Kae's CotCT Playtest Report and Campaign Journal

[KaeYoss]

Warning: Curse of the Crimson Throne spoilers abound!

The cast

Human Paladin of Torag, using the Paladin Upgrade.

Aims for the biggest armour around (though so far only has banded mail) and fights with an Earthbreaker (which I let him use as his deity's favoured weapon).

Will opt for the weapon rather than the horse.

Dwarf Barbarian, using the alternate rules for Rage and Rage powers.

Starts with an outrageous amount of HP due to con 18. Fights with a pikeaxe (racial weapon, I think from Races of Stone; reach weapon) or a dwarven waraxe.

Halfling Sorcerer, Celestial Bloodline

Female Human Cleric of Abadar, Domains Glory and Healing (exception, usually not on the list). GM Character.

Is played by myself as a supporter, hence the healing domain. Will preferrably buff, protect, and heal others rather than engaging in direct combat. Might be replaced by a bard later when I find that the Paladin (with the new bard's help) can keep the party patched up well enough.

House Rules
Beyond using the alternate Barbarian and Paladin, I have a small number of house rules in effect:

Weapon Finesse is automatic

Paladins and Rangers cast standard action spells as free actions

All spontaneous casters get Eschew Materials

Favoured classes always grant bonus skill points, not bonus hit points.

Monks can get Agile Manoeuvres and Defensive Combat Training as bonus feats

Everyone can potentially deal with every trap.

Trapfinding now grants an automatic check, like elves' secret door detection.

Character generation and starting equipment

25 Purchase Method, HP are average (rounded up).

1st-level HP are average (rather than full) plus 1 virtual Bonus Humanoid HD (i.e. extra HP equal to 5+con, no other benefits for the HD)

Players don't have to keep track of what I call Standard Equipment (rope, torch, that sort of thing. The informal agreement is to keep things reasonable, and never had a problem with it) and are assumed to have it.

Players don't have to keep track of expenses for floor & board, or for ammunition (at all, they don't have to count the arrows they have)

Players can have weapons for about 300gp, and armour/other protective gear for about 250gp.

They can choose to have either a masterwork weapon; a masterwork armour and shield; or another masterwork item or masterwork items for up to 300 gp

50 gp on top of all that.

Character/Campaign Status
Characters have so far cleared out the Fishery, returned Ileosa's brooch to her, and enlisted with the Guard. From the Turmoil quests, I let them save the young nobleman and get Grau sobered-up. At the end of the session, they advanced to second level, but they hadn't had a chance to use their new abilites yet.

General Observations
Cleric

The changes to Turn Undead/Channel Energy sure came in handy, as Lyra, the Prettiest Walking Band-Aid Ever, was able to heal several scratches without resorting to her actual spells.

Also, the ability to give everyone within 30 feet of her a small boost (1d6 so far) came in handy when she wanted to get the orphans a minor medical treatment.

Haven't used any domain abilities yet.

Sorcerer

The Celestial Bloodline's Heavenly Fire has shown its weaknesses as the halfling saw himself confronted with a dog and later the spiders, as they all were neutral - and thus immune to the effect.

I'd say that the choice of affecting neutral targets with eather ability (at half strength maybe) would help, since depending on the adventure, the sorcerer might get no use out of his all-day-long ability.

Alternately, an increase to 1d8, to reflect its limited usefulness, might be in order.

Barbarian

So far, we didn't get to test rage powers at all, so reports for this will follow.

Rage in general seemed more useful than in 3.5, though, because the barbarian was able to rage in several short fights now, something that wouldn't have been possible under 3.5 - and people often hoarded their few uses for big battles, especially at low level. Now, they will be less inhibited in their use of the barbarian's signature ability. A welcome and useful change.

Paladin

Again, the changes to the class (both from Pathfinder in general and from the Upgrade Design Focus thread) didn't get into play that much, due to the low level. He also didn't use his smite evil yet, though it seems a welcome change on paper.

Increased wis bonus hasn't come into play so far, so I can't say too much about it. I guess it is offset by Paladins' lower wis (since they don't need it for spellcasting anymore, and they have enough other abilities to tend to without wis).

Changes to detect evil were very welcome, since it can now be used the way many have been trying to use it during 3e days.

Monsters

Couldn't find tiny spider venom on the list of poisons in beta (for the Drain Spiders), so I extrapolated from the poisons that are in the list, giving it a duration of one round (i.e. a single spell). Can't say too much yet about the changes to poison yet, but no one complained about the lack of a second save a minute later...

Issues looming on the horizon

Will have to see how I adjudicate the Church of Abadar's insistense to get paid for all healing services and the use of channel energy.

[Gray]

What alternate rules were you using for the Paladin and Barbarian? I assume you are using something other than Beta, and there are so many alternate versions out there.

I'm interested in seeing how your group does.

Edit: I found those alternate rules as soon as I posted this. So now I'm even more interested in seeing how your group does. Get back to playtesting :)

[KaeYoss]

Gray wrote:

Get back to playtesting :)

Will do when that time of respite from living hell arrives. I call that time "weekend"

[KaeYoss]

Next session's over, and I have more to report.

First, change of cast:
The dwarf ranger is gone, having been replaced, what eventually became a gnome bard! So now, instead of some insight into the new barbarian powers, we'll get a look at the bard.

Also, the sorcerer was absent, so no new insights on him.

Scope:
The party continued with Edge of Anarchy, cleaning out All the World's Meat, putting the thugs through the mincer (not literally), and afterwards obtaining scandalous information on a certain ambassador by non-violent means - well, semi-violent.

The players went all the way through level 2 in the session (leveling up at the very end, like last time).

Classical Musings:

Bard:
His inspire courage ability was a big help in several instances, but he hasn't had the opportunity to properly test the other abilities.

His hideous laughter spell also helped against the 4 thugs in the butchery.

The main point of critique is that, especially at these low levels, there are too few uses of bardic performance. I agree with the player here. My suggestions of increasing the number of uses to level + cha, and making inspire courage an at will ability were welcomed, but we haven't implemented them yet.

We await an update to the bard with baited breath.

Paladin:
The new and improved detect evil continues to be useful, especially as a quick check before using smite evil.

The smite's AC bonus came in handy and is a welcome addition. The attack and damage bonus were useful as well - in the one instant where the paladin actually hit (rotten dice luck more than character incompetence). The other additions - more damage to fiends and undead, smite lasting rounds, and so on - aren't really available yet, so I can't comment on them. He did use it on an AoO once, I think, so there's an extra benefit as well. Ware the smiter!

Being able to use lay on hands as a swift action in himself was quite welcome, too - a quick health boost without the need to stop fighting or bother the party cleric. I wonder whether making the basic lay on hands work on everyone as a swift action at higher levels might be appropriate.

Cleric:
Not much new to tell here. Channel energy continues to be useful as an extra healing boost in combat, and the Selective Channeling feat is nigh-indispensible when fighting living critters. I'd suggest making it part of channel energy, but on the other hand, I always thought clerics don't have enough feats to select from, so there's something for them. to choose.

Domains continue to be useful. The healing domain's rebuke death power came in quite handy when they felled the butchery thugs but wanted to bring them back alive (of course, the thugs will probably think otherwise - a fast death in combat would be preferrable to a public execution by torture; murder's bad enough, making cannibals out of people in those dark times is worse, and the crowd screamed for blood.)

Getting an extra cure light wounds was useful, as was the divine favour.

Journal

The fight against the 4 thugs in the butchery allowed everyone to try out new powers: The paladin got to heal himself but keep hitting, and he got to try out his smite (though he missed). The cleric was able to heal herself and her allies without healing the thugs in the process. And the bard got to inspire everyone while firing away with his crossbow, and at one time ROFL-ing one of the thugs (hideous laughter). Afterwards, the priestess got to save their hides with her domain at will power.

In the fight against veric, his extra +1 AC from armour training saved him from hurt one or two times, but in the end, he was felled from a crit with the earth breaker (a hit that would have killed him if not for the extended death threshold - and since the playres wanted him alive, they were quite happy of that).

The next mission was only semi-violent: In the Spider King's court, they decided to negotiate instead of running in guns blazing (so to speak). Their combined good diplomacy ranks (everyone in the party - at least those who were there that session, and I think the sorcerer, too - has diplomacy and a charisma of at least 16!) gave them a good start, and the rest they did with a trio of knivesies matches by the paladin (against two thugs and a knivesies champion) and a small bribe of only 200gp.

The knivesies were a good opportunity to try the revised grapple rules. I degreed that they were both grappling without chance to break free, due to the leather strap.

The DCs were a bit on the high side, but I guess that's OK, since you don't want it to be too easy to grapple people.

There are several questions here:

The part about what it means to grapple others, and be grappled by others, could be explained a bit better - So you get a +5 if the enemy breaks his hold, but what about the other way around? You're both grappled, right? Can you grapple right back at once? Can you use all the options? If he doesn't brake the grapple, will you get the +5 bonus in subsequent rounds?

If you decide that you don't want to keep grappling the guy you just grabbed, but now he wants to hold on, will the grapple end, or do you have to break the grapple?

If you pin someone, is it still possible to stop him from talking (aside from taking the time to gag him)?

What about using weapons? Any weapons? There's no mention. I know using a greatclub will be problematic, but what about a dagger? punching dagger? Spiked gauntlet? Some lighter weapons should work, at least by accepting a -4 for not using both hands.

Speaking of free hands: Will not using both hands also decrease the DC to grapple you?

Finally, I think all the things you can and can't do during a grapple should be explained in the grapple section, including spellcasting and all that.

[KaeYoss]

Another session.

Cast
The sorcerer was absent - again - so we have a Bard, a Cleric, and a Paladin

Level Range
3rd level, turning 4th in the dungeon

Campaign Range
Hunt for Trinia, Dead Warrens, Execution Scene

Complaints and observations

While using hideous laughter, I thought about spells that take you out of commision for several rounds: Those spells should always allow another save (as a full round action) each round, especially at low levels, lest one unlucky die roll takes you out of comission. I spontaneously introduced this house rule when our bard managed to be affected by Trinia's hieous laughter spell.

The chase scene was cool! In fact, something like that should be in the running the game section of PFRPG! If used in moderation, it can be a nice respite from normal combat encounters and map-based battles.
I expanded the obstacle list (since there are no real acrobats in the game, and most of the rolls came down to acrobatics in the end) to include unfriendly Shingles squatters (intimidate), grumpy pseudodragons (diplomacy), dibious help (sense motive), sleeping chokers (stealth), flocks of crows (handle animal) and even a waking choker (attack roll versus AC).

The system can be varied by a different set of challenges, a different number of event sites (which can be a different distance from each other), and different ending conditions.

Grapple. The players complained about grapple, and manoeuvres in general: They liked the old grapple rules, and think that combat manoeuvres are too hard to accomplish, especially at low levels, due to the DC of 15+. We'll try to lower it to 10 next time to see how that works out.

They further complained about the new size mods, which they think should be bigger, at least for grapple.

Personally, I prefer the lower mods, since a small character (especially one without a big BAB) facing a large or larger character isn't totally screwed this way.

The bard's player seems to take to this character - which you can see by the vigor with which he looks through splat books for stuff to boost his character. It seems the playtest of that class is secure.

So far, I allowed him a feat from Complete Something that allows him to cast spells during bardic music, which is something I feel should be possible without any feat, anyway.

He'll later take a Versatile Performer (that's its name I think) that allows him to use one type of perform for other types, i.e. max one perform skill and use them all. I think this helps to keep the requirements for bardic music reasonable

Also, there's a feat that replaces concentration (well, spellcraft right now) with perform for concentration checks. I don't know whether I'd have allowed that during 3.5, but since I think that concentration should be a caster level check + key ability rather than spellcraft, anyway, I'm going to allow it.

The new variant Knowledge DCs to identify critters did come in handy in a couple of cases (especially a Korvosan recognising a Otyugh)

The paladin's new detect evil continues to be handy, though he keeps forgetting that he can smite evil.

Lay on hands has also been quite useful for the paladin, though he hasn't been able to use its newest power, Channel Energy, yet.

The Cleric did get to use it, to great effect - healing your friends while blasting undead to ash is funny. Just one thing: [b]Move the rules![b] The description should be in the cleric description.

Once again, my players asked for an Athletics skill, to combine swim and climb (and maybe put jump back in there, with escape artist possibly becoming part of acrobatics)

[Treyu]

KaeYoss wrote:

The bard's player seems to take to this character - which you can see by the vigor with which he looks through splat books for stuff to boost his character. It seems the playtest of that class is secure.

So far, I allowed him a feat from Complete Something that allows him to cast spells during bardic music, which is something I feel should be possible without any feat, anyway.

He'll later take a Versatile Performer (that's its name I think) that allows him to use one type of perform for other types, i.e. max one perform skill and use them all. I think this helps to keep the requirements for bardic music reasonable

Also, there's a feat that replaces concentration (well, spellcraft right now) with perform for concentration checks. I don't know whether I'd have allowed that during 3.5, but since I think that concentration should be a caster level check + key ability rather than spellcraft, anyway, I'm going to allow it.

I'm the Bard.

The Feat is from Complete Mage, it is called Melodic Casting and it replaces Concentration with Perform and adss the ability to cast during perform.

Versatile Performer does not max every Perform skill. Only one per Intelligence Modifier.

Until now I can say that I really like the Bard and most of the changes in PFRPG

[KaeYoss]

At long last, another session, and another test.

Level Scope: They startet late 4th, and finished with a levelup to 6th.

Adventure Scope: Started with Seven Days to the Grave, and went all through parts 1 to 3, and halfway through part 4 (Did A, B and C).

Report:

Interesting session, in that it took us 8 hours to get to the first fight (though it was 8 game hours, which means there was time spent getting food, eating food, feeding lung cancer, and talking off topic.)

From the start, they took an unhealthy interest in an innocent incident that had nothing to do with them (i.e. the whole plague ship incident). The paladin even took a dive down there (but was scared away by a bunch of finless fishes - wuss!). Though he did dive down there mostly naked (i.e. without the big, heavy armour), he liked how the penalty to swim checks wasn't so big any more).

Speaking of armour: Since he's a paladin of Torag, he took craft ranks. I still think the numbers are off there. He started crafting a mw heavy steel shield. His bonus to the skill is +9 (includes a trait bonus), so that means that even a regular shield takes a whole week to craft. And the masterwork part takes a month!

My idea would be to cut the target number you need with your extended skill checks. Instead of working towards the base price in sp, work towards the cost in sp (i.e. a third of what you had to get before).

[KaeYoss]

Wait, I wasn't done yet.

They pooled the money to save Brienna, since the party cleric was not of sufficient level to cast remove disease (and the paladin is even worse off there). The party cleric would have been in the same predicament, anyway, since she's Abadaran.

While escorting Trinia out of the city, they engaged in some ludicrous conspiracy theories about the identity of Blackjack, seriously believing that Vencarlo's the Hero.

One part I really found funny was their theory about the plague's origin: They thought that the ship was manned by undead (they saw the cover), who let themselves sink to the river bottom and then walked out of the river to infect people. I found that part really funny in light of the whole situation.

At the orientation meeting to meet the shiny new knights the Queen has put to the city's service, and the new physicians, the paladin got a kick out of using detect evil the new way. I think he really liks that change.

In the fight against the vampire spawn, the new channel energy again proved very useful, as most of the time, at least half of the spawn was out of commision from being frightened, plus she added to the damage output. The new smite evil was very useful in that fight, since it really increased the damage output AND saved the paladin's neck when some attacks missed because of the AC bonus (so there was no level drain)

The perfumery they handled quite well, even managing to get the crowd on their side for parts of the verbal duel between the bard, the paladin, and the snake oil saleswoman. They did get some of the stuff and got it to some QPs and the church of Abadar for testing - and meanwhile, Vendra skipped town, since she was sure the jig was up. They let her get away, but they did accomplish the primary objective by making it known the cure is phony.

Finally, there were some more real fights, against various wererats and their leader, where smite evil again came in useful.