| apprenticewizard |
preamble :
For one week, none of us read this forum to not be influenced by what other people can post.
We played this playtest as a mini adventure path with scenarios at level 3, 5, 7, 9 and 12.
Characters were created as level 3 PCs, we choose 2 bloodragers, one warpriest and one skald for the test.
PCs are living in a small group of houses, that you can hardly call a village, not far from a big town. This village is full of foresters and their family. For several days, a group of bandits decided to attack all merchants moving through the forest and cut the road between the town and PCs' village. Many supplies are running out, so the PCs decided to investigate and put a stop to the activity of this group of bandits.
After several days of search in the forest, they found one group of bandits. After a fight against enemies hidden in trees or behind bushes, they interrogated prisoners. They learned that this group is just part of a bigger group living in a cave. They walked there and eliminated the bandits in this dungeon of 4 rooms. They found evidences that this group is lead by someone hidden in the ghost market and that this bandits orders are to cut commercial roads to the nearby town and make city guard patrols run out of town as often as possible, but no fight against city guards.
PCs decided to go to town to learn more about this ghost market and the leader.
Once in town, PCs decided to be separated in two groups to learn informations : one went to the city guard, showed the evidence found in the cave, other group investigated in town, talked to people to understand how works underground market in this town (maybe ghost market is just the name of the underground market in this town).
They both learned that the ghost market is really the name of the underground market and even found someone ready to show them entrance to the market for a "fair" price.
Once inside the ghost market, they investigated to find the boss of the bandits, missed some social interactions with NPCs and fought several fights they could have avoided but they found the location of the boss. they fought him and his minions.
Once captured, he explained he's working for 3 merchants who want to make a coup and take power. While the PCs are bringing him to the city guard, they walked near the river which runs in middle of the town. The boss jumped in water and disappeared under water. As no PCs took ranks in swim, they watched him swim, cursed against themselves and decided to investigate the 3 merchants case.
The PCs decided to visit the houses of the merchants, where they work and to follow the merchants for one week. They began by following the merchants and found nothing, then they visited the storehouses (6 small dungeons of 3 rooms with no real dangers) and found nothing. So they decided to visit the 3 houses in the same night to prevent warning between the merchants.
They visited the first house (dungeon of 10 rooms, full of traps), this house is just a decoy for enemies of the merchant. They found the real house (dungeon of 4 rooms) but no evidence or information.
Second house (dungeon of 8 rooms) was a piece of cake, no real guards but still no evidence of information.
Third house was harder (dungeon of 6 rooms). This merchant have human guards and undead ones with a necromancer wizard as chief of security. The necromancer, once captured, explained that he didn't know anything about this coup, but that his employer talked about something big in two days when the night falls. PCs went to bed, they decided to explain all this to the city guard in the afternoon.
After sleeping, the PCs walked in the streets to the city guard building when they heared shouts and cry. They ran and found a troll, 3 city guards dead and people injured. They attacked the troll. After the fight, they learned that around 20 trolls are free in the city and destroying everything, killing people as if under rage. The PCs ran through the whole city, fighting trolls all day long and most part of the night. In the morning, they decided to investigate this attack on the city and begant to collect informations about spellcasters with enough power to charm trolls. They found that outside the necromancer they already fought, only 3 spellcasters are powerful enough to be responsibles of this attack, but none is strong enough to have done this alone.
After research, they found where this spellcasters are hidden (dungeon of 6 rooms), fought them and discovered that this spellcasters used the trolls as a decoy to prevent city guard to act while they tried a coup against the noble leading the city. The spellcasters wanted to prevent the noble to join church of asmodeus, to sacrifice innocents and to open a portal to Hells.
With this knowledge, and the information learned from the necromancer, the PCs went to rest to get their spells back and attacked the noble castle to stop opening of the portal before the night. The final battle was a big battle royal with the PCs, the noble and his guards, clerics of asmodeus and devils who entered this plane through the portal, and the merchants and their payed assassins. Every group fought all other groups and fights went to all rooms of the castle.
At the end of the fight, PCs had closed the portal, killed the noble, the clerics of asmodeus, put under arrest one merchant (others were dead), created an office of mayor and ran away of this corrupted city to go back to their village and back to their family and peaceful life.
This is our group of characters for the playtest
human oracle (metal, tongues) 2/bloodrager (aberrant) 10
job : melee tank, damage
1 curse : tongues, revelation : armor mastery, tribal scars (raptorscale), extra revelation : dance of the blades
2 oracle bonus spell : lead blades
3 fast movement, bloodrage, bloodline power : staggering strike, power attack
4 uncanny dodge
5 raging vitality
6 bloodline power : abnormal reach, bloodcasting
7 improved uncanny dodge, iron will
8 bloodline feat : combat reflexes
9 DR 1/-, bloodline bonus spell : enlarge person, arcane strike
10 bloodline power : aberrant fortitude
11 bloodline feat : improved initiative, improved critical (falchion)
12 DR 2/-, bloodline bonus spell : see invisibility
elf barbarian 2/bloodrager (fey) 10
job : melee tank, damage
1 fast movement, rage, fey foundling
2 rage power : ground breaker
3 fast movement, bloodrage, bloodline power : confusing critical, power attack
4 uncanny dodge
5 raging vitality
6 bloodline power : leaping charger, bloodcasting
7 improved uncanny dodge, iron will
8 bloodline feat : combat reflexes
9 DR 1/-, bloodline bonus spell : entangle, arcane strike
10 bloodline power : blurring charge
11 bloodline feat : improved initiative, improved critical (elven curved blade)
12 DR 2/-, bloodline bonus spell : hideous laughter
human fighter 1/warpriest (erastil, blessings : good, plant) 11
job : healer, archer
1 point blank shot, precise shot, rapid shot
2 blessing (good - holy strike, plant - name unknown maybe entangle strike), focus weapon : longbow, bonus feat : deadly aim
3 channel energy, improved initiative
4 bonus feat : blind-fight
5 sacred weapon, combat expertise
6
7 bonus feat : moonlight stalker, toughness
8 sacred armor
9 extend spell
10 bonus feat : manyshot
11 blessing (good - battle companion, plant - battle companion), improved critical (bow)
12
human fighter 1/skald 11
job : face, knowledge, archer
1 point blank shot, precise shot, rapid shot
2 bardic knowledge, raging song, scribe scroll
3 well-versed, deadly aim
4 rage power : reckless abandon
5 toughness
6 spell kenning
7 rage power : lesser spirit totem, improved initiative
8 lore master
9 manyshot
10 rage power : unexpected strike
11 dirge of doom, improved critical (bow)
12
Here is what we can say about this playtest :
Bloodrager
Nice class but which caster level is a bloodrager ? As this class seems to work like paladin and ranger, we ruled its caster level to be bloodrager level - 3. We haven't found if bloodragers can cast spells out of bloodrage, so we ruled they can.
Bloodlines are good, except some are weaker than others. Fey bloodline is clearly under-powered with other bloodlines (check lvl 8 ability and arcane bloodline lvl 4 ability as an example). Bloodlines should be revamped to be around same power.
Bloodragers should be able to forget some spells and learn new ones maybe every 3 or 4 levels after 4th.
Bloodragers have a problem with their spells : not enough out of combat ones, while combat ones are not that great to use. If bloodragers could have something like spellstrike from magus, or something like blessing of rune (spell-storing weapon) from warpriest usable 3 + cha bonus per day, it would resolve their problem.
Bloodragers don't really need DR, uncanny dodge, improved uncanny dodge, they have spells way better than this abilities. We think they should be traded for blessing of rune (spell-storing weapon) from warpriest.
Warpriest
Hum ... warpriest seems like a cleric under anti-steroids : traded spells for feats, channel energy is too weak to heal people and to damage undeads, lvl 10 blessings need more diversity (our warpriest took erastil and all lvl 10 blessings are the same : battle companion; animal, good, law, plant got the same one).
If warpriest are losing spells, channel energy and got domain-like blessings but with less diversity, they should get full BAB for the favored weapon of their god and/or spontaneous casting in addition of the feats.
Other than that, the class seems to do its job, weaker than a cleric, but still works. If the class go to print like that, no one in our group will play it and will play a crusader cleric instead.
Skald
Nice archetype for the bard, but not that great as a new class. We still are trying to find what this class brings that a bard doesn't.
Skald need a new list of weapons usable, the one they have actually feels too much like bard and not enough like barbarian (a skald with a rapier or a whip ??? please no).
Giving rage powers to other people is nice but choice is limited, new rage powers usable by skald could be useful.
How works raging song with bloodrage ?
Other abilities of skald work nicely.
This playtest took 5 evenings and we stopped our test at 12, so we can't talk about high levels and capstone. sorry.