The Pathfinder Playtest is roaring along as we move our focus to Part 4, The Mirrored Moon. This adventure sees the return of your characters from Part 1. In the years that have passed, these heroes have grown to be powerful adventurers in their own right, but the mystery that started all those years ago in Keleri's basement has yet to be solved. In Part 4, you'll rejoin them as they continue the quest in Thicketfell, in the faraway River Kingdoms.
Once you have completed your playthrough of Part 4, please remember to take the following surveys. Your data is critical in helping us make the second edition of Pathfinder be the best game it can be!
Player Survey | Game Master Survey | Open Survey
As a reminder, if you have not completed Parts 1, 2, or 3, you still have plenty of time to finish your sessions and get us your survey feedback. The more data we get, the more certain we are of how various parts of the game are performing. I should also note that as we get further into the playtest, some of the goals of each part of the adventure become a bit more extreme. You might play sessions that seem out of balance or somewhat harder than you're used to as we push the system to its limits and beyond. We've endeavored to make sure each part of Doomsday Dawn provides a fun and engaging adventure, but the goals of the test come first. We want to thank all of you for your patience and understanding as we delve deeper and deeper into the system.
All of the Changes in Update 1.3
Today also marks the release of Update 1.3, which promises to deliver a number of substantive changes to your game. Before I launch into the details, why don't you go grab a copy?
So, first and foremost is a revision to the Proficiency and DCs of the game. As of today, if you're untrained in something, your bonus is now equal to your level -4! This change was made to ensure that characters who haven't specialized in a given skill or ability aren't directly competing with those who have made the choice to invest in it. We've also made significant alterations to Table 10-2, Skill DCs by Level and Difficulty. In most cases, we lowered the DC by a point or two (but sometimes by 4 or more at higher levels). We made this change so that players who focus their character choices around a task have a better chance of success and so that this chance of success grows as you do. As a result, we have included errata for all 7 parts of Doomsday Dawn, updating all of the skill DCs across the adventure to reflect this change.
Death and dying receives another revision in this update. After looking at playtest data, we saw a significant change in dying rates and play style due to the way that characters came back from being unconscious. As of this update, we have removed the slowed condition that applied to characters after they were revived, and we've replaced it with a new condition: the wounded condition. This condition doesn't penalize your checks or DCs, but if you fall unconscious again, your dying condition is increased by your wounded condition. This means that while you're not penalized directly for getting up and charging back into the fray, your chance of dying increases the more times you're knocked out in a fight.
To go along with this change, we've also added a new way to use the Medicine skill, allowing you to spend 10 minutes to bandage the wounds of up to six creatures (one of which can be you). Depending on the check, this allows you to heal a significant amount of damage to everyone under your care! The best part is, you don't have to be a cleric to use this ability and it doesn't rely on your magic resources, so you can save those for combat. We made this change so that out-of-combat healing was a bit easier to manage, which allows you to heal up between fights and rely a bit less on the classes that have access to magical healing.
Finally, there are a lot of smaller changes in this update, including revisions to a number of classes, most notably the ranger and the rogue, both of which got some much-needed versatility added to their builds. But there's one other gigantic addition I want to talk about.
Multiclass Archetypes Update
Today we're releasing playtest material for all 12 of the multiclass archetypes, along with some revisions to the existing multiclass archetypes found in the Pathfinder Playtest Rulebook. These additions expand your range of tools when building new characters. With these changes, you can now play a bard that dabbles in the strange mysteries of the monk, or a barbarian with a sorcerous lineage!
We put all of these archetypes in their own document for ease of reference.
The Future of Resonance
Since the start of the playtest, we have heard a lot of feedback on the resonance system and we have been working hard to come up with a way to make it a better part of the game. Currently, we're looking at ways to use the resonance system just for tracking the items you wear, purely as a replacement for the slot system from Pathfinder First Edition. At the same time, we're looking to add a system that allows you to focus on the magic that your character can utilize to give it a boost in power when you need to, but otherwise allowing you to use it in a simpler way in an emergency. It's a little early to go into too many details, but I will say this: under this new system, you'll always be healed when you drink a healing potion.
While our current plan for the system is still coming together, we know that a change of this size is going to be challenging for us to fully implement before the end of the playtest. But, we do have a way to ensure that you can give it a try before we're done. In the coming weeks we're going to release a special version of the Pathfinder Society Playtest Scenario Raiders of the Shrieking Peak. This adventure is played using pregenerated characters, which allows us to create a conversion to the new system without having to convert the entire game all at once. When this scenario becomes available, we'll be asking everyone to give it a try, and we'll generate a specific survey looking at the new systems to get your feedback.
Well, that's about all for this week! Let us know what you think about these changes in the comments down below. And as always, we thank each and every one of you for participating in the playtest!
Jason Bulmahn
Director of Game Design
Join the Pathfinder Playtest designers every Friday throughout the playtest on our Twitch Channel to hear all about the process and chat directly with the team.
