Pathfinder Playtest: Doomsday Dawn (Redux)

Game Date: 8/12/2018
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: PF Playtest, Part 1
Module: Doomsday Dawn

System: Pathfinder 2nd Edition (Playtest)
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Alchemite (Nick) - Goblin Alchemist
Corbis (Gary) - Elf Ranged Fighter
Dane (Daniel) - Elf Wizard
Eldal (Jonathan) - Human Cleric
Furi (Matt) - Human Barbarian

The Session:
Same plot as last week - Lady Kendra Questgiver III, mayor of Plothook, sent us to the Sewers of Horrendous Peril to find the MacGuffin of Desna.  This week seemed a little bit easier, probably because we had a Cleric in the party.  The final boss was still brutal, though.

The first encounter (sewer ooze) went by pretty quickly.  Our party's goblin, Alchemite ("Al"), attempted to talk his way out of the second encounter, but the enemy goblins wouldn't have it.  That fight wasn't too difficult either, but Dane did go down to zero at one point.

In the room with the pool, we tried drinking the stone face's tears before they hit the pool, and found they had healing properties.  I don't think we tried that last time.  Nobody found the submerged statue this time, which kept us from having to fight the imps.

We never tried the locked exit, instead going through the door that set off the hanging armor alarm.  Knowing our enemies were alerted, Furi rushed down the stairs to fight the goblins around the campfire.  Dane managed to hit a few of them with burning hands, which was nice - we didn't see enough area spells last time.  Corbin rolled a lucky crit that killed the Goblin Commando.

Dane went down to zero again in this battle, but we healed him later.  Corbin killed the Pyro Goblin, Furi massively slaughtered another goblin with a crit, and Corbin killed the final goblin.  Bow fighters seem to be pretty good in this game.

Leaving this room the way we came, we checked out the room full of skeletons (which we bypassed last week).  Furi was in front, and got surrounded by skeletons.  They didn't do much damage, but Furi still almost went down just because there were so many, and they were attacking three times each.  It was like by 1,000 paper cuts.

Al tried alchemist's fire, only to find the skeletons were immune.  Eventually we finished them off, but Furi was down to 3 hit points.  Healing her a little, we went up the next hallway.  When we passed the hall statue, those of us who had swallowed the tears from the fountain room were able to pass it freely.  But the first time someone who hadn't partaken passed it, a sandstorm trap went off.  And I will rewrite a sentence all kinds of ways to avoid trying to figure out which form of "drank" to use.

To avoid the sandstorm, Furi pushed through the door at the end of the hallway, and found herself face-to-face with the hobgoblin boss.  He was accompanied by a dire rat, unlike last week.  Furi squared off against the hobgoblin, who changed into his Faceless Stalker form right away.  Corbin followed Furi into the room, and targeted the rat.

As the rest of the party gradually entered the boss room, Furi went down hard.  She spent a few rounds unconscious while the boss chased everyone around the room.  Our Wizard, of all people, finished off the rat with a dagger.  Then he tried using Color Spray on the boss, but our foe made his save.  Then Dane went down to zero again.

Corbin managed to do some decent damage to the boss, while Furi kept making rolls to wake up.  The boss started to use a Drain Blood attack on Dane.  Furi finally woke up, stood up, and finished off the boss.  Everyone survived, though it did take a few more rounds to rouse the Wizard.  We did a bit more exploring until we found the quest item.

Afterthoughts:
Last time I tried this module, I played a pregen.  While I did look through all the steps of character creation to see how the pregen got its stats, it wasn't the same as making a character from scratch.  This time I built a character from the ground up, so I could see what that was like.  It wasn't too bad. 

There were times when I was annoyed at having to hop around the PDF so much.  For example, one of the barbarian feats is called "Raging Intimidation" (page 57).  It give Demoralize actions the Rage Trait, and gives you the feats "Intimidating Glare" and "Scare to Death" once you meet the prerequisites.  (This is a system built on feats, and some of the feats don’t do anything but grant you additional feats.)  So now I have to look up those two feats. 

"Scare to Death" has a prerequisite of level 15, so let's ignore that one for now.  "Intimidating Glare" (page 167) allows you to use the Demoralize action by staring at people instead of speaking, which would make sense if you new what the Demoralize action was.  So after checking the index, we jump to Demoralize (page 150) and learn it lets you use an action to cause a single enemy to become Frightened 1.  (On a crit success they get Frightened 2 and flee.)

Okay, I have a pretty good idea what Frightened is, but it's a new system so I have to look it up anyway.  Another jump to the index, then on to page 322 where we learn that Frightened causes the enemy to have a penalty to checks and saving throws, which usually goes away after one round.

Okay, so after flipping around to all these different pages, we learn that this first level feat allows you (if you are raging) to cause a single enemy to take -1 to their checks and saving throws, for a round.  I honestly can't think of a lot of good uses for this.  Maybe if you coordinate with the party wizard, to give a boss a saving throw penalty before the wizard casts a spell.  But how often do raging barbarians cooperate tactically with wizards?

It gets a bit better when you get "Scare to Death" at level 15 (target now gets Frightened 2 and flees, and might even die if you crit), but it's kind of weird to grab a first level feat and then sit on it for 15 levels.  So to me, it seems like a bad feat.  And that's okay, different people play different ways.  My point isn't that it's a lackluster feat, it's that I had to jump to 15 completely different pages in the PDF to find that out.

Instead of having me look all over the place for the definitions of "Scare to Death", "Intimidating Glare", "Demoralize", "Frightened 1", etc, what if the original feat "Raging Intimidation" simply said something like this: "While raging, you can glare at one enemy with 30 feat.  If they fail their save, they get -1 to all checks and saving throws for one round.  At level 15, increase this number changes to -2, and the enemy flees."  It seems like that would be easier.

Perhaps instead of a physical book or PDF, the new edition should just be an app.  Then you could just highlight the keywords you don't understand, and the definition would pop up in a smaller box.  It might be easier than all the page jumping.

But overall, character creation was easier than I thought it was going to be.  I did have a problem where I kept thinking my character was done, and then I remembered something and had to get everything back out.  All told, I think I spent about an hour making my character, but the process should get faster once I get used to it.  I don't think it will ever get as fast as making a character in D&D 5e, though.

I can't wait to play some of the higher level playtests, but at the same time, I'm not looking forward to the time it will take to build and level up these characters.

By the way, "Your Innate Spells" sounds a lot like "Urinate Spells."  I can't unhear that now.

Pathfinder Playtest: Doomsday Dawn

Game Date: 8/11/2018
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: PF Playtest, Part 1
Module: Doomsday Dawn

System: Pathfinder 2nd Edition (Playtest)
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Delman (Gary) - Gnome Sorceror
Ezren (Henry) - Human Wizard
Lavena (Matt) - Human Fighter
Marcius (Martin) - Human Rogue
Merisiel (Brian) - Elf Rogue
Sig (Mikhail) - Dwarf Monk

The Session:
An aristocrat in Magnimar sent us on a mission to retrieve a family heirloom, the Star of Desna.  Her vault had been robbed by goblins, and our investigation led us to an old lair called the Ashen Ossuary.

The first room of the dungeon was round, with a few puddles and a grate in the middle.  As Lavena went to examine the grate, she was attacked by a sewer ooze.  This fight lasted approximately one round, with Lavena landing the final hit.  The grate didn't seem to lead anywhere important, so decided to go through the tunnel on the far side of the room.  Sig used his stealth to scout ahead.  The DM rolled Sig's stealth checks so he wouldn't know how well he did.

The tunnel went around a short bend, and ended in a long room with lots of alcoves.  Eight goblins inhabited the room.  Ezren cast Light on Lavena, who led the charge into the room to start the fight.  We quickly found ourselves surrounded, but the goblins weren't too difficult.  Delman cast Bless on all of us to give us a bit of an edge.

Once all the goblins were defeated, we investigated the three side rooms.  One room had a collapsed wall, covered in giant centipedes.  We avoided them.  Another room had some dead goblins hung on the wall, and the third room contained a large fungus.  We ignored that as well, and took another hallway.

The next chamber we explored contained a pool of oily black liquid.  Sig was brave enough to investigate the pool, where he found a small statue of an evil goddess.  The statue cracked open, and two quasits burst out.  This was a difficult fight only because the dice gods cursed us.  The players kept rolling badly, while the DM was on a roll.  Once the quasits were hit a few times, they turned invisible.  We kept rolling flat checks to attack their last location, and finally finished them off.

There were two exits from this room, though technically they led to the same hallway.  One of the doors was locked, and it took three successful thievery checks to get it open.  One of our rogues broke his thieve's tools in the process. At the end of one hallway was a large statue of the Goddess of Death, who happened to be same goddess Sig worshiped.   Lavena didn't want to go near that statue, so she exited the pool room through the other door, which turned out to be rigged to make a lot of noise.

At the end of one hallway, a short tunnel led down into a lair containing seven goblin warriors, one goblin commando, and a goblin pyro.  At first it was a standoff - we tried to get them to come to us, and they stayed where they were with readied actions.  Merisiel attempted to shoot them from a distance, but got taken down instead.

One of the goblins ran forward and started to drag Merisiel's unconscious form deeper into the room.  Lavena couldn't let this stand, and rushed into the room.  We lost a lot of hit points in this fight, but eventually we prevailed.  On the far side of the room was a 15-foot high cliff.  It took a lot of attempts, but eventually a couple of us made it up the wall and let down some ropes for the rest of us.

Down another hallway, we found a room with a couple of treasure chests.  One was unlocked, but the other gave us a lot of trouble.  We couldn't pick the lock, and so we made a lot of noise trying to smash it.  The racket drew the attention of the chest's owner, a hobgoblin.  Lavena was first in line to fight this boss, and while she managed to get one good hit in, the hobgoblin took her down.  Sig went down soon after.

The battle kept going for a few rounds, and the hobgoblin transformed into a Faceless Stalker.  Those of us who were 0 hit points used our Hero Points to save ourselves, but we kept failing the checks to become conscious again.  Apparently the DC for waking up is tied to the level of the creature that downed you.

Finally we defeated the hobgoblin.  Three of us were unconscious at the end of the fight, but nobody died.  The hobgoblin held the key to the chest, which contained some decent loot along with our quest item, the Star of Desna.

Afterthoughts:

After nearly a year without gaming, I finally got to play again.   “Doomsday Dawn” is the first sample adventure for the Pathfinder 2e Playtest.  Full details of this adventure are available on Pathfinder's website.  Earlier this week I posted my first impressions of the Playtest materials, but today I actually got to see it in action.

I do think it plays better than it reads.  I'm not sold on some things, but it was a fun session.  I still like D&D 5e better, but I'm going to give PF2e a few more sessions before I really judge it.  The two games are on such opposite ends of the spectrum that it barely feels like the same genre, and I think there's room in the world for both.  The playtest materials are so robust, I can't help but wonder how much will change in the final product.

Pathfinder 2e Playtest: First Impressions

This Saturday I’m going to join a playtest campaign for Pathfinder 2^nd Edition.  I’m trying to read over the rulebook, but it’s already giving me a headache.   At first glance it’s less complicated than Starfinder, but I still prefer the simplicity of D&D 5e.  I promise I will keep an open mind, though.  A lot of games play better than they read.

Here’s some things that jump out at me so far.  Disclamer: I might be wrong a lot.  So far I’ve only skimmed the PDF, so I may have missed a few things.  I also might mention some things that haven’t changed from Pathfinder 1e, because I’m used to playing D&D.

Action Economy – You get three actions per round (plus 1 reaction and unlimited free actions).  These actions can be movement, attacks, or all kinds of things.  To discourage people using all three actions to attack, the second and third attacks have a cumulative attack penalty.  Many spells cost multiple actions to cast, so you can only get one out per round.  I find this elegant, and a lot easier to remember than “Standard/Move/Minor” or whatever.

Attacks of Opportunity – I’ve gotten used to D&D 5e, in which you provoke when you leave an enemy’s threat range.  PF2e has you provoke when you make any movement while inside a monster’s threat range, which is going to get me in trouble.  One the bright side, it’s easier to Step (aka shift, 5-foot-step, withdraw, etc) in PF2e than in D&D 5e.   Just use one of your actions to Step one square, without provoking.

Diagonal Movement – Uses the 1, 2, 1, 2 method again.  I’ve always hated that.  I know it’s not strictly realistic having diagonal movement equal horizontal/vertical movement, but it’s not as exploitable as people seem to think.  Simpler is better.

Feats – The biggest part of character customization appears to revolve around feat selection.  It looks like you get at least one feat at every level.  Some feats come from for your ancestry, others from your class, and some are related to your skills .  So even if you have multiple Elven Fighters in the party, they’re still going to play very differently.  However, one downside is that each class’s section in the rulebook looks very similar to D&D 4e.  Yeah, feats aren’t quite the same as powers, but the aesthetic still brings back bad memories.

Stats – The method for generating your stats is a lot different than what I’m used to, but I really like it.  You start with all 10s, then you get bonuses from your Ancestry, Class, and Background.

Races – They’re now called “ancestries”, which is more accurate than “race”, and has the advantage of pissing off the neckbeards.   The Half-Orc and Half-Elf ancestries are now first-level feats that can be taken by Humans, which is pretty cool, but it makes me wish they’d taken the opportunity to add a few more half-ancestries in.  And why only for Humans?  Hopefully the final product will have more.

Goblins and Alchemists – Pathfinder’s most signature race and class are finally in the core rulebook.  I’m personally not interested, but I know a certain player who is probably thrilled.

Proficiency Bonus – I’ve never been fond of the “Base Attack Bonus” some RPGs use, and found D&D 5e’s proficiency bonus much easier.  Glad to see it here as well.  However, as I understand it, your level is part of your Proficiency bonus, which seems like will translate into absurdly bonuses at high levels.  I hope I’m reading that wrong.  I’m so used to D&D 5e’s tight math, that I don’t want to see another system where you roll a d20 and add something astronomical.

TEML – This is another thing that gets added to most die rolls.  You get another bonus to the roll depending on whether you’re Untrained (-2), Trained (+0), Expert (+1), Master (+2), or Legen... wait for it... dary (+3).  It seems as good a method as any.

Touch AC – Seriously, I hate systems with two types of AC.  If you know most characters’ TAC is going to be a little lower than their regular AC, why not just have one AC and raise the attack bonus to touch attacks?

Encumbrance – I’m not a fan of strict encumbrance rules, but this one’s at least kind of interesting.  Instead of keeping track of the exact weight in pounds, it uses a "Bulk" system that categorizes items in terms of size and shape.  It reminds me of how certain video games have you fitting different-sized items into your inventory pages.  It's neat, but it's yet another system-within-a-system I have to learn when all I want to do is pick up some dice and play.

Healing – Don’t get me started.  There’s no such thing a short rest, and long rests don't heal much (your CON mod times your level).  If you don’t have a healer in the party, you’re going to have a really slow campaign.  Most people reading this already know my feelings on hit points (Hint: I mostly consider it Stamina), and it’s hard for me to get excited about a campaign where I’m going to spend so much time recovering in bed. 

Resonance – This seems like a complicated addition, but it’s kind of interesting.  Basically it’s a score (CHA mod + level) that affects how many magic items you can carry and/or use at a time.   Charisma is my favorite stat, and I’m all for finding more uses for it.  Plus it’s kind of cool that you can build your character with the intention of specializing in magic items.

Hero Points – These days every system has to have some version of Action Points or Bennies or Inspiration or whatever.   I don’t have a problem with it, but it’s one more thing to keep track of in a game overloaded with different kinds of points.

Spellcasting – At first glance, it’s not too different from D&D 5e, but it shares some of the same problems.  Certain characters will end up having to juggle Vancian “spell slots per level per day” spells, as well as dealing with spell points, and some specific spells that have their own “per day” limit.  It seems like a lot of different systems to keep track of.

Character Sheet – The default character sheet appears to be in Landscape mode, which is awesome because I usually make myself some landscape sheets anyway. 

Overall, I like some of the changes, dislike others, and hate some of the things they kept the same.  I’ll have to wait until Saturday to know what I think for sure.  But even if it turns out to be excellent, I keep wondering, is a new edition a good idea?  Is this ultimately going to be a good thing or a bad thing for Paizo as a company? 

Here’s the thing:  D&D 3.5 was the most prolific version of D&D ever released.  When WOTC went on to 4^th edition, many people felt this was a bad idea, because it abandoned so much existing content.  I still say what I’ve always said: 4^th edition is a pretty fun game, but it should have been a spin-off product, not a replacement for 3.5.  I’m having similar thoughts about PF2e.

Today, Pathfinder has a very niche market.  It caters to the people who didn’t want to move on from D&D 3.5.  I wouldn’t be so skeptical if the new edition was a spin-off product, but by calling it “Pathfinder 2^nd Edition”, it replaces their masthead product.  Many gamers play Pathfinder for one reason: 3.5 nostalgia.  Throw out that reason, and suddenly there are hundreds of RPG systems out there to try.  Without that 3.5 connection, Pathfinder 2e is going to have a lot more competition.  I honestly think they are going to lose business over this.

I hope I'm wrong.