|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I want to talk about something that came up a LOT during my playtest, that being the way resonance cost for consumables slowed down our game and ruined a character concept for one of our players.
Quentin the Alchemist tailored himself as a traveling medicine man. His skills were dedicated to Medicine and Nature, and he was always willing to step in and administer a healing potion if a party member was struggling. As the party didn't have a cleric or paladin, we assumed that Quentin could fill the role of a support character. This went wrong in several ways.
1. Limited resonance strongly discouraged people from grabbing any sort of buff. There were lines about “I can’t accept that eagle eye potion, I might need to get healed later” during our game.
2. No fewer than eight healing potions were consumed with no effect due to lack of resonance points, and this forced the party tank to sit out the final encounter because they had no way to go above 1 health without leaving the dungeon to rest up.
3. The alchemist didn’t have enough resonance to both create a decent number of items and use them himself. Most often, Quentin only had one or two resonance points left after preparing in the morning.
4. When we had to go back to the town to rest (a direct consequence of several failed healing potions), Quentin proceeded to spend the downtime blowing all of his resonance on healing potions so the party members wouldn’t be one hit away from death when we went back down. Imagine our frustration when only 5 of the 10 crafted potions worked.
In short, putting a resonance cost on potions and elixirs bogs down adventuring and forces parties to have at least one cleric in order to have any semblance of sustainability. Parties (especially low-level ones with alchemists) go through a lot of alchemical items over the course of an adventuring day, far more than the resonance system allows for. The solution for this problem is simple: make it so that consumables no longer cost resonance. Elsewise, every low-level Alchemist is shoehorned into a bomber build and any cleric-less party can’t last longer than 2 encounters without having to rest. Neither of these consequences are desirable for a game.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Add to this the fact that 90% of the treasure list that's available to 4th level characters are consumables makes things very disapointing. I mean sure, Barkskin is awesome, but...who'd want to spend 80 silver on a one-combat-buff? (A 4th level adventurer could start with 3 of them; 4 if they used their free 3rd level item on it too).
People are already not preparing the spell due to the extremely limited number of spell slots available per day, but blowing that kind of money on it is worse than PF1 consumables (eg 20gp for alchemist's fire was generally considered a waste; or as one of my group said when an NPC used several one us, "What? Do they not like money?").
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
And the Survey results as shown in the stream indicates "Alchemists didnt run out of resonance". Huh...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
And the Survey results as shown in the stream indicates "Alchemists didnt run out of resonance". Huh...
Ours did. So did the barbarian he was healing.
The alchemist would have probably been fine if he went for a bombs only build, but he went for elixirs and poisons to push the class's flexibility. It did not go well, despite them getting lucky and skipping about 70% of the encounters.
The Alchemist does not need to spend resonance on his own elixirs.
The Alchemist does not need to spend resonance on his own elixirs.
He did to make them...
The Alchemist does not need to spend resonance on his own elixirs.He did to make them...
The original post said:
3. The alchemist didn’t have enough resonance to both create a decent number of items and use them himself.
The alchemist doesn't need to spend resonance to use his own elixirs.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'll have to check my notes, but the group that went through the first encounter with me, had one character run out of resonance from drinking the Alchemist's elixirs. A dark vision elixir and a elixir of life.
The alchemist went under and was fed their own elixir of life, but due to having taken out the boss, and having several characters badly injured, it basically terminated the adventure since they decided it was too risky to continue.
I believe the alchemist had one resonance left. They had one healing potion, and multiple people who were in bad need of healing, including one who had no resonance left. They didn't want to risk burning their only healing potion for a chance for their most wounded character to be healed. The Alchemist also needed healing, and they considered having them drinking the potion.
It later occurred to me, it would have made more sense to quick alchemy another elixir of life, but due to one of the major character having run out of resonance, and dependent on consumables at that point, it basically terminated the adventuring day, so that situation wasn't pursued, since the primary objective had been made.
It might also be interesting to note, the group didn't choose to go back to clean up, they decided that was enough.
So as I recall, while the Alchemist didn't get to where they lost their class ability. But they also were unwilling to get to that point(perhaps short of life/death uncontrolled situation), either, so that might not be a good measuring point. However, the resonance utilization of a non-alchemist (combat) character did end up terminating the session/adventure, when the party would have otherwise proceeded.
They all indicated that they enjoyed the game, but it did feel like it ended a little bit prematurely due to the Resonance situation, but it was more focused on the non-alchemist's limitation than the alchemist, although they would have likely hit the limit shortly after, if they had proceeded onward.
Honestly, I was expecting resonance to be a bigger limitation on the Alchemist, of which I didn't see quite the expectation I was seeing. It was interesting that the limitation hit on the non-alchemist combat character instead. This was also however only looking at 1st level play (the lost star).
I mean sure, Barkskin is awesome, but...who'd want to spend 80 silver on a one-combat-buff?
What? Barkskin in PF2 is a touch debuff for when you want to do some extra fire damage to your enemy and your party is all using slashing damage anyway. I can't imagine anyone willingly casting it on themselves, let alone paying anything to do so.