Converted over the players in my Shackled City campaign tonight to the new Pathfinder RPG rules.
They're doing Flood Season, so its a human Fighter 4, human Cleric of Kord 4, human Sorceror 4, human Wizard 4, and half-orc Rogue 3/Barbarian 1. The wizard used to be a warmage/bard combo, but we used the excuse of the playtest to revamp him as an evocation specialized wizard. For the barbarian, I just went with increased movement, Rage, and the d12 hit points. For the sorceror, I increased the hit die to d6 and let him cast his 0-level spells at-will. Racial hit points were used by vote - everyone liked the flavor it gave.
Conversion was pretty easy - the Sorceror was tough for skills, because the player had originally spread his points around a lot. The end result was pretty close, though.
The characters overall felt tougher. They faced one reasonably tough encounter early in the night, but pressed on. The extra toughness really came into play in the final encounter of the night - they faced down a EL11 fight. No one died, but everyone used pretty near everything they had in the fight to stay up... we had the fighter and cleric enlarged, the rogue/barbarian raging after using orc ferocity to stay fighting, and plenty of magical items used up in what proved a tense and hard fought fight.
Everyone agreed that the extra hit points from the favored class, the hit dice bumps (especially for the rogue) and the racial hit points made a huge difference in the party's ability to stay in the fight. With out them, the fighter, cleric and rogue/barbarian would have been negative or dead.
I didn't do any conversion of the Shackled City write ups, running the encounters straight from the stat-blocs in the book - had no problem doing that, and little impact on the fight. At worst, it meant the NPCs were slightly lower on hit points than they "should" have been, but I don't think that was a problem.
Overall, the feeling at the table was positive and at no point did the new rules get in the way or really slow us down. The cleric did end up doing a lot of healing - but unlike in past games of SCAP, also cast some other spells - enlarge and bull's strength being two examples. He was most happy. The sorcerer, with little to work with, was least impressed.
Some questions did arise:
1. The wizard's arcane focus - does it let you spontaneously cast the spell, or do you pick the spell when memorizing? I ruled it was a spontaneous cast, so basically an extra spell slot.
2. Noticed that Casting on the defensive or when adjacent to an opponent didn't appear on the Spellcraft difficulties chart - intentional, or did I miss where it mentioned that?
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We're planning to test the PFRPG via the same campaign. My players started their characters from scratch and as it seems, Paizo succeeded in reviving some old traditions, the roster is what you could call THE iconic band of adventurers:
dwarven fighter
human cleric
halfling rogue
elven wizard
I'm planning to do a total conversion of the campaign to see how this affects the overall SC - Monster-balance in comparison to the "old" 3.5 feel. We'll see how this works out
I didn't do any conversion of the Shackled City write ups, running the encounters straight from the stat-blocs in the book - had no problem doing that, and little impact on the fight. At worst, it meant the NPCs were slightly lower on hit points than they "should" have been, but I don't think that was a problem.
To me, this is the best news in your playtest report. It indicates that, even with the changes made in the game so far, it is in fact backward compatible. I'll look forward to hearing if this persists over continued game sessions.
Thanks for the report man sounds great also sounds like it is backward compatible to me so far . thanks.