Pathfinder Alpha Playtest - from Poland!


Alpha Release 3 General Discussion

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Here we go, I kicked off a RotRL game using Alpha.

I kinda wished the players would take at least one core class but noooo, they had to go splatbook crazy. Which ended up as a good thing, because there was some major backwards compatibility testing thanks to that.

So here we go, classes first:

DUSKBLADE (PHB 2) - converts just fine. No issues with spell list, player was very glad for cantrip changes. He liked the high CMB and ability to pull off some combat manoeuvres without the 3.5 hassle.

BEGUILER (PHB 2) - same as above. The player was new to D&D so he still doesn't use all Beguiler features, but he learns quickly.

FAVOURED SOUL (CDiv) - pretty much a cleric without turning and with sorcerer-like spell casting, worked just fine.

BINDER (ToM) - ouch. a brick wall with guns on in terms of compatibility. For example, one vestige allowed him pretty much unlimited undead turning. Fine and dandy in 3.5 , but here... unlimited healing ? I had to nerf that feature to 3 + Cha mod uses per day, much to the player's woes.

As for the rest:

SKILLS

We kicked off with Alpha 1 system and we will stick with it until the end of AP to avoid hassle. The players liked the "compacted" skill list very much - Perception, for example.

FEATS

Power Attack and Cleave changes, yay ! A few feats seems underpowered - for example, the Duskblade took Arcane Strike and thinks the WotC version was better. I read somewhere it's going to be buffed and scale with levels - good news...

COMBAT

CMB rocks, the grapple changes rock, the players finally have a clear idea how the extra combat options work and they use them ! We switched to A3 grapple rules - A1 was just too hard to track.

SPELLS

Not much changes in effect yet, as the players are still before having access to Save-or-Die spells or Polymorphs. I love the Identify change, though.

OTHERS

For some reason, I'm in deep love with XP table, because the DMG one scared me away.

The extra HP and Feats boost the PC survivability greatly, but makes some fights rather easy. Funnily enough, out of P1 and P2 the only 2 fights where things got hairy were Yeth Hounds and Shadows, both under Thistletop. Oh well, Shadow Clock is next, and I don't plan to tone Xanesha down, bruhahahahaha... ;)

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