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Background
First off, kudos to the pathfinder staff to take this giant step and let players help with improving what 2ed will be. Our group is planning on playing through the whole set of adventures and providing as much constructive criticism as possible during this playtest. We all wanted to have some time with the rules before we went off and told you everything you did wrong :)
For example here is an extensive walkthough of cleric powers from our cleric.
We are a group of players, mostly in our 40's that have been gaming since the 80s (+ one son) and currently play pathfinder twice a week with 5 separate campaigns, rotating Strange Aeons, Ironfang Invasion, Ruins of Azlant, Iron Gods, and Legacy of Fire.
We were excited to try out the playtest and see how it ran. I am a firm believer in playing through these rules to see how they work in action.
Pros
Cons
Party Makeup
The party started with five players the first night, after they rested, the next session was played with four.
(had some trouble with spellcasting actions with a weapon and shield, solved by drawing sword in second round.)
A1.
The Ooze went first, spraying the party and advancing on it. The hampered condition ended up not having any impact as the people who failed the save were next to it already, and maneuvering is not really needed with AC 5. Rogue hit twice for 20 in the next round, which would be a theme throughout as he tended to do the most damage in combat. However the Ooze hit back with a hit and a crit taking him down. This would also be a theme for the poor rogue as he went down several more times. The rest of the party took the ooze out and we moved on to the dying rules. We were confused on the shift in initiative and put the rogue right after the ooze and his failed dying check put him at dying 3 (2 for the crit that took him out and one for the failed save) before anyone else could act. The cleric brought him right back up though and we learned about still being unconscious after being healed. Players did not like that, but it never became an issue.
The party kept to the left when entering A2
A3.
as the goblins did not notice them they entered the vermin den. As they looked at the rubble the centipedes boiled out, using acrobatics to crawl through his legs and flank the rogue. He was poisoned and hurt badly. Here the shield came in handy for the fighter when the centipede critical hit was completely absorbed by the raised shield. The ruling here was that no damage meant no save vs poison.
A2.
The party was a bit split when the encountered the goblins, but this meant nothing. All of the goblins attacked the cleric (two flanking and two with arrows), but as his shield was up, even a critical did not take him down. The rogue and the fighter moved in and took the goblins down in one round, two each.
A4.
Party noted the corpses here and agreed that Drakus was likely not a vampire.
A5.
The party noticed the fungus but had no nature to identify it so the wizard decided to take care of it with produce flame… The whole party was engulfed with 2 members becoming confused. Here they made their act normally rolls and just ran to a corner of the room until the confusion ran out. This could have gone poorly if they had started attacking each other.
A6.
Here we got to interact with the invisibility and poison rules. A critical failure on the rogues check to fish out the idol activated it. After getting beat up the first round, one of the quasits went invisible, and started healing. The other one poisoned the rogue who spent the rest of the fight running away and drinking potions of healing. The seek rules worked out pretty well here and after finding the imp, quick work was made of them both with magic missiles providing a good chunk of the damage. Then the party tried to help the rogue with first aid but he was not able to get out of the depths of posion before it ran out.
At this point, the first session was over and the party decided to rest. The next session took up with out the wizard.
When we picked up again the party tried the locked door and were foiled. Four lockpicks later they gave up and chopped the door down. I was ok with locks that are hard to pick, but 10 years of pathfinder has taught the players that they should have no trouble with locks. The breakage rules did make them vow to just chop down all doors from then on, so maybe something to look at there…
From there they checked the other door, found the trap and slowly opened it. Interesting that this trap had no formatting on it.
A8.
From there, they ignored the small tunnel and headed south, encountering the skeleton room. The number of skeletons and the tight quarters made for a bit of worry, but the clerics heal took them all into one shot range and the battle went pretty smoothly.
They looted and moved on.
The rogue spotted the trap on the statue and rolled well enough to disarm it, allowing the party access to another door…
This door also was troubling as the athletics checks were failed by all but the cleric. The armor check penalty seems to be wrong here, as the fighter was the most penalized for this check.
A10.
The party entered the room and Drakus popped up ready to kill. Despite the fears of TPK from his stats, he did not roll well. On the 1st round he almost took out the cleric, but after that, did not hit more than once a round. The party surrounded him and chopped away with him always threatening to kill someone, but never carrying through. We were not sure what knowledge to use to id him but went with Arcana.
A11.
Now that the rouge had proper ‘lockpicks’ in the form of the master keys he was back into picking locks. Nice touch here. The party liked the vision from the bowl, and wanted to clean up the shrine, so having the blessing for them was nice to see. At this point they didn’t even try to detect magic. The one hour id time for magic if it was magic had turned them off looking for magic.
A12.
Having the keys disarmed the trap (which they missed noticing) and they concluded from the clothes that the faceless stalker was impersonating people around town for some purpose.
A7.
Approaching from the secret door changed this room quite a bit. As the rogue goblin, back lit by the light spell from the cleric saw his former gang, he tried to let them know that Drakus was dead and they should surrender. A very poor diplomacy roll here had the goblins attacking. This battle was pretty lopsided as the party was above the goblins with ranged weapons and spells, and the trap was not in play. Two of the goblin warriors tried to climb up to the party and the pyro tried grease, as the party was 15’ up on the ledge and burning hands was out of the question. Grease failed, and my understanding about it suggests that Acrobatics are only needed when it is cast or when a creature enters the area after without taking a step. No rolls after the first one if you stay in the same square.
The party focused on the spell caster and the goblins could not hit with the bows and those that climbed up were made short work of leaving only the commando, who tried to surrender at this point. The PC goblin was angry at this point and rejected the surrender, only to be hit by a critical and downed immediately. The remaining party members then accepted the commandos surrender and then adventure was over but for some talking.