| Harles |
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My friends and I played Lost Star today (I GMed). I'll try to find more specific threads to comment about the specific issues we had, but for now, here's our general observations.
First, we had 2 players that each controlled 2 characters (goblin monk, half-orc alchemist, dwarf druid, and halfling ranger). [We couldn't find 4 players on short notice and wanted to get the playtest started in earnest.]
After three combats, the characters were spent on nearly all resources and HP. We found that they would have to rest for several days to recover HP naturally - so the druid spent all healing spells to get them up to speed and then they rested again. [Perhaps a quicker recovery of HP during rest would help?]
The game dragged on pretty long. Granted we were not familiar with the new rules, but we were looking up stuff all the time. We had to get the rulebook out on nearly every turn. The dying condition was confusing, even after reading it a few times.
Counting diagonal movement slowed the pace. (Full disclosure - we're predominantly 5e D&D players.) Firing past other party members and enemies was a little confusing - "blocking" and "screening" seemed like similar concepts and got swapped around.
Could just be me. I was a little confused if conditions stacked. Like if a character was poisoned and then got poisoned again by a second attack - did that move him to a second stage of the poison (I ruled it did not).
I also was confused about shield proficiency. Do you also add proficiency bonus like you do with armor proficiency? (One player argued that you do not. It actually did not come up in play, as no one used a shield.)
We had a TPK in the final boss fight, but it was a close one. Additional healing resources would've helped. (The group found none of the healing treasure items.)
Overall, the players liked character creation and thought the whole game experience was an improvement over PF 1e. It was still slower than 5e and it seemed a little over-concerned with minutiae. (We have played some crunchy games including Shadowrun and 4e. This somehow seemed more bogged down.) There are many conditions to keep up with, weapon traits, different critical failure and success effects for most actions - and it's unlikely players will be able to remember them, so you will always have to refer to the rulebook.
Some of the design and layout choices didn't work for us. The icons for what kind of activation and the number needed were a little hard to read. (Just writing out "2 actions" would be sufficient instead of looking for two red boxes slightly stacked over each other.) Also, having to flip through hundreds of pages to find relevant information really slowed the pace. For example, having the death and dying rules on a page, then needing to look at a chart of sample DCs to find what the recovery DC should be was inconvenient. (Perhaps just have the DC be 10+ the monster's attack bonus?)
Anyway, I probably rambled enough here. Just wanted to post while everything was fresh.