I'm looking for some suggestions here. I'd like to playtest the new classes over a short span of time when my main group will be on break due to the holidays, and I'd like to do the test as "snapshots" of a Starfinder group's career so we can try out builds at different levels of play.
I think I know what I'll be running as the low-level starter adventure, but everything I've run with my current group (who have just hit level 11) has been homebrew and I'd like to explore doing this with some published adventures. Does anyone have experience with published adventures they recommend for mid-level (7 -14) and high-level (15 and up) play?
Well, there are always the Starfinder Society Scenarios. They're self contained and offer various levels of play.
Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Quest: Into the Unknown to get them rolling.
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For my PbP run, I decided to do SFS #1-27 King Xeros of Star Azlant, which we'll be doing level 8. It looks like it will be a really fun adventure. We'll be starting tomorrow.
Hmm
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For my PbP run, I decided to do SFS #1-27 King Xeros of Star Azlant, which we'll be doing level 8. It looks like it will be a really fun adventure. We'll be starting tomorrow.
Hmm
Same! But on roll20 :) level 8 ysoki vanguard.
Also Yesteryears Sorrow with a level 4 ysoki Vanguard.
I want to see the progression and what options open up between levels. Keep some continuity in my playtest experience.
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The Playtest rules for organised play make it a good opportunity to try some higher level content than my group usually plays, so we've been using it to catch up on some of the season 1 metaplot stuff. I ran 1-13 On The Trail of History with a biohacker, vanguard, and witchwarper, which worked out surprisingly well. The biohacker went all-in on the character concept and had the Biotechnician theme, which came in handy for that adventure. We're planning on running 1-17 Reclaiming the Time-Lost Tear this week with the same group - should be fun!
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The Playtest rules for organised play make it a good opportunity to try some higher level content than my group usually plays, so we've been using it to catch up on some of the season 1 metaplot stuff. I ran 1-13 On The Trail of History with a biohacker, vanguard, and witchwarper, which worked out surprisingly well. The biohacker went all-in on the character concept and had the Biotechnician theme, which came in handy for that adventure. We're planning on running 1-17 Reclaiming the Time-Lost Tear this week with the same group - should be fun!
I'd be excited to see how your testing of #1-17 goes, if you could share it please, that would be fantastic!
We have been at least some playtest characters at most of our SFS games in the region.
I have personally run games that had playtest characters in them:
AP7 (1-2)
1-23 (5-8)
1-24 (1-4)
A adventure I wrote for level 15.
I have played playtest vanguard in:
1-16 (1st level)
1-25 (4th level)
--Chris
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I'd be excited to see how your testing of #1-17 goes, if you could share it please, that would be fantastic!
Ok, ran 1-17 last night at Tier 7-8! We had 1 each of the three Playtest classes: vanguard specializing in charging and face-punching, biohacker doing the ranged-healing thing, and a witchwarper focused mostly on debuffing. Completing the ensemble were Keskodai and Altronus.
Vanguard also managed to correctly ID the scavenger slime in B1 (after falling into it;) I read the first little bit of the Scavenger Slime write-up from Alien Archive to the party, which basically says a now-extinct race created the first scavenger slime gel in an attempt to repair basically anything, in an attempt to rebel against entropy. Vanguards being what they are, he decided that, being a student of entropy, the vanguard had strong feelings about the scavenger slime needing to die. And it did. Neat little lore interaction.
This also meant the party approached the trash compactor trap room having already broken down the airlock door, so when the walls started crushing in, they just...walked out again. Between having a gnome, a halfling, and multiple means of flying/climbing, the party also did fine with the weight-activated traps on the conveyor belts. They had no problems retrieving the case containing antidotes for the devolution radiation.
Having a biohacker specializing in shooting injections definitely made the final encounter easier, but it wasn't a complete cake walk either. Biohacker nailed two of the devolved izalguuns with the antidote, but the party wanted to do a bit more combat, so they threw caution to the wind and still massacred two of the devolved izalguuns anyways. You know...for the playtest. Murder-hobos gonna murder-hobo :)
The adventure specifies that devolved izalguuns hit with the antitode revert back to normal over the course of a minute; I ruled that they stayed hostile during that time. The party clued in that saving some would probably be wise, so they used a combination of biohacker's Tranq Dart, witchwarper's Hobble Creature, and the vanguard being a solid wall to run out the clock on them.
All in all, we all had fun, and agreed that 1-17, being one big dungeon crawl without much investigation and basically no role-playing, was a good adventure for playtesting. They would have preferred something a bit less crawl-y had we not been playtesting, though. The new classes did their jobs well. One thing the party agreed on was that having both a Healer connection Mystic and a Biohacker in the same party is probably overkill for healing, but it does mean that both healers had more options to use resources that would otherwise just be keeping people standing. Keskodai busted out some sweet, sweet, 7d10 Mind Thrusts, and Biohacker dished out lots of fun injections. It also meant that we got away with our vanguard being pretty reckless. He was built for charging in and entropic strike dps (Str/Con build,) not optimizing defenses or AC. Two healers meant he could do that job pretty comfortably. Lastly, the studious Biohacker by lvl 8 had skill points for days, and so managed to fill a lot of the "skill monkey" roles that a mechanic, technomancer, or operative could have done, while still providing lots of healing. It's a great combination!
We are on our 5th society adventure using playtest classes.Since we don't play in an organized setting I'm going to let players keep using the classes in all our games society and otherwise til book comes out. ( Unless we run into some game breaking effect)
I have been doing some homebrew arenas on my own because my players don't have time to add another set of sessions for the playtest, unfortunately.
It's not at all an ideal or complete testing ground but stil... it's something.
Besides that, I am currently playing the Commencement (Society scenario) with a lvl 1 Vanguard via PbP ... Another not very ideal testing ground ... sorry :D