Armor seems to have been simplified. All light armors are Max Dex -, all mediums are Max Dex 2, and all Heavies are Max Dex 0.
The moving in heavy armor with sufficient strength is nice, though dwarves will feel envious that their racial trait isn't that grand now.
It seems to imply that in heavy armor you don't add Dex penalties. So you could have -1 Dex, but wear full plate and not take that. Why?
>Greatclub. Simple weapon.
Oh thank freaking god, I never understood why it was martial. It's a stick! It's a bigger stick!
And exotic weapons appear to be gone. Unless they're not in the basic; but this may be a good thing. The only real distrinction there needs to be is between "rock" and "rock you need training for".
They seem to be doing the 3.0 weapon size thing, where halflings can't greatsword because greatswords are size X too big. I wonder what they'd do if it was a small greatsword though. Probably just call it a longsword for everyone else I imagine.
Two-handing weapons is now a weapon property which increases the base damage. Looks like two-handing a morningstar, for example, won't do anything special. I suppose this does support more sword & boarding, a plus.
The price for special ammo seems to be 1/10, not 1/50 this time.
"Modest" living seems to require 1 gp a day. This is good because often NPCs are apparently supposed to live on coppers a day and be unable to afford more adventuring gear or even common tools. This one seems more realistic; they're not PCs but I do expect them to fling around a few gold every so often.
Ah, advantages and disadvantages, here we go. What's all this about... roll twice, take best/worst. Alright. Makes me wonder why Padded armor is BAD at stealth (it is listed as disadvantaged) but ok.
Skills. I heard what they did with them before and it still doesn't quite sit with me, but it's not the worst idea. At the least they do provide a list: it's shorter than I expected. That may be fine then, though its heavy on mental skills and not so much physical. The only question is; what determines which save you use? I geuss it's defined per spell, like Fireball may be a Dex save but Feeblemind might be an Int save, or something.
Saves now seem to apply one for each ability score, resulting in Con saves, Int saves, Cha saves, and so forth. This makes it so that all saves are important/you will have at least a few good saves if you're say all Strength or all Something-Else-That-Wasn't Dex/Con/Wis.
I see they refer to bards, paladins, sorcerers, and warlocks. Good, so other classes are about.
Pounce/Spring Attack appears to be built-in if I'm reading this correctly. This is a good thing!
Looks like since BAB is gone everyone gets one attack, barring shinanigans and class features.
I'm liking the Dodge action.
Shoving (bull rush) is now an attack action, good.
Grappling is... short? Ok, I haven't read what the grapple condition does to you, but they did a Pathfinder and made it simple. Atheletics (CMB) vs Athletics or Acrobatics (CMD). And that's good.
Damage typoes... negatic energy is now necrotic, thus removing the positive/negative scale. Poison is recognized offically. Psychic is a type, radiant is a type and is somewhere between "light" and "holy". Sonic is now Thunder.
Dying is now a 3 round countdown of rolling above a 10 on a d20. Extra attacks against a downed person count as failed rolls. As such there's no need to account for negative hp. (With the way it's worded you'd technically die at -Max Hp anyway). This is good. No more going from healthy to corpse because the 10 hp buffer wasn't enough.
Spells seem to have some psionic-style augmentation now for putting it in higher slots.
....alright, done reading! Overall: Better than expected, not good enough to buy though. I'd be interested in seeing it in action.
