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So, I gathered 4 out of my 6 usual players to run DD last Friday, the other two weren't intersted in playtesting but the rest of the group was open minded enough to give PF2 at least a try. We're halfway through Lost Star and the plan was to meet again on Tuesday, finish the Chapter and then post our first impressions of the gameplay here as well as fill out the survey. Sadly, I had to delay the next session due to life. So I asked the group if they could mail or text me their first impressions they had so far.
What follows is based on their and my notes.
DISCLAIMER
Those who know me, know that I have not the most positive feelings about PF2. 3.X was the system I decided to settle in for a long, long time. At least for those kinds of RPGs. Outside of the various D20 systems, I prefer systems that are usually more of the storytelling variety with lean systems, light on rules, light on combat, but a lot of options when it comes to creating and playing characters. But for the combat heavy heroic fantasy RPG fix, 3.X systems, especially PF, are supreme. Due to various circumstances, PF became the only system I played for 6 years now, since my homebrew Discworld campaign came to an end.
I'm in this hobby for a little bit over 20 years.
DISCLAIMER 2
3/4 of my players, like me, prefer systems that focus on storytelling over mechanics, but 3.X is a system all of them love to play. The 4th player plays PF exclusivly, mostly because we have introduced him to this RPG when he was new to the city and we haven't had a chance to play something different sice then outside of a couple of CoC One-Shots.
Two of them started RPGs the same time as I did. They were in my very first group as a player and my very first group as a GM. The third player started RPGing around the early 2000s in a V:tM group, the Fourth, as stated above with his roughly 5+ years of RPG experience is considered our Newbie
DISCLAIMER 3
All of us were and are willing to give PF2 the benefit of the doubt and it is entirerly possible that a system 'wows' us enough to change our attitude towards a game in the genre that is not 3.X. But to do that, said system has to be really, really good.
DISCLAIMER 4
An old friend of ours asked if he could participate in the playtest, which I agreed on, since he usually plays 5E and me, with my limited expirience with that system, thought it was a good idea to have someone with a different view at the table. He dropped out of the playtest on Friday due to the heatwave in Austria atm, deciding to drive to a lke instead.
CHARACTER CREATION:
As soon as the playtest document arrived, I texted the group to download the Playtest Rulebook and set the date for our first session. I told them, if they found the time to do so, they could create their characters for the first part of DD on their own, for the others we could always create them right before we start the game.
Two players in my group decided to wait for the first session the other two both needed over 2 hours for their first characters, both stating that it was "a hell to navigate the book and find the information" they needed. The players that decided to arrived at 1PM (because he notoriously gets dates wrong) and close to 3PM (as intended), both started Character Creation right away. The characters were ready at about 4:50, when we started the game.
One of the players who decided to make his charakter at home gave up on finding out what his starting money is and googled it instead. The other wrote me a text with the same question only to send another one minute later that reads "Nevermind. Found it. [CENSORED] that book."
All of us agree, that the character creation rules, as presented in the book, are probably pretty simple IF you know where to look and if the book would present them in a linear fashion instead of the 'Choose your own adventure' style of skipping to various sections of the document.
THE PARTY
the party my players settled on consists of
Dwarven Fighter (This is the player who usually loves to play Wizards, but he told me that class didn't feel attractive in the new system)
Dwarven Ranger (With a bear as animal companion - He also thought about playing a Paladin, but decided against that after reading the class)
Human Rogue (Not notes to add here)
Half-Orc Cleric (Technically he was the last one to create his character and asked what's left and was needed. I told him either arcane or divine spellcaster would be great, since we were lacking in that regard. I also asked if he could play one of the two Half- ancestries, since they are build differently)
NOTE: I was asked by two of my players if they could play Goblins. I declined for that group, promising them that Goblins could be played from the second group forward. I declined because
THE GOOD
- 3 action economy was a success, since rounds were faster than in our PF group. However, as one of my players stated, the two players missing from our regular group are usually the ones taking their time during their Initiative and I basically played with the more effective 2/3rds of my regular group. Also: First level and limited options usually lead to faster rounds, even in PF1. It will be interesting to see if that pace can be kept on that level once we're playing on high levels.
- The adventure itself. Having just finished RotR after 3 years, Lost Star so far felt like a prelude or prequel and the group enjoyed that.
- Bulk. We usually play without weight rules, but for playtesting purposes, this time we did. Bulk may simplify those rules, but not in a bad way. Some of the problems we had in the past are gone. Finding loot and adding that weight usually slowed the game down and there was always the money exchange issue of teleporting out of the dungeon and changing the found coins to weightless-per-rules gems.
- Backgrounds: The way they are designed is elegant, imo, and personally I love how easy it is to customize them and make them for your home campaigns. The worst reaction I got from my group was indifference, which is something I can't say for most of the mechanics.
THE BAD
- Ancestries and Ancestry Feats as written are a problem we could agree on was easily solveable by just having access to all biological/genetic traits at first level and have Ancestry Feats that build upon them for higher levels instead. There also seem to be "To good to not take it at first level" options, at least for Dwarves, since both of the players who played Dwarves decided to take the same feat "for optimization purposes, also, it looks fun"
- Half-Ancestries: The feat tax is not as bad as we all thought it would be at first reaction. However, it still is without a doubt a feat tax. The 'No Darkvision at 1st level' problem came up during the game and the cleric had to change tactics twice.
- Gameplay. There were times when it felt like PF. That was however after I decided to drop Encounter Mode from the game completely (see: THE UGLY). There were however times, when gameplay felt very different. And not in a good way. It could've been worse, but for us to change to PF2 "It could have been worse" is not good enough.
- Perception as Initiative. As a group we have conflicted feelings about that and I can't really post a consensus here. it is no ones favourite idea, but it is also not the worst change to the game. Somewhere in the middle in the magical land of "Meh...whatever!" with differing opinions on both sides of the spektrum
- Proficencies: Again, something some of my players felt indifferent for, some clearly didn't like (me included), but it is a nice little throwback to 2E, so nostalgic feelings existed at the table, saving it from going into the UGLY section. There is a very high risk different characters will feel the same and the difference due to +1/level on all skills will not be enough to make the chars feel special. it doesn't make a lot of sense either, to gain experience in fields never heard of or get better in things one never did, just because level. If only the skills get reworked to another system, none of us would mind the proficencies elsewhere.
THE UGLY
- Exploration Mode. Let's start the UGLY with that to get it out of my system. It slows the game down. The time saved due to the 3 Actions Economy is wasted here - and more. It also doesn't make a lot of sense that I have to tell the rogue over and over again that the usual rogue tactic of stealthily sneaking ahead and look for traps is basically two different tactics he can't take at once. He also can't draw his dagger while doing so, because that's a third tactic. After going to Exploration Mode two times, we agreed that we tested it enough and I dropped that subsystem from the game to never use again.
- Resonance. Now, at first level and without magic items, except for the health potion the group found but never used, it didn't came up in game as much as I feared, BUT we had a very lengthy discussion before and after the session about it, because it was one of the reasons we didn't have an arcane spellcaster but a cleric in the group. Since I'm the one on this messageboards I tried to explain the reasoning behind it as best as I could with my mind as open as possible. We came up with a lot of ways to get rid of the CLW spam 'problem' without crippling the characters. The easiest one: Make CLW wands a rare (since rarity is a thing now) item and change the price accordingly.
- Magic Item flavor. Again nothing that came up during gameplay but during discussions before we started the session (and afterwards): If you want to make magic items feel special, don't make having +x weapons mandatory and go with creative ideas instead.
- Monster/NPC stats. I mentioned the Goblin Pyro in another thread and will not repeat it. But the fact that members of a playable race get build differently just because they are not PCs but "monsters" did not go over well with my group, like, at all. I love transparancy on my table. If a player askes out of of character after a fight specifics about a monster, I answer them. "Hit dice ara a thing of the past, monsters don't follow your rules anymore, the Playtestiary is the prime example of postmodernism; Anything goes." Is not an answer I love to give and not an answer my group wants to hear. Paul Feyerabend would agree.
And for me, who mostly GMs, NPCs are the few times I can make characters and roleplay them and I strongly had the feeling this was taken from me.
Also, while on topic, the short stat blocks might be taking up less space, but as a GM I was constantly thinking that important information was missing if I want to do something else with the monster than fight the PCs
There are alot of things not covered here (Hazards work like Haunts now? Okay, I guess), mostly they didn't interfere with gameplay that much or didn't provoke strong reactions. We have not decided how we feel about Power Attack being only for Fighters for example. As soon as that changes, I will make sure to keep this updated.
You can travel with your weapon out - you're just never going to get the benefits of Raising a Shield on turn 1.
ADDENDUM
About the lethality of the game and Hero Points (because I honestly forgot about that)
Once we started the session I handed out Hero Points before we even went into story mode. I gave them 3 each, one for the start of the session, one for creating their characters and one for participating in the playtest.
The idea of handing out HP for player actions instead for character action needed explaining so I referred to the description of the book, stating that I intend to run this game as written, even though we all dislike the idea. My players are bringing more to the table than just playing their chars anyway, the idea to get rewards for something that should go without saying is, honestly, a little bit offending to them.
However, Hero points were spent during the session nevertheless; exclusively for rerolling bad rolls. The game was not lethal enough to bring experienced players near the 0 HP mark. Not for lack of trying, though. If the monsters hit, they actually hit hard enough for 1st level characters to be in real danger without a dedicated healer (which we had) or if the fights would have been long enough. They usually weren't long, though. The longest fight lasted 4 rounds, the most damaged dealt by a monster was in the shortest fight though, the very first encounter of the evening which lasted not even one round and if the enemy had worse initiative it wouldn't have dealt damage at all.
Going through my notes again, I see I wrote "Hero Points are mostly useless" somewhere near the middle of the evening. So, judging by lvl 1 gameplay, I'd put it in the THE BAD category for now, because I'm nice and don't want to put it in the THE UGLY category just yet. If Paizo changes their description and make them obtainable through character play only, I can live with them in the finished product.
Honestly, my group brings food and beer to every session and everyone has a role outside of character anyway without me having to bribe them with in-game mechanics. They look things up in the rules outside of their turn, when I'm occupied playing NPCs and monsters, they manage Initiative cards and keep track of Initiative so I can focus on the storytelling aspect. They already do all that. The thought of rewarding them for that outside of decades of honest friendship with game mechanics is something we can agree on our table to not want that.
(for playtest reasons, I'll hand them 3 Hero Points each for the next two sessions and then move to two each with a chance to gain a third through character actions. I'm interested how that might change the game)