EGA Pathfinder Alpha 2(3) Playtest
Adventure:Rise of the Runelords: Burnt Offerings
I've recently gotten a small group of friends and acquaintances from our local gamer's meet-up group together to do a long-term playtest of Pathfinder. The plan is play the exisitng adventure paths all the way through, each in turn, under a different DM (but from the same group of people each time), until the thing gets published, and most likely afterwards (this being mostly an excuse to game together). I have not altered the creatures or their statistics beyond the scope of giving them stats that are outright new, or replace a fundemental aspect of the system (such as CMB). This is both because I'm lazy, and so that all playtests can be put up against a known factor when their reviewed, and not my crazy house-ruled version of the adventures.
For this playtest, we are working mostly from the Pathfinder document, but in order to test it's backwards compatibility, I've made the following classes available from the D&D 3.5 publications: Binder (Tome of Magic), Dragon Shaman (Player's Handbook 2), Scout (Complete Adventurer), Totemist (Magic of Incarnum) and Warlock (Complete Arcane), as they either fit roles not covered by Pathfinder, or are unique in other ways. I've also made available feats, spells and prestige classes from various 3.5 sources, to see how their desirability and utility stacks up against those presented in Pathfinder.
HP system Used Initial hit-points are double the standard, maximized. Subsequent hit points are half the standard die size.
House Rules: I've added a few house-rules to the game, mostly covering either areas that do not seem to need additional playtesting, as they are issues that already exist in 3.5, or are good ideas that have been suggested elsewhere;
- Favored Class Rather than giving a bonus hit point, whenever you take a level in one of your favored classes, you gain an extra skill point.
- Background Feats: As mentioned in the Rise of the Runelords Player's Guide, I've allowed the players to select a background feat at first level, though I have expanded the list available to them by looking to other 3.5 books.
- Sorcerer Spells: As I have played sorcerers for years, I have not needed to playtest the continued 'sorcerer tax', and as such, have removed it, allowing sorcerers to gain new spell levels at the same rate as wizards. I also allowed them bonus spells known, but with the most recent Alpha upgrade to 3, I'll be revoking that next session, as the newest one gives them a bit more.
- Magic Items: I've given each PC a minor magic item at first level, and have advised them that they can select one item to be their signature item. They may enhance this one item directly by use of treasure, with the certain by level GP limits, and are less vulerable to being destroyed.
Characters: The following are the characters my players are playing. I'm going to be asking them to send me a full copy of the character sheet, along with a short blurb on their playing style, and any other relevant information, so that it can be taken into account with the reports;
- Halfing Rogue
- Gnome Sorcerer
- Human Fighter
- Gnome Bard
- Currently unknown
Our initial session, following character creation, was a bit on the bumpy side, but that;s primarily due to the fact that only 2 players were able to show up; the Gnome Sorcerer and the Halfling Rogue. We didn't get too far this time around - only the first part was completed, with the Initial Assault, Goblin Pyros and Die Dog, Die encounters finished.
There were no major issues raised by the two players when we talked about it afterwards, but during the playtest, the players both mentioned several times that they'd really like to see some kind of an Action Point mechanic in the game, as there were several times during the game that they were making long sets of bad rolls with a minimal bonus, making some stretches of combat quite boring - Action Points as an optional rule would really help out with this, though granting starting characters greater bonuses to attack would help as well (perhaps by dropping feat prerequisites such as the Weapon Finess +1 BAB).
Another issue that I've noticed in attempting to use Combat Maneuvers is too hard unless it's your specialty. As they are all initially Strength based, carry a size penalty, and have a base DC of 15+, instead of 10+ like AC, characters have a hard time getting one off, and the benefits they grant aren't normally good enough to warrant attempting to use them, unless it's your specialty. This results in everyone else who melees standing around, full-attacking, without spicing it up a bit. My initial thoughts are that the defense should be reduced by 5, and either the size bonus eliminated, with a hard and fast 'can only attempt to CM someone within 1 size category' rule used, characters should be allowed to choose the best of Strength or Dexterity, or the attack of opportunity should be removed in most cases, being afforded only to those who took the various 'Improved X' feats - any one of these would likely remove the punishment that comes with attempting to do something other than smack someone with a sword, and using more than one would likely lead to some very interesting combats - this is only my inital impression. I'm going to play through Skinsaw using the current set-up, and if nothing changes by the end, I'll begin implementing it.
On the positive side, the hit point variant that was available was very useful, keeping my two lonely players alive throughout the encounters with the goblin horde. If they had been 6 and 4 hp weaklings, I don't think I would have even tried to run it that day - I'd still be waiting till next week to write this up. Also, one of the things that really is working out for the sorcerer is her first level ability - it's been much more interesting than her using up her spells and then falling back to a crossbow to do damage - I do wonder what's going to happen at the higher levels, as they don't scale well, and few other abilities are at will, but for now it's just wonderful.
This Playtest took place about 2 weeks ago - I've been slacking on getting it up. The next game is tomorrow, and I'll try to have a report ready Mondayish.