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Doomsday Dawn - Lost Start Feedback
I ran the Lost Star today and thought I would report on it. Ran for six players, and the only change was to the encounter sized. I increased the number of mobs based on the published encounter rating (trivial, hard, extreme, severe). I also increased the size size of some of the rooms due to the number of characters.
How long did it take to play this past of the Doomsday Dawn:
Actual play time was 5 hours.
How long did it take to prepare this part of the adventure?
I spent about 4-6 hours of prep time. This included looking up and working through how Hazards and Poisons worked as I reviewed the creatures.
How many Hero points?
Everyone started with a single Hero point. None were used.
How many times was a character reduced to 0 hit points?
None
How many player character were killed?
None
Now on to my specific thoughts.
In general we enjoye character creation. Everyone's character felt mechanically different and unique. This is important to us. We have experience other game systems, particulary Savage Worlds, where that isn't the case.
The party consisted of the following:
Dwarf Fighter
Human Wizard
Human Cleric
Human Bard
Half-Elf Ranger
Gnome Rogue
The only complaint I heard at this stage concerned Ancestry Feats. The Half-Elf player didn't really feel like the Half-Elf Ancestry feat was really worth it. All the players felt like adding additional heritage based abilities as the characters went up in level was going to feel weird. You mean, all of a sudden I remember how to use my racial weapons? Neat. Where was that at 1st level? That kind of feeling suspends immersion to some extent. My players are particularly gamey, we play a lot of table top wargames and tend to approach D&D the same way so if it bothers them about their characters like that I take note.
Other thoughts
(1) We had a good time. The new mechanics were easy to grasp and within an hour or so we had a good handle on them. There were a couple of little issues we had to look up, nuance things but generally it went very well and we had fun.
(2) We really liked the unseen/seek/sensed mechanics. I intentionally made the sure the Quasits went invisible to make sure we got to see this in action. As the GM i enjoyed having a systemic way to handle it. My players enjoyed the 'Game inside a Game' aspect.
(3) My players were never really in any danger of dying. We had criticals happen on both sides of the fights. My players expressed frustration that a goblin had a better chance to hit than they did, but it's something we dealt with. Critical Fumbles should do something other than miss. My suggestion is that a critical fumble attacked causes the weapon to be 'unreadied'.
(4) My Rogue was surprised at needing multiple successes to open some of the doors and thought the DCs were a little high. I tend to agree. Need three success against a DC20 when his bonus was +5 was a little off from a game play situation. I basically decided that since there was no consequence for failure if he burned enough time he'd get there and ruled it took 5 minutes of in-game time. This is in reference to the door at the southern end of the pool room. I was a big fan of 4e's Skill Challenge system and will port it over if we continue with this. In my view it's simply a better way to handle it. Basically having to sit and roll dice until a 15 comes up three times can be time consuming and a real drag on the table.
(5) We all like the three-action system economy and the way spellcasting works as well.
(6) Cantrips. Yep they work
(7) Bard. He worked too
(8) No one but the fighter took a blunt weapon so they went to using the flats of the blades when fighting the skeleton. Ruled it improvised at -2 and moved on.
Due to the map and information from Talga they dodged the Ooze, the Mindfog Fungus, and the Giant Centipedes. The statue caught them. I feel like that trap is something of a Gotcha! moment.
How did they avoid the ooze? It's riht there in the entrance. Were they able to sneak past it?
correct. I had the ooze placed in the square to the north-west of the drain. First person in the room saw the Ooze and proceeded to skirt the west wall of the Cistern. Because of the distance they didn't need to sneak, the text says the ooze attacks anyone who gets within 10 ft and there was a path that avoided that distance.
Quick question - did you bump up the number of mobs to account for the extra party members, and if so what did you bump in each encounter?