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So, I run 8 games, play in another 2. I'm a huge Pathfinder fan. I mostly homebrew, although my longest campaign is a Kingmaker one with lots of fun Golarion-bits added in. My group is also mostly experienced players. When we come to start the playtest, the atmosphere is hestiant optimism. Most of us have bugbears with one thing or another in the current system, but can also see good things and have fingers crossed that significant updates to the game will make this a system we'll migrate to.
The party was a dual weilding Ranger, a Cleric, some caster (I think a sorcerer?) and... I think another caster? The game was 2 weeks ago today. I think it speaks poorly that the last two characters stood out so little I can't identify their class. I'm pretty sure they were spamming cantrips and occasional sling attacks all session.
I cannot remember anyone's ancestry, as they felt unimpactful and didn't affect the game, except that one was a goblin, which felt discordant and made the game worse.
Opening in the sewers, the slime won initiative. It knocked ProbablyCaster1 down with its wave ability, moved, and crit them, reducing them to 0 HP before anyone could act. The combat dragged on for three rounds. The PCs were annoyed that it had a better attack mod than them, crazy hp, couldn't be crit, and was immune to daze, making the fight feel very slow and grindy. ProbablyCaster1 got healed, and they continued.
The goblin fight was next. This was the only part of the module any player enjoyed. I played the goblins as extremely stupid and not optimal in combat, practically tripping over themselves. I think if I played them smart, abusing darkness and range, I could have TPK'd the party here.
But dumb goblins were fun targets, and we moved on. They examined the side rooms and... centipedes. 18 attacks per round plus all that poison knocked two PCs unconcious, one still in the room. The PCs had to run, and the PC left there (unlucky ProbablyCaster1) was eaten alive. He was immediately replaced by his twin brother as the PCs went to town to rest.
At this point, I felt Drakus would learn the goblins had been attacked, and relocate or reinforce the Ossuary, or at least make sure he fights with the remaining goblins in a future fight. This would obviously TPK or outright end the adventure. I feel that out of combat healing needs to be far, far better, as an adventuring day this short seemed absurd and destroyed any verisimilitude. I opted for running the module as written, which seemed to imply PCs could go back to town and Drakus acted like an idiot, not changing things inside the Ossuary.
So, fountain and quasit fight.
What the actual devils is this quasit statblock.
I realized that my party's damage-in-a-round was on the low end, and they could do very little to stop quasits that used invisibility and healing to their fullest extent. If these had been used at their most optimal and cautious level, I feel the PCs could never slay the quasits, and the adventure would have to stop here. I removed the invisibility for the sake of continuing play. The quasits were still very dangerous, and that's when one was spending an action each turn to concentrate on its shapeshift (this apparently doesn't require actions to maintain). Players wondered why the hell level 1 creatures had flight, poison, infinite self heal, crazy attack mods, and 27 hp. I could not explain this, let alone the at will invisibility.
I have since read about parties preparing to grab them when they come out of invisibility. This would help a lot, and might make them go from near-certain adventure-end when played optimally, to just the most annoying encounter I could design that requires a very specific mechanic to be pulled out. It would be nice if there was text to remind the GM that players could do this, to pass onto players if things seem impossible.
Then there were the doors. Failed perception checks led to the noise trap going off. Then, the group went to check out the 'main goblin room' that was now prepared for them.
Long fight, PCs yo-yoing up and down between 0 and 1 hp using everyone's hero point and a lot of lucky death saves. Felt pretty silly, and made me think I should have enemies mudering unconcious characters if they get up this frequently, which would lead to way more character deaths. This fight wasn't *bad*, so I'll call it a win.
They found the back way up to Drakus, but made enough noise he came to fight them near his bedroom and chests. This was before the rat-errata, so the rat was with him as his pet. Lots of crits from his +10-+12 attack, and this was without using his grab (which I probably should have done). Fight was salvaged by the ranger waking up from 0hp mid-combat and getting a lucky double slice crit from prone. Otherwise would have been a TPK.
Then I wrapped up the section, explaining that they find the book and have to show it to the questgiver to progress Doomsday Dawn. Every player simultainously laughed and derrided the writing for putting the important secret cultist plot item directly next to the unrelated quest objective and then assuming their characters do something specific with it.
That was part 1. Overall impressions:
* 3-Action system is good
* A lot of the other minutia of the system, like combat manuvers, seem pretty good
* Cantrips are quite usable, compared to 1E
* New flanking/prone/grapple/etc all felt solid
* Playing goblins like negative IQ cannon fodder never gets old
* Low level enemy stats are borked, leading to too many crits. 'should be usable as minions at slightly higher levels' is all well and good, but just have a -2 saves/ac, +2 to-hit template rather than make low levels terrible to play?
* Quasits are terrible to exist
* What was the centipede encounter even
* And why the ooze
* Adventuring day length felt terrible
* The writing felt terrible
* Goblin PCs felt terrible
* Yo-yo death system will lead to monsters finishing unconcious players uncomfortably often
* Ancestries in general felt not-there
It was, really, a horribly negative first impression. We're finishing part 2 tonight. It seems... not quite as bad? But without many good points either.
On the other hand, the not-doomsday-dawn 2E homebrew game I'm running is going fantastically. So far the players have gone around a carnival enjoying rides, games, a haunted house, and a local arena, and much more, and are having an absoloute blast with the system and homebrew monsters to fight. It definitely seems more problems stem from Doomsday Dawn and monster design than 2E's core.
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Part 2 completed:
The players took camels. At this point, there were two options:
1) Riding creatures is entirely nonfunctional, and fatigue you after 10 minutes (RAW I've seen here a few times).
2) Riding creatures are functional, and the time expected to reach the mountain is way off.
I went with 2, because I tend to assume core rules are checked more than adventures. So the players spent 3 days on camels to cover the 80 miles.
Hyena fight happened, hyenas got good initiative and ran up to the PCs... PCs proceeded to melee nearest Hyena, or use ranged attack. Difficult terrain maybe cost a single move action extra in the entire combat, and the hyenas were so low level that I think 8 damage total happened. This didn't feel worth drawing a map for.
Ankheg fight happened. PCs thought it was silly that they needed to succeed at a perception AND survival to realise what the mound was. Either way, it did its acid spray, then started a melee-off with the nearest PC. PCs just out-damaged it and combat ended quickly. PCs cleaned off acid, we decided the persistent damage rules are really annoying, but not the worst thing in the world. Moved on.
Gnoll river encounter! PCs decided not to talk, and started shooting at them from across the river. Gnolls... just shot back. Multiple PCs had melee weapons, so spending a lot of actions to get into melee would be bad. They sent their scorpion across to tie up the PCs while ranged wars went on. Encounter was fine. Nothing interesting happened.
After interrogating the swim rules, I realised it was statistically impossible that anything goes wrong while swimming at that DC and not actively threatened. So we skipped making any checks.
The PCs rest, heal up, etc, and start heading up the mountain. They didn't find the best path, one player took some fall damage. The actual time things were taking all felt meaningless as they were so far ahead of the Night Heralds.
Manticore fight! PCs felt it was a little b%$$+!~~ that it could be making multiple ranged attacks per action while flying at such a high attack modifier, but it rolled really poorly and eventually ran out of quills, died in melee. Apparently there was a question on the player survey about socialising with the manticore, but all signs point to it immediately attacking. I think I could have played this better, tactically. When I revealed that the encounter should be avoided by 'all players explicitly saying they're sneaking', everyone laughed because that was so specific and not really hinted at with the mediocre cover in the area.
Gnoll fight happened. Brief parley. Realised demoralise has hilariously low/bad range and couldn't effectively be used before combat. Nothing interesting after that. Players annoyed that enemies get higher damage dice without magic weapons. And pack tactics. And a re-position allies shout. At this point the players all feel that monsters get cooler, more fun stuff than they do, and that a way better campaign would involve using different monsters to fight like Pokemon instead of having to use the dull PC rules they got. But we continued because we want to give feedback.
The door to the tomb shocks a PC, as they had no rogue to find the invisible, small rune that was its mechanism. Players heal up, rest a final time, and after 5 days head into the tomb. Four days ahead of the Night Heralds.
They go to the water elemental fight. Druid turns into a shark and beats it up. Meanwhile the earth elemental tunnels over to the ranger. Everyone groups together and beats it up. They were not challenging, and the earth elemental felt like it was in poor terrain.
Next the air elemental fight. The fire elemental... had to climb up to reach them (as it had no ranged ability or flight, and could just be picked off if it stayed in the firey basin). It took its entire turn. It then got attacked twice and died before doing much. It exploded for a total of 3 damage. The air elemental was kinda cool with its vanishing about, and people thought it was absurd that it had higher AC than the earth elemental, which they expected to be durable. Cool as it was, it wasn't really challenging as the whole PC had some ranged competence.
They approached the 'puzzle' and rolled checks until they'd had four 20's. They were sad that there was no puzzle the players themselves could contribute to, and it was all obfuscated behind some very generic skill checks. This was not fun.
Mummy encounter happened. A PC went down due to two nat-20's in a row, we examined the new death rules and realised they were really terrible, detoured to design better ones, then resumed combat. Besides the double-nat-20, nothing was difficult about this.
They freed Mabar, briefly talked, he opened the tomb, they stepped in, got the clock, stepped out, and went home. Since they had no investment in these characters going forward, they ignored all the other loot in the tomb, and everyone felt very sad at the end, as there was no climax to the section. That said, before leaving they decided to arrange all the mummies with their middle fingers raised, to re-lock the puzzle door, hide three gems, and take the last one, just to mess with the Night Heralds.
Who would eventually arrive, four days later, but the section was over by then.
It basically felt that the adventure either failed to account for camels, which it even mentioned, or followed the RAW that mounts are entirely nonfunctional for overland travel... which, what? How? Why? Huh?
2E mechanic rules: 8/10
2E monster design: 2/10 to play against, 5/10 to play
2E class design: 3/10
2E adventure design: 0/10