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Sundered Wave spoilers below, please be aware.
I managed to pull together a gaming group of relative newbies to the PF2e system (I include myself under that umbrella as I haven't run anything since the original playtest).
Our heroes included:
Ashling - Female Human Ifrit Kineticist (Dedicated gate: Fire)
Finn Kittso - Female Elf Undine Kineticist (Dedicated Gate: Water)
Rocky Krakoa - Male Dwarf Oread Kineticist (Dedicated Gate: Earth)
North Gozren - Human Male Sylph Kineticist (Dedicated Gate: Air)
Vulkan Tempest - Male Human Suli Kineticist (Universal Gate)
1st Encounter vs 2 Vipers. (2x Creature 2)
Players won initiative and took down the vipers before they even got a turn. It's meant to be an easy encounter so I gave it to the players.
2nd Encounter vs Giant Ants
Players snuck into the room, and then used their combined adapt element and crafting checks to reinforce the partially collapsed wall and prevent the ants from entering the room.
3rd Encounter vs Living Waterfall (Creature 6)
This fight was a tough one. A couple of early criticals put Rocky on the backfoot. Finn had a couple of ways to deal with the Elemental between Voice of Elements and Extract Element. Unfortunately he couldn't roll above a 6 on Diplomacy, and the Elemental had a Fortitude of 16 vs the DC of 21, so mostly succeeded (for half damage). The poor Pyrokineticist could barely deal any damage at all, and didn't have a lot of good options around that Surprisingly the star of the encounter was the Air Elementalist with their boomerang. Eventually the elemental was reduced to less than 10 health, and Finn managed to talk the elemental into surrender. At which point Vulcan finished it off with a couple of lucky extract elements and a blast. Rocky the Earth Elementalist, was knocked unconscious after a few hits (seriously tanking as a kineticist is rough).
Encounters 4 & 5 were primarily puzzle based.
Our heroes spent some time resting, and getting healed with Combat Medic and healing wind. Not quite on max health, but close.
Encounter 6: Giant Pirate Skeleton (Creature 8)
Another tough fight (I did alter the skeleton to have a big scimitar as per its description), I allowed Rocky and Vulkan to use extract element against the skeleton (justifying it by allowing them to extract the calcium in his bones). Rocky ended up unconscious again, again AC was not nearly enough to prevent those critical hits. Gozren also got knocked out. I gave the skeleton Weakness to bludgeoning (rather than it being the only resistance it was missing). Our heroes managed to get solid hits in after flanking and extracting. It was a really tough fight but in the end our heroes stood victorious. North Gozren used Elemental Weapon to create an air flail to upgrade his damage dice from d4s to d10s (I ruled that handwrap runes applied to weapons).
Concluding thoughts:
The players felt that their characters had fun with managing the action economy of the Kineticist, and preferred to extract element over gather whenever it was available to their character (even with a chance of failure it felt more effective as a use of actions). There weren't any creatures that had available attacks of opportunity against the players, so shooting in melee wasn't a huge problem during this adventure. Players felt their characters were way to fragile for being a Con focused class.
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You were pretty generous with the house rules there, especially against the skeleton. That's not necessarily a bad thing, especially for new players, but it is worth noting.
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You were pretty generous with the house rules there, especially against the skeleton. That's not necessarily a bad thing, especially for new players, but it is worth noting.
I agree; I don't normally have an issue with houseruling if it makes the game fun, but I'm not sure any of this is helpful for a playtest... unless it's to say the class isn't viable without houseruling.
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I do note one interesting thing out of this playtest that I think might be worth considering more broadly. Their experience was that using Extract Elements is a lot of fun. dragging your magical power out of the bodies of your foes in a way that causes them damage directly is *fun*. So... feat chain? I mean, why shouldn't I be able to drag elemental water out of a slime, or pull earth out of a Stone Golem? I have no idea how to balance it properly, but if this is one of the fun things, then....
Thank you for the post.North Gozren used Elemental Weapon to create an air flail to upgrade his damage dice from d4s to d10s (I ruled that handwrap runes applied to weapons).But how? All d10 weapons I see are 2-handed (and strictly 1-handed allowed, even 1+ won't be included by most).
Bastard sword is a 1 handed weapon that you can spend an interact action to grip it with 2 hands to change the damage die 1d12. I don't see any fails like that though I suppose a katana could work if they have access to it.
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Yeah, I was generous with the house rules, last time I playtested PF2E was the beta playtest and adhering strictly to RAW left a bad taste in my players' mouths for the system.
That being said, making reasonable rulings is part of the playtest experience as well.
I could see Fire potentially getting a slashing or piercing attack by focusing a fire blast into a lazer.
I think we might have misread the flails weapon damage somehow, but upgrading to d8 from d4 is an average of 2 point damage difference. So doesn't really skew things too badly.
Extract element on the skeleton at level 5 was honestly just a way of mitigating the accuracy deficiency of being trained at level 5 instead of expert.
Honestly if they do like some people have suggested and have multiple Blast options for each element, I could see Fire getting a Bludgeoning "Explosion" Blast. After all, most real-world explosions aren't actually gonna burn you, it's gonna be the pressure wave that gets ya.
Question about the Giant Ants encounter. Were there a lot of Giant Ants in that encounter (4+)? Did the players decide to avoid fighting them because they saw an easy way out, or were they worried about fighting large groups?
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They avoided the fight because they saw an opportunity to use their elemental powers in a non-combat way that provided a solution to the encounter.
I usually reward players having creative ideas and convert it into some kind of skill challenge.
They didn't know how many ants were behind the collapsed wall.