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I read somewhere that one of the goals of the playtest is to see if we can develop the same style of adventuring campaigns for PF2 as we had for PF1.
My answer, based on playing through the Lost Star chapter, is 'no'. At least not as far as numerical/mathematical feel. (theme and role playing are similar)
The math needs to change. The current state of at least that chapter is egregiously not fun.
When I first started playing D&D 3.x we had a GM that mis-read the rules regarding appropriate encounter level. The rules as-written state that you should take the average of the player character level and have that be the CR score used to create encounters for. Our GM instead was doing a sum of the player character levels. So when we were a 4-person party of 3rd level characters, he would break out a CR 12 gold dragon.
Not fun times.
But that is how I felt that the Lost Star played out too. We were 4 level 1 players. Being put up against six CR 0 centipedes at once; or 2 CR 1 goblins and several CR 0 goblins at the same time. Both of these would be rated at a total encounter level of 2 or higher.
The final boss is a CR 3 with a CR 0 backup creature. That is probably somewhere around a CR 4 encounter.
... sigh ...
So. One of the apparent goals of the new rules engine is to prevent allowing players to create overpowered builds. Most bonuses are of the same type, so don't stack. The baseline character is reasonably effective already and so abilities and feats that get added on are not very powerful individually and don't stack with each other. Using multiple magic items - especially consumable items - is limited by resonance. Things like that.
But did anyone remind the campaign creators of that? It feels like the bonuses to hit for the monsters is expecting that players are coming in with an AC over 20. The highest AC in our group was 16.
So having Drakus with a +10 standard attack bonus means that he was hitting on both first and second attacks each round every round. Against any character. Quite often dropping a character from full health to dying in two actions. Move; hit; hit.
At one point my paladin managed to crit on the Retributive strike from his first attack on an ally. So for his second attack he is at -5 from multiple attack penalty along with the -2 from enfeebled (2). He rolls a 11 and still hits. Because that character he was swinging at only has an AC of 13. Because that is what that character has for an AC. Because the game doesn't allow (especially at 1st level) for a plethora of stacking bonuses to raise AC.
Some of my kids were literally and actually crying because of how punishingly difficult this entire scenario is and how helpless they felt to be able to do anything differently. They couldn't feel successful no matter what they tried.
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The encounters in Lost Star are completely out of whack with the encounter design rules from the bestiary, that's a fact. I also think this is intentional. The want to see which classes have the highest suitability, and to do that they need characters to die, and even to have entire total party kill situations. Listening to the Buhlman podcast affirmed this for me.
What Paizo misses here is that a playtest release is also a marketing ploy for the final product. If the players come away from the playtest with revulsion, they're not coming back to buy the final game.
The encounters in Lost Star are completely out of whack with the encounter design rules from the bestiary, that's a fact. I also think this is intentional. The want to see which classes have the highest suitability, and to do that they need characters to die, and even to have entire total party kill situations. Listening to the Buhlman podcast affirmed this for me.
Good to know. If we continue to have this level of frustration in the rest of the Doomsday Dawn campaign, we may end up abandoning the rest of it for our own health.
What Paizo misses here is that a playtest release is also a marketing ploy for the final product. If the players come away from the playtest with revulsion, they're not coming back to buy the final game.
I see a lot of good in the game engine itself. I put the blame for the lack of enjoyment squarely on the campaign.
So if the premade campaigns are still like Doomsday Dawn, I will likely get the core rule books and just make campaign content myself.
The encounters in Lost Star are completely out of whack with the encounter design rules from the bestiary, that's a fact. I also think this is intentional. The want to see which classes have the highest suitability, and to do that they need characters to die, and even to have entire total party kill situations. Listening to the Buhlman podcast affirmed this for me.
Bizarre if true. The playtest document is huge and must have taken a vast amount of work. It would have been far easier and quicker for them to just play the thing themselves. It might get repetitive, but with practice I'm sure you could play Lost Star a 2 or 3 times in a day. So 5 people for a week could run through it with 50 characters.
It feels as though it was rushed out in time for Gencon, and the people writing the final draft of each element didn't talk enough to the others, especially the rulebook vs the bestiary vs the campaign.
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The encounters in Lost Star are completely out of whack with the encounter design rules from the bestiary, that's a fact. I also think this is intentional. The want to see which classes have the highest suitability, and to do that they need characters to die, and even to have entire total party kill situations. Listening to the Buhlman podcast affirmed this for me.Bizarre if true. The playtest document is huge and must have taken a vast amount of work. It would have been far easier and quicker for them to just play the thing themselves. It might get repetitive, but with practice I'm sure you could play Lost Star a 2 or 3 times in a day. So 5 people for a week could run through it with 50 characters.
It feels as though it was rushed out in time for Gencon, and the people writing the final draft of each element didn't talk enough to the others, especially the rulebook vs the bestiary vs the campaign.
The data is more interesting with a broader pool of players:
It does not only matter what classes are most effective in the hands of the designers; it also matters what classes are most useful in the hands of players.
2 things just regarding the first scenario. The centipedes are an optional encounter and yeah they can be devastating. Drakus is actually alone, the rat was a leftover mistake. However utilizing the possible recovery time is a needed factor if you do not have an optimized party with a good healer and even then resting once is totally fine.
Just to give a positive example my group had a very easy time with the whole adventure. Drakus did not survive a single round and only one player actually fought him. The ranger critted him once with his animal companion and then proceeded to destroy him with max damage on the dwarven battleaxe and a third hit dealing 41 damage in a single round.
In general I would agree PF2 can be really hard or rather punishing. If you read monster entries especially level 0 ones, it is quite clear that your starting armor total goal is 15-16 so that you are mostly only critted on 19-20 just like in PF1.
However some of the monster entries especially regarding the skill department seem to be overpowered due to a mistake in modulation. Which will be adjusted.
In toto, I am sad to say that the playtest campaign is not suitable for kids. 2 of the scenarios are specifically made to aim for a total party wipeout. If you want to run it for kids, I'd recommend playing characters 1-3 levels higher than recommended for each scenario.
The data is more interesting with a broader pool of players:
It does not only matter what classes are most effective in the hands of the designers; it also matters what classes are most useful in the hands of players.
Oh, sure; you definitely need other people to try it in different ways and find the flaws and wrinkles and exploits that the designers didn't. But I'd have hoped that they'd have done the Alpha testing before it went to the public Beta. They must have done lots of development testing while the game was still being written, but they don't seem to have tested what they were about to release. Which makes it look like it was released before it was ready, because it was scheduled for Gencon and that was that.
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The Lost Star is not suitable for new players - it's likely to turn them away IMHO.
I have at least 2 completely new players on my table most of the others have under 1 year of PF experience and they really like it.
I guess this is a good example of how very different experiences we can have. My group found Parts 1 and 2 a cakewalk, with only a couple occasions where Hero Points were needed to automatically stabilize.
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The data is more interesting with a broader pool of players:
It does not only matter what classes are most effective in the hands of the designers; it also matters what classes are most useful in the hands of players.
That data is meaningless if no one wants to play the final game.
I guess this is a good example of how very different experiences we can have. My group found Parts 1 and 2 a cakewalk, with only a couple occasions where Hero Points were needed to automatically stabilize.
Every scenario, even PF1 scenarios, depend heavily on the GM. If GMs don't know the rules or prepare properly, it can make it much harder or easier.
For example, I read people's experiences online and some people have been saying Detect Magic is "working great", but they don't even know how it's supposed to work, they're using house rules and their eyes are just glossing over text. I'm going to guess that many people are not even playing the system properly still in many areas.
PF2 also heavily depends on the classes you bring, so I'm not surprised by vast differences in experience.
PF2 also heavily depends on the classes you bring, so I'm not surprised by vast differences in experience.Especially, "do you have a cleric?"
This is one thing that is important - Every group we've created so far, we've ALWAYS had at least one cleric. There are issues that the designers have acknowledged, and it sounds like they might beef up the healing for the other healing spellcasters a bit. Then again, we're a table of old-schoolers, who ALWAYS make sure that one person plays a healer of some sort (cleric, oracle, etc.) for every campaign - it's a habit left over for some of us from our AD&D1 or AD&D2 days.
PF2 also heavily depends on the classes you bring, so I'm not surprised by vast differences in experience.Especially, "do you have a cleric?"This is one thing that is important - Every group we've created so far, we've ALWAYS had at least one cleric. There are issues that the designers have acknowledged, and it sounds like they might beef up the healing for the other healing spellcasters a bit. Then again, we're a table of old-schoolers, who ALWAYS make sure that one person plays a healer of some sort (cleric, oracle, etc.) for every campaign - it's a habit left over for some of us from our AD&D1 or AD&D2 days.
Mine did not have a cleric yet and it worked out fine. However the +3 to the focus energy pool is something I miss in the other classes powers. I do think that the sorcerer primal or divine is fine for a main healer though.
I hope that my group will play some of my dream compositions in one of the higher level adventures, animal totem barbarian, animal druid (main healer), animal companion ranger and a wildshape druid to round it out, everyone can take natural medicine too.