In Progress - RPG Tactical Zones Theater of the Mind Combat Aid

 

    I usually run "theater of the mind" styled combats.  I'm not a fan of grids for tabletop RPGs, I love dedicated wargames like Battletech or Warhammer 40k but don't usually run RPG games that focused on combat.  It's kinda hard to run good combats off of the rough sketches I make however, so I started wondering if there was a better way to represent a battlefield that was not super-detailed.

    What I came up with is pictured to the side, dividing up the battlefield by the roles involved.  This is not a totally original idea, The One Ring RPG by Cubicle 7 uses something similar (a little from the D&D 4th ed combat roles too).  I'm adapting it in a more free-form way however.  You can just use the boxes without worrying about the roles to have a good idea of where everybody is, put your miniature or token in the corresponding space.  Or you could get more detailed, adding bonuses or penalties to each role to help make combat more tactical without the foot-counting precision of a grid.

    I'd love to come up with a full set of house rules for several systems, like the D&D 5th ed I usually run, but also Fate and any other game that could use a semi-structured combat.  Something for those like me who enjoy tactical choices but doesn't want to get too in-depth.  I'm still working on ideas though, and with 2020 my group has had a hard time meeting to play of course.  So I'm not sure when I'll be able to craft something detailed - but I decided to go ahead and throw this out there and see if anyone found it helpful.

    EDIT 1/10/2023: Due to current confusion about the upcoming OGL v1.1 and how that might relate to the previous OGL 1.0a that I was using, I have removed all links to my previous documents.  I will try to alter and re-upload them in the near future.

    I have a few more ideas like this, visual aids for some common challenges, that I am going to be posting in the near future as well.  I always welcome comments (it's nice to know somebody's reading this, inconsistent as I am about it).

Current Project - Pathfinder 2e Character Trackers

   A few years ago I made a simple webpage that could track Pathfinder 1e characters, something the GM could use as a reference.  Not because it was needed, just to learn how to do it.  It looked like this...

    While it wasn't amazing, I was kind of proud of it.  It was really more of a teaching tool on how to use JavaScript to write to a page than anything else.

    Recently though, I was getting ready to run my first Pathfinder 2e adventure.  I thought about that old program, and that it might actually be helpful since I was going to be using a new system for the first time.  So I took a look at it again and realized it was not nearly enough to help me at the table.  So I did a mock-up of a more advanced layout...

   I liked the look of this, but I didn't have enough time to code it before my game.  So I didn't end up using it at all.  But after the game I thought about it some more, and decided that it needed more than just tracking the party, it also needed to be able to track the monsters, like this...

    And, while characters and monsters are good to reference, spells are also a pain to keep track of, so maybe it should have a spell tracking section as well...

   Well, now I had gone far, far beyond the original, simple little page.  How far you ask?  Well, here is the table columns and the JavaScript object that powered it...

   It's around 30 lines of code, and the rest of the code to format and write it to the table is about another 100 lines.

    For comparison, here is just a part of the current JavaScript object...

    So once again I have turned a simple idea into a horribly complicated project with features that spiral out of control (and what I can code).  I've done this so many times I'm used to it, sadly.

    I'm hoping that I can actually get this done, and keep it from acquiring too many extra features. (well, with all the code to define a character, it's not really too much to make a step-by-step character creator section. Plus, with a Pathfinder 2e character defined you've got most of a Pathfinder 1e or Dungeons and Dragons 5e character...)  I can't say how long this will take, I've been bad about tracking time to get a feel for how long it takes me on these projects.  But I hope in the near future to be posting the site as a tool for GMs, and as a tutorial on the HTML, CSS and JavaScript (plus maybe more) used to create it.

Pathfinder Second Edition: The Fall of Plaguestone - Review & Recap

    I finally ran my first Pathfinder 2ed adventure - one of my payers had bought The Fall of Plaguestone adventure, so we figured we could test out the new rules and see what the writing quality was like. It was a very mixed experience. There were some things in both the rules and adventure that I liked, but there were also some rage-inducing issues. It did not leave me looking forward to playing P2e again, either to finish the adventure (we got 2/3rds through it) or to make/run my own adventures for the new system.

    For this review I’m going to start by talking about P2e and the characters I made for it (some players didn’t have the book, so I made pre-gens), then go through the adventure itself (there will be light spoilers), and give some final thoughts on the system.

1) Making Characters
     In theory the new system is very easy: pick your Ancestry, a Background, and a Class. Choose a feat for the Ancestry and Class, note the Skill Feat your Background gave you. Assign your Attribute Picks. Buy gear, everybody gets 150 silver. Then wrap up the details and fill out a character sheet.

    In practice this took a lot more work than I expected. Some of that is learning a new system, though I had made a character before (in this post) so I wasn’t completely new to the system. 8Some of it came from the difficulty of choosing a worthwhile option. For example, the Wizard has 6 level 1 Class Feats…

• Counterspell - counter a foe from casting the same spell you have prepared
• Eschew Materials - you don’t need a spell component pouch
• Familiar - you have a bonded small animal, which can give you a small bonus (but not fight)
• Hand of the Apprentice - you gain a focus spell of the same name. You can make a ranged attack with a melee weapon, once in a fight, and you have to be able to take a 10 min rest before using it again
• Reach Spell - by adding 1 action to the casting you can extend the range of a spell by 30 feet
• Widen Spell - you can add 5-10 feet to the radius of a burst or length of a cone/ line

    So Counterspell is mostly useless. You can only counter a spell you have prepared, and you lose the prepared spell to do it. So I can counter a magic missile, which might sometimes save a companion from dying, but I lose the spell myself and only have 3 spells for the day total, so now 2. Eschew Materials is useless, how many times have you lost your spell pouch? (or, how many times has your GM forgotten that you even have spell pouch to begin with?) The Familiar is a semi-decent spy and useless otherwise. Hand of the Apprentice is useless, it’s got a slighly better chance to hit than using a crossbow, damage is the same as your melee (so, pathetic for most low-Str Wizards) but you can only do it once per fight. Reach Spell is the only clear great to have ability, since you can attack with some of those touch spells from a safe distance instead. Widen Spell is maybe okay sometimes if you’re using a battle-mat, but I run “theater of the mind” fights and it’s incredibly hard to translate a slight bonus (5 feet to 10 feet) into a more abstract system like that.

    And too many feat choices are like that, a lot of reading new rules for how things work in excange for a bunch of crappy options that may or may not ever see play. Granted, 1st edition had the same problem, there were a whole heaping bunch of crappy options and edge-cases, but at least then you got so many abilities that there was usually one good thing in the lot. In 2nd edition you don’t get as many abilities overall (at least it doesn’t seem like it, and I really don’t want to go through the effort of making several characters to compare).

    Adding to the time, I did have to fight with some new character sheets. I absolutely love Dyslexic Studio’s website, but the sheets were not loading properly for me in Firefox (my preferred browser), and the PDFs are not edit-able, so I had to use Edge and download the HTML files, and then everything worked fine (bugs he fixed a few days later, lol). That slowed me down. Still, it took me about three hours to make 3 characters, and it felt a lot longer. It did not seem to be any more streamlined than 1st ed and I did not feel like my final characters were comparable to 1st ed versions. Wizards lose the bonus spells for high Int, no longer get the Scribe Scroll feat extra, and the bundle of Racial Abilities have been cut-up and strung-out in the new Ancestry Feats system (where you only learn how to be a proper Elf around 7th level).

    Again, I haven’t sat own and done a point-by-point comparison - but the initial impression was that I was doing a lot of work for little return, and I would have been better off making a DnD 5th character, or just going back to Pathfinder 1e. There was nothing new that made character creation a better experience.

2) The Adventure
     I’m going to try and keep the profanity to a minimum, but the adventure was garbage. There were a few okay spots, but overall I was not impressed by the quality of writing Paizo was charging me for. Now, here is where I may vary a whole lot with most other GMs. For example, I had heard tons and tons of great things about the Rise of the Runelords campaign, but when I played/GMed it I thought it was crap. The main villain and overarching plot (ie, the Runelords) are really a side-note lost and forgotten in a bunch of pointless side-quests, most of the big set-pieces like the haunted house and giants attacking the city were boring, there’s a lot of stupid crap where you’re told to make your players “care about” a place or people - yet nothing in the game gives them anything to care about (and that really should have been done before the game by giving each character some hook into the people/ places), and just the overall feel was amateurish - I’ve crapped out campaigns as good or better at 4am without advance warning. For a published product I expected something more.

    So with that in mind (that I’m a grumpy old b-stard) I did not like several parts of The Fall of Plaguestone. The characters are explicitly paid customers in a caravan, trying to get to a certain city, when a murder breaks out half-way there and they get roped into solving it and trying to save the town. That’s nothing to write home about, it’s the same kind of plot contrivance GMs have been shoving PCs into since the hobby began. The fight opens with an attack by wolves, several “Creature 0” wolves and one “Creature 2” Caustic Wolf.

    Here is the Number One thing I hate about this adventure and Pathfinder 2nd edition - the new CR system sucks @(!$!($#@%(!$^)@%(^@^@ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I only had 3 players, one of them bowed out at the last minute. So the party was a Cleric, Rogue and Wizard. There was no front-line fighter-type/ tank. I wasn’t sure what the combat was going to be like, being new to this adventure and the game in general. I figured I’d run the combat “by the book” so I could see how it worked, even if it made the fights a little hard, I was just going to be very generous about death saves and recovery time if needed. And I needed it. The Cleric’s limited spells and no Wis bonus meant there was very little healing the party could do. So I thought. Actually, I was remembering the old healing skill from 1st edition, the new Medicine skill (which the Wizard had) is actually very good at healing people - arguably better than the Cleric Heal spell (well, no, it is better - and wands are useless to low level characters, potions are expensive - a 1d8 heal potion is 40 silver or your starting 150).

    So healing sucks, no big deal if the PCs have decent Armor Classes, right? Problem is, while the CR0 wolves had only +6 to hit (which was pretty good), the CR2 caustic wolf had +11 to hit - which is incredible. For my Cleric PC they had a +3 attribute, and another +2 for being trained with a weapon, so +6 to hit at 1st level. At second level that would go up to +7. At 3rd level +8. 4th level +9. 5th level they get an attribute boost, so +11. The Rogue was slightly better, with an 18 Dex and a finesse weapon, so he had +7 at 1st level. Then +8, +9, +10 up to 4th level. At 5th he got the attribute bonus and went Expert with his weapons, so a whopping +14 to hit at 5th level. Which means the CR2 monster was hitting like a 4th or 5th level PC - but they were fighting it at 1st level.

    And that adventure did it constantly. There is supposed to be a CR2 boar that attacks in the town. Well, the PCs figured town was safe, and so they split up to investigate a murder, which meant only a single character was there for the boar fight. They would have died. Period. They could have ran away, but what good is that? They live, they don’t get any xp since they didn’t defeat/ neutralize the enemy, and all we did was waste several minutes at the table. A non-winnable fight is only good for flavor (you guys are in a very scary place) or to kill the PCs. Otherwise it’s a time-sink.

    Which there was too much of already. There is a murder the first night at town, and the PCs have to solve it so the movie can happen. It the murder the plot? No, the plot is somebody trying to kill the town. Which, had the bad guys just done that and not tipped their hand with the random murder, would have succeeded and all the PCs would be dead. Literally the bad guys derailed their own plot, it wasn’t the quick-thinking work of the PCs.

    So the first act has 14 enemies CR 0 or 1 and 5 enemies CR 2 or 3. A quarter of the fights need all the players, and still might get someone killed. Remember though- this act is framed as a murder mystery, not a combat slogfest. There are also 5 traps, and 4 bonus xp actions. Which all told comes out to 862 XP per player at the end of act 1. It takes 1,000 XP to level up. The party needs 4 more on-level encounters (CR 1) to hit next level. And they really need to level up, because in act 2 there are 8 CR 0s (no prob), 6 CR 2s (decent fights), 2 CR 3s (hard fights) and 2 CR 4s (really, really hard fights). I don’t count xp, so I had everybody level up to 2nd and gave one player a Ranger (also level 2) to give the party some more combat power. Even still, the last CR 4 fight they had to run away from because they were losing it badly. As level 1s? They wouldn’t have made it to the last fight.

    Finally, as GM the writing was meh. It usually told me what I needed to know, though some spots are not laid out well. You have to own the Bestiary for some of the monsters, and flip to the back form some of the stat blocks, which I hate. Wish they had just added 5-10 pages and printed everything in the book, I was overcharged anyways. The story isn’t that interesting, the pacing is off (act 1 is too long and slow, act 2 too short), the characters are boring (I re-wrote some NPCs on the fly to make them more interesting to me, since I had to act them out). For the players the Cleric was mostly useless, the Wizard had somewhat better cantrips for damage-dealing, the Rogue had a ton of skills, but the skills don’t always come into play. The special “Exploration actions” didn’t get used, I forgot about them and the adventure didn’t remind me or help me incorporate them. So if this is your first time as a GM or PC, not very helpful.

3) Pathfinder 2e and Me
     Why the hell did I pay $100 for this? That was just for the Core Rulebook and Bestiary, my player added another $23 for the adventure. And it’s mediocre at best. I cannot find anything in this game to convince me to play it instead of Pathfinder 1e or Dungeons and Dragons 5e. The few things I like (attribute picks, streamlined action economy, a few spells and spell mechanics) could all be house-ruled into either of those two games for little effort. I was excited when they said they were working on a second edition, even with the massive time and money sink we had in the dozen+ 1e books. Then when I saw the playtest materials I was doubtful. Having now made 4 characters and GMed 2/3rds an adventure, I don’t want to play it again. Maybe I’ll steal a few things for house rules, maybe I won’t bother, but this game is not getting any more money or time from me.

Almost Dead, Not Quite

    Yeah, it's been way, waayyy too long since I posted anything.  I am working though.  Earlier this year (things are such a blur I'm not even sure when exactly) I talked myself into trying the Wendy's Feast of Legends RPG.  While it didn't suck, it did have some big problems.  Most of all I expected it would be something friendly to new players and GMs, and more "old school play" with it's minimal mechanics.  Sadly, it is just incomplete.  There are no out-of-combat DCs, a ton of riddles (that my players luckily breezed through, those can either be easy or rage-inducing), and instead of building on an existing OGL game they really like the number 4 and figure the GM can patch all the gaping holes in the rules, assuming they can survive reading the campaign that feels like a written MC Esher painting.
    Well, being big dumb me I decided I could do better.  So far I'm 10,000 words into it with no end in sight.  I am learning a lot about my GM style, I've read a ton of advise over the years but I tend to just throw things together by gut instinct.  So thinking about how to explain GMing to a noob has forced me to take some hard looks at myself.  I'm also trying to make this look nice, with plenty of graphics - I can't afford to hire an artist, but there are lots of different icons and game resources out there if you search long enough.
    Anyways, that's my current big project - and it's resurrected some old projects too.  I just dug out my old Combat Capabilities Map and RPG Conversation Map and streamlined them both to somethings I'm much happier with, and they can be spun off into their own generic supplements.
    So please keep an eye one this space, I'm hoping to start posting some pieces of what I'm working on soon, and I have no idea how darn long the final game is going to take but I keep plugging away at it every day.
    Hope you all are finding ways to cope with the current madness :)

Ultramodern5 Review part 2 - combat and final thoughts

    With a second adventure under the belt, and testing the combat system, I have my final thoughts on the Ultramodern5 RPG.  And I think all those thoughts can be summed up by looking at one character, not mine, our friend Andi's Heavy "Bubbles."

    Bubbles sounded like a really cool character.  The Heavy class focuses one using the really big guns, so Bubbles shoots the minigun (aka Rotary Cannon).  Andi took the class abilities where Bubbles adds to the armor class of allies nearby - which was perfect for our party of 4, the Face was not a strong combatant and the Techie has a slightly better offense than defense, while my Gunslinger/Martial Artist was designed to run into melee range.  Bubbles' other ability was improved Overwatch, so if needed he could hold our flank and blast any number of baddies who tried to sneak up on us.  In the team or solo Bubbles looked like a good character.  But didn't play that way.
    Our first adventure was a building infiltration, it was a lot of planning and talking but no shooting.  Bubbles was able to get hired on as a guard, which gave us an "inside man" and valuable intel.  But the class didn't have any non-combat capabilities.  This is half the fault of DnD 5e, which is sadly lacking in anything non-combat, and half the fault of the Ultramodern5 team, who should have realized this limitation and tried to correct it.  So adventure one was a little disappointing, but we knew adventure 2 would be combat-focused, so finally Bubbles would get his chance to shine.
    Sadly it was not to be.  The Heavy class is all about those heavy weapons, but we found some problems.  The rotary cannon always fired multiple bullets, which meant it could hit a 10' cube and targets had to make Dex saves and took no damage on a successful save, or full damage on a failed save.
    Problem #1.  Ten feet right in front of you and ten feet a hundred feet in front of you are two very different arcs.  Let me use a diagram...

So here's my biggest problem with the square-grid system DnD and others use, things do not line up well at all.  I would much rather use a hex map, and allow objects to stand in-between hexes, which gives better positioning.  Still, 10' is two squares, which I'm spreading over 3 squares because that makes more real-world sense.  The 10' right in front of the shooter (played by the GIMP mascot) is a huge angle, while the furthest 10' is a very tiny angle.  Now, there is some validity to the concept that at close range you can cover a large angle because the targets are so close you're not likely to miss, while at a long range you have to keep to a narrower angle so that you can hit the smaller targets.  Which I can buy, with something like a machine pistol that has a relatively small ammo supply.  But something like the minigun, which carries hundreds to thousands of bullets, seems like it should be able to fill any angle with a potentially lethal amount of firepower.  So in the end the minigun just doesn't feel like it's hitting enough targets.
    Problem #2.  Weapons in U5 with "auto" fire have 2 damage values, one for firing a single bullet and one for firing auto.  Those numbers are always 1 die type apart.  So a Machine Pistol does 1d4 single, 1d6 auto.  An Assault Rifle does 1d8 single, 1d10 auto.  The "Rotary Cannon" cannot fire single shots, only auto, so how much damage do you think it does?  I'll give you a second...
    The answer is 1d10.  Yup, the same damage as an Assault Rifle.  What !?!?  The thing that fires a thousand bullets does the same damage as the thing that can, at best, fire 30 bullets?  As I mentioned in the last post, a 2-handed Greatsword does 2d6 damage.  So this is just insultingly low for such a huge weapon.  Not only is that damage low, is could be zero.  According to the rules when you auto fire (which the minigun has to) you don't roll to attack, the enemies roll Dex saves.  And on successful saves they take no damage.  The DC for that save is either 8 + Dex mod + Proficiency Bonus (if proficient) or 15, whichever is higher.  Your Ladder can get 1 attribute up to 22, or a +6 bonus max, and the max Proficiency Bonus is also +6, for a maximum possible DC 20.  That's pretty low.  Especially given that a successful save negates all damage.  I believe Bubbles had a +2 Dex (Heavies are Str builds), and we were level 5 so we had +3 Prof Mods - that's just a DC 13, below the minimum DC of 15.  And a creature with no Dex mod can beat a DC 15 save 30% of the time.  Again, that might be fine if we were talking about a machine pistol or other "small arm" - but we're not, we're talking about a huge, fire-breathing, bullet-spewing monster of a minigun!
    Problem #2a.  We played it so that Bubbles rolled his to-hit and it was applied among the number of targets the GM determined.  The other problem with making them saves is that the player now doesn't ever roll to hit, only the GM rolls for the monsters, which sucks for the player since he doesn't get the fun of rolling anything and sucks for the GM because he has to make 12 rolls for all the Small drones in that 10' cube.

    The sad story of Bubbles is that of missed expectations.  From everything we read in the book the expectation was of a hard-hitting, hard-to-kill tank.  The reality was that Bubbles was hard to kill, but while he had the advantage of being able to hit multiple opponents, did not do a lot of damage to any of them.  With my Gunslinger and Martial Arts mix I was able to do just over 100 points of damage in 3 rounds - about triple what Bubbles could do.  That's just not right.
    The other problem of our adventure is again inherited from DnD but overlooked by the U5 team - interacting with technology.  Our adventure was supposed to be a zombie outbreak (it's in the book), but one of our players doesn't like the living-impaired so the GM changed it to an android/robot outbreak.  Something so common it's cliché in the SF field.  But with only the "Computer Use" and "Engineering" skills, and literally no sample DCs, trying to figure out if something could be hacked, how hard that would be, and what modifications could be made was left entirely on the GMs shoulders.  That's extra work on the GM, and it means the payers can't read a rule to set their expectations, instead it's a big question mark until it comes up.  Which, in a science-fiction setting, anyone with a functioning brain knows it is going to come up!  And I'll illustrate that with something the U5 team did right.  My character took the "Runner" Ladder, and one of my abilities was that I could move 10' and then spend the rest of my move as a climb speed (so no Acrobatics roll needed).  That said to me that I was really good at climbing stuff.  So when we were attacked by a robo-forklift I had a crazy thought - since I was a melee-based character, could I climb on top of the forklift to do my melee attacks?  The GM decided it was just crazy enough to be plausible, and that I would make a Dex save to avoid getting run over, but if successful could climb on top without another check.  That was perfect, the Dex save gave that bit of risk and uncertainty but skipping the Acrobatics check kept it from being so uncertain it might not be worth trying.  No where in the book did it say I could climb an evil forklift, but it did say enough to logically and reasonably determine if it should be possible.  Which is where the computer use and engineering fall short, they don't have enough detail to extrapolate from, as a player trying to formulate a plan or as a GM trying to set the appropriate difficulty.


    After a second adventure my impressions have been reinforced - I don't think this is a very well-written game, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.  There are lots of other games that were designed for modern/ SF/ urban fantasy and do it a lot better.  None of us wanted to play a third adventure, though we might someday try converting our characters to another system, who knows?
    Doing some research I did find that the U5 team is working on Ultramodern Redux, and had a successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year (2019), so who knows, maybe the next book will be awesome?  I hope they do learn from this version and can give those who like DnD 5e a good modern/SF system to use.
    There is going to be one more post on the game though, next I'll put up my character.


You can read all the posts in this series here

Ultramodern5 Review part 1 - An Outline of the Game

    A few months ago some friends found Ultramodern5 from Dias Ex Machina at a con and asked me to look at it.  It's a modern/sci-fi DnD 5th-compatible RPG, apparently the original Ultramodern was built for 4th.  I like SF games, I've played lots of Star Frontiers, Rifts, Battletech, Star Wars and more.  I was a little skeptical though since DnD is not just a fantasy game but also built on fantasy tropes, the whole tank/healer/dps that was codified in MMOs was really started with DnD - and that gets a little harder to model with real-world combat without magic (or super-science that equals magic).  So I did not go into the book with a lot of enthusiasm, and my first quick read-through did not make me want to read it in more detail.  Still, our friends wanted to try it, so I drafted another friend to run the thing and we had our first adventure over the last weekend.
    Our adventure was a little odd.  The book has 2 adventures but the GM came up with his own idea.  It was open-ended for us to either fight or talk our way through, and to his surprise we ended up talking in a sort-of-Leverage-styled heist.  This is not an ideal first adventure to judge the game buy just because everything not fighting is weak in DnD, I think weaker in 5th than earlier versions even.  So we really did not interact with a lot of the rules.  Still, it was enough to get a taste of the system, and our next adventure is going to be more traditionally combat focused and the GM was going to use/adapt one of the adventures in the book.  I feel like I understand the system enough after playing it and reading through it in more detail to give a basic review, but I expect this review to be in several parts as I explore more of the system.  I'm also going to post about how I made my character later.
    Okay, I think I'm just going to walk through the book and comment on it in order.  Let's start at the beginning...

Setting and Misc Rules

    U5 does not have it's own setting.  There are apparently two other books, Amethyst and NeuroSpasta by the same publisher.  Haven't read them so I can't comment on them.
    There are no rules for magic in U5, so if you want an "urban fantasy" setting you'll have to use the DnD 5e rules.  Which might be tricky, does a "mending" spell that fixes objects work on a computer?
    There are only a few new rules.  One is for auto and burst fire, which I am not a fan of on reading, but I'll comment on them after we play the combat rules.  The other is the addition of "Computer Use" and "Demolitions" skills.  I kind of want to say that with the design of 5e these should both be Tool Proficiencies, but that's more semantics than anything.  I really wish they had added some more skills, or at least how to use existing skills.  Some of the classes have things like "Tool Proficiencies: All ground vehicles and aircraft" - wow is that vague... so can I drive a tank?  MechaGodzilla?  A 747 jet airplane?  You guys really have to be more specific than that.  I'm disappointed that they didn't put any work into this, into updating the fantasy of 5e into a modern/futuristic setting.  Since they ignored important things like this, the GM has to do the work - so why bother buying a book if you have to write the rules yourself?  Right?
    The only place that does talk about piloting is the feats.  There is an "Exo-Armor Proficiency" feat.  Exo-Armor is defined on page 99, I'm on page 8 (it seems to be what most games would call "Power Armor" and mecha).  There is not a dedicated section that talks about skills, the new skills and feats are stuck in the first 8 pages of the book.  Again, crap layout - there should be a dedicated section to explain this stuff.  Page 112 also has 5 categories of vehicles: light ground, heavy ground, super-heavy ground, aircraft and watercraft.  That's a little better division (though not by much), and again why the hell isn't it in a section about proficiencies?  (why not have a 'Military Training" feat that lets you apply your proficiencies to vehicles and weapons with the "military" descriptor?)  The few feats are "meh" at best, honestly I forgot they existed when making my character.

Races

    There is one race, Human.  This is fine in a modern setting, but aliens and genetically altered humans (even animals) are staples of lots of SF, so I'm a little bummed that they didn't address creating non-humans at all.  The equipment in the game goes up to laser weapons and mini-nukes, so this is designed for modern to far-future sci-fi after all.
    All Humans get a "genetic benefit" that can give you something like "Eidetic Memory" or "Light Sleeper."  That adds a touch of the diversity from fantasy races, but it is not much.  And some of the benefits seem like they might not get used very often (Nimbleness- you can move through the space of any creature that is a size larger than you), while others seem a little overpowered (Toughness- you have DR 2 against slashing and piercing damage; so you take 2 less damage from all guns?  Wow).
    Here is a good place to mention something that has driven me nuts about this book - the naming conventions.  "Toughness" has been a feat that gave you an extra hit point per level since DnD 3, and there is a genetic benefit that gives you those extra HP, it's just called "Extreme Fortitude" instead.  One of the components to your character is called a "Ladder."  What do you think that would add to your character?  Anything come to mind?  Well, it's kinda an archetype, but where 5e uses archetypes to provide variations to a class, 5U uses them as kind of but not quite background options.  One Ladder is the "Runner" who starts off with an extra 5' of speed as the name would suggest.  But on later levels they actually become parkour masters and general acrobats - either of which would be better names.  There are Archetypes too, but they are more like the 'Prestige Classes' of Pathfinder.  One of them is named "Cleaner."  Now, I've mostly heard the word (in a profession/ability context) to refer to a type of criminal who 'cleans up' after other criminals, destroying evidence of wrongdoing.  But the archetype is really an assassin, someone who specializes at killing people with one shot, or in one round of combat.  I haven't looked into the background of this company, but the book reads as if they do not speak English as a primary language and only got a semi-competent translator.

Backgrounds

    In 5e you don't get much from your Background, just a few skills/ tools/ languages and a few tables with role-playing suggestions.  U5 manages to give you even less, removing the role-playing stuff.  So honestly you could just let people pick 2 proficiencies and take an extra $50 and drop this entire section.  This is mostly crap in 5e and I'm sad that the U5 guys didn't improve on something that needed some love.

Lifepath

    Oh boy, the Lifepath tables.  A series of random rolls to discover your character's background.  These are an old part of gaming, really big in the 80s-90s with Traveller (maybe the most famous, in  your background you could be killed, and thus have to make a new character before you even finished your first character) and Cyberpunk 2020, Star Trek, Mechwarrior and several other games.  DnD has never used them in a core game, but they've cropped up a few times in supplements.  Lifepath tables are hard to do right, you need a system that gives you at least a semi-coherent story and some sparks for your imagination to build on.  These are not that.  Frankly, the U5 Lifepath tables pretty much suck.  It can give you some funny results (one friend's character has a bunch of failed relationships, I have 5 enemies and only 2 friends) but I'd rather adapt a different game's tables.
    Why not tie this to the Background system?  Maybe you have 4 Background picks, and each has a related table.  So take a pick as a Merchant and maybe you did great with your sales and start with extra money, take a pick as a Soldier and maybe you got promoted, or wounded in combat?  Then have a few random tables for your family and friends and stuff?  That would at least tie the benefits to the Background system instead of them being a world unto themselves, and then they would, you know, describe your background.

Ladders

    So you select a Ladder at 1st level, then at 4th (and every 4 thereafter) you can take another ladder ability instead of a feat or attribute increase.  So really these are feat chains/trees.  They are also designed to give you some power spikes to make up for the fact that SF stories usually don't gain and throw away special equipment like DnD/epic fantasy.  There are 7-

• Born Leader - get bonuses to skills as long as you don't fight or cast a spell, help your allies
• Juggernaut - get extra hit points/ damage reduction
• Runner - move faster, AC bonuses
• Savant - some skill bonuses and random stuff
• Survivor - take damage, kinda weirdly similar to the Juggernaut in a way
• Veteran - get a pool of re-rolls
• Warrior - power up to OVER 9000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  (well, to 5 at least)

    Virtually every Ladder lets you change the attribute you use for attack and damage rolls, which kinda makes the point of having different attributes pointless.  The powers you get from the Ladders cover the whole spectrum of useless to really strong/ maybe OP.  And others are just weird.  Here is an ability from the Born Leader... after taking a long rest, if you wear no armor and wield no weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to Charisma or Intelligence (select one) until you make an attack roll or cast a spell. Select either Charisma or Intelligence as your primary born leader ability.
    Ummm... what?  You are smarter or more likable until you attack someone or cast a spell, then you have to sleep to become smarter or more likable again?  What the hell kind of sense does that make?
    I don't like the ladder system.  Some of the abilities are fine, but as a whole it just seems stupid.  It's mechanics over logic.

Classes

    The heart of and DnD based system, there are 10 classes...

• Face
• Grounder
• Gunslinger
• Heavy
• Infiltrator
• Marshal
• Martial Artist
• Medic
• Sniper
• Techie

    The classes are complicated enough I need to talk about them individually.

Face
    You're kind of a Bard.  You get an ability to roll a DC 15 Wis/ Perception each turn and gain 1 extra action, that can't be used for an attack.  Then you get to choose a few abilities, most of which can't really be used in combat.  And there are some very questionable abilities like Polyglot (you learn 3 additional languages, and gain more over time) and Possible Sociopath (you have resistance to psychic damage and Advantage on saves vs effects that sense your emotions or read your thoughts).  Languages usually are not very important (and they can be pretty boring, you really have to purposefully build an adventure around language barriers to keep them from being more annoying than dramatic).  And if you're not using magic (which again is not in this book) then the psychic damage resistance is useless - why not add Advantage on Deception rolls or something to make this more broadly applicable?
    You also get a vehicle worth up to $30,000 and an Armored Personnel Carrier costs $8,000 while a Tank is $25,000.  Ummm.... yeah....  Somebody did proofread this, right? (as a side note, not many characters get a vehicle, so I guess public transportation in really, really good in the future)

Grounder
    You're the generalist fighter.  You can focus on using automatic or single-shot weapons.  You can also select from a pool of abilities.  Some are okay, like being able to move and fire a rifle/ 2H gun without attack penalty.  Some are borderline useless.  Like Combat Ineffective (if an ally goes to 0 HP gain Advantage to attack the foe who did it) and Comrades In Arms (if ally takes a critical hit, gain Advantage to attack the foe who did it).  Just how often are either of those things going to happen?  Some abilities are pure magic, like Jump In Front (if you and 1+ allies are hit by an effect of up to 60' across, push all of them out of the way and take as many hits as the allies you moved) which allows you magically teleport and throw full-grown adults several stories with no damage to any of them.  Not a bad class overall, but kinda strange in places.

Gunslinger
    Specialize in 1 or 2 pistols.  This was one of the classes I took (my character is a multi-classed Gunslinger/ Martial Artist) and there are 3 abilities I really like.  Classic Tumble lets you take 1/4 damage from an attack or failed Dex save.  Limber Up gives you Advantage on Dex and Str rolls for one turn.  And Kinesics lets you ignore difficult terrain, movement doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity and all attacks against you have Disadvantage.  So you can flow through the battlefield for one turn.  I ended up making my character based on John Preston from Equilibrium, the gun and melee hybrid who can stand in the middle of a crowd and kill everybody.  It's actually a pretty cool class, and one of the best in the book.

Heavy
    You fire the really big guns.  This is another good class.  You get to pick from a couple of abilities, but most of them are useful and fit the class concept.  Imposing Frame means you're so scary that allies near you get an AC bonus and have cover.  Easy Target (which has a bad name, I'd call it 'Monster Hunter') means you do extra damage the larger your target is (up to a +8).  Some of them are kinda "meh" - Overwatch makes your automatic attacks hit a 10' larger area, which is not always useful and only really applies if you're using a battle grid.  Shrapnel does your Dex or Str mod in damage to a foe within 5' of one you hit - again, not always useful unless your enemies like to bunch up (and by what magic do you make your normal bullets explode?).

Infiltrator
    The Rogue, not in the 'super skilled' sense but rather in the 'assassin' sense.  This class is very strange, it is literally the only class that doesn't get to make any choices.  Every other class has some sort of pool of abilities, but Infiltrator only get fixed powers.  They aren't terrible, you can do extra damage and are harder to hit, but it's an odd design choice to make them so limited.

Marshal
    Also the Bard, at least for the stuff that buffs the party.  A weird class because every single ability applies to your allies, none of them help you.  So a Marshall by themself is basically helpless.

Martial Artist
    Another good class.  Their main mechanic is the Combo Chain.  Each successive hit does more damage and unlocks special finishing moves, which can do extra damage, push/ knockdown enemies, or attack all nearby enemies.  A good amount of flexibility, a unique core mechanic, good design.  While I think this is one of the best classes, it still shows the strange errors that run rampant throughout the book.  The MA has two powers, I'm going to quote them below, see if you can spot the problem-

Gun-Something-Something
You treat one-handed small arms as melee weapons when attacking targets at 5 feet or closer

  and

C-C-C-Combo Breaker
You treat one-handed small arms as melee weapons when attacking targets at 5 feet or closer. Additionally, all ranged attacks with one-handed small arms made against targets 5 feet or closed can be considered melee attacks.

    If you answered "the second power does everything the first one does and more, thus there is no reason to ever take the first power" give yourself a cookie, and apparently you're smarter than the editors.  (bonus if you noticed the "closed" should be "closer")

Medic
    Another support class like the Marshal, but this one can actually act on its own.  Oddly, this is pretty much a spellcaster, which feels super out of place with the class design so far (and logic).  You get spell slots, but not many of your abilities are as powerful as spells.  Also, some of your spells require a "medical kit" which has 50 uses, but at 1st level you have a whopping 2 slots.  So the kit doesn't have the medicine, you magically charge the kit to do something.  Though you do have your "cantrips" to use at-will.  Not a bad class, but the magic masquerading as technology makes my head hurt - pick a lane guys (also you have some powers to kill people with, so much for the Hippocratic Oath).

Sniper
    Decent class.  A sniper focuses on doing damage at long range, which the game shortens to 25' or more - not a bad decision given how close most RPG combats tend to be.  I'd personally make the sniper a feat or class ability for making far shots, not sure it works that well as a class, again just because of it's narrow focus.  Still, this one seems like it would work fine.

Techie
    With a name like "Techie" I'd expect the class to be good with all technology, maybe even things like computer hacking.  Nope.  This class should really be called something like "Gunsmith" since the main abilities only boost a firearm.  At 12th level you can actually make an Engineering check to create an improvised tool, which seems like something anybody should be able to do and not a special class ability.  Not a great class, even for the limited thing it does.

    The classes are a strange mix, some very good and with solid design work, some that just make no sense.  I will admit that the class design work in 5th edition is kinda spotty, so the foundation is not great, but I'm surprised at how many weak abilities and classes there are.  I'd say it's good enough, but could really, really use a re-write.

Archetypes

    These are much like Ladders, a small collection of related abilities, and kinda like Classes in that each one has some niche it's meant to enhance.  There are 25 of them total, so it's a pretty broad range.  With so many I really don't want to break them all down.  I'll say that personally I think the majority of them are middling to garbage.  A few are pretty good.  While the "Cleaner" is badly named, it makes a great Assassin, doing big bonus damage (your level x 4) to a single target, which is only usable once but if you down your target you regain a use - so the more you kill the better you kill.  The "Grandmaster" is a cool idea, you pick a specific style of martial arts and gain bonuses, but the actual effects can be weak in some cases.  "Machine of War" is cool since every time you attack someone within 30' you heal 1 HP, so you like killing and it makes you happy, which is just awesome with the right kind of character.  "Militarist" is funny since you gain points when bad things happen, like an ally rolls a natural 1, that you can then spend for bonuses.  A lot of extra bookkeeping and attention to detail, but I do really like the concept.

Equipment

    Wow, so this is the section that I hate the most.  You're lucky you can't hear all the screaming I have done at this book so far, and this chapter elicits a lot of them.  Ultramodern5 wants to be everything non-fantasy, it's designed to go from present-day tech to far future laser guns.  That poses a pretty big challenge.  And they totally drop the ball on it.  The thing they get right is using Tech Levels, broad categories of related technologies.  So Tech Level 0 is steam power, early firearms, and generally 1800s.  I kinda hate that, just because this is the lowest tech in the game, there were a ton of technological innovations before the 1800s for crying out loud.  That's a small gripe though.  So Tech Levels go up to 5 which is antigravity, disintegration and "complete body reconstruction."  With those broad categories you'd think that each TL would have it's own sub-chapter in the Equipment section, that would be the smart thing to do.  But no, instead everything is just lumped together in one big table with the TL a tiny footnote at the end of each line.  The lack of organization sucks big time, and makes it a chore to buy your gear since you have to read line by line to find which items might apply to you.  And they don't even use the TL system right.  The book says that any item without a TL is TL0 - so 1800s tech.  But the Machine Pistol and Assault Rifle don't have a TL listed; and I don't think the Pony Express rode with AK-47s!
    Prices are also all over the place.  There is Capsicum Spray (aka Mace, Bear Spray, Pepper Spray) that costs $55.  Damn!  I can buy that stuff from the dollar store.  Now there is a note that if your setting is TL1 or higher, all items of that TL and lower are half price, except for TL0.  What?  So now it's an even bigger pain in the butt because I have to divide all the prices after I figure out which ones I can try to purchase.  Come on guys, get a clue.  That makes some things even worse though - there is a dart gun, does no damage, but one of the darts for it does 12 damage (which is a lot for a single attack) and only costs $10 !!!!!!!!!  And it has no TL listed, so it's 1800s TL0 !!!!!!!!!  WTF
    There are also some really big oversights.  There is no backpack, they apparently don't exist in this alternate dimension.  No rope.  There is a Pillow (thank god) but no Bed Sheets (which I could turn into a rope) but there is Duct Tape (which even mentions it can be used to make rope) (though I've watched Mythbusters so I know that's a time-consuming process) (miss that show so much).
    Damage is another really bad thing.  We have the DnD hit point inflation, so you need to be able to do a lot of damage at higher levels (unless you like your entire 4 hour game session to be one fight).  But something as huge as a Minigun (called a "Rotary Cannon" bizarrely) does only 1d10 damage - a DnD 5e Greatsword does 2d6 for crying out loud!
    There are some vehicle rules, thank goodness since I don't think the 5e rules have anything.  Again prices are all over the place.  Military vehicles like tanks and APCs are listed alongside passenger cars with no reference as to who should be able to own what.  That is something the GM should be watching over, but they could at least acknowledge it.

NPCs and Adventures

    The last section of the book has the "monsters" and two sample adventures.  The adventures are a little weird since they are designed for level 4 and 14 characters, nothing for a basic starting character.  I can't comment on these sections because I haven't looked at them.  I'm not the GM, so I'll wait until our next adventure is over (I'm not really planning on playing this character past one more).  I do like that they included some sample characters, which are 4 and 14 to go with the adventures.  Down the road when I've had a chance to go over these I'll post on them.


Final Impressions
    This is an okay system.  There is a lack of modern/ SF material for DnD 5e, at least that I've seen, so I guess something mediocre is better than nothing.  I really don't think the book was well-written or designed.  I'm surprised that I liked the character I made so much, and our first adventure was okay, but I have no desire to play this system in the long term.  Would I recommend it?  No.  Get Shadowrun or Star Frontiers, Cyberpunk 2020, Rifts, Gamma World, Mechwarrior, Alternity - almost anything else has a more developed and focused system.

Pathfinder 2e - Character creation - Return of Devi Stoneson

    Back when the second edition playtest came out I made a Dwarf Fighter as a sample character (part 1 and part 2).  So now that the official second edition is out, let's make him again, and walk through all the choices you have at character creation.

Ancestry

    So we have a few choices in the Core Rulebook-

• Dwarf
• Elf
• Gnome
• Goblin
• Halfling
• Human (which includes options for Half-Elf and Half-Orc).

Since I'm re-creating the same character I'm sticking with Dwarf.

Dwarf comes with a few stats-

• Hit Points: 10
• Size: Medium
• Speed: 20'
• Ability Boosts: Con, Wis, free
• Ability Flaw: Cha
• Languages: Common, Dwarven + Int (which I'll revisit when I've got my final Int mod)
• Traits: Dwarf, Humanoid (duh)
• Darkvision - can see in darkness and dim light as well as bright, but in black & white

Now the choices.  First off, Dwarves have 5 heritages-

• Ancient-Blooded: gives you an ability to resist magic
• Death Warden: increases saves against necromancy
• Forge: fire resistance
• Rock: bonus to resist being moved
• Strong-Blooded: poison resistance

    I'm not writing the one sentence bit of flavor, it's not enough to be worth paying attention to.  I took a poison resistance feat with him last time, so I noticed Strong-Blooded.  But my loose concept for him is really more of a Fighter/Cleric, so I like the idea of Death Warden, maybe he guarded his clan's ancestral tombs and knows all about the old heroes and gods.  Yeah, I like that.

 Last is the Ancestry feat, you get one at 1st, 5th, 9th, 13th and 17th levels.  Let's see what we've got to choose from-

• Dwarven Lore - you're Trained in Crafting and Religion (can swap if gain one of them from another source) and Dwarven Lore
• Dwarven Weapon Familiarity - considered trained in some weapons, no bonus beyond what your class gives
• Rock Runner - can move better across difficult stone and earth
• Stonecunning - bonus to skills with stone and finding stone secret doors
• Unburdened Iron - ignore some speed penalties
• Vengeful Hatred - a small damage bonus against some enemies

    Okay, first some hot takes on the abilities, most of them suck.  These are first level feats, so you don't expect them to be too powerful, but that's balanced against the fact that you only ever get 5 of them.  The Unburdened Iron seems super-useless.  Sure you get that one extra square of movement in heavy armor, but just how often is that really going to make a big difference?  As a Fighter (which I'm planning on) the Dwarven Weapon Familiarity is pretty useless, unless one of those exotic Dwarf weapons is clearly superior to all others (which I doubt, thought I haven't looked yet... okay, I looked there's 1 simple weapon and 1 martial weapon and they're decent but nothing that superior to all the other weapons).  I will concede that for non-Fighters it might be kind of worthwhile, but I can't see it being by a lot.  Stonecunning is not bad, secret things are usually worth finding.  Rock Runner is pretty specialized, not sure how often it's going to come into play.  Vengeful Hatred is extra damage, which is never a bad thing, but 1 point is not a big difference, especially with the HP bloat at higher levels.
    This one is easy, I'm taking Dwarven Lore.  Maybe not the greatest feat, but two skills that fit my concept (and whatever the hell Dwarven Lore is good for?).
    And that finishes up the Ancestry, moving on to...

Background

    I wanted to walk through all the available options and take a quick look at each with this post, but Backgrounds pose a bit of a problem.  There are a lot of them, 35 to be exact.  However, they are all very brief.  The total Background section takes up 5 pages, with pictures on 3 of those pages.  So since the book doesn't devote much space to them, I'm not either - I'm just going to list them by title below:

• Acolyte
• Acrobat
• Animal Whisperer
• Artisan
• Artist
• Barkeep
• Barrister
• Bounty Hunter
• Charlatan
• Criminal
• Detective
• Emissary
• Entertainer
• Farmhand
• Field Medic
• Fortune Teller
• Gambler
• Gladiator
• Guard
• Herbalist
• Hermit
• Hunter
• Laborer
• Martial Disciple
• Merchant
• Miner
• Noble
• Nomad
• Prisoner
• Sailor
• Scholar
• Scout
• Street Urchin
• Tinker
• Warrior

    Whew, what a list.
    Last time I made Devi I took the Warrior background.  And I thought it was very strange that I got the Quick Repair skill feat but didn't get the Crafting skill it depends on.  I'm happy that they fixed that from the playtest.  Now Warriors get the Intimidation skill and the related Intimidating Glare skill feat.
    This time though, I think I'm going for the Scholar Background.  I'm seeing this character as a special guard, that he was kind of sequestered away from other Dwarves, kind of like a scholar.  I'm thinking that maybe something was stolen, an artifact or even a body, and he's left to reclaim it.  So he would have studied the history of all the items/relics and people that he was guarding.  This background also gives him the Occultism skill, which I think could be a cool hint as to the thieves.  He also gets the Assurance skill feat w-Occult, which let's him "take 10" on a roll - yup, no longer are take 10/20 parts of the core game, now they are specific feats (well, 10, not sure if there is a take 20 feat, haven't read them all yet.) and the Academia Lore skill, which is so vague I'm going to interpret it as a list he has of notable scholars and educational institutions to help him find the thieves.
    He also gets a boost to Int or Wis and a free boost.  I'll tally those up at the end.

Class

    The big one now, Class.  There are 12 in the Core Rulebook-

• Alchemist
• Barbarian
• Bard
• Champion
• Cleric
• Druid
• Fighter
• Monk
• Ranger
• Rogue
• Sorcerer
• Wizard

    I'm not going to describe them all, they're the same ones from first edition with the addition of the Alchemist.  The "Champion" is the new name for the old Paladin.  I like that idea, it is long overdue to broaden the concept of the Paladin from the "generic good guy" into something more nuanced.  Sadly they didn't quite go all the way with that concept (as I'm noticing a lot in these rules).

 I was a Fighter last time and I'm sticking with that again.  So he gets a few things from the class...

• Key Ability: Strength or Dexterity.  I see him as being a Str fighter, and he gets a boost in that.
• Hit Points: 10 + Con mod
• Perception:  expert
• Saving Throws: expert in Fort and Ref, trained Will
• Skills: trained in choice of Acrobatics or Athletics, and trained in choice of 3 + Int mod
• Attacks: expert in simple, martial and unarmed
• Defenses: trained in all armor and unarmored

    And these are the Class Features-

• I'm going to write this one out verbatim from the book, "Ancestry and Background- In addition to the abilities provided by your class at 1st level, you have the benefits of your selected ancestry and background, as described in chapter 2."  What the hell is this?  Pages 21-30 have all the character creation steps and even a sample character (we're on page 142).  This is such a common thing in 2e, repeating information like you're a stupid 5 year old who can't figure anything out on your own.  I am super-sick of it, and it's killing any desire to go on reading this let alone actually run it.  Paizo, if you want to write books for children, then don't sell them for $60.  The next "class feature" is Initial Proficiencies, which is all the stuff I already mentioned above, which was in a clearly marked sidebar, and again you must be pretty damn stupid to not get that.  This crap makes me want to puke.
• Attack of Opportunity - like the 1e ability everybody had, in 2e only Fighters can attack on someone else's turn.  I'm actually okay with that, it makes Fighters a little more dangerous and special, and tracking AoOs for everybody was a fair amount of work.
• Shield Block - this is a bonus feat Fighters get.  Now, I totally hate how 2e treats shields.  Combat in Pathfinder is actually quite abstract, hit points represent luck and exertion as well as physical damage, and armor class represents the ability to dodge as well as to absorb blows.  This is the legacy that was inherited from Dungeons and Dragons.  Which is why it's always baffled me why Pathfinder 1e was so precisely simulation-ist with things like DR (which was never used with Armor by default, the one place it would make the most sense if you want to model reality) and the combat grid.  Weirdly 2e has decided to double-down on that in some ways, shields being most notable.  In 1e shields we're abstracted as a bonus to your armor class (ie, odds of not getting hurt) and that was it, you just had to remember a few times when you didn't get your shield bonus.  2e decided that was too simple, now you have to take one of your 3 actions each turn to "Raise a Shield" in order to get that AC bonus, and then you can use the Shield Block feat to spend your Reaction (ability to act on someone else's turn, you only get one each turn, period) and use your shield as DR, but both you and the shield take any damage above it's hardness and so you now also have to track your shield's HP to check for when it breaks.  Oh yeah, and since the Shield Block takes your reaction, you can't both block and use your Attack of Opportunity.  Now, this does give you another layer of defense with a shield, which is not a bad thing, but it also adds the bookkeeping of taking the action every turn just to get the bonus, guessing if you should use your AOO or block or any other reactions each turn, and it just feels super stupid that you can forget to use your shield, or watch shield after shield break while your sword never does (nothing I'm aware of yet specifically damages weapons).

   Anyways, those are the class features, so all that's left is picking our level 1 Class feat-

• Double Slice - 2 acts - when dual-wielding you can attack twice without increasing the multiple attack penalty (on these two, normally on a 3rd) and combine the damage into one attack
• Exacting Strike - 1 act, Press; this is one of the times when the keywords actually matter, "Press" means you can only use this when you have a multiple attack penalty, so this has to be your 2nd attack - if this attack misses it doesn't increase the multiple attack penalty for your 3rd attack
• Point-Blank Shot - "Open" this has to be the first thing you do in a turn, "Stance" it takes an action to start this, and it continues until you cannot maintain it or choose to end it, 1 act (so is that the action you have to take to enter the stance or is it an extra action you have to take before the shot?) - has 2 effects; (1)with a "ranged volley weapon" (the longbow, only) you "ignore the attack roll penalty from the volley trait."  Okay, so in 2e longbows apparently have -2 a penalty to hit anything within 30' (don't ask me why), with this ability you can ignore that.  (2)with a non-volley ranged weapon you get +2 damage within the first range increment (which is 60' for the shortbow)
• Power Attack - "Flourish" you cannot take a second action with flourish in the same turn, 2 acts -  take the multiple attack penalty but do an extra die of damage, with another die at levels 10 and 18
• Reactive Shield - React when hit w-shield - auto Raise A Shield and gain the AC bonus on this attack and for rest of turn
• Snagging Strike - have one hand free, 1 act - make a Strike, if hit target is flat-footed (-2 AC) until your next turn or it moves out of reach
• Sudden Charge - Open, Flourish, 1 act - Stride (move up to your speed) twice and make a melee attack

    I am thinking about multi-classing this character with Cleric, but you have to be at least 2nd level to do that.  So something for the future.
    Everything I hate about 2nd edition is right in the Point-Blank Shot ability.  In 1st edition PBS was easy, you get +2 damage within 30' with a ranged weapon.  Simple.  Useful (to a degree, not accounting for HP bloat).  So did they keep it the same (ain't broke don't fix it principle) or did they improve it in 2nd?  No.  Instead we make it a hell of a lot more complicated and clutter it with weird pseudo-realism in our non-realistic high fantasy game.  The text defining the "Stance" trait says you need to take an action to activate the stance, but the ability itself says it takes an action to use - so did they duplicate the same action out of stupidity, or does it take one action to start and then another action for each shot, and is that action in place of the shot or in addition to it?  This does not have to be confusing - in point of fact it wasn't confusing before, instead 2e took something that worked and screwed it up.  And why the hell can't longbows shoot accurately within 30'?  I have shot a kid's bow in my younger days, so I'm not a professional archer, but from what I've done and people I've watched it seems that shooting closer things is easier since you don't have to account for gravity as much as with a far away target.  And why are we trying to inject some kind of realism with bow usage into a game with fireball-throwing elves?  This ain't Riddle of Steel Paizo!
    Otherwise, Double Slice seems to be okay, make two attacks but without the penalty, allright.  Exacting Strike seems stupid, it's a re-named version of the same ability I gave the original character, all it does is let you miss better.  Wow, that makes me feel special.  Power Attack is actually okay, it's like the original - a penalty to hit for extra damage - and it even levels up a little with you to stay relevant.  I'm good with that one, wish more abilities were like it.  Reactive Shield is stupid because everything we do with shields in the game is stupid.  Snagging Strike is also good, it's a simple ability that makes it easier for your friends to hit somebody, and party cooperation is a good thing.  Sudden Charge is also alright, kind of hate that you need a special ability to do it, I'd imagine I could run up to somebody and hit them with a stick, but it's not terrible.
    Since I hate the new shield rules so much, I'm thinking of making him a two-handed weapon fighter, so I'm going to take Power Attack.

Ability Scores

    According to the character creation checklist I'm now at Step 6- Determine Ability Scores.  So let's recap the ability scores so far:

Ancestry:  +2 Con, +2 Wis, free, -2 Cha
Background:  +2 Int or Wis, free
Class:  +2 Str

    I first need to decide on those "free" boosts, each is a +2 but cannot be applied twice.  Even though Dwarves are antisocial (Cha penalty) and he's lived apart from other Dwarves as a guard, I'm thinking I want him to be decent at talking to people (he likes to share the epic tales of old), so I'm putting the Ancestry free boost into Cha to offset that penalty.  I want him to Cleric later, so the Background boost is going into Wis and the free is going to Con because he's lived a spartan life of hardship as a tomb guard.  That leaves me with:

Str  12 (+1)
Dex  10 (0)
Con 14 (+2)
Int 10 (0)
Wis 12 (+1)
Cha 10 (0)

    Finally everybody gets 4 free boosts, like the others they cannot be applied to a score twice.  I'm going for Str, Con, Wis, Cha for my final attributes as:

Str  14 (+2)
Dex  10 (0)
Con  16 (+3)
Int  10 (0)
Wis  14 (+2)
Cha  12 (+1)

Odds and Ends

    Just some final numbers and things to figure out.

• Hit Points - 10 Dwarf + 10 Fighter + 3 Con = 23
• Bonus Languages - 0 Int mod means none (too bad, I'd like the flavor of him knowing an ancient language or something)
• Skills - From my Dwarven Lore Ancestry feat I get: Crafting (Recall Knowledge, Repair, trained: Craft, Earn Income, Identify Alchemy), Religion (Recall Knowledge, trained: Decipher Writing, Identify Magic, Learn A Spell) which I think would cover his own and enemy pantheons and Dwarven Lore (Recall Knowledge and trained: Earn Income).  Scholar gives him Occultism (Recall Knowledge, Decipher Writing, Identify Magic, Learn A Spell - only the first untrained) and Academia Lore (Recall Knowledge and trained: Earn Income).  From Fighter I get, Acrobatics or Athletics.  Athletics is the Str one, so he can Climb, Force Open, Grapple, High Jump, Long Jump, Shove, Swim, Trip and Disarm (only the last needing to be skilled).  And he gets 3 + 0 Int bonus skills.  I'm going to take Diplomacy (Gather Information, Make an Impression, Request -no trained only actions), so I can ask people if they've seen the stolen McGuffin.  Arcana (Recall Knowledge, trained: Borrow an Arcane Spell, Decipher Writing, Identify Magic, Learn a Spell) since knowing about magic might be helpful?  Lastly Medicine (Administer first Aid, Recall Knowledge, trained: Treat Disease, Treat poison, Treat Wounds).

    I have to say that having actions anyone can do and actions only trained people can do makes sense to me, it's pretty much the definition of a skill as opposed to an attribute.  But you'd think that every skill would have trained-only actions then.  Stealth, Intimidation and Diplomacy don't.  Yet Diplomacy's actions are all personal - Gather Information, Make an Impression, Request.  Why not have Mediate (get two opposing groups to agree, which justifiably takes advanced knowledge of talking to people) or Whisper Campaign (to raise or lower the reputation of a group or person) as trained skills?

Equipment

    This is the last big step, once I get my gear I can fill out a character sheet and be good to go.  Of course I have to find a character sheet since I'm not using the backside-ugly one in the book.  One problem at a time.
    All characters get 150 SP (or 15 GP) to start, and I'm going to buy the following:

• Scale Mail - 40sp, +3 AC, Dex Cap +2, no armor check penalty due to Str, no move penalty due to Str, Bulk 2 (3 carried), composite material
• Greataxe - 20sp, 1d12 S dmg, 2 Bulk, 2 Hands, Axe group, Sweep (+1 cir attack against a different enemy)
• Hatchet - 4sp, 1d6 S dmg, 0.1 Bulk, 1 Hand, Axe group, Agile (multi attack penalty -4/-8), Sweep, Thrown 10'
• Adventurer's Pack - 7sp, 2 Bulk, contains: backpack, bedroll, 2 belt pouches, 10 pieces of chalk, flint and steel, 50 feet of rope, 2 weeks rations, soap, 5 torches, waterskin
• Manacles, simple - 30sp, 3 DC 22 thievery checks to pick, 0 Bulk
• Religious Text - 10sp
• Repair Kit - 20sp, 1 Bulk

Spent - 131sp
Money: 19sp,  Bulk: 7.1, carry 7.9 w/o penalty, max 12 lift/carry

Final Thoughts

    My character's finished.  It was a lot harder process than I expected.  It is a new game, and with every new game comes the adjustment period until you get the hang of the system.  But there were also moments of screaming at the book and harassing my friends asking them to explain some baffling choices to me (which was unfair as I don't think even the designers know what they were doing).  I'm not excited to play this game, not looking forward to seeing what my character can do.  It's way too simple and way too complicated at the same time - which I'll grant is an impressive feat.
    I managed to find a fillable pdf, not from Paizo of course but at: https://queuetimes.com/fillable-character-sheet-for-pathfinder-2e/.  Big thanks to them for working it up!
    You can download Devi from my Google Drive here.