Dusk Comes to Doomsday: Playing the Playtest in Pathfinder


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So I’m clearly not in Paizo’s prime target demo here. I mostly write and run my own stuff in Pathfinder, although I’ve been having a lot of fun with Starfinder lately. I’m not interested in setting material, and long APs. Since Paizo discontinued the module line, I’m not much interested in their adventures. And Pathfinder 2 appeals to me less than D&D 5e. But Doomsday Dawn interests me. I love raiding Dungeon for adventures to sprinkle into my home games, and Doomsday Dawn is like the first Dungeon we’ve seen in a long while, just with a nice metaplot linking the adventures. Some look to be stronger than others, but this seems like something I could run. And hey, I never get the chance to run level 17 stuff. So why not see how Doomsday Dawn runs as a Pathfinder adventure?

Now, converting on the fly should be interesting. I intend to do this thing actually on the fly. I don’t want to write up big statsheets to swap in and out, none of that noise. I get annoyed enough with the industry standards of spreading statblocks and keys well away from the maps* (in my publications I put the stats on the map and the key on the adjacent page), so if I can’t convert things from off the Doomsday Dawn (or Playtest Bestiary) page, I’m just going to hit the online SRD and grab the nearest thing. We’ll see how the conversion goes. I’m sure it’ll break at later levels, but that’s useful information too. I used to run 3.5 modules right off the page, so let’s see.

I’m going to run this with a group of three fairly hardcore players. Unless they start dying, I’m going to let them use the same three characters in all seven parts of the adventure; the story is pretty flexible on the matter. The players are allowed to optimize pretty hard after the starting constraint, which one they enjoy; the PCs are rolling stats of 4d6 drop 1 in order. So that in mind, we wound up with:

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Siegfried the Gnome, Heavens Oracle

Siegfried is yes, a disgusting Heavens build, but he’s complimented his 19 Cha with a remarkable 4 Dex. He’s going to be slowly waddling about in heavy armor (heh) and useless at ranged plinking. Siegfried rolled a solid 14 Int and a 15 Wis, so he’s going to be skillful enough.
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Sally the Dwarf (!), Hexcrafter Eldritch Archer Magus (!?)

Taking a natural 18 rolled in Dex, the player of Sally here wins points in my book for creativity. Only 15 Int means she’ll be good but not great at her spells, but the silly 15 Cha means this is the most beautiful and graceful dwarf you’ve ever seen.
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Hero the Middle-Aged Human, Arsenal Chaplain Warpriest of Desna

Old boy here is totally min-maxing with four of his six scores starting out odd. I’m fine with it. Another middling Dex roll means Hero is another heavy armor guy, this is going to be a comically slow party.

The party is going to be given their standard WBL every time we time jump, along with whatever gear they snag in the previous adventures. Traits are going to be standard Pathfinder traits, but I’m gave them the option to take the Doomsday backgrounds as backstory. They enthusiastically agreed they all wanted to be survivors of a mindquake. Cool, I’ll buy it. We don’t usually use hero points, but they are options in Pathfinder so I’ll give them here. By consensus, my players don’t want to use them to prevent death though. So with that said, let’s get in to it.

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* Review of Doomsday Dawn as reading material.
I guess I should first say a few things about the playtest adventure as reading material. I know for all the strum und drang around the new gaming system there is a large chunk of Paizo’s customer base that buys their adventures just to read. A lot of criticism toward how these adventures are written is a little misguided, I’ll readily admit. Things that would make the Bog Standard Format easier to run at the table would probably make them less enjoyable as fiction. I recall reading these things before I could regularly play and it’s something like reading both a bit of genre fiction while also imagining playing the game.

Going by that criterion, Doomsday Dawn still reads like a Paizo Pathfinder adventure. The changes in how monsters, hazards, and traps are displayed don’t significantly change how reading flows, and the way that neat abilities get highlighted in the statblocks is fun to read. The adventures are closer to Society scenarios than AP installments in their story flow, but I think the secondary (or primary?) market that buys APs for the reading will be quite content with second edition.


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The Lost Star

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How long did it take to play this part?

3 hours. Three players makes for faster play.

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How long did it take to prep this part?

2 hours. Because, see above, lazy.

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How many sessions for this part?

1 session, naturally.

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How many Hero Points did you give out?

2, one for the host and one for Hero bringing some first-rate Tennessee whiskey. (Each PC had one to start with by default, naturally)

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How many times was a player reduced to 0 HP?

4 times, although one was only at 0 and staggered rather than into negatives.

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How many PC were killed?

0 died. Of course, level one, so a bad crit could have vaporized a PC.

Adventure Comments:
***First fight, we bump into a problem. No sewer ooze in Pathfinder. There’s a sewer blight, which I think might be slightly overtuned for three level 1 Pathfinders…okay, screw it, I’m running this from the Playtest Bestiary. It’s hitting hard, but we’ll see…

I kick this off with a filth wave, which is funny given the slow slow slow party. Hampered is an easy condition to port over to Pathfinder Original Flavor. I have the ooze use his standard action for it, and I can already see I’m going to want to figure out a rubric for converting 1/2/3 action stuff back into swift/move/standard, but it feels like this is a SLA, so standard action. I told the PC who failed (Siegfried the 4-Dex) to take move-equivalent actions to de-muck. The ooze managed to chase down poor Siggy and smash him to -2, but after that poor slow critter got all 40 HP whittled down by arrows and starknives.

***The four goblins are a four-goblin fight. I used Pathfinder the First goblins. They were detected and shot by Sally the Magus Dwarf, so they charged. Two got themselves color sprayed (scroll), other two clanked uselessly against Hero. After they got dispatched, the party found the ring (upped to 5gp) and a cure light wounds potion. No finding of the claw. Amusingly, Siegfried picks up a small dogslicer, his first weapon (player bought armor and scrolls).

*** The side rooms didn’t get a lot of interaction. The basic strategy of “throw in a torch” showed the centipedes “we nope the hell out of there”, the drained bodies “they don’t move? Eh, still don’t want to touch that…”, and the fungus. Which then exploded. Sally the dwarf made her save (even though she wasn’t in the room, I ruled the explosion puffed spores out).

***The nasty fountain was fun. Hero the Desnan Warpriest wanted to clear the fountain and he found the idol. They were all careful and poked it with a dogslicer first, and then when nothing happened Hero grabbed it, releasing the quasits. The Standard Issue Fight With Tiny Demons follows, with a looooot of missing but with Old Pathfinder reach/tiny/AoO rules the party managed okay. Sally got crit into 0 HP, but that was the last gasp.

I didn’t think that they’d see the pure fountain but they opted to stay in the room for Treat Deadly Wounds (successful). As that lasted an hour, they saw the fountain go clear. I let them roll Knowledge Religion to get an inkling that the fountain would be good to drink, so they all drank up and got healed to nearly full. Then they left via the east door, after every one of them saw the noise alarm trap. Good trap is good, props on the dungeon writing.

***In the corridors, the roomful of skeletons got noped out of when they saw six skeletons rise up. Winning initiative let them retreat before any actual fighting occurred. Because they’d all drunk of the pure fountain, they didn’t trigger the statue trap. There was some fun discussion about trying to bring the goblins they heard in A7 in front of the trap, but they opted instead to go force the door. Kudos for another fun trap, writer.

***Forcing the door open into Drakus’ room was a strength check, which I foresee will be a conversion problem going higher. But for now, they bopped in and charged.

Drakus was nasty; I used the dire rat to flank for him and hitting at +10 for 1d8+1d6+3 is pretty horrible for a level 1 OP&F character to endure. There was a funny up-down where he put Hero into negatives, Siegfried healed Hero, then Drakus promptly put Siegfried down and Hero healed him back up. By then, though, the dire rat was down from Sally’s arrow fire and with focus the PCs took out Drakus’ hefty 40 HP. He failed his evil eye save thanks to a hero point, which helped against his AC. They got lucky to avoid crits, and the claw I ruled was Drakus’ secondary attack, so only something he could do full-round-attacking. The players had fun and were pretty breathless by the end of it all, completely out of spells and blessings. I’m curious to see how things go next for part 2.

***Wrap up was simple, and the party was pretty happy to get some decent loot. They decided to keep the +1 ghost touch dagger for the next part, good on ‘em. They’re all cheerfully signing on as members of the Esoteric Order. Next stop, Pale Mountain (cue cutscene of a couple years’ adventure).


In Pale Mountain’s Shadow

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How long did it take to play this part?

5 hours. Three players makes for faster play.

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How long did it take to prep this part?

1 hour. Because, still lazy.

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How many sessions for this part?

1 session, of course.

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How many Hero Points did you give out?

3, one for the hostess with the mostest, one for Siegfried’s homebrewed IPAs, and one for Siegfried’s brave attempt to self-sacrifice. (Each PC had one to start with by default)

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How many times was a player reduced to 0 HP?

6 times.

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How many PC were killed?

0 died. The horrible burns probably made Hero wish for death.

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Did the PCs beat the rivals to the site? By how much?

Yeah, by a solid two days.

Adventure Comments:
***Leveling up was done via montage. I told them about the languages; Siegfried decided Ancient Osirion made sense to take given their work for the Esoterics. No multiclassing happens, as an oracle plus two 6-level casters are extremely incentivized to stay pure to level four. It’ll be the same for a while, actually, the breakpoints work well for 6-level casters. Setup was pretty standard, and as ride doesn’t lead to a former horse named Theodore (ex-hoss Ted) in Pathfinder, camels were opted for. The ride montage in this case went oddly Emperor’s New Groove-referential. Llamas are camelids, I’ll allow it.

***Hyenas and the Hyeanadon were pretty standard to fight, I used the Pathfinder Bestiary 1 versions. Bite-to-trip worked on the surprise round against Siegfried, so that caused panic for a bit, but the littles died and then the big ‘un got focus-fired. I usually run my own games with random encounter tables so having to draw out the map was standard practice for me. Importantly, the party healed up to full.

***The quicksand Anhkrav presented an issue. In Pathfinder: Origins that’s a CR 9 critter. I could have blindly subbed it in; I’ve tossed CR 9 monsters at level 4s and had them survive before. I noticed that this feller was supposed to be CR 3, though, so I swapped in an Anhkeg. Which means it got sprayed. And thus neutered. Then comical flailing in the quicksand using the OG Rules would have made for a nice fight wrinkle, but eh. I wish I had tossed the Anhkrav.

***Nobody speaks Gnoll. And this party couldn’t stealth by a dead body. But they can do a ranged duel. Sally the Dwarf begins the fight critting on snowball+arrow ranged spellstrike that took out the giant scorpion in a single hit. I used the gnoll elites as written in the adventure; those battle axes were nasty with pack attack. If one of the elites hadn’t been standing there drooling due to color spray, they might have dropped someone. As it was, everyone ended up low on hit points and decided to rest for the night. I might mention now, nobody packed a happy stick, because they dislike them, but maxed out treat deadly wounds plus care plus Siegfried burning the last of his spells on healing made everyone start out the next day at full.

***There difficult climb bit that comes next has a point of confusion for me. No idea why each character would be expected to make these checks for the cliffs; the party discussed sending one person up and dropping ropes. Either way, though, they’ve had excellent time thus far and Hero has first-rate survival, so they opted to take the easy way instead. And hello the manticore.

The manticore was a manticore fight. Brutal, nasty, and short. Having a good archer hurt the manticore badly at first, and he focused on her to hit detriment. Siegfried levitated up (gnome FCB got it early)…color spray stun, fall out of the sky, dead. Hero feels small and ineffective, which serves the player right for picking that name.

***For our next trick, the gnolls are Old School Gnolls, but Zakfah gets run out of the adventure book. I called his Bark Orders a swift action, which let him move his one conscious (COLOR SPRAY) minion into flanking position. Hero’s bad, crummy, nofun, messed up, worst day ever continues as he gets himself crit into negatives. I ruled Pack Attack as precision (sneak attackish) damage, but 4d6+8+1d4 still hurts. By the way, I am a little annoyed by the “more dice” trend for these monster attacks, the players got excited by the weapon then I had to tell them the extra d6 was from Gnoll Boi being just that swole. That tense moment aside, Sally calmly dropped the minion gnoll and then Zakfah got himself focused down.

***The players handled the trap well, detecting both the latch and the magical trap. The old-school players not being fools, they roped the latch, climbed to the side, and yanked, setting off the bazzzap. Glad I didn’t screw with them here, as despite their lowering resources they opted to forge ahead into the tomb. Not a great idea guys…

***So the players are careful, as we’ve established. They noped out of both elemental rooms at first, but the “puzzle” was three fails and a success (earth) given the initial DCs. They didn’t quite know how the elemental rooms were going to help, but they figured fire and wind would be in C3. What followed was one of the closest fights I’ve run to a TPK.

The whole lesser/minor nomenclature for the elementals clearly had the fire elemental as large and the air as medium, so I used Pathfinder I equivalents. The fight was fun and frantic. The initial reaction to the medium air elemental was apathy, as the party focused mainly on the fire elemental. Hero dropped to negatives before snowball shots killed the large fire horse, but then Siegfried failed his reflex save and got picked up in the whirlwind…and dropped into a lava stream, going unconscious. Comedy time! Hero heals Siegfried, drops again due to lava damage. Siegfried heals Hero to consciousness, drops to the air elemental’s slam. Hero heals Siegfried, and then getting the hell out of Dodge eats an AoO and drops. Sally finally remembers how to shoot a bow again and at last drops the air elemental. Everyone is yelling in triumph. I have the air gem drop into the lava. GM gets himself murdered.

…okay, the last bit didn’t happen when Sally used mage hand. The party solves the puzzle except for water but opts to wait on using the solution until a new day dawns.

***So the party wakes up at nearly full health but dreading the incoming elemental fight in C2. They opt to try the water side one more time first though, and Sally nails the check with a natural 28. DCs might have to be adjusted going forward but so far, so good. Awesome, now it’s into the tomb kids.

***There isn’t a good mummy guard CR 2 equivalent off the top of my head in Pathfinder: A New Hope* and damned if I’m sending four mummies at three level 4 PCs, so I ran these yobs from the Playtest Bestiary. I…think if I do that again I’m going to go with “vulnerable to fire” rather than “weakness 10”, because Sally had been prepping fire spells to deal with a water elemental and the result was…less than pretty. After that insultingly easy slap fight left the part with little more than scratches and a teeny weeny case of the mummy rot (lesser), negotiation with Mabar was fittingly anticlimactic. The players wanted to set an ambush for the rival party but they didn’t have the patience to wait two days more for the baddies, and it was getting late. So here’s a countdown clock, guys. Don’t break it please. Now let’s research it. Cue another montage to level 7…

*Empire Strikes back is Advanced Class Guide, and Return of the Jedi is Unchained?


We're having fun with the adventure here and will be continuing either way, but is anyone finding this writeup useful? Any questions? I can tell Sombrefell is going to be rough for the on-the-fly quick run style.

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