| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
First post here on the forums!
I'm a high school English teacher about 1.5 hours from Indianapolis (also pronounced "Gen Con") at a small school. Graduating classes are in the 50-60 range.
Last academic year the strangest thing happened; I pitched an RPG Club at our administrators in late February, and they loved the idea (once I explained what an RPG is). I expected to begin after Spring Break with GMing for the five students that had planted the seed of this idea once a week. We had a callout. Eighteen students showed up. My colleague and I were running three groups each week, so we selected PF1 as the game due to his expertise with the system and easy free access to most of the rules online. He had invited me to play in his home game the preceding fall, so I was already working on learning the system. We used a setting I was more familiar with (FASA's Earthdawn) to ease my workload.
When the Playtest was announced, we knew we wanted to try it out.
Encounters
Whereas we began at level five last year to give our outgoing seniors a taste of heroism, we're starting at the beginning this time around. Instead of a month to plan and work with complete novices in small groups of varying sizes, we went from callout to the first encounter of Doomsday Dawn in two weeks.
Taking into account the reluctance of students from 7th-12th grade to read a 430-page document, this speaks to the increased teachability of the Playtest's basic mechanics. We had a couple that have read most of their class and character creation details, but most came in without cracking the book.
We just wrapped our first week of split sessions. Two groups made it through the second encounter in their first two-hour session. The third group (the magic-heavy team) is just past the first encounter. No casualties yet, but none of the younglings elected to become a cleric, so we'll see. The alchemist has burned through all his resonance points, the sorcerer is out of spells, and a paladin almost got knocked out from a vicious crit, but they're otherwise fairing okay so far.
Issues
I'm sure more concerns will arise in time, but coming from a person who just learned PF1, D&D5e, and now the Playtest in the last year each with enough depth to GM, the Playtest has felt intuitive enough not to be burdensome (in most aspects -- I don't think I can manage continuing to adjust with weekly updates. I'll learn the death and dying system, please just let me know when one is chosen). However, using the pdf is a bit of a bear -- lots of jumping around.
With the forum lurking I've done so far combined with the limited scope of my testing, I'm keeping a close eye on the necessity of clerics. While I would love nothing more than a cleric in every party (I play one in both the infrequent PF1 game and the 5e game I am a part of), I don't like that feeling like a requirement.
I am officially backing the crowd that feels ancestries take too long to feel meaningful.
Weirdly, I wonder if I'm missing something with thrown weapons. The ranges seem a little too close on most from what I'm recalling.
Insights
My colleague and I have both mentioned reaching a point where enough of the compartmentalized bits click together and feeling like we had had an epiphany. Most of the pieces of the system clicks together and feel like a whole eventually.
I'm hopeful for the level of customization that I can see the potential for in the current skeleton. Unfortunately, some of the past options don't seem like they'll work anymore. My Exalted Cleric of Pharasma summoning in seven Vanth Psychopomps for dramatic effect just isn't going to be a reality in PF2, but that's okay. We'll build new cool things. I'm impatiently waiting to see them.
The other teacher and I are having a lot of fun tinkering with the Playtest here and there. The Goblin NPC and Elf PC that took the Half-Orc ancestry feats have been fun additions on the role-playing side. I'm wondering if the Goblin Monk could make poisoning her fists work. I don't think the PC Paladin is going to be able to pull off throwing weapons like he's trying, but a Ranger might have a shot a little more than most games.
Apologies for the long post. Future updates on our merry band of weirdos will be more pointed and concise. I'd love to hear anyone else's input on what we've encountered so far and if we should keep an eye out for anything on the horizon.
That sounds like a pretty fun initiative. Also, I thought my school was small with a graduating class of 140.
In my experience so far, that lack of a cleric will start to show quickly, unless they're willing to retreat and rest frequently. Some other healing options exist, but nothing else can keep up with Channel Energy when it comes to restoring HP. I'll be curious to hear if their experience is similar.
Thrown weapons had short range increments in PF1 as well, limiting their utility. At least in the playtest there's not the same risk of attack of opportunity for using them, and you don't have to take point blank shot and precise shot anymore.
Good luck to you and your teams.