So I spent some time doing a couple run throughs with the first encounter in the play test and I find combat to be quite deadly and challenging, especially if coming from the mindset that I think many 5e players will have. It is a lot more cruncy but most of the crunch is automated. That is both good and bad. It is good in that combat is not slowed down by trying to figure about the various buffs and banes and such. But it is bad in that it makes system mastery a bit more difficult. Because you don't have to constantly look things up when you start playing you can easily play without knowing what is going on in the calculations. The chat card do break things down for you, though, so that helps. I think the character sheet, in-context tips, and chat cards can be polished to address this. I think an option for new-player or tutorial mode would help with the option to go to less verbose chat cards would be a welcome improvement. Don't get me wrong, out of the box in this pre-alpha version it is already leagues ahead of most systems in terms of in context help, automatons, and chat cards showing the math behind the automatons. But for players who are not read-the-manual types, it could still be improved.
One reason I found the combat so brutal, I think, is that I didn't grok the importance of morale in this system, so I didn't really take advantage of character features that act on enemy morale. I need to dig into the rules on morale a lot more and do another run through with this as a tactical focus. In the discord chat I see complaints about morale making combats too easy, so I obviously made things more difficult for myself by coming into the game with a D&D mindset.
I filled out their feed back form. When they asked what I liked most about the system, I said the automations.
When asked what I most disliked, I stated the lack of a HUD. Having to constantly open the character sheets to execute actions is annoying. The character sheets cover so much of the battlemap. It is especially annoying for the DM as it make so many more clicks. Even with the pop-out mod for foundry, you are just replacing blocking out the battlemap with having to toggle through multiple windows. Blech. They really need to get a Crucible specific hud made ASAP. If the system becomes popular enough, I'm sure some of the popular community-mod huds will release a Crucible version, but as this with be the VTTs flagship system, they need to make it core to their system.
In the "other" suggestions, I said that they really need to release a PDF version of the rules. I want all of the rules in one place to read through separate from the VTT and I would rather switch to another window to look up a rule rather than constantly opening and closing pop-up windows. When you've been playing a game for a while, the in-tool, context-based links to the rules are really convenient. When you are learning a system for the first time, they become very tedious. Also, I really don't like not being able to look up or read the rules unless I'm on my lap top, open Foundry and launch the game.
Other random observations:
Out of the box they designed their system to work with the mods Dice, so Nice and JB2A (Jen & Ben's Animated Assets).
Dice, so Nice works well as it has in every system I've tried in Foundry. It is always a must-have mod for me. But having to constantly have the character sheets open detracts as it often covers the 3D dice rolling anyway.
JB2A isn't doing anything for me. First, I thought it was because I didn't have the premium, Patreon-supported version, but in Discord I learned that a recent update fixed it so that the game system would work with the free version. It also requires the sequencer mod, which I installed. But I still never got it to work. I'll likely just enable it.
You don't need any mod to run the system. Dice, So Nice! and JB2A are just eye candy. But if they are going to reference them in your system rules, they need to provide detailed instructions and support. I know that most of the initial playtesters are going to be Foundry veterans who are deep into its modding culture, but a big part of the attraction of Crucible to me is to have a game system that "just works" without having to deal with selecting, installing, configuring, and troubleshooting a bunch of mods. They are not going attract many people outside of the current faithful unless they make this easy right out of the box.
In a recent update they added the ability to undo an action when you set the action to auto-confirm. Out of the box, you have to click a "confirm" button to apply all of the effects. This gives some protection against mis-clicking on an action you didn't intend to take. But it also means a lot more clicks. So I quickly changed the setting so that everything is auto-confirmed. That only works if the DM can undo an action taken by mistake. You can do that but I didn't find the way to do this immediately obvious on the chat card. It is always tough to balance being overly verbose versus turning your system into a hidden-rules game. Another reason to have a new-player/tutorial setting.
This brings me to another point. They don't have instructions on the system interface itself. Sure, they do for the FOUNDRY interface, but not the system itself. There needs to be better documentation on how the character sheet works, game-system-specific options in the chat cards and in the combat tracker, etc.
For example, I couldn't figure out how to undo death from a dead character. I clicked the trash icon in the active effects section of the character sheet to remove the dead condition, which gave a warning, and then the character sheet became all buggy. What I later learned in a Discord chat is that all you have to do is enter a value of greater than one in the wounds field. Duh! I felt a bit dumb about that, but I'm sure a lot of new players will be confused by this.
Movement is all integrated in grids. You can move 4 grid spaces per movement actions. Etc. Is a grid 5'? 1.5 meters? 10 feet? The rules don't specify. To be fair they will go into more details as they continue to work on the system. I know that they want to be neutral about this and don't want the rules tied to a specific measurement standard, but as it is implemented, one grid works exactly the same as 5 feet.
Overall, I love having crunchy, tactical combat that is easy to run because the math is automated. Lots of options without the overhead in-play complexity. Love it! Lots of tactical options without the slog. It won't be able to solve the issue of decision paralysis with players who have trouble deciding what action they want to take, but I don't want the game-system to try to solve that issue. That is up to individual tables to address based on their personal levels of patience.
I really love how characters are built. I love the idea of game that feels a lot like D&D but without classes.
The talent tree needs a lot more polish. It is not snappy to load. Initially, I kept clicking on the open talent tree button, which caused it to spaz out. You have to wait a few seconds for it to load. Also, it doesn't have descriptive titles for the talent groups and talents. You have to hover over or click on each node to even get the descriptive title. I'm sure this will be polished in future updates.
Leveling is based on number of encounters per level but they have not released the detailed encounter design rules yet. So, for now, I would only be able to run it as a milestone level style campaign. Which is fine, but I'm interested to see what their encounter and refined leveling rules will be.
This is very early alpha, so there is a dearth of weapons, armor, and monster choices. There are no items other than weapons and armor at this point. They'll obviously be adding these as they continue to develop the system and you do have the option to create your own. If it gains steam, at least among the Foundry community, I expect that a lot of third-party community developers will quickly fill in any gaps.
I'm a broken record here, but I really hope they have someone working on a meaty, campaign length adventure for this in tandem. If they don't realease it with adventure material, it will really limit the number of people willing to give the system a try.
