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Hello from Gencon 2018!
My group played Raiders of Shrieking Peak today, which was a challenging module that resulted in a TPK. I'm glad we played the demo, because there's no substitute for figuring out how a new rules system works than by trying out the rules in practice.
First, the non-spoiler general feedback:
- The critical hit system is very problematic. The way critical hits work, a natural 20 is a critical success as is scoring 10 above the necessary DC for a skill check or attack. The relevant text is on page 292 of the rulebook and its impact on the game can't be understated.
"[I]f you succeed and rolled a 20 on the die (often called a "natural 20"), or if your result is equal to or greater than the DC plus 10, you critically succeed. You apply the critical success effect instead of the success effect. If the critical success was an attack roll, it is sometimes called a critical hit."
Note that there are no rolls to confirm critical hits in the new system.
Under these rules, critical hits are far more likely to occur, as you'll see when you play. Not only because a natural 20 will auto confirm if the attack was a success, but because of the DC+10 rule. We found that although PC hit points are much higher in this system, the frequency of crits made combat feel a lot more random. I imagine that at higher levels, if monsters are routinely hitting AC+10, PCs will die a lot faster.
If I were to immediately request a fix to one thing in the new system, it would be how critical hits occur.
- A significant and unwelcome change from 1st edition is the new dying rules that make if difficult to bring someone back from death's door.
Our playthrough ended in a TPK, mostly because half of the party was taken out of combat in the final fight (see spoilers below). That meant we got to get some small experience with the death and dying rules.
When you go down, you start on the dying track at "dying 1" if a normal attack took your PC down or "dying 2" if the attack was a critical hit, which as mentioned above happens a lot more often in this version.
1) Recovery saving throws are just weird. They're based on the DC of the person or thing that took you unconscious and seem needlessly complicated.
Page 295: "If damage that reduced you to 0 Hit Points came from something that doesn't have a DC, such as an attack roll, use the attacker's class DC. Though a class DC usually includes the key ability modifier for a character's class, the GM might sometimes decide a different ability score is appropriate; for example, a wizard's class DC usually uses Intelligence, but if he knocks someone out with his staff, the DC might use Strength or Dexterity. For monsters the GM will use a high-difficulty skill DC of the monster's level (see page 336)."
2) If you get healed while you're down, you end up making recovery saves for a while, losing actions, no matter how healed you get...even if you get up.
Say a critical hit takes you to "dying 2" and you are a 0 Hit Points and receive healing. In our situation, Kyra healed another PC for over 30 HP using her substantial heal spell (as high as 6d8 HP healed!).
See page 295 again, because when you're healed to 30 Hit Points but at dying-2 after having gone down from a crit, you still need to make multiple Recovery Saves, losing actions as you do so.
The whole system is unnecessarily messy.
- Ok, let's talk spoilers.
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.* The harpies.
Clearly this scenario was designed with the harpy encounter as the focus. With six players we had two harpies, each with (I believe) over 75 HP. Two PCs were enchanted by one harpy and one by another. With no chance to break the enchantment, we had two flying opponents plus the other combatants against three PCs.
We were out of our Sound Burst, but tried throwing thunderstones vs. PCs to try to negate the harpy effect (it didn't work). We found that the opponents made quick work of us, which resulted in a TPK. The enchanted PCs, once they failed the first save, had no recourse but to walk around in a daze, taking them out of combat (no additional saving throws against the songs were allowed). We were told that making a save against a single harpy's song would bolster you against that harpy only, which meant that everyone made two saves -- one against each harpy's song -- and failure on either took you out of the game.
We had some ways to deal with flying creatures (spells, bows, etc), but were quickly overpowered.
General impressions: everyone has more HP but there's more critical hits going around and the whole system just felt more arbitrary and random. This could be the result of encounter design, but we came out of it simply hoping the system would be fixed.
Hello,
See page 295 again, because when you're healed to 30 Hit Points but at dying-2 after having gone down from a crit, you still need to make multiple Recovery Saves, losing actions as you do so.
I think thats wrong because on page 295 you can read:
At the end of each of your turns while you have at least
1 Hit Point and are conscious, you reduce your dying
value by 1. As with other conditions, when the dying
value reaches 0, the dying condition ends.
