Dragonriderje's 'In Pale Mountain's Shadow' Playtest Report and Feedback

[Dragonriderje]

I started the game first by giving out 1 Hero Point to the player who was on-time, and 1 Hero Point to the player who saved our bacon last week by keeping track of the Player Tracking Sheet for everyone (it was especially important because of how many times players were knocked unconscious and revived in the Drakus fight) with some talking about Katapesh and Kelmarane and mentioned that the PCs’ adventuring group has made its name by helping the town as it rebuilds itself. Protecting trade routes, routing out any pockets of resistance, discouraging anything or anyone from taking advantage of the fledgling town, that kind of thing. I had the players describe their characters and say what their role is in the adventuring group. Then I asked them to come up with a name for the adventuring group.

We have:
GMPC: Gnome Bard (Muse: Maestro)
W: Half-orc Monk (Tiger stance)
M: Elf Druid (Order: Leaf [reflavored to Sand])
H: Elf Fighter (Mixed combat with javelins and shield)

I then described the meeting with Camadus and Lady Kamisora Vord. I was a lot of just me telling the players what happens, and of course a lot of talking from Lady Vord. I suppose that may be one of the reasons why when Lady Vord finished talking, and I opened the floor to questions, all I got were crickets. After a few prompts, they asked a few questions but still didn’t ask what I might have imagined was the most important question! Who was this Tular Seft guy whose tomb we were raiding?!

But anyway, I showed them the map (I redrew the map in the book because I didn’t think it was quite descriptive enough, and I don’t like the encounter labels). I only described the map a little and they did ask quite a few questions about it, and rolled skill checks to confirm the best route through the map to the Tomb’s backdoor.

The path to the difficult terrain areas had some confusion re: Exploration Tactics

The Road to the Foothills:

The party is all elves and monks except for my GMPC gnome, so they decided that he would normally have a mount in this adventuring group to not slow the group down too much. Considering this, even the fighter in heavy armor was speed 30, thanks to feats, so they had a leg up when it came to travel speed! 3 successes and 1 failure from M gets the group to the scrubby brush area halfway through Day 4. It wasn’t until Day 2 that I remembered I hadn’t asked about Exploration Tactics, especially since the adventure doesn’t really bring it up (probably because there are no hazards or magic to detect or hide from), but technically this is ‘Travel’ so maybe you don't need Exploration Tactics? Seems a little unclear. Not to mention that the Exploration Tactics make you move slower, and speed was of the essence so they determined to just be Wandering, if they needed to pick a tactic.

They decide to camp out on the Old Road because we calculated that it would take 4 hours to traverse the brush and they didn’t want to end the adventuring day in between the brush and the sand flats. They did attempt a few creative things at this point, which was nice to see. M tried to Wild Empathy a small lizard to lead them on the easiest path through the brush. He made his Make an Impression check but failed the Request check, so I said that lizard DID show them the best path - but it was the best path for a tiny lizard and they couldn’t follow. H was worried about the weather, since rain may swell the river and flood the salt flats, but he and M determined the weather outlook was fine.

Hyena fight in the scrub brush went well, but I still have some issues with the transition from Exploration to Encounter modes.

Hyena Fight:

Day 5 started with my asking about Exploration Tactics again, and if they would change now that they have a map, know the way, and know it's going to be slow-going and dangerous. My players probably inferred that there was an encounter because of this (and honestly they’re pretty RPG savvy and knew anyway). They knew they were going to be slowed down by my GMPC anyway so they didn’t feel like they would be penalized for taking a tactic that would slow them down. So my GMPC and H Wandered while W Searched and M Looked for Tracks. W didn’t roll a great Perception and obviously none of the party was Stealthing so I told them they were ambushed by hyenas in the brush.

Honestly, the transition from Exploration to Encounter felt weird and awkward. I felt like I was just telling the players what was happening to the PCs, and since there doesn’t seem to be any kind of Stealth vs Perception for a Surprise Round or anything its kind of abrupt. “You are doing X, get ambushed by some hyenas, roll initiative.” It is true that I let M roll Survival for initiative saying that he could maybe spot a hyena track that would alert him to the possibility of danger but honestly, I would have preferred M and H make skill check versus the hyena’s stealth DC (or vice versa, hyena vs PC DC) and then have the result of that have some effect on the start of combat. It’s a better transition from mode to mode in my opinion. It would give the player’s choice of Exploration Tactic feel like it matters more, and doesn’t feel like it removes player agency.

The hyena combat went well. It was very obviously a “deplete PC resources” combat instead of a “fight for your life” encounter. The critical specialization of the fighter and monk and the critical effect of Produce Flame did well with adding some complexity and felt powerful (you do double damage AND this cool persistent effect). I do kind of feel like the flat DC to recover from a persistent effect should be 15 instead of 20 though. The movement wasn’t much of a problem (W had jumping feats and just lept around - very amusing) though the H did force the hyaenodon into the damaging brush once with some advanced shield block maneuver. H’s shield got eaten up in the first two rounds, causing him to complain about how shields feel like paper! There was a brief pause to determine if they wanted to stop to repair H’s shield, but not wanting to stick around and knowing they were on a time crunch, they decided against it

The sand flats area was complicated by a mistake on my part that let them avoid the ankhrav fight.

The Sand Flats:

They made it to the sand flats in 4 hours and I tried to determine how long it would take them to cross the flats. The adventure calls it “2 miles across desert terrain” but I couldn’t find any specifics in the rules about desert terrain, so I assumed that it was normal travel speed. They were again slowed down by my GMPC so they didn’t feel bad about using Exploration Tactics that slowed them individually. So my GMPC and H Wandered again while W Searched again and M Detected Magic.

Here’s where I goofed. I gave W a Perception check to see the ankhrav’s sand mound too far ahead of time. I literally said “you see a large sand mound in the distance.” So W points it out to M who rolls survival, determines the threat, and the group just decides to go around it. From what I now understand from the adventure, they are really only supposed to be able to spot the SLIGHTLY raised patch of sand after stumbling into or finding the quicksand. This does, however, bring something up about the Searching tactic. W was moving too fast to get a guaranteed roll to find everything but it's really vague as to what he does or does not get a chance to reveal. I probably would’ve given him the roll to spot the quicksand before stumbling in because W specifically mentioned quicksand as something he was worried about in this area.

So I added 30 minutes to avoid the ankhrav onto their 1.5 hours across the sand flats.

At the river bank, a misinterpretation from the leap-happy monk started the fighting right away! No chance at avoiding this one.

Gnolls + Scorpion fight on the river:

They arrived at the river bank with 2 hours left in the adventuring day. I described the river, the tents, and the fire. W immediately wanted to put his jumping skills to use and jumped across the river. He apparently took from my description that the tents were abandoned. I told him they certainly look that way but surprise! 2 gnolls and a giant scorpion. This combat felt a bit more dangerous, especially as the gnolls won initiative and mobbed W. The scorpion joined in too, but W used his next turn to jump back across the river. He didn’t quite make it on this attempt and ended up in the water. The scorpion followed him in and the gnolls took up their bows. Their shortbow damage is pretty weak compared to their axes though! I decided that the enemies would continue their focus fire strategy and W started dropping pretty low by the time he got back on solid ground. The scorpion never hit W with a sting (and missed H when he provoked the reaction - side note: I REALLY like these kind of unique monster mechanics, really add to the feeling of mystery and excitement, especially for seasoned [maybe jaded] players). W did get grabbed at one point and we had a bit of an issue when I couldn’t tell that Grabbed was actually a condition. I was expecting the monster ability of Grab to say it made the victim Grappled. But now we know!

W took quite a few healing spells (we have my GMPC with Soothe, a Wand of Soothe, and M has Heal and a Lesser Staff of Healing) and never fell to 0. They killed the scorpion (again with more critical specialization effects!) and one of the gnolls. I had the last gnoll run away at that point - he was on the far bank and wasn’t doing much good with his shortbow. Not to mention these are deliberately described as demoralized creatures.

The group had a conversation about stopping here since a lot of resources were expended keeping W up and fighting the gnolls at range. H also wanted to repair his shield. So M spent the last charge on his staff, knowing it would be recharged in the morning and we looked up the rules about resting. There was a brief moment there when a player thought his character got no hp back overnight because his con was 10!

This was the end of session 1. We only got through those two fights (avoiding the ankhrav) but I think that was fine because we had to get the chapter started, do exploration stuff, etc.

Session 2 started with the PCs waking up in the gnoll camp, and the players choosing Exploration Tactics as their trek continued. Manticore fight again rubs me the wrong way with the awkward transition between gameplay modes. Some issues with terrain in combat during the manticore fight.

Difficult Mountain Path:

M succeeded in finding a easy route to the tomb’s door, but the act of scouting takes 4 hours, and they were moving at a 15 ft travel speed with their Exploration Tactics which would make the travel time 5 ⅓ hours since it was difficult terrain. I have been enforcing the 8 hour travel day very strictly for this adventure, so we knew it would take a whole day just traveling to the tomb. Things went pretty smoothly - M had his character looking for tracks and I described the tracks of the gnoll tribe and then they discovered the battle site but couldn't figure out what creature attacked the gnolls.

Then it was time for the manticore ambush, and I felt like things were awkward again. I just had to tell the players “The group is ambushed by a flying lion creature with a spiked tail - roll initiative.” Usually, I’d prompt them to roll Perception FIRST and then tell them what happens/what they see based off their result. It gives them a sense of accomplishing something I think - when you go straight to initiative and base initiative off their exploration tactics it feels like we’re doing the steps out of order. “You get into a fight -> now roll to determine if you were stealthy, or noticed the creature, etc”

I can’t really say “Suddenly, while traveling along a twisting path, a hail of quills descends upon you as you are ambushed by a monstrous flying predator” because if they all beat him in initiative I guess that means they spotted him first?! So how do I describe the start of combat? Do I just say “As you travel down the path roll for initiative” ?? And THEN describe how the battle opens up. Maybe if a PC beats the manticore in initiative I can describe it as “You spot the monster as it tries to lay an ambush, what do you do?” That works, I guess, but it feels awkward and backward.

During the manticore fight, we had some effective and ineffective PC tactics. W couldn’t do much because his monk didn’t have a ranged attack. But M summoned a spider that could bring the manticore down with a web attack - that was really cool and cinematic. The manticore went down over the steep mountain slope and H tried to close into melee on it so I had to come up with a DC and effects for the steep mountain slope. I couldn’t find any specific rules for climbing the slope or damage from falling down it, but I used the tables in the bestiary and came up with something I thought was fair. Just took some extra time on my end (I’d prefer numbers like that be included in the adventure text, but I understand you can’t anticipate everything which is why the DC tables exist).

The group had to rest again because they reached the end of their 8 hour adventuring day before reach the Tomb and finally arrived at the tomb door on the second hour of the seventh day. The fight with Zakfah and friends went fine, but with some cliffside combat complications.

Zakfah fight:

There was an obvious power discrepancy between Zakfah and the regular gnolls, but that made sense because one was the leader and the other were basically just goons. There was a cool point where W tried to Shove Zakfah off the edge of the cliff and I had to look up to rules for Grabbing the Edge. I ran into a bit of problem here because I couldn’t figure out what the DC should be! Grabbing onto an edge feels like it should just be a flat DC but they don’t even give examples, or a baseline. Also, I don’t understand how a critical failure on grabbing an edge is any different from regular fall damage. Is there something I missing with a regular failure vs critical failure when grabbing an edge?

The PCs couldn’t find the hidden latch to open the door and decided to try and force it open. Again, there was no stated DC for forcing the door, so I had to find a sidebar in the Bestiary about forcing door, and modify the baseline DC for this situation. Just another thing that took a few minutes out of the game.

Inside, the encountered the Earth/Water room first. The power discrepancy of different leveled creatures was very obvious again.

Water/Earth room:

The earth elemental did not feel threatening at all and went down pretty quickly. But the water elemental felt like a total powerhouse and lethal threat. It had 5 higher bonus to-hit and did double the damage. It dropped H and W to 0hp TWICE each, my GMPC once, and almost caused a TPK except W finally made his second recovery save and spent 3 hero points on a last ditch effort attack while at 1 hit point. And rolled a natural 20! Critting the water elemental and dropping it.

The PCs exhausted almost all healing resources and had to spend the night. There was no way they would risk another encounter after exhausting everything to barely survive that fight and in recovery afterwards.

This ended Session 2. Got through 3 combats this session, but the Water/Earth room fight probably took as long as 2 easier fights would have.

Session 3 started on the dawn of Day 8 (now using Errata 1.1). The PCs walked past the Fire/Air room, explored the room with complex magical lock, determined its purpose and went back, looking for the FIre/Air room.

Fire/Air room:

The Fire elemental seemed ridiculously powerful. 15 foot reach, auto-applying persistent fire damage. There were over half a dozen times when a PC went unconscious and had to be healed back up The terrain was also an issue here, especially given the fire elemental’s reach. They fought the air elemental first and the fire elemental started chewing threw them, setting them on fire. At one point, they decided to run away and put themselves out in the water room. The rules for persistent damage when quite interactive in my opinion. Choosing actions to help put themselves out and whatnot. But it seemed the DC was too high or maybe the fire elemental’s persistent damage was too high. They eventually won, but just barely.

The combat, and healing up after combat consumed ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the group’s healing abilities and items. The damage was just insane. One combat with tough environment that exploited the groups weaknesses and they were almost done for.

The group decided to press on because giving up after 1 combat would be ridiculous and opened up the way to the mummy room

Mummy room:

The two frontliners weren’t even back to full HP. They unlocked the magical device, and prepped for something bad to happen as they walked into the mummy room. A couple lucky crits from the mummies drop W but otherwise it was a pretty easy combat. H held the line with his shielded fighter and M and my GMPC lit the mummies on fire with Produce Flame. They waited for W to get back up naturally after 10 minutes while examining the floating janni.

They freed Mabar, talked to him, and opened the Tomb. They were aware that W was now at 1 hp and they had no healing magic, but they were hoping for some luck against whatever big bad was waiting for them in the tomb. As we all know, there wasn’t any! How fortunate.

Opening secret door, they were appropriately cautious of the trapped mirror, but still looted the room and no one went crazy. They decided to leave and rest just outside the back door of the tomb. Job done!

Avoiding the Night Heralds:

This was when the Night Heralds were due to arrive. Day 9. I described to the that they could hear the NH enter the tomb and start rooting around. The PCs overheard the NH start searching for them and the PCs decided to high-tail it! I described them being doggedly pursued all the way back to town. I didn’t have the NH catch up or ambush them for a few reasons: A.) The group really was well made for overland travel so it made sense they could outrace the NH and B.) it was already 3 hours into the THIRD SESSION and we had to wrap ASAP. When I told my players that the leader of the NH was a level 5 monster, they cringed because the water and fire elementals that wrecked them were level 5. It’s so weird that a monster just one level higher than the PCs can feel so deadly.

We ended the adventure and I’m pretty sure my players were relieved to be done. The fights with the elementals in the tomb were frustrating and not particularly fun. Our group’s dynamic was clearly focused on a damage dealing and defensive front line, with two support casters behind. When the terrain hampered the front line, the support-focused casters couldn’t shoulder the heavy burden.

Took 11 hours to play over 3 sessions, 2.5 hours to prepare
PCs fell unconscious 13 times. 5 in Water/Earth fight, 7 in Fire/Air, 1 in Mummy fight

Overall, I am neither impressed or disappointed with this chapter, it showed some good things and reinforced some bad. Looking forward to the next chapter!

My Specific Feedback and Takeaways:

• Tables with guidelines for DCs and ad hoc damage are nice, but it ended up taking away some valuable in-game time when I had to look up guidelines and make a ruling. Not much room for improvement here, except maybe include more specifics in the adventure.
  
• The terrain difficulty seemed appropriate and/or fun outside of the tomb. But the terrain inside the tomb (plus the monsters being synergistic with the terrain) were way too difficult.
  
• I am still really hung up on the transition from Exploration Mode to Encounter Mode. See the Manticore fight for my rant.
  
• Monsters of different levels have a very large disparity in their power. Level 3 Air Elemental doing 1d6+4 vs Level 5 Fire elemental doing 2d6+6 and 2d4 persistent. 5-10 dmg vs 10-26 dmg with just one hit.
  
• Recovering from combat is not easy. Healing resources are not plentiful and PCs have lots of hit points! One difficult fight 100% drained the party.
  
• What's the DC for Grabbing the Edge? How is the Critical Failure for that action different than the usual effect of falling?
  
• The terrain definitely slowed combat down in this chapter but mostly not an unreasonable amount
  
• Difficult Terrain isn’t as hazardous when not every creature has an Attack of Opportunity. One of the big drawbacks to Difficult Terrain in PF1E is negating a 5-foot step.
  
• The DC 23 secret door is REALLY hard for level 4 PCs to find, probably intentional. BUT that brings up a good point…. how/can you Take 20?

Notes from my players:

• Foraging to be self-sufficient and not use rations seems to be a downtime-only ability. Can’t use while traveling?
  
• Aid Another can’t be used in Exploration Mode.
  
• This was a chapter focused on exploration and skill usage. The feat Assurance would have caused a failure in every single situation here. Useless feat?
  
• Impossible to use Ready Action to cast most spells. Intended?
  
• Goblin Pox has the Attack trait but the description does not say it requires a melee touch attack. Every other attack spell mentions that it needs a touch attack roll. See Produce Flame or Hand of the Apprentice. There appear to be some other spells similar to Goblin Pox that have the Attack trait but they do not require an attack role like Ki Blast and Leng’s Sting. Is this intentional or a typo?
  
• Because of how rigid Exploration Mode is structured, there doesn’t appear to be any good time to use Wild Shape: Pest Form.
  
• Dying rules are still so ridiculous. This very much enforces that a Cleric must be in every party in order to have enough healing for an encounter. The lack of spell slots makes this even more noticeable since non-Cleric casters have less spells to dedicate to healing spells.
  
• Challenge Rating needs serious revision
  
• Monks have no free way to get ranged weapons, they must take a feat tax to get this option. So during the Manticore flying fight, there was nothing my Monk could really do.
  
• Monks suffers from not having any options to really get good AC. Having no bonus for having high wisdom or just having a flat bonus to AC bonus makes this front line melee character very vulnerable to damage
  
• Monks have no real use for the mental stats
  
• Needs to be a way to stretch rations while traveling without magic. Needs more overland travel actions
  
• Shields are made of paper. Very delicate paper

[EberronHoward]

Yeah, Assurance is a terrible feat.

Oh, and I think it's cool you allowed the Druid to reskin as a Sand Druid.