| CommanderCoyler |
Ran Lost Star for a group of friends over the weekend, this is how it went and my impressions:
Party (In order of character creation)
Nasrudin, a Half-Elf Ranger
John (goblin name: Ghamdoob), a Goblin Paladin
Duldar, a Dwarf Paladin
Ylva, a Half-Elf Wizard
Slartibartfast, a Goblin Bard (joined at the start of session 2)
Session 1:
A1: Sewer Ooze: Went down in half a round, partly because I didn't notice that it was immune to crits. Don't think it would have lasted much longer with that in place though.
A2: 4 Goblin Warriors: After some taunts between John and the his ex-tribemates, the fight went quickly (as one would expect from 4 level 0 enemies)
A3: 6 Giant Centipedes: The room (and especially its entrance) is too small to fit the centipedes and the PCs, so they ended up bottlenecked in the entrance and John went down mid-fight. A workout for the affliction rules. Ylva, with her aoe magic was mvp here.
Session 2:
A5: Mindfog fungus: Nasrudin passed the nature check to know about its weakness to fire, and they threw a torch in.
A6: Party detected magic, but decided not to look into the pool. Noone in the party had the theivery skill to unlock the door, so they kicked it down (alerting the goblins in A7 and Drakus)
Ylva's player had to leave at this point, so Ylva hung back in this room
A9: Sands of the Boneyard: Trap was sprung, but noone took damage (Duldar and Nasrudin passed the initial save, after that they could walk through the cloud in one action)
A10: Drakus and Giant Rat: Drakus hid, got a sneak attack off, then died in 1 round. Rat lasted a bit longer, inflicting filth fever on Slarti.
A11: Group pocketed the dagger (couldn't roll high enough to identify) and the holy book without reading it.
A12: Group unlocked chest with master key, took the money, gems and Star. Left the rest as they realised it was stolen (including Notes on the Last Theorem)
A7: 2 Goblin Warriors, 1 Goblin Commando, 1 Goblin Pyro: Coming in from the A12 path, Slarti attempted to intimatde the goblins with the head of Drakus but rolled poorly. Through poor tactics (having the melee characters climb down the cliff), poor rolls (low on the party's part, I rolled ~4 crits across the fight, including the pyro's produce flame at Slarti on round 1) and lack of light (though only affecting Nasrudin) the party had a lot of trouble with this fight. Lead to a wild chase around most of the dungeon, alerting Ylva to the fight (who I piloted to save the group)
Thoughts:
♦ A lot of the fights were either trivial, or unintentionally difficult.
♦ Even at level 3 (which should not be a thing level 1 PCs fight), Drakus was a pushover because it was 2v4.
♦ Finesse and Ranged weapons suck, 1d6 damage is not enough to threaten a 15+hp PC.
♦ A few systems (afflictions, persistent damage, blinded) need to be streamlined to reduce the amounts of rolls per turn e.g. any damage from afflictions/persistent damage needs to be flat, not a roll.
♦ The rules for being in total darkness are across THREE seperate sections in the book, these all need to be togther. Also as in my last point, they need to be streamlined to have less rolling (a simple penalty to rolls would suffice).
♦ Monster maths seems to be all over the place, needs to be more standardised (look at 4e's monster stats rules)
♦ A few of the areas (A3 and A8 stand out, but kinda A2 too) are far too small for the amount of creatures there. They barely fit the enemies, let alone the PCs