So, just took part in a runthrough of the first adventure of Doomsday Dawn. It was fun! Well, when we weren't running through the rulebook, trying to recall what did what at least.
The party was a bit unique - a goblin druid with a wolf companion, two rogues (I was a halfling, and the other human), and a dwarven monk who we realized partially in had not boosted his dexterity.
As you'll note, no cleric or paladin or divine sorcerer to be seen. Our druid always was not preparing any healing spells going in.
We did the adventure in two dives. As a player, I had to say it felt *really* nice to have dex to damage at first as a rogue.. Being able to roll practically every skill with no penalty was also nice - however, I never felt like I was really succeeding at anything too well. Even Perception, which was expert, was often times my lowest roll. As my Wis was only 12, I wasn't expecting a miracle, but it felt odd given how it was 'better' than all those skills I only was trained in. I'm sure as we try the higher level activities this will change, but for now it kinda felt like having a 'You Participated' trophy.
There were struggles though - I would say the biggest was the catacomb/skeleton room. A tight space where 3 or 4 enemies could pile onto one target *hurt.* Multiple players went down in that one, and one nearly died.
It also felt a little off when we came across the Pharasma puzzle/secrets. I'm sure that a player who happened to pick Lore up for her, or was a cleric of her, would have felt pleasantly surprised! But it felt weird knowing that there was probably something that could have been done with the items there, and missing out on it with no opportunity to learn of it (outside of our GM letting us).
One final note, I liked being able to not just have to kill/brute force our way through all our problems. Knocking out the initial guard of goblins and only dealing with the big bad himself was nice. I'm sure if we'd gotten a little luckier, we might have even been able to surprise him and get the leg up, or maybe sneaked by. Either way, more opportunities like that would be great.
