Hythlodeus's page

So, I gathered 4 out of my 6 usual players to run DD last Friday, the other two weren't intersted in playtesting but the rest of the group was open minded enough to give PF2 at least a try. We're halfway through Lost Star and the plan was to meet again on Tuesday, finish the Chapter and then post our first impressions of the gameplay here as well as fill out the survey. Sadly, I had to delay the next session due to life. So I asked the group if they could mail or text me their first impressions they had so far.

What follows is based on their and my notes.

DISCLAIMER
Those who know me, know that I have not the most positive feelings about PF2. 3.X was the system I decided to settle in for a long, long time. At least for those kinds of RPGs. Outside of the various D20 systems, I prefer systems that are usually more of the storytelling variety with lean systems, light on rules, light on combat, but a lot of options when it comes to creating and playing characters. But for the combat heavy heroic fantasy RPG fix, 3.X systems, especially PF, are supreme. Due to various circumstances, PF became the only system I played for 6 years now, since my homebrew Discworld campaign came to an end.
I'm in this hobby for a little bit over 20 years.

DISCLAIMER 2
3/4 of my players, like me, prefer systems that focus on storytelling over mechanics, but 3.X is a system all of them love to play. The 4th player plays PF exclusivly, mostly because we have introduced him to this RPG when he was new to the city and we haven't had a chance to play something different sice then outside of a couple of CoC One-Shots.

Two of them started RPGs the same time as I did. They were in my very first group as a player and my very first group as a GM. The third player started RPGing around the early 2000s in a V:tM group, the Fourth, as stated above with his roughly 5+ years of RPG experience is considered our Newbie

DISCLAIMER 3
All of us were and are willing to give PF2 the benefit of the doubt and it is entirerly possible that a system 'wows' us enough to change our attitude towards a game in the genre that is not 3.X. But to do that, said system has to be really, really good.

DISCLAIMER 4
An old friend of ours asked if he could participate in the playtest, which I agreed on, since he usually plays 5E and me, with my limited expirience with that system, thought it was a good idea to have someone with a different view at the table. He dropped out of the playtest on Friday due to the heatwave in Austria atm, deciding to drive to a lke instead.

CHARACTER CREATION:
As soon as the playtest document arrived, I texted the group to download the Playtest Rulebook and set the date for our first session. I told them, if they found the time to do so, they could create their characters for the first part of DD on their own, for the others we could always create them right before we start the game.

Two players in my group decided to wait for the first session the other two both needed over 2 hours for their first characters, both stating that it was "a hell to navigate the book and find the information" they needed. The players that decided to arrived at 1PM (because he notoriously gets dates wrong) and close to 3PM (as intended), both started Character Creation right away. The characters were ready at about 4:50, when we started the game.

One of the players who decided to make his charakter at home gave up on finding out what his starting money is and googled it instead. The other wrote me a text with the same question only to send another one minute later that reads "Nevermind. Found it. [CENSORED] that book."

All of us agree, that the character creation rules, as presented in the book, are probably pretty simple IF you know where to look and if the book would present them in a linear fashion instead of the 'Choose your own adventure' style of skipping to various sections of the document.

THE PARTY
the party my players settled on consists of
Dwarven Fighter (This is the player who usually loves to play Wizards, but he told me that class didn't feel attractive in the new system)
Dwarven Ranger (With a bear as animal companion - He also thought about playing a Paladin, but decided against that after reading the class)
Human Rogue (Not notes to add here)
Half-Orc Cleric (Technically he was the last one to create his character and asked what's left and was needed. I told him either arcane or divine spellcaster would be great, since we were lacking in that regard. I also asked if he could play one of the two Half- ancestries, since they are build differently)

NOTE: I was asked by two of my players if they could play Goblins. I declined for that group, promising them that Goblins could be played from the second group forward. I declined because

THE GOOD
- 3 action economy was a success, since rounds were faster than in our PF group. However, as one of my players stated, the two players missing from our regular group are usually the ones taking their time during their Initiative and I basically played with the more effective 2/3rds of my regular group. Also: First level and limited options usually lead to faster rounds, even in PF1. It will be interesting to see if that pace can be kept on that level once we're playing on high levels.

- The adventure itself. Having just finished RotR after 3 years, Lost Star so far felt like a prelude or prequel and the group enjoyed that.

- Bulk. We usually play without weight rules, but for playtesting purposes, this time we did. Bulk may simplify those rules, but not in a bad way. Some of the problems we had in the past are gone. Finding loot and adding that weight usually slowed the game down and there was always the money exchange issue of teleporting out of the dungeon and changing the found coins to weightless-per-rules gems.

- Backgrounds: The way they are designed is elegant, imo, and personally I love how easy it is to customize them and make them for your home campaigns. The worst reaction I got from my group was indifference, which is something I can't say for most of the mechanics.

THE BAD
- Ancestries and Ancestry Feats as written are a problem we could agree on was easily solveable by just having access to all biological/genetic traits at first level and have Ancestry Feats that build upon them for higher levels instead. There also seem to be "To good to not take it at first level" options, at least for Dwarves, since both of the players who played Dwarves decided to take the same feat "for optimization purposes, also, it looks fun"

- Half-Ancestries: The feat tax is not as bad as we all thought it would be at first reaction. However, it still is without a doubt a feat tax. The 'No Darkvision at 1st level' problem came up during the game and the cleric had to change tactics twice.

- Gameplay. There were times when it felt like PF. That was however after I decided to drop Encounter Mode from the game completely (see: THE UGLY). There were however times, when gameplay felt very different. And not in a good way. It could've been worse, but for us to change to PF2 "It could have been worse" is not good enough.

- Perception as Initiative. As a group we have conflicted feelings about that and I can't really post a consensus here. it is no ones favourite idea, but it is also not the worst change to the game. Somewhere in the middle in the magical land of "Meh...whatever!" with differing opinions on both sides of the spektrum

- Proficencies: Again, something some of my players felt indifferent for, some clearly didn't like (me included), but it is a nice little throwback to 2E, so nostalgic feelings existed at the table, saving it from going into the UGLY section. There is a very high risk different characters will feel the same and the difference due to +1/level on all skills will not be enough to make the chars feel special. it doesn't make a lot of sense either, to gain experience in fields never heard of or get better in things one never did, just because level. If only the skills get reworked to another system, none of us would mind the proficencies elsewhere.

THE UGLY
- Exploration Mode. Let's start the UGLY with that to get it out of my system. It slows the game down. The time saved due to the 3 Actions Economy is wasted here - and more. It also doesn't make a lot of sense that I have to tell the rogue over and over again that the usual rogue tactic of stealthily sneaking ahead and look for traps is basically two different tactics he can't take at once. He also can't draw his dagger while doing so, because that's a third tactic. After going to Exploration Mode two times, we agreed that we tested it enough and I dropped that subsystem from the game to never use again.

- Resonance. Now, at first level and without magic items, except for the health potion the group found but never used, it didn't came up in game as much as I feared, BUT we had a very lengthy discussion before and after the session about it, because it was one of the reasons we didn't have an arcane spellcaster but a cleric in the group. Since I'm the one on this messageboards I tried to explain the reasoning behind it as best as I could with my mind as open as possible. We came up with a lot of ways to get rid of the CLW spam 'problem' without crippling the characters. The easiest one: Make CLW wands a rare (since rarity is a thing now) item and change the price accordingly.

- Magic Item flavor. Again nothing that came up during gameplay but during discussions before we started the session (and afterwards): If you want to make magic items feel special, don't make having +x weapons mandatory and go with creative ideas instead.

- Monster/NPC stats. I mentioned the Goblin Pyro in another thread and will not repeat it. But the fact that members of a playable race get build differently just because they are not PCs but "monsters" did not go over well with my group, like, at all. I love transparancy on my table. If a player askes out of of character after a fight specifics about a monster, I answer them. "Hit dice ara a thing of the past, monsters don't follow your rules anymore, the Playtestiary is the prime example of postmodernism; Anything goes." Is not an answer I love to give and not an answer my group wants to hear. Paul Feyerabend would agree.
And for me, who mostly GMs, NPCs are the few times I can make characters and roleplay them and I strongly had the feeling this was taken from me.
Also, while on topic, the short stat blocks might be taking up less space, but as a GM I was constantly thinking that important information was missing if I want to do something else with the monster than fight the PCs

There are alot of things not covered here (Hazards work like Haunts now? Okay, I guess), mostly they didn't interfere with gameplay that much or didn't provoke strong reactions. We have not decided how we feel about Power Attack being only for Fighters for example. As soon as that changes, I will make sure to keep this updated.

Mathematicallly and mechanically, I mean.

I'm still in the phase of trying to understand the rules enough to be able to GM the playtest on Friday and my math skill has way too few ranks in it (that's right, I haven't converted myself to PF2 yet) to answer that question myself.

But how much would it break the game if we got rid of that mechanic or substitue it with another?

The description for your
character’s ancestry in Chapter 2 gives some guidance
on the age ranges of members of that ancestry. Beyond
that, you can play a character of whatever age you like.
Your character’s age is a major factor that shapes how
she interacts with the world. There aren’t any mechanical
adjustments to your character for being particularly
old, but you might want to take it into account when
considering your starting ability scores and future
advancement; for instance, an old and wise character
might have a higher Wisdom score, so you might want
to make sure to put one of your free ability boosts in
Wisdom. Particularly young characters can change the
tone of some of the game’s threats, so it’s recommended
to play characters who are at least young adults.

I'm not sure how I feel about that. One one hand, paizo saved space by excluding a simple table, on the other hand I find the lack of mechanics a little bit troublesome if I want age effects in game. a character magically aged or de-aged is something that can happen, from time to time. and in that case it is nice to look up the effects instead of telling the player: 'shuffle around a couple of the free ability boost you gained at first level'

How do others feel about this?

Testing this format for presenting relatively minor
encounters on the way to a primary adventure site
that is mapped (the Tomb of Tular Seft) is also an
experimental part of the playtest process. Make sure
to let us know in your feedback for this chapter how
this worked out at your table. Did you enjoy the
opportunity to build battlefields on the fly for your
encounters, or do you prefer having published maps
to accompany every fight in the adventure, even if it
means fewer encounters are included?

To answer that prematurely (we haven't played that section yet), because I have been in that position before, personally I don't mind it much, if I know that's the case and have enough time on my hands to prepare maps before the session. My photoshop skills are solid enough to produce a battle map close enough to what I have in mind* and to print it out in A3 format is, while not exactly cheap if I have to do lots of them, not really an issue since I'd have to print out the published maps anyway.

However, if I have not enough preperation time and really have to do it on the fly during the session, usually - and that is the case in every system, not only PF, so it stands to reason this will be a problem in PF2 too - it takes time away from the actual game play, yes, I could draw on blank flip mats, but while I still use them sometimes, all of them are too large for our gaming table to leave room for the notes, dices and char sheets of the players, so personally I find them a littlte bit unpractical when it comes to larger areas, but totally usefull for small houses or minidungeons, where you can just fold the mats to a more suitable size.

So, with the time taken away from gameplay or time taken away from preperation of running the adventure, that's not a big deal for one encounter or two every couple of sessions, but it becomes a pain in the behind if I have to do on-the-fly encounter maps every third encounter or so.

If I understand the question correctly, paizo's goal seems to be to publish less maps themselves and have more of those on-the-fly encounters that I'd either have to prepare or, if not enough time beforehand to do it right, cobble something together during the session which is using the precious time my group and I have together a little bit inefficiently. please keep that in mind when publishing further adventures.

For the sake of playtesting, I'll not prepare them beforehand but at the table, to see how much time we lose during that process and give a more exact feedback when we have played through that scene in question.

*but that's just me. I know GMs who have less skills in the graphic area or simply lack the tools to produce maps. so I look forward to other GM's opinions on that issue

While trying to build my second character, which I hope will be much faster this time, I noticed a lot of the problems I had the first time around searching for answers which Abilities get 'boosted' when, stem from the organization of the information needed and the placement of the tables 1-1 and 1-2 in the playtest document.

I have no idea how to explain this and why the organization a presentation in the book seems counter intuitive to me, so I take myself trying to create a character as an example. My thought process while making my first Dwarf yesterday (and yes, this will be long, but I feel this might be a problem others will have too, so please take the time to read it):

The Character Creation part right now is, beginning with page 11: Introduction to Character Creation (ok, I know what that is, so let's skip over that text) a sidebar about dice (I know what dice are, so, no new information here) and a picture of the character sheet with seemingly way to many orange dots on it. The dots may be important, but right now, I have no idea what they are) - so page 11 is not useful to create a character at all it seems.

Let's turn to page 12.

Aaah, the first orange dot, "determine my character's concept" I see. Let's scroll back to the picture of the char sheet...the dot refers to Character Name. Well, my Character concept is the dwarfiest Dwarf possible, a Barbarian with a tragic backstory. The name is the last thing I care when creating a character, odd way to start the Character Creation.

Back to the text, first paragraph ends with: "Once you have a good idea of the type of character you’d like to play, move on to Step 2."

Tragic Dwarven Barbarian! That's the type of character I want to play. So, naturally, I move on. (There is a lot of text after that paragraph and before Step 2, but I have moved on already)

Scrolling past the two tables in question, I notice them obviously, I know they show the Ancestries and the Classes available, I do not notice however the footnote on Table 1-2, nor do I read the text above the tables except for the headline "Ancestries and Classes" - I get the feeling the tables are about Ancestries and Classes, which I, of course, already chose.

Page 14 now, the second orange dot! Choose an Ancestry. Did that already, that's why I'm here. I read the text nevertheless. Table 1-1 (one page earlier) gives me an overview, details are in chapter 2.

So now, I decide to not scroll to chapter two, but look into the details when I need them in Character Creation, because right now, I haven't even started that.

Moving on to orange dot 3, Backgrounds: Text says: Please go to pg. 38 and choose a Background, so I do that (and do not read what comes after the 'please go to page 38' part - if it were important it wouldn't be AFTER I was send to a different page), I scroll forward and select the Background that fits thematically the most. It's a stretch, really, but Warrior is the only one that fits somehow. So I decide to scroll back to page 13, since I have successfully selected a Background.

Where was I? Ah, yes, orange dot 3. Well, I've done that, so off we go to the next orange dot: Choose a Class, which I have done, so no need to read that, what's the next step? Finalize your Ability Score.

wait what? Finalize? I haven't even started! Have I missed something? Should I scroll back, or...oh..."To learn how to calculate your character’s ability scores, see page 19", I see, so I scroll down to page 19.

Page 19: Step-by-step instructions! Good. I feel we're getting somewhere! First step is easy, second step is Ancestry Ability Boost and Flaws...Ah, yes, the good old Racial Modifiers, they clearly must be somewhere on the first page of the Dwarf ancestry...Of course I don't automatically scroll there. Just to be sure I go back to the index, look on what page the Dwarf ancestry starts and then go there, and funnily enough, I immediatly find it under "Ability Boosts" and "Ability Flaw" That was quick. Back to page 19, to read the rest of the entry. Oh well, I could have saved time if I had just looked at the second example given. Dwarven Ability Boosts and Flaws, right there, on the same page.

Next step: Backround Ability Boosts...what? Okay, maybe my fault. I didn't notice the Ability Boost part in the description of the Background. I went to the Background for flavor, I didn't know, the rules part was that important that early on. So, scroll back a few pages to finf the part where it send me to page 38, because I figured that would be quicker than searching the Backgrounds by scrolling down until I'm there. Reread the text. Ability Boost. Okay it is there. Noted and added to the Abilities.

Back to page 19. Wait, page 20. Next step: Four free Ability Boosts. I read the text very carefully, after all, if stuff is for free, there's always a hook attached.

I can't find a hook, I get excited instead!

Then I realize, I have no idea if a Boost means +1 to an Attrib...Ability or +2. I kinda assumed it was +2, because 3.5, but there were no Free Boosts in 3.5, so, anything might go.

This is the point, where I return to page 11 for the first time to figure out if a Boost gives me +2. I scan the text for an answer, somewhere, I don't know where exactly, burried in small print, I guess, is the answer! Yes! +2!

Back to page 20 and ....Class Ability Boosts....Okay, I gueI go to the Barbarian Class pages and search for 'Ability Boost' and I just can't find it: Key Ability, Hit Points, Proficencies...No Ability Boost. Nowhere.

(Of course, the text of Step 5 says "one ability boost in a score that’s important to your class’s abilities. This ability score is called your class’s key ability" ... I know that NOW, I didn't know THEN! Maybe if the 'K' and the 'A' in key ability were in upper cases instead of lower ones, I might have noticed that it was an important game term and not just filler)

So once again, I turn to page 11, to see where the information is, that I clearly have missed and that's when I finally realized the two tables on page 13

It turns out, all the information I need to determine my ability score is right there, even though one information is burried in a footnote! (Except for the Background Boost), pages before I actually needed it, pages, before I actually had any use for that tables or the content of the tables had any meaning to me.

If 1-1 and 1-2 were implemented in the step-by-step progress of Ability Creation instead of somewhere between 'What's your Name?' and 'What's your Ancestry?' I could have saved minutes. And not just one or two, but tens of them! Implement them there, instead of where no one (at least not me) reads them!

Which reminds me: Since Choosing Ancestry/Background/Class and the Ability Points Generation are so closely related, I feel that having the step-by-step process on page 19 is misplaced anyway, It should be part of the Character Creation Steps, starting with orange dot 1:
.Create a Concept
.Start with 6 Abilities with a score of 10
.Choose an Ancestry
.Add your Ancestry Ability Boosts and Flaws to the Ability scores
.Choose a Background
.Add the Background Ability Boost to.. (and so on)

Anyway, long story short, I hope I succeeded in being either a) a bad example when it comes to reading the playtest document or b) could help with the organization of the information in the finished product or c) both, I guess

So, I started converting the first chapter of the playtest adventure back to PFOriginal and even though one would think 1st level adventures shouldn't be to hard to convert, the way the new Bestiary works (as in: no useful information about the creature given) and the way the new action economy, the spells and items have changed, keeping the game balance and math intact is surprisingly hard even at the start.

There is a thought that grew bigger and bigger in my mind over the last couple of days. A lot of the reactions that are positive about the changes that the new edition will bring are about problems that will be solved with the new mechanics. most of those problems I never witnessed or didn't perceive them as problems, but, it looks like those problems seem to be most noticable in organized play.

- 'wand spamming' wascalled out as one problem, and yes, I can see how in organized play, wher it can't be ensured that dedicated healers are in the group every week, this could be seen as a viable solution to the lack of otherhealing options.

- 'forcing players into the dedicated healer role': this is something that I only read about, since I cannot understand how, in a home game, where you play with your friends, someone would be forced or bullied into a role he or she doesn't feel comfortable with. so I have to assume that this again is a problem more often encountered in organized play

- 'Cha 7 dump stat characters', seems to me to be a byproduct of the point buy system, which again, is a necessity of organized play, I assume. I understand the reasons behind point buy when one has to guarantee that all characters that drop in and out of the game any given week and can be played at any PFS table are largely build around the same guidelines. I'm not sure how popular point buy outside of PFS society is (I did notice however, it seems popular on these boards), but I've never seen it used in home games. so the perceived necessity to build Cha 7 characters might not be as strong in home games as it is when you play with your own circle of friends.

- 'streamlined action economy': as I understand it, PFS games follow a time limit and the modules have to be finished after a certain amount of hours, so time is more of a factor there than it is at home games, where a lot of time is spend on ordering chinese food or pizza or just chatting about what happend last week inthe lives of your friends and where the players might actively use the time they're out of turn to look something up or whatever players do. If the fight scene turns out too long somehow, well, one can always end the session 30 minutes later or cut right there, make a quick picture of the battle map and drop right back into action next session. time is not as important as it might be in PFS.

- 'oversimplifications of the XP mechanics': I had a little "Aha!" momen of enlightment yesterday evening, where I thought "So THAT'S why!", but I honestly can't remember what it was. I just remember that I thought that therewas good reason to believe that it would make life for organized play GMs easier than it was before. (If I somehow remember while I can still edit the post, of course I will)

- there might also be a case made for simpler monster creation rules, but I haven't yet figured out why, since I don't think GMs in PFS are encouraged to create their own monsters. Maybe someone smarter than me might explain it to me.

- I'm pretty sure, I'm forgetting a lot of things

So, long post short, my question here is: Is PF2 more of a reaction of the needs and faults of organized play than it is of the needs of home games? How big is the influence of organized play on the design of the new system?

And please, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to blame somebody and I DO understand how something like the PFS is needed for those who can't find or organize RPG groups otherwise. I just try to understand where design choices that are far away of my perception of how the game is played might come from and why and where there seems to be a need for it

The minimum I want out of 2nd ed. is that the APs are easy to convert back into 1st, at least easier than Starfinder, where converting is a big pain as it is. I might enjoy the new setting specific books, after all it is still Golarion, but I really hope I can enjoy playing the Adventures you will writer after August 2019 too.

Don't just screw us over, who came in the 3.5 diaspora to you. Let us keep the system we chose 18 years or so ago and make it easy for us to still enjoy your wonderfully crafted APs even though we won't follow you to your new, sexy streamlined rules.

That's my only wish for 2nd ed. Don't make converting it back too hard

You know, so that threads like the obligatory GM Reference threads, the Community Created Stuff thread, the When Will We See The Players Guide? thread or the Which Iconics Will Be Used? thread have a place to get created when time comes?

Will SF finally use the metric system or do I still need to consult an app while playing or GMing to translate the gibberish?

It may be a little bit too soon to start this thread, which mirrors the various 'What AP would you like to see next' threads in the PF sections, since we know next to nothing about the setting.

But I thought to start early would give the developers the chance to see where our interests lie.

So, please, suggest what you want to see in the first Starfinder APs

my group is about to start HMM, but unfortunately one key player is missing next session (on friday). Luckily there is still the invitation of Grobaras left from book 2 and I want to stretch that out until the missing player rejoins the party the session after this.

So, I decided to borrow the banquet scene from Dance of the Damned, modifying and changing the 4 courses enough, that when any of the players of my group somehow find themselves joining a group that plays Hell's Rebels, the meals will still be unique and unknown for them.

However, frustratingly, I'm not very good at this. So, if anyone has ideas for 3 - 4 courses of meals that challenge their Dexterity, Fortitude, Reflexes or require lots of skills to eat, please help me out on this.

Thank you.

Our group is planning to do CotCT after RotRL and that made me wonder if I should start dropping hints about events in Korvosa. I thought about rumors that the King is ill or maybe introducing Trinia Sabor in a tavern somewhere down the road. ending the AP with the news that Eodred died after the group returns from Xin-Shalast (if they return).

My group is currently on their way to Habe's, so there is enough time to plant subtle seeds.

How would you handle it?

Hi. My group is about to finish Thistletop on Friday and I plan to run Lore Seeker (from Wayfinder #7) as a little sidequest on their way back to Sandpoint before we start The Skinsaw Murders.
So far, so good.
But, my group has made lot of friends in Sandpoint so far and I really want to pad out the beginning of book 2 with a couple of small adventures that gives those NPCs that they interact quite a lot whith (but have not a big role in RotRL) something to do, either as a quest giver or person in distress or, you know, something that rewards my players for their roleplaying in the first place.
And I'm out of ideas.
I really am. I thought about five hours today while preparing for Friday's session (which usually contains preparations for the sessions afterwards too) what to do with NPCs like Mdm Mvashti and Sabyl Sorn and came up with nothing except the vague idea that maybe Mdm. Mvashti has visions about the Skinsaw Man. My group loved the Chopper's Island adventure, that I ran between the Cathedral of Wrath and Thistletop so something like that is what I want to put in the next session somewhere between their return to Sandpoint ad the first few murders.
If you have any ideas or already ran sidequests like that, I'd really appreciate the help. Thank you.

I want to introduce him earlier, sometime during Burnt Offering for a bigger impact. Any ideas when would be the best time in the book fo him to show up in Sandpoint (in case Tsuto doesn't survive the Glassworks encounter)? Should he arrive when Hemlock returns from Magnimar?