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Had a chance to play through Rose Street this weekend and would like to put my thoughts out there. Overall, I think it does a good job of explaining the modes of play that will matter in PFS and gave a pretty good explanation of how things work. More or less, it felt like a PFS scenario but with a few glaring exceptions. I'm worried these exceptions will make PFS a less fun experience going forward.
First is how magic items and identification is handled. Because identification takes an hour, in most scenarios they'll be relegated to gold/silver on the chronicle and play no role in the scenario. Even with quick identification, you're looking at a pretty hefty amount of time to ID loot. In PF1 many scenarios often reward the players with items that will be useful later in the scenario. Unless its handed over by an NPC, loot will not matter in this model if the scenario has any amount of time pressure in the story.
While Quick Identification can alleviate this problem to some extent it takes a long time to get there and with few exceptions is unavailable to 1st level characters and moderate hauls will still take over an hour (in-game time)for most levels of play. My overall impression is that magic items as in-scenario tools will be limited as a narrative device and I worry that this will harm the diversity of scenarios.
The second problem is healing. While clerics are super duper good at it, nobody else is even okay it. While Rose Street is broken up into quests, it made me think that without a cleric or an ability to identify items like potions in a reasonable time, PFS scenarios will be much harder. While we know Paizo is trying to get away from the Holy Stick, doing so has brought us back a state of always needing a cleric. Given the fluid composition of PFS tables, you can't always guarantee one. If Alchemists could be de-coupled from resonance in some way, they may make a good healer as well giving players a non-religious healer. As someone who regularly plays support characters, I'd certainly appreciate that.
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I imagine the typical PFS table will consist of 4 clerics, as nobody wants to risk being in a game without one...
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First is how magic items and identification is handled. Because identification takes an hour, in most scenarios they'll be relegated to gold/silver on the chronicle and play no role in the scenario.
Yes, identifying magic items take too long now. It should be 10 minutes as a base (1 minute with a feat) and even that would substantially increase the game day.
Detect Magic is completely broken with it detecting only the "presence" of (unknown) magic in a 30' aura.
If Alchemists could be de-coupled from resonance in some way, they may make a good healer as well giving players a non-religious healer.
Alchemists should definitely use the spell point mechanic and instead of having INT mod spell points, it should be level + mod.
The second problem is healing. While clerics are super duper good at it, nobody else is even okay it. While we know Paizo is trying to get away from the Holy Stick, doing so has brought us back a state of always needing a cleric.
I'm not sure what they are going to do.
If this is how it's going to go in PF2, I will be playing as much PF1 as possible and will probably even try 5E, something I said I'd never do.
I imagine the typical PFS table will consist of 4 clerics, as nobody wants to risk being in a game without one...
That will be the 1st question at every table "who's going to play the cleric". I'm not looking forward to this.
I imagine the typical PFS table will consist of 4 clerics, as nobody wants to risk being in a game without one...That will be the 1st question at every table "who's going to play the cleric". I'm not looking forward to this.
Mileage may vary but I can see my own local PFS pushing the "new players" to roll up Cleric.
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A bit less Doom and Gloom, guys. This is what the playtest is there for, to balance all the options. I do believe that we will get serious buffs to Alchemist, Angel Blood Sorcerers and maybe even plant Druids and Paladins.
And I have hopes for Medicine getting better as well, like making Combat Medic simply a trained skill use and reducing your Chance to kill the guy you try to help.
I can't speak for others posting, but I wouldn't describe myself as "doom and gloom". I had fun playing it for the most part, however these two things are bad for the game as it relates to PFS play.
I think all the things you list would be good things to change to get away from mandatory cleric (which is where we're at), but we're not there yet. Thus, feedback. I think the idea of an alchemist as a primary healer is interesting if done correctly.
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A bit less Doom and Gloom, guys. This is what the playtest is there for, to balance all the options.
Thing is, there are only a few months left before the game is finalized and to me, we're not polishing the game, it's still quite rough. And when corrections are made, something else is broken.
Even things as minor as not having archer rangers or smiting paladins, I'm not sure why these decisions were made, but they are not good decisions.
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A bit less Doom and Gloom, guys. This is what the playtest is there for, to balance all the options.Thing is, there are only a few months left before the game is finalized and to me, we're not polishing the game, it's still quite rough. And when corrections are made, something else is broken.
Even things as minor as not having archer rangers or smiting paladins, I'm not sure why these decisions were made, but they are not good decisions.
My hope with some of the "duh" choices like archer ranger and smiting Paladins is that they were so "duh" that they wanted to test other options.
I think one of the reasons they're calling it a "playtest" vs. a Beta is that there's a lot things in this that feel like they're designed to test. This isn't a coherent game in a lot of ways (flails wildly at Alchemist). I'm hoping that's because they want to see what strange thoughts they've had work rather than the actual in-office test system they've been using.
Hiding how we feel won't help either. If we don't express how we feel, they go away thinking everyone is satisfied.
Even worse, if we say nothing the game doesn't improve. I'm not sure if you're in business, but businesses (like mine), we value customer input more than anything, because honestly, it's hard to get that input. More often than not, a customer will leave your business for another, or another alternative. It's very hard to get them to tell you anything, let alone how you can improve. It hurts, it sucks, but if you're willing to listen and care, you'll be good at what you do.