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I wasn't sure if this feedback was due here, or elsewhere. I'm struggling to find the motivation to run the playtest. When it was announced I was dead keen, I've teased the countdown clock to my players (both in Entombed with the Pharaohs, and I ran the theme across my Legacy of Fire Campaign, which ended suddenly with a TPK). So I was really excited to get some answers. However I'm struggling to find motivation for three reasons
1) The explanation for the countdown timer is disappointing. "Some wizard made a portal to bring the dominion of the black here, go stop it". I was hoping for something more awesome.
2) The scenarios (I'll come to some exceptions) are boring. We have
- A 12 room dungeon crawl
- A linear outdoor trip with a 7 room dungeon
- A multi wave attack on a house
- An assault on a fortress
- A meatgrinder
- An infiltration
- A boss battle
They are not all bad. The mirrored moon has a neat subsystem that will reward savvy play. Whilst I can see some players might like the 'sword of doom' the meatgrinder brings, my players will not. A lot of the scenarios feel like they are scripted encounter, followed by scripted encounter, and there isn't anything the players can do other than 'have the next combat'.
3) My big problem here is I'm really struggling to see how the new system is meant to shine in these scenarios. I love Pathfinder for its modularity and customization. I deeply appreciate I can scale up encounters by slapping some class levels on monsters. I have loved Paizo's adventures because they frequently put players in new situations, with combats where the players have to adjust. For example in the end of eternity there is a Brass Ram monster built to just bolt out of combat (but which the players want to kill), and also a ship combat (where the rules for casting, or moving on a ship kick in).
Very few of the combats in the adventure have anything so cool. I will call out the final battle, where you are trying to disarm a complex trap and complete the battle, that is pretty neat. But zeroing in on Affair at Sombrefell hall, the player's only defensive option is to barricade the door, which gives them three rounds warning to take up defensive positions (which strangely enough could also be achieved by taking up defensive positions initially). There is a chandelier that can be dropped (but no rules for the enemies trying to drop it). The other waves of monsters just 'get in'.
I'm not sure what the new system is trying to do / show off. None of them see to try and showcase why resonance or other new features are awesome. Red Flags comes the closest, as infiltration has sometimes gone horribly wrong in PF1.
I'll try to tack this another way, a number of Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventures don't translate into 3.X or 5e adventures. Rather they show off the weird side of their world. They rely on DM adjudication. And they stress how life is cheap and you shouldn't be attached to your character. They show off what the publishers think are the strengths of the system.
Likewise 5e hardback adventures can show off the strengths of 5e, where combat/monsters are frequently something to be avoided at low levels. Where basic combat is abstracted enough to move quickly and rarely require a grid.
I read the playtest adventure and rules and I'm not sure what it's trying to do. What stories will it help me tell better as a DM over other systems out there?
I"ll try to join in the playtest as actual testing data is important. But it is hard for me to sum up the enthusiasm for the following three reasons. I'm not excited about the plot presented, I feel most the scenarios are boring, and I'm not sure what PF2 is trying to achieve.
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This is a playtest. This is not a consumer product. Having fun, while important, is secondary to testing. That mindset isn't for everyone. If you aren't enjoying yourself within the context of testing, hang out with the new PF1 AP and come back in a year.
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Well the purpose is fairly obvious as PF2 set out to get rid of everything the smarks like to label as "problems" in the game such as "15 minute adventuring days", "Christmas trees", "the Big Six" and so on and so forth.
It seems to accomplish this by dismantling the tactical aspects of combat in a way that makes this edition wholly unappealing to those of us that enjoy advanced tactical combat.
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If you like the look of 90% of PF2e then don't force yourself to playtest if you're not going to enjoy it and that 10% isn't a dealbreaker. Otherwise if you see substantially big issues the only chance you have of getting them fixed is to participate in the playtest. Otherwise you'll get a 2nd edition that you and your group hates.
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Please move this thread to the GM section on the Doomsday Dawn threads... you posted numerous spoilers to the Playtest adventure and while you may not have found the plot interesting this does not means other won't, or that some people might not want to know what to expect from the parts of the playtest before playing them.
If you like the look of 90% of PF2e then don't force yourself to playtest if you're not going to enjoy it and that 10% isn't a dealbreaker. Otherwise if you see substantially big issues the only chance you have of getting them fixed is to participate in the playtest. Otherwise you'll get a 2nd edition that you and your group hates.
On this I'm torn. I have too many gaming systems already and not enough time :) So I'm probably a good target :) Unfortunately for Paizo I'm content enough with what I have in terms of rulebooks, that if I don't like the finished PF2 product I will simply play other games. Whilst I'd like it to be a superb set of rules (because their adventures and supporting material is usually really good) I content to watch and make a decision in a year's time.
In a theoretical way I'd like to run the playtest, as I like Paizo, but finding the motivation after reading everything is hard.
Please move this thread to the GM section on the Doomsday Dawn threads... you posted numerous spoilers to the Playtest adventure and while you may not have found the plot interesting this does not means other won't, or that some people might not want to know what to expect from the parts of the playtest before playing them.
I don't think I can now that I've posted, I didn't even consider the spoiler side when thinking about where to post.
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If Doomsday Dawn isn't connecting, I'd recommend trying one of the Pathfinder Society Scenarios.
http://paizo.com/products/btpya1y3?Pathfinder-Society-Playtest-Scenario-1-T he-Rose-Street-Revenge
http://paizo.com/products/btpya1y4?Pathfinder-Society-Playtest-Scenario-2-R aiders-of-Shrieking-Peak
http://paizo.com/products/btpya1y5?Pathfinder-Society-Playtest-Scenario-3-A rclords-Envy
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Please move this thread to the GM section on the Doomsday Dawn threads... you posted numerous spoilers to the Playtest adventure and while you may not have found the plot interesting this does not means other won't, or that some people might not want to know what to expect from the parts of the playtest before playing them.I don't think I can now that I've posted, I didn't even consider the spoiler side when thinking about where to post.
I've flagged the thread for moving when the mods get in later today.
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From my understanding, the book is a series of adventures that is designed to put the system through it's paces. If that does not suit you, there is nothing stopping you from creating a homebrew adventure and using that to give feedback. That is what I am doing.
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Just FYI, I flagged the thread for the admins so they can move it to the correct forum.
As to your concerns, I find them quite valid (although I haven't read through the adventure in its entirety yet). However, I also know that the developers have said that the survey for each adventure has specific things they are looking for as a result of each scenario in how things work. In such a situation, I suspect they've allowed story to take a backseat.
I think the motivation for running the Playtest is to give Paizo the feedback they need to improve the game and make it good for everyone. If that doesn't work for you as motivation, then that's fine. Gaming is supposed to be fun - don't force yourself into something you don't want to do.
Yes, in order to stress-test the system they need to rail-road players to a certain extent.
I'm not sure what the new system is trying to do / show off.
There is a sidebar near the beginning of each chapter of Doomsday Dawn that says what they're trying to test with a specific chapter. In one, they are trying to see how the system fares when the party has one encounter per day. This does not make for an adventure with resource management, and it does railroad the players. Not good for "showing off" the game, but good for a playtest.
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I have similar qualms. My approach in prep is reflavoring the adventures and changing some plot points (especially the origin / nature / purpose of the clocks), adding some extra non-combat puzzles and social encounters of the same rough DC as other challenges in the published adventures to break up all the combat, adding extra rooms / sites for those extra non-combat events to happen in, and making the setup / terrain for individual encounters more interesting.
I think for 3 I will have there be more meaningful options for setting up barricades, funneling the enemies if the players set up well, and having the NPCs provide support. That will also make my players care more that the NPCs are in danger. Rather than the barricades doing nothing but break automatically after 3 rounds and then become hazardous terrain, I think they should be able to be shored up if the players decide to reinforce them, and once the door behind the barricade is broken maybe the players can make ranged attacks past them treating them like arrow slits in a castle parapet. If they reinforce one side well enough maybe they can force the enemies to go around to where the players want them.
I'm kind of lost on 5. I like little details in the adventure like the stained glass window so maybe there needs to be more stuff like that which can be triggered over the course of the siege. I'll probably add retainers who can watch outside and die first for flavor, and have enemies advance up the hill instead of always just boringly teleport directly into the edges of the room. I'm thinking the roof can fall in partway through the assault and then weather effects can happen later, maybe applying the weak template to the later enemies to compensate for increased check / attack difficulties from the weather. Beyond that, not currently sure.
I might also decide to have the players level up the parties from 2 and 3 for 5 and 6 instead of making entirely new parties. I'll have to decide that based on what kinds of characters they make for those parties, and if they seem appropriate to the later adventures. The party for 3 seems like it might be a good choice for 5 just based on thematics. 5 would have more weight for the players if the party in the hopeless siege is comprised of characters they already ran through an earlier adventure.
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Well the purpose is fairly obvious as PF2 set out to get rid of everything the smarks like to label as "problems" in the game such as "15 minute adventuring days", "Christmas trees", "the Big Six" and so on and so forth.
In case of the "15 minute adventuring day", so far the new edition seems to be going in the opposite direction, i.e. the "10 minute adventuring day".
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Well the purpose is fairly obvious as PF2 set out to get rid of everything the smarks like to label as "problems" in the game such as "15 minute adventuring days", "Christmas trees", "the Big Six" and so on and so forth.In case of the "15 minute adventuring day", so far the new edition seems to be going in the opposite direction, i.e. the "10 minute adventuring day".
More 1 encounter, crawl away with your KO'd party members and and rest for a few days unless it was a TPK. So far it's been pretty brutal. Good thing they fixed CLW wand use right? :P
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I have loved Paizo's adventures because they frequently put players in new situations, with combats where the players have to adjust...
Very few of the combats in the adventure have anything so cool.
If you're running a playtest, you primarily want to see how the classes and systems perform in 'standard' conditions - eg, level one characters stumble upon four goblins in a room who attack immediately. If the game is interesting under these circumstances, then the system is probably good.
If the playtest is full of imaginative/novelty battles involving, say, a runaway cart rolling down a hill, then the main thing you learn is whether or not players enjoy battles involving runaway carts rolling down hills. This is too specific to be useful.
Many of the scenarios seem designed to test certain situations and mechanics in particular. This may make them less than ideal as a full blown campaign. Oh well? If the adventure path tried to push the envelope in adventure design, would reactions be about the adventure, or about the rules and monsters?
You could just run the game and make up your own adventures if you want, or heavily modify the adventures to your taste. Your opinion would be less useful with regard to examining the specific goals for the default mission, and there wouldn't be as much of a basis for comparison. But the game also needs to work when people are making up their own stuff.
We're well aware it's not a full campaign, per se, and I'm not houseruling anything. I just want to make the adventures more fun for my group of players, who are particularly averse to unending combat slogs. That's why I'm trying to figure ways to change and add stuff without subverting the actual test intent of the individual adventures.
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There *are* questions in the survey about the narrative and pacing of the adventure which leads me to believe they are taking feedback about the non-crunch side of things, so if you want better pre-written adventures I would still run the module as written and leave feedback about the writing.
There *are* questions in the survey about the narrative and pacing of the adventure which leads me to believe they are taking feedback about the non-crunch side of things, so if you want better pre-written adventures I would still run the module as written and leave feedback about the writing.
Um, is there some secret link to the survey you can share with me? Because the playtest page only has surveys for PFS, not for doomsday dawn.
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Part of the point of the playtest is to put stress on certain sections where they want to see how people respond to it. Certain parts will be harder than they should be in a standard adventure, and other parts easier. That's so they can tell if their predictions regarding standardized difficulty play out correctly.
Each section has a different goal:
Lost Star: Standard dungeon crawl. This one's the most standard.
Pale Mountain's Shadow: Traps, hazards, and difficult terrain at the same time as combat.
Somberfell Hall: Healing, encounter length, and sustainability.
Mirrored Moon: Higher-difficulty encounters, but with preparation and only once/day. Basically testing nova capabilities.
Heroes of Undarin: Durability and endurance of default mid-high level characters. There's a reason it specifically checks when people go down, and specifically limits gear choice.
Red Flags: Roleplaying, skill usage, and investigation-themed sections. Tries to go as long as possible without combat.
When the Stars go Dark: High-level play, difficulty balance, and checking for option paralysis.
The point is: this is a playtest. It's designed to stress test certain aspects. What it's not designed for is setting up constant roleplay scenarios or random 'interesting' one-off mechanics that will never be seen again. It's to test the things that need testing so that they can get the best information possible and use that to improve the game.
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If you're running a playtest, you primarily want to see how the classes and systems perform in 'standard' conditions - eg, level one characters stumble upon four goblins in a room who attack immediately. If the game is interesting under these circumstances, then the system is probably good.I have loved Paizo's adventures because they frequently put players in new situations, with combats where the players have to adjust...
Very few of the combats in the adventure have anything so cool.
No.
I have playtested often at a game design club named Table Treasure Games. One need is to test the strategies that the designer overlooked. Likewise, I have tested algorithms and software on my job, and we have to test the extremes. The standard conditions are the part that people understand the best. The extremes have the new data.
If the playtest is full of imaginative/novelty battles involving, say, a runaway cart rolling down a hill, then the main thing you learn is whether or not players enjoy battles involving runaway carts rolling down hills. This is too specific to be useful.
I added a runaway cart to Palace of Fallen Stars in my Iron Gods campaign. The rules for a runaway cart won't need to be well tuned in Pathfinder 2nd Edition. An approximation was good enough.
I have had novelty battles in my adventure path campaigns. My players love to derail the paths and that led to unusual battles. I will want well-tested rules for atypical fights.
Let me give an example. In Tide of Honor, the 5th module of Jade Regent, the PCs are supposed to lead a revolution against the corrupt oni-controlled government. An entire revolution cannot fit into one module, so the writer set up the PCs to handle a few battles and negotiations that would be repreentative of the overall revolution.
My players scrapped that plan. You can read their plan at Amya of Westcrown if you don't mind spoilers. As I reacted their changes, I decided to go extreme and send an army of 250 oni to destroy them. But I gave them warning. I let them learn of a secret meeting of oni and attend the meeting in disguise via Veil spell. I created an auditorium hidden inside a hollow mountain, with the ice atop the mountain serving as a translucent roof to let in light. My wife, playing a ninja, listened to the description of this enormous space and the stone pillars to the ice ceiling and asked, "What would it take to bring the roof down on them?"
I figured out some believeable engineering, and they collapsed the roof with a combination of Disintegrate spells and massive damage, with Fireballs thrown in to turn off the onis' regeneration. Fragments of ice fell 100 feet onto a crowd. Over 100 oni died. The party took some damage themselves, but teamwork got them all out alive.
I just asked my wife about that session. She said that she liked being able to take the descriptive text and put it to use. She wants to be able to take a jump to the left.
In my Iron Gods campaign, the broken Divinity starship has a working portable stardrive and a repaired scout ship. The module did not intend for the party to reach the starships homeworld Androffa, but in my campaign, they did. In my Rise of the Runelords campaign, the lost city of Xin-Shalast was supposed to be heavy combat. Instead, my players handled it by subterfuge and intrigue, starting a civil war between factions.
My players love to expand the narrative. Thus, I want adventures that give them methods by which they can take control of the narrative.
My players are only halfway through Lost Star, on break while one attends Worldcon. I have looked over only Lost Star and In Pale Mountain's Shadow. Yet those two chapters do have variety, as Cyouni lists above. That variety adds elements where the players can do things their own way. Maybe I will have to tweak them a little to play the the PCs strengths, but that is routine for a GM.
If the playtest scenarios are boring, as John Whyte claimed, my players can make them interesting. His statement that he does not see how the new system is supposed to shine in those scenarios worries me more. The Paizo Blog previews of Pathfinder 2nd Edition hyped its flexibility a lot. If that flexibility does not inspire creativity, then something would be very wrong.
But zeroing in on Affair at Sombrefell hall, the player's only defensive option is to barricade the door, which gives them three rounds warning to take up defensive positions (which strangely enough could also be achieved by taking up defensive positions initially). There is a chandelier that can be dropped (but no rules for the enemies trying to drop it). The other waves of monsters just 'get in'.
I have only glanced at Sombrefell Hall, so I don't know whether the PCs are defending only their own lives or something or someone else, but I see options: two open stairways and a balconey for archers to shoot from, furniture to move to channel opponents, a torch-lit hall for fire, a room labeled kitchen, and a storeroom of crates and barrels. The PCs could use the terrain to their advantage. My players would have fun with that.
I hear ya, beyond the desire to playtest the rules (which we may not all have equally) there's really nothing compelling inherent.
Since we're pausing our campaign (which has advanced to 4740 AR), I decided to make it part of the campaign. Essentially, a whole new party appears, with the conviction that they are destined for greatness. They arrive at our PC kingdom in the Stolen Lands where they are very surprised to learn that they have been expected. The spirits of the Stolen Lands are restless. Something has perturbed them, and not even Magdh can divine what it is. But there is a prophecy - a group of adventurers will arrive on the same day, not knowing why. The king and his most trusted advisor to take them to the lowest basement of the castle where it will be obvious to them what they need to do.
When the players arrive, they discover the personification of one of the local spirits (genius loci) has opened a portal for them. They pass through the portal to arrive... thirty something years before. The players in my campaign are pretty saavy about Golarion's lore. I'm spending as much time colorizing the background as I am prepping the playtest.
The first part will be getting the PCs familiar. When they return to the 'present', the rudiments of the plot will be uncovered. It'll be learned that the king's advisor is really Kendra, albeit much older. she's spent her lifetime interacting with these PCs who, from her perspective, are appearing time and again out of nowhere. She knows a lot of what is going on, having pieced it together over time, but its all disjointed for her. Future sections will include at least one PC from a previous section who will be the "organizer" for that part of the playtest (example - in part 2 she'll tell the party druid to gather up a group of wilderness-minded folk).
Yeah, its a bit hackneyed and railroaded, but it's a fun way to put the whole thing in a nice wrapper.
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More 1 encounter, crawl away with your KO'd party members and and rest for a few days unless it was a TPK. So far it's been pretty brutal. Good thing they fixed CLW wand use right? :PWell the purpose is fairly obvious as PF2 set out to get rid of everything the smarks like to label as "problems" in the game such as "15 minute adventuring days", "Christmas trees", "the Big Six" and so on and so forth.In case of the "15 minute adventuring day", so far the new edition seems to be going in the opposite direction, i.e. the "10 minute adventuring day".
Level 1 is always "If a fight continues for more than 2 rounds and the fighter isn't tanking the fight then the party rests for the rest of the day". I also don't know of any party that starts at 1st level with a wand of cure light wounds (last campaign had us go to level 3 before we got one).
If you think higher level play will cause a 10 minute work day I'd like to hear how.
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I also don't know of any party that starts at 1st level with a wand of cure light wounds (last campaign had us go to level 3 before we got one).
I don't recall mentioning a level...
If you think higher level play will cause a 10 minute work day I'd like to hear how.
Having played through the Lost star and Pale mountain’s shadow sections, I'm not seeing how you can AVOID a 5 min work day. Combat is so brutal, most combats result in players KO'd and neither section was completed as the game ended in a total party wipeout. If we'd have tried to 'push' through the 'work day' we'd have all died much quicker in the adventure.
If you mean higher than 4th, Pale mountain’s shadow, then for me it doesn't matter much as I can't imagine a party living to that high a level unless you start the game then.
EDIT, "the fighter isn't tanking the fight": I wanted to comment on this. We found it quite hard for the fighter to do this when they were lying on the ground after being crit before the fighters round. We saw our fighter, ranger and animal companion KO'd more than once before they could go.
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I don't recall mentioning a level...
Your post had minimal information. Thankfully I invited you to expand on your thoughts if they applied to levels greater than level 1, which you took the opportunity to do. So thank you for that.
Having played through the Lost star and Pale mountain’s shadow sections, I'm not seeing how you can AVOID a 5 min work day.
I'll ignore Lost Star as that is level 1 and you seem to not want to discuss level 1 (because if you don't colour spray a fight in PF1e at level 1 then every fight has the potential to take your party out for the rest of the day).
Combat is so brutal, most combats result in players KO'd and neither section was completed as the game ended in a total party wipeout. If we'd have tried to 'push' through the 'work day' we'd have all died much quicker in the adventure.
Fair enough. I wouldn't mind seeing your writeups on these if you've posted them anywhere. I'd also be interested if you had a cleric and how many heals they were prepping each day.
"the fighter isn't tanking the fight": I wanted to comment on this. We found it quite hard for the fighter to do this when they were lying on the ground after being crit before the fighters round. We saw our fighter, ranger and animal companion KO'd more than once before they could go.
I was talking about level 1 in PF1e (because unless the fighter is tanking then your party is going to blow through the cleric's cure light wounds).
I wouldn't mind seeing your writeups on these if you've posted them anywhere.
Here is a link. I have a post on page 2 for Lost Star and page 3 for Pale mountain’s shadow. I didn't go into great detail as it was someone else's thread.
A-sober-campaign-journal-of-Doomsday-Dawn
I'd also be interested if you had a cleric and how many heals they were prepping each day.
No cleric. We were promised barbarians that could heal the whole party so we went with an alchemist [8 life potions + overspending] and a bard using soothes at 1st. 4th level was a druid that pretty much had to go 100% healbot. If cleric is the only was to survive in new pathfinder, I find the game deadly flawed.
I wouldn't mind seeing your writeups on these if you've posted them anywhere.Here is a link. I have a post on page 2 for Lost Star and page 3 for Pale mountain’s shadow. I didn't go into great detail as it was someone else's thread.
Thanks.
No cleric. We were promised barbarians that could heal the whole party
Well... that's going to cause problems with your first foray into a new edition. That said, an alchemist and bard should be enough to keep the party alive.
That said, an alchemist and bard should be enough to keep the party alive.
We took SO much damage in the first 2 encounters that we ran out of resonance, used every life potion and ran out of spells and my familiar had to end the second fight because we were all KO'd... We then crawled back to rest up... Then the quasits alone did the same, nearly killing us all. the boss though, he killed us all but good. So about 1 trip back to town to rest up per 1.5 encounters... well before dying.
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You are thinking of a different part of the testing: This round of testing is "does it work?" not "can we break it?"
If you're running a playtest, you primarily want to see how the classes and systems perform in 'standard' conditions - eg, level one characters stumble upon four goblins in a room who attack immediately. If the game is interesting under these circumstances, then the system is probably good.No.
I have playtested often at a game design club named Table Treasure Games. One need is to test the strategies that the designer overlooked. Likewise, I have tested algorithms and software on my job, and we have to test the extremes. The standard conditions are the part that people understand the best. The extremes have the new data.
Since there will be no other round, now is the perfect time to break it
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At this point, I feel like I'm doing the playtest more for the sake of giving the feedback than because I think it will actually be any fun.
For my part, I'm struggling to find players to run the playtest with. Some people who were previously interested were turned off as soon as they saw the rulebook. Currently I only have two. I've run or played Pathfinder with only two PCs on several occasions, but I've done that by changing the parameters to balance the smaller numbers: extra levels, mythic ranks, Path of War. I can't do that in the playtest without invalidating the data and by all accounts it's a total meatgrinder so without a full party and dedicated healer they won't stand a chance. right now the plan is to have them run two PCs apiece, so at least they'll get to experience multiple classes.
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After reading the rules and reading the adventures I am unsure what PF2 is offering me. A new system has to offer something superior to the old so that you think it is worth scraping all the money you invested in the old system for the new, while at the same time giving players experiences they can't get elsewhere.
Yes. This, so much. So far the only thing I am getting from the playtest is a few houserules I'll propose for my next PF1E campaign.
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3.Shooting from darkness into an area of light treats them as concealed this is detailed in the vision rules. This means 5 flatcheck or their attack is cancelled.
Since the goblins also have darkvision, this is very much a disputed rule calling and so far the majority of people in the relevant thread have fallen down on the other side of the argument. See here:
You are thinking of a different part of the testing: This round of testing is "does it work?" not "can we break it?"
If you're running a playtest, you primarily want to see how the classes and systems perform in 'standard' conditions - eg, level one characters stumble upon four goblins in a room who attack immediately. If the game is interesting under these circumstances, then the system is probably good.No.
I have playtested often at a game design club named Table Treasure Games. One need is to test the strategies that the designer overlooked. Likewise, I have tested algorithms and software on my job, and we have to test the extremes. The standard conditions are the part that people understand the best. The extremes have the new data.
If "Does it work?" is the goal of the playtesting, then checking whether Pathfinder 2nd Edition works under non-standard scenarios would be a vital part of the playtest. Who wants to play a multi-session game that has to stick to standard scenarios all the time?
For my wife and other players, their roleplaying goal is not "Can I break it?" Instead, their goal is, "Is the story about my character, too, or am I stuck on a railroad?" Derailing a pre-written plot might be considered breaking the railroad, but I consider it player agency, an important element of tabletop roleplaying games that is missing in roleplaying video games. I stopped playing Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edtion because Pathfinder 1st Edition offered me a lot more player agency.
Man, my unoptimized party is having so much less trouble than this it is crazy.
Um, is there some secret link to the survey you can share with me? Because the playtest page only has surveys for PFS, not for doomsday dawn.
http://paizo.com/pathfinderplaytest
search "Currently Playtesting". There is a player survey, a DM survey, and a general survey.
But if they don't even know how it works in the standard scenario, that seems to be an earlier and more vital stage.If "Does it work?" is the goal of the playtesting, then checking whether Pathfinder 2nd Edition works under non-standard scenarios would be a vital part of the playtest. Who wants to play a multi-session game that has to stick to standard scenarios all the time?
For my wife and other players, their roleplaying goal is not "Can I break it?" Instead, their goal is, "Is the story about my character, too, or am I stuck on a railroad?" Derailing a pre-written plot might be considered breaking the railroad, but I consider it player agency, an important element of tabletop roleplaying games that is missing in roleplaying video games. I stopped playing Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edtion because Pathfinder 1st Edition offered me a lot more player agency.
Paizo already conducted the early stage playtesting with in-house playtesters. They know how the standard scenarios with experienced players works out. They expanded to public playtesting to reach a wider variety of players.
Plus it's possible to get more coherent data this way - they're asking for specific feedback on the various scenarios they put out. They're designed to test different aspects of the system.
Dealing with messy data is one of the major challenges of data science. Restricting the data to only the coherent parts, however, throws away too much useful data.
I believe that despite John Whyte's claim of monotony, the Doomsday Dawn chapters do have a good variety of scenarios that will test a wide swath of the 2nd Edition rules.
It doesn't really do much good if the test scenario goes off the rails completely and groups all wind up doing completely different things and having completely different experiences. What's the point of even putting out playtest scenarios in that case?
Just repurpose some existing modules with the new mechanics or something. Or just ask for general feedback on people playing home games. Which, I'm sure they're also getting, as we can see throughout this forum.
As you said, scenarios give coherent data. For example, Paizo wants to test whether resonance equal to level plus Charisma modifier is enough. Running the characters though a scenario designed to tax resonance gives more information about resonance than an existing module.
For games that stray off the rails of the playtest chapters, Paizo has these playtest forums as an alternate means of data collection. If the regular surveys cannot compile the results in a meaningful way, the participants can communicate their results by posting the story here. A story that says, "We did this unexpected thing, which made sense in character, and then the rules did not cover the results," is valuable information about a gap in the rules.
Obviously the long term intent should be to be able to play long form games with plenty of variation. I'm not sure how you design scenarios to test that.
But then, I've never quite understood how people use "player agency" around here. I had issues with 4E, but agency and railroading weren't among them. And I've had GMs run railroads in any system I've played broadly. It's always seemed at least 95% a GM issue to me, not a system one.
Edit: Obviously it could also be a module problem, though most of my railroad experiences were in home-brewed adventures. That's still not a system problem though.
The Tides of Honor module I described above has a reputation for railroading. Sending the party on a representative sample of tasks for the revolution is nevertheless sending the party to do a predetermined set of tasks. Pathfinder 1st Edition gave my players the freedom to re-interpret those tasks and go in their own direction. As a GM, I could have taken the freedom away, because the new direction left gaps, but I chose to invent new material to fill the gaps instead.
In 4th Edition the PCs abilities are built around a set of powers: daily powers, encounter powers, and at-will powers. Trying to go beyond the powers was like swimming upstream. The powers were designed for combat, so that made the story about combat. In my Pathfinder campaigns, my players and I prefer an even mix of exploration (or mystery solving), social interactions, and combat.
For example, Lords of Rust, the 2nd module of Iron Gods, is about entering the shantytown of Scrapwall and encountering its gangs, sometimes in fights and sometimes in negotiating an alliance, to find why a team from Scrapwall had invaded their hometown. My party instead adopted false identities as refugees seeking to hide in Scrapwall. They moved in peacefully. Okay, Scrapwall was not a peaceful place, so moving in involved combat, but they were pretending to be the kind of people who would not rile up the gangs. Their first big move was holding a public concert. We could not have pulled that off in 4th Edition. We did pull that off in Pathfinder.
Um, is there some secret link to the survey you can share with me? Because the playtest page only has surveys for PFS, not for doomsday dawn.http://paizo.com/pathfinderplaytest
search "Currently Playtesting". There is a player survey, a DM survey, and a general survey.
Huh, for whatever reason those links don't show up when looking at the site on a phone.
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So I downloaded the playtest because a player in my gaming circle wanted to try the new system and I understand the OP issues.
After reading the rules and reading the adventures I am unsure what PF2 is offering me. A new system has to offer something superior to the old so that you think it is worth scraping all the money you invested in the old system for the new, while at the same time giving players experiences they can't get elsewhere.
D&D 4e I could see what they were trying to do with the system but it didn't give me an experience I couldn't get elsewhere, in fact it felt so much like a video game that I was always thinking I could get the same experience but better playing on my computer.
D&D 5e is an example of a system that gave me something different from the pervious so I could see exactly what it was trying to do and it gave an experience that you couldn't get elsewhere so there was clear reason to play it. Now I personally don't like the system but i am able to see the appeal other have for it so I get what it was offering people to buy it.
3.x/PF1 Both are examples of offering something I couldn't get elsewhere and I could see what it was trying to do. SO I could see the value. PF1 had the advantage of saying we are going to keep 3.x alive which was great because 4e really was crap for most people.
So what is PF2 trying to showcase? Why is this better than PF1, what is it about this system that solves ENGOUGH issues to make the hundreds of dollars invensted in PF1 worth giving up? I don't see it.
The playtest adventures where so poor at showing me why PF2 is worth a look. That I scrapped it completely and started working on a one night adventure. When I playtested 5e I got it immediately what they were trying to achieve. I see PF2 as a reactionary response to D&D 5e actually being popular and PF losing some market share so they feel they have to release a new edition. I don't mean to say this is just a money grab as that isn't the case. It instead feels like a desperate...
Glad I'm not the only one :)
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If Doomsday Dawn isn't connecting, I'd recommend trying one of the Pathfinder Society Scenarios.
http://paizo.com/products/btpya1y3?Pathfinder-Society-Playtest-Scenario-1-T he-Rose-Street-Revenge
http://paizo.com/products/btpya1y4?Pathfinder-Society-Playtest-Scenario-2-R aiders-of-Shrieking-Peak
http://paizo.com/products/btpya1y5?Pathfinder-Society-Playtest-Scenario-3-A rclords-Envy
Thanks! I will definitely check those out.
I looked at trying to do a small campaign arc in PF2, but my players current classes don't translate well from PF1 to PF2.
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At this point, I feel like I'm doing the playtest more for the sake of giving the feedback than because I think it will actually be any fun.
That sounds incredibly depressing.
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My first recommendation would be to check out Rose Street Revenge, the organized play module to see if you'd be happier with that. It's got the same kind of mini-adventure structure as the main adventure but looser. Maybe it will work for you.
The thing that I think will maybe work best for you would be to just take the rules and run your own game. That's one of the playtest methods Jason Buhlman suggested. You can run pretty much anything (adapt an older Pathfinder AP or adventure, grab a third party adventure, whatever) and see how the rules work for you--or just go your own way and run your own adventure. Then, when you're done, file your results in the open survey.
You really don't need to throw your hands up because you aren't thrilled with the playtest module, in fact it'll probably be more helpful having some folks out there running all sorts of different things.
Hope that helps.
1. That room is just chalked full of cover and in very rare cases should anyone not be benefiting from it. Not just any cover but huge freaking 10ft diameter stone pillars. +2ac to most people vs ranged
2. It's extremely cramped and thus the goblins,pcs,and cover will be screening each other constantly. +1 ac vs ranged
3.Shooting from darkness into an area of light treats them as concealed this is detailed in the vision rules. This means 5 flatcheck or their attack is cancelled.So even though yall couldn't see the sensed goblins and were flatfooted y'all should have been +1ac with a 25% miss chance to the majority of the goblins.
You and our group read those rules differently.
#3: as we read it, when you have darkvision, there is NO 5 dc check as darkness/dim light doesn't affect your vision.
#1 and #2: the goblins were far enough back that taking cover meant no unblocked line of vision. In fact, looking at the map, I'm unsure where you can get cover while attacking. Screening came into effect though.
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It doesn't help that many of the rules are so complex, confusing or counterintuitive that people are interpreting them in different ways. So different groups get very different rules because one game read the rules differently, and that probably doesn't come out in the surveys.