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.
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Thanks for sharing your playtest. I still love reading these things.
Maybe a suggestiong on the celestrial heritage, maybe the power shouldn't only heal good characters and harm evil. I think that maybe it should be just a postive energy thing that heals non evil subtyped outsiders. But that's just a thought. Maybe you could test that out or something for us.
Update - game session #2, from this past Monday.
I had been planning on trying it at a higher level, and since I had three players again I had a three-character playtest. The adventure is rated for four fourth-level characters, so I retried it with three fifth level characters.
These characters were:
1) Emroth, now 5th level with great cleave
2) Mariel, the 5th level cleric with Selective Channeling (and now Chaotic Good)
3) Orlandtwo, a 5th level wizard that's a Paizo translation of the player's regular character. This character took craft wand, and used that to create a half-price 5th level wand of magic missiles.
An indeterminate time after the first adventure, the now higher level characters decide to return. Emroth picks up several vials of antitoxin, and the cleric decides that this is a good idea. The party returns to the village and find that the villagers are now paying tribute to the insectoid ogres.
Now knowing the way, the party travels up the trail toward the ogre lair. I wanted to have another wandering/wilderness encounter, so I flipped through the monster manual looking for likely chitin-covered candidates. What I found: spider eaters. Advanced spider eaters are huge, so they could be mounts for ogres... I liked the mental image, so I ran with it.
The party first encountered spider eaters on their own, two standard large 4HD ones - CR 5. Two CR 5 monsters are a 'hard' encounter for three 5th level characters, and this was pretty accurate. That might have been because the party's spellcaster was stingy with his high-level spells. I think that may come from being unused to Paizo rules - so far, no one has used their bonded item respell.
At any rate, the spider eaters ambush the party by flying through heavy woods (permanent free action) and miss the fighter while hitting the wizard - but the threat doesn't confirm. There's no primary damage from the spider eater poison, but the secondary damage is paralysis for 1d8+5 weeks, followed by injection with eggs. This means that any fight with a spider eater is a potential TPK if the party rolls badly on secondary saves.
Emroth really shined using his greatsword and power attack, and takes one of the spider eaters out while avoiding being stabbed. The cleric got some shots in and did some damage while the wizard concentrated on being defensive and getting a couple of shots in. Emroth charged over to join, hitting the spider eater and setting it up to get finished off by a magic missile from the wizard's wand.
The cleric cast delay poison on the wizard, which just delayed the question of whether he would succeed or fail until the party was that much closer to the ogre's lair. Emroth used his survival skill to harvest some spider eater poison, although it ended up not being used.
The party traveled closer to the ogre's lair, but before the delay poison wears off the party espies the insectile scouts - insectoid ogres with greatspears mounted on huge spider eaters. The fighter decides to hide, and rolls a 4. His fellow party members mock him. The wizard casts mage armor, the cleric casts shield of faith.
The spider eater / ogre combinations charge, and the fighter and the cleric are stung by the spider eaters but not stabbed by the ogres. The fighter attacks the spider eater and cleaves into the ogre, since they are adjacent.
The wizard casts web on the second spider eater/ogre combination. The spider eater benefits from free action, and flies off leaving its webbed rider.
The first ogre tries to grapple the fighter, and fails - size doesn't help against a higher base attack bonus and Defensive Combat Training. The spider eater stings successfully - this continued the theme that the ogres were essentially window dressing and the spider eaters were almost the entire encounter. The fighter finishes off the ogre and severely injures the spider eater, which flies off into the woods with only a few hit points back. The fighter wanted to sunder the spear, but we weren't sure if you could sunder as a cleave attack or how many extra hit points to assign a larger weapon. Rather than fake something, he just kept attacking normally.
The second spider eater flies around waiting for the party to collapse, while the party tries unsuccessfully to affect the ogre in the middle of the web. The web provides partial cover, and no one wants to charge in. The fighter eventually picks up a large-scale greatspear from the first ogre and uses it to kill the ogre from the edge. We had some question about how difficult it was to use an oversized weapon that was really just a big stick. I assigned a -2 penalty for it, and he jabbed the stuck ogre until it died.
After the fight, the cleric uses touch of good just before the poison takes effect on everyone. Between this and some antitoxin, two-thirds of the party succeeds in their saving throw. The fighter was stabbed a few times and fails his second save, and is paralyzed. The cleric quickly uses the remove paralysis Liberation domain power. When the spider eater notices that everyone is still moving, it flies off.
The party decides to wait until tomorrow before actually entering the cave. They find a likely camping spot, and set up watches. On the third watch, the wizard hears various galumping around the woods. He wakes the party and casts light, and two insectoid ogres charge the camp at night.
Emroth the fighter rolls a few critical hits while power attacking, and really he's a lot more effective than anyone else. The fact that monsters have to be adjacent to -each other- rather than the fighter means that cleave and great cleave almost never come in handy, and that positioning doesn't really help him. Still, he is complimented on his smackitude by his party members.
The party reaches the ogre cave, and is not surprised when ogres start falling from above. The wizard fireballs them, and three out of the four ogres fail their saving throw. One ogre grapples the mage, and this makes him sad.
In round 2, none of the ogres are adjacent so the fighter can't cleave. He is able to kill the ogre grappling the mage, who uses cold snap (relics and rituals) to no avail. The cleric swings and misses.
Round 3, the wizard starts daze spamming while the fighter starts cleaning up, finishing off the ogres.
There is another fight against a couple of ogres, and the fighter resists an overrun and then sunders two greatspears that are pointing down the hallway. He doesn't completely sever them, but they gain the broken condition. There's a bit of daze spamming, the cleric tries and fails to finish a sunder. The ogre fails to grapple the fighter - defensive combat maneuvers help again. The party takes down the last ogre by a mix of smacking and magic.
Wandering around a bit, the party trip off a trap and take some damage from a block dropping in. The invisible 7th level ogre mage (a la Savage Species) gets a surprise round and basically dodges and returns to invisibility, but can't regenerate quickly enough to make a difference. The ogre mage's cone of cold wreaks great damage on the party, but the fighter charges the mage and inflicts enough damage to take him down.
Summary: Emroth the fighter really shone, but that was because the wizard didn't often let loose with his big guns and the cleric was sticking to melee and not rolling well. Again, the channeling helped the party extend the adventuring day a great deal.
The wizard didn't care for daze spamming, even as he was doing it. He thought it was more effective than the universal power hand of the apprentice.
Monsters were still easy to convert, and I threw in an extra feat or two. It might be useful to have a list of 'suggested feats' for monsters who get extra feats. I've been leaning toward power attack, cleave, or dodge depending on the character. Combining spot and listen into alertness is generally the tricky skill conversion that comes up most frequently.
The character playing the fighter mentioned that the insectile ogres didn't seem to have any weaknesses, which made me think that monsters with strengths and weaknesses are more interesting to fight than big bulky things that just hit and get hit.
He also thought that feints would be handy to move monsters 5', using feinting as a technique for tricking opponents into moving into the position you want them in.
that was last week's game, soon I'll type in this week's results!
"He also thought that feints would be handy to move monsters 5', using feinting as a technique for tricking opponents into moving into the position you want them in."
There is wisdom it what you say, some sort of mechanic for this would help to make fights more mobile.
Okay, I'm documenting a separate Alpha 2 playtest from Monday the 19th, but I can't create a new thread so I'm putting it here.
This adventure was Hasken's Manor, another of the free WOTC adventures. Spoilers ahoy.
The characters were all seventh level, with three characters from the earlier adventure and a newly created tiefling rogue.
The fourth player had created a wizard but we wanted to avoid a two-wizard party. That wizard character started off with a ring of evasion as his bonded item. I'd like to get a clarification about the level requirements to enchant bonded items - normally Craft Ring requires 12th caster level.
The fourth player doesn't really like worrying about sneak attack, and we talked about alternatives for it that were more swashbucklery. I suggested trading off sneak attack for +1 to attack or +1 dodge (alternating), so at 20th level this would be a +5 attack and +5 dodge bonus. He surprised me by asking "So, can I play it this way?" I agreed. So, the rogue in this game has no sneak attack and +7 attack (but +5 base attack bonus) and a +2 dodge bonus to AC.
On to the adventure, which I set in Faerun's Battledale, and retroactively set the last adventure in Mistledale. The town of Haskenport was concerned that the abandoned manor house of Lord Hasken had been inhabited by a small group of hobgoblins. "And, as my gramps always said, where you see one hobgoblin there's a dozen, and where they're a dozen there's a hundred." (Stolen from Classic Monsters Revisited). The manor house belonged to a paladin of Tyr that had founded a local church, and after his death it could not afford to maintain his manor and the town church so the manor had gone to seed.
The party did a bit of shopping, went to bed early and set off in the night to arrive at the manor a little after dawn. When they were a mile away from the mansion, they disturbing a sleeping owlbear and we got to have a random-ish encounter.
Owlbears are only CR 4, so I used an inspired-by-Monte and doubled its hit points, gave it a +4 to hit and +4 to armor class.
Owlbear: tried to attack and grapple, and inflicted a reasonable amount of damage but was never able to land a grapple on the fighter thanks to strength and defensive combat training.
Fighter: Concentrated on power attacking, which was generally effective although he missed a few times
Cleric: Concentrated on melee, and wasn't that impressive damage-wise although she did usually hit. Even the critical hit with a bastard sword was only 8 hit points.
Wizard: Started off with an overly optimistic daze, then moved to using hand of the apprentice with his dagger. This was really about on par with the cleric, thanks to the intelligence bonus to damage.
Rogue: Starts off by throwing a dagger before the owlbear can move, but no sneak attack so it was only a damage. This was the general tenor, that he could hit, wasn't worried about setting up a flank, and didn't inflict much damage.
After the fight, the fighter finished off the owlbear while the cleric channeled energy - excluding the owlbear thanks to Selective Channeling.
After approaching the manor, the rogue stealths in and crawls around the decade-abandoned structure using slippers of spider climb. He spots two ogres and a tall, ugly woman at the back of the manor cooking some meat in the fireplace. When he moves to the second floor, he rolls a 1 and dislodges some of the old slate tiles on the roof. He manages to hide behind the chimney during the resulting alarms and excursions, and the rest of the party stays where they are in the forest over a bowshot away from the manor.
Afterward, the rogue sneaks back to the main party. After some extensive discussion, the party splits up. The rogue returns to the manor house stealthily, and sets up an ambush point in the front yard that includes some vials of oil spread amongst the weeds. The wizard stays in the woods. The (neutral) fighter and (chaotic good) cleric approach the manor in the open, playing the role of paladins of Tyr.
They called out to the house to challenge the group. "Say something paladiny", suggested the cleric. "Save us the rope, you cowards!" yelled the fighter. "More paladiny", replied the cleric.
The party was surprised when a tall, female human barbarian opened the door and yelled back at them. Their legalistic dispute over squatters rights and the presence or absence of ogres did not go well, and ended with the rusty door being slammed in their faces. The party decided to enter the manor, using their map to select the side door into the chapel.
After a brief detour into the still consecrated chapel, where the wizard caught up with them, the party entered the sitting room that had previously held the monsters. No monsters, barbarian, fire, still steaming breakfast. The party challenged the barbarian, who took this opportunity to cast fog cloud.
In the mist, the fighter closed with the annis (still disguised as a barbarian). He damaged her, and she stepped away and called out to her ogre minions. The fighter closed with the ogres, and this left things open for the annis to attack the cleric. The rogue was still outside, and spent a couple of rounds trying to find a non-misty way to return to the rest of the party.
The wizard tried to dispel the fog, but failed his caster check by 1.
Ogres: Only CR 3, they suffered a bit from the miss chance, hit the fighter a few times, but tended to go down pretty easily. They attacked the wizard a few times, but between the fog, mage armor, a good dexterity and the universalist shield power, the ogres never hit him.
Annis: The annis moved to the cleric, and had the power to attack, grapple, and rake if she hit with both claws. She rolled well, inflicted a tremendous amount of damage, and killed the cleric. Soon after, the fighter, wizard, and rogue finished her off.
Cleric: Started with bless, got grappled and used divine power to help her get out of it. She didn't have enough time, but as a result I think that it should be explicit that the Alpha 3 "divine power" adds to your CMB - or that it doesn't, depending on intent. But since it's a strength-check buff, it sounds to me like it should boost CMB.
Fighter: He dealt pretty well with the ogre, but the obscurement in the fog slowed him down a few times. Once he closed with the annis, her small damage reduction wasn't enough to help.
Rogue: Slow to enter the combat, and with the concealment from the mist wouldn't have been able to sneak attack anyway. Definitely disadvantaged by the situation.
Wizard: Switched to orb spells to avoid spell penetration, and used his bonded item to pick a second 4th level orb spell. He inflicted a fair amount of damage on the annis, so that the fighter and rogue could finish her.
After the fight: the party hears a mysterious THUMP from below, and the entire house shudders. Next week, we will investigate what happened.
The encounter - a CR 7 plus two CR 3 ogres - is effectively 1.5 annises, so between an average and a challenging fight. One of the characters did die, but I'm not sure whether that was bad luck, tactics, or something else.
Reactions and feedback:
1) The cleric had fun "till she died". I may experiment with the post-raise rules next week.
2) The wizard had concerns about the writeup for hand of the apprentice (page 85 in alpha 3). As written, it looks like both base attack and intelligence add to damage, instead of intelligence adding to both base attack and damage.
3) The swashbucklery rogue didn't work. Even though the rogue could hit in combat with the higher attack score, the rogue couldn't inflict any serious amount of damage.
4) It looks like there's going to be a serious gap between a good and a bad CMB. The fighter is almost impossible to grapple, but the second-best character (the cleric) is in much worse condition. Not only could we end up in a situation where any grappler who can succeed against the fighter practically can't fail against everyone else, we can end up in a middle range where the grappler can't succeed at the fighter and still can't fail against everyone else.