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Okay, so I started the Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign AND began my Pathfinder playtest last night. I incorporated the portions of Pathfinder I liked into my house rule document, gave everyone a campaign handout, and went over some of the changes in brief. Obviously, I’ll focus my playtest comments on the stuff I’m using from Pathfinder. To start, we generated characters – four out of five of my players made it, and generated characters – they were a tiefling duskblade 1, a human beguiler 1, a silvanti cleric 1, and a human factotum 1.
ASIDE: While I am running COTCT, I am using my own homebrew world – there are no half-orcs, but as a replacement, there are a race called silvanti. Prior to even Pathfinder coming out, I had decided the half-orc was a suboptimal choice, so I created a lycanthrope-descended bestial race with +2 Str, +2 Wis, -2 Cha, low-light vision, and the ability to enter a feral rage, which allows any silvanti to rage 1/day, and while raging gain a secondary bite attack and scent. I’ll be honest, the ability to rage 1/day went over very well with the player, and the encounter with Giggles (who was now a silvanti himself) – I’d strongly suggest it as a half-orc alternative to the Ferocity ability.
During the game, the party tried to sneak into Gaedren’s fishery, and it went poorly when the beguiler failed his Sleight of Hand check to surreptitiously cast sleep on Bloo the dog. So mass combat ensued.
First thing was the factotum tried to bull rush the gnome off of the catwalk. He had a CMB of +0, and the gnome had a CMB of -1. He rolled poorly, and the Bull Rush failed. It is an interesting non-OGL note that Factotum’s gain a significant bonus to CMB rolls when they use an Inspiration Point for Cunning Insight.
Shortly after that, the tiefling duskblade climbed through a window, and while unarmed was confronted by Yagrin with his wand of acid splash. He tried to take the wand away, which I ruled as a Disarm attempt. This did not work well in practice. He had a CMB of +3, but by Disarm was considered unarmed, so suffered a -4 to grab the wand. Yagrin had a CMB of +1, so to take the wand away, and failed because he needed a roll of 16 with a +1. The players’ feedback was it was far to difficult for a simple grab of a wand.
RECOMMENDATION: Reword Disarm to only give a -4 penalty when unarmed if taking a weapon away. If trying to take a wand, potion or other held item, eliminate the penalty. That seems pretty fair.
Later again, the gnome ran, and the factotum chased him down and attempted a grapple. He managed to avoid the attack of opportunity, and got a grapple result of +5, holding him in place until the duskblade could get there and stick a sword in him. Hookshanks was not disabled, and him swinging his kukri at the factotum was dramatic (if ineffectual).
FEEDBACK: The stages of grapple are named in a confusing manner. Grabbed and held didn’t clearly indicate to my players the results of their roll. Can we consider renaming them? Aside from that, the new grapple rules as very popular and streamlined - great job, Jason! If you change nothing else, this is a great addition to 3.5.
Overall, it was a success to incorporate a lot of these rules. The cleric enjoyed his unlimited 0-level spells. The revised identify spell worked very well with the abilities of the Deck of Zellara, but the players were very amazed that they can use each identify attempt to ID up to 10 items at once. The DC assigned by Pathfinder (Appraise DC 15 + caster level) is FAR too easy compared to the Rules Compendium (Spellcraft DC 25 + ½ caster level), so we reverted to the latter. It's also more in line with identifying potions.
As well, we used the new Appraise rules with increasing DCs for the value of non-magic items. This was great, but it still runs the problem of what happens when the PCs blow their Appraise roll. I decided on the fly that “the DM might invent a value for the item that is wildly off the mark if your check fails by 5 or more” really didn’t work for me, so I ruled to myself when they failed by less than 5, they identified the object at 80-90% of value, and when they failed by 5+, they identified the object at 50% of value. That way, because I hate paperwork for treasure, rather than leave the object unvalued or have to re-value it when they take it to a merchant, they have their final answer for its value, and Appraise is an important skill – voila!
So, that’s my experience so far.
Cool. I don't think a 16 is too high to disarm a wand though. Let's say you have a mid level wizard with a wand of fireball nuking the party, do you want it to be easy for the party to wrest the wand from the sorcerer?
I also think the thief was punished for having a low strength, which thieves should be punished for doing, especially if they use STR as a dump stat. I think you played it just fine. If it was the fighter doing the same thing, he probably would have had to roll only a 12.
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Cool. I don't think a 16 is too high to disarm a wand though. Let's say you have a mid level wizard with a wand of fireball nuking the party, do you want it to be easy for the party to wrest the wand from the sorcerer?
Well, taking a wand away should be easier than taking a sword away. I assume the -4 for attempting an unarmed disarm is reflective of 'look out! that sword is sharp!', which isn't there if your opponent is holding a potion, wand, talisman of world destruction, or the like.
I don't want it to be too easy, but it seemed a little too high for my liking.
A better question might be, to take something that someone else is holding, should that be a disarm attempt, or something folded into grapple?
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Well, taking a wand away should be easier than taking a sword away. I assume the -4 for attempting an unarmed disarm is reflective of 'look out! that sword is sharp!', which isn't there if your opponent is holding a potion, wand, talisman of world destruction, or the like.
I don't want it to be too easy, but it seemed a little too high for my liking.
Unfortunately, your "it's sharp" argument doesn't work with hafted weapons and blunt weapons like a a wooden staff or and axe. Logically, I don't think a wand should be easier to disarm than a weapon. Mechanically I certainly don't like the idea that a frail wand-wielding wizard would have a greater penalty to holding onto his wand than his already low BAB and strength.
A better question might be, to take something that someone else is holding, should that be a disarm attempt, or something folded into grapple?
I think disarm is definitely the best way to go here.
Archade, thanks for actually posting a playtest report, and not another "I think we should change this rule because..."
I'm guilty of a couple of those, but have totally lost interest in those kinds of threads now.
Great work, let us know how your campaign progresses.
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Archade, thanks for actually posting a playtest report, and not another "I think we should change this rule because..."
I'm guilty of a couple of those, but have totally lost interest in those kinds of threads now.
Great work, let us know how your campaign progresses.
I've done my own share of armchair-general opinions already, so I know what you mean. But I think opinions *before you implement the rules in play* are just as valuable as the playing itself. It at least shows we've thought about the rules and how they impact our game.
We're playing infrequently, since this is a secondary game on the side, so it'll be another week or so before we get together again, but maybe Alpha 2 will be out by then, and I can incorporate some additional changes into my house rule document ...
I'll keep you all posted, never fear!