Below list a series of notes I wrote while playtesting the game at Gen Con.
Most of my notes have to do with the experience of building and playing the two characters I made. I don’t have much to say about the scenarios themselves as they felt pretty standard for PFS scenarios. My biggest complaint was that the final fight in Shrieking Peak had obnoxiously high DCs. Otherwise, they were pretty fun.
A) Summary
0. I like system overall, but think the classes need some serious re-evaluation in how their features are distributed.
1. Building a character for the first time was frustrating due to the character creation rules not having all of the information necessary to fill out the character sheet, such as calculations for your statistics.
2. I dislike how polymorph spells now replace your statistics. It means polymorphing is only useful for full casters that don’t build themselves into a combatant. Wild shape felt like a waste of time when my druid was already a decent fighter without it. If you have a spell that's supposed to literally turn you into a combat beast, it should make you feel stronger regardless of whether you're a scrawny druid or a beefy druid.
3. The druid was very fun. I loved how every order enabled a different type of build. Helps create very varied druids. I wish I could say the same for sorcerer bloodlines.
4. Cool I could make an effective melee combatant with a spellcaster.
5. Sorcerer doesn’t feel balanced with the druid or other full casters. They get about the same number of feats and spells while getting almost no proficiencies and having more limited spellcasting and feat selection.
6. I strongly believe sorcerer bloodlines should have a greater impact on how the class plays. I don’t like how their selection of feats is mostly isolated to metamagic instead of augmenting or playing off sorcerer bloodlines.
B) Archlord’s Envy
Level 5
Race: Human (Tien)
Class: Druid (wild order)
Background: Acolyte
STATISTICS
Str 18; Dex 16; Con 14; Int 10; Wis 14; Cha 10
Fort 8; Ref 8; Wil 8
HP 58
RP 5
AC 22 (+3 Dex, +4 armor, +5 prof)
Melee: claw +10 (1d6+5)
SKILLS
Nature +8, Survival +7, Religion +8, Intimidate +5
FEATS
Class: wild shape 4/day, savage slice, animal form
Ancestry: none (didn’t have time to choose)
General: Feather Step
Skill: none (didn’t have time to choose)
SPELLS
0 — guidance, tanglefoot, detect magic, light
1 — heal, charm, grease
2 — enlarge, restoration, human shape
3 — haste, blindness, wall of thorns
GEAR
+1 hide armor
1. I only had about 2 hours to read the rules and make a character.
2. The rules were organized in a frustrating way that made it difficult to look things up. The character creation rules does not include all of the calculations needed to create a character. I had trouble finding the rules for proficiency bonuses. My class’s spellcasting class feature said the calculations for spell DCs were on page 291, which does not actually provide this information. Different chapters in the book gave conflicting calculations for how much Resonance a character has.
3. It’s not inherently obvious what wild shape’s benefit is. I think it basically gives me an X amount of free castings of pest form that automatically heightens to the maximum spell level. However, the text is worded awkwardly and makes it sound like I have to prepare and expend these spells. If so, it makes the ability significantly less useful.
4. Many of the spells have criminally low durations and don’t scale. This makes many of them feel totally useless. Why would I ever use human transformation for disguises if it only lasts 10 minutes? That would barely cover a single social encounter. I know there’s a feat that extends it, but level 10 is a long wait – and it comes at a cost of action economy and potency.
5. I spent most of the scenario with low AC because I didn’t add my proficiency bonus. Again, the calculation is buried in the character creation rules and not made easily referenceable.
6. All the druid’s first level feats are basically just the feats from the druidic order. Hope to see more as this limits my options a bit.
7. I have mixed feelings about the fact that polymorph spells overwrite your character’s statistics. While the animal form spell has significant natural attack damage, the form is slightly weaker than my normal form, despite this being a spell that’s supposed to make me stronger. After the first combat, I stopped using wild shape and stuck to using my wild claws power. I am concerned these spells will scale poorly, especially considering the duration doesn’t increase at all.
8. The animal form text is cumbersome and gets repeated across multiple similar spells. Shouldn’t there be a more uniform set of rules for this?
9. While my skills felt pretty good at 5th level, I likely wouldn’t say the same at 1st level. At 1st level, you will likely have a negative bonus on any skill that isn’t one of your trained skills – which feels awful.
10. Many of the major crowd control spells require three-actions, which hindered me during a fight when I tried to cast wall of thorns. This is probably for the best.
11. Wanted to feet to fins the boss. Noticed it was willing creature only. Disappoint.
12. My character felt very effective overall. However, the action economy of wild claws did hinder me a little, and wild shape didn’t feel worth it most of the time since my character was already a decent fighter without it.
13. Really like the point buy. Flexible and tied to the character’s lore. Even when I had two 18s, I still had enough boosts to splash into other statistics. I foresee a variety of builds with this.
14. Druid feels solid overall. I love how each druidic order give character-defining powers that you can center a whole build around.
15. Angered a bad guy during an ambush by casting wall of thorns to shove them off the ledge they were sniping from.
16. Blinded the final boss. Felt good.
17. Like how wild claws heightens to add item bonuses.
C) Raiders of Shrieking Peak
Level 5
Race: Human (half-elf)
Class: Sorcerer (draconic bloodline), multiclass fighter
Background: Acolyte
STATISTICS
Str 18; Dex 16; Con 12; Int 10; Wis 14; Cha 16
Fort +5; Ref +7; Wil +6
HP 43
RP 8
AC 21 (+2 Dex, +4 armor, +5 prof)
Melee: dragon claw +10 (1d4+5)
SKILLS
Religion +5, Athletics +9, Acrobatics +9, Arcana +5, Intimidate +8, Diplomacy +8, Perception +5
FEATS
Class: fighter dedication, double slice
Ancestry: half-elf (speed), extra class feat (didn’t pick one, not enough time)
General: Fleet
Skill: student of canon (skill feats feel so weak I didn’t bother picking any)
SPELLS
P — dragon claws
0 — detect magic, shield, prestidation, produce flame, electric arc
1 — fear, charm, burning hands, comprehend languages
2 — resist energy, enlarge, invisibility, false life
3 — enthrall, fireball, dispel magic
GEAR
+1 hide armor
+1 greatsword
1. Sorcerer doesn’t feel balanced with the druid. They are both full casters a similar number of class features, but druids get way more proficiencies. Druidic orders also give powers that better define a character. Sure, the sorcerer gets an extra spell per level, but I don’t think justifies the difference.
2. I choose draconic bloodline because it seemed like the only bloodline that gets powers interesting enough to build an entire character around.
3. Disappointed that bloodlines don’t have a greater influence over how a sorcerer casts spells. I always loved how Pathfinder 1.0’s bloodlines could allow a sorcerer to bend the rules or do things that normal casters cannot, such as letting them enchant undead.
4. Sorcerer feats are really, really boring. Almost all of them are metamagic and have nothing to do with bloodlines. I think feats should have been more directly associated with bloodlines, which are the sorcerer’s iconic feature.
5. Because of the boring sorcerer feats, I choose to multiclass into fighter. Double slice was very handy.
6. Very cool I was able to create an melee effective combatant using a full caster. It went really well and was fun to play. I was also fairly useful out of combat, too.
7. Weird that dragon claws requires only one action while wild claws required two. I can’t complain.
8. Final fight was a bit of a struggle as half the party kept getting disabled.
9. Critical successes made AoE spells less reliable.