stat boosts into the same process is not bad. Even being poorly laid out here it's still a hell of a lot easier to explain than the scaling point costs of point buy.
That said being better than bad is still not good. IMO the whole legacy system of racial stat modifiers should just be binned in the first place. They're trying very hard to polish a turd here because "wouldn't be D&D if there wasn't a min/max opportunity when choosing elf."
You're 100% correct, these are reference books first and foremost. I'm just waiting for "well, there will be a starter set" apologists to jump in. I'm of the radical opinion that the "starter set" should, in fact, be the rulebook.
It's telling that the chapter titled "playing the game" opens with fiddly math rules and not, you know, plain directions on how to play the game.
Class feat, Skill feat, Ancestry feat, and General feat. It's feats all the way down.
The funny part is the the abuse of the word "feat" is just a trick to lure 3e grogs into not realizing that this is basically just 4e, but, like, not good (though with a mix of passives and powers this is World of Warcraft's Talent system more strictly than 4e's power system)
Also it immediately falls victim to being really, really bad. Like, like's breakdown this ability Mirror Shield. It's mid-level, so it should be reasonably powerful. A Wizard at this level can use Cloudkill 3 times per day which, as per its name, is a murder cloud.
Mirror Shield, on the other hand requires the following:
-Player must be targeted with a ranged touch attack (like Disintegrate)
-The caster *critically fails* (rolls a 1) on that attack
-The player succeeds on an untrained ranged touch attack of their own
-Player must be targeted with a ranged touch attack (like Disintegrate)
-The caster *critically fails* (rolls a 1) on that attack
-The player succeeds on an untrained ranged touch attack of their own
Like, really? Really?!
I would be amazed if this ability triggered and succeeded more than once in an entire campaign unless the DM went out of their way to target the player with it.
Oh, and "ranged touch attack" only appears in the Bestiary once lolololololololololololololol
I would be amazed if this ability triggered and succeeded more than once in an entire campaign unless the DM went out of their way to target the player with it.
Oh, and "ranged touch attack" only appears in the Bestiary once lolololololololololololololol
(This means it functionally only works against the 11 spells in the game that are innately Ranged Touch Attacks, or any Touch spell augmented with Reach Spell feat requiring asldjg;hb;f;lsvum avfsv
Paizo. Paizo. Please. I'm dying here. Just let the Fighter do something rad. It's... the circumstances are already super narrow it's okay if they can just reflect the spell back. It's fine. The game won't break if it just works. I promise.
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