My first playtest - from Monday night. Module spoilers galore, if you care.
The adventure I picked was "Fallen Angel", from the WOTC free adventures. This adventure is designed for 4th level adventurers, but I suspected that Pathfinder characters were powerful enough to go through it at a lower level so I ran the game with four third level characters.
I set the game in the Forgotten Realms, in the obscure corner of the Dalelands known as Mumbledale. (I didn't have time to pick a dale before the game.)
o) Emroth, a human fighter 3 fighting with a greatsword. His feats were power attack, cleave, and defensive combat maneuvers.
o) Kaynden, a tiefling rogue 3 with weapon finesse and two-weapon fighting, and the 'slow reactions' rogue talent
o) Mariel, a very very tan half-elf (half-drow) cleric of Eilistrae with the liberation and good domains
o) Zed, a human sorcerer 3 (Celestial bloodline) with spell focus and greater spell focus enchantment, and craft wondrous items. Zed used his craft skill to start with a charisma-boosting headband.
I built the fighter and the rogue myself, the cleric and sorcerer were created by their players. The fighter was customized a bit pre-game (feats swapped around), the rogue was not.
Optional rules in play:
o) +6 bonus hit points - to all characters and monsters. This was easy to add and keep track of.
o) A character's first action in combat is always a partial action (not a Paizo rule, but one of my standard house rules)
While travelling through Mumbledale, the party encounters a village that has been recently raided by strange insectoid ogres, led by a blue-skinned giant. The sorcerer realizes that he can use Heavenly Touch heal all of the injured villagers, at least a little. Then he realizes that if they're neutral, nothing will happen, and if they're evil he will harm them. He decides it would be wise to avoid the social awkwardness of injuring surly villagers and blaming the victim.
The sorcerer consoles himself with the thought that at least he can heal his party members. At this point, he finds out that every other member of his party is neutral. This disappoints him.
The cleric uses channel energy to heal all of the villagers. They are grateful, and send a guide along with the party to help them track the trail of destruction left by the marauding insectile ogres.
I added a night attack by medium scorpions during the travel to have what I thought would be a pretty easy fight. Not so; four CR1 creatures against four 3rd level characters was the challenging fight the APL guide said it would. The sorcerer was on watch with no familiar and failed to perceive the sneaking scorpions, which made the problem worse.
Combat 1: Four medium scorpions (CR 1) attack the party at night.
Modifications: I added 6 hit points to each scorpion.
The scorpions charged in, doing damage to the lightly armored/unarmored party as Zed the sorcerer belatedly notices the situation. He also notices that his enchantment spells won't help against mindless vermin, so he closes and uses his celestial melee attack, which doesn't affect neutral creatures. The sorcerer casts mage armor on the cleric and is otherwise stuck with a 1d3 0th level Electric Jolt.
When the party stands up, they trigger attacks of opportunity. The party takes some damage, but shrugs it off fairly well. The sorcerer is pretty useless, and the cleric isn't too effective in melee. The fighter and to a lesser extent the rogue crush the scorpions, but the rogue gets poisoned and loses 9 strength.
After the combat, the party brings their guide back from his hiding place in the woods, and the cleric is able to channel energy and heal everyone up in two attempts. Since the rogue had thought about coup de gras'ing earlier, I made sure to point out what would happen if they channeled energy to heal living creatures next to four disabled scorpions. It does seem that Pathfinder characters will have to take an active role in finishing off disabled monsters.
After the combat, I realize that scorpions have improved grab and this would have been a great test of the grapple rules. D'oh.
Unfortunately for the rogue and the plot, the cleric did not memorize Lesser Restoration and chose to take her spells at the Eilistraean moonrise. As a result, they lose a day hiding out in the woods before reaching a cave that is the lair of the insectoid ogres. Their guide leaves long before this.
The rogue scouts the first room, where there are two insectoid ogres hanging from the ceiling. I gave them a Sneak bonus for being in an unlikely place (+2) and immobile (+4), which cancelled out their penalty to hide. The rogue rolls badly, the ogres roll well, and so when the party enters the cave, the ogres surprise the party by dropping from the roof.
Combat 2: Two insectoid ogres (CR 3 each)
Modification: I added 6 hit points to the ogres, and since they had 4 hit dice and only one feat I also gave them Power Attack. Easy to modify on the fly.
The ogres get a surprise round - one drops and grapples the fighter, while the other pokes the rogue with a huge greatspear. The rogue bleeds, the fighter swears.
The sorcerer was much more effective in this combat, and was able to sleep the greatspear-wielding ogre and then daze the other ogre with some success thanks to a DC 17 will save (20 stat, +1 focus, +2 greater focus). The ogre was able to crush the fighter twice, but the defensive combat bonus feat kept him from being crushed twice. When the ogre failed a grapple squeeze, I interpreted that as "failed squeeze but grapple is maintained", and made the fighter break out on his own turn. In retrospect, I'm not sure if that's right. The second ogre was taken down by a critical hit from the cleric and sneak attacks from the rogue.
The channeling works well to get the party back up to snuff between combats, and this time there is no ability damage to worry about.
The party wonders how it is that insectoid ogres are able to climb, and bemoan the lack of a druid or ranger in the party to answer this question. One suggestion is : sticky hands.
The group advances into the cave complex, and meets two more ogres lying in wait at a T intersection.
Combat 3: Two insectoid ogres (CR 3) wielding greatclubs
Modification: as combat #2
The rogue gets initiative and is able to sneak attack one of the ogres, while the fighter moves to close with the other one. The ogres start laying the smack down on these two characters, while the sorcerer and cleric are too far back to act directly. The cleric uses inspiring word in the first round, which helps the rogue confirm a critical in the second round. Then the rogue is hit by a power attack, which causes her to disengage with four hit points left.
The fighter is able to finish off one of the ogres while the sorcerer keeps up a constant stream of dazing. After finishing the first ogre, the fighter takes care of the other one.
We take a small snack break, and discuss how the game is going. This confirms that people are having fun but may distract the group and contribute to the rogue not being fully healed for the next fight. This will be significant.
The rogue sneaks around a little bit more and finds a path that leads to some sort of garbage dump slash privy, and another path that leads to a couple of lurking ogres that fail to notice the sneaking thief.
The party decides to check out the garbage dump, and discusses the idea of lurking in the privy to ambush ogres as they go in to use the facilities. Truly, this is a heroic bunch.
The rogue moves in first, cautiously, and hears some scurrying under garbage. With the rest of the party in the hallway, the rogue climbs the 20' wall and throws a copper coin in the center of the garbage.
Alas, this plan would have worked a lot better if the creatures in the midden had -not- been large scorpions with 50' move, climb +8, and tremorsense. Two scorpions close with the party while one climbs after the still injured rogue.
Combat 4: Three large scorpions (CR 3)
Modifications: +6 hit points, and I remembered they can grapple. I gave them a +10 CMB (4 strength, 3 base attack, 1 size, 2 improved grapple).
The combat went pretty well for the fighter and cleric, but the sorcerer was again useless against neutral mindless vermin. Cleave and power attack worked well in combination here, and the fighter's AC, strength and defensive CMB feat kept the scorpions from any successful grapples. Unfortunately, when the cleric finished off the second scorpion in the hallway, the third scorpion dropped the lifeless body of the rogue on top of them.
The rogue had been trapped on the other side of the scorpions, and outside of the party's ability to reach. She was able to sneak attack the climbing scorpion - even though they both lost their dexterity bonus while climbing, sneak attack still works. Huh. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough, and the rogue was killed with claw attacks and a jabby jabby tail before the grapple rules mattered.
If the fighter's player had been more familiar with the rules, or had a better idea of how low the scorpion's armor class was, then he might have started cleaving + power attacking earlier. That wouldn't have been enough to save the rogue unless she'd disengaged and started tumbling. People are less familiar with their character's powers and less attached to them in pickup games, so these things happen.
At this point, the party collected the body, healed up as best they could, did a quick search of the midden because the rogue would have wanted them to, and cleared out of the dungeon.
They expressed an interest in continuing the adventure, so I'm letting them rebuild to fourth level and I'll tinker with the adventure a bit, then finish it off in a couple of weeks.
General player comments:
1. They had fun, and everyone liked their characters. The rogue's player felt that she should have been a spring-attack fighter rather than a two-weapon fighter, since she didn't have the stamina to stay and fight. The two-weapon style was picked to maximize sneak attack, and the rogue didn't have the feats for spring attack anyway.
2. They'd like to play 3P again
3. The new grapple rules worked quickly, but they didn't require an opposed roll and moved so quickly that people weren't always sure how the grapple was going and what the chances were of various outcomes.
4. They liked the different XP charts, and felt that parties could change between ladders as they went up - fast chart for the first few levels, then slowing down to enjoy mid-level play.
5. Encounters felt harder than 3.x (but these were 3rd level characters in a 4th level module)
6. There was some thought that more challenging encounter should be reflected in XP somehow - killing four scorpions at once should be worth more than having them come at you one at a time, Bruce Lee-style.
7. People generally liked the base class progressions.
8. Two people considered playing a barbarian and decided it against it, one early on because of the rage point bookkeeping (she chose cleric) and one at gametime because of the presence of the fighter (he chose sorcerer).
9. One player was concerned that humans were still a bit underpowered compared to the other classes, now that every race has two favored classes. It didn't seem to him like a serious problem, though.
Sorcerer-specific comments:
1. The sorcerer's player didn't mind being useless against vermin, and considered it an outcome of how his character had been optimized
2. He was concerned that enchantments not scaling were going to really damage playability for this sorcerer in a level or two. The flat 4 HD for daze and sleep means that a technique goes from absurdly effective to absurdly ineffective in a very short period.
3. He really liked the 3P sorcerer and its progression - he felt he could take the feats he wanted, in contrast to 3.x when every sorcerer feat he picked was designed to get him into a prestige class as quickly as possible.
4. He was not terribly impressed that sorcerer getting melee touch attacks - for the celestial sorcerer, he thought it was a reasonable balance since the touch can heal. If your party is good. For other bloodlines, though, he suggested more ranged touch attacks.
5. He didn't think the touch attack scaled to the point of being at all useful at high levels, and thought that a sorcerer would start running out of spells once unlimited 0-level spells and touches were useless. Maybe if the touch attack scaled up in damage as the sorcerer progressed it would be more useful?
6. If the sorcerer got a class-type boost, he felt that the ability to wear light armor would be more useful than rogue base attack/hit points, especially if the melee touch attack stayed.
7. He liked that use magical device was a sorcerer class skill, but feels that UMD is still useless at low levels because there are so few magic items and the DCs are high.
Cleric-specific comments:
1. The cleric's player felt that Selective Channeling is key, and will be rebuilding the cleric to have that feat. I can see this being the must-have feat for clerics, sort of like Natural Spell for druids.
2. No one objected to Selective Channeling needing a feat instead of being a power clerics get.
3. The domain powers were fun, but she wasn't sure when to use them. She figured that was more of a familiarity issue.
Rogue-specific comments:
GM comments:
1. The encounter scale based on APL worked better than I was expecting; I'm used to ECL as written being unchallenging.
2. I wouldn't mind a fuller list of suggested sneak bonuses and penalties, to let big clumsy things sneak around a bit. I usually let woodsy opponents that prepare blinds take 20, but 'hanging from the ceiling in the shadows' should be worth something too.
3. I had an easy time downloading and running a 3.0 module with almost no prep.
4. Changing skills on the fly was a bit of a pain, mostly because of combining spot/listen and hide/move silently and trying to reallocate those points fairly.
5. I'd suggest that players have a "CMB AC" (15+CMB) on their character sheet. That way they can get a feel for how strongly the opposition is based on the numbers the DM is calling out, and it may save a bit of time comparing numbers.
