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Unlike Lost Star, too many encounters in Pale Mountain felt like life and death encounters, encounters that lasted 6+ turns (one was 14), where the outcome was uncertain. While I do like *some* long encounters (boss encounters), it felt like every encounter after the first few were too hard. It was a real slog.
The scenario took 10 hours to run, 12-16 hours to prepare (I didn’t track it well and I’m not sure this stat means much when part of preparing is just learning new rules for the game).
The group was 2 elven rangers and 2 elven wizards multi-classed to cleric. All were optimized as much as possible and the wizards each had a staff of healing, which was the only reason they survived. Clerics, even multi-class, are clearly the best class.
The opponents felt… better than us. While I like the new bestiary, they had cooler abilities than the PCs, and it was noticeable. If I (the GM) didn’t play some of the opponents according to their Int stat (stupidly) I could have wiped them easily.
Morale needs to be included in the adventure, in the stat blocks I made all opponent’s fight to the death, but it seems like most of the animals and gnolls would run when getting beaten. And especially the mercenary scout in the Night Heralds. I don’t know why the designers are trying to change so many things compared to PF1, there was a reason Morale was part of every stat block. Why are you guys changing what has worked for 20 years?? I’m giving you feedback but I feel like the game should have been much more polished already and not so much of a work in progress. And the game feels too much like 4E, especially when it comes to spells. Paizo’s quality is usually so much better than this. /endrant. Sorry about that.
Travel: Elves (with Stride, no need for camels) going full speed using wander, combined with no watch because they took a chance and relied on the Alarm spell, made the road travel especially fast.
Hyenas: They ambushed us, but it was an easy combat. This was a good ambush in the sense that we stopped wandering and started seeking after this. I didn’t understand what the map was supposed to be. Automatic knockdowns are a perhaps too powerful. Why do monsters get to do automatic knockdowns, grabs, burn, when PCs cannot do these things? It just makes it feel like the monsters are better than the PCs.
Ankrav: We spotted both the nest and the quick sand because we started seeking. We also Recalled Knowledge when it burrowed, so we spread out and readied attacks. It did some minor damage and died.
Gnolls: We had a ranged party so they fought from range across the river, with obscuring mist, which was an obvious advantage. Scorpion never made it across the river. The party took some minor damage only.
Manticore: This group was ranged and did well against the manticore. They had Obscuring Mist, which helped a little too. I think two characters were taken to half hp, but it was a much better outcome compared to my other group who TPKed. If I had used the manticore’s crazy high level Intimidate skill (his best weapon), the outcome would have been different, but I kept him at range.
Gnoll Leader: This battle was our first epic grinding battle. One character was dropped 6 times (thanks to magic healing and no dying condition at 1+ hp). This fight grinded out all of our healing resources and we needed to rest. It was much harder than I expected and AoO played a huge part. Again, if I had used the leader’s insane Intimidation check, the outcome would have been different.
Electric Latch: We spotted it, but we had to eat it the damage because no one was an expert.
Btw, I expected more checks in both Lost Star and Pale Mountain to say “trained” or “expert” at times, or at least to give additional information for higher levels of knowledge. As it stands, there’s almost no difference between untrained, trained, and expert, just very few points (+3), which can easily be made up with pure luck. I’m kind of disappointed that there’s so little difference between supposed experts and untrained.
Water Elemental: Brutal, simply brutal. I was very nice and attacked when they swam out to only 15’ in the water and 2 of the PCs weren’t even in the water. The elemental kept sucking PCs to him, nullifying swim checks, climb checks (to get out of the water). Luckily the elemental had only one reaction. One PC would have died if I had remembered vortex makes the water difficult terrain.
The earth elemental was much more reasonable, we were prepared, and we baited him out with an illusion. This one room (mostly the water elemental) took 50% of our resources and 75% of our healing. Our party, at nearly full health, decided to continue.
Fire Elemental/Air Elemental: Combined it was nearly a TPK. The automatic burn damage is insane. We won with two PCs down (one at dying 3), another at 50%, one at 100%. The combat must have lasted 13+ rounds. 100% of healing resources drained at the end of the encounter and two PCs were still at 4 and 1 hp. I messed up with the air elemental and didn’t use her ability to hide after being hit, making it easier than intended.
Recovery rolls felt pointless (when we relied on them), they were too insanely high (DC 22-24 when we had only +6 fort?) and PC deaths were only avoided because of magic healing and specifically the two staves of healing, which are almost mandatory.
You can't make the administer first aid DC equal to the recovery rolls. In Lost Star, two PCs died from crit failed recovery rolls. I was assuming this would get better with levels. I had 2 PCs with 16 Wis and trained in medicine (+8), and still they would almost an equal chance to either help (15+ = 30%) or killing their patient (5 or lower = 25%). I don't think is good design. Could you please just change it back to DC 15? I think preventing PCs from dying is one of your goals, otherwise you wouldn't have created the dying rules in the 1st place?
The party rested again, after only 2 encounters. This part of PF2 doesn’t feel good or right, we can’t even make it to 4 encounters, even though the fight was against a level 3 and 5 creature. Sigh.
The elemental lock was not difficult for this group. In terms of scenario design, I thought the lock could have been described and explained better, it was confusing as written.
The mummies were much more difficult than I thought they would be (on paper) and actually dropped 2 PCs despite the wizards having flaming sphere (the mummies had good saving throw rolls and Flaming Sphere does no damage on success).
The scenario assumed that we could communicate with Mabar and gave no direction at all if you couldn’t. Big scenario flaw. With a Diplomacy roll (non-verbal communication), we kept him overnight long enough to cast Comprehend Languages (why isn’t it a 1st level spell???).
They broke into the tomb and took the stuff. One Ant Haul spell and we were good to go. It was only Day 5 and the party left the Night Heralds in the dust.
We had time, so for fun they wanted to fight the Night Heralds. Without Mabar’s help (and him using the +2 scimitar), early crits on Henah (which was also Mabar’s doom), good placement (far away from Henah), we would have wiped. On paper, they were better than us.
Basically, Henah destroyed Mabar in one round, the cleric was effective enough that he was focus fired down, and the mercenary ranger and wizard were fairly ineffective.
Actually, I wanted to bring something up. The Night Herald Cleric had six level 2 spells! Please, for the love of god, could you limit your NPCs with the same limits we have? It was clearly an unfair advantage and luckily it didn’t factor in, because when he moved forward to do Sound Burst (which was effective), the group focus fired him into oblivion.
The most ironic part about this encounter is that it was one of the shortest, thanks to Mabar critting and a failed Flaming Sphere saving throw.
The Night Herald encounter took a long time for me to prepare, because I had to look up all powers and spells, which I was unfamiliar with in PF2. A lot of the powers are really bad and almost not worth having, which is not good.
My thoughts on the NPCs:
- Henah is terrifying. The Anti-Paladin power of retribution is great! Her only weakness is that she had to waste a round running to us and she was super slow, especially compared to elves with a speed of 35’.
Also, I loved Henah's artwork, props to the artist!
- The Cleric of Rovagug was equally terrifying, even though he was only level 3. Clearly clerics are the best class in the game. Luckily, he wasn’t able to implement his Harm spells or it would have been game over for us.
- The wizard was OK, magic missile was effective, but Burning Hands and Web ended up being ineffective. I felt he was fairly weak compared to Henah and the cleric.
The Web spell does Entangle unless you move. So my wizards just stayed in the Web casting, completely unaffected by the Web. I'm not sure this is what was intended.
- Scout: I thought the scout would be effective, but it wasn’t. There were definitely some bad rolls, but over 6+ rounds it just felt ineffective and was the last NPC we took down.
Overall I thought the scenario was OK, but I feel the Doomsday dawn scenarios are written a little bit too mechanically, they don’t have a soul. And the writing is not quite up to par compared to Pathfinder Society scenarios. There were also too many travel encounters. Not having stats like PF1, with blocks like morale or tactics, was annoying. I felt the writing in the scenario didn’t use enough plain English, you realize these descriptions go over people’s heads at conventions right?
I didn’t like that maps were not drawn for all encounters and I found some of the explanations confusing and there was too much table variation for some of them. I felt like it took me longer to prepare because of the way this scenario was written. Looking up rules didn’t help.
It's a good thing cantrips now scale because they were used a lot. They are still not great, but at least the wizards can contribute. In general it felt like the Wizards didn't have enough spells, they always ran out of their level 2 spells.
There was definitely a lot of whack-a-mole with our group, which was made possible with magic, but not moreso than PF1. The difference between this and PF1 is that I’ve never seen PCs go down in PF1 like they go down in PF2. If the PCs kept the Dying condition at 1+ hp or needed Recovery to wake up, they would have died, guaranteed. So if you want to re-implement these things, you need to reduce the power of your monsters dramatically, if you want the game to be playable.
I also liked it that we regained consciousness when healed. The slow condition, picking up weapons, and standing (sometimes we fought prone) was still a major penalty, but it was good.
To be honest, I liked it when the PCs kept the Dying condition when waking. Sure, in this scenario it would have meant a TPK, but it would have stopped whack-a-mole. Really the problem is that most PF2 monsters are too powerful.
I just want to re-iterate that these were veteran players who spent a lot of time optimizing (and reading magic items) and we almost TPKed several times. And that if the rules were in their original playtest format (Recovery to wake, Dying condition on waking), we would have TPKed.
Although the PCs were successful, overall the playtest (and the scenario design) wasn’t a success in my eyes. Sorry.
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My group had a similar experience with the encounters being pretty over the top. We also succeeded, narrowly, but it was a total slog. The thing took over twelve hours and we skipped the mummies because it was late and we were beyond done. It really wasn't a fun experience.
We had a monk, two sword and board fighters, a rogue and a bard. The manticore was really brutal considering we were lacking in ranged combat. We had ranged weapons, but were focused on melee. One of the fighters was almost killed (and pinned to the floor multiple times). Someone used the fly scroll, but the manticore could move faster and just left and waited for the 1 minute duration to pass and then came back. We had prepared magic weapon on our bows and all readied attacks for when it came back and were able to do enough damage to drive it off.
The water elemental fight was absolutely brutal with it doing both massive damage and having to deal swim checks and drowning rules. I think two of us were dropped in that fight. The monk was on land, but I was in the water while unconscious which made things really hairy.
We never even encountered the earth elemental and ran away from the fire and air elementals after they did some devastating damage in one round and we just couldn't handle them. It didn't help that the room looked like it was a death-trap with only a tiny space to maneuver without wading in magma. We pulled back to rest and fought the Night Heralds, that fight was really rough. We were already down a lot of resources when they came, and had two party members knocked to dying (one like 3 times in that fight). We were able to get everyone back alive but the bard had to play as a makeshift cleric. He used all of his spell slots for Soothe.
After that we ignored the elementals and just spent the free time breaking into the tomb. We skipped the mummies because it was 2am, couldn't talk to Mabar who just shrugged at us and disappeared.
The fact that there was only one magic weapon to go around to the whole group until after the boss fight was rough. Magic weapons seem pretty much essential to be even have a chance. Crits were frequent and brutal. Especially when used with magic weapons and power attack. Against the hyenas and gnolls, we were getting a lot of crits. Against the elementals, maticore and Night Heralds it was the other way around. There were at least two or three times where PCs would have died if not for the GM rolling really low on damage. I'm starting to be seriously concerned about the crit mechanics. They make luck an even bigger factor in this edditoin. And the automatic monster effects like automatic persistent damage from the fire elemental were really brutal. We did have some Jack in the Box effect with the dying rules and healing.
This adventure was pretty demoralizing. I'm hoping it's mostly due to flaws with the adventure design and not the system. But those criticals and automatic effects do make me worry.
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The cleric has 6 level-2 spells because they include both his channel energy (4 harm spells) and his regular spells. They just aren't listed separately.
I made all opponent’s fight to the death, but it seems like most of the animals and gnolls would run when getting beaten.
That's certainly the way I ran it. When the animals got badly beaten, they ran. When the Manticore ran out of its 12 quills, it flew away. When the last Gnoll got cornered, it begged for its life. The adventure didn't say you had to make them fight to the death.
I just want to re-iterate that these were veteran players who spent a lot of time optimizing (and reading magic items) and we almost TPKed several times.
If you kept almost TPKing, maybe your group wasn't as optimized as you think they were?
The cleric has 6 level-2 spells because they include both his channel energy (4 harm spells) and his regular spells. They just aren't listed separately.
Yeah, someone mentioned that in another thread. I agree the shorthand is good, it just caught me off guard. It goes to show how powerful clerics are, if he was able to implement those Harm spells, it would have been devastating.
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If you kept almost TPKing, maybe your group wasn't as optimized as you think they were?
Maybe, maybe not, but we've all spent significant time learning this new game.
I'm not saying the classes were the most optimal (we try to pick something new each round), I'm saying we did the best within the classes.
I'm not really sure why you'd say something like that (you're implying we suck at optimizing), this scenario wasn't a walk in the park if the GM actually spent the time learning the abilities of the monsters.
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If you kept almost TPKing, maybe your group wasn't as optimized as you think they were?
That seems rather uncalled for.
The important point here is that experienced players were having difficulty.
Admittedly, this is one place where the surveys are a LOT better than anecodotal evidence. Difficulty is one place where you have to look at large numbers to get a good feel. Otherwise all sorts of other factors (player and GM choices, class choice, random rolls, etc) dominate.
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A lot depends on how the GM runs the monsters. The encounter balancing may assume that the monsters are using bad tactics (which isn't the best practice, IMHO).
Yes. For example with the fire elemental, if he spread his attacks around and tried to put his persistent fire on as many PCs as possible, it would have quickly overwhelmed our healing.
And you could play all sorts of games with the water elemental. But at 6 Int, I didn't think that was appropriate.
Part of my feedback is that they should be leaving tactics in the monster's description. This would take away a lot of the table variation.
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Sounds like the first half wasn't life or death, and players can even bypass two of those encounters, and detect the ambush to make that one easy. So I'd say that during travel only the Manticore battle really strains the party, but they should start that one at full (unless really bad at scouting/climbing). And they can recover before the tomb.
In the tomb, those tough elemental fights are optional. My reaction (and later, the reaction of my players) was "Um...no." when seeing the elemental rooms. Not that they didn't enter, but they knew it'd be tough. (And it was!)
But again, optional. A party that scouts out the area first might simply bypass both, or realize they should search there if they can't get past the puzzle.
The party has a specific mission, and it isn't to clear out the tomb.
The speed of the party determines how much time they get at the tomb.
The research/Thievery skills of the party determine how much time it takes to decipher the puzzle.
Enough time lets the party recover in between elemental battles.
A party built for combat can get the elemental gems to overcome poor research skills, and has less to worry about if slow. It's even written that they can wait for the Night Heralds to unlock the puzzle.
(That'd be a neat three-way battle, perhaps.)
And after the puzzle we're back to a straightforward fight against the mummies and a trap of little consequence unless fighting the Night Heralds soon-ish (or crit-failing). Plus, a party that gets there with time to spare can typically ID the powerful items to aid against the Night Heralds (if such a fight occurs). And maybe get an ally.
I found it a pretty sophisticated balance of options that let's most any party composition succeed. I think the main hindrance is having the mindset that one must clean out all the rooms, followed by thinking rest shouldn't be required in between.
I know PFS tries to address the scour-mindset by suggesting moving rewards so PCs can find them if players find alternate solutions. This is so players can work toward the story's objective, and don't feel obliged to meta-pillage. I find that latter mindset quite common there anyway...
Reminds me of the early days of 3.0 where in the first low-level adventures PCs could meet a Roper and a Succubus. Players can fight them if they'd like, but of course shouldn't. The writers even said they put the Roper in there so players don't think the world's dangers simply balance on behalf of the PCs.
I admit I miss that level of wariness where players pick their battles.
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In the tomb, those tough elemental fights are optional. My reaction (and later, the reaction of my players) was "Um...no." when seeing the elemental rooms. Not that they didn't enter, but they knew it'd be tough. (And it was!)
But again, optional.
How does one know what is optional and what isn't until you investigate?
Typically in adventures and scenarios, if you skip the intermediate rooms and go to the end, you don't have enough knowledge or perhaps resources to be successful.
Sorry, I'm not going to blame my players for doing the scenario "wrong".
These fights were supposed to be rated as "high", not day enders. And in the future we're guaranteed to see more "high" encounters and are probably expected to do 4 of them.
Anyway, I'm just reporting that they were. You're free to report however you like.
I know PFS tries to address the scour-mindset by suggesting moving rewards so PCs can find them if players find alternate solutions. This is so players can work toward the story's objective, and don't feel obliged to meta-pillage. I find that latter mindset quite common there anyway...
No, PFS allows for alternate solutions. If you skip rooms and miss treasure, you're supposed to lose gold.
There are many PFS scenarios where if you skip rooms, you will fail the final encounter.
Reminds me of the early days of 3.0 where in the first low-level adventures PCs could meet a Roper and a Succubus. Blah blah blah
It wasn't that obvious. And judging by the reaction of others who playtested this, it wasn't obvious to them either.
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Interesting that you found the fire elemental a challenge. In my group, it appeared out of the lava while the players were on the raised ledge, spent an entire turn clambering up to them, then got focus fired down before it could ever attack.
It seems that raw DPS for PCs, backed by cleric, is very effective (we had a Wild Shape Druid going bear mode, and a Barbarian). Our Wizard definitely felt a lot less effective in comparison. I imagine the group would have TPK'd if they'd had another Wizard over any other PC.
I definitely agree that PCs don't get enough cool things, and that skill proficiencies should be called out in text more frequently.
And yeah, the main emotion to the playtest so far has been 'slog'. It's not been fun at all.
Am I reading the Lesser Mummy Rot correctly that the player will gain a cumulative -1 to Charisma based checks and DCs each day until they remove the curse (a 4th level spell) and cure the disease (saves or a 3rd level spell)? Just want to make sure I’m letting them know the correct expectations for future diseases like this. Thanks!
I found it a pretty sophisticated balance of options that let's most any party composition succeed.
You're right, it was an interesting design and it could have played out in many interesting ways.
Having the ability to solve the puzzle and being 4 days ahead of time, the group didn't get to appreciate it.
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It seems that raw DPS for PCs, backed by cleric, is very effective (we had a Wild Shape Druid going bear mode, and a Barbarian). Our Wizard definitely felt a lot less effective in comparison. I imagine the group would have TPK'd if they'd had another Wizard over any other PC.
Yes. I wasn't that impressed by the wizard. They ended up using their cantrips the majority of the time. I wasn't impressed by the level 2 spells either.
For example, Acid Arrow should do a lot more than 1d8 + 1d8 persistent damage considering how much damage martials do every single round. Even worse, now that TAC is so high, it's very possible to miss with it. And that's basically your "big attack" for the day. My players opted for Flaming Sphere and Illusionary Creature. Flaming Sphere couldn't be used against either the water elemental in the water, the fire elemental, or the air elemental, so it was illusionary creatures (halfling archers), who are OK but not great.
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The important point here is that experienced players were having difficulty.
But not experienced at Pathfinder 2. None of us outside of Paizo are. Doing a party of 2 Ranger and 2 Wizard/MC Clerics is an interesting experiment (and I would have liked to have heard that is was really good), but I'm not surprised that it was problematic.
Maybe, maybe not, but we've all spent significant time learning this new game.
I'm not saying the classes were the most optimal (we try to pick something new each round), I'm saying we did the best within the classes.
I'm not really sure why you'd say something like that (you're implying we suck at optimizing), this scenario wasn't a walk in the park if the GM actually spent the time learning the abilities of the monsters.
I think perhaps you were out-thinking yourself, trying to find a secret solution to a problem when the obvious answer is "Play Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric". Minor Staff of Healing is a very tempting magic item to take (our Druid took it), but I'm not sure it was worth going that far to get two of them.
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I think perhaps you were out-thinking yourself, trying to find a secret solution to a problem when the obvious answer is "Play Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric". Minor Staff of Healing is a very tempting magic item to take (our Druid took it), but I'm not sure it was worth going that far to get two of them.Maybe, maybe not, but we've all spent significant time learning this new game.
I'm not saying the classes were the most optimal (we try to pick something new each round), I'm saying we did the best within the classes.
I'm not really sure why you'd say something like that (you're implying we suck at optimizing), this scenario wasn't a walk in the park if the GM actually spent the time learning the abilities of the monsters.
The game is supposed to work with characters of other classes. Otherwise there wouldn't be 12 classes in the book.
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But not experienced at Pathfinder 2. None of us outside of Paizo are. Doing a party of 2 Ranger and 2 Wizard/MC Clerics is an interesting experiment (and I would have liked to have heard that is was really good), but I'm not surprised that it was problematic.
It was an experiment and it wasn't meant to be an optimal group, just doing the best with the classes that were given. I already know what the strongest classes are.
I think you took my optimal statement too literally, I wasn't trying to create a team for Bonekeep.
Playing the strongest classes or optimal group combinations is not the best test. And we fully intend to play all of the classes.
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The game is supposed to work with characters of other classes. Otherwise there wouldn't be 12 classes in the book.I think perhaps you were out-thinking yourself, trying to find a secret solution to a problem when the obvious answer is "Play Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric". Minor Staff of Healing is a very tempting magic item to take (our Druid took it), but I'm not sure it was worth going that far to get two of them.Maybe, maybe not, but we've all spent significant time learning this new game.
I'm not saying the classes were the most optimal (we try to pick something new each round), I'm saying we did the best within the classes.
I'm not really sure why you'd say something like that (you're implying we suck at optimizing), this scenario wasn't a walk in the park if the GM actually spent the time learning the abilities of the monsters.
Oh, the 12 classes are there so your all cleric group can multiclass into them...
SO it's cleric/fighter, cleric/rogue, cleric wizard and the cleric that doubles down on cleric feats. ;)
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Our experience was similar to yours except we ran out of time after the long water elemental slog. But we agreed the fire elemental was likely to be a TPK. We were a party with a ranger, barbarian, druid, sorcerer and alchemist. I didn't buff up the monsters to accomodate 5 PCs, and good thing too!
Action economy wise with the extra party member these encounters should have been reasonably easy. But, as one of my players pointed out - what's the point of action economy when all you do is miss.
DCs, attack roles, etc.. are very skewed towards the monsters. Same thing with skill rolls. I'm not sure why everything is dialed up so much, but it makes for a very frustrating experience, and one that runs counter to their stated goal of getting away from forcing PCs to be required to collect certain feats.
There is so much that needs to be altered from balancing to removing wisdom as the stat connected to initiative to damage being linked to magic weapons to fixing resonance particularly with respect to alchemists, one hardly knows where to begin. For me, although I hold out hope, it's hard to see how they can fix all this in 9 months.
But not experienced at Pathfinder 2. None of us outside of Paizo are. Doing a party of 2 Ranger and 2 Wizard/MC Clerics is an interesting experiment (and I would have liked to have heard that is was really good), but I'm not surprised that it was problematic.It was an experiment and it wasn't meant to be an optimal group, just doing the best with the classes that were given. I already know what the strongest classes are.
I think you took my optimal statement too literally, I wasn't trying to create a team for Bonekeep.
Playing the strongest classes or optimal group combinations is not the best test. And we fully intend to play all of the classes.
Glad to hear it. We're taking a more conservative approach (starting with traditional and moving outwards), but you are giving good feedback for the playtest. If I can make a request, I'd love to hear how an all-Stealth group does!
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It took 3 full sessions for my group to slog through this... and they RP'd their way through a couple of the encounters without a fight, because they had creative solutions, unexpectedly apt skills and spells, and lucky rolls.
The two elemental rooms were brutal, and were almost lethal. Everyone at the table commented about the return of the 15-minute adventuring day, because each of those were "one and done" encounters.
We just finished a couple of hours ago, and I'm tired and still thinking... but it doesn't have that satisfying job-well-done feel to the adventure. It's like we fought the mechanics more than we fought the creatures.
I'll have more coherent thoughts after sleep, coffee, and preparing my feedback surveys.
Am I reading the Lesser Mummy Rot correctly that the player will gain a cumulative -1 to Charisma based checks and DCs each day until they remove the curse (a 4th level spell) and cure the disease (saves or a 3rd level spell)? Just want to make sure I’m letting them know the correct expectations for future diseases like this. Thanks!
I believe it’s just a -1 penalty, not cumulative; as in the poison example in the rule book, the condition is just reapplied. If it were some sort of damage it would keep occurring, but it looks to be a pretty minor curse/disease, all in all.
The scenario assumed that we could communicate with Mabar and gave no direction at all if you couldn’t. Big scenario flaw.
Two wizards and neither took the Auran or Ancient Osiriani languages?
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Our group took several sessions to get through this and had it end with a TPK.
Luckily they made NEW characters for this part rather than the ones they used in the first portion.
Everyone died.
The killer of the keg was the Night Heralds. They wrecked us BADLY.
I do not know if it is comforting to know that other groups have had this same difficulty or see the same problems with them that ours dealt with.
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I do not know if it is comforting to know that other groups have had this same difficulty or see the same problems with them that ours dealt with.
I find it comforting. It shows to me that it's not just that we did something wrong, but that the system and/or adventure is on the deadly side. And with others having the same issue there are more likely to be changes to the system to deal with it.
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Two wizards and neither took the Auran or Ancient Osiriani languages?
The rules say if your Int is 14 or greater, you have to pick the bonus language from your race's list of bonus languages. Neither language is in the Elf bonus list.
Bonus Languages
At 1st level, if your Intelligence score is 14 or higher, you can also select one of the following languages: Celestial, Draconic, Gnoll, Gnomish, Goblin, Orcish, or Sylvan.
I think the wizards took Draconic.
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Glad to hear it. We're taking a more conservative approach (starting with traditional and moving outwards), but you are giving good feedback for the playtest. If I can make a request, I'd love to hear how an all-Stealth group does!
It actually was kind of a Stealth party. The rangers were good and the wizards were trained (but not as much Dex).
What prevented them from using it were:
- Time constraints on travel. Speed was more important.
- I wasn't sure if Searching stacked with Sneaking. Searching, especially after the hazards, seemed more important.
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Two wizards and neither took the Auran or Ancient Osiriani languages?The rules say if your Int is 14 or greater, you have to pick the bonus language from your race's list of bonus languages. Neither language is in the Elf bonus list.
Bonus Languages
At 1st level, if your Intelligence score is 14 or higher, you can also select one of the following languages: Celestial, Draconic, Gnoll, Gnomish, Goblin, Orcish, or Sylvan.I think the wizards took Draconic.
Doomsday Dawn, p.19
LANGUAGES
Inform the players that three languages—
Auran, Gnoll, and Ancient Osiriani—
might open up additional role-playing
or investigatory opportunities in this
chapter, and that they have access to
those languages.
I believe many GMs just miss that bit. There are such pieces of informations at the start of every DD scenario, all of them important in their own way.
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I believe many GMs just miss that bit. There are such pieces of informations at the start of every DD scenario, all of them important in their own way.
I made sure my players were informed of this, and tomorrow is the session I get to find out if they decide to use this. :) It took one session to make it from Kelmarane to literally deactivating the trap on the secret tomb door and opening it...
(I did mess up on this part - I allowed the DC19 Thievery to disarm it, but I missed that the character doing this was trained, not expert, and should have triggered it. BZBZBZBZBZBZZZZZZZAP!)
I believe many GMs just miss that bit. There are such pieces of informations at the start of every DD scenario, all of them important in their own way.
This is why I make it a point to read each section very carefully, and several times, before running my games. I'd rather not assume incompetence or even ill intent on the part of the writers for a mistake I made.
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I believe many GMs just miss that bit. There are such pieces of informations at the start of every DD scenario, all of them important in their own way.
Yep, in my haste I messed that up and it wasn't a fair criticism of the scenario itself.
It didn't change the result or overall feeling of the playtest though.