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"Here, I'm trying a new recipe out. Can you taste it and give me feedback so I can perfect it?"
"It has too much salt."
"OK, well finish eating it and then fill out these forms."
"I don't want any more. It has too much salt."
"Don't you want to help make it better? You're going to be eating it for a long time to come!"
"I wouldn't count on it."Except that's not how the playtest works at all. It's more like,
"Hey I'm trying to create a whole new menu that we're going to reveal in six months. If you agree to help you will get a free meal every week and all you have to do is fill out a survey to let us know what you think."
"Sure yeah I've always liked your food so far. I'll help you out"
"Okay here's the first menu, we've prepared one of every dish. Let us know what you think"
"I don't like 3 of the menu items. Get rid of them completely."
"Uhh okay well we can try to change them to suit your taste but they are important to the menu-"
"Just get rid of them they are too salty"
"Oh okay so add less salt? We can give that a try and you can come back next week and let us know what you think"
"Nah that's okay if you're not getting rid of them I'm not coming back"
See how that's not helpful at all and doesn't make sense? Unless you hate the whole system you're not helping anyone by leaving the playtest early. Even if you're having a bad time it's supposed to be helping them realize WHY you're having a bad time. Is it something you're doing? Is it a misunderstanding? A system flaw? Is a different playstyle needed from your group to have a better experience? All of these are valid questions. That need a lot of data to be sure of.
Ehh, this is more like (for me) eating Italian - it's a menu where there's only one or two things I like, a few that I'm ambivalent toward, and a lot that I don't care for at all. The menu needs a significant overhaul to match my tastes.
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This is how the fight played out with my group,
NPC giving intro: "...gnomes, also, lake with a giant sea serpent, -slipping into OOC- so if you love underwater combat..."
Players in unison: "Okay, lake is off limits. I'm sure the rest of this hex map has enough resources"
And they won the module handily. I like that some combats are not there to be fought. Gives a good sense of scale and adds some realism.
Maybe. If this were a normal campaign, I might agree, except that the PCs could be missing out on XP and essential loot. If this were a normal campaign where the GM lets the players level up at story milestones without tracking XP (my favorite house rule) then I absolutely agree.
But I don't agree in a playtest.
A playtest report that says "Chapter four was super easy. My PCs finished it in a night. Only one battle, we won, gg." doesn't tell the developers much about the system.
We're supposed to be TESTING this stuff. Skipping encounters is not testing the system. It won't expose flaws in the game mechanics; it will only expose flaws in the adventure writing. I don't think we're here to test the adventure writing (though it could be a good footnote in the playtest report).
As for me, in a PLAYTEST, I hate skipping encounters. I assume the devs put it there so we could tell them how their game system worked. So I try to take them all on, even if I would have skipped them in a non-playtest campaign.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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This is how the fight played out with my group,
NPC giving intro: "...gnomes, also, lake with a giant sea serpent, -slipping into OOC- so if you love underwater combat..."
Players in unison: "Okay, lake is off limits. I'm sure the rest of this hex map has enough resources"
And they won the module handily. I like that some combats are not there to be fought. Gives a good sense of scale and adds some realism.
Maybe. If this were a normal campaign, I might agree, except that the PCs could be missing out on XP and essential loot. If this were a normal campaign where the GM lets the players level up at story milestones without tracking XP (my favorite house rule) then I absolutely agree.
But I don't agree in a playtest.
A playtest report that says "Chapter four was super easy. My PCs finished it in a night. Only one battle, we won, gg." doesn't tell the developers much about the system.
We're supposed to be TESTING this stuff. Skipping encounters is not testing the system. It won't expose flaws in the game mechanics; it will only expose flaws in the adventure writing. I don't think we're here to test the adventure writing (though it could be a good footnote in the playtest report).
As for me, in a PLAYTEST, I hate skipping encounters. I assume the devs put it there so we could tell them how their game system worked. So I try to take them all on, even if I would have skipped them in a non-playtest campaign.
DM_Blake - I only partially agree with you here. In your extreme example, finishing the adventure with only 1 fight, and avoiding the rest, sure, that's not encouraged, but the playtest is supposed to test more than just the combat aspects of the game. If there's an encounter the PCs avoid through stealth, then that's completely good data. If in the first part, someone makes their check to notice the fungus hazard, and never enter the room (like my group did), then that's also good. My group also avoided the poisoned well like the plague (cause we though it might actually have the plague). Avoiding encounters is part of the game, and should be part of the playtest.
I actually wish the playtest had more encounters which could be talked through, or avoided to test more of the system beyond monsters and hazards.
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Part of the problem with this battle, beyond the monster's ludicrous attack and defense bonuses, is that once you encounter it, it's already too late. It's impossible to escape, and the only magic that would let you do so is now Uncommon so PCs aren't allowed to have it for the playtest. (So how are we supposed to test it?)
When my group gets to this adventure, well, I'll run the encounter if they have it by the book and see. But I'm already planning to retcon the almost inevitable TPK into them waking up on shore with 1 HP.
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It's impossible to escape, and the only magic that would let you do so is now Uncommon so PCs aren't allowed to have it for the playtest. (So how are we supposed to test it?)
The spells Fly and Control Water are your friend here.
The adventure explicitly tells you that, in this chapter, if the PCs are about to lose you should let them flee. So not doing that is actually directly counter to the playtest's instructions.
That's a good thing to note. This has now made several times on these forums where I read a thread about how terrible things are only to later find out the GM didn't read part of the playtest or simply ignored it. This is no fault of the players of course, but it does show how insufficient preparation can lead to poor results.
I feel like the math is just generally way off/bad in 2e. The promise of this feeling like 1e, at all, is just wrong. The Sea Serpent is a single CR+3 creature. In 1e, that'd be a challenging combat for a party of 4, but not a deadly one. In 1e, the fighter-types would have greater than 50% chance of hitting on their first attack. Not so much in 2e...
This beastie had an AC of 32. Even a fighter with max strength and master proficency, and a +2 weapon is at a +17 to hit. That's hitting on a 15 or better only...
Maybe others like this math. I hate it. Whiffing 75% of the time on your first attack just isn't fun. And being a Fighter "tank" (AC 30 is as good as you can do at 9th level *with* a shield) with the enemy hitting on a 7 on its first attack... Well, it's just ridiculously overpowered.
Simply put, level scaling to everything just doesn't work. It's not enjoyable, and makes hard fights feel impossible. Maybe the intention is that the only *reasonable* encounters at a level is CR+/-1, but... that's extremely narrow, and then individual enemies will have a *lot* of variance that's not reflected in CR.
You make a good point, but you draw an incorrect conclusion from it.
Namely, your chance to hit and the level scaling are mostly unrelated. It would be trivially easy to adjust the numbers so that you have a 75% chance to hit most first attacks against same-level monsters (which is about where I think PCs should be by the way) and still keep level scaling. In that case you would still have a 60% chance to hit a typical level+3 encounter.
Level scaling does affect how many CRs you can go up before a fight becomes impossible... but all that's really doing is making explicit something that was true anyway in PF1.
Did this sea serpent fight with my group and i know we did a fair amount of things wrong so bare that in mind. party was a wizard me, druid, paladin, and cleric. because of a joke the cleric made he had water breathing precast on all of us as a 4th level spell so it lasts 24 hours. we got to the lake and without ever taking to anything in the forest we went in and walked along the bottom of the lake.
turn 1. sea serpent went and swallowed cleric
turn 2 cleric got out but the huge dino druid got swallowed, it chewed its way out.
turn 3 sea serpent missed, wizard cast cone of cold and it made its save and took 2 damage. (rolled 36 damage)
turn 4 sea serpent ate paladin and ran away and paladin killed it from the inside but almost died.
after action report, from the dm said he lowered the ac by 2. most likely remembering one of the devs saying that numbers were off by 2.
it was a crazy fight and if ran right then we would have had almost no way of winning. also funny to me that the dino druid at huge got swallowed. it was also 1 am on Wednesday and people had to work the next day so it got a little hand waved.
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DM_Blake - I only partially agree with you here. In your extreme example, finishing the adventure with only 1 fight, and avoiding the rest, sure, that's not encouraged, but the playtest is supposed to test more than just the combat aspects of the game. If there's an encounter the PCs avoid through stealth, then that's completely good data. If in the first part, someone makes their check to notice the fungus hazard, and never enter the room (like my group did), then that's also good. My group also avoided the poisoned well like the plague (cause we though it might actually have the plague). Avoiding encounters is part of the game, and should be part of the playtest.
I actually wish the playtest had more encounters which could be talked through, or avoided to test more of the system beyond monsters and hazards.
I agree with you. Encountering an encounter then "defeating" it with a test of skills (Stealth vs. Perception, Diplomacy, or whatever) is still a valid encounter.
Several people on this thread were suggesting just not going to where this encounter was. Comments like those are what prompted my original post about playtesting encounters rather than avoiding them.
So, to be more clear:
Since this is a playtest, I assume that every encounter is there because the devs want feedback on it. Just walking around it is not feedback. I think we're supposed to actually encounter it. How we "defeat" it (combat, skills, RP, whatever) is up to us and our GM and all of that will be great feedback for the devs. But jut "Don't go there" is not playtesting and it's not what the devs want feedback on.
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DM_Blake - I only partially agree with you here. In your extreme example, finishing the adventure with only 1 fight, and avoiding the rest, sure, that's not encouraged, but the playtest is supposed to test more than just the combat aspects of the game. If there's an encounter the PCs avoid through stealth, then that's completely good data. If in the first part, someone makes their check to notice the fungus hazard, and never enter the room (like my group did), then that's also good. My group also avoided the poisoned well like the plague (cause we though it might actually have the plague). Avoiding encounters is part of the game, and should be part of the playtest.
I actually wish the playtest had more encounters which could be talked through, or avoided to test more of the system beyond monsters and hazards.
I agree with you. Encountering an encounter then "defeating" it with a test of skills (Stealth vs. Perception, Diplomacy, or whatever) is still a valid encounter.
Several people on this thread were suggesting just not going to where this encounter was. Comments like those are what prompted my original post about playtesting encounters rather than avoiding them.
So, to be more clear:
Since this is a playtest, I assume that every encounter is there because the devs want feedback on it. Just walking around it is not feedback. I think we're supposed to actually encounter it. How we "defeat" it (combat, skills, RP, whatever) is up to us and our GM and all of that will be great feedback for the devs. But jut "Don't go there" is not playtesting and it's not what the devs want feedback on.
I think a big part of why my playtests have been fairly low on the kill count for us is because we're playing this like we'd play an adventure. Which means smart tactics, avoiding as many fights as possible (or fights that don't provide reasonable expectation of reward or progress).
There's a fight with a pit of centipedes in the first adventure my party just noped out of because they had two tribe-members in the party who knew about it. It probably saved a whole bag of hit-points.
In the second adventure
I understand the Playtest is a stress-test of sorts, but I think a typical play session should be accounted for in the results.
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It's impossible to escape, and the only magic that would let you do so is now Uncommon so PCs aren't allowed to have it for the playtest. (So how are we supposed to test it?)The spells Fly and Control Water are your friend here.
Fly only targets one person, and if you even had enough spell slots the people waiting for later castings would be dead before you finished casting 5 rounds later.
Control Water doesn't help because the sea serpent is not a water elemental.
The adventure explicitly tells you that, in this chapter, if the PCs are about to lose you should let them flee. So not doing that is actually directly counter to the playtest's instructions.That's a good thing to note. This has now made several times on these forums where I read a thread about how terrible things are only to later find out the GM didn't read part of the playtest or simply ignored it. This is no fault of the players of course, but it does show how insufficient preparation can lead to poor results.
I always do a second pass through the text before actually running just to try to catch stuff like this. We just haven't gotten to this adventure yet, so it hasn't been necessary yet.
All the same, requiring divine intervention / plot armor via GM fiat to manage an otherwise inescapable and impossible encounter is not good writing.
The condescending tone of your post and implication that I don't know what I'm doing are not appreciated.
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All the same, requiring divine intervention / plot armor via GM fiat to manage an otherwise inescapable and impossible encounter is not good writing.
It is when you're stress testing an extreme part of the system (ie: how PCs do at one very difficult encounter per day). The idea is not to TPK, but it's a risk in Chapter 4 in a way and to a degree that is not true in most other chapters...and yet this is nevertheless something in need of testing.
The condescending tone of your post and implication that I don't know what I'm doing are not appreciated.
That's an interesting reaction considering that portion of my post wasn't directed at or even referring to you.
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The adventure explicitly tells you that, in this chapter, if the PCs are about to lose you should let them flee. So not doing that is actually directly counter to the playtest's instructions.That's a good thing to note. This has now made several times on these forums where I read a thread about how terrible things are only to later find out the GM didn't read part of the playtest or simply ignored it. This is no fault of the players of course, but it does show how insufficient preparation can lead to poor results.
Very well.
When do players decide their PCs need to run?
After losing a few HP? Of course not. That's expected. When the PC is down to single digits? Maybe. Before all hope is lost? Probably not. After all hope is lost? OK, that seems a good time.
Then what happens?
Unless everybody is in light armor, almost all monsters are faster than some of the PCs. Fleeing means the wizard and rogue escape while the monsters catch and devour the slower fighters and clerics. Yay. 1/2 the group lived. Go back and pick up some bits of flesh or bone and try to get a friendly priest to cast two 7th level Resurrection spells. Then those two naked PCs can help the two survivors seek revenge. Might even get their gear back.
Given the speeds of the deadliest stuff in the PF Bestiary compared to the speeds of armored and/or encumbered PCs, running away is often a poor option.
That doesn't even take into account things like monsters with ranged attacks, magic, grapples, rough terrain, or other reasons why running away is guaranteed to fail.
Of course, some players rely on the mercy of the GM. "Oh no, all hope is lost! Running away looks bad too! I guess we'll stay and slug it out and hope we get some good rolls and those hidden dice behind the GMs screen might just get a timely cold streak and start rolling lots of low numbers."
Realistically, against most monsters, that last option is the best one. Hey, the GM has a campaign going here, he doesn't want a TPK either, right? Besides, even not allowing for fudged rolls, the chance that luck favors the PCs in the final rounds of the fight might actually be higher than the chance of surviving if they run away.
Finally, the idea that the book tells the GM to let the monster behave in an unexpected fashion and let them go is not something the players would know or expect. I certainly wouldn't expect that sentence to be in the book. I probably would have looked at my slow PC, or my slow allies, and said "Well, this is our last stand. Let's hope the gods are on our side!" and fought it out.
Heck, at least in PF1 a GM might say "Make an nature check" and if any PC makes it he could say "This monster looks like it has a full, distended belly and probably would have no interest in another meal; it would most likely just curl up and go to sleep if you leave."
In PF2, that requires an action now to Recall Knowledge. Now the GM has to say "Hey, you're losing, you're desperate, but you suddenly feel like it's a good idea to waste an action on Recall Knowledge."
Written into the adventure by the developer or a mercy from the GM, either way, this sounds like fiat to save the PCs. A mercy save to avoid a TPK so the story can go on.
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I think that comparing the playtest to a menu isn't really appropriate. When you eat at a restaurant you might only eat one thing off a menu with 60+ options. You can go back to that restaurant and eat the same thing every time, or even just 2-3 things you really like. 90% of the menu can be ghastly to you but if there's just a tiny number of things you like, you might eat there regularly anyway.
When you play a roleplaying game, sooner or later you're going to engage with all the rules. We've already seen how one rule can throw a serious wrench in the works - Resonance. Now I love the idea of resonance, but we've seen from surveys that the majority of playtesters disliked how it worked to some degree or another. Not it's temporarily 'patched' and getting reworked, and I'm excited to see what Paizo thinks up to replace it.
The point is, when somebody engages with the playtests and gives feedback, they're almost never just sampling one piece of it and rejecting it wholesale, they're experiencing the whole thing, all at once, for hours at a time. Which is the second problem I have with the menu metaphor; the playtesters are putting a lot of time and effort into playing the game and giving their feedback. They're not just being handed a thing and trying it for ten seconds before shoving it back, they're putting hours and hours into this. I feel like the menu analogy paints them as coming off entitled and whiny, and I don't think that's true at all.
When do players decide their PCs need to run?
This will vary wildly by table of course. But in this case, according to the OP, the players knew on round 1 before any of them acted that the sea monster can hit their best AC on a roll of 4 (and they suspected it could only miss on a natural 1). They're fighting a powerful monster that can hit them easily, in its element, in an engagement that is not their primary goal. That would be a good time.
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This will vary wildly by table of course. But in this case, according to the OP, the players knew on round 1 before any of them acted that the sea monster can hit their best AC on a roll of 4 (and they suspected it could only miss on a natural 1). They're fighting a powerful monster that can hit them easily, in its element, in an engagement that is not their primary goal. That would be a good time.When do players decide their PCs need to run?
That seems... unusual.
I've never been in anybody's game where any player knew any of that on round 10, let alone on round 1. Though some players deduce things like AC throughout the battle, like when one attack hits on a 23 but another misses on a 22. Pretty easy to figure that one out after a few rounds.
Yeah, the OP did say he saw the rolls.
I guess, in a metagame sense, that's a good time for the PLAYERS to run. But their PCs wouldn't have known anything like that. Might have still been a bad time for the PCs to run.
Unless their table enjoys metagaming. Maybe a couple of the players were looking up the monster's stats on Google while another player was reading Doomsday Dawn to see if there was any good environmental tactic or other written solution for them to find, or whether there was enough loot or a valuable maguffin to warrant the risky fight.
This will vary wildly by table of course. But in this case, according to the OP, the players knew on round 1 before any of them acted that the sea monster can hit their best AC on a roll of 4 (and they suspected it could only miss on a natural 1). They're fighting a powerful monster that can hit them easily, in its element, in an engagement that is not their primary goal. That would be a good time.When do players decide their PCs need to run?
That seems... unusual.
I've never been in anybody's game where any player knew any of that on round 10, let alone on round 1. Though some players deduce things like AC throughout the battle, like when one attack hits on a 23 but another misses on a 22. Pretty easy to figure that one out after a few rounds.
Yeah, the OP did say he saw the rolls.
I guess, in a metagame sense, that's a good time for the PLAYERS to run. But their PCs wouldn't have known anything like that. Might have still been a bad time for the PCs to run.
Unless their table enjoys metagaming. Maybe a couple of the players were looking up the monster's stats on Google while another player was reading Doomsday Dawn to see if there was any good environmental tactic or other written solution for them to find, or whether there was enough loot or a valuable maguffin to warrant the risky fight.
Well it's not as clear as seeing the actual number rolled, but characters can still make some guess about the monster's skill.
Rolling a 4 and hitting could mean that it landed an effective bite without even trying too hard; that's a thing that can be noticed, maybe.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I use Roll20, and roll in the open. So players can see when the monster's attack results in '1d20+31 -> (12)+31 -> 43. I like this. As well as I might be able to evoke the power of a creature, nothing is going to give the player's an idea of the accuracy and impact of that hit like seeing those numbers. I'm definitely happy for PCs to see monster bonuses once they've become relevant.
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This will vary wildly by table of course. But in this case, according to the OP, the players knew on round 1 before any of them acted that the sea monster can hit their best AC on a roll of 4 (and they suspected it could only miss on a natural 1). They're fighting a powerful monster that can hit them easily, in its element, in an engagement that is not their primary goal. That would be a good time.When do players decide their PCs need to run?
That seems... unusual.
I've never been in anybody's game where any player knew any of that on round 10, let alone on round 1. Though some players deduce things like AC throughout the battle, like when one attack hits on a 23 but another misses on a 22. Pretty easy to figure that one out after a few rounds.
Yeah, the OP did say he saw the rolls.
I guess, in a metagame sense, that's a good time for the PLAYERS to run. But their PCs wouldn't have known anything like that. Might have still been a bad time for the PCs to run.
Unless their table enjoys metagaming. Maybe a couple of the players were looking up the monster's stats on Google while another player was reading Doomsday Dawn to see if there was any good environmental tactic or other written solution for them to find, or whether there was enough loot or a valuable maguffin to warrant the risky fight.
Our GM decided to roll in front of us after seeing the monsters stats, after reviewing the creatures perception bonus and attack mods he wanted us to realize that the creature had very good bonuses, we later learned how impressive it’s saving throws and ac were after trying attacks and spells to no avail, the GM asked what everyone’s movement speed was and confirmed that only the rogue (myself) could escape, I don’t know if the module says to let your players escape like some other posters say but as everyone likes to remind me this is a playtest, if we can’t beat it on skill rolls which lead to us being ambushed and it’s movement, attack statistics and saves are all better than ours then how are we going to fair any better in the actual release if we don’t ‘complain?
I realise some people disagree with me on this topic but at the end of the day this was OUR experience we play these games to play the characters we want and have fun, if we wanted to HAVE to build characters a certain way and do things the ‘right way’ than we’d just play a video game and that’s the problem when building characters in the playtest it’s like building video game characters where if we don’t use the META we’re punished, pathfinder 1st ed had bad options and new player traps but there was no right way to play, however in the playtest I always see people saying
“Well you didn’t have the most effective party”
Sorry but if I can play the same 1st edition module 3 times with different classes every time but a cleric is mandatory in the playtest then that feels like a step in the wrong direction.