Hello dear readers! I’m Otmi, you might have seen me in the Team+ Discord, or you may be familiar for my work in Even More Magic on Pathfinder Infinite (go check it out if you haven’t already!). But for this blog post, I wanted to peel the curtain a bit, and explain to you folks my five Hows for playtesting:
- How the playtesting process works;
- How I approach playtesting;
- How I prepare and run playtest games;
- How I formulate my feedback;
- How I go around the table for post session feedback, elaborating on pressure points and the aforementioned feedback (this one is one long How, ey?)
For this post, I will be talking about the Magic+ playtest cycle, in partcular with a focus on Essence Casting, as it’s been the longest so far, and also the hardest one we Plustesters (that’s how we refer ourselves as Team+ Playtesters) worked on.
If this sounds cool to you, then please keep reading! There will also be some anecdotes from some of my playtest games that I’ve ran to keep thinks more interesting (without context, of course, so that you can scratch your head thinking of why would we ever say such a thing?).
1: Giving credit where credit’s due
Before heading in, I would like to mention that as Plustesters we receive material that’s gone over multiple passes, revisions from authors, writers, and first mechanical passes. We receive a feature, feat, spell, item, etc. that has already gone through quite a lot of work before even getting into our hands. I always keep this in mind whenever I offer feeback, as I don’t want to sound disrespectful towards the people and the work that went into making what we received, into something that can be tested and given feedback to.
With that out of the way, the way playtesting works is that us Plustesters are given access to a document where we can see all of the playtesting options. From there, we can leave comments and chat in a specific Discord chat about the various options, talk to each other about those, debate whenever a playtest feature should be changed or not, how a particular option affects game balance, how it compares to various existing options published by Paizo, et cetera. And believe me, there’s been a lot of debate during the Magic+ playtest phase, which lasted almost seven months!
As a general rule, the power level of an option that goes through playtesting should be along the lines as something that Paizo would publish. But, from experience, how this is gauged varies vastly from person to person; since every PF2e table is different, so are the expectations for a given feature. Some say that X feat should be more powerful, others less, leave it as it is, or tweak it slightly. Elaborating feedback is more the authors’s job, so now I’ll be moving on to how I do things for playtesting’s purpose.
2: I did it my way
In the last playtest cycle, I really wanted to focus on the Essence Casting system for my feedback. So much so that I solely focused on that, and not much else. I really, really like Essence Casting, and I wanted it to be the best version it can be.
So I asked myself the following questions: Who is essence casting for? Would the players/GMs interested in this system find it fun? Does it have anything that makes me scratch my head? Do I find this exciting and wanting to play with it right this instant?
In the very first draft of Essence Casting, there were a lot of things to consider, and I got to work quick. I and other plustesters noticed that there were a few things that didn’t feel great about the system. For example, here are a few things that I can share with you about the old version of Essence Casting:
- The only way to increase essence was to use Draw Cantrip, or casting a spell with a rank equal to your current essence. You didn’t increase your essence if you casted a spell with a rank lower to your current essence;
- Life Essence Reservoir didn’t exist. Instead, if one of your spells would restore Hit Points to a creature, that creature could only benefit from healing via your Essence spells once per hour. Due to feedback, this was changed multiple times, until Life Essence Reservoir was created!
- Bounded casters didn’t have a Terminus. They could only do one cycle per combat, with a 3 turn buildup (Draw Cantrip, Max spell rank -2, Max spell rank -1).
And many other things that, if I were to list them, I would be here all day. Of course, all of these things were addressed!
Fun story before moving on: someone leaked the Magic+ document to other people, they shared it with other people, and then it kept spreading around various other PF2e servers the same day it dropped. We called this incident: “The April 1st Leak” (yes we started playtesting Essence Casting on April 1st, the irony huh?)
3: Grinding my Gears
I didn’t want to formulate feedback without having played with Essence Casting first, so I got to work and GM’d a short campaign that lasted from May to June of this year, which was a long dungeon crawl that took place in a single day, an optimal case scenario for Essence Casting. I made this decision in order to assest its power ceiling (multiple encounters in a single day with no possibility to redo daily preparations, due to dungeon shenanigans), and to see how do normal spellcasters fair in comparison to an Essence Caster.
After discussing with the players, we went with the following line up of level 6 characters:
- Desecration Cause Tengu Champion (control);
- Demonic Bloodline Essence Caster Conrasu Sorcerer (the mighty GOOM 9.5);
- School of Rooted Wisdom Spell Substitution Essence Caster Human Nephilim Wizard (that was a mouthful);
- Seer Samsaran Animist. (control caster)
- Thief Tripkee with Magical Trickster and archetype Essence Casting (only joined for one session but not forgotten!)
- School of Rooted Wisdom Spell Substitution Essence Caster Human Changeling Wizard (the first Wizard couldn’t attend anymore, and another player joined in making another spell sub, bless them!)
Generally, what I try to do with my playtest games is the following: assest the power level of all the options being tested, and if said options require specific scenarios in order to be used, then make that scenario happen during the session. Since PF2e is a combat focused TTRPG, and most of the playtest options are combat focused, I try to make combat my playtest games be centered about the combat pillar, although that’s not how I usually run my home games.
The way I build encounters in a playtest game is the following, and they happen in the session in this order: 1 Moderate encounter, little bit of roleplay/exploration, 1 Severe encounter, little bit of roleplay/exploration, and 1 Severe+/Extreme encounter depending on how well the players built their characters. Encounter design is a balancing act and that could be its own blog post (perhaps in the future?).
4: Oh yea, it’s all coming together
Here’s a story of what happened during the very first session. While the party was getting their footing in the dungeon, they found a room with numerous magic circles, each of them containing an item on a small pedestal; the magic circles created a wall of force that didn’t allow anything or anyone to pass through. The players could dispel the magic circles in order to get the items by rolling an Arcana check, or Occultism/Nature/Religion at a slightly higher DC; but the Spell Substitution Wizard decided to take 10 minutes to swap one of their prepared spells to Dispel Magic (2nd rank), and use Dispel Magic as a Short Incantation in order to remove the circles by rolling with an even lower DC, since they were using Dispel Magic specifically. They got the items (one of them was unfortunately a cursed sword that, if ever released, it would fly and attack the nearest creature), and moved on with the session.
Once we were done with the game for the day, we talked a bit about the magic circles room, and the feedback was overall that Spell Substitution Wizard’s versatility was too much, especially for lower rank spell slots, which weren’t going to be used that much in combat due to how Essence Casting works. The potential to solve most problem with the right prepared spell as a short/long incantation at the right time was deemed too all-rounded and could make skill challenges that didn’t have time pressure a bit too simple. After consulting with Tony, the “If you substitute a spell into your prepared spells or repertoire (such as with the wizard spell substitution thesis), you can’t use it for an incantation for 1 hour.” line was added to Essence Casting. This way, you can still substitute spells and use them in combat, but out of combat you have to wait a bit.
5: Mirrors… it had to be mirrors…
We did a total of 7 sessions, and overall we’ve had a blast. It was now time to wrap the bow on this short campaign, and give our feedback on everything.
I went around the table, and asked each player what they thought about Essence Casting as a whole. Feedback was overall positive, and we discovered how Essence Casters and more conventional casters can help each other out, and how they go so well together. While Essence Casters build up their power, the traditional casters bought them time by casting strong spells on their own, and the switched back to less powerful ones when the Essence Casters fully ramped up. It was something really cool to discover in actual play, that we didn’t read in between the lines of text, that such a synergy would come forth. Some players (including me) were willing to make the full switch to Essence Casting in a future campaign, while others were a bit more hesitant, wanting to give the players the freedom to choose.
As for my personal feedback, I come to realise that Essence Casting allows for something I called: “”story-based casting”.
An essence caster’s spells, due to the nature of building up your essence in order cast your most powerful spells, makes all picked spells a way for the caster to express themselves in a unique way, almost like a “feat” for the caster and, looking back, almost like what Kinetecist does with its Impulse feats.
There’s also a more hidden advantage for GMs with essence casting being the only way to cast spells in a campaign: being able to more easily tell a story during an encounter at high level. I’m the type of GM who focuses on the NPCs themselves, how they act, how they fight, what spells they prepare, how’s their lair and how those it play during a fight, and I find it easier to do so with Essence Casting. Every spell they prepare gives a glimpse of the NPC’s personality, how they think and what they prioritise, similar to how a player can express their player character with Essence Casting.
And all of this, I found to enchance storytelling quite well. Which is why I was, and still am, a big advocate for Essence Casting after the playtest was done, cementing the excitement I’ve had after first reading it.
And that’s all I had to say about how I run playtest games! Before signing off, here’re a few out of context quotes during the playtest game, just for fun:
- …No, the sexy nun statue is not leaking.
- We should leave this old man to burn on the pyre.
- He’s pulling his rod out!
- That devil is just like me fr fr.
- I’d rather stand with the devil legion than with the pervert painter.
- I f***ing hate those golden mirrors!
- Would.
- I am glad gay people are real in this dungeon.
See you soon!
Otmi