We just finished our playthrough of The Lost Star and I am going to try and write this down while it is still fresh in my mind.
Characters:
*Flix, the Halfling Tempest Druid
*Alanya, the elven rogue
*Chungus, the goblin alchemist
*Kromma, the Half-orc barbarian
A quick recap of the encounters:
The party burned down the sewer ooze in a single round. It got to use its filth wave, but that was about it. The barbarian got a crit in and that was more than half the hp. The halfling threw a stone at it and that was that.
The Goblins in the first goblin chamber heard the rogue as she utterly f@$%ed up her stealth, but presented barely any threat. They hit once with an arrow and stabbed the barbarian good once, but got otherwise burned down in no time. The rogue especially got sneak attacks in very easily with the new action and no AoO and the half-orc took one down per round.
The Quasits were the first challenge - They spread the poison around to all of the party, except the rogue, and got a decent chunk of damage off with it.
The goblin commando with pyro and warriors were a rather quick battle. The rogue (Once more) failed to sneak into them and they hid. She was pretty sure that goblins were in there, so she waited in the hall while the barbarian stepped in. The alchemist ran ahead and got the goblins to trigger a trap. (I am a bit worried about how ambushes works, more on that below). The alchemist went down from the trap and when the druid arrived a round later, the Commando and a warrior took him down quickly.
The goblin pyro died in no time to the rogue and only the Commando really put up a fight here, getting a few good hits in, but the rogue was hard to hit and the barbarian hit hard.
After this, they returned to town to rest for one day of downtime. That was the only rest they took. During the rest, the alchemist made healing elixirs to his heart's content and distributed them, as he was back on his feet after a night's rest.
They discovered the statue was a trap because the Druid was using Detect Magic in the hallway and stopped to do investigate, figuring out it was a trap and the group decided to go drink the water to see if that would bless them. It did.
The skeleton fight was relatively straight-forward. The rogue did enough damage with her rapier to basically go through the resistances and same for the barbarian with her axe. The druid used her slingstaff and the alchemist his light mace, for similar great effect.
The last boss attacked the group in the door opening, but the rogue tumbled through his space (Eating a nasty crit as she did), and went down the next round, being the only one to use a hero point to get back up - Critting with a sneak attack as she did, making a bit of an awesome ending to the fight as the faceless stalker was stabbed from hell's heart.
Alright, with that out of the way, here's my thoughts:
* Mostly, the game seems more straightforward and I am positive about this. Character creation was much more pleasant than 1.0.
* The three action system makes for MUCH more freedom and more dynamic battles, as players run around and monsters position themselves to get better worth from their attacks, which brings me to...
* Weapon Traits. I love them. So damn much. As a GM or as a player, it is just much more fun.
* I LOVE the new crit system. Just love it.
* In general, the adventure seemed fairly well balanced, though the resistances on the skeletons seemed rather irrelevant with the damage the barbarian and rogue were putting out when combined with the low hp.
* Exploration mode does not quite jell. "I want to sneak and look for traps" the rogue said and well, what can I say, other than "You can't"? Fortunately, the rogue had the trapfinding class feat, but it felt silly. They also quickly all just did Searching or Stealth, only the druid varying it.
* I like the new version of detect magic.
* I can not for the life of me figure out ambushes. Having to transition to encounter mode as soon as the goblins decide to attack the PCs makes for a peculiar meta-gaming situation where the players roll initiative and then move around in order while the goblins ready actions? This is WAY worse than the old "Roll perception....... You don't see anything" problem.
* Generally, I do not like the un-grip-weapon, regrip-weapon to cast spells. Druids are so thematically linked to using a staff that the idea that they effectively have to spend two actions between spells to do so seems insane. Please just make a "Ready Weapon" action instead and make unreadying not an action or a free action. Having to spend two actions to cast spells makes casters immobile enough without also forcing them to spend actions fingering their staffs.
*Classes:
* The Alchemist is just... Worthless. He could never use his bombs, due to a fear of putting down his allies, and his poisons just never worked out. His only contribution was as a fighter with a shoddy attack bonus and a d4 damage with no bonus. Rubbish, for sure. Maybe better at higher levels, but this was just painful.
* Barbarian seems a lot of fun. Sudden Charge was used liberally and the great axe was just fun fun fun.
* Druid was a bit underwhelming, the tempest did less damage than the slingstaff. Didn't seem worse than casters usually are at level 1, though.
* Rogue seemed perfectly fine. The weapon traits meant that the rogue used a rapier in one hand and either a hand crossbow or short sword in the other, dependent on the situation. Worked really well. She ruined her thieves tools twice on a critical failure, the poor thing.
