Taliesin and Mordulin's Playtest Report

[Vigil]

This weekend, one third of our group was out of town. The fairer third, actually. So while my wife and the wife of one of the other players were gone, we rolled up new characters and ran through The Demon Within by Stephen Greer. By Memorial Day, we finished the adventure successfully. We played through to the adventure's completion without stopping to rest, so there was no fifteen minute adventuring day here!

On to our observations!

The Paladin

Spoiler:

actually didn't feel very paladiny. The player's comments after the game sessions were that he felt like he was playing a fighter who occasionally pulled off a spell or some other neat trick, and could have possibly played a fighter with gear from Magic Item Compendium to replicate just about everything he was doing. Nevertheless, his Channel Energy was helpful (though overshadowed by the cleric), his smite evils were all used up. Actually, I think he had one left. Also, his Divine Bond never got used. As a standard action, he'd rather just attack. This ability should be a move action to summon, I think.

The Monk

Spoiler:

performed surprisingly well considering all of the flack the class has been getting. I played this character myself, and created an elven monk with a high dexterity and weapon finesse. His attacks were at +17 (which was more than adequate in this adventure at least) normally, but combined with flanks, the cleric's luck domain power, the ranger's hunter's bond, and the paladin granting smites, I often had much higher attack rolls, so accuracy was not an issue at all. I used eight of my ki points and ten stunning fist attempts, which means I still had a few tricks left up my sleeve. Would I have liked more ki points? Sure. But I didn't need them to contribute. Oh, and jumping 50 feet to get past crowds of panicking peasants while my party is slogging through what they consider difficult terrain? Awesome. My damage output with this character was a bit low, averaging fifteen damage a swing, but Gorgon's Fist and Medusa's Wrath more than made up for it. Many times, Mordulin (who GM'ed this game) swore (as in used profanity) and muttered that Gorgon's Fist should allow a save.

The Ranger

Spoiler:

was a GMPC run by Mordulin. To encourage him to post a little more often, I'll let him share his own thoughts on the class.

The Cleric

Spoiler:

still had a lot of fun with the class. Accuracy was his biggest problem, but that's what you get when you play a character with a moderate base attack bonus and use Power Attack. Channel Energy and Turn Outsider saw frequent use, so much so that his Heal spells went to NPC's we came across that had been driven insane. Imagine that, a cleric who's resources were deep enough that he felt confident to use valuable high level healing slots on people who weren't party members! The mind boggles!

Next week, back to Rise of the Runelords!

[Baquies]

Had the player of the Paladin run paladins before? What do they mean when they say "paladiny"? Is it a case that the pathfinder paladin is less paladiny than 3.5 or is it that the class concept in general is lacking something in the players opinion?

[Vigil]

His first paladin, as far as I know. But he's played fighters, rangers, and barbarians. In fact, in our regular playtest, he's playing a dwarf barbarian. And the character feels like a barbarian to him. Rage, power attacks, wild swings for massive damage. It's all there.

[Taliesin Hoyle]

Your thread title caught my eye. Is there another Taliesin out there?

[Vigil]

Sigh. On every other message board out there (hordelings, maxminis, enworld) I go by Taliesin. On these boards, I opted to just use my last name. It seems I forgot that small fact while titling the thread, and now it's too late to edit. Oh well.

[AquabatX]

Baquies wrote:

Had the player of the Paladin run paladins before? What do they mean when they say "paladiny"? Is it a case that the pathfinder paladin is less paladiny than 3.5 or is it that the class concept in general is lacking something in the players opinion?

No...I haven't played a paladin before, so although I don't have an idea on how a 3.5 paladin felt really, just playing the Paladin in general it just felt like a class that tries to be a Cleric and a Fighter at the same time, but falls short of both. Maybe if there wasn't a Cleric in the group I would have felt a bit more useful, but I really didn't need to use any type of lay on hands, the channel positive was weaker until I learned a new spell that made me as effective as the Cleric, and yes..when given the choice to attack or charge up my weapon...I might as well attack since I was already getting around any kind of damage reductions. It also didn't help that I had no confirmed duration of the bond. As far as combat went, I didn't really have a problem persay, but I know I could have been even more effective with all the extra feats a Fighter gets.

So I guess to answer your question: In my opinion the class in general just felt lacking of something to make it unique from the other classes really. Like mentioned in Vigil's first post, it just felt I could have played a Fighter and accomplished the same type of special abilities by using items from Magic Item Compendium

[mordulin]

Well I suppose I should step in and talk a bit about the game.... seeing how I ran it. Backward compatibility ran into a little snag with some of the stat blocks

Spoiler:

The Paladins stats in particular with the change to lay on hands.

but on the whole I was able to have the adventure converted in a little less than an hour of prep time. Not bad at all. I have to agree with an earlier post by Vigil that the xp chart makes things very easy for the dm. I did change two encounters in the adventure.

Spoiler:

I replaced both groups of Chatterer Swarms. As much as I liked these encounters they would have been a tpk for our group with no area effect specialist. Instead I used a group of 3 elite fiendish Girallons for the horse Chatterer encounter and used a 2nd Son of Perdition for the possessed Holy Sentinel.

As to Vigil mentioning about the 15 minute adventure day this adventure seemed to originally be designed to eliminate that need.

Spoiler:

The unlimited healing statue was evidence enough of that, however the extra healing provided by Channel Positive meant that the party only used the statue twice.

I suppose I should also weigh in on the Ranger...

Spoiler:

One of the things I hate about creating a DM PC is trying to keep them in the background so the players don't feel like they are watching the DM play with himself. Early on I found I had to change the way I was playing the Ranger, I optimized him too well and he was beginning to overshadow the others. Against his Favored Enemy and in his Favored Terrain Rangers are monsters. The extra bonus to attack for Favored enemy may be a bit too much. For a ranged Ranger I was able to use Deadly Aim on every attack against my primary Favored enemy and my bonus to hit was still higher than my normal ranged attack bonus. It doesn't help much that the main Favored Enemy was 90% of the enemies that the party faced. Hunter's Bond adding to your allies quickly became my favorite action (allowing me to have the DMPC contribute while allowing the Players to actually be the ones to do the damage.) Hunter's Bond does still need clarification though on its duration, I played it as lasting till the designated target dropped or a new target was chosen. In all honesty after having run this adventure I should have dropped the DMPC but I didn't want to run the risk of TPKing the party because they are one player short (its happened in our games before, especially when I'm running).

Well I suppose thats about all I can think of.

Edit: Just wanted to add a big thanks to Stephen Greer and Tim Hitchcock for this awesome adventure! I only wish I could have used it as an end to a campaign instead of a one-shot.

[hogarth]

AquabatX wrote:

No...I haven't played a paladin before, so although I don't have an idea on how a 3.5 paladin felt really, just playing the Paladin in general it just felt like a class that tries to be a Cleric and a Fighter at the same time, but falls short of both.

Yup, that's how a paladin is supposed to feel, all right! :)

[Baquies]

OK, I was curious if the feeling was something unique to the pathfinder Paladin or not. As someone who was once playing a Dwarven Paladin and had a guy show up with a Dwarven Fighter Cleric one day, I can sympathize.

[mordulin]

Baquies wrote:

OK, I was curious if the feeling was something unique to the pathfinder Paladin or not. As someone who was once playing a Dwarven Paladin and had a guy show up with a Dwarven Fighter Cleric one day, I can sympathize.

In my opinion its not just limited to Pathfinder. The last time I myself enjoyed playing a Paladin was in 2nd edition. 3rd ed made the cleric so much better for a warrior/priest that the paladin was left in the dark.

[Mucus von Spidtle]

mordulin wrote:

Baquies wrote:

OK, I was curious if the feeling was something unique to the pathfinder Paladin or not. As someone who was once playing a Dwarven Paladin and had a guy show up with a Dwarven Fighter Cleric one day, I can sympathize.

In my opinion its not just limited to Pathfinder. The last time I myself enjoyed playing a Paladin was in 2nd edition. 3rd ed made the cleric so much better for a warrior/priest that the paladin was left in the dark.

Using 3.5 rules, I'm playing an Aasimar Paladin (currently lvl 9) through Age of Worms with a Druid, Barbarian/Fighter/Eye of Grumsh(?), Druid/Barbarian (mainly Druid), Wizard, and an Urban Ranger. My paladin uses Sword of Celestia class ability from Dragon mag in place of mount.

Early on I found the Lay on Hands useful in a tight spot but that is now mostly used to keep the paladin up in combat against tough foes who can hit him. The druid and urban ranger can use CLW wands and we have some potions so paladin looks after himself and the odd NPC mostly.

Have use turning very occasionally but our group prefers to kill undead and given the paladin is weaker than the cleric I've taken Divine Shield feat from Complete Warrior and Sacred Vitality from Libris Mortis to use Turn uses to boost survivability in combat instead.

Haven't bothered with Heal skill, leave that to the druid which has come in hand with a certain monster in the AoW campaign.

The Sword of Celestia class ability is more limited than the PRPG version but it has some nice tradeoffs.

In combat I find the Barb/Fighter/Grumsh guy consistently outshines in the damage dept as we don't seem to go through enough combats to use up all his Rage abilities and the Grumsh PrC has some pretty big bonuses. Even his AC seems to compete with my paladin's AC of 22 - 25 (I need a ring of protection I think). Given our DMs propensity for rolling an insane number of very high rolls and 20s it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference what AC we have though.

[Baquies]

Well in 3.0 I made pretty good use of my "mount", selecting a riding dog and choosing to use it as more of a police dog, he would run in an make trip attacks to hold the bad guys in place while my heavily armored dwarf could waddle on over and beat them down. Of course I lost that with the 3.5 poke-mount but then my dwarf was not so slow in armor.

So with that in mind I would like to see the full time real mount as an option or have the summoned mount be usable multiple times per day; summonable 1/2 paladin levels time per day, minimum of 1 hour, no more than 2 x level hours per day. or something.

[thelesuit]

mordulin wrote:

In my opinion its not just limited to Pathfinder. The last time I myself enjoyed playing a Paladin was in 2nd edition. 3rd ed made the cleric so much better for a warrior/priest that the paladin was left in the dark.

I'm currently playing a paladin (okay he is a dedicated 1/fighter 1/paladin 5) and I have yet to feel redundant in a party. I have adventured with clerics and fighters aplenty. I find what this character brings to the table is mostly leadership -- he isn't a combat powerhouse (he holds his own) as either a tank or a DPS fighter. Out of combat he is generally in-charge and the "face" of the party. And once we wade into combat it is his plans and tactics that galvanize the party into action.

I know that D&D has largely become a Squad-level fantasy combat simulator -- but there ARE other aspects to the game and those are the areas where the paladin shines.

On the flip side: paladins should excel in smacking truly evil creatures: undead, demons, etc. Those creatures that are on the opposite end of the morality compass rose should fear facing a high level paladin in combat.

CJ

[primemover003]

I don't know about you but the Hunter's Bond seems to imply it lasts a single round and you need to use a move action each round to reactivate it. Flavorwise it sounds like you're calling out to your party telling them what to do when they attack your favored enemy.