Yoda8myhead's RotR Playtest - Session 1 Notes

[Mark Moreland]

Several issues were raised over the course of character creation and play, as well as some general observations on how the new system functions.

For characters with low skill points per level, there was some disappointment at being unable to pepper their class skills with a +1 here and a +2 there as one could do with the x4 skill points in 3.5. While this more than balances out in the long run, up until third level it is a hindrance to those characters wanting to be mildly skilled in a lot of things. It is especially noticeable in the trained-only skills, like knowledge, which one can use with only a single rank, but can't without any.

Grappling is now harder to initiate, but once you succeed it's harder for the grappled to break. At first level, against small creatures, it worked extremely well when done by the half-orc monk. Everyone grappled easily became pinned and couldn't break out from there. Questions regarding this is how one reverses a grapple, whether one no longer enters another's square, and how the grappled or pinned condition affects ranged attacks. Also, it would be nice to have the grapple and pinned conditions printed in the combat section so that one can easily reference when reviewing the grappling rules without turning tons of pages.

One question about bardi knowledge came up during conversion of an NPC. Does the bard's free rank from bardic knowledge count as a rank in a class skill, granting the +3 bonus? Can it stack with additional ranks, or is that skill still limited to one rank per level, regardless of whether it comes as the free point from bardic knowledge or the character's skill point pool?

I was worried that the double hp option would greatly overpower the PCs, but with one player being dropped to -9, I realize that it was a necessity to bump up first level hp. It really sucks to die on the first session. Additionally, had it not been for Color Spray the battles might have gone very differently. The fact that this was an unaltered SRD spell supports the backwards compatibility of the game as it stands.

Converting monsters and NPC's from 3.5 to PFRPG was a lot harder than I expected, but mostly because I kept rebuilding everything from scratch. Once I realized that BAB, saves, AC and most other mechanics don't change, it was a lot easier to just calculate CMB, and re-allot skills and feats. Class features have changed more for some classes than others. Clerics and druids have the most to change, but for most classes they are pretty simple to do.

[Mark Moreland]

In our second outing, we did no combat, and instead explored the town of Sandpoint.

Social encounters seem not to have changed at all in the revision, so backwards compatibility from a roleplay perspective looks good.

We were surprised at the lack of mention of an elf's "trance" replacing sleep. Has this been removed from the new rules?

I guess that's about it from session 2. Session 3 tomorrow night should present quite a bit more, as we should be getting to quite a bit of combat and thus, more use of the altered rules.

[Selgard]

For the Alpha:

Any rule that hasn't been replaced or specifically omitted is still in existence.

This should go towards elves and their sleep (or lack of it), imo.

-S

[Shisumo]

It's worth noting that "trance" as opposed to sleep is actually not part of the SRD - the SRD racial description makes no mention of it.

Whether Golarion elves get a break on sleeping I don't honestly know, but I wouldn't assume that the racial description is automatically lacking.

[David Fryer]

yoda8myhead wrote:

One question about bardic knowledge came up during conversion of an NPC. Does the bard's free rank from bardic knowledge count as a rank in a class skill, granting the +3 bonus? Can it stack with additional ranks, or is that skill still limited to one rank per level, regardless of whether it comes as the free point from bardic knowledge or the character's skill point pool?

The way that I have handled this is that they do indeed stack, just like any racial skill bonuses stack. However, while the bardic knowledge feature does let you use skills untrained, it does not grant you a trained bonus unless you have put ranks into the skill. As is you are almost as good as a non-bard who has put ranks into it anyway.