A New Part Dawns!

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Time flies when you're playtesting a new version of Pathfinder. It's been over three weeks since we got underway by encouraging everyone to play Part 1 of Doomsday Dawn. And play you did! The outpouring of survey responses from those who completed "The Lost Star" (Part 1) has truly been overwhelming. We've learned a lot about the game, but there's still so much to explore! That is why, today, we're moving our focus to Part 2 of Doomsday Dawn, titled "In Pale Mountain's Shadow."

Before we move on, I want to stress that while we're shifting focus to Part 2, it's still not too late for you to contribute to the surveys for Part 1 (which you can find links to at pathfinderplaytest.com). 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.

In Pale Mountain's Shadow

Starting today, we want to encourage everyone to play Part 2 of Doomsday Dawn. Your GM will have all the details you need to create characters for this adventure. You heard me correctly—you'll need to make new characters for this part of the adventure. Don't throw away those sheets from Part 1 just yet, though; we might revisit characters throughout this process.

Once you've played through the adventure, we once again have surveys for you to fill out to give us a sense of what everyone is playing and how the game is performing in this new adventure. You can find the surveys at the links below:

Player Survey
GM Survey
Open Response Survey

Please note that just like last time, these surveys are ONLY for participants who have completed Part 2 of Doomsday Dawn. Also, please ensure that you complete all four pages of the Player Survey or GM Survey, since if you don't complete the survey, it'll end up not being counted.

Updates to Death and Dying

Before you begin your playthrough, we highly encourage you to grab the newest version of the Pathfinder Playtest Update document. Inside you'll find a host of changes to the game, as well as a revision to the Death and Dying rules, which we made based on feedback from the first round of the playtest. Make sure to incorporate these changes before you play your next game so you're playtesting the latest version of the system.

Results from The Lost Star

In case you missed it, we ran a stream on the Paizo Twitch channel on Friday, called Doomsday Dawn Deconstructed, in which we explored some of the survey results from Part 1 of Doomsday Dawn. Here are just a few of the highlights from the surveys (mild spoilers ahead).

  • Ancestry: Of the characters made for Part 1, humans were the most common (around 25%), followed by elves and goblins (around 15%) and dwarves (around 12%). The other ancestries were around 6-8% each.
  • Class: Cleric, fighter, and rogue were the most common choice for class (around 12% each). Most others fell between 6-9%.
  • Dying: Around 6% of characters were killed in Part 1 of Doomsday Dawn, with clerics dying the most often (probably due to no one being able to heal the group's only healer).
  • Trivia: 3 characters elected to venerate Asmodeus. 34 decided to drink from the polluted fountain. Fewer than 1 in 8 alchemists completely expended their ability to use Resonance Points during the adventure. Monks had the most coin left over after creation, at 64 sp.

There's so much more for us to learn from this playtest, and we're truly grateful to all of you that have taken the time to play our game and give us your feedback. We're looking forward to seeing more as we get underway with Part 2. Good luck at your next game!

Jason Bulmahn
Director of Game Design

Join the Pathfinder Playtest designers every Friday throughout the playtest on our Twitch Channel to hear all about the process and chat directly with the team.

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Tags: Pathfinder Playtest
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New PDF seems the same as before, bug in the update?

Sovereign Court

11 people marked this as a favorite.

Bards should get "Heal" #ThereISaidIt

Silver Crusade

8 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I guess we can lay down the "nobody is ever going to play goblins" argument.

The Exchange

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Seems like the link is to the old one. I got it here


5 people marked this as a favorite.

Could you update the doomsday adventure and the rulebook with the updates not just give us an updates document?

Verdant Wheel

6 people marked this as a favorite.

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.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Well, if it's like our group, there's always one.

At least one of our players wanted to try out the goblin race, even if it wasn't popular with the rest of us.

Grand Lodge

I noticed a few issues in the errata, additional lore is on page 162 not 163, and should the update to nonlethal damage from lethal weapons also be applied to nonlethal weapons dealing lethal damage?


3 people marked this as a favorite.

I haven't run/played this yet so I haven't looked at the surveys so they may or may not address this, but I'm curious as to whether the ancestry percentages take into account half-elves and half-orcs (since they're technically humans with an ancestry feat).


2 people marked this as a favorite.

I am so disappointed in everyone who decided to play a goblin.

Silver Crusade

7 people marked this as a favorite.

I love that only 34 people drank from the polluted fountain and 2 of them were on the table I played at.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I REALLY liked the new Dying Rules! Now they're really useful and serves its purpose greatly!

However, I'd make two little changes to make it less complex and even more meaningful:

1) A single hero point just throws that cool, useful rule in the garbage.

I'd change the Hero Point cost of Heroic Recovery to 2 or 3, to keep the rule nice and meaningful!

2) Also, I'd not change the character initiative. This seems unnecessary complex and may give a character "a bonus round" if he has acted before the effect that knocked him out and receive any healing to regain conciousness in the same round.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

So, nothing about the dire rat? I guess it's not really important any more, but some people might still be doing part 1 before the part 2 window closes.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

My group is finishing Lost Star tonight, I hope we see the data above get updated later on to reflect the larger dataset later groups will help provide.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Alchemaic wrote:
So, nothing about the dire rat? I guess it's not really important any more, but some people might still be doing part 1 before the part 2 window closes.

The dire rat was removed in the last update.

Liberty's Edge

11 people marked this as a favorite.

Please make Hero Points optional! Let PCs take 1 Bonus Class or Ancestry Feat in exchange just like 1st Ed.

I love Hero Points personally, but about half my players don't like them and being able to opt-out of their use was a good side benefit for them.


7 people marked this as a favorite.
Themetricsystem wrote:

Please make Hero Points optional! Let PCs take 1 Bonus Class or Ancestry Feat in exchange just like 1st Ed.

I love Hero Points personally, but about half my players don't like them and being able to opt-out of their use was a good side benefit for them.

Agreed. Mechanics like Hero Points should be optional.

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Our playtest game is being run here on the forums, so we haven't been able to finish Part 1 yet...


4 people marked this as a favorite.

So Alchemists didn't run out of resonance? That sounds like the opposite of what I've been seeing.

Paizo Employee Developer

4 people marked this as a favorite.
Gorbacz wrote:
I guess we can lay down the "nobody is ever going to play goblins" argument.

The argument I always saw was that they'd disrupt the table and ruin immersion by acting like little monsters despite "PC goblins are different". And, in my run of doomsday dawn, I gotta admit the two goblins were actually pretty disruptive to the atmosphere of the game, laughing at a certain scene in the adventure that was meant to be portrayed as grotesque and acting even more "murder-hobo" as the rest of the party.


25 people marked this as a favorite.

As the player of one of those alchemists who didn't run out of resonance, I can tell you it's entirely because I rationed out my very few bombs and saved them for the boss fight, and keeping a resonance reserve for any emergency anti-toxins or healing elixirs I needed to whip up with Quick Alchemy. So mostly I was just flinging rocks with a sling to avoid running out. Running out of resonance isn't the only way it can get in the way of people having fun.

Scarab Sages

I still don't understand WHERE you are supposed to send the survay. I found no info.

I made a topic to report how the game went but I guess it is not the proper way.


Shaheer-El-Khatib wrote:

I still don't understand WHERE you are supposed to send the survay. I found no info.

I made a topic to report how the game went but I guess it is not the proper way.

The survey is all online. If you follow the link and fill everything out, then it automatically updates the survey results so Paizo can see them. No need to manually send it anywhere.

Scarab Sages

Doktor Weasel wrote:
Shaheer-El-Khatib wrote:

I still don't understand WHERE you are supposed to send the survay. I found no info.

I made a topic to report how the game went but I guess it is not the proper way.

The survey is all online. If you follow the link and fill everything out, then it automatically updates the survey results so Paizo can see them. No need to manually send it anywhere.

Thanks.

I downloaded the paper survey and was like "wtf I do with that ?"

So now I Will need to found like for part I.

Tanks again.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Did the ancestry stats parse how many of those humans were actually half elf or half orc?


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.

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32

Yay! You confirming my suspicions that people are not running out of resonance points too badly, despite the loud voices on the forums ) Our group never seen this problem either, and at higher levels life becomes even easier, with more space for tactical choice of RP spending.


Would be real interesting to hear how many Feedbacks were actually received. I am not a twitch Viewer, so maybe someone who watched it can comment?


1 person marked this as a favorite.
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.)


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Mats Öhrman wrote:
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.)

To my understanding, Doomsday Dawn involves making characters that start at different levels. A player has a lot of reason to play something else at level 1 and their half-human of choice at another level.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

My group had a half-elf in lost star and found it a great choice.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Had a half-orc in my group. The player really liked the change to the way halfies are handled (as did I).


9 people marked this as a favorite.
DarthMask wrote:
Had a half-orc in my group. The player really liked the change to the way halfies are handled (as did I).

it gets even better. Just wait until the half-orc character reaches a level where their eyes are finally fully developed!

Scarab Sages

13 people marked this as a favorite.
Doktor Weasel wrote:
As the player of one of those alchemists who didn't run out of resonance, I can tell you it's entirely because I rationed out my very few bombs and saved them for the boss fight, and keeping a resonance reserve for any emergency anti-toxins or healing elixirs I needed to whip up with Quick Alchemy. So mostly I was just flinging rocks with a sling to avoid running out. Running out of resonance isn't the only way it can get in the way of people having fun.

This matches what happened in our game exactly. The alchemist didn't run out of resonance only because they were afraid of using their class abilities and running out of them. It was a very un-fun experience for the player overall.


22 people marked this as a favorite.
Quote:
Fewer than 1 in 8 alchemists completely expended their ability to use Resonance Points during the adventure.

Holy qualifiers batman! What a misinformative statment of defense. I get that resonance is your baby and all, but you're going too far in your defense of a broken system if you have to twist your language like a twizler to produce a positive statement.

Based on the above quote you appear to only have been counting alchemists that Failed or Critically Failed an Overspending Check, or at the very least Zeroed Out. This would be an inherently flawed basis for judgement.

Basic adventuring tactics dictate that the 'adventuring day' is over when the Alchemist (Bard, or Sorcerer) is down to, but hasn't spent their last RP (Likewise for Cleric's and Channel Energy). This isn't a PF2-specific trope either, frugality is encouraged to some degree in almost every fantasy RPG. The only time a competent adventurer should ever be Overspending RP is if something has gone very, very wrong. The same went for Grit/Panache/Luck (and those pools at least had the advantage of a reasonable refreshment clause). Thus, like it or not, an Alchemist, Bard, or Sorcerer is effectively 'out-of-resonance' at 1 point, not at 0. Because waiting until you fail/crit fail to activate an item before you begin to retreat is pure idiocy.

Shadow Lodge

Shaheer-El-Khatib wrote:
Doktor Weasel wrote:
Shaheer-El-Khatib wrote:

I still don't understand WHERE you are supposed to send the survay. I found no info.

I made a topic to report how the game went but I guess it is not the proper way.

The survey is all online. If you follow the link and fill everything out, then it automatically updates the survey results so Paizo can see them. No need to manually send it anywhere.

Thanks.

I downloaded the paper survey and was like "wtf I do with that ?"

So now I Will need to found like for part I.

Tanks again.

Yes the paper survey is a reminder of details that will be asked for on the online form.

This is really important as later chapters will take more than 1 session and it lets you write down the results so you don't forget the nitpicky exact numbers like 'how many times were you koed'.


This adventure was run along with Part 1 for a 12 hour marathon. The first took about 4.5 - 5 hours with skipping the first few rooms.

This one took us around 6 and we skipped the encounters from the tomb entrance and on. It was insanely long for some reason. Not to mention they beat the other group by like 4 days.


I feel the updated text should have as paragraph title
"Taking Damage while Unconscious"
rather than
"Taking Damage while Dying"


5 people marked this as a favorite.
Blog wrote:
Results from The Lost Star

Boy where these different than ours.

Blog wrote:
Ancestry: Of the characters made for Part 1, humans were the most common (around 25%), followed by elves and goblins (around 15%) and dwarves (around 12%). The other ancestries were around 6-8% each.

75% human, 25% elf.

Blog wrote:
Class: Cleric, fighter, and rogue were the most common choice for class (around 12% each). Most others fell between 6-9%.

Bard, Ranger, Alchemist, Fighter

Blog wrote:
Dying: Around 6% of characters were killed in Part 1 of Doomsday Dawn, with clerics dying the most often (probably due to no one being able to heal the group's only healer).

Everyone died.

Blog wrote:
Fewer than 1 in 8 alchemists completely expended their ability to use Resonance Points during the adventure.

LOL ran out of resonance multiple times [four]...


Did your party submit surveys?


5 people marked this as a favorite.
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. :(

Sczarni RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

6 people marked this as a favorite.
Cantriped wrote:
Quote:
Fewer than 1 in 8 alchemists completely expended their ability to use Resonance Points during the adventure.

Holy qualifiers batman! What a misinformative statment of defense. I get that resonance is your baby and all, but you're going too far in your defense of a broken system if you have to twist your language like a twizler to produce a positive statement.

Based on the above quote you appear to only have been counting alchemists that Failed or Critically Failed an Overspending Check, or at the very least Zeroed Out. This would be an inherently flawed basis for judgement.

Basic adventuring tactics dictate that the 'adventuring day' is over when the Alchemist (Bard, or Sorcerer) is down to, but hasn't spent their last RP (Likewise for Cleric's and Channel Energy). This isn't a PF2-specific trope either, frugality is encouraged to some degree in almost every fantasy RPG. The only time a competent adventurer should ever be Overspending RP is if something has gone very, very wrong. The same went for Grit/Panache/Luck (and those pools at least had the advantage of a reasonable refreshment clause). Thus, like it or not, an Alchemist, Bard, or Sorcerer is effectively 'out-of-resonance' at 1 point, not at 0. Because waiting until you fail/crit fail to activate an item before you begin to retreat is pure idiocy.

I tend to agree... if you are only counting characters who critically failed their resonance checks, then that should be *extremely* rare. I think most characters when they get to 0 would call it a day. Or find a different tactic. At minimum, attempting a resonance check would potentially waste an action, and it could very well waste a consumable resource (e.g. a potion) as well. All of my players would basically never do that unless they were *really* desperate.

I do actually really like that you *can* continue to try and press your luck with more resonance checks after you have zeroed out. I think it makes for some nice dramatic tension! But it shouldn't be happening with much frequency. About as often as characters getting KOed and needing to make death saves would be about right for me.


Tamago wrote:
I tend to agree... if you are only counting characters who critically failed their resonance checks, then that should be *extremely* rare.

4 times in the first adventure my alchemist locked herself out of quick alchemy because she failed the resonance check. I guess that only counts as ONE alchemist for that 1 in 8 though.


Is it me but with the new update on dying, even if a monster keeps slashing your unconscious dying body, he cannot increase your condition to more than dying 2?

If so it seems broken (I take the diehard/unbreakable feats and will pretty much never die?)


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Tbh, the alchemist's resonance issue wouldn't even be as bad if they just got a buff to their resonance pool. Hell, even allowing the alchemist to infinately push quick alchemy until they crit fail would help somewhat (drats! That's not where I left my spare eye of newt! Maybe this pocket...)


3 people marked this as a favorite.

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.

RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32

12 people marked this as a favorite.

As well as tracking the number of times someone ran out of resonance (and critically ran out of resonance) they should probably also track times where fear of running out of resonance altered a characters action choices.

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32

7 people marked this as a favorite.
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.


7 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder LO Special Edition, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
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.

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