Lead Designer
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This forum is for general discussion of the playtest process, announcements, and updates. If you have feedback of a general nature, not necessarily tied to actual playtest feedback, please post that feedback in the Rules Discussion forum. All feedback tied directly to actual playtesting should be posted in the Playtest Feedback forum.
Check this forum regularly for news and updates about the playtest process. Thanks again for participating in the Occult Adventures Playtest.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
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I guess I should have posted this here, instead of in it's own thread:
Channeling Cheapy and Sean, I wanted to remind people what makes for good playtest feedback.
I've updated Cheapy's ACG post for Occult Adventures.
I’m not the end-all-be-all for what Paizo wants from this, but here are my thoughts on the topic.
- You are not the lead designer. Jason is.
- Ignore typos and grammatical errors. That’s not what they want to playtest. They want you to test the rules.
- Give feedback, not opinions. If you don’t like the idea of the new classes, then don’t just say that. It’s not too helpful as that ship has sailed long ago.
- You’re still not the lead designer. Jason is still the lead designer. That’s his job.
- Don’t make houserules for it and then give feedback with those rules influencing your perceptions. Think of it like a recipe site. You go there to find a recipe, and you see a 1 star review for a pasta recipe you’re looking at. The review states that the cook substituted ice cream for butter, and marmite for pesto sauce. Surprisingly, the cook found the recipe to be absolutely horrible. But this review isn’t helpful. It’s helpful for a pasta recipe that includes ice cream instead of butter and marmite instead of pesto sauce. But that’s not the recipe they were reviewing. At all. The recipe they were reviewing had butter and pesto.
- Remember that the point of the playtest is to work out all the kinks so that you don’t have to make houserules about the classes.
- Play the game, see what happens. A lot of problems seem like they’ll exist in pure theorycrafting, but don’t really show up in actual play. Keep this in mind. (There was a time when the Summoner was considered underpowered.)
- If you can, try to playtest multiple different power-levels of the game. How these new, advanced classes work out could be a lot different between a group consisting of synthesist god-tank-pouncers, zen archers, optimized God wizards, and AM BARBARIAN and a group consisting of a sword and board paladin, a rogue rapier-duelist, a cleric of healing and love, and a sorcerer focusing on illusions.
- Core! Core is great because it sets the base-line level of power. It’s fine if you play some tengu with 5 natural attacks at first level or some aasimar that through various rules hoops has some feats meant for tieflings, but if you find that with the new classes you’re making a completely ridiculous character, consider how much of that is due to the new classes versus the non-core rules. In fact, keep that in mind with core rules as well.
- I believe that the default assumption in the game is 15 point buy with the core races and the balanced option for wealth by level. Testing at this point is a great way to test.
- These classes aren't going to be perfect. They might have serious flaws. But that’s what the playtest is for. Designing is hard, doubly so for a base class.
- Positive feedback, or at least constructive feedback, is immensely preferred to negative feedback. See Sean’s post here for a bit on that. But suffice to say, positive feedback is more helpful because it fosters a helpful environment. It’s the difference between working together and stand-offishly stating your “factpinions” as gospel. If you ever start a sentence that follows this form, you’re doing it wrong: "<feature X> is the worst thing I've ever seen and here’s how I would change it to make it <(balanced, useful, cool, English)>."
- Despite saying that positive feedback fosters an environment of working together, we aren't working together to make the classes. Jason is still the lead designer of Pathfinder. The odds are probable that you aren’t. Our job, insomuch as it can be called that, is to playtest and report in an unbiased fashion to let them sift through the results.
- PFS play is useful because it provides a set, known standard of rules. It’s a great environment for testing, as theoretically it’s run the same everywhere. But that doesn't mean that home games aren't useful. In fact, home games can provide very useful information, as sometimes restricting options is a great way to see how these classes do. Core and APG only, no Golarion line crunch? That’s going to present a vastly different playtest result than if done in PFS. Keep this in mind, and try to list your playtest parameters out at the beginning of any playtest reports you give. If someone were to come up with a basic form for all playtest feedback, that’d be solid, and I would recommend everyone use it, just to make sifting through information easier.
- Try to keep track of die rolls in your playtest report. There's a difference between power and luck. Did your kinesicist kick ass because it's overpowered, or because you didn't roll below a 12 all session? Are too many foes immune to your Mesmerist, or did they just all make their Will saves? I've had encounters that would appear to prove that a Sorcerer makes a great crossbowman: die rolls are important.
The Chronicle for PFS playtesting is a bit unwieldy for online games participating beyond a single scenario. I'm just imagining someone having to send and resend the same file just to get those signatures. Sure, we'll be able to at least get the first boon from it.
The boons are nice though. Especially the first and last ones.
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Wow, just a quick perusal through the playtest and I'm happy to see the old Psychic attack and defense modes as spells! Overall this has the feel of old 1e/2e psionics moreso than 3e psionics. I'm going to have to try and make some of my old psionic characters using these rules.
Loving the use of the Harrow suits for the Medium's powers and the Mind Palace ability of the Psychic with the Lore discipline (a little Sherlock easter egg?).
--Mental Vrock
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F+~$ YEAH, TOWER OF IRON WILL!
I don't care what it does, that's just the most bad-ass name for a spell evah.
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Lead Designer
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Check out the blog at this link. It contains a link to the download page.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
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I will be shocked if this book doesn't contain stuff for existing classes, Magefox.
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I honestly think that this books suffers from it's branded title, as occult I would say is already well represented in the flavor of existing casters like the witch or shaman of which this book does not go more in depth on . In all honesty I thought something in this would trace back mechanically to the slam dunk that is the oracle. Specifically in for things like the curses and the ancestral spirits. Also all the psychic classes while interesting lose in flavor as they all feel like they were painted Occult for the purpose of the book.
With the exception of the kineticist, these are all classes that I would feel comfortable playing in a supernatural campaign set in 1920s Earth. That's plenty occult.
I will be shocked if this book doesn't contain stuff for existing classes, Magefox.
while thats probably true and this is just a play test for new stuff…i haven't read anything that interests me enough to test it.
it reads like a whole different game…bleh
I do have a question about the aether kineticist's defense ability:
I spend an immediate action I immediately gain temporary hit points equal to my level. As these are depleted it takes a minute per hit point to regain them.
Is there anything stopping me from simply spending another immediate action to regain all the temporary hit points at once? Currently I'm not seeing a reason to refresh every round.
If that is possible how does this refreshing interact with extra temporary hit points gained from burn? Since the amount is increased with burn it seems that the amount returned would too, but that doesn't seem to be how the raw of it is read.
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I'll say that reading through this book I feel that it has flavor absolutely oozing out of every pore (probably should get that looked at).
I look at the flavor of these classes and I can see building a class around them even with some of their sub par mechanics (A discussion for class threads).
As long as the time is taken to get the mechanics right I feel like this could be the most interesting core release for quite a while.
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I am working on one of the terrakineticists. And the first thing I found hard to go through was the wild talents order. So looking at each of the different elements a kineticists can be, it lists the different wild talents you can get at each level. Then on page 7 the list starts of all of those wild talents until page 15. Currently they are in alphabetical order. Personally, I would think it would flow much better if they were placed in order in a similar fashion as spells, where there are first listed by level and then within that level order they are listed alphabetically.
My second point, is a question in regards to the terrakineticists' Flesh of Stone ability. The ability says you can have DR1/adamantine as an immediate action and then dismiss it whenever you want. What is preventing you from just always having the ability on. When you start a scenario you advise the GM that your Flesh of Stone is on and that you have no intention of turning it off. From the way I understand it, you only take burn damage if you increase the DR.
Third point, does Arcane Spell Failure apply to Wild Talents? It states that wild talents are typically spell-like abilities, they have spell levels, and you have to do concentration checks. Kineticists are proficient in light armor, some of which have Arcane Spell Failure chances. I didn't know if your ability to control the elements was going to be affected by this or not and would like clarification.
Sure, keep flesh of stone up all the time. Rock on!
No arcane spell failure. They are SLAs, and they aren't arcane, so that's two reasons why you're set!
I did not even know the playtest had started. I will download the book now.
I really like the new classes. Am looking forward to playtesting them soon. I may need to work a little harder at working in the occultish flavor of the kineticist than the other classes though, really play up the mysterious and possibly eldritch nature of the powers, it comes very naturally to the others though.
Just curious, when the survey will go up, or if it already is where to find it.
I have found the 3 classes my group have tested are good overall. The mesmerist has felt a little over powered at times with the no save versus stare. Especially when the average monster has a relative low will save as it is. The adjustments made to only one stare at a time has fixed some of the issues in my opinion. The spiritualist feels more like a watered down summoner at times but it is enjoyable. The occultist is by far the best class seems well balanced over all and able to handle most situations. My group has played from 4th to 17th level and have left all of our house rules out we have had many arguments about the meaning of the rules. We are in the process of writing out a list of concerns and issues we found playing each of the three classes we played and I will be adding a post about that at a later date. The game has been ran with mesmerist, occultist, and spiritualist only no other party members have been allowed. They have fought undead, daeomen, giants, dragons, and constructs. It hasn't been easy it has been hard some enemies that would be easy for a normal party were hard to kill, while some that would be a cake walk fell with ease. So I have to say I am well pleased with the new rules and can't wait to see them when complete.