Blow-by-Blow Report of Lost Star, First Session.

[Mats Öhrman]

Blow-by-Blow Report of Lost Star, First Session.

Ok, my GM finally managed to scrape together three players to do the playtest, two from his regular campaign (of whom I am one) and one borrowed from another previous campaign.

We had prepared by building our characters the week before:

* Arami, female elf bard w. leather armor and whip, a budding Osirionologist. (Played by me.)
* Keyt, female half-elf rogue with leather armour and rapier, a Pathfinder hopeful.
* Twipple, female gnome barbarian with chainmail and glaive, also a Pathfinder hopeful.

(I'm writing this from a character perspective, so I will use pronouns matching the characters, not the players, even when breaking the fourth wall.)

Furthermore, our GM ran some basic combats for the bard and the rogue the day before, to familiarize us with the basic actions. He dropped us in a cave with first a goblin and a goblin dog, then a single lvl 1 goblin, and finally two level 0 goblins, and told us to fight it out.

This warm-up raised an issue that we failed to find a solution to in the rules: One of the two final goblins got scared and ran away and hid in some fungus forest underbrush. We knew where he was, so he was still sensed. We wanted to discover him properly to get rid of the miss chance, but we could find nothing in the rules for turning a sensed creature into a seen creature. There were lots of stuff on turning an unseen creature into a sensed one, but nothing on turning a sensed one into a seen one, unless he voluntarily broke his hiding.

With preparations done, the curtain could rise and the play start. We received 2 hero points each at the start for making the effort.

--- Mission Briefing ---

Since my GM uses Greyhawk for all his campaigns, we met in the city of Greyhawk itself. Two weird pathfinders, Twipple and Keyt, showed up and dragged Arami, the bard, away on a "well-paying gig". It was not until our our patron Keleri presented the goblin Talga that the Arami realised that it was *not* a standard performance. Well, it never hurts to have one of the well-to-do owe you one...

We asked the goblin a lot of questions, and got a hand-drawn map handout. I understood from my GM that another GM had made that handout and published it on the Net. Many thanks for that!.

Everybody rolled various knowledges when Talga spoke of the blood-drained bodies, and all failed.

We finalized our equipment. Besides healing potions, we purchased antidotes, since Talga had spoken of a fountain with "bad water", and Arami bought a 10-minute Darkvision Elixir under the assumption that she would have Resonance Points to spare.

Here we had a long rules discussion on lights and vision. After reading through the relevant sections and finding them unclear, our GM made two rulings based on what we had read and discussed.

(GM ruling A) Bringing a bright light source into a room would cast the rest of the room in Dim Light, partly due to realism (see the Mythbusters' "mirrors into an egyptian grave" episode) and partly to the description of Dim Light: "Areas in shadows [...] are in dim light."

(GM ruling B) Creatures with Darkvision would not necessarily notice such dim light. Since they see perfectly for an unlimited distance, introducing the dim light would just add faint colours to what they see, which might not be obvious depending on the situation.

But even after these rulings Arami decided to keep the Darkvision Elixir she had purchased.

The goblin Talga followed us through the sewers to the entrance, but refused to go any further.

--- First room: The Cistern ---

All rolled perceptions at the entrance: 10, 4 and 7. We saw nothing interesting.

Arami sneaked along the left wall, while Keyt and Twipple walked into the center of the room, which started a sudden slime attack.

The GM ruled that Arami could roll stealth for initiative, since she had been careful, while Keyt and Twipple had to roll perception. This was protested by the rogue, who wanted to roll stealth too. So we went through the initiative rules again, and Keyt acquiesced.

Initiatives: Slime 20, Twipple 19, Keyt 12, Arami 8.

The Slime moved into position and attacked us all with its filth wave. Arami took 3 in damage, Keyt 2, and Twipple saved.

Time for the next rules question. Was the filth wave an attack or not? According to my GM, the bestiary entries were *not* annotated with the "attack" keyword in general, which would have helped a lot. After some futile searching, the GM off-the-cuff-ruled that the filth wave was an attack, and thus the next attack from the slime would have a -5 penalty (GM ruling C). The slime tried to hit Twipple with a pseudopod and missed.

Twipple tried to a knowledge roll to find the best way to defeat the slime. She remembered that the best way would be to hit it with something big and flat, to splash it out as thinly as possible. We did not quite believe her. Well, since she did not have anything big and flat, she hit it twice with her Glaive, and it seemed to work.

Keyt moved around the slime to flank it, and hit it twice.

Arami start her inspirational dance, and also hit the slime twice, which killed it.

We wiped off the filth from the filth wave, and searched the room. Nothing found.

We consulted the handout map, and realised that the next room would contain goblins. We revisited the vision rules discussion, but decided to keep the GM rulings made above. Arami decided that it still was the best occasion to use the Darkvision Elixir and sneak up to the next room entrance for a peek inside.

--- Second Room: The Big Grave Chamber ---

Using the darkvision elixir, Arami peeked inside. At the far end of the room she spotted three goblins with a tall pale hobgoblin. She rolled her occult knowledge, and realized that it wasn't actually a hobgoblin; instead the goblins were constructing a Golem out of filth! No, the others did not quite believe that either.

Using the pillars in the middle of the room as cover we did a series of sneaks to reach attack distance of the distracted goblins (see GM ruling B above). Since we made it all the way, we were all allowed to roll stealth for initiative. Twipple 18, Arami 17, Keyt 8, Goblins 8.

The equal result between Keyt and the goblins sent us into searching the rules again. What happens when your roll is equal? The only thing we could was something like: "On an equal result, the opponent wins" (from memory). Who is the "opponent" when *both* sides roll? Finally our GM made a ruling: "On equal result, the monsters win" (GM ruling D). As the rogue thus rolled "lower" than the goblins, she got discovered.

Twipple went into rage, and hit one of the goblins in spite of it having cover from a pillar. The goblin was instantly killed. She then tried to use Raging Intimidation to demoralize one of the two remaining goblins. The GM gave her +2 circumstance bonus due to following up on an insta-kill, and she succeeded.

Arami started her inspirational dance, moved into position and tried to trip the demoralized goblin with her whip. Natural one - she dropped the whip.

Goblin #1 drew its weapon, closed with the barbarian, attacked her and missed.

Goblin #2 found Arami fumbling her whip very funny and tried to intimidate her by taunting her mistake. It failed. After this it readied its weapon to attack anyone that threatened their precious hobgoblin statue.

Keyt moved towards goblin #2 and got hit by its readied attack. She then changed her mind and made another move to goblin #1, which made a more tempting prey. She back-stabbed goblin #1 and killed it.

Twipple made a step to close with goblin #2, and then made two attacks. Both missed.

Arami concentrated on her inspiring dance, and then retrieved her dropped whip. We ruled this to be an Interact, and thus cost only one action. She then tried to trip the remaining goblin. Another natural one - and she dropped the whip again!

Goblin #2 closed with Arami and attacked her twice. Both missed.

Keyt circled around the goblin to flank it. The back-stab attack was a natural 20 for 25 damage. The goblin died and combat ended.

Arami retrieved her whip again. Keyt drank a healing potion, and thus spent the first of her three resonance points. It brought her to full health.

Here we went into exploration mode to rummage through the room. Arami and Keyt searched, and Twipple kept guard. We ruled that the latter would be "Looking Out" from the Social Tactics, as we did not find anything more appropriate.

The GM rolled the searches secretly, but then revealed that we had scored a critical when searching the old graves. So we found a potion, a silver ring and an odd animal claw. After this search, the duration of Arami's darkvision elixir ended.

Rather than spending an hour trying to identify the magic in the potion and the claw, we decided to simply try to recall if they reminded us of something we've seen or heard of before, i.e. we made a series of quick recall knowledge rolls. Thus we recalled that animal claws were usually used to make enchanted one-use trinkets that enhance a weapon's effect, and that the potion bottle design matched a known maker of healing potions.

We looked at the handout map again, and decided to go directly for the boss and not go for any side rooms. That meant that the next room was the fountain room.

--- Third room: The Fountain ---

Eager for new experiences in a very gnomishly barbarian way, Twipple bounced into the fountain room. Keyt and Arami following more carefully and sneakily.

Giving the room a once-over, we noticed a small statue in the pool.

Keyt tried to carefully lift it using her thief's tools without touching it.

She rolled 7 - it fell back into the pool.
She rolled 13 - it fell back into the pool.
She rolled a natural one - it fell into the pool.
(The GM was busy searching deep in the rules, trying to find with an appropriate thievery check with an appropriate critical fail here, and missed to make up a critical fail on the spot. He later said that the appropriate improvised critical fail for a natural one was quite obvious.)
She rolled 13 - it fell back into the pool
She finally rolled good enough to retrieve it.

More recall knowledge rolls. Keyt recognised the statue as Lamashtu, and Twipple recognised a face on the wall as Selene (as the GM had set this in Greyhawk, he used another goddess than the Golarion one).

Here the GM realized what critical failure he should have inflicted on the rogue on the natural one above. But never fear, when the barbarian heard that the little statue depicted Lamashtu, she grabbed the bag that Keyt had put it in, and smashed it into the wall, which made any GM regret moot.

The bag inflated, and two Quasits jumped out of it, which lead to an immediate rules search - what is the effect of being tiny in this edition?

After we found the rules for zero reach and tiny critters entering squares, we rolled for initiative. Twipple 22, Quasits 20, Keyt 17, Arami 13.

Twipple decided not to use rage, since it would not give her any to hit bonus. Instead she first took time to get a good two-handed grip on her weapon (since she had just before used one hand to smash the bag into the wall) and then hit quasit #1 for 10 + 11 points of damage. The DM announced the quasit to be "bloodied" (Yes, it's from another edition, but informative!).

Quasit #1 spent three actions to heal itself, and was no longer bloodied.

Quasit #2 moved into Twipple's square, first missed and then hit with its tail attack. The hit did 0 damage though, so no venom.

Keyt delayed so that she would get the benefit of Arami's inspire courage.

Arami started her inspirational dance, moved into range, and whipped quasit #1 for 3 damage, making it bloodied again.

Keyt moved into flanking against quasit #1, and missed twice.

Twipple attacked quasit #1: miss, hit for 10 damage, miss.

Quasit #1 healed itself three times. Still bloodied after that, though.

Quasit #2 hit Twipple for 1 damage, but Twipple succeeded her save vs the venom. The quasit then successfully feinted Twipple, and hit again for three damage, but Twipple saved again.

Arami maintained her dance, hit quasit #1 for 2 damage with her whip, and then missed with her second attack.

Keyt stepped into position, hit for 13 damage and killed quasit #1. She then tried to attack quasit #2, but missed.

Twipple tried to hit quasit #2, which still was in her square. Natural one. The second attack was also a miss, and this finally made Twipple start her rage.

Quasit #2 hit Twipple for 0 damage (i.e. no venom), then successfully feinted her, and hit again for two damage, forcing a venom save. However Twipple yet again successfully saved.

Arami maintained her dance. and tried to trip quasit #2 with her whip - and scored her third natural one on a trip attempt. Whip dropped. Arami used her final action to retrieve her whip.

Keyt tried to feint the quasit twice, and failed both times. A regular attack hit, though, for 10 damage.

Twipple missed twice, but the third attack was a natural 20 for 26 damage (if we managed to keep all bonuses straight). Yes, this killed the quasit, and the fight was over.

Time for a damage check. Thanks to her temporary hit points, Twipple had taken two in damage in total, and she had successfuly saved against all non-zero-damage venom attacks. Arami had taken three from the slime, and Keyt was at full health. Arami's two spell slots were still unused, and we had several healing potions left. We decided to continue.

The next door in the direction of the Boss was locked.

We speculated a bit around the lock-picking rules. If you try without having a toolkit, thus taking a -2, would you risk breaking the lock picks you don't have?

Well, speculation aside, Keyt *did* had a toolkit, so she went to it: fail, success, fail ("Hey, this is boring, can't we do a take 20?"), success, fail, success. No critical failures, and as the lock was unlocked in two rounds flat Keyt wondered "Was this supposed to be difficult?"

--- Corridor with Statue ---

So we moved carefully into corridor, and around a bend we noticed a statue that triggered Detect Magic. Here we simply did stand still and kept rolling multiple perception rolls until we saw that it was a trap. This was the next call for a "take 20" rule.

We did search the rules, but found no better roll to use than Perception for this situation, and we could not find defined critical failure for perception rolls - a problem with perception not being found in the Skills chapter. So we just kept rolling and rolling.

Amongst other rolls, Twipple rolled a natural 20 on a religion roll, identified the statue as a Selene statue (yes, the Greyhawk goddess again, see above), and we decided to retreat and get ourselves some Selene Holy Symbols, in the hope that they would help us pass the trap.

--- Downtime ---

Arami used her two unused Soothe spells to get everybody up to full health.

Twipple visited a Selene-temple and donated her remaining silver. In exchange she got a blessing: +2 AC vs undead for a day.

--- Session Ended ---

2h 30 minutes spent.
No hero points spent.
1 + 1 resonance points spent.