Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
EN Publishing
Playtest Feedback (8/12)
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="LucasC" data-source="post: 6359891" data-attributes="member: 6762606"><p>There were 7 players and myself in this session - the players each have 4,000 XP and have not had an opportunity for 'down time' so they have not picked up any additional Career progressions beyond the starters. </p><p></p><p><em>This playtest utilized the August playtest guide. </em></p><p><em></em></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 15px">Basic Stats</span></strong></p><p>Here are some basic statistics drawn from each player. </p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>Defenses</strong></p><p></p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">10, 11, 12, 13, 13, 17, 19<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">(the character with 19 is a star knight and 5 comes from his rank 2 class exploit & requires he be unarmored)</li> </ul></li> </ul><p></p><p></p><p><strong>Attack Pools</strong></p><p><strong></strong>Five of the seven characters had one of these attack pools. Seems I missed capturing the other two. </p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Pool 1 (1 character): <span style="color: #ff0000">7d6</span> (3d6 ability, 2d6 skill, 1d6 battlesuit, 1d6 high quality)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Pool 2 (2 characters): <span style="color: #ff0000">10d6</span> (3d6 ability, 2d6 skill, 1d6 battlesuit, 1d6 high quality, 3d6 seeker enhancement)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Pool 3 (2 characters): <span style="color: #ff0000">5d6</span> (3d6 ability, 2d6 skill)</li> </ul><p></p><p><strong>Damage Pools</strong></p><p>Five of the seven characters had one of these damage pools.</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Pool 1 (1 character): <span style="color: #ff0000">6d6</span> (3d6 weapon, 1d6 racial, 1d6 high quality, 1d6 exploit)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Pool 2 (2 characters): <span style="color: #ff0000">5d6</span> (4d6 large weapon, 1d6 high quality)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Pool 3 (1 character): <span style="color: #ff0000">5d6</span> (2d6 psiblast, 3d6 rank 7 pwr)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Pool 3 (1 character): <span style="color: #ff0000">6d6</span> (2d6 psiblast, 3d6 rank 7 pwr, 1d6 battlepsyc rank 2)</li> </ul><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong>Misc Feedback & Questions</strong></span></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Can a character benefit from emergency first aid (EFA) for the purposes of stabilizing the dying countdown pool more than once a day and/or if said character has already been the target of EFA and gotten healed 1d6? Presumably yes, but EFA specifically disallows benefiting from it multiple times a day.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Is a Medic's ability to heal considered EFA?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Can a character that was unconscious and has been stabilized and now is awake abel to take any actions? Is that character considered Mildly Unconscious (as in the game condition)?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Can a character progress a racial skill when selecting their free hobby skill (for example, a human that chooses Poker as a racial skill)?</li> </ul><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Consider Smuggler as a viable pre-req for Con Artist</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Battlepsych (rank 1) is looking like a must-have career for anyone serious about psionics</li> </ul><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Do you mean for their to be no LUCK attribute exploits?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">More than half my group ended up with a 2 LOGIC</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Focusing on a single psionic career and ranking up results in a character with only 1 psionic power, is this intended and working as desired?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Regarding career advancement, limiting skill selection, limiting powers gained and other restrictions seems to encourage jumping from career to career but forcing a 'restart' on career abilities seems to encourage the opposite. Is this working as desired?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Regarding direct and indirect skills- should there be a requirement that in order to gain any benefit whatsoever from an indirect skill you need to have at least a 2-dice pool in that skill? The observation is that someone with say, 1 rank in Poker, playing against someone with 1 rank in Playing Cards are at on an equal footing despite the Poker skill being more narrowly focused and both having equal 'skill' in their respective areas.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Is cover meant to protect against Psionic attacks (presumably not but who can say for certain)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Seeker item enhancement (+3d6 attack) is very powerful especially given the overall reduction in dice pools</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Is there an exploit for shooting 2 guns at once? Ambidexterity specifies it adds extra melee attacks only.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Does crawling affect movement?</li> </ul><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong>Special Emphasis</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong></strong></span>These two items are broken out from above just to provide emphasis on them as they were 'hot button' topics with my players. </p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Having no exploding dice outside the LUCK/special pools really disappointed them.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Permanent damage is universally despised.</li> </ul><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong>Psionics</strong></span> </p><p>With new support around psionics, and picking up another player interested in trying them out, we got to see a bit of psionics in action last night. </p><p></p><p>I will summarize my feedback in one sentence.<p style="margin-left: 40px"><em><strong>Psiblast is an extremely effective attack. </strong></em></p><p></p><p>The two psionic characters were attacking with an attack pool of 5d6 and a damage pool of either 5d6 or 6d6. This damage ignored all SOAK and the attack itself targeted Mental Defense which tends to be lower for many monsters. These attacks also ignore cover and all other mechanics intended to help with balance (shooting in melee, covering fire, roll with it, etc.). </p><p></p><p>Furthermore, by adding a single rank in Battlepsych they do all of this without suffering any of the negative consequences inherent in the use of psionics. </p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong>Combat Feedback</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong></strong></span>I still find it difficult to find a good balance between challenge and overwhelming force. </p><p></p><p>Last night's game involved 2 battles. </p><p></p><p>The first included 2 gobbers for each PC. This fight failed to offer any challenge to the PCs. The gobbers attack with 3d6 making a hit unlikely. Then, on the occasions where they did hit, dealing damage against the PCs in armor (SOAK 10 generally) was more unlikely (weapon damage = 2d6). Pack tactics helped with this a little but I think in the entire combat they dealt less than 10 points of damage to players. </p><p></p><p>The second fight involved vehicles and thugs. I simply doubled all the thugs attack dice pools so that the PCs felt there was some damage. This pumped things up to about 6d6 for hits and 2d6 for damage. When adding in positional bonuses and other benefits I could get another die or two on damage and begin to hurt the PCs. It worked OK but not great. </p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong>Rule Presentation</strong></span></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Terms that have special meaning in the game - like <em>exploits</em> - should be avoided if at all possible in the remainder of the text or clearly differentiated (such as by putting them in all CAPS when indicating the game term).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">At several points during character creation it references adding your starting age to the ages you pickup from careers (starter + 4) but I cannot find anywhere that tells me what the starter age actually is.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I'd like to see names for all Career exploits for recording those powers on my character sheet -</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">p144- Verbiage under death and dying could be cleaned up to use the established countdown language (classify the dying countdown as a "slow" countdown vs. indicating any dice that come up 6's are removed).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">High quality weapons do one extra damage die in the examples but in the text it only explicitly indicates they add to attack.</li> </ul><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong>Character Sheet</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong></strong></span></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The worksheet on the back of the sheet does not have a place for LUCK increases</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Several people indicated the blue lettering meant to be written over was too dark and should be made lighter</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">One player indicated that under the attack section he'd like to see a box for skill dice, attribute dice, weapon dice, etc. vs. just a single box for the attack dice and a second for damage dice</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Several people indicated the species skill box, on the worksheet, is too small to hold 3 skills</li> </ul><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong>Typos</strong></span></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">p143- <span style="font-family: 'PalatinoLinotype'"><em>Eyepatches are cool: </em></span><span style="font-family: 'PalatinoLinotype'">when an attribute<span style="color: #ff0000"> isreduces due </span>to a permanent...</span></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">p269- <span style="font-family: 'PalatinoLinotype'">You <span style="color: #ff0000">shold</span> also select thespecies' size at this time. </span></li> </ul><p></p><p>--</p><p>Lucas </p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/embersdesignstudios/the-book-of-terniel-a-pathfinder-rpg-adventure" target="_blank">[ATTACH]63493[/ATTACH]</a></p><p><a href="http://www.thecityofbrass.com/" target="_blank"></a></p><p><a href="http://www.thecityofbrass.com/" target="_blank">The City of Brass</a><span style="color: #000000"> :: </span><em>the next generation of gaming apps</em></p><p><em><a href="http://www.embersds.com/blog" target="_blank">Blog </a>| <a href="https://www.facebook.com/EmbersDesignStudios" target="_blank">Facebook </a>| <a href="https://twitter.com/city_of_brass" target="_blank">Twitter </a>| <a href="https://plus.google.com/+EmbersdsEmbersDesignStudios" target="_blank">Google+</a></em></p><p><em></em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="LucasC, post: 6359891, member: 6762606"] There were 7 players and myself in this session - the players each have 4,000 XP and have not had an opportunity for 'down time' so they have not picked up any additional Career progressions beyond the starters. [I]This playtest utilized the August playtest guide. [/I] [B][SIZE=4]Basic Stats[/SIZE][/B] Here are some basic statistics drawn from each player. [B] Defenses[/B] [LIST] [*]10, 11, 12, 13, 13, 17, 19 [LIST] [*](the character with 19 is a star knight and 5 comes from his rank 2 class exploit & requires he be unarmored) [/LIST] [/LIST] [B]Attack Pools [/B]Five of the seven characters had one of these attack pools. Seems I missed capturing the other two. [LIST] [*]Pool 1 (1 character): [COLOR=#ff0000]7d6[/COLOR] (3d6 ability, 2d6 skill, 1d6 battlesuit, 1d6 high quality) [*]Pool 2 (2 characters): [COLOR=#ff0000]10d6[/COLOR] (3d6 ability, 2d6 skill, 1d6 battlesuit, 1d6 high quality, 3d6 seeker enhancement) [*]Pool 3 (2 characters): [COLOR=#ff0000]5d6[/COLOR] (3d6 ability, 2d6 skill) [/LIST] [B]Damage Pools[/B] Five of the seven characters had one of these damage pools. [LIST] [*]Pool 1 (1 character): [COLOR=#ff0000]6d6[/COLOR] (3d6 weapon, 1d6 racial, 1d6 high quality, 1d6 exploit) [*]Pool 2 (2 characters): [COLOR=#ff0000]5d6[/COLOR] (4d6 large weapon, 1d6 high quality) [*]Pool 3 (1 character): [COLOR=#ff0000]5d6[/COLOR] (2d6 psiblast, 3d6 rank 7 pwr) [*]Pool 3 (1 character): [COLOR=#ff0000]6d6[/COLOR] (2d6 psiblast, 3d6 rank 7 pwr, 1d6 battlepsyc rank 2) [/LIST] [SIZE=4][B]Misc Feedback & Questions[/B][/SIZE] [LIST] [*]Can a character benefit from emergency first aid (EFA) for the purposes of stabilizing the dying countdown pool more than once a day and/or if said character has already been the target of EFA and gotten healed 1d6? Presumably yes, but EFA specifically disallows benefiting from it multiple times a day. [*]Is a Medic's ability to heal considered EFA? [*]Can a character that was unconscious and has been stabilized and now is awake abel to take any actions? Is that character considered Mildly Unconscious (as in the game condition)? [*]Can a character progress a racial skill when selecting their free hobby skill (for example, a human that chooses Poker as a racial skill)? [/LIST] [LIST] [*]Consider Smuggler as a viable pre-req for Con Artist [*]Battlepsych (rank 1) is looking like a must-have career for anyone serious about psionics [/LIST] [LIST] [*]Do you mean for their to be no LUCK attribute exploits? [*]More than half my group ended up with a 2 LOGIC [*]Focusing on a single psionic career and ranking up results in a character with only 1 psionic power, is this intended and working as desired? [*]Regarding career advancement, limiting skill selection, limiting powers gained and other restrictions seems to encourage jumping from career to career but forcing a 'restart' on career abilities seems to encourage the opposite. Is this working as desired? [*]Regarding direct and indirect skills- should there be a requirement that in order to gain any benefit whatsoever from an indirect skill you need to have at least a 2-dice pool in that skill? The observation is that someone with say, 1 rank in Poker, playing against someone with 1 rank in Playing Cards are at on an equal footing despite the Poker skill being more narrowly focused and both having equal 'skill' in their respective areas. [*]Is cover meant to protect against Psionic attacks (presumably not but who can say for certain) [*]The Seeker item enhancement (+3d6 attack) is very powerful especially given the overall reduction in dice pools [*]Is there an exploit for shooting 2 guns at once? Ambidexterity specifies it adds extra melee attacks only. [*]Does crawling affect movement? [/LIST] [SIZE=4][B]Special Emphasis [/B][/SIZE]These two items are broken out from above just to provide emphasis on them as they were 'hot button' topics with my players. [LIST] [*]Having no exploding dice outside the LUCK/special pools really disappointed them. [*]Permanent damage is universally despised. [/LIST] [SIZE=4][B]Psionics[/B][/SIZE] With new support around psionics, and picking up another player interested in trying them out, we got to see a bit of psionics in action last night. I will summarize my feedback in one sentence.[INDENT=2][I][B]Psiblast is an extremely effective attack. [/B][/I][/INDENT] The two psionic characters were attacking with an attack pool of 5d6 and a damage pool of either 5d6 or 6d6. This damage ignored all SOAK and the attack itself targeted Mental Defense which tends to be lower for many monsters. These attacks also ignore cover and all other mechanics intended to help with balance (shooting in melee, covering fire, roll with it, etc.). Furthermore, by adding a single rank in Battlepsych they do all of this without suffering any of the negative consequences inherent in the use of psionics. [SIZE=4][B]Combat Feedback [/B][/SIZE]I still find it difficult to find a good balance between challenge and overwhelming force. Last night's game involved 2 battles. The first included 2 gobbers for each PC. This fight failed to offer any challenge to the PCs. The gobbers attack with 3d6 making a hit unlikely. Then, on the occasions where they did hit, dealing damage against the PCs in armor (SOAK 10 generally) was more unlikely (weapon damage = 2d6). Pack tactics helped with this a little but I think in the entire combat they dealt less than 10 points of damage to players. The second fight involved vehicles and thugs. I simply doubled all the thugs attack dice pools so that the PCs felt there was some damage. This pumped things up to about 6d6 for hits and 2d6 for damage. When adding in positional bonuses and other benefits I could get another die or two on damage and begin to hurt the PCs. It worked OK but not great. [SIZE=4][B]Rule Presentation[/B][/SIZE] [LIST] [*]Terms that have special meaning in the game - like [I]exploits[/I] - should be avoided if at all possible in the remainder of the text or clearly differentiated (such as by putting them in all CAPS when indicating the game term). [*]At several points during character creation it references adding your starting age to the ages you pickup from careers (starter + 4) but I cannot find anywhere that tells me what the starter age actually is. [*]I'd like to see names for all Career exploits for recording those powers on my character sheet - [*]p144- Verbiage under death and dying could be cleaned up to use the established countdown language (classify the dying countdown as a "slow" countdown vs. indicating any dice that come up 6's are removed). [*]High quality weapons do one extra damage die in the examples but in the text it only explicitly indicates they add to attack. [/LIST] [SIZE=4][B]Character Sheet [/B][/SIZE] [LIST] [*]The worksheet on the back of the sheet does not have a place for LUCK increases [*]Several people indicated the blue lettering meant to be written over was too dark and should be made lighter [*]One player indicated that under the attack section he'd like to see a box for skill dice, attribute dice, weapon dice, etc. vs. just a single box for the attack dice and a second for damage dice [*]Several people indicated the species skill box, on the worksheet, is too small to hold 3 skills [/LIST] [SIZE=4][B]Typos[/B][/SIZE] [LIST] [*]p143- [FONT=PalatinoLinotype][I]Eyepatches are cool: [/I][/FONT][FONT=PalatinoLinotype]when an attribute[COLOR=#ff0000] isreduces due [/COLOR]to a permanent...[/FONT] [*]p269- [FONT=PalatinoLinotype]You [COLOR=#ff0000]shold[/COLOR] also select thespecies' size at this time. [/FONT] [/LIST] -- Lucas [URL="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/embersdesignstudios/the-book-of-terniel-a-pathfinder-rpg-adventure"][ATTACH=CONFIG]63493._xfImport[/ATTACH][/URL] [URL="http://www.thecityofbrass.com/"] The City of Brass[/URL][COLOR=#000000] :: [/COLOR][I]the next generation of gaming apps [URL="http://www.embersds.com/blog"]Blog [/URL]| [URL="https://www.facebook.com/EmbersDesignStudios"]Facebook [/URL]| [URL="https://twitter.com/city_of_brass"]Twitter [/URL]| [URL="https://plus.google.com/+EmbersdsEmbersDesignStudios"]Google+[/URL] [/I] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
EN Publishing
Playtest Feedback (8/12)
Top