Strachan Fireblade's page

Strachan Fireblade wrote:

Themetricsystem wrote:

All Jokes aside, I would LOVE a LANDSCAPE Pathfinder GM Screen with a tri-panel make instead of a portait quad-panel. I don't have a high stool to GM from anymore and I like to actually SEE the map without standing up or walking around the table.

IIRC, the PF2 default GM screen is landscape, although I think its 4 panel. I believe you can order the portrait version as well direct off of the Paizo site.

So there are 2 coming out next month. The regular GM screen is portrait and the Paizo.com exclusive is landscape.

No, you have it backwards. If you go to the Release Schedule link, it states that the Paizo Exclusive one is portrait.

Love the start. I had to read it twice. Great stuff!

All Jokes aside, I would LOVE a LANDSCAPE Pathfinder GM Screen with a tri-panel make instead of a portait quad-panel. I don't have a high stool to GM from anymore and I like to actually SEE the map without standing up or walking around the table.

IIRC, the PF2 default GM screen is landscape, although I think its 4 panel. I believe you can order the portrait version as well direct off of the Paizo site.

I'd really like to know what the Advanced GM Screen is vs the one releasing on Aug 1st. I might delay my purchase of it until I know.

@ericthecleric and @lacker

Thanks guys. It took a lot of work. I had to get pretty creative with my google-fu in searching the tiniest shops online to complete the collection. Once it got under 10 volumes left, they got pretty pricey.

Well, I'm no charter member, and in fact, only started collecting during War for the Crown. But, since then, I have tracked down and purchased a physical copy of every AP issue through any and every online source I could discover in Canada and the USA! So I have the complete collection. Not sure where that puts me in this discussion :-) This was not an easy task, let me tell you.

Cori Marie wrote:

Pumpkinhead11 wrote:

That is a VERY colorful bear

Because he's not really a bear ;)

Developer's Note: Dolok Darkfur reacts to claim that he's "not a bear" in much the same way that a professional wrestler might react to being told that they're "not a real athlete." While technically correct in Dolok's case, it's a conversation best had not in his presence. The last time someone called him "not a bear", a magic-reinforced castle surrounded by vrock demons was insufficient to keep him at bay (see above).

AKA, "Let the wookie win".

Strachan Fireblade wrote:

graystone wrote:

Strachan Fireblade wrote:

Where's Mark Seifter when you need him to unofficially confirm our thoughts.

*hopes that the mere mention of his name will summon him*

You didn't say his name 3 times. ;)

Mark Seifter!

Mark Seifter!
MARK SEIFTER!

Nooo! Saying his name 4 times reverses the effect!

Dammit!

I could sell you this old brass oil lamp, but we're all too afraid a blue Will Smith will emerge from it.

Quoted for truth!

Strachan Fireblade wrote:

Where's Mark Seifter when you need him to unofficially confirm our thoughts.

*hopes that the mere mention of his name will summon him*

You didn't say his name 3 times. ;)

Mark Seifter!

Where's Mark Seifter when you need him to unofficially confirm our thoughts.

*hopes that the mere mention of his name will summon him*

One aspect of that I expect to have some trouble with is Xan, and how to get around him being far too obtuse to negotiate with, especially since the PCs wouldn't have the expertise to necessarily contradict his authority. In my case I fully intend on taking advantage of the fact that one of my PCs is a summoner with an eidolon that I've fluffed to be a marut inevitable that is investigating the immaculate circle via the PC (and therefore can provide some fact-checking on Xan's claims). But I never did come up with an alternative in the event that the eidolon is unable to intervene. I imagine there might be something worth doing there to give diplomatic players a means to successfully argue their way past Xan. I'd be curious to know if you had any ideas for this particular issue?

I chose a pretty extreme solution when it comes to Xan. The PCs will not encounter him until AFTER they rescue Prince Carrius and are ready to leave town. At which point, the encounter (fight) will occur as the module suggests (in which Xan wants to kill the party and take Prince Carrius for examination).

I did have townsfolk mention the rumors of Xan around the area so that when they do encounter him its not out of nowhere, but ultimately, with the changes I mentioned before, I felt that if they met Xan beforehand it would spoil the surprise of who The Twilight Child is and change the focus of the mystery. I just can't conceive of a way for the PCs to encounter Xan without "changing the feel and tone" of the module as I want to present it.

In fact, doing it this way, I think it throws one last curveball at the PCs. After the PCs determine that this is the true Prince Carrius, and they have rescued him from the cult, and are on their way back to Martella/Eutropia, now they have some planar creature (a psychopomp) claiming that Prince Carrius is contravening Pharasma's judgement, which ultimately introduces another mystery which I think explains why Prince Carrius is a background figure during the next module (which is because Eutropia is trying to understand how Carrius has come back and his issues go beyond just being drugged by the cult).

To me, the flow of all this, is so much stronger than if they meet Xan beforehand. Xan is a real danger in making the cult too interesting too early. As mentioned in my previous post, the weight of Martella's/Eutropia's political needs should be pushing the adventure forward. Combine that with the fact that the general population is benefiting from the cult (and by the way, I tried to avoid the word cult as long as possible - in fact, the only person to call them a cult was Chief Enumerator Abrun as he was explicitly able to tell the PCs that the cult was not actually following the Abadar faith, but even then, he couldn't call the cult evil since they weren't doing anything wrong) and it allows the players to make this a low priority especially in the face of cannibalistic dreams, a missing regiment, and high banditry. Not all these concerns need to be equal, and I think this does that nicely.

It may not suit everyone's campaign, but it has worked well so far for me. Next session my group will begin the cult investigation, so if I hit any trouble spots, I will let everyone know!

Edit: I should add that I expect the final encounter with Xan has to be a fight with no way around it. Allowing negotiation weakens the impact of the strange circumstances of Prince Carrius's return. Xan's strong convictions should be a nice foreshadow of "The Six Legend Soul" module.

Can this be purchased at PaizoCon? Or ordered for pickup and PaizoCon? If so what are the box dimensions? Are the Dragon's demand box dimensions different?

If it helps, I have ordered both the base set and CofCT sets. Should be here tomorrow or Tuesday from what I've been told. I'm happy to play through them with you. ;)

Also, I believe our LGS, Strange Ideas, has some coming in (which is where I have ordered them through).

So, I have already backed the new compilation, but one question I have is if there will be digital interactive maps released (the same as the ones you receive if you have an Adventure Path subscription) for this product?

My gaming set up makes use of a Microsoft Surface and a 50 inch TV as the gaming map. I use Photoshop to project the map onto the TV allowing me to zoom in/out as necessary for miniature use. I have no desire to ever hand draw a map every again.

Trichotome,

This truly is great work! I love how things are interconnected and foreshadowed. This clearly was a lot of work but the end result shows the planning you put into the project.

It is unfortunate that I am currently in Book 3 - The Twilight Child, as its too late for me to run the prologue. Nevertheless, I have archived your work in my library in the event that I run this AP again in the future. I hope you don't mind, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your work is very inspiring!

Also, since you mentioned the OmegaZ thread, I have been making use of his ideas too. The additional foreshadowing, and in particular, OmegaZ's thoughts on how to handle Prince Carrius and the cult in Book 3 has worked out wonderfully. At the beginning of the Twilight Child, I didn't have Martella mention the cult at all. Instead, she mentioned bandit activity, a missing agent, and a strong need to represent Eutropia well in order for Yanmass to side with them over Pythareus. Once the PCs arrived in Yanmass, the PCs learned about both the seemingly helpful "offshoot Abadaran group", and the dreams that were afflicting the people of Yanmass. With all of these things going on, my PCs felt that investigating the cult could wait - there didn't seem to be any threat. Thus far, they have dealt with the pairaka's causing the dreams, and next session they will deal with the traitors at Tallgrasses. Once that is complete, they intend to investigate the cult which is basically the last section of the module (other than dealing with Merkondus).

Its here where I have made a few changes of my own from OmegaZ's ideas. First, I have decided the cult only meets weekly instead of daily. This is mainly attributed to the fact that in just over a week of in game time, the PCs have made good headway in this adventure. If I recall correctly, there are 8 persona phases and this will help me extend the timeline to fit those 8 persona phases in. Second, I have decided that only regular citizens have attended any of the sermons featuring Prince Carrius. Being peasants for the most part, they are not up on Taldor nobility knowledge (or in my case Lore as I am using PF2 playtest rules). Thus, no one even realizes who the twilight child is, and therefore there is even less of a reason to investigate the cult first. I think this puts the proper spotlight on the PCs. They become the first people to recognize that the Twilight Child is a "returned" Prince Carrius. Further, it makes the last section of the module more interesting because the PCs need to find out if this is some sort of deception or not. And since its not, how the hell did this happen. Since I have used OmegaZ's advice to bring up Carrius several times throughout the AP so far (old stories about him, seeing paintings of him in Birdsong Palace, etc), it really ties in strongly that the PCs are the first to recognize him since he is fresh in their minds.

Anyways, I wanted to add some additional insight for people who haven't gotten this far as to what has and hasn't worked well.

Edit - One other thing I wanted to add about your work. I really love how you evoke a sense of time passing through the prologue. You see many of the AP players at earlier times in their lives. A young Dame Crabbe, Baron Okerra with a wife, etc. This is so great!

The twig collecting is a pretty cool concept in the video. I like it!

Don't think this was posted here yet...but there is a Basic action called Sense Motive that uses Perception. Joe, you may want to add a link which points to the Garycon thread where Mark Seifter talks about this in the final game.

Perception, so it's a basic action rather than a skill use.

Perfect! Thanks!

Anyway, on Sense Motive, everyone here is correct. However, they are also right about that sort of bespoke nameless "Perception check vs. weird behavior that isn't lying" being a thing, so for the final, we wound up calling that thing "Sense Motive" and giving it reverse success conditions of Lie when used against Deception, kind of like how Seek and Hide/Sneak have reverse success conditions.

Thanks for replying Mark, although I'm a little confused. Is Sense Motive a use under Deception or a use under Perception.

I recall it's supposed to be Deception vs Perception DC in the playtest, but that could 100% have changed in the final version with the change to untrained skills.

I suspect you are right but I have had situations where players want to detect if someone is being influenced (whether by drugs, possession, or the like) and no active lie is being told. It just didn't feel right to use Deception in those cases, so I wound up using my own method which so far, seems to work fine.

Still, thanks for the reply, as I can no longer recall the actual PF2 playetest rule!

I'm currently running WftC myself with PF2 rules. We will wrap up the second book this week. I've largely left the modules as is. When it comes to monsters, I snip the PF1 stat block from the book, then find an appropriate monster from the PF2 bestiary for that level and paste beside the PF1 stat block. This lets me retain the PF1 vision, abilities, and feel of the monster, while using the proper numbers for a PF2 monster of the correct level.

The process is pretty simple and works fine. It's really not a lot of work. Most things convert easy enough, some require some hand-waving.

The only thing that I got hung up on, and I'm still not sure I'm doing it right, is the PF2 equivalent of Sense Motive. I've basically been having players make a Perception check against a creatures Will DC (Will Save bonus plus 10) if they want to sense that something is wrong or off. I suspect I should be using the Deception (Lie) but that doesn't seem right either in some cases.

Mark, if you are still around, I'd appreciate an answer on how that should work in PF2!

Strachan Fireblade wrote:

Personally, I'd like to see a change to spell AoE templates. Burst, cones, and even some aura's are a real pain to eyeball as to whether a creature is in or out of a spell effect without counting squares. I suspect my group is in the minority for this sort of change but it sure would be nice. The game should be more about being in the moment rather than counting squares....

Perhaps Mark Seifter could enlighten me if there are any changes (and if there is, he wouldn't have to reveal what those changes are.... :) )

I don't know how you play a grid based combat without counting squares TBH. But I have found that most grids seem to have exactly 1 inch squares, so you can use a ruler or measuring tape to make your life much easier.

Otherwise, Theater of the Mind is always an option. :)

While 4e had its flaws, simpler bursts and blasts made it far easier to determine who was in/out of the AoE. I thought this was a vast improvement. For the record, I'm not saying it has to be exactly that...

Personally, I'd like to see a change to spell AoE templates. Burst, cones, and even some aura's are a real pain to eyeball as to whether a creature is in or out of a spell effect without counting squares. I suspect my group is in the minority for this sort of change but it sure would be nice. The game should be more about being in the moment rather than counting squares....

Perhaps Mark Seifter could enlighten me if there are any changes (and if there is, he wouldn't have to reveal what those changes are.... :) )

I'm curious if the font size for the new CRB is the same as the 1st edition? In other words, what's the total word count?

I'm trying to compare the amount of content between the two books. More so out of curiosity than anything...

Does anyone know what kind of gap there would be between receiving material pre-ordered off the Paizo website versus going to get it on launch date at a brick and mortar store? I had a bad experience waiting on my local gameshop to get the playtest, so I'd rather give my money directly to Paizo. But I'm not sure if they ship books so they arrive at about the same point, which seems rather hard to control for alongside a hard launch date with all the variables for shipping.

I'm in Canada and I'd say its about 50-50 that I get a product before launch day. Usually, if its late its only a few days after. Assuming you are in the US, you should be fine.

I find that hard to believe! ;) That sounds like a villain-y thing to say.

In all honesty, I'm pretty stoked for the next edition! Looking forward to August 1st!

Is the villain Erik Mona? ;)

War for the Crown...by a landslide. As others have said, the prep work is a lot, but so far the payoff has been there. My group is enjoying it. And, just as important, I enjoy DMing it.

Thanks to the Paizo team for all their hard work. Thanks in particular goes to Mark Seifter who I think is a fantastic ambassador for the Paizo team and brand. His participation on the forums, DM fill in for streams (if I got that right), design insight, and overall in depth interaction with the "fans" has been nothing short of impressive.

/tips hat

I get the same result too. I mentioned it twice on the Friday stream but none of the Paizo people acknowledged the issue.

Pretty tough to get play test results with the wrong survey.

I got the impression from one of Mark Seifter’s chat comments during the stream that the devs are looking at possibly removing the +1/level for skills while keeping it in other places.

My overall sense is that they are seriously looking at all options here and nothing is off the table at the moment.

Anyone watching the stream should keep an eye out for his comment and see if you get the same impression as I. I believe it was during the Q&A portion.

I would like it much better if it just was Rage uses = Con modifier, actually, and maybe let the Barbarian pick Str or Con as the class bonus stat. It adds a scaling factor to it while not having this crazy variance, and you have an option at level 1. "Do I want to rage more and have more HP or just hit harder?"

I think on the surface this is an interesting choice from a build design perspective. Haven't really thought about it in detail but it sounds good.

I thought it was worth mentioning that I thought this was a very solid survey. It seemed to have the right balance/types of questions for the feedback I wanted to give. Kudos to the designer of this survey!

One note that I will point out, at least as I understand it, regarding the Entangled/Grabbed condition is that the DC 5 flat check only occurs on actions, activities, reactions, etc with the manipulate trait. I originally read it to mean manipulate action, any activity, any reaction, any free action. But I don't believe this to be the case. The next step up is restrained and it points out both manipulate and attack traits. This would not need to be mentioned if Entangled/Grabbed already included the attack trait as part of ANY activity, ANY reaction, ANY free action.

I may be wrong, but I think this is how it reads.

This is my experience too. Average damage would be nice after a certain number of dice are rolled.

In an exception based game, there are a few too many exceptions for the exceptions....

Agyra Eisenherz wrote:

Mark Seifter, please explain it to me like I am 5 years old. How do resistance and weakness work against a weapon which deals multiple types of damage (like a weapon with cold iron, fire, good, and another good damage point from the paladin)?

Let's say you attacked for 20 slashing damage on the dice plus your Strength (with a cold iron weapon, but the damage type is slashing), with a conditional bonus from your bard giving you 1 more damage, 21 slashing damage. You also have 3 fire damage from flaming, and 4 good damage from holy with an extra good damage from the paladin, so 5 good damage.

You are fighting a demon with weakness 10 cold iron, fire, and good.

You deal 31 slashing damage (21 + 10 weakness), 13 fire damage (3 + 10 weakness), and 15 good damage (5 + 10 weakness).

The reverse would be true if the creature had resistance to all damage. Incidentally, this makes the cleric domain power that creates an aura with a small amount of resist all for you and all your allies extremely good against attacks with multiple damage types. You can see Erik Keith's goblin paladin use it to great advantage in the youtube video where I ran a group through The Mirrored Moon, and several enemies dealt multiple types of damage.

That's ridiculous. This may be how it works, but this is not at all what I read in the Weakness section quoted earlier in the thread. Maybe I don't understand English after all.

If there is one frustrating thing about PF2 right now, its that the game doesn't always play the way you think it does. And that both frustrates and discourages people and not mention gives faulty survey data when the game is being played wrong.

I like PF2 and I get that this is a playtest, but man, in an era where anything and everything competes with RPGs, the play experience needs to be a lot clearer. Games in general that obfuscate rules or intent of rules are bound to be less successful because no one wants to feel stupid for trying to play a game. For the love of all the holy gods in Galorion, please make it that I don't have to have an English degree to understand the final rules upon release of PF2.

Too many conditions.

Too many nested conditions. When you read a condition, you are referred to other conditions.

Condition definitions needs to be more concise. I don't want a wall of text when I am trying to figure out penalties/bonuses.

I think you could make that a Class Feat for alchemists in order to gain the formula (non trsnferable) to make "elemental coatings" sort of like silversheen.

just take silversheen's guidelines as an item and apply it to that way.

Though that would leave out weapons without the elements.
I would rather just have elemental coatings that last for 1 min and give d4 of an element

I dont' think the system would support being able to alter things like Returning and such.
but it would support altering damage types via alchemy.

This is more or less what I pictured, myself. It seems to be a different way of buffing, much in the same way that other support classes buff. Only this buff is direct to damage instead of the typical bonuses to saves, attacks, and defenses.

@colette Would you be open to streaming or recording your game for public viewing? I really would like to see you in action.

I’m not all that familiar with the Alchemist class as I usually DM so this ide may not fit into the scope of the class, but....

What if the Alchemist could temporarily change property runes on weapons to take advantage of weaknesses or enhance persistent damage (in conjunction with creature weaknesses). Changing a corrosive property to frost against a creature weak to cold damage might be an interesting option for the class.

A few more points I meant to add to my last post.

1. The slaver demon Take Your Soul ability was ineffective. The DC was to easy to make. Much like the aforementioned ghost mages and dread wraiths.

2. Monks deal an impressive amount of damage at this level. It was the highest average damage dealer.

3. The sheer amount of dice, both gathering them up as well as adding them up significantly slowed the pace of the game and contributed to the longer fights. I believe this is one of the biggest factors of the long fights we are now experiencing.

4. Persistent damage when used on a creature that has a weakness to it can do significant damage each round.

I noticed the issue with the map and huge sized creatures too. Since I didn’t see any aqueezing rules I had the Treachery Demons appear in different spots than suggested in the book and it did impact the fight somewhat making it considerably less dynamic.

I also noticed an issue with Reverse Gravity and ceiling height. Heroes of Undarin states that the treachery demons use Reverse Gravity to cause targets to fall to the roof. I decided to lower the roof as the spell only reaches 40 feet in height allowing the demons to perform their stated strategy.

After 2 sessions we have completed wave 5. Fights are getting longer and are dragging out now. Many more rules are interacting together causing us to look at the rule book more and discuss how they interact with one another. Additionally, more reactions are being used during other creatures turns which interrupts the flow of combat. This was a major issue with 4e and I’m starting to see it become an issue at higher levels.

Another issue in this adventure is that the save DCs of some monsters abilities are so low that during an entire encounter the special abilities were useless. In particular, the dread wraith and the ghost mages suffered from this problem.

Also of note, is that while monster damage generally feels adequate and capable of punishing PCs with crits, the amount of healing at this level is astounding, even without a cleric. I have a healing spec’d paladin, a monk/sorcerer, an alchemist and a sorcerer. With class healing, and some of the magic item healing, I have only dropped one player thus far and they likely have enough healing to get through several more encounters. It feels like too much right now, especially in light of the fact that Treat Wounds exists now (even though players are limited to when it can be used in this chapter).

Lastly, the lich fight was not near as dangerous as I’d hoped. My players did get lucky with some crucial timely saves (dominate for example) but with the ghost mages not being very effective, the lich is quickly worn down with the action economy of 4 players against it.

Overall, this chapter is the least fun to DM and to play in as a player (as indicated by my players). It has nothing to do with the likely impending PC deaths either. It’s the grindiness, staticness, complex interactions of rules (spells, conditions, flight interacting with trip, seen/unseen, etc). It wouldn’t be so bad if the chapter ended earlier but player healing keeps the chapter going and going and our hope is that after the next session (our third which would equate to 12 hours playing time), it will mercifully end. We all understand what this chapter is measuring (it should be noted that I did not warn my players beforehand but they have since figured out the chapters goal and I thought it was fair to warn them of what is likely coming next session in order to mentally prepare them and not have them discouraged). However, it could have been written much differently to add some fun aspects to the chapter. It meets its design goal admirably, but it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, something that I think some playtesters will be unable to separate leading to further negativity of PF2 which I feel is ultimately unfair beyond the criticism I have already mentioned. Despite this, we continue to enjoy PF2. We hope our feedback will bring the necessary adjustments to improve high level play.

I know this post goes beyond the OPs intent but I felt this information might be valuable to DMs running this chapter.

Edit: Something else I often forget is that if you don’t use a fly action, you fall. I’d like to see this in a more obvious spot, maybe the basic action section (despite it not being relevant for a number of levels), Doing this makes this rule more obvious to players and DMs alike.

Rolling too many dice really slows the game down. This became quite evident during our chapter 5 playtest.

I liked seeing the forensics use for Medicine. I’m meh on the rest. It’s a move in the right direction tho.

OMG. I love you! I have been waiting for someone to make a DM screen. Very much appreciated!

Strachan Fireblade wrote:

One thing that I don’t see mentioned here that was part of the stream is that ethnicities (Osirion, Varisian, etc) will not be part of the Heritages. You pick whatever heritage you want, your feat, and can still be from wherever you want to be. Ethnicity and heritage do not compete with each other.

So in PF1 a lot of "I am from a certain place" was encoded in traits, like "I bear the elaborate tattoos of my people". Are we no longer going to have a mechanical impact from Shoanti or Varisian tattoos, or where are we going to put that stuff?

I guess those could be ancestry feats where if you take it at level 5 in a campaign not set in Varisia, you can just justify it via "I met some people."

I do not know the answer to this question. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that out of the gate there will be no mechanics for ethnicity but I could see that added in the future.

One thing that I don’t see mentioned here that was part of the stream is that ethnicities (Osirion, Varisian, etc) will not be part of the Heritages. You pick whatever heritage you want, your feat, and can still be from wherever you want to be. Ethnicity and heritage do not compete with each other.

Bonus post!

I’d been invited as a guest player to join another local game as a player for Chapter 5 (shoutout to Strachan Fireblade)! I’ve skimmed this chapter during my prep but have delayed my detailed prep so that I can enjoy most of the experience without knowing the specifics.

I’m made a elven Monk with the Sorcerer (Angelic) Multiclass. I chose this class because:
- The monks in my group looked like they were having a lot of fun.
- The group I’m joining hasn’t tried the monk, sorcerer, or multiclassing yet.
- I’ve always wanted to make a winged martial character but it never happened in PF1 for various reasons.

I’ve focused on the bloodline powers while (attempting to) maintaining combat usefulness. All with the end goal of making a angelic crusader; capable of assassinating demonic leaders, navigating the hazards of the worldwound, protecting his allies in battle, and serving as a beacon of light.

After watching my player flail at monsters with -4 or -8 to hit I’ve decided to double down on finding uses for my 2nd and 3rd options. Taking Shield, Forbidding Ward, and Circle of Protection from Angelic Halo. Because he has Fly from Angelic Wings I’ve skipped all the monk mobility options. For many of his feats he focused on Ki powers: Ki Strike, Wholeness of Body, and Abundant Step. Lastly he took one stance; Tangled Forest Stance. This was not an organic character. He would have been less than useful at any of the lower levels. The retraining rules are fairly forgiving in the playtest, so this character could hypothetically be the end result of a long path of retraining as he leveled up. It took about 4 hours of distracted work to make this character, but this isn’t unusual for me.

I’m really excited to play this character as I feel I’ve hit my two character objectives: Make an angelic crusader and use the second and third actions for things other than attacking. I'll post an update after playing.

It was a pleasure having you! It was the first monk our table experienced in the playtest. My impression was that your monk was very versatile, capable of overcoming many obstacles. Monk damage felt like it was on the higher end. Overall, as DM for the session, it felt as though the monk was nicely balanced between offence, defence, and utility. I'd like to hear more of your thoughts!

For others reading, I will add that Chapter 5 is the first time I felt combat became a bit of a slog. Fights were a little too long in my opinion and at this point healing is becoming a little ridiculous. An enemy spends 2-3 actions to dish out damage and a single action heal spell completely wipes the damage away (and then some). More and more rules are also being used which forces us to consult the manual more often as well which points to a definite increase in complexity at this level. There definitely needs to be some fine tuning of combat at these levels but overall the experience continues to be fun.

One other interesting point is that different players have different ideas on how to "spend their 3rd action". Some like to use this at the beginning of their turn, others at the end. There seems to be no clear consensus as to what is the best order of taking actions. This suits the new action economy well.

I, and my group, have been happy to help refine the game. While the Playtest experience can be stressful, and I will admit that at times it can be discouraging, we are delighted to contribute to the final product.