| Gazzor |
Just about managed to finish the adventure, sans the final fight as we ran out of time.
I was playing Wizibit, A goblin sorcerer. I was accompanied by my faithful minions: Lord Two Picks (2 pick crit fishing fighter); Bow Ranger; Bow monk; Healer Cleric.
For goblin feat I took the burny damage feat, cos my guys likes to make people do the burny dance. Had a familiar, hawk named Beaky. Didn't take improved familiar as a lot of those benefits seem to be wizards only.
I took both general feats for light armour and shield, for AC 27 (29). A lot of the general feats seem weak sauce apart from fleet and tough, which seem almost no brainers.
Only dakka spells I took were fireball and magic missile. Both were subject to spontaneous casting feat. I also had a wand of 10 lvl 3 fireballs and 10 lvl 4 enervates. As I had plenty of dakka I filled my slots with utility spells: Dispel Magic, Slow, Glitterdust, Dimensional Anchor, Fly, Freedom of Movement; Shadow Walk; Elemental Form, etc
There was something about a mission to find some bad guys. Wizbit just heard it as "Blah blah blah blah blah, bad guys to burn, loot to grab, blah blah blah, 2 months, blah blah". With that settled we started to explore a mysterious valley.
We came across a mysterious lake and I sent Beaky to have a look see. Then he got scoffed by a giant lake monster, like Samuel L Jackson getting scoffed by a shark in Deep Blue Sea.
Suffice to say that we goaded it to the shore to attack us. I cast Freedom of Movement on the fighter, plus some other guys that got grabbed. Fight was super hard, especially as 2 of my 3 fireballs did zero damage. Crit saves is harsh... We barely won. Admittedly our tactics were poor, trying to melee it, but Lord Two Picks wanted some glory. Him only rolling 1 hit out of 10 attacks didn't help us a lot...
Also enervate was disappointing. In PF1 it was horrendously broken, but the quad nerf to it has really hurt it.
We then met a dryad that wanted us to stop some Cyclops from ruining her woods. This we did by basically murdering most of them with fireballs, with some follow up to get round their "die twice" reactions and the rest ran off. We gave her a bag of severed Cyclops heads as a present, which she didn't seem to like. No pleasing some people. But she said she'd help us.
We met some gnomes that wanted us to kill 2 Rocs. This was okay as I fireballed them a load and cast Fly on Lord Two Picks, so he wasn't left holding his cock in his hands being unable to otherwise reach them. The shield was good as one attack on me hit AC28. Fireballing and raising shield each round seems a legit tactic. We soon ended up with 2 roasted big birds. Lord Two Picks again failed to perform as spectacularly as before. Archer damage seemed a bit more consistent. Good thing the monk had a bow or he'd be utter pap.
We heard about a big fire dragon and a fire giant. I was hoping that my sorcerer feat to negate some elemental resistance would be useful here. Nope, complete fire immunity. Hmmm. Maybe should learn some cold spells... Anyway, we tricked the dragon into thinking that the Cult were planning to kill her. She flew off (Beaky mk2 was keeping an eye on her lair, to be innocuous like). We then ganked the giant (Crit fail on a Daze cast at it helped), fairly easily and grabbed loads of phat dragon loot. We ended up buying 2 +3 picks, +3 hand wraps and a +3 bow. My sorcerer was hard enough and my minions needed the help.
We ended there, but apparently we'd succeeded as well as we could to reduce the cult defences as low as possible (Reminded me a lot of Mass Effect 3...)
1) Goblin Sorcerer is a nice fun hero. Lots of options apart from burning people to death. Even though that's really fun.
2) Felt bad for the cleric having to select each spell. Really makes it hard to plan ahead. Makes me not want to play a wizard either. A lot of the time the cleric seemed to be stuck with the wrong spells. I'd much rather all classes could use slots freely, like D&D 5th ed did. Otherwise I can't see myself playing anything apart from Bard or Sorcerer.
3) Enervate seems kinda weak sauce now. TAC is now very similar to AC, so a lot harder to hit now. And effects a lot weaker and capped. I'm not sure that I'd bother taking it.
4) Fly spell. Wow, super nerfed into the ground. Higher spell slot, fewer targets, far shorter duration, slower fly speed. Also the sorcerer dragon wings are weak sauced and magic items to fly are really nerfed. Feels like PCs really aren't meant to fly much. Does make me question the utility of melee heroes at high level when a hard flying monster, possibly with spells, can fly rings around us raining down death from above. An intelligent flyer, perhaps knowing rubbish speed and duration of fly could just fly away until the spell expires.
5) Picks. Awesome when crits hit, but meh otherwise. I've no idea as to the typical AC of monsters, but certainly a lot of the time the fighter was only going to be critting on a 20. So he'd be a lot better off with a higher dpr for normal attacks. Not sure how viable to have two swords for high Ac fights and two picks as back up to quickly dispatch low AC critters?
6) Can creatures staunch bleed? I assume on a 20 each round?
7) Does 5' extra move from fleet feat apply to fly speed from a spell?
8) Dispel magic rules seem kinda complicated, and having a rule on page 319 refer to another rule on page 320 seemed a bit clumsy.
Anyway, we had fun, which is the main thing.
Level 12 play test next week. Not pleased with such a limited range of magic items. I won't be playing a tricksy skill monkey hero then...