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...because some of us work night shift and Noon is our Dawn.
Which is a real issue with availability since that means our group can only play weekends. Otherwise someone's always stuck at work. Thus we're getting started a month late. However! I finally managed to corral my gaming group into one room for some playtesting. It only took a month.
Meanwhile, I read the book cover to cover twice and came away unsure about the whole thing. Which is already a red flag, I'm used to being able to read a Pathfinder book ONCE and having an idea how the rules work.
But my players really wanted to do the playtest. Because playtesting means having a say in things and that's cool.
So... Character creation.
Lost Star
Cast of Characters:
Sirtir, elven druid. Built with the point buy system. Took just over 3 hours to build.
Fimbly, elven paladin of Torag. Rolled for stats. Took 2.5 hours to build.
Bookworm, goblin alchemist. Rolled for stats. Took just over 2 hours to build.
Arianna, elven cleric of Calistria. Rolled for stats. Took just under 2 hours to build.
Myself the GM, who ended up with a migraine an hour and a half in. A migraine caused by 4 people demanding rules clarification on everything under the sun. Not a good start.
So first session we notice that building characters takes a long time and a lot more effort than Pathfinder 1st.
Begin the arguing.
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The Character Sheet
Why is there no place to put the qualifier for the Lore skill? What if we ever get more than one Lore skill? Someone has Esoteric Lore, there's no space to write 'Esoteric'. To be fair, I like the Lore skill idea. It reminds me of knowledge skills from Shadowrun. A good inventive GM can come up with a lot of use for any Lore skill. I just think there should be space to write down what Lore a character has.
Where do I put stats for armor and shield? There's space for AC and Touch AC but that's not what I mean. I mean stats of the armor a PC's wearing. The shield they're carrying. Stats that change whether the shield is raised or not. Bulk and speed penalties and material and dents and such. Where does that go?
Speaking of, why is there no space for equipment? There's 8 lines of space for mundane items. 'Adventuring kit' has always been a house rule of mine and that helps but people still need space to write down 'thieves tools' or 'spell book' along with whatever else fun they want to buy. Or loot. It seems like this sheet was designed by someone who never had PCs who killed and skinned ankhegs to make armor from their carapaces.
The whole thing seems too busy. I can see how it was consolidated to try and make things easier to find but it didn't work. The T/E/M/L bubbles make everything seem bigger than they need to be, there's nowhere to put any details one might want to easily access, and the whole thing becomes counterintuitive.
I expect this problem to solve itself through the cunning use of 3rd party products. But it shouldn't have to be that way. And I know 3rd party stuff would likely be unwelcome in Pathfinder Society. PFS is hard enough for someone with my schedule to manage, do I really need a less-than-comprehensible character sheet to bar entry even more? If the character sheet is too busy to work with, how can one expect a new player to feel? A convention game is out of the question as of now.
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The Skills
Why did so many things get folded into Society? Is this where Knowledge Local went? Say I'm building a rogue and I don't feel I need the skills for high society, why should I be forced to take this skill? Just because it's where Knowledge Local went? And Forgery? Why not some sort of Underworld Society? Or maybe just split Knowledge Local out of it? The knowledge skill is rather solidly separate from everything else shoehorned in here. If you feel like you need a catch-all skill to hold all the Rogue stuff then maybe you've consolidated too much. Rogues get skills every single level, they can afford to spend some of those skill points on rogueish things.
These crafting rules seem so familiar. They look like the house rules I've used for the past 6 years. I approve of this change. Maybe now more games will experience Tyrannosaur Hide Armor, parrot-feather cloaks, weapons made out of random native metals, Wings of Flying made of a freshly slain dragon, and the lute of Phil Orc.
Do I add my level to any of these things? "Proficiency modifier" is poorly defined. I can't even find rules on the unarmored proficiency at all. Does it even exist? If it follows the same proficiency rules, of which it took the five of us three hours of gameplay to find, does that mean a wizard with Mage Armor up is easier to hit than the same wizard naked? Why was it so hard to find the definition of 'Proficiency Modifier'? It's the MOST IMPORTANT STAT in the game, DEFINE THE DAMNED THING WHERE I CAN FIND IT! I don't just mean the glossary and then again somewhere in the front on a page I can never find, the 'Proficiency Modifier' section on page 290 doesn't mention adding level AT ALL. It says, and I quote, "As your character gains levels, your proficiency modifier can increase." I took that to mean the modifier going up solely through Trained/Expert/Master/Legendary and so did all my players. For three hours. Until one dude happened to look up another thing and suddenly the massive un-fun pointless slog of dungeon made sense.
If the whole Trained/Expert/Master/Legendary thing means as much as the book says then why is each step only worth a plus one? A 15th level wizard is trained with the staff, a 15th level fighter is legendary with his sword. Yet there's only a +3 difference between them. Why does the fighter matter again? Sure the fighter's spent all his feats on awesomeness with the sword and the wizard's feats all went into magic. But there's still only a +3 between their weapon proficiencies. As GM I can enforce meaning by saying certain actions require legendary ability but that is entirely contrived because said action doesn't require it. The +3 difference is too small to matter.
I have to roll WHAT to pick a lock?! An 'average' lock requires 3 rolls hitting a DC 20?! Are you kidding me? Has no one at Paizo ever picked a lock? It doesn't take a lot of skill to slam a screwdriver into a lock to slam the bolt open. I can see a DC 20 lock, sure, but 3 checks? Who makes these locks? Are 'average' locks made by Modrons on the plane of Law? Who makes 'expert' locks then? Does Asmodeus train 'expert' locksmiths himself? These rhetorical questions are no more hyperbolic than these check DCs. Even if a party has a rogue, how many doors are really going to be unlocked under these rules? Or are doors going to be smashed open by frustrated and annoyed PCs? How many doors will I GM-fiat away in order to ensure my players have basic fun? How many doors will I have to GM-fiat away before I storm away from the table in disgust? This is a playtest, we're playing a pile of different characters. If I present them with an insurmountable obstacle with characters they're not invested in there's no reason to continue. Why should they continue to play along? Why don't we just go back to 1st edition? Why not end the playtest then?
Player investment is important. Psychology is as necessary as math. That means rogue-required obstacles are a disservice to the game and its players. That doesn't mean going easy on anyone, absolutely not. It means options. Nobody goes into the Tomb of Horrors without knowing what they're getting into. I'm not going to force my players into that situation and I shouldn't be expected to.
Math check your stuff before you publish it. Unless you're specifically testing whether or not players will put up with pointless and ridiculous checks. At which point I can tell you: no, players won't. And neither will GMs.
Overall, the skills need work.
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The Gameplay
Sirtir and Fimbly know each other. Fimbly likes to rub shoulders with nobility and has insinuated himself among the Deverin family as a curiosity: an elven paladin of a dwarven god. (Torag has some good ideas, Fimbly says with a shrug.) Sirtir breeds hunting dogs outside of Magnimar, she has a giant hound as her animal companion. They both get a summons by the Deverin family for some favor or whatever.
Arianna gets a missive telling her to show up for a job. The Deverin family knows Arianna's patron, Arianna's been trying to get into the Esoteric Order of the Palatine Eye for a few years and finally found a half-interested patron to introduce her. Also, as a cleric she might have useful skills against the 'vampire'.
Bookworm has some known connections to the Mudchewer tribe. He pays them as junk-finders. Or he used to before they got a new leader. Now he's had to find his own junk. He's got things to do, brewing things. Distilling things. Blowing things up.
The players certainly enjoy these characters out of combat and ridiculous rolls. While things are kept abstract and social the game goes excellently. Much antics between Bookworm and Sirtir's dog. Talk of putting fake wolf ears on the dog to make it look proper. The PCs eat all of the appetizers and drink all the wine Keleri Deverin offers as snacks before shoving the PCs down her cellar floor. None of this is in the book, I am aware. And all of this happens because I have excellent roleplayers in my group.
The written adventure begins where the dungeon starts and things start to bog down.
The first combat went decently. Some clunkiness with learning the initiative system and turn sequences, which is to be expected. Bookworm is the only one in the room when the sewer ooze decides to let loose its Filth Wave, the goblin succeeds at the save and we all get a laugh at how he RPs. He's a goblin, a little filth is only proper.
The second combat takes more effort, as is to be expected. It is a more difficult combat. Goblin warriors with their 5 hp all go down in one hit each. The shrooms in the side passage are pondered at, how can we harvest and sell these, let's come back later. Criminal Lore is used to determine how mob bosses might use these spores for interrogations and brainwashing.
Nobody could roll high enough on Perception to figure out the fountain's blighted nature. Nor did they notice the alarmed door. Thus the goblins in area A7 were all of the prepared.
Fimbly the paladin charges in there with an alchemist's fire and takes falling rocks to the face. The goblin pyro casts Grease on the passage into the room before anyone else can come in. And then the combat... bogs.
The issue with Proficiency Modifier comes to its big gross head here. Fimbly the paladin gets critted by a goblin commando and goes down like a sack of potatoes, though he gets better later. The death rules get looked at. I hear there's already errata on them though I haven't seen it yet. Nobody can roll higher than an 8 on anything and the whole combat becomes a futility bowl.
Until Arianna crits the commando after, and I kept track, 25 minutes of nobody hitting anything. Then it's over.
Respect for crits has been instilled.
And that was the game today because we only had 6 hours to play. Character creation took a full half of that time. I expect we'll finish the rest of the dungeon next time.
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I agree that the lock DCs are too high, as are other skill DCs (like Medicine checks). I'm also not a fan of the skill critical failures, as implemented. My rogue broke his lock picks on the first try. hadn't realized that I needed to spend a substantial part of my starting cash on replacements.
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We finished part 1. Finally. It took 2 sessions due to scheduling issues.
So! The official GM questions:
How long did it take to play this part of Doomsday Dawn not counting prep and character creation?
5 and a half hours. Almost 2 of them were roleplaying encounters tacked onto beginning and end to make it a game and not just a set of encounters. So, as-written it took just over 3 and a half hours.
How long did it take to prepare this part of the adventure? (reading, gathering materials, etc)
2 hours to bake cookies, 2 full readthroughs of the main rulebook (4-5 hours each, what you thought I was kidding?), hour and a half to familiarize myself with the adventure, half an hour to realize what they'd done to the Bestiary, 5 minutes to look at my shelves to see I already own the minis. The number you're looking for is "2 hours". The amount of time actually spent was "day and a half spread over two weeks".
How many sessions did it take for you to play through this part of the adventure?
2 sessions. For 5 and a half hours of gameplay. We created characters the first session so that ate a lot of time.
How many hero points (in total) did you give out during this part of the adventure?
Gonna be honest with you, I never used them before now. Not going to use them after this, either. I gave out the mandatory "one for showing up" twice, thus I gave out 8.
How many times was a player character reduced to 0 HP during this part of the adventure?
5 times. Twice before I got the errataed death mechanics, 3 times after. That twice happened to the paladin, that 3 times happened to the druid.
How many PCs were killed during this part of the adventure?
Surprisingly, none. It was close a few times and there were many comments around the table. Many clutch heals by the cleric. 2 hero points spent, they kept the PCs from death but kept them out of the combat as the monster would just attack them again and put them right back down.
I think you guys need new dice, or an online dice roller. I can't even imagine missing that much.
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Sirtir, elven druid
How long to create the character? Over 3 hours.
How many times did the character hit 0 HP? 3 times, all against Drakus. To be fair, this kept Drakus busy.
How many times did the character hit 0 Resonance? none
How many times did the character critically fail while overspending Resonance? still none
What about spell slots? never. The player blames the layout of the spell chapter; a more comprehensible layout would have allowed him to cast spells at all.
Spell points? Again, incomprehensible chapter leads to a fat pool of unspent points.
I know you spent Hero Points, right? Yes, once. 1 whole point.
Sirtir, elven druid, eventually came to shine as Commander of Duzumid, the wolf companion that did all the work and completed all the flanks and critted all the quasits. Not high praise for the druid as a class. Again, if the spell chapter made more sense, specifically if the spell lists in the beginning of the chapter had a one-line general description of each spell instead of having to read and memorize every spell you have...
The player gives the overall system a rating of Not Fun, I'd Rather Play 5e.
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Fumbly Fimbly, elven paladin of Torag
How long to create the character? 2 and a half hours
How many times did the character hit 0 HP? twice, both times in area A7
How many times did the character hit 0 Resonance? none
How many times did the character critically fail while overspending Resonance? still none
What about spell slots? do paladins even have spells at 1st level?
Spell points? no but he did use spell points, that's an improvement over the druid?
I know you spent Hero Points, right? Once. It kept him from being dead and then he got put right back down.
Fimbly, elven paladin of Torag, earned his name of Fumbly for all his really bad rolls. Seriously, his dice hate this character. He brought out a half dozen d20s, test rolled them all (a lot of 16s), and then proceeded to cycle through them all as they refused to roll higher than a 4. Out of character, bring out the 13s, the 15s, the decent numbers. In character, no successes for you. He ended up near 0 HP for a third time just from quasit venom.
The player gives the overall system of Underwhelming. I'm Not Asking Much, Maybe Just 'Whelmed'? I Could Go For 'Whelmed'.
The whole +3 difference between a wizard Trained with a Stick and a fighter Legendary with the O Mighty-Holy Badarse Longsword is what's causing a great deal of his 'Underwhelmed'.
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Bookworm, goblin alchemist
How long to create the character? a little over 2 hours
How many times did the character hit 0 HP? never!
How many times did the character hit 0 Resonance? none
How many times did the character critically fail while overspending Resonance? again, none
What about spell slots? nope
Spell points? still no...
I know you spent Hero Points, right? No, should he have?
Bookworm, goblin alchemist, perhaps played the alchemist as Paizo wanted people to given the absurd Resonance tax the alchemist suffers:
Bookworm never mixed a single alchemical thing in combat. He did it all offscreen, before the adventure technically began, making ordinary things that one could sell. Like alchemist's fire and antidotes. I think he used one single Resonance point the entire dungeon. Otherwise he stood in the back with a crossbow the whole time.
So... with Resonance as it current stands... the most effective alchemist is a talentless rogue?
The player gives the overall system a rating of Let's See Where This Goes.
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Arianna, elven cleric of Calistria
How long to create the character? under 2 hours, a new record!
How many times did the character hit 0 HP? 0
How many times did the character hit 0 Resonance? still 0
How many times did the character critically fail while overspending Resonance? again, 0
What about spell slots? close! Actually used all true spell slots and all but one channel energy. And all of it on healing.
Spell points? no
I know you spent Hero Points, right? No because she thinks they're dumb. Points for showing up? For bribing the GM? For making the GM roleplay for you? This is encouraging the "GM's Girlfriend" problem.
Arianna, elven cleric of Calistria, gleefully used the 'heal from a distance' tactic of adding actions to one's spell in order to keep people from ending up All Dead. That's kind of... most of what she did. The vast most. This does not assuage my concern over the now-mandatory clerical support.
The player gives the overall system a rating of This Isn't Pathfinder, It Has Some Good Ideas But This Isn't Pathfinder.
Now then, the one thing the playtest isn't testing but my players expect:
A story. My players want a story. They expect a story. They watch me toss in random bits of story and make me pull entire narratives out of my butt all the time.
Use these details as you see fit. They're free to a good home.
The Magnamarian chapter of the Esoteric Order of the Palatine Eye is more of a social club than anything. After all, Runelords are (as of yet) a rumor out of history. The Irespan has been quiet for decades. The Skinsaw Cult hasn't popped up in years. So I added some internal politicking.
Arianna already has a Patron, someone sponsoring her entry into the Esoteric Order. So when the PCs all find the Notes on the Last Theorem and Keleri offers to sponsor them all this creates a problem. Patrons take credit for their Acolytes' discoveries. So Arianna has to choose. Does she stay with these PCs and damn the consequences? Or does she stay with her Patron, Keleri takes full credit and Arianna loses access to her own work? Arianna chose to stay with the PCs. This means conflict! Her old Patron will demand some recompense from Keleri for stealing Arianna's discovery and all future discoveries she might have made. This might mean a duel as things go on. Not sure yet.
Bookworm is a goblin, wtf? But he found the other alchemists in the Order and they'll shield him. He unknowingly went through their initiation ritual without prompting, a BYOA (bring your own antidote) affair involving cherry liqueur as a cyanide source. Downed the whole glass then followed it with an antidote chaser when he made the Medicine check. Then with a successful Fort save he joined the society within the society and will have access to better alchemical formulae as time goes on.
Fimbly schmoozed his way around. Very standard.
Sirtir found the visiting members from Ustalav and got into a conversation about undead hunting. The Ustalavians were all quite impressed that Sirtir had ever faced down undead at all, so many of these Magnamarians were too soft and fat and drunk to pick up a weapon. They offered their assistance should Magnamar ever grow too complacent in their navel-gazing.
And this makes for a nice segway into the next two adventures as it is the Ustalavian Esoteric Order that brings in the next two batches of PCs and ends up finding the horrible truth.
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Planning on part 2 this Saturday, finally. We'll gain a player, someone who's never played an RPG ever but was really amused/intrigued/interested in the game shenanigans her husband went on about while he was a player in my Serpent's Skull campaign.
Just in case anyone's wondering where this thread went.
Also, the 'never played in her life' might be a useful perspective.
Change of plans. Minor changes. We did not gain the new player.
Also we did not play today. We spent the entire session making characters for part 2 due to 3 of my 4 players spending all day at an X-Wing tournament.
Notes on the 4 new characters follows.
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[not yet named character], gnome druid. Played by Sirtir, elven druid.
Yes there's a pattern there. I expect it to continue and here's why.
He showed up for game at 6pm. That gave me and him an extra hour and a half while everyone else finished up the X-Wing tournament across town. Discussion of the playtest, of the the possibility of switching to the Star Wars FFG RPG, of the cookies I was baking to bribe people into showing up, of characters and character concepts. Everyone else got here around 730 so Sirtir had a hour and a half head start on character creation thoughts.
When we broke at 1130 he was not yet finished with his character.
He started wanting to play a monk. But by 8pm he admitted the monk class chapter makes no sense and is unusable. Spent time looking at fighter. Gave up by the time we all broke for burritos around 9pm. Finally decided on playing a druid again because it was at least vaguely familiar.
By 1130 he'd done everything except buy equipment.
Problems I noticed were mumblings of "there's no good skill feats for Nature" and the declaration "Let it be known I picked all my cantrips sight unseen."
Also, let it be known I wrote down his exact words as he said them because that level of can-no-longer-care is important to know.
He'd still rather be playing 5th edition. At least, I assume that given he said so often enough. He's insistent the Pathfinder playtest would have worked much better if Paizo hadn't printed a book and instead rereleased an edited pdf with each round of errata instead of their current thing where I have to police people's reading of the book to make sure their reading of the rules is current.
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Siff, half elf ranger. Played by Fimbly, elven paladin
Fimbly took 3rd at the X-Wing tournament and cannot believe Admiral Sloane. Also he had to find a parking spot after dropping everyone else off so he didn't get started on character creation until just after 8pm. He spent one hour on actual character building, finishing the bulk of it by 9pm when we broke for burritos. He was on equipment by 930pm, gave up around 10pm, then picked at his sheet for another half hour.
The quote I got out of him was "NERD RAAAAGE!"
He DOES NOT LIKE the character sheet. Not one bit. Also he's still underwhelmed. He does not approve of the move on Untrained, making it worth a -4 instead of a -2. It doesn't fix the problem he had with the TEML system, which was the complete meaningless-ness of Legendary's +3
We did come up with a fix though, while waiting for Sirtir to @&#^ing finish already. TEML currently represents a 0/+1/+2/+3 spread. A more whelming spread might be 0/+1/+3/+6. It still keeps Trained and Expert close together but it allows Master and Legendary to mean something.
Overall, he is highly frustrated with the system and the playtest. However, he stays because he respects and appreciates the community involvement Paizo has and invites. He just wishes Pathfinder 2ed felt anything at all like Pathfinder 1ed.
Temesheck, human paladin of Sarenrae. Played by Bookworm, goblin alchemist
Cookies distracted him for a bit so he didn't get started until a little before 8pm. He declined a burrito break and was essentially finished with character creation by 930. He took the Cavalier archetype and went for a camel mount. I agreed there will be rules for camel spit, dammit, even if they're not in 2ed yet. Camels spit. It's gross. I've experienced it.
Relevant quote out of him was "I spent 20 minutes reading everything in the paladin thing trying to find f*%king 'lay on hands'." As you might imagine, it was an issue of the book layout. Again. It's laid out by someone who owns stock in Post-It. Has to be.
Equipment was also an issue here in that there really isn't any good 2nd or 3rd level equipment that isn't just one-use junk. Also, while the idea of equipment having levels makes sense, players shouldn't have access to that information. Previously, when I gave a 7th level party their first bag of holding it would be a reward. Now that the bag of holding is a 4th level item those same 7th level characters will be liable to consider it a punishment. Why did I hold back? Why did I keep this from them instead of giving it to them at 4th level like the book says?
Equipment levels makes things less complicated mathematically but more complicated in actual game play with actual psychology involved. Dammit, I'm the GM, it's my prerogative to make my players covet that first bag of holding or to unbalance the game if I so wish with a vorpal sword. The players shouldn't expect treasure just because a book says they deserve it per their level.
Finity, half-orc sorcerer. Played by Arianna, elven cleric
She had the issue of Worked Night Shift Friday Then Woke Up Early Saturday For X-Wing Tournament. Meaning she was exhausted by the time we finally got to Pathfinder. This was a major handicap as apparently Pathfinder 2ed requires one's FULL ATTENTION otherwise nothing makes sense.
Also, she's pissed that sorcerers don't get a Spells Known chart. The wall-of-text example was really hard to follow. Maybe it was her exhausted state, maybe the fact that she works with numbers all day caused her to expect stuff to make logical sense. This would be easily fixed with a 20 line chart next to the Spells Per Day chart. Or on the next page? Or somewhere, anywhere?
We seriously discussed her dipping into the Paladin Archetype like that one thread over there solely to gain weapon and armor proficiency. I would allow it simply because I'm curious how horribly game-breaking it really is or if this is just a case of people being mad at sorcerers having Nice Things for once. Oh no, the sorcerer has a competitive AC, how horrible?
She got to see just how bad the spell list really is. Spoilers: it's bad. There's no description in the initial list, just a name and a level. Not even a one line description of the spell. Also, spells are significantly worse in 2ed than they were in 1ed: they do less and cost more. She took a representative sampling of spells, standard quality-control procedures, and compared them to their 1ed counterparts. The spells sampled did less and cost a larger percentage of one's per-day resources.
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I should point out that the book explicitly states sorcerer spells known = spells per day. The bloodline spell known and spell per day is a freebie. Page 128, under spell repertoire. "Each time you get a spell slot from Table 3–20, you add a spell to your spell repertoire of the same level."
Side note: +3 to hit mathematically represents +50% in damage.
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I counter with a quote from the book. Yes page 128 says
Each time you get a spell slot from Table 3–20, you add a spell to your spell repertoire of the same level.
But the very next line gives the details of how that works.
So when you reach 2nd level, you select another 1st-level spell; at 3rd level, you select two 2nd-level spells, and at 4th level you select a 2nd-level spell.
Which unfortunately feels vague to someone who expects very literal written instructions to make sense. An easier way to say it, one that might make sense, is to say instead "So when you reach 2nd level, you know 3 1st level spells; at third level you add two 2nd level spells to your spells known, and at 4th level you know 3 1st level spells and 3 2nd level spells."
It took an actual epiphany, the kind of mystical "Oh S#!t, so THAT'S how it works" moment for the line as-written to make sense. That the spells known equal the spells per day. Why not say that? In words? Alternatively, a chart can pull double duty. Since Spells Known and Spells Per Day are the same number, why not SAY SO?
Pathfinder 2ed should not be more complicated than US tax law. Given what I do for a living that is not hyperbole.
It's over.
Done. Just... done.
It's been two weeks since we played. We were an every-Saturday gaming group. But the 2ed playtest has destroyed that. Vague excuses have been the hallmark of this playtest, including last weekend's "I have to be out of town next weekend. I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier but I'll be out of town. I know it's really short notice but I can't be there that day. Sorry."
I have been open about my problems with this system. I have been open with my players about these problems. I have not pretended they'll be fixed because I have not seen major fixes thus far, only vague tweaks of broken rules and the vague sense that it might get better if only I let psychology convince me I'm here because I enjoy it.
Maybe my players only put up with it because I'm GM and therefore they feel I have an element of power over how bad the rules are. I do take notes about their complaints to condense into posts here. There has been the hope that their input means something.
I had Arianna's player talk to my other players. She told them nothing more or less than what I've been saying: we don't have to do this, I know the rules suck, it hasn't been fun for anyone, we have options that aren't this.
That broke the dam. This playtest is over. It's not fun. Fimbly's player isn't even convinced 2ed is a game at all. I know it's an incomplete game but that's not an excuse. If a car frame has square wheels I don't need to see the finished car to realize it's not going to drive anywhere.
To be honest, this playtest has strained the trust my players have in me as a GM. That's why after 9 years as a forever-GM I'm stepping down. I'll finally get the chance to play a character. That is, if my gaming group hasn't permanently shattered because of this experience.
I plan to look at PF2 when it comes out, in that I plan to go to my FLGS and look at the book before looking at other more interesting things. If I'm feeling charitable I might pick up the book and open it to see how little they've listened to their playtesters before putting the book back on the shelf.
We're sticking with 1st edition Pathfinder. If that means no new content then we're fine with that.
I'm not even annoyed that we spent money on this playtest. I'm too burnt out to be annoyed.
Doomsday Noon is over.