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Guys, I know that DD is meant for feedback on mechanics but, damn, Pale Mountain was a horrible, terrible slog. I can't imagine any game system making it an enjoyable experience.
Difficult terrain everywhere. Unfair hazards and traps. Two boring random number generator games (one for survival; one for knowledge skills). Enemies who cheat (manticore with its single action double shootiness; elementals with all their insanity, the ankhrav). A couple of these things in isolation is one thing but a glut of them over two sessions of play is just terrible.
Please, never release an actual module like this. Also, if later modules are this terrible, let people know so they can skip them.
Even watching the Glasscannon Podcast, you can tell those guys were struggling to get through Pale Mountain. And those guys usually make anything seem fun.
I have new players I met online and I am trying to sell them on PF2 as a system. I want to follow up Doomsday Dawn with my own campaign using the system (which I rather like). I am not going to be able to find players if such modules are their introduction to PF2.
Thankfully, I was able to convince my players to give part 3 a try. Thankfully, part 3 reads better and it looked fun on the GC Podcast. But I would have totally understood if these players would have walked away after part 2.
I don't think "cheat" talk is helpful or accurate, the game has long been rule of exceptions,
monsters routinely having unique abilities, in fact actions granting 2 for 1 of free attacks not unheard of for PCs.
Although by that metric, one might ask if Spike Volley should suffer -2 attack penalty ala Rapid Fire and/or reduction of damage.
I certainly can see limitation of 1/round for Spike Volley, or just make it 2-action activity, otherwise why ever use normal attack?
There is inherent conflict between playtesting and normal game expectations, and I don't think that's 100% resolvable, and there will inherently be mismatch of expectations because there is small audience for activity which isn't really like fun game they aim for. Perhaps the best practice is clearly specifying the role of each module, so people know what they are going into with the harshest stress tests etc.
To be fair, the manticore does have a limit in the number of spikes it can use in a day, but calling its abilities cheating is poor form.
The elementals were addressed in one of the Twitch stream, the developers know that the sustained damage is over the top and caused more player deaths than was expected.
I cannot speak for the ankhrav as my players detected both its mound and the quicksand and thus were able to avoid this encounter entirely.
Guys, I know that DD is meant for feedback on mechanics but, damn, Pale Mountain was a horrible, terrible slog. I can't imagine any game system making it an enjoyable experience.
Difficult terrain everywhere. Unfair hazards and traps. Two boring random number generator games (one for survival; one for knowledge skills). Enemies who cheat (manticore with its single action double shootiness; elementals with all their insanity, the ankhrav). A couple of these things in isolation is one thing but a glut of them over two sessions of play is just terrible.
Please, never release an actual module like this. Also, if later modules are this terrible, let people know so they can skip them.
Even watching the Glasscannon Podcast, you can tell those guys were struggling to get through Pale Mountain. And those guys usually make anything seem fun.
I have new players I met online and I am trying to sell them on PF2 as a system. I want to follow up Doomsday Dawn with my own campaign using the system (which I rather like). I am not going to be able to find players if such modules are their introduction to PF2.
Thankfully, I was able to convince my players to give part 3 a try. Thankfully, part 3 reads better and it looked fun on the GC Podcast. But I would have totally understood if these players would have walked away after part 2.
Just sounds like your players or their characters weren't built for adventuring that AP. When I ran it, the encounters were fun and challenging, but still able to be overcome. Some encounters I let them overcome with "diplomatic" means, others were won through sheer tactics, even if somewhat accidental (mostly the mummy fight), but the biggest thing was that they managed to stay on-mission and didn't fight everything that they saw or bothered with (and didn't need to, truthfully). The PCs beat the Night Heralds to the objective with a couple days to spare. They were optimized some, but not absolutely (especially the Cleric).
^ Yes, but I think regardless of avoid/bypass tactics being ideal,
these are all supposed to be normal range CR encounters that CAN be defeated.
I just finished running Pale Mountain's Shadow for my group, and the only thing I thought was out of line was the latch trap on the tomb door (I ended up letting a PC open the door while taking the hit).
The Manticore was a nasty fight, but between a Ranger and Cleric with bows, an Alchemist with bombs, and an Arcane Sorcerer with spells the party had enough ranged capability to bring it down (admittedly I was not rolling my best with the spike attacks).
My party bypassed the elemental rooms at first, got to the puzzle room, examined the controls and sighed, figuring out that they probably needed to fight the elementals. Those fights were the closest I came to killing any PCs, but the Cleric managed to keep the worst of it to a PC being down to 3 HP (the party did do a night's rest between the two rooms).
We did benefit greatly from being a bit late to the chapter, because the 1.2 Update on Skills meant the Alchemist had taken Occultism, giving them good rolls in all four applicable skills.
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Sorry you had such a tough time of it
Tough? No. Not tough at all. It was a slog. A complete slog. It was boring. Slow. The result was going to be a win. Only the hyenas posed a real risk thanks to their drag ability. The elementals they just ran away from. The manticore ran out of quills and had to go ground and pound eventually.
The "puzzles" were just pure random number generators. I am sorry but that is not good puzzle design. The PCs "puzzled" over nothing. They just rolled dice. Survival? Roll dice.
Mechanism? Roll dice. Have a rogue? Roll dice at a lower DC. Kill some elementals. Lower the dc a bit more. Terrible. They brute forced it (without killed any elementals - one fight with them was enough for them to go "no thanks") and they still had two days to spare.
It was a bunch of slow, boring, crap. The party handled it. They just had zero fun doing so.
The thing I disliked the most was that the elemental rooms were basically "screw you" rooms. Despite having lethal encounters, they were both dead ends with no interesting treasure or features. The only rewards were non-essential items for a puzzle.
The manticore is annoying because it's a flying enemy with a ton of hit points and high saves. Unless you have several good ranged combatants, it will take forever to kill. It can only shoot 12 spikes a day, and it can't use volley to damage the same person twice.
Also, keep in mind that the module is a playtest. It's meant to test game mechanics, not function as a product you could expect to purchase.
As a product I would purchase? Yeah, I'm not a fan of long wilderness adventures, so I probably wouldn't like it.
As a system stress-tester, it did what it set out to do. In the end, we had two heavily specced wilderness types (a Druid and Barbarian) and the only one who had the worst problem was a wizard. Poor guy got to test the death and dying rules against one of the main fights TWICE in one combat. :-D Fortunately, we were using the 1.1 Death rules, so he wasn't in real danger of dying at the time.