Nothing wrong with this, but I was perusing chapters 1 and 2 in prep for sessions and find myself bothered by the PCs needing to make new characters for chapter 2.
From a storytelling standpoint, I love the idea. In practice one of my players wants to play a Druid. I only just announced to them the two-character thing so many of them simply had their primary idea and are now kinda "well, this is weird..."
From my standpoint, knowing the spoilers, my wants to be druid player has his Druid for chapter 1 planned out roughly. But, moving to chapter 2 the Druid is a much mire prevalent role. So unless he makes two Druids, essentially he's playing the character he wants to play with low input in Magnimar, followed by chapter change and when that character would get to shine much more, he's got to play a different one.
Should I suggest he wait until chapter 2 to play his Druid, knowing that this will not be his main character? Has anyone else had a similar issue with Doomsday Dawn's multiple PC construction?
Something to note. The Doomsday Dawn adventure asks for players to create 5 different characters.
Something to note. The Doomsday Dawn adventure asks for players to create 5 different characters.
... Alright, I have several questions because that seems excessive.
When are all the character changes? And why? I know they want to test things, but part of an adventure is growing attached to your character. I love making unique interesting characters, but even my wells would run dry needing to make 5 for a 7 chapter game. And I don't think I'll be able to keep my players invested in a character if even their main one will only be played for, equivalently, less than half of the adventure.
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So it goes like this:
Part 1 - Create new characters. These are the main characters and test dungeon exploration.
Part 2 - Create new characters. These characters are doing the task because they are suited for crossing multiple terrains. These are meant to test travel.
Part 3 - Create new characters. These characters are meant to handle multiple waves through having lots of healing so as to test healing resource management.
Part 4 - Back to the main characters. Testing single combat days.
Part 5 - Create new characters. These characters are meant to be hardy crusaders who can handle multiple waves of enemies but will eventually die. This is meant to test lethality for mid to high level play.
Part 6 - Create new characters. These characters are high ranking member of the order. These are meant to test out roleplaying.
Part 7 - Back to main characters. Testing high level play
Going off this I've actually made changes where part 2,3, and 6 can be played with the same characters after creating the new ones for part 2. But for the purposes of the playtest if they wish to they can switch out characters that work better for that part.
I ended up skimming everything before you posted to read at least the character swap parts. I totally understand the reasoning for playtesting those things but damn... Does not feel good to purely put mechanics over roleplaying.
Of my 5 player table, two are experienced players. It is going to be a hard sell for all of them though to invest in additional characters. I can also see the issue of one of them liking one of their 4 others better than their "main character".
The other thing I feel this stumbles with is failing to test character advancement. Perhaps I'm wrong but my initial mathing says my players aren't going to level to 4 over the course of a single dungeon. There may be dead levels (where change is minimal or negligible) that will likely need addressing before release next year.
Something to note. The Doomsday Dawn adventure asks for players to create 5 different characters.... Alright, I have several questions because that seems excessive.
When are all the character changes? And why? I know they want to test things, but part of an adventure is growing attached to your character. I love making unique interesting characters, but even my wells would run dry needing to make 5 for a 7 chapter game. And I don't think I'll be able to keep my players invested in a character if even their main one will only be played for, equivalently, less than half of the adventure.
Paizo wants to seriously test the character creation in Pathfinder 2nd Edition. Lengthy and complex character creation is a main stumbling block to getting new players into Pathfinder. Another reason is that some chapters will test the characters under different conditions and sometimes the GM can warn the players about those conditions before they create their characters.
Doomsday Day has seven chapters: The Lost Star, In Pale Mountain's Shadow, Affair at Sombrefell Hall, The Mirror Moon, The Heroes of Undarin, Red Flags, and When the Stars Go Dark. They take place at 1st, 4th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 14th, and 17th levels and at different locations across the Inner Sea continents. The original party members play at 1st, 9th, and 17th level.
The PCs don't have to be unique or creative. They could be very generic or stereotypical. Hopefully, just playing a new class or species will be enough to keep a player's interest for the 8 hours of gaming each chapter will require. Doomsday Dawn is only 95 pages long; it is not an adventure path.
My wife used to play in up to three roleplaying games in a week. She has an entire city's worth of characters in her head. She jumping into making her Pale Mountain character before we got halfway through The Lost Star. The first is a goblin paladin of Alseta who works as an orderly in a hospice. The second is a supersitious spear-chucking barbarian native to the mountains.
And yes, this playtest does not properly test character advancement. Such testing on a normal roleplaying schedule would take over a year. The repeating characters jump ahead several levels without explanation nor earning the levels.
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I ended up skimming everything before you posted to read at least the character swap parts. I totally understand the reasoning for playtesting those things but damn... Does not feel good to purely put mechanics over roleplaying.
Of my 5 player table, two are experienced players. It is going to be a hard sell for all of them though to invest in additional characters. I can also see the issue of one of them liking one of their 4 others better than their "main character".
The other thing I feel this stumbles with is failing to test character advancement. Perhaps I'm wrong but my initial mathing says my players aren't going to level to 4 over the course of a single dungeon. There may be dead levels (where change is minimal or negligible) that will likely need addressing before release next year.
The thing is that RP doesn't need to be playtested, it's table-specific, and we all know how to do it in our groups.
The mechanics do, and it makes sense to me to have an AP specifically designed to stress test certain aspects.
However, I do think that we need to see a playtest AP for say 5th-15th level to test out how a longer adventure would work.
I was also disappointed to see that there was no playtest of 20th level play.