Doomsday dawn ch. 1 Lost Star - My players had fun!

[Dilvias]

Since the full round by round description runs for multiple pages, I will sum up and just include the comments. Please let me know if you want the full description of each and every action by the players.

First thing. All the players had fun. Yes, they had issues with some things, but overall they enjoyed the first adventure enough that they were willing to do the next chapter. So good job there.

The group consisted of a axe and board dwarf fighter, a halfling rogue, an elven wizard (conjurer) and a human cleric of Saranae.

Dwarf Fighter:

The Fighter went str 16, dex 16 and wore chainmail, so with a raised shield his AC was 20. This saved him multiple times, especially on second and third attacks. Also, shields in general were much more important than I thought they would be (both the fighter and Cleric used shields). Also, add a shield boss, it's worth it. He wanted ancient blood, but felt the resonance penalty was too much so took Hardy instead. Having someone with darkvision in the party was really helpful. He chose Sudden charge as his feat, but he never really used it due to the small space and said that another feat would have been better.

Halfling Rogue:

The Rogue chose as her ancestry feat weapon familiarity, originally for the filcher's fork, but her halfling sling staff became the weapon MVP. That thing was nasty. She looked over the rogue class feats, and declared that she didn't want any of them until 8th level, so was going to multiclass into wizard next (she wanted sorcerer, but since that wasn't an option...) Consequently, she had an Int of 16, which meant that she had practically every skill in the game. She said that the stupid door which took 16 rolls to open was unfun. She was also the only person to hit dying state (twice), likely because she didn't use a shield.

Elf Wizard:

Summoning is still strong. In fact, the animated broom was broken, and was pretty devestating against the giant centipedes (with the augmented summoning it was AC 15, Hardness 3, +8 to hit for 1d4+dust, and immune to practically everything). The fire beetle vs the goblins in room A7 was also pretty good, what with the dazzle effect much stronger in PF2. The wizard's only real complaint was the fact that it took him forever to find the single cantrp for conjuring, and it was tanglefoot. (He had to check every single cantrip, since the school wasn't listed in the spell list.

Human Cleric:

The group wasn't sure how they would have survived without the Cleric's channel energy. She was torn between Emblazen symbol and Healing hands, and choose the symbol, which was definitely the right choice. Being able to cast while holding both scimitar and shield really helped. She did ask why if wizards got bonus spells from schools why clerics didn't get bonus spells from domains. She also wanted better cantrip options. She cast Daze a lot. (Which did help the rogue and her sling staff of doom, admittedly.) Magic Weapon is an amazing first level spell.

GM comments:

I needed to prepare a lot more than I did. I spent too much time flipping between the adventure, the beastiary and the rulebook. Definitely copy over the monsters being used, as well as any spells they use. Shields kinda trivialized a couple of encounters, especially the Quasit fight (they couldn't break the hardness even when they did hit, so their poison never came into effect.) Speaking of poisons, the poison listing in the index goes to the alchemist section, not the rules under afflictions. The group never used resonance, so it never came up.

Rules questions:

The ooze attack in A1 was 1d6 bludgoning +1d4 acid. How should that interact with shield block? I ruled the damage combined for overcoming hardness but am not sure if that was correct. I also ruled that filth wave could not be blocked, but I could see it going the other way. How does Healer's Blessing and the 3 round heal spell interact? The rogue at one point was at dying 1 and got into with a burning hands spell. I couldn't find any rule about it, but I did not allow him a reflex save, so he went to dying 2. I hope that was correct.

Tracking:

(I included both GM and Players tracking)

GM
1. How long did it take to play this part of Doomsday Dawn (not counting preparation or character creation)? 5 hr
2. How long did it take to prepare this part of the adventure (time spent reading, gathering materials, etc.)? 4 hr
3. How many sessions did it take for you to play through this part of the adventure? 1
4. How many Hero Points (in total) did you give out during this part of the adventure? 1
5. How many times was a player character reduced to 0 Hit Points during this part of the adventure? 2
6. How many player characters were killed during this part of the adventure? 0

Players (Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric)
1. How long did it take for you to create (or update) your character? 2-3 hrs
2. How many times was your character reduced to 0 Hit Points during this part of the adventure? 0/2/0/0/
3. How many times did your character reach 0 Resonance Points during play of this part of the adventure*? 0/0/0/0
4. How many times did your character critically fail the check while overspending Resonance Points during play of this part of the adventure*? 0/0/0/0
5. How many times did your character run out of spell slots during play of this part of the adventure*? 0/0/1/1
6. How many times did your character run out of Spell Points during play of this part of the adventure*? 0/0/0/1
7. How many Hero Points did you use during this part of the adventure? 0/0/0/0