We started the playtest adventure. Half the group hadn't started character creation yet, which is the only reason they didn't blast all the way through the adventure in a single sitting (we play from 6-10 but this week the first hour and a half was character creation).
The first encounter with the solitary muck monster with an AC 5 was over in a round. They saw it hiding because it's +5 to stealth and a lowball roll made it easy to spot. Once they saw how easy it was to hit, they all stood in the antechamber and used all three actions on ranged attacks while the bard psychically threw wet wreckage at it. If it wasn't immune to criticals it wouldn't have made it through the PC lineup. I feel like an ooze makes a bad ambush predator because they don't seem smart enough to commit to hiding well. If it were a creature that understood how camouflage worked or had a premade hiding space I could argue for a bonus to its preparations. Likewise a creature with a burst attack would tactically benefit from waiting to get everyone in a tight group--but as is, it's just a blob that would have moved toward food as soon as it saw it and would use its blast attack as soon as it couldn't just wack an adjacent foe. Dramatically those attacks are fun and you'd want to see them work, but the abilities just seem a mismatch for a mindless enemy. Regardless people seemed to have felt clever for having spotted it and taken it out so easily.
Everyone was suitably paranoid about proceeding into the tunnel in the pitch black except the goblin alchemist, who could see fine. One player lit a bullseye lantern and another lit a torch, but there was a real fear that while that was the only way to see, it also made them easy to see. The goblin decided to scout ahead.
The group's a little bigger than standard, with 6 players instead of 4, so I added some sleeping goblins to the catacomb and had them wake up as various encounters triggered. That worked out nicely to flesh out what in the module feels like a pretty underoccupied area. The fitfully sleeping goblins also made the PCs nervous, that if they made too much light or noise that they'd trigger a much bigger fight.
The goblin could hear bickering goblins at the far end of the chamber, the boss directing underlings to put together the sludge statue, so he backed away into a side chamber try and find a way around the encounter. He ended up in the centipede room. Just then the gnome from across the way starts trying to call out in a hushed voice to make sure the goblin was all right. The centipedes roll to sense the nearby commotion and a fight begins as they boil out of the rubble. The goblin freaks out and throws a bottle of alchemist's fire into the horde, not hitting any of them, but splashing several. The light and activity wake three goblins, who crawl out of their sleeping creches, grab weapons and position themselves for sneak attacks (that goblins don't have special mechanics to sneak attack or lay traps for people feels like a wasted opportunity--most should carry caltrops or something nasty).
The ranger comes into the room and pulls his scythe but doesn't have enough actions left to attack, so the goblin jumps on his chest and stabs him on it's turn doing max damage. That was fun. The goblin, who gets bitten once and is about to be swarmed by centipedes and worried all the goblins are waking up, sneaks away from the swarm and into a creche with a skeleton and ends up finding the silver ring as he plays around with the bones. The bard comes out to help the ranger and just obliterates the goblin on his chest, psychically impaling him with her crowbar--because she's Carrie White on a bad day and nobody messes with the psychic bard. It's a fun scene but it strikes me as weird that NPC goblins now have a third the hit points of our goblin alchemist, that discrepancy bugs me.
The second goblin jumps out from behind the column and swings a dogslicer at her neck but she ducks and it chunks into the funerary shelf above them, dumping bones and dust on them both. In come the swarm of centipedes and I realize my math was wrong and there's one too many goblins in the encounter. That and the idea that the centipedes don't attack the goblins seems a little lame to me. How would that work? So like something from the mummy this swarm of six centipedes just murder and climb over the goblin that had just attacked the bard, two last centipedes hadn't attacked, so they attack her. It's nasty. She takes half her health from one centipede biting her and doing poison damage. Centipedes are deadly to first level characters, 1d4-1 plus 1d6 poison is nine damage with another 2d6 the next round. A single bite can one shot most characters at my table by the time the venom does its thing.
The hiding alchemist notices a goblin try to sneak by his creche and rolls out and swings his dogslicer at knee level. Natural 20. The strike hews off it's leg and killing it as it hops around squirting blood out it's leg stump. People laugh and are impressed with the awesome attack.
About this time the main group of goblins get ready to attack. The gnomish bard can smell them up ahead with her uncanny sense of smell and they creep up to their location. The ranger makes his way up with some light to help them out as the goblins stop whisper bickering and break into movement. One moves into position behind the column the ranger is crouched by, leaps out and once again he gets hacked hard with a dogslicer across the back (the old one is still imbedded in his armor, they've been afraid to pull it out). The human osirionologist runs to help the ranger when the two goblins who have been lying in wait for just such an opportunity fire their bows at her. The arrows miss, but it's an intense moment as she dives forward and takes out the goblin and rolls around the corner. The alchemist runs up cackling and lets his second alchemist fire go, sailing up and tagging the boss goblin in the chest. The other one laughs, but gets splash damaged. Then the terrifying bard sends her grappling hook out and gets a natural 20 on the boss goblin, catching him under the throat and lifting him up the wall and dropping him. The last, smoldering goblin gets put down with arrows.
The PCs poke around some of the other rooms. The human osirionologist spots the exsanguinated goblins with the unusual bite marks. The gnome rogue detects the magic from the owlbear claw as he goes all through the crypt casting it on everything. They find the room filled with fungus but are too weirded out to investigate. The bard makes an improvised torch from a thighbone and rags and moves into the fountain room. They all take a long hard look at this room because apparently it seems like a deathtrap. Finally the osirionologist takes the goblin's new horsechopper and pries the Lamashtu totem out of the pool, averting the quasit encounter. Good for them. Then the bard opens the trapped door and all the armor comes crashing down. Whoops. They decide not to go that way and begin working to unlock the other door. Four rolls, three 20+ results. The only one to fail was the rogue who specifically is all about traps and locks. Oh well.
As they stare out at these two passageways it turns 10 and we decide to call it.
Overall it was fun. We had a good time with it. The backgrounds seemed really railroady until half the players hadn't made characters and when they did they turned out to be two random gnomes and a ranger with no connection to anyone or anything. But when the one was a fellow mindquake survivor, all of a sudden there was a tie between her and the bard, who suffered similarly but has turned it into fuel to ignite her excitement about aliens and spaceships (her muse). The other gnome was an Osirionologist librarian learning to be a rogue as part of a journey out to the sands, which means he's got ties into where the story is headed and is curious to test his new skills against a group of antiquities burglars, and the ranger is a Varisian whose family have become targets of the Night Heralds and is looking to join the Palatine Eye for allies. Integration became a snap!
Everyone loved the new system of +'s and -'s for ability score generation.
Initiative based on Perception caused some grumbles.
Crits based on hitting 10 over AC slowed everything down and never happened except on the sludge monster that couldn't be critted.
A lot of the language created weird scavenger hunts: this special ability causes this status. Look up the status: this status causes a target to suffer this status. Look up that status. Oh okay. Everything doesn't need a different name. All the different terminology is so much harder to parse through. It happened a lot and could have slowed down the game a lot if we hadn't been so good about doing it in the background. The solution would just be to not have terminology definitions link to other obscure terminology, just describe the mechanic and then maybe in parentheses say what that mechanic is called.
I believe monster's don't role opposed checks (except for initiative). So the the DC to detect the sewer ooze, for instance, should be a flat 15 (10 + 5 Stealth). That might have made that encounter a little more interesting.
Really surprised your group was able to get 3 20+ roles on unlocking the door. I had Talga accompany them as a DM NPC (Goblin Bard), and she had a +3 Thievery score. She broke her thieves tools on the first attempt, and then tried together with improved tools (she used duct tape on her broken tools), and broke them too.
Now that the situation came up I have one general question for the centipede lair, you already mentioned that it was strange that they do not attack the goblins living in the ossuary. But how (especially relevant for your group composition) do they distinguish between the alchemist and the other goblins?
Other than that nice additions for the powerlevel it felt really flavorful reading it and indeed the adventure felt a little under populated and overloaded with other hazards in my opinion but I guess that is necessary for playtest results.
We had the chance to finish up the Lost Star tonight.
It was a rout.
The rogue made her way into the goblin cave and utterly failed to notice the trap, and just got crushed by the rock trap--followed by goblins raining arrows on her from their hiding spots until she was dying. Two of them dragged her away and stuffed her into a corner while the rest reset the trap. Next the gnome monk sent her flying snake in to scout. They shot it. The party wasn't sure what to do and the goblins started mocking them, saying they'd cut parts of their friend and throw them back to them. The bard was able to spot one of the hiding goblins, the one manning the rock trap, but wasn't able to hit him with her telekinetic projectiles. The opening was so small it was hard for other characters to get inside without getting a rock dropped on them or shot with arrows. Finally the gnome wizard was able to just annihilate the rock trap goblin with three magic missiles. The rock trap dropped. The monk, thinking the way was clear and looking to avenge her flying snake charged out into combat and got dropped by arrows. The next few rounds were heavy combat. The goblin alchemist got into a fierce duel horsechopper to horsechopper with the goblin commando. The rogue was able to regain consciousness due to the low class DC of the goblin warriors and sneak attack one of the two goblins left to watch her as they were shooting arrows at the PCs, just skewering him. The other goblin shrieked and stabbed her back down to dying. Then he and the remaining warrior got burning hands cast on them by the wizard, both nearly dying. The bard was finally able to use her grappling hook to do in the commando, just as he was about to kill their goblin friend...of course the goblin objected loudly about having been denied 'his' kill. The two burned goblins turned tail and ran, but ended up getting murdered by a flask of alchemist's fire.
The PCs patched each other's wounds as best they could and the goblin wandered off to explore the ledge he found. It took him forever to climb up, but once there he almost instantly spotted the secret passage. Not waiting for anyone he ducked inside and started looking around. He found Drakus' bed, sheets covered in goo (I assume he sleeps in true form), his dresser and chest. He looked the chest over carefully and then decided the best way to deal with it would be at a distance, so as not to deal with the poison needle--prying it open with his horsechopper. He got it about halfway open when the rest of the PCs hear the racket he's making and come to check up on him. The rogue checks out the bed and finds the book tucked underneath it, and keeps it. The rest of the group start giving the goblin grief for taking off on his own. While they're berating him, the bard wanders off again and goes to open the door at the far end of the tunnel, quietly peering into the dark. Trying to be helpful the wizard produces dancing lights and brings one up right behind her, flooding Drakus with light as he's crouched over the goblin in the shrine. They hear something whimpering and a neck snap, then heavy footsteps approaching. The goblin can't take it and bolts. Suddenly the door flies open and this hobgoblin is standing there, his flesh boiling like a creature from John Carpenter's Thing, it's tongue a long three pointed blood sucking tentacle. People lose their crap and run. The wizard has the presence of mind to cast tanglefoot on him, and crits.
People scramble madly, meeting up at the Pharasma fountain and closing the doors. The rogue is able to jimmy the locks on the one door locked again, so that one is secure. Half the party just wants to leave, but the wizard and bard want to stay. The bard thinks this creature is the most fascinating thing ever and is really excited. The wizard is worried about the town and that the monster will just escape and continue to plague people unless they stop it. The conversation goes back and forth. Suddenly the people who aren't in "conversation mode" are asked to make perception checks. That's basically just the monk. She rolls a 4. Must be nothing...
Then the door on the armor trap side bursts open, Drakus steps in and claws the bard into unconsciousness and begins to feast on her with a surprise action, then tosses her aside and pounces the monk. Two down. The wizard tries to use produce flame on him and the rogue rushes in to try and hit him with her short sword. No damage. The goblin just runs. Next round Drakus draws his longsword and murders the wizard. The rogue runs. Drakus starts to mock them, calling after them in the voices of their friends that they should come back, that it's fine, the monster's gone. The rogue and goblin are so full of nope they just leave their friends behind.
They head back to the city and recover somewhat, then return to see if they can complete their quest. The two find the bodies gone, the star they're looking for cast aside in a pile of less valuable things pawed through by Drakus as he was grabbling his most essential treasures to take. With no goblins left and adventurers coming back at any moment, he wasn't sticking around. He shapeshifted into a new human form and took off shortly after dispatching the last of the dying PCs.
So that's where we left it. Everyone's making their 4th level characters and when we next meet our core heroes at 10th level they'll be joined by some new friends they met along the way. Everyone is talking about wanting to play a cleric next. Everyone.
Really surprised your group was able to get 3 20+ roles on unlocking the door. I had Talga accompany them as a DM NPC (Goblin Bard), and she had a +3 Thievery score. She broke her thieves tools on the first attempt, and then tried together with improved tools (she used duct tape on her broken tools), and broke them too.
There is just no alternative to great die rolls. They kept rolling 19s.
Now that the situation came up I have one general question for the centipede lair, you already mentioned that it was strange that they do not attack the goblins living in the ossuary. But how (especially relevant for your group composition) do they distinguish between the alchemist and the other goblins?
Yeah the scripting for the centipedes didn't make any sense to me. It felt like a gamist attempt to keep them in the room so the encounters wouldn't blend together...but the creatures are mindless. They go after food. They eat whatever they find, goblin or adventurer (or both!). When they've killed a foe, they settle in to feed on it. They just don't fight in an optimal, tactical way.
Other than that nice additions for the power level it felt really flavorful reading it and indeed the adventure felt a little under populated and overloaded with other hazards in my opinion but I guess that is necessary for playtest results.
Thanks! Yeah it feels a little underpopulated. I could have done with more goblins. It felt a little unconvincing that the main boss had eaten the tribe down to just a few goblins per room--that feels like not a great way to accomplish his goals. I think you're right, I think it's partly a playtest thing, and hopefully our data helps improve the game. I also think a downside to three actions per creature means you'll end up with less creatures overall. Especially since they all have +6's to hit--every additional creature is potentially two more hits someone will end up taking.