Welcome to my overly wordy report on DD1 – The Lost Star
Feedback is clustered on the rooms, including info on where I had adjust for 6, later 5 players. I am listing the rooms in the order my players visited them. In the end there is a short overview of my main takeaways.
I had 6 players, 3 PFS veterans and followers of the playtest info and 3 D&D roleplayers with years of experience. They had a very different approach to both the adventure and encounters.
The veterans brought premade characters and helped two of the PF2 newbies create their own. The last player was late and decided to play Valeros – he hates the nitty gritty of mechanics anyway. The only longish part was chosing equipment and spells, and the TEML layout led to lots of confusion where and how you end up with your actual bonus. It took overall a bit over an hour to go, with lots of spell and mechanics info still missing.
We ended up with the following
Elf Barbarian, Friend of the Family
Self identified Kyra clone, Pathfinder hopeful
Valeros
Goblin Bard, Renegade
Human Alchemist, Mindquake Survivor
Human Sorceror, Angel Blood, Mindquake Survivor
I set up the Elf Barbarian as Keleris trophy boy and strongman, who should gather some pathfinders to clear out the troublesome goblins in her cellar. What he found was Valeros tagging along two drinking buddies he had picked up at a local bar that wouldn’t stop talking about the tentacles behind the night, and Not-Kyra that was hanging around the lodg hoping to impress some actual pathfinders.
He gathered them all up with a promise of 100gp (I made that up on the spot – is there an actual reward in the adventure I missed?) and they confronted the two fungus addled goblins in the cellar, one blasting away at his blowpipe, the other singing so badly as to make make Zon-Kuthon weep.
Valeros introduced them to the fun of Coercion by Intimidation, but they locked the backup goblin up in a cupboard.
General layout and adventure structure:
I am not a fan of non reactive dungeons. At some times, the more experienced Players highlighted that it would be tactically better to rest and regroup, as they had 7 days to regain the Star. Our roleplayers persisted that it would feel off, so they pushed through, which could have very easily led to a TPK.
What felt strange was that Drakus was supposed to sit in his room and eat Goblins for days, even if all his minions were slaughtered around him. There should be at least a few sentences what he does with his remaining minions or how it impacts the Overall dungeon.
Finally, having a Goblin that can explain you 3/4 of the dungeon takes away a lot of the challenges. So I ignored that, otherwise there would have been no interest at all to investigate Areas 3-5 (as there is not even any loot in there), both the Alarm and both the traps of the goblins and the Pharasma statue would have been detected without any Action by the Players - this info would have been automatically available, which seems very odd.
Therefore, I agreed with the Goblin player that he had overdosed on the mindfog shroom and gave him untrained Lore checks for each room, and we came up together with some hilarious half-truths. When they finally met Drakus, the had actually prepared stakes for a vampire.
A1: Starting the playtest off with a Monster that is nothing but a pile of hitpoints but without any exploitable weaknesses is boring. I had troubles where my Players would be when I have them enter Encounter mode, and I didn't really understand if I could give them info about the hidden Ooze or not. Also nobody knows which recall Knowledge works on Oozes (I went with Nature and Occultism). As I didn't remember the rules for Setting the difficulty of the Task, I gave up, made up a number in my mind - and then realized I had no idea what info to give them. What is the most known Thing about oozes? Or something more subtle. This was made more complicated by 2 users of dubious Knowledge and some other critfails on Knowledge. Coming up with interesting erroneous Knowledge on the spot is not easy.
A2/A5: My next problem with exploration vs encounter mode and perception. Does it make any difference what tactics people use if they want to hear the goblins? What do I roll for the goblins to notice the players? None were sneaking, so there should have been a chance. As is, I just started encounter mode as soon as one of my players set foot in the room, as nobody was sneaking and he had a light source. Was that right? No idea.
I did not run into much of the lighting trouble, because my players got lucky with initiative and the Barbarian with the Nightvision power had the light spell on his sword and just ran to the goblins. What felt odd was that even he had not seen any of them (he was in the hallway) he went off with a Sudden Charge. So he essentially charged the darkness until he luckily found a goblin in range.
In the aftermath I could have worked better with the Goblins to set up flanks on him with Goblin shuffle, but this takes some getting used to. I realized that my monsters were already at a disadvantage because they had to spend an action to get their weapons out. This goes back to “When does the encounter start” Is there a perception before that? There was a fight next door involving alchemical bombs. Should my goblins have heard that?
They slaughtered the Goblins nicely, the Barbarian took some damage, and I fled the last Goblin run into the Fungus room. Due to my group being 6 players, I had placed two already confused Goblins there (also to give anyone a reason to enter this room).
The Fighter followed and got confused, The alchemist blew up the Shroom with a Fire Bomb, and the Sorceress entered the room as well. Both Fighter and Sorceress stayed in there for a looong time. Here I misunderstood the Hazard Statblock. I thought that Routine: Action (1) meant that It costs him one action to disperse the spores and had him do it three times initially. I am not sure that changed anything, because I don’t know if the Fighter failed his first or only a subsequent save. This could have very well been the end of the sorceress, as the fighter had to attack her, but bad rolls saved both of them. They just staid in there. Again, and again. Until the Sorceress even got the critfail.
I then improvised a Pull Maneuver from Shove and finally allowed them to improvise a Lasso in order to get them out of the room. We then realized that despite having three healers including an alchemist with Antidote and Antiplague and a first aid kit, there was nothing there could be done about the stupefied condition. It feels off that the spores are a completely traitless effect with no means of counteracting it. At least Someone got off a great Nature roll so I could tell them it would wear off in an hour.
I had my goblin player always roll Lore untrained to see if he would remember anything useful about the dungeon due to Shroom aftereffects. Even after he told them that the two other rooms were dead bodies and vermin, they still went in.
A3: I had put a Bat Swarm in with the Centipedes, to try a low level swarm and to make the room more reactive (basically any movie ever has a cave full off bats that then fly all around once someone enters.) Swarms are still nasty, but at least they can be hacked up now with some work. Valeros actually guessed right in using slashing with his sword and the killed them between an AoO and some normal attacks, but not before I got four players into the swarm and could bite twice. Including a critfail on the Dex Save by the alchemist, that hurt! What felt counterintuitive to me was that bleed doesn’t stack, but it was harsh enough.
I flubbed the centipedes as I didn’t notice their climb speed. But having a three dimensional fight already would have been horrible anyway. So they got into a chokepoint in the tunnel. At least my players obliged and ran into the readied attacks of the waiting centipedes. No poison saves were failed. The cleric pumped everybody to full to stop the bleeding. Splash and persistent damage by the alchemist bombs actually did something here, I think one wounded centipede got killed by splash, and one by persistent damage.
Unfortunately here it got late so our Barbarian had to leave. We continued on with 5 players.
A6: Purification Fountain
We realized neither Detect magic not Read Aura give you any useful information on the fountain. Neither helps you to find the Idol either. I had to guess that the fountain would have transformation magic as Aura? The Sorceress tried to pick the lock with the help of the Alchemist. After two broken Lockpicks they got lucky in just under ten rolls. Nobody in the room felt that this was an interesting mechanic.
They also found the alarm on the other door, but never used it.
A9. They successfully identified the Pharasma statue and were sure it’s a trap, but nobody thought of disabling it. They tried with prayers and some water directly from the fountains face. I liked the idea and let it pass, unfortunately only the leading character did it, so as soon as another player passed they got a faceful of sand.
A8. This unfortunately led them northwards, because it was easier to evade that way, and they decided to raid the Ossuary. Despite multiple questions from both the Cleric and the Fighter if ransacking this crypt is a nice idea, the proceeded to go in, blasting positive energy. The Cleric had a short oh shit when his 3 Action Heal basically woke up all 6 Skeletons plus the Plague Zombie I had upgrade the encounter with. But with the support of another 3 action Heal from the sorceress that left a battered plague zombie. He ate another disrupt undead from the bard, and then was gloriously decapitated by the alchemist with a thrown dagger. I still have trouble imagining how a thrown dagger would cause slashing damage, but it made for a nice finishing move.
A6 (again) Then they actually decided to go back to the fountain room, because they were convinced they had to solve that riddle before they could pass the statue. Finally someone made the Perception roll to find the Idol. They “Telekinetic Projectile’d” it out of the fountain, which led us to the fun realization that this Cantrip has no Bulk limit. Look out, unattended Wagons! Which released the Quasits.
We had some fun trying out the invisibility/unseen/sensed mechanics, and this actually felt like teamwork, with the Sorceress and Alchemist pointing out the baddies and the Cleric and Fighter killing the beasties. The Fighter ate a critical Sting and critically failed the poison resistance, which led to some distress, but finally a use for the alchemists antidote. I like the new poison rules, even though we got confused if you take damage if you succeed at a subsequent saving throw or not. I ruled wrongly in favor of the player. So our fighter would have died after the fight was over, but I am not too worried about that. The poison rules felt quite exciting, but it’s a not easy to track, especially with multiple instances of the poison involved.
A10. They finally battered down Drakus door in an great display of ineptitude (three 1s were rolled)
I messed up Drakus action economy by using his transform ability on turn 1, because between him stepping and transforming I only had one action left. I wanted to grab the sorceress in front of me, but as the Grab ability of the claw actually needs another action, I was unable to use that and instead Athletics-grabbed her, thereby squandering his +2 to damage.
The fight was actually a pretty cool boss fight, even though Drakus failed miserably a lot of the time. I think I hit once with the sword, and never got that Claw/Grab/Sword with Sneak attack damage to work. Nevertheless we had quite a cinematic moment with the sorceress restrained in a critical grapple, with her using three actions to escape and succeeding on the last with two hero points invested.
Valeros got to shine when Drakus critically failed to grab him, so the Fighter b%*%#slapped him to the ground and gave him an AoO to the face when he stood up.
Even though my roles were shit, everybody was quickly aware that they were always only on crit away from Death with this guy, and with only Valeros having an AoO there was no real way to stop him from attacking whoever he wanted.
Luckily the quickly dispatched the two rats in the room, so Drakus could not set up any flanks.
I am still convinced that this combat is extremely dangerous and swingy, but there were multiple things to think about, actually interesting and feasible combat maneuvers involved and everybody had fun to kill this guy in the end.
We ended the scenario there, because it was late and there were no more challenges worth fighting over, there was no reason for them to enter the Goblin Cave.
Major takeaways:
1. I still have no idea what exploration mode is supposed to do. But as this dungeon was so small, we could have basically done it all in encounter mode anyway, interrupted by strange 10 minute pauses for read aura or waiting an hour for stupefied to pass.
2. Hazards and poisons are interesting, but complicated. Hazards are similar enough to creatures that their slightly different format (Hardness instead of hitpoints, routines with a set number of actions instead of the normal action setup) that it can lead to misunderstandings. It was for example really strange for me that the players would save for the fungus cloud when it was the fungus turn, for the sand trap at the beginning of their turn and for poison at the end of their turn.
3. Inititative is king, even more so with the three action economy. Had I beaten them in initiative with the Goblins or the Quasits, much pain would have happened.
4. Ambushes with Perception vs. Stealth are nice once you are in encounter mode, with the interesting Sensed/Unseen mechanic and point out. But it is really ill defined when to transfer there and what kind of actions you can take before/who senses whom first. So the transfer from exploration to encounter mode was still strange for situations where both sides could have been aware of each other. And as drawing your weapon costs an action, that small a thing can make a major difference.
5. The boss fight was long enough and had just enough interesting mechanics to be fun. Unfortunately, even if my players had somehow found out that the boss is not a vampire, but a faceless stalker, it would have made no difference. Finally, having him already linked to the Heralds of the Night would feel more natural than a random faceless stalker that wants to impress the red bishop, but that’s just me.
6. Cleric Healing is absolutely OP versus everybody else. We had a Bard, Angelic Bloodline Sorcerer and an Alchemist. They all felt like idiots when they compared their healing to the Clerics spell point healing, before even talking about his spells! After seeing how harsh battles are, my clear recommendation is to buff other classes healing. You need it. If you want to get away from mandatory clerics, you need to give meaningful options to these other classes to make up for it.
7. Combat Maneuvers are nice, but rolling them against Fortitude instead of Athletics was a surprise. Also the inexplicable absence of a Drag maneuver.
