AwkwardCrying's page

AwkwardCrying wrote:

master_marshmallow wrote:

Proficiency was not exactly changed. Untrained being -4 is nice, because it means there is a larger range of values that can show up on the dice, but the DCs table doesn't seem to really match this. In fact, for some of the intermediary DCs, they're actually higher. This means more forced specialization to still have the coin flip scenario with the d20.

I think this is my biggest problem from the update. A majority of the DC's have been increased (some increasing by upwards of 9 or 10) for all parts of Doomsday Dawn and I'm not liking what I'm seeing for my players. Like why in The Mirrored Moon are the perception checks now harder than ultimate difficulty for 9th level? The normal check DC before the changes matches perfectly up to hard difficulty, why the change?

Did you miss the part where they updated that if you're doing a skill check with no consequences for failure and everyone can attempt (such as perception checks) you should raise the DC by 4 so that there is still a chance that the PCs miss it.

You do realize that makes it less than what they changed it to right?

Proficiency was not exactly changed. Untrained being -4 is nice, because it means there is a larger range of values that can show up on the dice, but the DCs table doesn't seem to really match this. In fact, for some of the intermediary DCs, they're actually higher. This means more forced specialization to still have the coin flip scenario with the d20.

I think this is my biggest problem from the update. A majority of the DC's have been increased (some increasing by upwards of 9 or 10) for all parts of Doomsday Dawn and I'm not liking what I'm seeing for my players. Like why in The Mirrored Moon are the perception checks now harder than ultimate difficulty for 9th level? The normal check DC before the changes matches perfectly up to hard difficulty, why the change?

It's not really specific though. Only Fist shows up in the weapon section and even under unarmed strikes it states

Use the statistics for a fist even if you’re kicking, kneeing, or attacking with another part of your body.

So technically kicks from Dragon Stance would fall under Fist. Probably would be up to a GMs interpretation but I don't really see a problem with allowing it to work.

Now for the second part.

How long did it take to play this part of Doomsday Dawn (not counting preparation or character creation)?: Across three sessions it took around 10ish hours.

How long did it take to prepare this part of the adventure (time spent reading, gathering materials, etc.)?: Around 5 hours from having to make up my own maps (not a fan of) and then import the images from the pdf to the Roll20 game.

How many sessions did it take for you to play through this part of the adventure?: 3 sessions since we had to restart.

How many Hero Points (in total) did you give out during this part of the adventure?: 13. 1 per session to each character and then an extra handed to the Monk for his act of daring.

How many times was a player character reduced to 0 Hit Points during this part of the adventure?: The first time through about 6 or 7 times. The second time around 8 times. The third time 0.

How many player characters were killed during this part of the adventure?: Effectively had a TPK for the first and second session. 0 deaths the third session.

Did the player characters beat the rival adventuring party to the site? If so, how much sooner did the PCs arrive?: The players had two days left until the Night Heralds arrived.

Some general notes from my end: Party was made up of a an Elven Fighter, a Gnome Bard, Half-Orc Monk, and a Dwarf Druid. They waste a day at the tavern in the town.

First area was easy though the Monk had a little trouble with getting ganged up on.

Second area had the Fighter and Monk get stuck into the quicksand. Monk easily could get out but thanks to his low roll the Fighter was sucked down into the quicksand before he could act starting his hold breath. The Ankherav attacked as well but the Druid and Bard were able to take it on without going down. Unfortunately due to wearing heavy armor and rolling numerous ones the Fighter was sucked down deeper and deeper until he ran out of breath. Passed one suffocation test but then crit failed the next instantly dying. I asked what the players wanted to do and the player who's character died said they could go on while he rethought out his character.

Third area the group at first tried sneaking by but ended up just going the long way.

Fourth area the characters started climbing around the mountain but because they had to keep taking the long way they decided to rest on the mountain. Obviously the Manticore attacked them at night leading to a TPK as the characters could not do much with only low-light vision at best.

Restart!

Characters are the same with a few spells or a feat changed around. They skip the first two encounters to the Gnoll camp.

At the third encounter they at first try to jump and swim across making loud noises for the Gnolls to hear who get close enough to start taking pot shots at them. Characters end up killing them all.

Fourth encounter the characters are climbing up and making good progress when the Monk notices the Manticore and the fight starts. Most of the characters were near useless due to lack of range until the Monk decided to use his grappling hook to grapple around the Manticore. I let him do it as an improvised weapon with a 20 foot range. He actually hit and started using the climbing rules getting closer and closer over the subsequent turns but the Manticore also getting higher and higher while trying to force him to fall from the rope. He finally gets up on the Manticore and starts kicking it continuously while the Manticore keeps trying to shake him off and fly higher. Manticore finally dies after around 10 continuous rounds of just their two turns and they both fall dealing 200 and some odd damage and would instantly kill the Monk but I said he could use a Hero Point to survive and would still receive an extra point but it would then take time for his allies to find him and for them to get back on track. After getting back up the Monk takes the tail as a trophy.

Fifth encounter they come upon Zakfah's group where Zakfah sees the big trophy tail the Monk has and starts asking them where he got it and they explain that he took out the Manticore. Zakfah believes this thanks to the obvious trophy and a good persuasion roll from the Bard.

Encounter six, the Bard uses Detect Magic to look for anything and detects the magic coming from the latch that opens the door. Since Detect Magic only
acts as a ping they just know it's magical and use the latch activating the trap. Players and myself really aren't fans of how Detect Magic works now and would rather it just be like it used to.

Seventh encounter the Fighter and Druid walk into the chamber up to the water curious what the room is used for and then started the fight with the water elemental going up and bashing at them. The earth elemental gets up and burrows over between the Druid/Fighter and Bard/Monk and starts attacking the Bard. The fight is long with both the Monk and Fighter being unable to roll high enough to hit the elementals and ends with a TPK.

Restart!

This time they restart right outside of the tomb and because the Monk player couldn't make it this day the Bard player played both his Bard and the pregenned Cleric leveled down by 1 and the replacement of the +1 Scimitar for a normal Scimitar.

Seventh encounter starts with the Fighter again strolling into the chamber but this time all the way into the water where the fight starts again. This time around things go a lot better though it still takes awhile in large part thanks to their immunity to critical hits and now having a Cleric. They pick up the stones and find Ninth encounter where they place the stones seeing the stuff light up and go searching for the next elemental chamber.

Eighth encounter they walk into the chamber and the fight starts immediately. The fire elementals persistent damage is pretty good though the flat check should be changed around to something else to give the players a better chance of getting rid of it. Fight still takes awhile thanks to critical immunity but thanks to the Cleric again they get through it. After the fight they decide to rest for the night.

Back to the Ninth encounter they bring the other two stones and see the others light up. They then spend around 5 hours solving the equations and then the door opens revealing Mabar.

Tenth encounter the characters are curious about the floating stuff and one even uses their Sling to hit him with a stone just in case he's a bad guy sleeping. So the Fighter walks in with the Druid and the Mummies rise up. They get through the fight pretty fast though the Fighter falls under the curse. They eventually free Mabar after some deliberation and all the stuff falls including him and the Bard has a conversation with her while the Druid finds the secret door. No one asked him if he'd come with them so he asks where they came from instead and then leaves them behind to look at the treasure.

Eleventh encounter they find all of the treasure and divvy it up so they can carry it all, including the tapestry. They were two days away from the Night Heralds arrival and were contemplating resting to change spells so they wouldn't be slowed down but decided not to. Since the book says the Night Heralds only catch up if there is one day left the session ended with them arriving back to town and getting their reward from Lady Vord.

I was a little disappointed they didn't rest so they could fight the Night Heralds just to see how they would've done but that's whatever.

General feeling after playing: After the first session the players were not fans of a lot of things that happened. The suffocation and Manticore being chief complaints and everyone very much felt sour afterwards.

After the second session the players still felt sour though more so to the fact that the dice just wouldn't roll in their favor and that it sucks fighting something that gains full benefits from the new crit rules but they can't.

Third session everyone felt better afterward but they also noted how mandatory they realize having a Cleric is for the adventure and didn't really like that when they already had a Druid.

This was addressed in the new errata where the willing needs to be switched to read "one living creature or one willing undead creature."

A treachery demon has +28 to initiative score. A typical 12 level PC has +13 to +17 Perception initiative score. Means treachery demons act first in any fight by default.

The Doomsday Dawn book lists them at +28 using Deception but the Bestiary does state that Treachery Demons get a +2 circumstance bonus if they use Deception for Initiative. That makes it where unless players are rolling nat 20's and all have a +17 the demon has to roll a 6 or lower to not go first. Which is obviously extremely unlikely.

So it goes like this:

Part 1 - Create new characters. These are the main characters and test dungeon exploration.
Part 2 - Create new characters. These characters are doing the task because they are suited for crossing multiple terrains. These are meant to test travel.
Part 3 - Create new characters. These characters are meant to handle multiple waves through having lots of healing so as to test healing resource management.
Part 4 - Back to the main characters. Testing single combat days.
Part 5 - Create new characters. These characters are meant to be hardy crusaders who can handle multiple waves of enemies but will eventually die. This is meant to test lethality for mid to high level play.
Part 6 - Create new characters. These characters are high ranking member of the order. These are meant to test out roleplaying.
Part 7 - Back to main characters. Testing high level play

Going off this I've actually made changes where part 2,3, and 6 can be played with the same characters after creating the new ones for part 2. But for the purposes of the playtest if they wish to they can switch out characters that work better for that part.

Something to note. The Doomsday Dawn adventure asks for players to create 5 different characters.

Had this actually happen last night when redoing The Lost Star for a new player to the group. What I ended up doing that was the fastest was I had Drakus grab some extra Goblins as "bodyguards". I'm sure you could do something like "He grabs one per day they rest" or "Roll a 1d4-1 and Drakus grabs that many Goblins" but I just grabbed two at the time so they could hide right behind the statues while Drakus was behind the altar.

How long did it take to play this part of Doomsday Dawn (not counting preparation or character creation)?: It took my group about 5 and a half hours.

How long did it take to prepare this part of the adventure (time spent reading, gathering materials, etc.)?: About around 6ish hours including advertising. This could have probably been longer had it not been for Roll20 getting the add-on.

How many sessions did it take for you to play through this part of the adventure?: One luckily.

How many Hero Points (in total) did you give out during this part of the adventure?: I handed out seven. None of them were used though because the players would just forget about their existence.

How many times was a player character reduced to 0 Hit Points during this part of the adventure?: Four, but if we include animal companions five.

How many player characters were killed during this part of the adventure?: None thanks to luck and a proactive Cleric.

Some general notes from my end: If the players spot the Ooze then it's dead before half of them can even act.
Everything hits hard pretty easily.
Why do light sources not have a dim light radius? Low-light vision felt completely pointless without any sources of dim light.
The Mindfog Fungus feels pointless without any real danger to the hazard, a player walks up to it, gets confused, others notice, get the player away and then just ignore the room.
Needing to succeed multiple times to unlock something really drags things down, especially with high DCs that can easily break lockpicks and resetting any progress. It was much much easier for the players to break the doors in a few hits rather than deal with the locks.
The goblin commando is a beast with his ability to trip with his weapon. He was the first one to bring a player to 0.
Drakus was interesting. The +2 bonus from reverting allowed him to easily one turn down the barbarian. The Barbarian started tripping him to get the conditional bonus but even that was hard because of Drakus' high Reflex and high AC. Drakus starting by the altar also gives him an advantage of not being easily flanked. The +2 circumstance bonus also helped him out a lot against the Bard

General feeling after playing: All in all the players had fun and want to continue so they are making the fourth level characters for part two but were confused why they couldn't just keep playing the same characters especially when there's no real story reason why they couldn't be the same characters. I had fun myself though there were a lot of times where combat would start to drag because there was some specific condition that needed to be looked up and there are so many instances of everything in the book.

This is obviously late and I'm writing this up well after the session but I'll hopefully have the notes from my players as well to post here.