A New Part Dawns!

Our 4th level Alchemist has been doing fine. Of course, he took the extra Resonance Feat, and we haven't had more than 2 fights in a day yet. Still, 14-16 'spell equivalents' on a 4th level character is very solid.

Not the place for a full analysis, but the Alxhemist feels so underpowered I hesitate to even call it a player-character class. I can only see alchemist being used effectively as a support NPC of comperable level that can't/won't overshadow the real heroes.

A great chassis if I need a GMPC that mostly stays out of combat, not so great if I want to feel like I'm actually a heroic adventurer.

I firmly support separating Alchemist class features from Resonance and simply giving them a Spell Point pool just like other class features use.

It would allow for independent balancing of Alchemist class features and if changes to Resonance come in a future revision then it will isolate them from the blow-back on that.

I'm beginning to think this might be the better solution. Currently, it's as if clerics had their channel energy coming from resonance instead of a separate pool - not that much of a problem at level 1, but as levels grow, it could hit a wall.

Fewer than 1 in 8 people strangled completely run out of oxygen.

But hey the forums are back.

graystone wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

Did your party submit surveys?

Was this to me? If so, I submitted a survey. I don't know if the others did. They were so demoralized by the first two parts of the adventure, they abandoned ship and I have to find a new group. :(

Hey graystone, Not to be mean or anything but I have a bit of sneaking suspicion that your GMing playstyle probably made your players demoralized. I mean you've been on the forums complaining about almost every single change since the playtest was announced. I don't know how I would even be able to play a game when the GM hates it themselves and won't stop talking about how they don't like it.

So much this. There are at least two GMs on the boards that are nothing but negative and then complain about demoralized players. I feel like the GM sets so much of the tone that if the GM is already negative, there's very little room for the players to have a good time. Graystone, I'm sure you're a fine GM, but in this specific instance (the playtest) you might be poisoning your own well so to speak.

And there's another GM who sounds like they're outright vindictive for some reason, changing written monster tactics specifically to cheese against the players and TPKing several (and all) sessions.

ENHenry wrote:

That's more bombs than they had under PF1

THIS! Was waiting for somebody to actually say that.

Other casters get same or lower amount of spell slots than before, yet i don't see and real hysteria about that. Alchemists got MORE, and they seem to have most trouble.

What happened is that alchemists do not have now an easy class-specific source of round-by round damage, such as cantrips used by casters in this edition. While it suggests alchemists should be using weapons (other than bombs) for that purpose, in practice this class is not well outfitted for this option. Unless the player made a special plan for that (like elf alchemist archer in our group, or other alchemists that multiclassed to fighters), alchemist is not resonably good at melee or missile combat. And the player finds out that everybody is firing non-stop, endless resources - except the alchemist.

I believe what we see is a "social injustice" effect, where inability to endlessly spam something POWERFUL tirelessly feels like a handicap. Was not an issue in the previous edition where cantrips were crap, yet is an issue now.

But do they have more items than a PF1 Alchemist who had bombs PLUS spells? That's at least 2 extra powers for them. Not to mention they had nearly endless supply of alch items with jsut 100GP investment. Then there was Mutagen... The PF1 alchemists almost never ran out of class features to do.

graystone wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

Did your party submit surveys?

Was this to me? If so, I submitted a survey. I don't know if the others did. They were so demoralized by the first two parts of the adventure, they abandoned ship and I have to find a new group. :(

Hey graystone, Not to be mean or anything but I have a bit of sneaking suspicion that your GMing playstyle probably made your players demoralized. I mean you've been on the forums complaining about almost every single change since the playtest was announced. I don't know how I would even be able to play a game when the GM hates it themselves and won't stop talking about how they don't like it.

I'm pretty sure Graystone is a player, not a GM.

Laik wrote:

ENHenry wrote:

That's more bombs than they had under PF1

THIS! Was waiting for somebody to actually say that.

I can definitely give it to you that at first level Resonance doesn't appear to be much of an issue. The issue comes down to players that start to use Magic Items. This happens more frequently at higher levels and you have to "Reserve" a portion of your Resonance aside for your investing.

This causes the pool that Alchemists are drawing from to be smaller and limits the amount of uses they have for their Bombs. It definitely does not scale too well.

I firmly support separating Alchemist class features from Resonance and simply giving them a Spell Point pool just like other class features use.

It would allow for independent balancing of Alchemist class features and if changes to Resonance come in a future revision then it will isolate them from the blow-back on that.

I would also support giving them a spell pool for some quick alchemy stuff. At level 1 alchemists seem to be in a pretty good spot they get a fair amount of stuff they can make for free every day. The problem is their progression is really flat and then once they get magic items they start losing stuff per day they can make. Then as they gain levels they get the ability to pour in more resonance to add other effects like double elixers or additive effects to bombs. But every time they use one of those tricks its taking at least 2 items per day away from their total capacity.

What would sorc think if using meta magic made you lose a spell slot per day to use?

It would make some sense that they get some kind of spell point pool for their feat type features to make their normal alchemical stuff do extra things. That way so you don't have your alchemist when they are making their stuff for the day have to guess if adding a smoke bomb effect to a bomb is worth two elixers of life or two bombs or two of some other alchemical item.

And there's another GM who sounds like they're outright vindictive for some reason, changing written monster tactics specifically to cheese against the players and TPKing several (and all) sessions.

The problem is if it's only the smart playing on part (not charging headlong to their death) of the monsters that causing the TPK, it means that math is off and needs to be checked.

In the game I ran, the alchemist didn't run out of Resonance, however they were down to the last one, and was injured enough they needed healing to continue (they had been knocked out in combat, and were revived by one of their own elixirs). One of the main combatant characters however had run out of resonance, and they were unwilling to risk wasting the single healing potion they had. The Alchemist could have used his remaining resonance to produce an Elixir of life for themselves, but it would have left one of their main characters near dead, unless they risked wasting an expensive consumable. Instead, since they had tackled the boss, they called it a day and ended up just calling the adventure over, rather than coming back to do any cleanup.

So the alchemist never ran completely out, but was close. (but they still had some bombs remaining) But one of the combat PCs was forced to retire for the day due to resonance running out, since they were relying on the Alchemist for healing.

This might have been different if they party had had a cleric which could have healed the party without using resonance, but in this case, they only had the alchemist.

So resonance ended up cutting the adventure short, due to a non-alchemist running out of resonance. Short is of course relative. The primary objective was achieved. Item recovered, and boss defeated. However the rest of the dungeon was left as is and some roleplay was skipped over due to the parts that were not investigated.

I want to point out that the players all had fun. They weren't complaining, it just was obvious the day was completed, due to hitting the daily limit, and it wasn't worth it to them to come back once they'd agreed to leave.

They were instead... ok... What is the next chapter about?

Gloom wrote:

Laik wrote:

ENHenry wrote:

That's more bombs than they had under PF1

THIS! Was waiting for somebody to actually say that.

I can definitely give it to you that at first level Resonance doesn't appear to be much of an issue. The issue comes down to players that start to use Magic Items. This happens more frequently at higher levels and you have to "Reserve" a portion of your Resonance aside for your investing.

This causes the pool that Alchemists are drawing from to be smaller and limits the amount of uses they have for their Bombs. It definitely does not scale too well.

I firmly support separating Alchemist class features from Resonance and simply giving them a Spell Point pool just like other class features use.

It would allow for independent balancing of Alchemist class features and if changes to Resonance come in a future revision then it will isolate them from the blow-back on that.

I would also support giving them a spell pool for some quick alchemy stuff. At level 1 alchemists seem to be in a pretty good spot they get a fair amount of stuff they can make for free every day. The problem is their progression is really flat and then once they get magic items they start losing stuff per day they can make. Then as they gain levels they get the ability to pour in more resonance to add other effects like double elixers or additive effects to bombs. But every time they use one of those tricks its taking at least 2 items per day away from their total capacity.

What would sorc think if using meta magic made you lose a spell slot per day to use?

It would make some sense that they get some kind of spell point pool for their feat type features to make their normal alchemical stuff do extra things. That way so you don't have your alchemist when they are making their stuff for the day have to guess if adding a smoke bomb effect to a bomb is worth two elixirs of life or two bombs or two of some other alchemical item.

I'll admit, it is kind of a nice mechanic how the Alchemist gets to choose where on the spectrum between spontaneous ability use, vs. prepared ability use. With preparing Elixirs basically giving you 2 for 1, and letting you pick how many you leave for spontaneous uses isn't a horrible mechanic.

Definitely, alchemists seem to lack the equivalent of a cantrip however. Is it a big enough problem, to make the class non-viable? I don't know. The alchemist in our game used an Ancestry feat to get a reasonable melee weapon, and used it more than once targets had engaged in melee.

If you move them to SP based for quick alchemy and leave prepared alchemy attached to resonance, you reduce the ability to have the alchemist choose to slide the scale between priority to be spontaneous vs. being prepared. I'm not sure I'd find that a positive. Now if they get the same starting SP that they were getting for resonance, and had the difference in SP cost between prepared and quick, that might be viable, not sure.

I'm sure it's been said but make sure that there's a I didn't trigger the trap but someone else did option in the future questions.

A little question about the Advanced Alchemy ability for alchemist: It says he can spend 1 Resonance point to create a batch of items with the infused trait, but can he choose NOT to spend that point to create items without them being infused? Or it is mandatory for him to spend the point and they must be infused?

To me, this makes a slight difference since if he doesn't need to infuse it at the time of creation, then I would expect the item to last indefinitely since it becomes a "normal" spend-the-Resonance-when-used item, right?

As for his bombs, I would think using a Spell Pool would make more sense than burning up Resonance for them, but again, it would still limit the number of bombs he could throw since Spell Pools are limited and there are no additional feats to grant more points for different bombs since they all fall under the same alchemical items list. I think it might be better to give him an ability to make a flat check when he uses his ability for Quick Alchemy to avoid spending Resonance instead of waiting until he runs out, and just increase the DC by 1 or 2 each time. If he fails, he burns the Resonance; on a critical fail, he uses double the Resonance, which is more likely to happen when he pushes his luck. Just a thought.

And speaking of Spell Pools, can anyone explain to me why the Cleric's Spell Pool and Channel are dependent on his Charisma when every other class that gets a Spell Pool has it dependent on their key ability (except Paladin, who also uses Charisma)?

Oh, and my game had only three players with me as the GM; human bard, human paladin, and half-elf cleric. The bard loved using inspire courage and telekinetic projectile in combo, the paladin made good use of shield block and retributive strike, and the cleric liked using his whip to trip foes, then smack them down, but he absolutely HATED the three action use of heal ONLY healing/inflicting damage equal to his ability score modifier, which was 2 points in his case. Did we misread the damage part of the three-action ability?

"You disperse positive energy in a 30-foot aura. This has the same effect as the two-action version, but it targets all living and undead creatures in the burst and reduces the amount of healing or damage to your spellcasting ability modifier."

First of all, this is very awkward wording since he says it has the same effect as the previous step, but t hen it changes the damage; the player found this wording very confusing and we argued about how much damage it meant. Second, wouldn't it make more sense if the damage at least increased by the level of the caster?

Also, does spell level no longer apply to saving throws against spells? I would think a higher level spell would still be harder to save against than a low level one.

Not the place for a full analysis, but the Alxhemist feels so underpowered I hesitate to even call it a player-character class. I can only see alchemist being used effectively as a support NPC of comperable level that can't/won't overshadow the real heroes.

A great chassis if I need a GMPC that mostly stays out of combat, not so great if I want to feel like I'm actually a heroic adventurer.

In my group (admittedly not the official playtest scenarios), the Alchemist is the second most effective character, only trailing the Rogue. The Cleric is great at keeping everyone healed and alive, but can't seem to hit in combat, and the Sorcerer ends up trying to use Ray of Frost most rounds but reliably rolls poorly.

Just out of curiosity, what are alchemists spending it on?

8 elixirs of life and then spontaneous alchemy. The adventure was so brutal on PC's that we went through the 8, some extra made later AND a druid only casting soothe for spells. Monsters tore through us like tissue paper.

Dire Ursus wrote:

graystone wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

Did your party submit surveys?

Was this to me? If so, I submitted a survey. I don't know if the others did. They were so demoralized by the first two parts of the adventure, they abandoned ship and I have to find a new group. :(

Hey graystone, Not to be mean or anything but I have a bit of sneaking suspicion that your GMing playstyle probably made your players demoralized. I mean you've been on the forums complaining about almost every single change since the playtest was announced. I don't know how I would even be able to play a game when the GM hates it themselves and won't stop talking about how they don't like it.

I'm pretty sure Graystone is a player, not a GM.

Yep, all player. The party as a whole didn't seem down on the game and neither was the DM. It was the continuous savage beatings we took every encounter that wore people down. We spent more time KO'd and bleeding out most fights than attacking. All to get killed before ending that part of the adventure. Twice...

So I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that we went into the game trying to hate it: the game didn't need our help for that. For myself, I hoped I'd enjoy the adventure even if there were parts of the playtest I didn't like: so far the enjoyable bit have been few and far between and I wasn't very surprised when I got a PM that the other players backed out of more torture. :(

Alyran wrote:

And there's another GM who sounds like they're outright vindictive for some reason, changing written monster tactics specifically to cheese against the players and TPKing several (and all) sessions.

The problem is if it's only the smart playing on part (not charging headlong to their death) of the monsters that causing the TPK, it means that math is off and needs to be checked.

I think part of our issue might have been that we didn't make characters to be 100% optimal and have the perfect party composition. We didn't have a 5 man party or a healing focused cleric or fighter with a melee reaction or have less than an 18 in your main stat or... The game seems to punish you if you step out of the box even a little. That and monsters seem to be balanced to be a few points better than their optimized PC counterparts.

ENHenry wrote:

Just out of curiosity, what are alchemists spending it on?

8 elixirs of life and then spontaneous alchemy. The adventure was so brutal on PC's that we went through the 8, some extra made later AND a druid only casting soothe for spells. Monsters tore through us like tissue paper.

Fuzzypaws wrote:

Dire Ursus wrote:

graystone wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

Did your party submit surveys?

Was this to me? If so, I submitted a survey. I don't know if the others did. They were so demoralized by the first two parts of the adventure, they abandoned ship and I have to find a new group. :(

Hey graystone, Not to be mean or anything but I have a bit of sneaking suspicion that your GMing playstyle probably made your players demoralized. I mean you've been on the forums complaining about almost every single change since the playtest was announced. I don't know how I would even be able to play a game when the GM hates it themselves and won't stop talking about how they don't like it.

I'm pretty sure Graystone is a player, not a GM.

Yep, all player. The party as a whole didn't seem down on the game and neither was the DM. It was the continuous savage beatings we took every encounter that wore people down. We spent more time KO'd and bleeding out most fights than attacking. All to get killed before ending that part of the adventure. Twice...

So I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that we went into the game trying to hate it: the game didn't need our help for that. For myself, I hoped I'd enjoy the adventure even if there were parts of the playtest I didn't like: so far the enjoyable bit have been few and far between and I wasn't very surprised when I got a PM that the other players backed out of more torture. :(

necromental wrote:

Alyran wrote:

And there's another GM who sounds like they're outright vindictive for some reason, changing written monster tactics specifically to cheese against the players and TPKing

...

I'm honestly surprised with your experience, as the group that I had been GMing for had no issues with the first chapter, in terms of staying healthy against me TRYING to be brutal, and the party had ONE source of healing beyond 3 store bought minor elixirs of life, being that of a paladin, whose other party members consisted of a rogue, monk and ranger, only the Rogue of which I would have described as optimized in play and playstyle.

The group made it all the way and beat the quasits, including handling the centipedes, before the quasit poison whittled down the paladin enough with some bad rolls that they left to lick their wounds and come back the day after, finishing up with the closest to dead on day 2 was the bear after taking a serious beating from the final fight and not a single lay on hands used to heal until after finished the skeletons, the rest of the goblins and the boss.

I suspect a part of it is the very large range in how much damage some enemies can do (which might explain MusicAddict's experience; not a lot of crits?)but from a quote or two I've read another part is what happens when the GM encounters bad rules. Some apply the RAW rigidly because it's a test of those rules, some would rather keep the game going.

I'm honestly surprised with your experience, as the group that I had been GMing for had no issues with the first chapter, in terms of staying healthy against me TRYING to be brutal, and the party had ONE source of healing beyond 3 store bought minor elixirs of life, being that of a paladin, whose other party members consisted of a rogue, monk and ranger, only the Rogue of which I would have described as optimized in play and playstyle.

How did the group manage this? When I ran it the goblins and centipedes did a fair bit of damage, enough to consume all healing resources (no cleric in the group).

The numbers seem to make this all but inevitable. The monsters survive long enough to get some hits in.

Note - not saying that this wasn't your experience, I'm just trying to understand HOW that was your experience. Barring really bad or good rolls I just don't see how you can't take more damage than that healing can deal with

MusicAddict: the slime started off the beatings by starting the game off knocking out the animal companion in a single shot. The first set of goblins wrecked us good [foes firing from darkness bad for group] and if the DM hadn't been kind and allow my familiar to continue fighting to 'defend itself' we'd have all died there. The quasits tore us up again and the second group of goblins wasn't pretty.

Our best fight was the skeletons, as we only got crit once and no one got KO'd. Second best was the centipedes that just poisoned us but left us mobile. Our fights mostly went #1 foes go first #2 KO 1-4 players [most rounds resulted in at least 1 enemy crit] #3 players get to go and try to keep KO'd people from dying. We retreated 4 times during the adventure too do to running out of healing do to the merciless curb stomping.

I am so proud to be one of the 34 people that decided to drink from the polluted fountain. I wonder if someone that wasn´t a goblin with Eat Anything Ancestry Feat did it.

Our party also had two drinkers, but our goblin didn’t drink!

Just out of curiosity, what are alchemists spending it on? At first level, the alchemist is going to have up to 8 to 10 bombs a day, or maybe 5 or 6 bombs and one or two points for some other elixirs and maybe 1 to spare for a quick alchemy for something corner-case as needed. That's more bombs than they had under PF1, and not even counting overspending, they can resort to something melee or ranged as needed after they run out. At first level, they don't have magic items to worry about anyway.

That said, I do think they need more resonance as levels increase than one per level is giving. Maybe they should push that Expanded Resonance to 4th (and leave it for quick alchemy)?

I have decided that the next PC I create for the playtest is going to be an Alchemist. :) I want to see what the fuss is about.

As for me, I prepared 6 bombs (4 alchemist fire and 2 liquid ice) and kept a reserve of 2 RP in case I needed to make a utility item and/or drink a healing potion we might find. I ended up only using bombs against the boss. I think I used all 4 alchemist fires, but had little effect due to bad rolls.

I was more worried about resonance than I was about bombs per day in PF1, because bombs per day only applied to bombs. Resonance applies to all alchemist abilities as well as magic items. So in PF1 I could use an extract for utility or my mutagen to try to hulk out, in PF2 that counts against the same pool which encouraged hoarding.

This of course will be a "Your mileage will vary" situation. People respond differently to the situation of having limited resources. Some will blow everything fast, some will figure out the most effective way to use things, and others, like me, will see the scarcity and be driven to not use the resource. I tend not to use many consumables in games because they might be needed more later. Resonance just makes me want to use them even less because they also take a second resource. So I would suggest moving Alchemists away from using resonance for class features and instead have their own Alchemy Pool. Of course I'd also support getting rid of resonance entirely or at least scaling it back dramatically, as it is, it feels to me like a blunt instrument that bludgeons away fun.

Yes, very bad Alchemist statistic in the OP.

In my group, the Alchemist got down to 0 Resonance, and then managed to be the only member knocked out in the adventure--given that I found the attack modifiers of the enemies _ludicrous_ and tuned them down, plus not being able to roll worth anything--because all he could do at that point was attack. With a club.

(He couldn't afford a Crossbow because of all the kits and tools he needed. The group has no Rogue, so he has to handle that part as well as general support.)

The Alchemist needs _something_. It may be as simple as providing free alchemist tools so that a crossbow can be afforded. The general fact remains that the Alchemist can be a good skillmonkey and maaaybe okay at combat... but not great.

My group has a Fighter (Dwarf with Waraxe), Druid (Animal), Cleric (Desna), and Alchemist--I GM--and the Cleric and Alchemist feel very very low-powered compared to the other two. The Cleric is very good at support, but offensively is quite poor. The Alchemist is so-so at support, and terrible at offense.

The best thing that can be done, I think, is give the Alchemist something to use when the Resonance runs out _that uses Intelligence_. As others have noted, the game is balanced, combat-wise, around having an 18 in the combat-relative stat, and I don't know any Alchemist that can reliably have that and still be, well, an Alchemist.

Edit: Also, I agree that Resonance _in general_ is really quite bad, and also hamstrings the ALchemist. You know it's bad when the Alchemist refuses a +1 returning dagger because he needs to invest it, and thus reduce his alchemy. I mean, that's what you're dealing with.

Alchemists being unable to exclude people from their effects makes them less effective when it comes to melee.

At this rate they end up sitting on their hands because
they don't want to damage melee.

I played an alchemist and I reported I had not run out of resonance. I technically hadn't. I had leftover doodads. I never got to use them. The few I had, mostly got wasted due to OTHER people being out of resonance. I never felt good throwing a bomb, because friends were there, waiting to be splashed on. I mostly hit things with my torch.

Resonance did not make my game more fun.

We spent 4 healing potions (elixirs of life) on someone and they gained 3 hit points total.

Resonance did not make my game more fun. It actively detracted from it.

I played an alchemist and I reported I had not run out of resonance. I technically hadn't. I had leftover doodads. I never got to use them. The few I had, mostly got wasted due to OTHER people being out of resonance. I never felt good throwing a bomb, because friends were there, waiting to be splashed on. I mostly hit things with my torch.

Resonance did not make my game more fun.

We spent 4 healing potions (elixirs of life) on someone and they gained 3 hit points total.

Resonance did not make my game more fun. It actively detracted from it.

I agree that resonance has some problems, specifically with connection to the alchemist and their abilities. I don't think a class can reasonably run on this resource without a large amount of extra for that resource.

But this person is cursed. Nothing can help them.

David Silver - Ponyfinder wrote:

I played an alchemist and I reported I had not run out of resonance. I technically hadn't. I had leftover doodads. I never got to use them. The few I had, mostly got wasted due to OTHER people being out of resonance. I never felt good throwing a bomb, because friends were there, waiting to be splashed on. I mostly hit things with my torch.

Resonance did not make my game more fun.

We spent 4 healing potions (elixirs of life) on someone and they gained 3 hit points total.

Resonance did not make my game more fun. It actively detracted from it.

I agree that resonance has some problems, specifically with connection to the alchemist and their abilities. I don't think a class can reasonably run on this resource without a large amount of extra for that resource.

But this person is cursed. Nothing can help them.

I'm trying to think how that is actually possible. A Minor Elixir of Life grants 1d6 HP. The worst case is 4 HP for 4 of these.

Alyran wrote:

David Silver - Ponyfinder wrote:

I played an alchemist and I reported I had not run out of resonance. I technically hadn't. I had leftover doodads. I never got to use them. The few I had, mostly got wasted due to OTHER people being out of resonance. I never felt good throwing a bomb, because friends were there, waiting to be splashed on. I mostly hit things with my torch.

Resonance did not make my game more fun.

We spent 4 healing potions (elixirs of life) on someone and they gained 3 hit points total.

Resonance did not make my game more fun. It actively detracted from it.

I agree that resonance has some problems, specifically with connection to the alchemist and their abilities. I don't think a class can reasonably run on this resource without a large amount of extra for that resource.

But this person is cursed. Nothing can help them.

I'm trying to think how that is actually possible. A Minor Elixir of Life grants 1d6 HP. The worst case is 4 HP for 4 of these.

I believe in anything else, though, but I just got really curious about this case.

Drink 3, roll 1s. Drink the 4th, fail the overdraw roll. Not an easy thing to do, but certainly possible.

Igwilly wrote:

Alyran wrote:

David Silver - Ponyfinder wrote:

I played an alchemist and I reported I had not run out of resonance. I technically hadn't. I had leftover doodads. I never got to use them. The few I had, mostly got wasted due to OTHER people being out of resonance. I never felt good throwing a bomb, because friends were there, waiting to be splashed on. I mostly hit things with my torch.

Resonance did not make my game more fun.

We spent 4 healing potions (elixirs of life) on someone and they gained 3 hit points total.

Resonance did not make my game more fun. It actively detracted from it.

I agree that resonance has some problems, specifically with connection to the alchemist and their abilities. I don't think a class can reasonably run on this resource without a large amount of extra for that resource.

But this person is cursed. Nothing can help them.

I'm trying to think how that is actually possible. A Minor Elixir of Life grants 1d6 HP. The worst case is 4 HP for 4 of these.

I believe in anything else, though, but I just got really curious about this case.

Drink 3, roll 1s. Drink the 4th, fail the overdraw roll. Not an easy thing to do, but certainly possible.

Thanks ^^

Alyran wrote:

Igwilly wrote:

Alyran wrote:

David Silver - Ponyfinder wrote:

I played an alchemist and I reported I had not run out of resonance. I technically hadn't. I had leftover doodads. I never got to use them. The few I had, mostly got wasted due to OTHER people being out of resonance. I never felt good throwing a bomb, because friends were there, waiting to be splashed on. I mostly hit things with my torch.

Resonance did not make my game more fun.

We spent 4 healing potions (elixirs of life) on someone and they gained 3 hit points total.

Resonance did not make my game more fun. It actively detracted from it.

I agree that resonance has some problems, specifically with connection to the alchemist and their abilities. I don't think a class can reasonably run on this resource without a large amount of extra for that resource.

But this person is cursed. Nothing can help them.

I'm trying to think how that is actually possible. A Minor Elixir of Life grants 1d6 HP. The worst case is 4 HP for 4 of these.

I believe in anything else, though, but I just got really curious about this case.

Drink 3, roll 1s. Drink the 4th, fail the overdraw roll. Not an easy thing to do, but certainly possible.

Thanks ^^

Try failing the overdraw 3 times and then succeeding, woo, 4.

EberronHoward wrote:

I imagine we won't see many Half-Elf or Half-Orcs before Level 5, since becoming one eats up an Ancestry Feat, and Humans have a lot of good ones.

The Half-Elf and Half-Orc feats have the Heritage trait. That means that they can *only* be taken at first level. (With the exception of doubling up on the same feat, which is explicitly handled in the feat text itself.)

I forget about that. Thanks! Still, I think that for the purposes of building one-shot pre-gens, having another ancestry feat available will increase the amount of Half-Elves and Half-Orcs shown. The PCs for "Sombrefell Hall" and "Heroes of Undarin" can be built as if they took a Heritage feat at level 1.

And I agree with CaniestDog that the Human Heritage feats *are* very good.

I'm neither for nor against resonance (at least as it is; I tend to be in favor of it in general, but I haven't played enough to give much of a response), but I have to say that any cases where resonance was the main deciding factor for the first playtest seems odd. Even for Alchemists, I can't see much to say that it's worse than other characters. In our game, the Barbarian was the only one to do much in the first section of the playtest, but given that we were a druid, a bard, and a sorcerer, otherwise, it was disappoining to be as weak at first level, but not exactly unexpected for first level casters. And I fail to see how Alchemists are worse than casters in this regard.

I'm neither for nor against resonance (at least as it is; I tend to be in favor of it in general, but I haven't played enough to give much of a response), but I have to say that any cases where resonance was the main deciding factor for the first playtest seems odd. Even for Alchemists, I can't see much to say that it's worse than other characters. In our game, the Barbarian was the only one to do much in the first section of the playtest, but given that we were a druid, a bard, and a sorcerer, otherwise, it was disappoining to be as weak at first level, but not exactly unexpected for first level casters. And I fail to see how Alchemists are worse than casters in this regard.

Damage cantrips are decently reliable even if underwhelming. Alchemist doesn't have this option.

Our group filled out surveys, and found the experience .... ok. There was danger, but it wasn't excessive, and we didn't run out of resources (although it was very close). This was due to two circumstances:

1. Our barbarian rolled a natural 20 *three* times. She probably did two-thirds of the damage in the party, as a result.

2. We focused heavily on conflict-avoidance, being close to paranoid in searching for traps, clues and other ways to avoid actually engaging enemies. We never fought quasits, centipedes, etc, if there was a way to avoid it. We also intimidated the group of goblins in their HQ by presenting them with the head of their boss that we had decapitated. They gave up - another potential TPK avoided.

The reason for this somewhat extreme approach is that we, as a group, felt incompetent to be heroic in the usual manner. We are committed to the playtest as a matter of grace to our GM and a promise we made, but there's zero chance we would stick with it, were this a chance encounter. It's just not fun enough.
So far, the playtest has been the most effective advertisement for D&D 5th we have seen in a long time, and we're not even habitual D&D / d20 players.

Note, please, that three of us have extensive PF1 experience, and two others a little. It didn't appeal more (or less) to the experienced PF players than to the others.

I'm surprised that the unconscious rules weren't changed to specify crit failing reflex saves (considering that applies for the sleeping condition). My group didn't have a particularly difficult time running out of resources, but it was a large group- and they returned to town a couple times to rest. They had the most trouble with the second goblin encounter. The trap, along with the increased number of goblins, butchered them with a plethora of crits and maneuvering. The alchemist in the group was afraid to do much, thanks to both his splash damage and limited supply. His meager bulk meant he resorted to using light bulk weapons to fight, thanks to his armor, bombs, kit, and other great taking up a large chunk. I found that the hero points made a lethal encounter far less so, especially if you run shorter sessions with free encounters.

I've a question for the Developers.

Have you updated the main PDF as well with rules changes? If I re-download the PDF will it have the rules changes (significant and minor) already in the document? Or are you having us edit everything ourselves (which is difficult if you don't have an Adobe editor)?

The Playtest rulebook PDF isn't updated.

Bringing in the Layout-Team takes too much time, IIRC.

Thanks for the update!

As a side note, watching the Twith video was useful as it provided additional context. If you are there live ypu can also ask questions. I suggest it for anyone interested in the Playtest.

The Playtest rulebook PDF isn't updated.

Bringing in the Layout-Team takes too much time, IIRC.

Shoot. :( I was thinking of bringing the PDF to Staples to print out a copy as one of my players works better with print copies, but I'm less likely to spend the money seeing it's out-of-date and needs quite a few edits already. Which is also a reason why I chose not to buy the print copy (though I do wonder if they have any left that were order cancellations or the like...)

Franz Lunzer wrote:

The Playtest rulebook PDF isn't updated.

Bringing in the Layout-Team takes too much time, IIRC.

Shoot. :( I was thinking of bringing the PDF to Staples to print out a copy as one of my players works better with print copies, but I'm less likely to spend the money seeing it's out-of-date and needs quite a few edits already. Which is also a reason why I chose not to buy the print copy (though I do wonder if they have any left that were order cancellations or the like...)

The print version is still in stock at Amazon, in case Paizo doesn't have extras anymore.

Oh, and my game had only three players with me as the GM; human bard, human paladin, and half-elf cleric. The bard loved using inspire courage and telekinetic projectile in combo, the paladin made good use of shield block and retributive strike, and the cleric liked using his whip to trip foes, then smack them down, but he absolutely HATED the three action use of heal ONLY healing/inflicting damage equal to his ability score modifier, which was 2 points in his case. Did we misread the damage part of the three-action ability?

"You disperse positive energy in a 30-foot aura. This has the same effect as the two-action version, but it targets all living and undead creatures in the burst and reduces the amount of healing or damage to your spellcasting ability modifier."

First of all, this is very awkward wording since he says it has the same effect as the previous step, but t hen it changes the damage; the player found this wording very confusing and we argued about how much damage it meant. Second, wouldn't it make more sense if the damage at least increased by the level of the caster?

Also, does spell level no longer apply to saving throws against spells? I would think a higher level spell would still be harder to save against than a low level one.

3-action level 1 heal does heal/damage equal to Wis, yes. The 2 action does 1d8+Wis. And spell DCs are caster-based, not spell based.

We'll be keeping those surveys open until the end of the year, and the results will be checked regularly as we continue to analyze the data.

Wait, only until the end of the year? Between meeting only roughly every other week and taking longer to go through chapters, my group is just about to start In Pale Mountain's Shadow. At that rate we'll be lucky to finish Chapter 3 before the surveys close. :(

Wait, only until the end of the year? Between meeting only roughly every other week and taking longer to go through chapters, my group is just about to start In Pale Mountain's Shadow. At that rate we'll be lucky to finish Chapter 3 before the surveys close. :(

I'm guessing no reason to keep them open longer if the end of the year date represents the time frame of finalizing the rules for printing.

Might bias the playtest if your data collection excludes slower groups. Frequency of games and length of games could correlate with things like older demographics, and slower progress through encounters could correlate with playstyle differences like more cautious play or a more completionist outlook. Both of those things could result in very different playstyle experiences.

I mean, if there's a set timeline there's not much to fix about it now, but it does make me feel like some of what was said about still valuing feedback from groups that are running behind the schedule isn't accurate in practice.