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I'm sure that some people were expecting me to come back from my playtest session with my hair on fire, but, a bit surpringly to even me, it was about as perfect a run as you can wish for, for both players and me as the GM. There were some issues, but I'll bring those up presently.
Introduction: I ran The Lost Star with three players and a GMPC, since the fourth player managed to pull a muscle when he started to ride his bike to our play location. We took about two hours for character creation. The set-up was extremely classical, with a Rogue/Wizard/Cleric/Fighter party.
Group Composition:
Elf Rogue with Bludgeoner, armed with a rapier, club and sling, in studded leather armor.
Dwarf Cleric of Torag, with warhammer and shield, in chainmail.
Dwarf Wizard, armed with a warhammer (took weapon familiarity ancestry feat)
Human Fighter, armed with longsword, light hammer, dagger and heavy steel shield, with Power Attack and Sudden Charge (took natural ambition ancestry feat). Used a hooded lantern to illumuinate the dungeon for himself and the elf, which normally cost him the first round to put down the lantern, draw his sword and ready his shield.
Playthrough Notes:
Sewer Ooze: An extremely easy fight. The sewer ooze went dead last, and got absolutely hammered in two rounds. It released its slime wave, against which everybody saved except the fighter, who critically failed. With a cry of "he slimed me!" he was the one to deal the final blow.
2d4 points of damage on the fighter, but only minor wounds (3 HP). No healing was applied.
4 Goblin Warriors: Due to the two dwarven warriors with darkvision and the hooded lantern this was much less dangerous than for many other parties. While the dwarves took care of the two goblins who rushed down the left side of the room, the fighter and rogue took down the two on the right. After the fighter and rogue ran out of goblins on the right, the illumination rules immediately reared their head, since the fighter had left the hooded lantern back at the rooms entrance and the entire left side of the room was pitch black, due to the blocking colums in the middle of the room. Luckily the two dwarves managed to finish off the remaining goblin before further intervention was needed.
The cleric was hit by an arrow and a dogslicer and the rogue and fighter took minor wounds as well. The cleric used his first heal on himself. The Raise Shield action prevented an entire hit on the fighter without denting the shield.
The party proceeded to ignore the Vermin Den and Fungus Bloom, since they were warned by Talga of the danger in those rooms.
The party then proceeded to the Purification Fountain and managed to find the Lamashtu idol, which the Rogue then fished out with a grappling hook and a thievery check. After which the cleric proceeded to smash the idol, because he found it a blasphemy against Torag. Hence, what followed were
2 Quasits: This fight also went surprisingly well. The party rolled well on initiative and the rogue immediately sneak attacked one of the flat-footed quasits. After another hit from the cleric and the wizard, that quasit turned invisible and hid in a corner to heal. The other quasit went on the attack against the cleric, but only managed to inflict minor damage. The cleric saved against the poison. The fighter was on the furthest away from the remaining visible quasit and, as usual, spent his first action putting down the lantern, drawing his sword and then moving into a better position.
The second quasit then got basically destroyed by four focused attacks on him when everybody else got their turn again, so we were left with a very nervous invisible and heavily hurt quasit.
Here is where we ran into some minor rules troubles, since at first it was unclear if the quasit would need to use verbal components for his innate spells. After consulting the bestiary nothing was found which contradicted the need for them (spell-like abilities in PF1E have no verbal components for example), hence Seek actions were spent trying to find the position of the invisible quasit. After again searching through the PDF (an onerous action if there ever was on a dingy tablet), it once again was determined that Invisibility does not grant a bonus against Seek actions and so Perception was simply rolled against Stealth. After one of the characters found the square where the quasit was in, he spend an action pointing it out to the others.
This resulted in a lot of attacks over the span of about one round and a half, which killed the second quasit dead. A second Heal was cast by the cleric, since enough damage had accumulated on the fighter by this point.
After noting with approval that the fountain was starting to slowly clear up, the party then proceeded to ignore the southern door. The rogue searched the northern door and easily found the trap. The party thus proceeded to advance towards the goblin headquarters unnoticed. Since Talga had warned them about the falling rock trap, the fighter took a Stride into the room past the rock trap, set down the lantern to illumante most of the room and raised his shield. The others followed.
Goblin Headquarters Initiative was rolled and the figher went first, goblin warriors second, followed by the rogue, wizard and cleric. The goblin commando and pyro went dead last. I moved the fighter into the middle of the room and attacked, without readying the shield, since I wanted to see how that would affect things. The goblin warriors surrounded the fighter and managed to land some minor hits.
The rogue followed next and critically sneak attacked the still flat-footed goblin commando, killing him instantly with exactly the 20 HP the poor goblin had. The cleric, who had used his domain power to absorb a bit of the damage inflicted upon the fighter, cast Bless and the wizard used Electric Arc (which he used a lot during the entire run) on two adjacent goblins.
The fight then proceeded as well as one could hope for the party, with the rogue harrassing the goblin pyro so well that he couldn't position himself for a decent Burning Hands (also the remaining goblin warriors also were blocking the area) and the cleric, fighter and wizard taking apart the three goblin warriors in short order. The pyro went out last, but only managed to singe the rogue a bit with the burning hands spell.
A third Heal spell were used by the cleric to heal up the party after the fight, this time as a 30-foot channel.
The party looted the room and the rogue and fighter climbed the ledge. Notably, the rogue wanted to use his grappling hook, but apparently the entry what the thing does is missing in the playtest document. The rogue and fighter then searched the area, with the fighter finding the secret door. While the fighter helped up the two dwarves up the ledge (rules on what checks were necessary were a bit fuzzy, so I resorted to strength checks, since the put the rope around their shoulders and they then were pulled up), the rogue success/failed his thievery checks to a zero result. After some assistance from the wizard, who for some reason had taken thievery as a LN dwarf, the secret door was opened.
The party proceeded to sneak into Tarkus lair. After seeing the chest, the rogue immediately found and disabled the poisoned lock, but failed to open the chest, even with assistance by the wizard. The party then decided to find the key and the person holding it.
After failing to sneak successfully, an alerted Tarkus transformed back into his form and arrived one round later.
Tarkus: That dude had a baaaad day. Tarkus had blocked the passage to the shrine. The cleric went really fast and cast magic weapon on the fighter. The fighter sudden-charged Tarkus and hit for 2d8+4, causing 16 damage on him with the first hit, then readied his shield. The rogue proceeded to hit him with his sling for another 4 damage, after which the wizard used a three action magic missile to hit him for another 12 damage.
At this point Tarkus did a triple attack and critically hit with the first, yet only for 10 damage, which the fighter took on his shield, putting a dent into it and letting 5 damage through. The second attack then did 8 damage and the third missed. The cleric proceeded to use the two-action Heal to bring the fighter back up to only five damage, after which the fighter missed and then the wizard used a reaction to recall his magic missile and converted Tarkus into confetti.
The party then proceeded to restore the shrine, take the book and Star of Desna to Keleri and gave the loot from the chest back to the citizens of Magnimar, as well as notifying the temple of Pharasma about their holy site and the holy items in it.
Conclusions:
Number One: Taking a classical party composition really helps a ton to make things go more smoothly.
Number Two: Having the players roll several crits during the five combats and the opponents only a single one is also extremely helpful.
Number Three: Having a cleric helps out immensely. I think the party would have had to retire back to rest after the third fight at the lastest without a dedicated healer. Clerics are just superior to all other classes in that field and, if you have nobody who wants to again have to play the class, can be a problem for the party staying power.
Number Four: The fights went, from my perspective, very smoothly with the new action economy. Problems only came up when stuff like "how does Seek interact with Invisibility" or "Do innate monster spells use verbal components as the spell?" came up. It is very frustrating to not have the book and instead have to comb through a PDF.
Number Five: The illumination rules need a bit of a revision, since if you are not in the direct light area, you are immediately in pitch darkness. This makes dwarves and goblins superior races to everyone else, given their unlimited range darkvision. Low-light vision is essentially worthless in dungeons, since there are no dim-light areas from torches, lanterns, etc. anymore.
The other players found that the individual fights lasted longer than in PF1E (which they took as a positive) and also commented that the new action economy goes much smoother.
All in all, my fears of a shortened adventuring day were not confirmed, but then again I had the perfect set-up to work with. The wizard was especially happy that at first level he never had to resort to 1d3 acid splash cantrips, instead always having something useful for each round to use. He ended the adventure with one spell memorized. The cleric ran out of spells in the Tarkus fight and had one channel energy Heal left. The wizard also commented positively about having enough HP to endure a bad hit at first level.
I will probably delay playing the second part of the Doomsday Dawn until the physical copy has arrived, also because I had to print out about 50-100 pages of materials and spent three hours only copying cantrips, first level spells and powers into a Word document to give to the cleric and wizard players.
Since I played a GMPC, I'll do all three surveys tomorrow, if that is technically possible. I pressed my players to do the player and general survey and hope that they will take the time out of their day to fill them out.
I'd love to confirm for myself if having a non-optimal group composition would lead to having to rest much sooner, but I fear real life time constraints make that impossible. I guess I'll have to rely on other playtest reports. I'm very interested to see how the other adventures will go. The wizard player was, at first glance, not that impressed about the idea of having to memorize Mage Armor as a higher level spell.
GM Tracking Sheet:
How long did it take to play? Four hours
How long did you prepare? Ten hours, including three hours copying spells together for greater clarity
How many sessions? One
How many hero points did you give out? Two, for punctual arrival
How many times was a player reduced to zero HP? Zero times
How many PC's were killed? Zero
Player Tracking Sheet:
How long did character creation take? 2 hours for everyone
How many times were you reduced to 0 HP? Didn't happen to anyone
How many times did you reach zero resonance? The cleric healed everyone alone
How many times did you critically fail overspending resonance? Never
How many times did you run out of spell slots? The cleric ran out in the final fight and the wizard was down to one spell
How many times did you run out of spell points The wizard only spent one on Force Bolt, but the cleric spent several on Divine Ward and probably was very close to running out.
How many hero points did you use Zero were spent during the entire adventure.
A few things I want to point before leaving this playtest report alone:
- Secret checks are onerous on the GM: I gave up almost immediately on the idea of demanding to roll the perception checks for the party, because I had to balance about three stacks of papers on each of my legs and reference them constantly for little rules questions. Aside from taking away player agency, it really puts too much strain on the GM to keep check on that aspect as well. YMMV if you are very good at multitasking, at which I am only competent.
- Seeking and Invisibility: We could use some official examples for how detecting invisible or hiding creatures works with vision, hearing, etc. I had to adjudicate stuff on the fly pretty much and would have liked to have a clearer idea how that works now.
- Superfluous Encounters: Why have the centipedes there at all, if Talga would point out that they exist? I've heard of groups walking into their room and getting wrecked, but I have to wonder why they even bothered, given that Talga clearly warns them that they are there. Same with the skeleton room.
Would you say that playing the game changed some of your initial perception of the game?
then the wizard used a reaction to recall his magic missile and converted Tarkus into confetti.
It's a free action, not a reaction.
Would you say that playing the game changed some of your initial perception of the game?
It felt much better than expected to use the new action economy. And overall I got a good bit of enjoyment seeing my players like their first level characters power level.
Since the run went so well for the players, though, I didn't get see many of the problem areas other GM's are describing in their threads. Hence I remain still worried that the dice and good decision making just covered the pitfalls of the new system. I guess higher level play is needed to see if there are cracks which need to be filled out.
And, as I said, the availability of healing resources is obviously the big difference which can let a party get going to success or fail and have to retreat quickly.
So, to sum it up, I am feeling more positive overall, but I remain skeptical that without a cleric and at higher levels the system will work out just as well. We'll see.
then the wizard used a reaction to recall his magic missile and converted Tarkus into confetti.It's a free action, not a reaction.
Thanks for pointing it out. Didn't really change the result, though.
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It felt much better than expected to use the new action economy. And overall I got a good bit of enjoyment seeing my players like their first level characters power level.
Since the run went so well for the players, though, I didn't get see many of the problem areas other GM's are describing in their threads. Hence I remain still worried that the dice and good decision making just covered the pitfalls of the new system. I guess higher level play is needed to see if there are cracks which need to be filled out.
And, as I said, the availability of healing resources is obviously the big difference which can let a party get going to success or fail and have to retreat quickly.
So, to sum it up, I am feeling more positive overall, but I remain skeptical that without a cleric and at higher levels the system will work out just as well. We'll see.
I played through "The Lost Star" yesterday (going to run it after the errata comes out), and I agree that the Classic 4 Classes are probably the optimal set-up for a party. If I get the chance, I'd like my group to run through a 1st-level adventure with a similar but different array (Barbarian, Monk, Alchemist, Bard) and see it holds up.
And thank you for a well-written review!
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- Superfluous Encounters: Why have the centipedes there at all, if Talga would point out that they exist? I've heard of groups walking into their room and getting wrecked, but I have to wonder why they even bothered, given that Talga clearly warns them that they are there. Same with the skeleton room.
I agree, my group completely avoided the centipedes and the mindfog fungus (or as Talga called them "manylegs" and "dum dum fungus"). For some reason they still tackled he skeleton room, in part because they did not want them joining the fight later and probably because they were undead and therefore evil whereas the other encounters were natural creatures.
Yeah, the shield was really quite useful and it was actually a fun way to calculate if it was worth it to ready it in the first place. It prevented damage two times and took only one dent.
Although, and I haven't really checked, but unless there are rules for way harder shields at higher levels, blocking damage will destroy shields at such a prodigious rate that the option to prevent a few points of damage will become actually detrimental. Unless you have a hireling with a cart of shields two rooms waiting behind the party. :p