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So our session lasted 5 hours and I didn't eat anything during it so there was couple of things I wanted to comment but forgot to comment when writing survey answers <_<
First thing is that this is when I really did feel like magic was overly nerfed: Party had 3 research points which gave the "both sides can cast buff spells, but by time combat starts 1 minute has already passed from the buff". Well the problem was that ALL buff spells pretty much last only minute, only exception being heroism for the two cultists. In otherwords, players didn't really benefit any from it besides cultists not being fully buffed.
Second thing is that it felt like most of dcs to avoid combat and such were purely luck based. Like since players don't really have any way to increase their skills so that one is exceptionally better than other pcs, it kinda felt like coin flip at times whether there is combat or not.
While I did like red dragon encounter, weeeeeell, first round, it moves and it fire breathed party, second round attacked first time, critted and on same round fire breathed again. Basically creatures that are even one level higher than party have reaaaally high chance to crit. And this encounter had two level 10 creatures, main reason why there wasn't tpk was because I had fire giant stay on higher ground to throw rocks initially and only move in when dragon started to get in trouble by which time it was too late for the dragon.
Also in same manner, while both are severe 9 encounters, lake monster is in comparison impossible to red dragon + fire giant one. Main reason why party survived was nat 20s, some fails from the monster to spells and because I had it attack on beach instead of in middle of lake because I realized nobody in party can swim anyway, the monster's ac was so high only way they could really hit it was with crits and spells that didn't need attack rolls. It does really feel like math is on side of monsters and that same level pcs will never match same level monster(though it IS much more fun for them to fight monsters of their own levels, roc encounter wasn't that bad while still being somewhat challenging)