Scythia's Struggles: Playtest Log 01


General Discussion


Setting Info (irrelevant to playtest, included for those curious)

Spoiler:
In an alternate Golarion, the Starstone shattered because it delivered its final apotheosis. The final successful trial attempt was made by a wise and experienced Orc who had the dream of bringing his people together to cooperate for a better future. Meanwhile the shattering led to unrest and flare-ups of conflict between human kingdoms, nations, and empires, fearful of what such an event might portend. In time the humans started warring, and steadily more were drawn into the conflict. While the humans fought each other and grew weaker, a prophet arose among the Orc tribes that brought word of the new god offering glory and prosperity. The disparate tribes began to unite, and the shared bonds of worship and ritual shaped the forming culture, giving them discipline and purpose. When the Orc legion began to move upon the human cities, the humans were caught completely off guard. Humans were both weakened by their ongoing conflict, and too embroiled in the pettiness of that conflict to cooperate with recent enemies. Against the ferocious zeal of the Orc legions, as well as the tactical insight of their great prophet, the human lands fell like a house with a collapsing foundation.

The playtest game is set 25 years after the final city fell. Orcs have built a mighty empire ruling all of the once human owned lands. They practice a henotheistic faith, with their Orc god as the supreme divinity, and all other gods seen as lesser/subservient. In this empire, Orcs have full legal status and rights. Orc ally groups (goblins, ogres, bugbears, hobgoblins) that gave support during the war have near full status and full rights. Most other groups (including elves, dwarves, and gnomes) have limited status, and limited rights. Humans, and any group seen as human-tainted (such as half-elf, and oddly halfling) have no status other than those kept as property, and no rights. The exception is half-Orcs, as religious teachings say that such individuals can be redeemed from their state through faith. As such half-Orcs enjoy the status of allies, so long as they keep the faith, and don't act against Orcs. Free humans, in a near complete reversal, primarily persist only on the frontiers and fringes of the land, mostly living in crude often nomadic encampments and constantly on guard against incursions from Orc adventurers. The playtest game begins with the PCs in one such village.

The majority of the first session was taken up by chargen. The initial process of making characters went pretty smoothly, but upon equipment, the first common issue arose: each player in turn asked what the L meant for a bulk entry. Having a small key with each table could be helpful. The next snag appeared when filling out values on the character sheet. The player were confused by what the prof value was and how it interacted with training level. One player had attempted to find information in the skills section (they are a longtime player so they recognize "trained" as a term from skills in the previous edition), but of course it isn't there. Overall, the players found the layout of the book confusing and difficult to navigate for the systems information they needed to stat character sheets (redundancy of simple but essential information would go a long way, like with the entry listing what modifiers affect a roll, a small box saying "remember, proficiency= lv-2 untrained, lv trained, lv+1 expert, lv+2 master, lv+3 legendary" would go a long way. Once I explained what the prof value was, and how it mixed with training level, they understood it.

We just had time for a quick intro afterwards, and one combat. The extra HP compared to the previous edition did go a long way to making the first level have less risk of being instantly fatal. A single party level +1 enemy was a significant challenge, but that was due more to rolling (the enemy rolled a crit against a PC as a second attack after a successful regular first attack.) Fortunately, the party had a cleric with energy channel Heal available. This did lead to another spot of confusion though, as the dying entry did not make any mention of how/if applying a magical healing would impact the process. It also seemed odd, that despite being healed above zero HP, the player still had to roll a fortitude save to expunge the dying property (because they had been felled by a critical hit, they went to dying 2 instead of dying 1. The system says that beginning their turn above zero HP will automatically remove one rank of dying, which meant the player had to roll to remove the other rank). Additionally, one PC did critically fail and attack roll, and as I hadn't seen if there was a standard for what critical failure on a regular strike resulted in, I let them choose between either the momentum of the badly missed attack causing them to fall prone, or losing their grip on their weapon and dropping it (the idea being that the critical failure would consume an extra action to recover from). Otherwise, this first combat went okay, and I'm looking forward to tying out more of the new material next week.


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Scythia wrote:
Additionally, one PC did critically fail and attack roll, and as I hadn't seen if there was a standard for what critical failure on a regular strike resulted in, I let them choose between either the momentum of the badly missed attack causing them to fall prone, or losing their grip on their weapon and dropping it (the idea being that the critical failure would consume an extra action to recover from).

For future reference, a plain Strike (page 308) has no critical failure entry, so nothing special happens then. (And hurray for that, fumbles suck.)


Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:
Scythia wrote:
Additionally, one PC did critically fail and attack roll, and as I hadn't seen if there was a standard for what critical failure on a regular strike resulted in, I let them choose between either the momentum of the badly missed attack causing them to fall prone, or losing their grip on their weapon and dropping it (the idea being that the critical failure would consume an extra action to recover from).
For future reference, a plain Strike (page 308) has no critical failure entry, so nothing special happens then. (And hurray for that, fumbles suck.)

That will make things easier, although it's odd that the critical failure entry does refer to them as fumbles when they don't apply to what are most frequently called fumbles.


Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:


For future reference, a plain Strike (page 308) has no critical failure entry, so nothing special happens then. (And hurray for that, fumbles suck.)

Yes, I was nervous about the increased possibility of critical failures during strikes until I realized this.


Once the PC was healed, this is relevant (page 321): "If you have 1 HP or more and are conscious, your dying condition decreases by 1 at the end of your turn each round."

What was not obvious to our group at first is that the Unconscious and Dying conditions are separate, and Unconscious affects Dying condition level in an interesting but not necessarily clear-at-first way.

If that PC rolls a successful recovery save at the beginning of their turn to become conscious (the Fortitude save), they will be at Dying 1 in your example, conscious, and may take 2 actions. Then at the end of their turn, because they are conscious, the dying condition will decrease to 0 - specifically because they made that recovery save to become conscious at the start of their turn with HP 1 or more - and they are out of the woods.

Troubles for the party arise when a PC has been raised up in HP but fails that recovery save at the start of their turn, because it effectively prevents them from both consciousness and clearing the Dying condition nearly as quickly.

As one other point of context, it should be noted that Stabilize cast by a 7th level and higher PC mitigates part of this problem by removing one level of the Dying condition on application...but it does not solve the "require successful recovery save to become conscious" part of things.


You are at 0hp and dying. You are unconscious. You have the dying 1 condition.

You receive magical healing, your hp is now 1+. You are still unconscious and have the dying 1 condition.

At the beginning of your turn, you must make your recovery save.

Since you have 1+ hp, a failure does nothing, but a success is required to regain consciousness.

Keep attempting one save per turn.

Upon a success, you regain consciousness and have likely two actions remaining. One to stand up and one to pick back up your weapon... probably.


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Ewww... If you have to make a recovery save to wake up even though you have been healed, that is a big crimp in the rules. It's not fun for the player and it requires more bookkeeping than necessary.


Freagarthach wrote:

Once the PC was healed, this is relevant (page 321): "If you have 1 HP or more and are conscious, your dying condition decreases by 1 at the end of your turn each round."

What was not obvious to our group at first is that the Unconscious and Dying conditions are separate, and Unconscious affects Dying condition level in an interesting but not necessarily clear-at-first way.

If that PC rolls a successful recovery save at the beginning of their turn to become conscious (the Fortitude save), they will be at Dying 1 in your example, conscious, and may take 2 actions. Then at the end of their turn, because they are conscious, the dying condition will decrease to 0 - specifically because they made that recovery save to become conscious at the start of their turn with HP 1 or more - and they are out of the woods.

Troubles for the party arise when a PC has been raised up in HP but fails that recovery save at the start of their turn, because it effectively prevents them from both consciousness and clearing the Dying condition nearly as quickly.

As one other point of context, it should be noted that Stabilize cast by a 7th level and higher PC mitigates part of this problem by removing one level of the Dying condition on application...but it does not solve the "require successful recovery save to become conscious" part of things.

I was a bit off in the order of operations then. The part that struck me as strange however was that a PC could have over 1 HP (the PC in question was almost completely healed by the Heal applied), yet retain the dying condition. It would be like requiring a check to remove persistent burning even though the fire was put out.

Grand Lodge

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A critical failure on an attack roll can have a consequence, /if/ fighting someone who has a reaction that triggers off of it. It's not looking to be a common (or even uncommon) trigger, but it's there.

(I, for one, look forward to moments like that with a monster I've not fought before, wondering if they have a special sauce for that occasion. :) )


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Zman0 wrote:


Upon a success, you regain consciousness and have likely two actions remaining. One to stand up and one to pick back up your weapon... probably.

Anecdote from the playtest tonight - my Druid cast Stabilize on the Barbarian, who made his recovery save to regain consciousness...only to take an attack of opportunity for attempting to pick up his dropped sword, which then increased his dying condition, knocked him unconscious, and effectively forced him to use a Hero point to clear it on his next turn.

Frontline melee characters will need to have a backup plan for being knocked prone and dropping their weapons, something like Quick Draw and a secondary weapon with Light Bulk.


Scythia wrote:
It would be like requiring a check to remove persistent burning even though the fire was put out.

Doesn't that basically happen? Spending your action to smother/pat out/dump water on persistent burning just lowers the DC from a 20 to a 15 flat check, if I'm not mistaken.


Freagarthach wrote:
Anecdote from the playtest tonight - my Druid cast Stabilize on the Barbarian, who made his recovery save to regain consciousness...only to take an attack of opportunity for attempting to pick up his dropped sword, which then increased his dying condition, knocked him unconscious, and effectively forced him to use a Hero point to clear it on his next turn.

Was he fighting a Fighter? Because I haven't seen anything that can make attacks of opportunity... I mean, I assume there are, but it's not a thing most creatures can do.

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