The Pathfinder Playtest is well underway! We’ll have a bunch of opportunities, tips, and tools for those who want to try out the new system. In the meantime, you can:
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- Download all the free playtest material.
- Check out John Compton’s post about creating your own playtest character. He has guidelines for creating 1st, 5th, and 10th level characters.
- Once you’ve either played or GM’d a playtest adventure, don’t forget to fill out the survey. (Scroll down the page to the survey section.) Make sure your voice is heard!
We held a playtest session yesterday (Tuesday, August 7) at Knight Moves in Brookline. We played part 1 of “Doomsday Dawn.” Something that came up early on when we verified our characters with each other was how easy it can be to get lost tracking all the boosts to your ability scores. To help players track stats during character creation, we offer this simple chart. We hope you find it helpful!
Our party was successful with our mission in Part 1. We had a paladin, an alchemist, a fighter, and two clerics. It began like a standard Paizo adventure–we received a briefing and a mission. Then it became a dungeon crawl.
We were more aware of our marching order than we typically seem to be in version 1. Subjectively, critical hits seemed to happen more frequently than we’re accustomed to at low levels. They were very satisfying when a PC enjoyed critting. There was a lot of tension when a PC was the recipient of a crit. Given the new action economy, it is entirely possible for a target to be crit three times in a single turn. Yikes!
Certain conditions felt frustrating (details omitted to avoid spoilers). We’re left to wonder if the party might have failed the mission if we didn’t have two clerics and a ton of healing. There were a couple of combat encounters that nearly ended us! Granted, some of that was the result of the dice. However, this adventure felt particularly dangerous overall. Maybe it was partly because we were (relatively) fragile 1st level characters.
As a whole party, we never ran out of spells, though individual characters did.
Our party was very cooperative. We checked in with each other so that we didn’t step all over each other’s tactics. This was a big factor in our success, for sure!
We referenced the core rulebook frequently. In that regard, gameplay was slowed down a little. We expect that to be reduced as we gain experience and system mastery. However, if the idea was to make the playtest friendlier for casual players… Well, the jury is still out on that. Our table was full of experienced players, and we engaged in a lot of checking and double-checking.
Overall, we had a fun evening, and that’s the most important thing.
If you haven’t yet tried the playtest: What would you like to know about? Do you have any questions about how gameplay went for us?
If you’ve already tried the playtest: What did you like? What do you think could be improved? Share your experiences with us!
Boston Organized Play 