How long did it take to play this part of Doomsday Dawn: It took my group approximately 3 hours to play through this part.
How long did it take to prepare this part of the adventure (time spent reading, gathering materials, etc.)? I spent roughly a total of 1 hour familiarizing myself with the world and scenario. Several hours were spent the day before discussing character creation with the party and attempting to work out answers to rules questions.
How many sessions did it take for you to play through this part of the adventure? 1
How many Hero Points (in total) did you give out during this part of the adventure? 0, Hero points were largely ignored for this session as both players were already slightly overwhelmed with the amount of things they needed to keep track of.
How many times was a player character reduced to 0 Hit Points during this part of the adventure? 1 time. The Human Fighter went down against Drakus after failing to escape his grab attack for two turns in a row. He was drained several times and Drakus landed two Critical Successes against him. The Bard and Alchemist weren’t doing enough to draw his attention from the Fighter in his grasp.
How many player characters were killed during this part of the adventure? 0 times. When the fighter went down the bard and alchemist were quick to heal him back up so he could finish Drakus with a power attack.
The party consisted of a Human Fighter, a Human Bard, and a Goblin Alchemist as a DM NPC.
The gameplay was very smooth once all of the general character building questions were out of the way. Level 1 was just enough so that each character felt very different already, however none seemed to be misbalanced or lacking. I made use of many crowd control alchemical items when it came to combat with large groups and prioritized attacking the Fighter when it came time to deal some damage. Resistance 5 for first level enemies was very harsh, and thankfully the Fighter was able to use his Shield Bash for bludgeoning damage against the skeletons, otherwise that encounter would have likely been too difficult.
Some particularly sticky rules that we were unable to find in the book arose when the shield was being used and to how damage should be applied to the item and Fighter. It is VERY unclear how the Shield Block reaction and Hardness interact with one another, and there are several threads already talking about this.
Building characters was very daunting and frustrating at times because of how disparate and fragmented all of the rules pertaining to each class are. One example I will use is for the Bard class. They gain a Muse, which directs them to another page to learn what their Bard Feat is. This Bard Feat directs them to find a Power, several hundred pages away. I feel this could be simplified.
Additionally, I believe Spells and Powers should be contained in separate sections, as it is unclear that powers are mixed into the spell descriptions.
As for class breakdowns, Fighter was by far the simplest to create, and worked like an efficient machine in combat and outside of it. This class has been done well in my opinion.
Alchemist was also relatively easy to set up, however it again ran into the problem of many class features directing you to locate separate feats and items several hundred pages away. Overall this class played well. The utility items like sunrods, Darkvision Elixir, and Elixir of Life made him invaluable for exploration and party maintenance, however in combat the lack of single target alchemical items made it too dangerous to use the main class weapon while the Fighter was in melee. I feel an option to make bombs more precise, or to ignore allies would be a welcome change.
And finally Bard. This was by far the most daunting class to create a character for due to the different varieties of spell and power types, in addition to Feats, and unique resources like Spell Points. I’ve detailed most of the character building complaints above so I will not rehash that once more. In play the Bard felt very good in my opinion. The character had plenty of useful skills outside of combat, and in combat focused on buffing the Fighter with Guidance and Inspire Courage augmented with Lingering Composition, to great effect.
For enemies, most encounters felt good. The goblins and centipedes felt very well suited to the challenge level required, whereas the skeletons and ooze did not. My players stated that because the ooze had gone down so easily (2 rounds of power attack with a bastard sword and a crit) it sent a false idea of how difficult the rest of the dungeon was going to be.
The skeletons on the other hand seemed particularly too difficult for this adventure. Having resistance 5 to so many different damage types this early into the game made them nearly lethal foes. If the Fighter hadn’t used shield bash it may have cost them their lives. Characters not equipped with bludgeoning damage were relegated to playing a support role for the Fighter while he took them down one or two at a time.
And finally Drakus, the faceless. I felt this was a very good boss fight for this level. His claw and drain combination nearly spelled doom for the Fighter and terrified the other characters involved. His AC was just high enough to make him a really imposing threat, but with careful managing of space and resources allowed players to work their way around him. Overall a very good boss fight.
The players ended the session very excited to see where things go next. Once we got into gameplay instead of rule discussion things went very smoothly with delays only due to searching for ability descriptions or creatures. One thing that was brought up was that having your level be added into proficiency seemed unnecessary. Players stated they would much rather roll against a DC25 with a +7 modifier than to do the math for a DC 45 with a +27 modifier.
Hope this was helpful. Feel free to discuss or ask questions!
