Pathfinder Playtest Adventure: Doomsday Dawn

Appropriate only at the moment of the testing of Pathfinder 2e, much less now.

Great book

This book presents 7 short adventures for the Pathfinder 2nd edition Playtest.The 7 quests are spread out over an array of different levels:The Lost Star: Level 1*In Pale Mountain's Shadow: 4Affair at Sombrefell Hall: 7The Mirrored Moon: 9*The Heroes of Undarin: 12Red Flags: 14When the Stars Go Dark: 17*Asterisks show that those 3 adventures are supposed to use the same characters. So you play the 1st adventure with them at level 1, do a couple other adventures with different characters, then come back and level up those starting characters to level 9. Then you do a couple other adventures with different characters, then you come back for the finale using the same starting characters, but you level them up to 17.Overall, the adventures are cool and fun. Lots of Pathfinder-y diversity presenting different types of challenge, because this is for a playtest so they want to see how players interact with a variety of things. This is nicely encased in the realm of Golarian, using some familiar and not-so-familiar locations, and "Easter Egg" type references to beloved Pathfinder adventures. I really liked that. For example, and this isn't a spoiler: the first scenario ties in nicely with the opening scene of the Burnt Offerings adventure, which was the very 1st Pathfinder adventure 10 years ago. That was very charming and appreciated.Unfortunately, I really cannot get over the typos & errors. It's hard enough Game Mastering a game: you have to balance multiple different players and what they are trying to accomplish, you have to story tell, and you have to know the rules, which is hard enough because the new version of Pathfinder has changed almost everything. Not one feat, spell, or class functions the same as the earlier version. The rules are a total rebuild, and there is no backwards compatibility with 1st edition Pathfinder. Plus when there are errors in the document, that makes it that much harder. For example, at the final battle of the 1st scenario, it lists the BBEG and another monster... but that other monster is not really supposed to be there. The author explicitly said that other monster isn't supposed to be there, but if the GM doesn't know that, it can spell disaster for the party. And it's hard finding that errata online.Even without that extra monster, a lot of the adventures seem too hard. I get that it's a playtest, but expect frustrated players and lots of characters getting knocked down. (I was going to say expect a lot of character death, but then they just errata'ed character dying rules, which now makes it really hard to actually die. Again, confusing.) Monsters tend to be better than the heroes. For instance, at the very start, the goblin warriors have fewer HP but better at hitting. Poison is very deadly. There seems to be a lot more critical hits, which we felt like harmed the PCs more than it harmed the monsters. The combat feats almost universally have been watered down. The heroes feel less like heroes, more like normal guys with swords and magic trying to survive.For me, the hardest part was creating new characters and leveling up characters, because the new ruleset dramatically confines player choices. It feels a lot like 4th edition or 5th edition D&D: each class is expected to stay in their lanes. The vast majority of feats are locked for particular classes and races. Among other things, you're back to absolutely needing a Cleric for healing. Skill selection and customization is greatly diminished too. This was the area of the new version of the game that my players and I found the most frustrating.Finally, please note that a free PDF of this adventure is available at the paizo.com website. You should only buy this if you wanted a nicely printed color copy. I'm glad I bought a hard copy rather than just the PDF, because printing out every page on a color printer would cost more anyway.

this is significantly smaller, flimsier, and underwhelming compared to the $5 corebook.

Softcover book was delivered as advertised. Pathfinder 2.0 rules are out, but $50. For a fraction of that price, I can get a feel for the rules that I would otherwise not have time play!