The Pathfinder Playtest, Part One

Many of you reading this may know already, but earlier this month Paizo released the playtest of their Pathfinder Second Edition system. I’m running the corresponding Doomsday Dawn adventure with some experienced gamers, and I wanted to write and share my thoughts on the system at each part of the playtest.

First Impression

After playing our first adventure in the new system, my first impressions are very positive. There are some things in the system that don’t have me convinced, but for the most part the system seems to work really well and definitely feels like an improvement from First Edition. The game flows really smoothly and maintained an exciting pace throughout the entire first session.

Seven Parts

The Doomsday Dawn adventure that came with the playtest is divided into seven parts. Each part involves different characters (or the same characters at different levels) and is designed to test different parts of the system. If you are planning to try the playtest, be advised there is a ton of character creation involved.

We have as of yet only played the first adventure “The Lost Star,” but so far it was really fun. The adventure was really well written and designed. It was also really challenging, we had PCs go to 0HP 6 different times (they were saved by their hero points, which I’ll explain in a later post). The boss in particular was a beast and took one of the players down in a single hit in the first attack of the first round of the combat.

The Parts that Are Awesome

First I want to point out the parts of Pathfinder Second Edition (henceforth referred to as P2E) that I think are great. I think Paizo is heading in a fantastic direction with this new system and I will detail some of the reasons below.

Three Actions

The new three-action economy in P2E is fantastic and works wonderfully. Having three actions to manage during a turn opens up a very large number of options and feels much less arbitrarily restrictive than Pathfinder First Edition. Rather than having several different kinds of actions, each with their own restrictions, In P2E all actions are created equal. Each of your three actions is equally applicable to anything you want to do in your turn. You want to move three times? You can. You want to attack three times? You can. You want to open each of the three doors in front of you? Go for it. There is a lot more freedom and incentive to do what makes sense in the situation rather than executing a premeditated plan to get the maximal use out of each type of action.

This is especially nice for martial characters at early levels, as you have the ability to make multiple attacks in a single round from level 1. Each subsequent attack has a -5 penalty over the previous one, but this is functionally no different from the First Edition way of handling multiple attacks and you don’t have to wait for level 6. Additionally the rules for agile weapons help rogues feel rogueier, incentivizing them to make multiple attacks in a round even more so than the barbarian and fighter. The classes with heavier weapons are more likely to make fewer, more focused and devastating attacks whereas the rogue is more likely to make several quick stabs in a round since the agile trait reduces the Multiple Attack Penalty from -5 to -4.

One specific change that synergizes well with the three action economy is now Attack of Opportunity isn’t something that all creatures have. If the first adventure is anything to go by, it looks like only a select few creatures will be able to punish a player for freely moving around the map. This hugely opens up battlefields and incentivizes players to consider many more options than just “stand there and attack until it dies.” Being freer to move around the battlefield and interact with the environment is an unambiguous improvement in P2E.

The Three Game Modes

P2E is broken into 3 distinct modes, Encounter, Exploration, and Downtime. We didn’t deal with downtime mode too much as it wasn’t a part of the first adventure, but I found the flow between Exploration and Encounter mode to be very fun and liberating as a GM. One of the things I hated in Pathfinder First Edition was asking each player exactly what squares they stepped in when not in combat. This can often clue a player off to the presence of a trap in the room or other positionally determined factor. In exploration mode, I don’t need to know exactly what the players are doing each step, I just need to know generally what they want to do in the room. If there is a trap or encounter in the room and we switch from Exploration Mode to Encounter Mode, I get to place the players in the room in the way that I think is most interesting and makes the most sense. I don’t need a player to step on a specific square to set off a trap, I just need them to roll a low perception and be doing something that would logically lead them to the trap. “Sorry Jack, you were walking around looking for treasure, and you didn’t watch your step when you were checking over here.” The transition between these two modes confused a lot of GMs in the forums, but I feel like I was able to take right to it.

Low Level Play

The players all felt significantly more effective at level 1 in P2E than they ever did in First Edition. While the martial characters benefit from the new 3 action economy, spellcasters got a significant boost to their low level effectiveness. Cantrips that used to do 1d3 damage now do 1d8, and there is even a cantrip that does 1d10. Plus, these cantrips automatically improve as you level up. I hope this boost to low-level casters corresponds with a boost to high-level martial characters, but we will see about that later in the playtest.

Many low-level creatures also had their AC decreased a little bit, offset by a slight increase in their HP. This was a very welcome change as missing 75% of the time when you are level 1 in the old system just made low-level play not fun.

The Flow

Thanks to everything mentioned above, our session had a really good pace and flowed really smoothly. It felt really exciting and I don’t think there was ever a point that felt tedious. We were able to just keep trucking along and it was exciting the whole time.

Spells

The rules for critically failing and critically succeeding at saving throws, particularly against spells, are awesome. This change solved the problem that most players had regarding spells that did nothing if the target made their save. In the new system, the norm is that a spell does nothing only if the target critically succeeds at their save. Conversely, a target usually suffers a worse effect than normal if they critically fail the save. This greatly reduces the feeling of completely wasting a spell that casters can feel, especially in low levels.

The other thing this part of the system does is greatly open up the catalogue of viable spells. In First Edition there was an understood list of viable and non-viable spells, and many spells were never ever selected because their payoff did not justify the risk of using them. Now Paizo has a lot more room to spread out the effectiveness of spells more evenly, and the really dramatic spell effects only appear on a critical which spices up the variety of spellcasting.

Also there is no more spell resistance. I repeat: THERE IS NO MORE SPELL RESISTANCE. This is huge and relates directly to the list of viable vs. non-viable spells that I mentioned before. In First Edition the first spells you always wanted to take at each new level were the ones that didn’t allow for spell resistance. Spell resistance was just one more stupid level of chance that your spell will be wasted on top of saves, energy resistance, and immunities, and I’m glad to see it gone.

Criticals

On the note of criticals, the new critical system is also a lot of fun and a big improvement over the old system. Gone are the old days of confirming critical hits. Now, as with other systems, a natural 20 is an automatic crit (provided the total would have hit the target’s AC normally) and a natural 1 is an automatic critical failure. But wait, there’s more. In P2E, if you beat a check by 10 or more, you also critically succeed, and if you fail a check by 10 or more you also critically fail. This seems to me like a good way to reward players who have built their characters well, since many of the old optimization options have gone away with the new system.

The Parts that Aren’t Awesome

While I am overall very pleased with the direction in which Paizo is taking the game, there is certainly a lot of room for criticism. I hope they improve on the points below, but definitely don’t consider them to be dealbreakers.

Resonance

Resonance remains the most controversial inclusion in the game. We didn’t run into it much since the first adventure was level 1, but it seems to me to be just another unnecessary number to track and it feels tacked on to fix a problem that could have been fixed by other means. They wanted to fix the problem of low-level magic item spam, like how a party could go from almost dead to full health in minutes with a single, inexpensive wand of cure light wounds. I’m still willing to give it a shot, but I don’t think I’ll like it.

Proficiencies

I’m also not sold on the proficiencies system. Firstly, it’s confusing. Every single player without exception struggled with the difference between the proficiency rank and the proficiency modifier. I like what they’re going for with the system, each rank unlocking new skill feats and the like, but it needs more polish. Secondly, I don’t like the idea of all of the numbers arbitrarily going up each time a character levels up. That feels too videogamey for me and takes me out of the fiction. It creates bizarre situations where a level 15 wizard has almost a guaranteed chance to stab a level 1 fighter in full plate with a spear despite having never done so in his adventuring career, or a level 10 barbarian having a +8 to a religion check despite having no training in it whatsoever. It also makes a weird situation where players always have to be fighting monsters of their level and limits the fun of including monsters of different levels into their fights.

Full Plate

Speaking of armor, I’m really mad at what they’ve done with full plate. They did dramatically reduce the price of full plate, but in the playtest book half plate is just objectively better than full plate. I’m going to get a bit crunchy in the rules to explain myself so buckle up. Compared to half plate, full plate’s DEX Modifier Cap is one lower, its check penalty is one higher, its bulk is one higher, and it costs 125 SP more. Additionally, full plate has the “clumsy” trait where half plate doesn’t. The “clumsy” trait means that the DEX Modifier Cap applies to Reflex Saves as well as to AC. What advantage then does full plate have in the face of these five major downsides? +1 AC. That’s all. Full plate’s AC Bonus is one higher than half plate’s. We’re not even talking Touch AC, just regular AC. There is literally no reason to consider full plate unless your character never plans on having a DEX score higher than 13, and even then it’s not a foregone conclusion. I know this is a really specific nit to pick, but it matters a lot to me so I included it.

The Rule Book

The playtest rulebook is a bit of a mess. It’s not surprising and I’m sure the final version will be significantly improved, but I constantly felt like I needed to hop around three or four different sections to understand how a single mechanic worked. For example, I had the hardest time figuring out what a character’s spell save DC should be. I finally figured it out by finding a table towards the back of the book, but that table was almost completely void of context, and required that I fully understand a section at the beginning of the book for the table to make any sense. This feels like a mistake compared to Pathfinder First Edition, where it would tell you your spell save DC right there in your class description in the section describing your spell casting.

Other things were simply absent from the rule book and we had to make guesses to proceed. For example, it seems assumed that each player is counted as at least trained in unarmored defense, but nowhere in the rulebook does it actually say that. This was terribly confusing when calculating the AC of characters that weren’t wearing armor.

SJW Nonsense

Another problem I had with the rulebook was the inclusion of several cringeworthy paragraphs in the beginning of the book. One paragraph stated that players could build characters of any sexuality that defy gender norms if they wanted (thanks for the permission, Paizo). Another paragraph was badgering the reader to make a “safe,” “comfortable,” and “inclusive” environment because “Everyone has a right to play and enjoy Pathfinder regardless of their age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other identities and life experiences.” Then there is another section ordering the GM not to be a racist butthead while GMing (thanks again, because I had no idea until you told me Paizo).

Stuff like this drives me bananas. All of my Pathfinder groups are at least 50% female and there is at least one gay dude in each of them save one. I’ve done literally nothing to make my games more inclusive, “particularly if those players are members of minority or marginalized communities that haven’t always been welcome or represented in the larger gaming population” and I don’t have any patience for Paizo’s moral grandstanding when I’m trying to learn the blasted rules of the game. The good news is that the rest of the book stays on topic and this type of language doesn’t seem to repeat (outside of the suspiciously copious use of the feminine pronoun in place of unknown gender). It’s obvious and obnoxious SJW pandering, but I’m inclined to think that it’s mostly just a marketing decision. If Paizo wants to make that SJW buck I can’t blame them, I just hope they remember “Get Woke, Go Broke.”

Conclusion

I will discuss more mechanical changes in future posts as we play more, but as for now I cannot wait to run the second adventure in the playtest. We had a blast and I can’t wait to discuss our future games in the new system. And if you want to see a group of cool dudes play this section of the playtest, then please give the boys at The Glass Cannon Podcast a view. I love their work and I'm a happy Patron of their show. See you in a few weeks.