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On Wednesday, we took the wrappers off the shiny NDA on PFS5th at our FLGS game night. Response was mostly positive with some mixed on certain systems, but over all we had a good time. I wanted to report in now that our trial is over and I've had some time to think about it. I hope to get some feedback from others on how their games went.
For those of you who didn't invited in to the beta for PFS5th, here's a rundown of the new PFS5th rules.
Overview
PFS5th is completely new system based on Pathfinder rules for Pathfinder Society. It is an abstract system. It is a game of the theater of the mind. The GM has to be good at describing (in addition to drawing on flip mats) the environment around her. There is a lot of imagination involved, and creativity. Fortunately, it also uses playmats, making it completely compatible with existing PFS materials and scenarios. Characters in Pathfinder work just fine in PFS5th edition (no classes have been released yet).
Since there are no PFS5th events released yet, we played a scenario and applied the upgrade rules for our characters and the scenario.
Since not everyone was aware of the new rules, I shared them with people as we played and situations came up.
PFS Events
In PFS5th, scenarios are replaced by events. Events are like scenarios, but in addition to providing a chronicle sheet, you also get event points. Event points are very important for Rollplaying Checks (see below). You get seven event points for every event (aka, scenario) completed. You also get variable event points for every supplement purchased. There's no computer system set up to track this right now, so the PFS5th guide suggested requiring people to show the book. (However you can only use PFS5th edition books for this, old Pathfinder books and PDFs didn't count.) The guide suggested that a 32 or 64 page supplement would be on the order of 30 points, and hardcover might be more. These points are all additive as a bonus on Rollplaying checks.
Rollplaying Checks
This is probably the most interesting new aspect of PFS5th edition. Whenever you need to do an action, you can describe it as usual, and/or you can make a Rollplaying check. Rollplaying checks are usually made with a d100 (but might not in some circumstances). The most important part of a Rollplaying check is how well you roleplay rolling the check. It's important to remember that roleplaying is important in a rollplaying check: if you roleplay well, the GM is required to add a modifier (positive or negative) depending on how well the player roleplayed the rollplaying check. This can be anywhere from +100 to -100 to the check, but excellent roleplaying of the rollplaying roll may warrant more (or lackluster energy and effort my result in a bigger penalty). Higher numbers are usually better. This number impacts roleplaying aspects of each encounter or d20 roll. Really good roleplayers just roleplay their rollplaying check; some even were able to use d6's or d20's. The best at our table made me really believe that they rolled their rollplaying checks without needing to even use dice.
Rollplaying checks are exclusively for players. NPCs can't make rollplaying checks. GMs simply decide how an NPC rolls their rollplaying check.
There are three kinds of rollplaying checks: Basic, Opposed, and Cooperative (also known as a check-off).
- Basic: When you make a d20 roll, you can also make a rollplaying check to see how good your roleplaying was about making the d20 roll. This is mostly important for social encounters, but really good rollplaying checks in a combat situation can help even a rogue strike an enemy.
- Opposed: When you have an enemy NPC that makes a rollplaying check, a player can oppose that with their own. Think of this like a debate, or an opposed intimidate.
- Cooperative: Cooperative rollplaying checks are the roleplaying equivalent of aiding another. When two players are working together on a single action, they alternate rollplaying checks until they can't roll higher than the previous roll. Both players get to use the final rollplaying check.
As mentioned above, in regular play you get a bonus to your score based on a GM discretion. in PFS5th, in order to make it more fair, you add your event points to the roll to represent your character's growing ability to rollplay.
Action Point System
In PFS5th, the traditional action system has been replace by action points. There are several action points kinds in two categories: standard action points and fast action points.
Standard action points can only be done on your turn.
- Standard Standard action point: You get one of these. Lets you do major actions in combat, like fighting, casting spells, and the like. The PFS5th edition handout didn't go into detail on this, but otherwise it works like a standard action.
- Standard Move action point: You get one of these. Lets you change location, grab something, flip a switch, stand up, and the like. Think of this like a "move" action.
- Standard swift action point: You get one of these. Works like swift actions.
- Standard free action point: these you can do at almost any time on your turn.
Fast action points can be done whenever you like.
- Fast limited action points: Basically equivalent to an AOO. Feats like combat reflexes and class abilities can give you more than one.
- Fast swift action point: Like an immediate action, consumes your standard swift action point on your next turn.
- Fast free action point: you can do as many of these as you want as long as it's not your turn.
Special action points:
- Standard Complex action point: a complex action point is a standard action point that takes a Standard Standard action point and a Standard Move action point, and lets you do something like charge. These action points are analogous to full round actions or one round actions.
It sounds confusing at first, but really, the new action point system was really easy to follow once we started playing.
Movement
PFS5th has a compatible movement system with Pathfinder, so conversion was easy after teaching people how to use it. Instead of simply moving places in combat, you have to make a movement roll. A movement roll is a d20 plus your move speed. If you meet or exceed the DC of movement for an encounter (usually 40, but less for cramped encounters or more for outdoors encounters) you can move. On a grid you still always move your speed, but meeting or exceeding the DC lets you approach or disengage from an opponent when you don't use a grid. You can of course take a standard complex action point to add your speed twice to this roll; small creatures, dwarfs, medium armor wearers, or heavy armor wearers typically need to use standard complex action points to move appropriately.
As an advantage for those who train in it, acrobatics is added to this roll.
Experience Report
We had a group of six that volunteered for this event, and we chose By Way of Bloodcove. This scenario I felt was particularly good due to the many roleplaying, rollplaying, and the open world nature of the scenario. Having run it a few times now it's never run quite the same way.
The players got used to the new rules pretty quickly. It took some of them a while to figure out how to do rollplaying checks, but with quick feedback from me as the GM, they started to get used to it. We had one player who really got into the rollplaying aspect, and even figured out in one encounter that during his rollplaying check-off, he could roll more than just his d100! He ended up rolling 5d6 and using each die as a different value, getting a rollplaying check result of 36,000 ish. It really enhanced the description of his bull rush check.
Combat is as deadly as ever. Most people had played the scenario before, but since we were running it in core mode, everyone could get credit for it again. One had not played before at all, so that person made major decisions. That person decided it was fine to split the party to gather information, but accidentally triggered a combat...and by accidentally, I mean they intentionally triggered it by building a trap igniting it, and setting it off. This trap ended up engulfing most of the enemies, but one of the NPCs survived. This turned out to be the team's undoing: the NPC downed one of the three that split off to this encounter, and a great axe crit brought the other to true dead. Not even the excellent rollplaying could undo that. Fortunately, another player at the table had a free rez boon, and a cleric of Gozreh was handy.
Roleplaying with the new rollplaying system went well. We breezed through several social encounters. A couple of people by this point had really good roleplaying in their rollplaying rolls, and had decided to stop rolling dice altogether and just roleplay the rollplaying roll. Only in one case did I have to apply a negative GM modifier to the rollplaying roll due to poor roleplaying of the player, and that player learned very quickly that it was important to roleplay.
Summary
Overall the trial of PFS5th went just fine.
Everyone got into the new rollplaying system, but this new system added a lot of overhead. While everyone really enjoyed themselves, we went over on time for our five hour timeslot and had to cut the final encounter. The roleplaying opportunities with the rollplaying system is very much appreciated. I'm curious how the event bonus to rollplaying checks will work out in the long run - I'm not sure if I like the "pay to win" roleplaying implications...even if I am already subscribed to all of those book lines. It would be nice if that was incorporated right into the website and my PFS card so I could just show it instead of having to add it all up.
The other question I had was whether or not the event bonus to our rollplaying checks from books applied to only a single character or all characters; the document I had on this system was unclear. It might be a little unfair if they apply to all characters - a new character would automatically get a big bonus to rollplaying checks which wouldn't really be fair for new players. We might want to limit book event bonuses to rollplaying checks to only a single character or a fixed reuse limit, maybe based on GM stars. This might also be a way to curb additional resources: you can only use additional resources from books that you have an event bonus from. (But then that opens up a second question: if you have MULTIPLE physical/pdf copies of the book, can you get multiple boons? Might be a good way to boost sales!) Either way, I would expect to see some kind of standard form for each book, like a chronicle, that says you get that event bonus.
Combat, skills, and other unchanged game related components work well with the new systems. It was a transparent transition, which I really appreciate as a GM, and our players appreciated since they didn't have to rebuild or do any mechanical changes of any kind to their characters.
The out of combat movement system we didn't use much. I like the idea of adding acrobatics to movement, could make for some interesting rollplaying opportunities (like a skill focus/acrobatic dwarf getting +5 and +10 on movement checks in addition to skill ranks). If the PFS5th leadership wants to do this, you may want to consider just making acrobatics a bonus to move speed in addition to other abilities it provides.
The terminology updates were a mixed bag. The action point system description of each action point I felt was a little clearer about when you can and can't do something (standard vs fast). I like the inclusion of "complex" instead of "full round" action (makes it distinct from one round actions.) I was uncomfortable with how the action point names for each action are so long (much harder to explain to people how you get a standard standard action point and standard move action point than "move and standard" action).
I'm not sure about some of the balance changes. I like making "Advanced Class Guide", "Pathfinder Unchained", and the upcoming "Occult Adventures" the new core rulebooks - this will really spice up the society's character range. Potion and scroll crafting is much appreciated as a new character option to compete with alchemists. However, going to "firearms everywhere" is going to make a lot of people mad, even if it does "even the playing field" as the guide said. I forsee a lot of one level dips for the firearm training 1 at level 1 for gunslinger. Introduction of LE as a playable alignment is going to cause all sorts of headaches, but NE as well is just going to make people mad, even if they have to "explore, report, cooperate" to remain in the society. (Atonement are going to be flying like hotcakes.) Thank you for keeping away from CE. Both of these might need to be rethought to keep Pathfinder Society as an all-inclusive game.
In conclusion
I think PFS5th has a ways to go, but it's shaping up nice. I'm sorry to say we only got one day to test this (last Wednesday to last Wednesday was a very short beta period) but I'm glad we got the opportunity to try it out. I appreciated the opportunity to participate in this beta test, and I'd be happy to do it again. As always, I'm looking forward to whatever comes next! :)
Chief Technical Officer
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It was originally posted in the PFS Adventure Card Guild forum. And somebody moved it to the card game homebrew forum probably because they were as puzzled by it as everyone else seems to be.
Not that i have any idea what the approproiate forum is for what’s apparently an April Fool’s Day post that missed April Fool’s Day by several days, and will probably confuse and upset people who don’t get the “joke”…. but it certainly isn’t the card game forum, so I'm moving it somewhere else.
