So my official review for play test in Oregon is as follows: people were able and willing to adapt to the new rules and effects. There were times when it was difficult to remember all of the new rules and what was on your card but for the most part I’m pretty sure that that sort of thing will go away in two or three games. A few spells got mixed up. Like how slow is a binding spell. As far as class balance goes, fighters dominated the game. With their ability to swing for damage all day long and tank along with their defenses which work on nearly everything, it’s my opinion that they’re the best class. We saw a lot of resolute, spell parry, and mettle. Earth scholars were highly effective against undead but we didn’t have enough of them and life spells. One guy ended up resurrecting in an undead fight. It was my understanding that body bloat was supposed to go down and NPCs were supposed to have fewer defenses but I didn’t notice that trend. We only had around 10 earth casters and 5 celestial casters. We ended up having some resurrection hiccups because our normal invested earth circle peeps didn’t have healing arts anymore as they had changed classes.
Friday night we fought undead. They resisted spells such as stun limb and prison, and had spell strikes for evocations. The 2 undead I fought most were immune to binding and were healed by flame and ice. In Seattle and Oregon we have an LCO rule where you call “healed” if an effect heals you unless it is healing, or chaos. That rule wasn’t in effect for the play test, So when I threw fire at them, I was healing one of them without knowing it. I’d like to see “Healed” be a standard call in the rule book.
The NPCs I fought seemed to have the same amount of hit points as in 1.3 and enough resists to shrug off nearly all my spells. From what I experienced most of my spells ended up just making enemies use up their spell defenses. Through augmented magic storms, I was mostly only able to whittle down enemy hp some so fighters could do the heavy lifting. I’d say I dropped about 5 or so enemies over the weekend, though only once or twice by myself. I fought constructs Sunday that reflected the spells I threw, and while I was able to prison one of them because I baned one back, I found out that these constructs were specifically designed to bounce back shatter spells I tried throwing. There were some constructs Saturday whose spell defenses I could blow through with a spell before subjugating them.
The big Saturday night fight had us fighting pc races. Not monsters with racial resists. This was the most effective my spells were the entire weekend. I used my augmented magic storm and potency combo to pick at enemies from behind ally lines. I used recharge prowess for another magic storm. My high magic cloaks ran out for command and curse because they don’t recharge like mettle does, but I was able to use retribution to give me the extra firepower I needed when an enemy hit me with their spells. Later Saturday night we were attacked by red caps. Each of them could resist magic three times, and had a Dodge.
There was a lair card that resulted in a TPK I had the misfortune of stumbling into with a group of low to mid level characters. It was over quick and the undead I was helping fight swung for 7 drain. 1 PC escaped to bring back help, but 4 PCs were engulfed and ressed. Later it took 20-30 PCs and tracking the undead down to retrieve the items lost in that mod. At that time the undead triggered their swarm ability and started swinging for engulf after reviving and renewing undead by voice.
I’ll say that I did have fun this weekend with the npcs that came in to interact with the PCs and with the story plot was telling. In regards to the playtest however, it was VERY frustrating as a level 35 celestial caster with a 9 column to be unable to land most spells. Out of 7 stun limbs, only 1 stuck. Out of 8 prisons only 3 stuck. I did not use many large evocation spells, only 4 or so through the weekend, relying on DOT magic storms.
Spell swap was the most useful utility ritual I used all weekend. So useful! I kept dropping and switching spells from wards, COPs, prisons, magic storms, and even dropping most evocations for spell protections to load up spell stores and refill spell protections on allies.
Recharge prowess was great to get backs storm spells for me to use. I didn’t take any channeling, so augmented storm spells were my sustained source of damage. I had 2 counter spells on me, but never used them all weekend.
Moving forward I plan on taking more active notes during each fight at our next game so I can get better data, because I feel that in order to get a concrete analysis for my feedback I want to use a similar build at the next Oregon playtest and see how the two compare.