Old Pathfinder Playtest for Death and Dying?

[TheMonkeyFish]

I apologize if this is something my brain made up on it's own, but I've absolutely convinced myself that this playtest existed in ye'olden days.

Does anyone remember any of the Playtest that had something along the lines of the telling the GM "We are testing the death and dying mechanics and plan to push it to the limit. Don't tell your players that we are trying to kill them to make testing more realistic. Your players WILL die."

The session was basically just multiple waves of combat of increasingly ludicrous difficulty, only to have a "and every dies" at the end if they somehow do survive?

Can anyone confirm what this Playtest Session name was?

(Edit) I never played it officially, hence why I can't just find it on my Organized Play or Library, but I remember discussing it with my former PFS Group before situations caused me to leave the group.

[Cyouni]

Yes, that would be part of Doomsday Dawn, part 5. Checking tells me the name is Heroes of Undarin.

[LunarVale]

Aside from what Cyouni said, I can confirm that most of what you heard/were told is accurate, but specifically the part about how the adventure concludes is not. While the Heroes of Undarin was created with the intent of killing the party, it explicitly does not require the entire party to die, and even has an adventure conclusion text box written to be read aloud if there's at least one surviving party member. The likelihood of this occurring would be incredibly low, though.

It wouldn't have made for a very good test if it assumed the conclusion. While the adventure was heavily stacked to wipe the party, the whole point of the mass testing was to see how much force would push the party beyond the breaking point (both the minimum, and on average) with a large enough group of testers to get back meaningful results. Therefore, it also needed to handle the test case that Paizo had vastly underestimated what a party could handle, and that they would need to tune things up in the future if large amounts of people reported success.

[Mathmuse]

I kept my copy of Doomsday Dawn, the set of test scenarios for the Pathfinder 2nd Edition Playtest. My own playtesting was too slow, so we did not reach The Heroes of Undarin chapter.

Doomsday Dawn, The Heroes of Undarin, page 61 wrote:

Playtest Goals

For a roleplaying game to convey drama and a sense of urgency, the players have to feel that their characters are in danger, that death is waiting for their characters if they push too far—a final consequence to a serious mistake. To properly calibrate Pathfinder to convey this, we need to push a group of characters to their limit and beyond. Therefore this adventure has only one purpose: to test the durability and endurance capabilities of mid- to high-level characters.

This chapter of the adventure will probably result in some or all of the characters dying, but you should give the players no indication of the challenge they are about to face other than what is indicated in the text, and you should resist pulling any punches when things become dire. While the PCs should be made with the assumption that this is an ordinary adventure with average challenges (as noted in the character building guidelines), these characters are destined to pay the ultimate price so that the White Axiom can be obtained. The PCs’ task may be a suicide mission, but their sacrifice might just save the world.

It is worth noting that the magic items possessed by each character are intentionally limited to prevent gear choice from overly influencing the group’s endurance. A group with a large stockpile of powerful healing supplies would fare much better than one that forgot to pick up such provisions. To prevent this, the total list of the PCs’ equipment is provided, but the players can divide it among the characters in any way that they see fit.

[TheMonkeyFish]

Thanks guys! I was having such a hard time finding out what it was and couldn't think of anywhere else to ask. You all helped me so much with your answers and descriptions of the old event.

I am curious about the ending LunarVale mentioned, all the more reason to see if this playtest is possible to purchase for myself.

Thanks again for the help ^-^

[logsig]

The PDF is still downloadable here.

(The physical book is also still purchaseable here on paizo.com, though of course used copies can be found more cheaply elsewhere.)