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After GMing several tables (six of PFS, one of Doomsday Dawn pt. 1) of Pathfinder Playtest over the course of the last ~10 days, I'm summarizing some free-form responses to things that were good/bad in addition to filling out the event surveys. This is a combination of player reactions as I observed them and my own opinions.
So, to start with the good things. Encounter Mode is very, very good. The action economy system is fun, it's easy to teach on the fly, and players really don't need to read the chapter to figure it out, just the list of actions and their class feats. The three actions per turn/one reaction/everything is an action system is a very good choice. I even like the spellcasting component = action balance, and our spellcasters in all six runs of Rose Street Revenge (five at Gen Con, one locally) were smooth while we were in initiative.
I also want to give special props to the initiative system. I initially was leery of it, and it does feel like Perception is too powerful in the new edition (I mentioned it in the Skills comments). However, in practice it's very easy to figure out after one or two tries, and the players who weren't being willfully intransigent were quick to run with the system since it rewards doing things in the dungeon your PC would do anyway, like tracking or sneaking. It's a little, well, weird that the cleric is now the fastest character in the initiative order in many combats, but that's just cognitive dissonance from the legacy concept of, "Cleric initiative," sticking in the group's brain.
Traps were also pretty good. Traps acting like PF haunts took a while to get used to, but the ability to have them disabled by appropriate skills (Occultism for haunts, Survival or Nature for deadfalls and natural obstacles, Thievery for mechanical traps) is a good change. While there will be a learning curve to this system, I consider the traps to be a marked improvement over the 3.x chassis that PF1 ran on, and I think players will gravitate to that as well.
With all those good things covered, though... Exploration Mode is not pleasant. Across all our tables, I had to tell every player that they were trying to perform multiple "tactics", even though these were things that the characters should've been doing. The party's rogue, either the Merisiel pregen or the homemade ones, always tried to scout ahead and clear the hallway of traps. "Sorry, Merisiel," replied the GM dejectedly, "That's two tactics and you can only perform one or the other down this hallway." This despite the fact that the right way to clear a building is to move to cover, check, move to cover, check, move to cover again. Want your weapon drawn? Nope, clearly can't use your eyes with that sword in your hand.
Exploration Mode's Tactics made the game feel like a series of toggle buttons a la Neverwinter Nights, Pillars of Eternity, or other top-down isometric RPGs. I list those games (and not a not-to-be-named whipping post genre) because I loved all of them - they were great video games. However, part of what differentiates tabletop RPGs from those kinds of games is that you have the freedom to define your actions based on realism and implement good, tactical thinking without requiring sacrifices to the limitations of a game engine. Those kinds of toggles are (somewhat) necessary in video games, to manage and balance the party's ability to overcome encounters. Those things aren't necessary in a tabletop RPG, and indeed the ability to move, think, and act in a way similar to real life is part of the appeal of tabletop play when competing for a consumer's limited free time. Exploration Mode adds a level of cognitive dissonance and player/GM friction without providing a material gain in return.
I think I understand some of the problem that Exploration Mode and it's codification of your actions during a dungeon crawl is trying to solve for. I've run a lot of Organized Play (both PFS and Adventurer's Guild), and I'm all to familiar with the player who responds to initiative by announcing, "I was sneaking with my weapons out already while spamming Detect Magic while buffing with Heroism!" or to the springing of a trap with, "But I would've been searching for traps with my weapons out while sneaking down the hallway while reading this spellbook!" The answer to these players isn't to codify how you walk down a dungeon hallway. It's for the GM to turn to that player and say, "No, you can't."
More than anything else that showed up in the playtest, this prompted multiple players to verbalize negative reactions to the actual gameplay. I heard lots of negativity about the classes and character creation in four days of Gen Con, and more over the week of building characters for Doomsday Dawn and our Friday night PFS night. This, though, was the only spot where gameplay was hammered on by the players, and it was hammered harder than just about anything in character generation. Please, please please, revisit this concept. I genuinely believe that you could achieve the same result by adding a paragraph about how to use the skill while exploring to each of a few skills (Stealth, Survival, Thievery) and Perception.
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Huh, that's decidedly different than the reactions the devs related that they got a GenCon. Did you do tables which were not visited by the devs?
I play it as searching is not only being done with one's eyes. The PC is looking under bits of rubble, feeling the wall for cracks that might indicate a secret door, peeking behind tapestries, listening intently while remaining still for a moment, etc.
If they're sneaking they're moving slowly, looking before carefully placing each foot down to ensure they don't step on something that might reveal their presence. A sneaking character would also likely put their weapon away lest any light source reflects off their naked steel (obviously this is situational).
As I've said in another thread about exploration, these same things apply to the party's foes as well.
Anything that requires a skill check means the character is focusing on that task. Despite many people's feelings to the contrary, humans really do not multitask well and the exploration mode is a reflection of that. I like the system as it feels very intuitive.
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Huh, that's decidedly different than the reactions the devs related that they got a GenCon. Did you do tables which were not visited by the devs?
Possibly? I was in the "Red" section in the Sagamore Ballroom; I know I saw a few people in Paizo shirts walk by, but they were mostly Organized Play folks. Nobody stopped to chat with us.
@Fumarole - sorry for the chunk quoting, I'm trying to each of your points as well as your larger argument. If you feel I misquote/quote out of context, I apologize; that is not my intent.
I play it as searching is not only being done with one's eyes. The PC is looking under bits of rubble, feeling the wall for cracks that might indicate a secret door, peeking behind tapestries, listening intently while remaining still for a moment, etc.
While searching for a physical thing, i.e. tossing a room, would definitely be done with at least three senses, searching for a trap (the primary point of contention for the playtest tables I've run, which now includes another table of Doomsday Dawn from Sunday August 12) wouldn't be done in the same way; you'd need to identify the danger before you reached the trigger point by sight, sound, or smell, though you might validate that by touch ("I think I see a tripwire," "Yep, look here guys; this is probably attached to that branch up ahead."). Ditto for upcoming monsters - I'm not going to turn over a rock to discover the kobold, but I'll probably hear his jangling staff ornaments before I come around the corner unless he's Stealthy enough to remember to hold them still.
If they're sneaking they're moving slowly, looking before carefully placing each foot down to ensure they don't step on something that might reveal their presence. A sneaking character would also likely put their weapon away lest any light source reflects off their naked steel (obviously this is situational).
Anything that requires a skill check means the character is focusing on that task. Despite many people's feelings to the contrary, humans really do not multitask well and the exploration mode is a reflection of that. I like the system as it feels very intuitive.
While it's true that humans do not multitask well, this isn't really a function of multitasking - it's sequential tasks, undertaken in a repetitive order. I move from Point A to Point B. I survey for hazards. I survey again for the next cover point, Point C. I move to Point C. The current system abstracts this away as either Searching or Sneaking, while what the characters are supposed to be doing actually encompasses both activities.
I made some adjustments for the Doomsday Dawn table on 8/12. I tried explaining the movement speed reduction differently for this table by framing it as, "You move, you stop, you look for danger, you move again - you're not literally walking slower, but you're moving less frequently and pausing to do something else in between." I also let people have weapons in hand without needing to use the tactic to, "Ready weapons," under the logic that carrying a thing != gaining the Raise a Shield benefit. The response was considerably less snarky than it was the prior session.
I wonder if some of this isn't just a function of me applying Exploration Mode when the PFP rules should still be in Encounter Mode - the party is sweeping a dungeon complex then searching for valuables, so they move tactically through the complex in the tactical mode of play. I don't know if the rules should change to account for that or not - it was common practice in Organized Play locally to sweep the dungeon for threats then come back and study it once the area was secured. Exploration Mode seems to assume the party is moving through the complex more like archaeologists than a tactical team, and perhaps this is a clash between playstyle and assumption where both sides (the rules and the players) need to adjust to each other?
Hmm... I think our group overlooked that by mistake. More precisely, we all considered we had our weapons drawn, just not at the ready, while exploring. Barring that, most of the exploration tactics make sense, as they are basically what your character focuses on. Our gm also let us switch back and forth a little, so the rogue would often swift between Stealthing and Searching, mostly searching, but stealthing when going into rooms where we expected monsters to be. I'll admit, exploration mode, when trying to use it really by the book, is a little confusing and restrictive. We played more as a general idea of what we were doing, and switched between tactics based on what we saw, sometimes.
Thank you for sharing these experiences, they are very insightful.
I have noticed in PF1 my players often want to believe their characters are focused into round-by-round mode all the time for exploration as well, except of course when that means moving tactically through a battle map that is supposed to be the size of a city and a session gets them through 5 to 10 minutes of in game play. Then everyone starts feeling pretty exhausted. Usually, I attributed this to wanting to exploit the duration of minutes long spells, but I think it probably goes deeper to the level of wanting to believe we are always acting carefully and making the best possible decisions in any given situation, even though that gets exhausting.
Maybe a way to get both/and in this situation is to allow characters to attempt to do multi-tasking things in exploration mode with the caveat that it doubly slows them down and that they have to start making increasingly difficult fortitude saves or become fatigued as they hyper focus on moving silently, looking for traps and staying ready for combat?
I play it as searching is not only being done with one's eyes. The PC is looking under bits of rubble, feeling the wall for cracks that might indicate a secret door, peeking behind tapestries, listening intently while remaining still for a moment, etc.
If they're sneaking they're moving slowly, looking before carefully placing each foot down to ensure they don't step on something that might reveal their presence. A sneaking character would also likely put their weapon away lest any light source reflects off their naked steel (obviously this is situational).
As I've said in another thread about exploration, these same things apply to the party's foes as well.
Anything that requires a skill check means the character is focusing on that task. Despite many people's feelings to the contrary, humans really do not multitask well and the exploration mode is a reflection of that. I like the system as it feels very intuitive.
not even legendary warrior-adventurers in a magical world of wonder and excitement?
what about nonhumans such as elves, who would would expect to be incredibly good at multitasking?trying to impose earth-realism for the sake of realism, rather than aiming for internal consistency for the game's world (see: fantasy and magic, and legendary heroes), and most importantly Fun for those playing, is entirely contrary to the point and should have no place in the game's design.
it completely stifles the fantasy for anyone not deemed "exempt" from that realism (usually people who can cast magic, and you should know all too well where that reasoning leads) and leads to infamous cases of "I, an average joe with a few hours' idle practice, cannot ball-in-a-cup my mouse back into my hand with it's cord at speed, therefore trained weapon masters and legendary heroes should not be capable either" rulings.
(and yes, i'm going there.)
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I understand it in theory, and I have no problem with perception having a role in initiative.
But in practice clerics and druids are going to be the classes with highest bonuses to initiative, which feels weird. Personally I feel like that is the domain of the scout type classes like rangers and rogues.
Stealthing characters who are scouting in encounter mode do, in fact, roll their Stealth roll for initiative.
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With all those good things covered, though... Exploration Mode is not pleasant. Across all our tables, I had to tell every player that they were trying to perform multiple "tactics", even though these were things that the characters should've been doing. The party's rogue, either the Merisiel pregen or the homemade ones, always tried to scout ahead and clear the hallway of traps. "Sorry, Merisiel," replied the GM dejectedly, "That's two tactics and you can only perform one or the other down this hallway." This despite the fact that the right way to clear a building is to move to cover, check, move to cover, check, move to cover again. Want your weapon drawn? Nope, clearly can't use your eyes with that sword in your hand.
Merisiel can explicitly sneak and search simultaneously. The Rogue Feat Trap Finder (which M has trained at 1st level) reads "Even if you aren’t searching, you still get a check to find traps if you are trained or better in Stealth."
I also interpret the Defending Tactic to only mean you have your weapons/shield raised and ready. Not that you can't have them in-hand. I'm surprised Defending doesn't have the Fatiguing trait though.
I really like the Exploration mode idea - it codifies something that a lot of players usually just want to forget it exists, and in my humble opinion is as important as combat itself.
That said, I am having some problems with players wanting to multitask their way (but in quite credible ones).
Maybe there should have a rule saying that a player trying to do more than one of the tasks at the same time gives a -2 penalty to all checks for each extra tactic? A player who multitasks is not going to be as effective, but if he is good enough, he can do it.
Merisiel can explicitly sneak and search simultaneously. The Rogue Feat Trap Finder (which M has trained at 1st level) reads "Even if you aren’t searching, you still get a check to find traps if you are trained or better in Stealth."
I also interpret the Defending Tactic to only mean you have your weapons/shield raised and ready. Not that you can't have them in-hand. I'm surprised Defending doesn't have the Fatiguing trait though.
The pregen does get Trap Finder at 1st level, which helped when the party was playing pregens, but then you end up with only Rogues being able to scout; in the two parties that didn't use pregens, the lack a Rogue made the trap section of Rose Street a case study in frustration.
The language in Defending leads me to believe that wherever you carried your weapon was immaterial - if you didn't need to spend an action "drawing" your weapon (hefting it off your shoulder, pulling it from its sheath, stringing it, etc.) then you were using the "Defending" tactic. I'd really prefer that not be the case, and it's just a way to get Raise a Shield before your turn - that would eliminate my complaint with that specific tactic, but not the system overall.
Maybe there should have a rule saying that a player trying to do more than one of the tasks at the same time gives a -2 penalty to all checks for each extra tactic? A player who multitasks is not going to be as effective, but if he is good enough, he can do it.
Being able to do multiple tactics at a penalty would be a (frustrating, but) viable option. However, the intent of the rules seems clear:
In general, each tactic requires enough attention that a PC can only use one tactic at a time, though each PC can select a different tactic.