So, apparently at GenCon they announced that they're pretty well happy with the playtest feedback for the game, so most of the design is done now. Presumably lots of development to do still to get the math right, add in some missing options, etc. That strikes me as a little odd, given that we just got this packet recently and haven't given feedback on this version. I don't think this is all one big marketing ploy, but I guess they don't expect to be making many changes to what we've got now.
I largely like some of the changes they've made. Fighters now get lores, and they acknowledge that some classes/builds should have skills (i.e. expertise dice) including knight-type fighters. After being disappointed that there was a loss of options from the previous packet (particularly in the cleric and rogue), I saw there were some other quite nice options and a lot of the stuff does look like an improvement. I still wish monks had a maneuver system instead of lame ki powers and that there were a few more races included so we could easily run Planescape or Al-Qadim. That said, I think there are a few changes that really should have been made, and I'm afraid we won't see them in the next edition right away.
I largely like some of the changes they've made. Fighters now get lores, and they acknowledge that some classes/builds should have skills (i.e. expertise dice) including knight-type fighters. After being disappointed that there was a loss of options from the previous packet (particularly in the cleric and rogue), I saw there were some other quite nice options and a lot of the stuff does look like an improvement. I still wish monks had a maneuver system instead of lame ki powers and that there were a few more races included so we could easily run Planescape or Al-Qadim. That said, I think there are a few changes that really should have been made, and I'm afraid we won't see them in the next edition right away.
