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Obviously spoilers here, so don’t read on unless you’ve either played or are planning to run it.
First, some background: I’m an experienced GM, been running games for 25 years, with a nice mix of players that are anywhere from old 1ed D&D veterans to people who literally just got their first set of dice. It makes for a nice dynamic. I tend to play the rules pretty loose and go for fun - but warned everyone in this play test I was going to try and stick to RAW as much as possible so that we could provide good feedback.
Party composition:
Gnome paladin
Goblin Sorcerer
Human Ranger
Goblin Alchemist
Halfling Cleric
Generally speaking, we had a blast! Everyone had a great time with the new rules and their characters. Very little complaining about this or that being different. Lots of excitement to try out some new things. Here are the things everyone liked the best:
- The Action economy. So many more ways for a player to engage!
- Clerics are actually fun to play and all declared ours the MVP. Lots of healing, but the way multiple actions make the healing have different effects actually created tactical interest and some tough decisions.
- New critical rules mean a greater variety in play than just “roll to hit, roll for damage” over and over again.
- Multiple attacks per round for all! What!
- Spells can feel totally different even at first level by boosting them with more actions. Three magic missiles at first level? Awesome.
Here are a few things that were not so exciting:
- Character creation felt a bit weird - you don’t roll your ability scores? Everyone has an 18? I need to pick a background I don’t love so that I can get that 18?
- More precision in the action descriptions means sometimes characters can do fewer things than the players are used to. “You mean I have to take my whole turn to drop the weapon, take off my backpack, get out my potion, and drink it?” (Note, as GM, I liked this!)
Interestingly, nobody grumbled at ALL about resonance points or about the level flattening proficiency thing. Interesting that what seems to be most popular to discuss on these boards isn’t something my players even cared about. The conversation about resonance went like this: “Oh yeah, that makes sense, so you don’t have fifty magical items hanging all over you to get every possible advantage, I like it.”
Okay, so how was the actual play test?
Pre game - two goblins in the party! And of course they were cousins, and of course they had been the only two “heroes” in the whole Mudchewer tribe and tried to get their bullying cousins to overthrow the rule of Drakus. These two PC goblins had shown great promise and were obviously the smartest goblins in the tribe, and as such were mercilessly bullied and mocked. So it was a simple decision to throw in with a longshanks and ask for help in killing the creature who had overtaken their tribe.
How I handled goblin knowledge of PCs that might have spoiled some surprises in the adventure - well, that mind fungus has some side effects, right? Like, a hazy memory, can’t recall precisely what was where... were the skeletons in there or over there? Were there skeletons at all? You’ve been having some weird dreams lately... maybe it was all some sort of figment of your imagination? I mean, walking skeletons, really, is that even a thing?
Ok, so room one. The use of stealth to roll initiative was fun. The party didn’t explicitly declare that they were searching the puddles or paying much attention to them. So, I had them adjust their minis as they walked into the room, and at an appropriate time asked them to freeze, and rolled initiative. The ooze came up out of the puddle. One of the characters beat the ooze on initiative, so I just described how the ooze kind of rippled in the puddle and that character just got the jump on it as it rose up, while the others were a bit surprised to see it form. If they had been searching, I would’ve allowed a perception roll against the ooze’s Stealth DC, and if they were successful, we’d roll for initiative but they would have started in better positions. Seemed pretty easy to me - though like a lot of modules you sort of have to assume some of these things on your own.
Anyway, the ooze only has an AC of 5, which the group found hilarious, and they chopped it to bits in no time flat. It got one disgusting oozy wave off and did some damage and knocked a character flat, and everyone was suitably grossed out, and then they moved on.
Room two. The goblins were positioned so that two of them were in the light radius of the torch, and two were in the dark with bows. When the arrows started flying, the sorcerer grabbed one of her sling bullets, tossed a light cantrip on it, and chucked it deeper into the room. Once revealed, the goblins went down pretty quickly. Some damage was taken so the cleric popped off his first healing burst. The other characters: “Wait, you can do what?” Seriously, after this session, another of my players is asking if she can be the cleric next time because it seemed SO FUN. That NEVER happens.
At this point the goblin PCs started asking what was in those nooks off to the side. I made secret Lore rolls and one made it and one critically failed. “Some kind of bugs in that one (true), walking skeletons in that one (lie).” The cleric wanted to go destroy the skeletons and nearly fired off a positive energy burst from the hallway without going all the way inside, but decided in the end to peek inside. Seeing only inanimate bones inside, the party went on their way. Comment from a player: “She critically failed her Lore roll and didn’t know it. Awesome.” They skipped the centipede room and the fungus room entirely, deciding they were ON A MISSION and not there to just look in every room (see, smart players!)
Room three. The fountain was identified as holy to Pharasma by the cleric using Religion Recall Knowledge. Suspicious of the murky water, the alchemist searched and found the idol. Just as he got so excited to find “the coolest treasure of my young goblin life,” it hatched open and out came the quasits. This fight took a bit but the quasits didn’t do much damage. Poison did its thing, but saving throws were made, and the cleric stood ready with a Healing Kit just in case. When the first quasit went down, the second popped invisible, healed a little, and then popped in better positioning and did a sneak attack. The paladin promptly walked up, hit twice, and did 20 points of damage in two rolls. Poor quasit never had a chance.
After this fight was over I realized I had accidentally given them RESIST 3 to everything instead of WEAKNESS 3. Oops. Oh well, we will just call that encounter scaling due to party size.
They spent a while messing around in that room, identifying a healing potion they found back in Room 1, doing some repairs, and so on, and noticed that the water was clearing up. Once clear they all drank from it and healed like 2 hit points each, burning its use for the day, which I found hilarious.
They left the room, missed the alarm, and so alerted the goblins that they were coming.
Room four. The goblin commandos, pyro, and warriors were waiting in position when the party showed up. They lured the party in and then pulled the rope to set off the trap. Boulders fell but saving throws were made and the party wasn’t too used up. This fight was tough, but the goblin PCs especially found it very amusing. I decided every goblin in the whole place had a rhyming name, but these six were the best, so they were rewarded with two syllable rhyming names. This meant my PCs (Click and Pick) got to fight Hardnick, Chadnick, Beatnick, Pyronick, and so on. At one point the goblin alchemist threw a flaming bomb at the Pyro, hoping to blow him up, and while it didn’t work, it did set the Pyro on fire. The Pyro was so excited by this that he didn’t bother to extinguish himself and instead went into a kind of frenzy. Everyone enjoyed watching him shoot fire at the party while on fire himself, and when he went down there was a little smattering of applause. This was the first room where the characters started going down, also. The paladin went down and had to be healed, and the cleric realized right then the limitation of the healing burst - heal the goblins along with your friends or not? In the end he did a two action heal and healed from a distance. The paladin was up a couple of turns later and back in the fray.
Oh, one more cool moment here - the paladin had positioned himself next to the sorcerer, and when a goblin aimed a solid hit at the sorcerer, the paladin used retributive strike to stop the goblin and attack it instead. The paladin’s weapons caught the goblin’s dogslicer in a parry, and then neatly counterattacked to slice the goblin’s head clean off.
Room five. Not really a room but a hallway. There was a statue there with an hourglass. Must be a trap, right? The goblin alchemist happened to have taken Thievery as a trained skill, so tried to disarm the trap, and rolled an 18! Easy.
Room six - a slight detour to go check out the actual skeleton room. The cleric was so excited to rush in, positive energy blast the whole room, and destroy every skeleton. The other characters had to clear him a path first. The ranger finally scored a hit after shooting like a storm trooper for the previous six rooms, and it was a doozy - a critical doing 24 points of damage with a heavy crossbow! The skeleton blew up into shards, clearing a little space for the cleric to rush in and blow the rest of them up with his positive energy wave. Again, everyone was mightily impressed at the little cleric halting.
And finally room seven - Drakus. Drakus knew they were coming and so was hiding behind the altar. The party crept in carefully, but of course had no idea that this was the “boss room” since it wasn’t the last one (which I really appreciated).The paladin wandered up to the altar, and Drakus leapt out from behind it. He rolled a 24 on initiative and easily beat everyone. He was able to swing three times at the paladin, but missed on all three! After a couple of rounds of back and forth, the cleric cast Command and told Drakus “Lay down!” He failed his save and did so. The paladin then got to attack Drakus flat footed and rolled - a 20! I kid you not, a crit on the boss fight to end the adventure. He did some stupid amount of damage and Drakus was no more.
From there it was just some exploring and cleanup. The party returned the Star to Keleri and heard the backstory that sets up the rest of the adventure. I did throw out the god’s name “Nyarlothoteph” and some of my more experienced players nodded sagely and chuckled before declaring, “We’re screwed.”
Final comments: Boy did I have a good time! I really liked the new rules. Combat was clean and flowed well. I did not have some of the problems others are having and would advise those who are still going to run the adventure to relax, trust your GM instincts, and roll with the punches. I did not find the adventure terribly difficult, nor did my players, even though several of them were knocked out a time or two (I think I glossed over some of the hairy details above - in the end I think we had 3-4 KOs total.)
I’m one of the few people who really enjoyed 4th edition, and this reminded me of some of the best features of that system. The only real problem I had with 4e was that it didn’t feel like you could easily role play very well in the system - virtually everything was made exclusively for combat. PF 2e seems to be going that direction a little bit as well, but with the chassis of 3.5, it means that there are still plenty of skills and powers that provide lots of opportunities for role playing.
We’re all looking forward to our next session and already today I’ve gotten texts from last night’s players asking about rules for character creation for part 2 of the play test. That’s a very, very good sign. I think even though there are still some warts, Paizo is doing what it needs to do to update and advance the system and guarantee another decade of loyal players.
Love the dubious knowledge you gave the goblin PCs due to the mindfog fungus. Kudos!
Great to hear it was fun! Did you adjust encounters in any way (except the accidental Quasit buffing) for the 5th player?
And for the trap, well, your Players were blessed anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered.
Btw, I am really looking Forward to see if my Players will be so eager to drink from a fountain of the goddess of Death. Personally, I would think twice about that ;) (Having Flashbacks to Game of Thrones Hall of the Faceless God)
No adjustments. For three reasons:
1. I just ran out of time to prep.2. I had read some posts here about how hard this module could be, and I really didn’t want a TPK as the first session.
3. I looked at the adjustments and they just seemed very minor. Like, 10xp extra at first level? It didn’t seem it would make a huge difference.
As for the trap - yes, I did remember they were blessed and knew it wouldn’t hurt them, but when the alchemist disarmed the trap he was excited and I wasn’t going to spoil his feeling of accomplishment. Plus it’s not like they would’ve actually known anyway!