Director of Narrative
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I’ve been reading as much of these posts as I can, and have really hesitated posting any observations until I got a chance to sit around a table and throw dice with my crew. Well, tonight I did just that and have to say, actually playing it instead of just reading it makes a difference.
I want to know who among us has actually built characters and ran through some scenarios with other players. I’m not saying that any one person’s opinion or experiences carry any more value or weight. I just know that my mind was eased into the understanding for a few rules that seemed kinda weird at first reading.
So, if you’ve played the Alpha – sign here.
Our group made 6th level characters. We each chose one of the classes and used a 32 point buy (what we normally use in our campaigns, actually). We gave full hp at first level and let the dice determine the other five.
We ran through four encounters in an extremely loose storyline. First there was a zombie attack on a village with 16 human commoner zombies attacked the party. Later, three trolls ambushed the party. Finding a cave that led into a ruined underground complex, the group met up with a guardian in the form of a grey render. After defeating the guardian, the group went face to face with something way out of their league just to prove that nothing was ridiculously powerful and fought a young adult green dragon.
I will post my notes in the appropriate threads after I go through them again and analyze.
I've got my group playtesting the Alpha rules.
We started at level 1, with the +6 hp option. One character of each class available so far (cleric, fighter, rogue and wizard). No multiclassing (since we haven't seen how multiclassing will work yet). I've run them through Siege of the Spider Eaters and half of Home Under the Range so far. We've made it to level 3.
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Director of Narrative
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I've run them through Siege of the Spider Eaters and half of Home Under the Range so far. We've made it to level 3.
Oooh! Both Cabbagey adventures!
Have conversions been anything to note? We noticed that many of the CMB and skill bonuses have been really simple to do on the fly.
Just gettin' started
I have put it to my group running through an ad-hoc Savage Tide campaign. They will be starting conversions where thay can and will progress with the other character classes as they are released. For now, I see it only making the present characters a bit more powerful/versatile in the game. But when you play the old way of AD&D 2nd ed. (Random encounters could be anything from a few kobolds to a Ancient Red, at 1st lvl. Learn to run or be eaten) this is actually a good thing.
My players have learned not to get too cocky and maintain a semblance of restraint until enough information can be gathered about an encounter. Then whatever happens, happens.
My only concern is the prestige classesp; how the base characters will affect the prestige classes and their hd. But, we will give it a try. This should quickly point to problems integrating with existing 3.5 rules and abilities.
There are definitely certain things our group agreed on after the playtest. Everyone liked the change to turn undead. The radial burst of positive energy was easy to calculate, not looking at a chart for max HD undead to be affected. Also turning was used to heal on more than one occasion which worked out well. We also all agreed that feat chains ddo not work out. I played a fighter who was trying to use Great Cleave. I could not stand toe to toe with a monster for 3 rounds to use the feat. I would be dead before I used the feat.
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1 Session a month for playtest, running them through parts of Age of Worms (already played it, so my players get to see if it feels 'different') until we finish off our regular weekly campaign, at which point we're going full bore into Crimson Throne using the PRPG ruleset.
Changes we've implemented to resounding success - Turning Undead, Combat maneuvers.
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We converted our RotRL characters all over to the new rules to playtest them. The conversions worked out pretty well and I noticed skills remained about the same in number but several increased in their actual score (nobody lost skills from the new system even though I had, at the beginning, given extra skill points). I may push their exp. up from about 21,000 to a new 23,000 and try out the new xp rewards tracks using the fast track chart. Probably next week we will start HMM using the rules.
My players are going to go into it full bore this weekend (had no game because of easter) So far the only thing that seems unbalanced is the skill system. we like the condensed skills but not sure how its going to work. We should know shortly though. We plan to create two sets of characters. Both identical in every way aside from the fact that one set will be done with the PF:RPG rules and one with traditional 3.5 to test the differences in a simple delve set up for testing purposes. Should give us a nice chance to see how things work, if/how the differences change the game and what still needs tweaking.
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I have only been able to incorporate a few of the rules into the game so far and liked those rules so far. I couldn't do any class or skill changes since the players have already played through my homebrewed world. I so far have implemented the CMB system and love how simple it is to use and a bonus amount of HP. I chose 10 HP as the buffer amount instead of 6. Once those simple changes were added, I noticed a difference in my party, they started doing things they normally wouldn't do and were having fun. The Gnome Rogue in the party Jumped from his horse to dive down a hole after his Friend whom was in the jaws of a Ankheg. It would have taken him 2 rounds the safe way. With this buffer, players know that they could try something and not die because of it. My next session I will actually implement the consolidated skills with some added consolidations. Can't wait to see how that works.
I'm not quite playtesting yet, waiting until a couple more classes come out, then I might change RotRL over to PF. Unfortunately, there's just too many non-Fighter/Cleric/Rogue/Wizards in it to really test the system at the moment, and I'm terribly lazy.
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I'll start RotRL in a few weeks, and I'll use the rules in the Alpha release (still debating the issue regarding skills) plus some options from Unearthed Arcana and the Book of Experimental Might.
I have scrapped my usual vitality/wounds approach in favor of a more heroic fantasy feeling, but I'll use the slow advancement table and throw some more baddies at the PCs to balance it out - and quite a lot of encounters during those long treks.
I hope to see the second alpha release of the Pathfinder rules before I'll start, mostly to see some more core classes updated.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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My Recommendation for Playtesting -- Don't Roll Dice
Back in the day, I was a freelance editor for AD&D, and it was clear that very few freelance writers ever playtested any of their submissions. Sometimes, it was very clear.
So, I spent a fair chunk of time playtesting and (the modern word is) developing their scenarios. And one thing I learned was "Don't roll dice."
Instead, make a small deck of cards with each die value two or three times. So, for the party's d20, make a 40-card deck, with two 1's, two 2's, and so on. Draw from this deck instead of rolling, and reshuffle once you exhaust the deck.
Make a twin of that deck for the bad guy's d20's.
Make decks for the damage dice, too.
Play out all combats three times, start to finish, At least once, play the villains as smart and ruthless as possible. Take hostages, cast silence and grease, use up all those expendible items, trip PCs, hit-and-run for repeated ambushes, etc.
This process makes sure that neither side wins because they're luckier than the other, but still allows for high rolls and low rolls. And it checks to see whether the encounters stall when both sides use good tactics.
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We are playtesting alpha while running Curse of the Crimson Throne.
So far, the most positive comments have revolved around the skill point changes (with first level characters). While there's no ability to dabble in skills any more, the players still like the new system for its simplicity. Levelling up skills every level may sound good in the abstract, but in practice it seems like it's an attempt to pretend you have an option each time you level up.
We did minimal adaptation of the adventure, only increasing the hit points of those opponents with non-NPC class levels by 6. It went quite well. Three first level characters showed some durability, but were also in pretty bad shape by the end of the first main area of the adventure (phrased to avoid spoilers.)
The biggest question was whether you can try to appraise a magic item again with a new casting of Detect Magic. The alpha rules say you can, but Detect Magic, as a 0 level spell, can be cast as often as you like. We suspected this was an oversight, and ruled you had to make a new casting of identify to get a reroll. Otherwise you might as well take 20, provided you're not in combat.
Drew Garrett
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I just started a new RotRL campaign. The players had rolled up characters for a Skill consolidated version of 3.5 using 4d6-L 7 times keep the 6 you want stat rolling method (yes, I know, very powerful-but you'll get people playing this way, so why not test it :P )
I converted the characters myself. The skills ended up being mostly the same, with a couple of 1-2 skill point skills being lost (anticipating them being picked up later.) I asked the peson who was going to play the Favored Soul of Desna to play a cleric instead, to test the new rules, and she agreed. The Human (Shoanti) Fighter didn't change much, except for an additional 2 point bump in her strength, and the changes to her Feats. My wife's character was going to be an Elven Warmage, but she also agreed to test the Pathfinder waters by converting to a Wizard. The party is rounded out by a Dwarven Druid and a Elven Bard. I made a half-orc rogue NPC to supplement the party and test those rules.
The party has done some RP, and gone on a hunt for boar the first night of play.
The second night we played, we were able to get into some of the crunch during an extended battle with goblins. At the high levels of Strength (20), Power Attack with a greatsword is just INSANE. Nuna has +1 to hit and 2d6+17 Damage on Power Attack. She was unable to attempt a cleave under the new rules because she was never around more than 2 opponents at a time and none of the goblins survived her first attack when she hit.
The Bard uses a whip and was trying out several Combat Manuevers, but never rolled high enough to succeed.
The Wizard REALLY benefitted from the extra 3 hit points (2 for d6 instead of D4 and 1 for favored class), and as a Universalist, was able to use his Long Sword for great use at range once she was low on spells and hit points.
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My crew and I are beginning our playtest ( and new campaign...haven't played DnD for 6-8 months now) this Friday(hoping to keep on a bi-weekly schedule). We are going to use the high hit point option[max die type + con mod + con score}, 28 point build, and core PFRPG races and classes only for character creation.
Anyhoo, was wondering if anyone thinks the use of other 3.5 supplements( spell compendium and magic item compendium in particular) will have a significant affect on the playtest? My gut instinct says yes and so, no pc will begin with any gear or spells outside of the core 3.5 books and the PFRPG ,but maybe later on...
So, we're pretty excited to get going and I will be trying to relay my group's ideas as we go along.
Oh yeah, and thanks again Paizo for supporting the grognards and quasi-grognards(gonna look at 4e...but likely pass on it)..like me.