I played through the first adventure of Doomsday dawn recently and thought I’d share my feedback.
I’ve never been a fan of pathfinders 1.0 death mechanic. It was everchanging and not immediately knowable without some system knowledge. But 2e makes 1e death mechanics seem basic. I’m begging y’all, consider new players to the system at level 1 are more likely to experience the death mechanic than a high level character that is likely being played by a player with much more system knowledge gained from leveling said character. Y’all are front loading a convoluted mathematical component of the system to players who may be experiencing the system for the first time. Please please please, make the death mechanics, and any mechanics likely to be experienced at level 1, simpler, so I’m not scaring away new players to the system at their first game.
Rule of thumb, don’t force me to consult a table during a game. It kills immersion and enjoyability of the system.
I also found the pregen Barbarian to be too strong on damage and too weak on everything else, if I understood the mechanics correctly. A total of +8 damage from raging (initial +2, doubled from large weapon, doubled from titan mauler) was devastating. When I got confused, I had to metagame to my party ooc to get away from me until I could shake the effect, otherwise I’d likely kill any or all of them in short order. No damage reduction mechanic and low AC made me an ineffective front line defender as well. Damage was too great for a pile of hit points alone to serve as my tankiness and I was a drain on Party resources because of it.
I found the DC’s to be way too high given our bonuses. A door with 3 locks which required perfect execution of the rogue to pick just isn’t fun. I saw the player deflate as they thought, “oh hey, this is my element, this is when I shine... no wait, turns out I’m useless, guess we have to go through the railroaded trapped door.”
Good thing I noted, the cleric loved the changes to the casting mechanic. Being able to spend more actions to increase the size/shape/number of people of his heals appealed to him. He’s been playing clerics in a lot of systems and this was new and exciting for him. Well done there. I think this is a step forward for sure.
The additional effects on critical success and failure of spells also seems like a good idea, although we didn’t get to see it in action much.
Overall, it was tedious and lacked the fun element of being heroes in an rpg. Respectfully, I didn’t care for my first introduction to the new system and fear the direction the game is going. Make more heroes, not more tables.