My group had our first playtest session last night, and it went very well! We had an absolute blast, although I'd attribute that to some excellent roleplaying more than the system.
We only made it about halfway through the dungeon, due to time taken on character creation, breaking for dinner, and other distractions.
Party:
Orrum, dwarf fighter (Pathfinder Hopeful background)
Cassander, half-elf paladin of Shelyn (Mind Quake Survivor background)
Charanpal, human cleric of Sarenrae (Esoteric Scion background)
Hawthorne, halfling bard (Family Friend background)
How long did it take to play this part of Doomsday Dawn?
2.5 hours spent playing so far. Our group paused in the fountain room to continue next week.
How long did it take to prepare this part of the adventure (time spent reading, gathering materials, etc.)?
About 2 hours reading the adventure, copying down monster stats, and other adventure-related tasks. If we're counting time spent reading the playtest rulebook to learn the system, add another 8 to that.
How many sessions did it take for you to play through this part of the adventure?
Pending. I expect 2.
How many Hero Points (in total) did you give out during this part of the adventure?
I have given out 4 so far, since everyone brought food to the last session.
How many times was a player character reduced to 0 Hit Points during this part of the adventure?
0 so far.
How many player characters were killed during this part of the adventure?
0 so far.
Our group is mostly very experienced Pathfinder players, and we had 1 new player with us. We were able to walk him through character creation pretty easily. I'd guess character creation took around 1.5 hours total. The dwarf fighter's player had to keep getting up to check on dinner, so it was a bit later by the time we got started playing.
We did some roleplaying to introduce the characters and the adventure premise, and the party entered the dungeon.
The sewer ooze rolled a natural 20 on its stealth, and wasn't noticed by the party. The fighter got knocked down by its filth wave, and was generally covered in various sorts of goop for the rest of the session.
The party had no problems with the goblins in the first hallway. The cleric kept the fighter topped off on HP very well, and threw in some Produce Flame when he could get a good shot. The bard used Inspire Courage and occasionally fired his shortbow to great effect. The fighter and paladin did good damage and were fairly accurate. They did find the treasures, including the owlbear claw, but no one cast detect magic on anything, and they didn't take the hour to identify the potion.
The party failed the roll to examine the goblin bodies. The cleric decided to burn them so they didn't come back as undead. The paladin recalled some dubious knowledge about vampires, though nothing especially relevant.
The combo of the fighter blocking a hallway, with the paladin with a glaive behind, was absolutely devastating to the monsters in the dungeon. Especially with Retributive Strike. The centipede room was a piece of cake to the party, since only one centipede could attack at a time.
The players wanted to avoid the fungus room, but after two critical failures on knowledge checks, the fighter and the bard believed the fungus was actually both edible and delicious, and went in to harvest some. The fighter critically failed his save against the spores and became stupefied, which didn't really affect his character much other than drooling more than normal. He did hit himself for 9 damage while confused, though, which the paladin patched up. The bard managed to make every save against the spores, even when the cleric blew it up with fire magic while he was still in the room.
In the fountain room, the party decided to send the fighter to get the idol, who, in his stupefied state, hit it with a hammer instead. They dispatched the quasits easily with a good Burning Hands from the cleric. One of the quasits critically failed its save.
Love the fighter/paladin combo. Great synergizing!