#I did actually mention some of this with my playtest group in our session 0

[scratching92]

So I've been working a bit on my Currently-Unnamed Lancer Module, and I feel I've hit a bit of a wall as of late with regards to what, exactly, I want it to be about.

When I started writing some background for the setting my module takes place in, I basically wanted to hit two particular notes; firstly, that the setting was a former colony that had gained independence (in this case from SecComm). Secondly, that after the revolution, the planet devolved into infighting between the various factions that had participated in that revolution, resulting in on-again-off-again warfare across the planet.

I thought this would be neat to write about because, well, as much as I love a good story of plucky rebels fighting off their oppressors and liberating themselves, I'm also from a country that actually did have, in a certain sense, a bunch of plucky rebels fighting off their oppressors and liberating themselves, and... Well, look. I'm never going to say we were wrong to fight a war of independence, but we did kinda fight a civil war immediately afterwards. Life is just messy like that. And so I wanted to kind of touch upon that sort of thing a little.

But also, after I had written that setting lore, I looked back at my outline and realized it didn't really have much synergy with what I had written, beyond that it was, presumably, one of many wars since that initial collapse into in-fighting amongst the revolutionaries. So I figured "Fair enough. Let's throw out this current outline and draft up something that does!". So I did. And I think the new outline I have is decent! But... Once again, I'm finding myself wondering if my current outline is a little too far in the other direction. I'm worried now that it's no longer about the relationship between the various factions on the planet, but about the planet's general relationship to modern Union (and the complicated relationship between ThirdComm and SecComm, with ThirdComm both being a rejection of SecComm while also in a strange sense an inheritor of it (or, at least, an inheritor of the problems it made)). And it's making me consider throwing out what I've written again.

It's possible I'm just massively overthinking it, and a lot of my problems are just things that are always going to have to be left up to a GM to prep anyway even when working from a pre-written module. I'm planning on running the first session of a playtest pretty soon, so maybe I'll feel different once I've run my current outline with an actual group and it's no longer just abstract ideas on a page. I dunno. I guess we'll see in like... two months or however long it takes me to run this playtest game.

#Lancer RPG #Currently Unnamed Lancer Module #I did actually mention some of this with my playtest group in our session 0 #if nothing else I guess I'll know one way or another if this is working once I've actually run it #maybe I'm expecting a little too much of how much structure you can even impose on something like a TTRPG module #no prep survives first contact with the players and all that #but I do feel a bunch of Lancer modules I've read #whether 1st or 3rd party #have been really good at kind of zeroing in on a particular thematic throughline or idea #and while I don't want to be too much of a perfectionist with my first ever 3rd party module writing #I do want to at least try to hit on certain ideas and themes

[atomicgm]

Doomsday Dawn: The Lost Star Playthrough

So I finally got the chance to play the first adventure of Doomsday Dawn!  Here is a summary of my experiences with the new system

Firstly, character creation was a blast.  Ancestry, Background, and Class worked very well together.  I created four premade characters including a Dwarf Wizard, Elf Rogue, Gnome Bard, and Goblin Paladin.  That last one was amazing, as the races have a floating +2 I dropped in Strength. My little goblin knight had an 18 strength!  As long as your race doesn’t have a penalty in the attribute, it’s a viable choice.  Even with the penalty, you can start with a 16 score, which is still pretty good. The party was a goblin sorcerer, gnome bard, elf rogue, goblin paladin, and halfling druid.

As for the adventure, I did an in medias res with the first encounter. The ooze went down pretty quickly, but it did get one good hit in on the Paladin.  He blocked it with his shield, banged the dent out with quick repair, and spent the rest of the adventure with his shield up. Next I jumped back in time to explain the setup of the adventure, the players immediately doubting that Drakus was a vampire.  Two players were goblins returning to their tribe on good terms, so they talked their way past the first group of goblins.  Taking their non-goblin “hostages” they found themselves in the polluted fountain area, completely skipping several encounters that could have netted them some of the few available magic items.

I had Talga accompany the party so I had a voice of some sort during the adventure, which may have made exploration a bit easier.  The second I mentioned that the fountain was clear when the goblins first moved in, they began poking around the fountain and found the idol in the basin. The Rogue failed to fish it out with tongs so the Paladin just grabbed it out bare-handed, releasing the Quasits.  They went down very quickly, but not before damaging the Rogue and Paladin.  The party scanned the fountain for magic, and upon finding it magical everyone drank from the fountain.  The Rogue rolled a 1 and spent the rest of the adventure with 3 hit points.

The party managed to prevent the alarm door from ringing and ambushed the goblin headquarters.  The bard cast a Sleep spell, making me realize I have no idea how Sleep works.  The wording says most enemies immediately wake up in combat, but I had no idea where to find that.  I just had Warriors waste an action waking the Pyro and Commando.  The Paladin triggered the rock trap but made his reflex save, ripped up the Warriors the Commando was using as meat shields, only to drop from a critical hit from the Commando’s horse chopper.

The Rogue tumbled in, trying to protect the fallen paladin, which moved her out of the way of the Pyro’s burning hands.  Half the party got fried, but the Paladin made his death save, returned to 1 hit point, and I realized I didn’t know how the unconscious rules worked.  I let him stand up, he dumped lay on hands on himself, and the fight abruptly ended as the Rogue suddenly had a flanking partner and the Sorcerer got a critical hit with Telekinetic Projectile.

The party then found the back entrance to Drakus’ hideout and found his loot.  The Rogue managed to spot and disarm the trapped lock, but immediately broke her lockpicks.  It wasn’t even a series of bad rolls, the lock’s DC was just absurdly high for 1st level.  She needed to roll THREE 17s, and they had to be IN A ROW or her progress would erode. They scouted ahead, spotted Drakus, and half the party doubled back for the other door.  Everyone had already drank from the fountain so they didn’t even notice the sand trap.  They tried to bluff Drakus that they were bringing offerings, failed to open the door, and he moved into a hiding spot.  As they stormed the room Drakus revealed his true form, to no one’s surprise. The Paladin dropped from a sneak attack , the rogue nearly dropped from a triple attack that hit her and the Rogue, and things started to look grim.  Then the paladin burned a hero point to remove the dying condition, got up, and hit Drakus hard.  The Rogue got a sneak attack, and the Druid nailed a Shillelagh critical.  With Drakus dead they completed the dungeon in leisure and looted everything.  The day was saved, and we were rushing everyone out of our house.  That took five hours.

So, I’m positive I ran some things incorrectly.  Dying is incredibly confusing.  When you drop to 0 HP you are hit with both the dying AND unconscious status effects, and recovering from dying does not remove your unconsciousness.  You actually continue making saves until you fail three times (advance to Dying 4, dead) or roll one success, gaining 1 hit point. When you have 1 hit point you STILL makes death saving throws.  If you succeed at this point you wake up. Now your dying condition decays at a rate of one level per turn, so you can be conscious, fighting, and dying all at the same time.  You also have the option of burning a hero point to remove all of your dying conditions, and with no action specified I can only assume you can do this at any time. I ran it where a single success on a save removed both dying and unconscious, and with hero points you can make my rules good the game as intended.  The Paladin used them to bounce back into combat undeterred, and it was instrumental in their defeat of Drakus.  Playing properly, he would have gotten one fewer reroll, which requires two hero points.  Honestly, those two hero points seem like a waste when you can ignore the damage system of the game.

Edit:  Technically running out of hit points takes away one of your three actions, knocks you prone, and disarms you.  That’s three actions to get back into fighting shape. Maybe not so bad after all?

As far as properly used mechanics, the druid picked Acid Splash and was screwed over by the d4 damage die.  Even the sorcerer grabbed Ray of Frost and started to wonder why he would use anything that wasn’t Telekinetic Projectile.  That d10 is hard to argue with, especially when none of the cantrips come with meaningful riders outside a critical hit.

Our Rogue felt like she was TOO powerful in combat, out damaging the Paladin by a fair margin.  Meanwhile, out of combat she felt useless.  This was partly the fault of some terrible rolls, and partly due to some of the crazy high DCs of traps and perception checks she had to contend with.  I think DCs of 10 to 12 are plenty when you have at most a +5 to your skill check.  The Rogue wants to shine when dealing with their area of expertise, not feel like they wasted their entire character class.   Side note with her, I couldn’t figure out if the players could split their movement with an action, like Spring Attack or normal 5e movement.  It really wasn’t clear.

The whole party had to contend with the utter lack of healing as well.  The hit point inflation from the new racial bonus to HP was not enough to keep the party on their feet.  By the end half the party was down and the other half running on single digits of HP, with no way to recover.  Without a 5e-esque short rest mechanic and no potions or wands to spend their resonance points on, the party ran low by encounter 2 and ran out by 3, sliding to the finish of encounter 4 on their faces.

All in all, the group said they didn’t like P2.  They much preferred 5e DnD, and I would say I have to agree.  I am willing to give P2 another chance and will definitely finish out the playtest.  I know things will get easier as we master the rules, but I remain unconvinced that this edition of Pathfinder will scratch my itch for high-customization, high-powered Dungeons and Dragons-style play.  Complexity is there, but it didn’t seem to provide anything exciting.  I’m still making the same move-swing turns I always was, and I’m losing a lot of the quality-of-life tweaks from 5e DnD. I suppose we shall have to wait and see what session 2, In Pale Mountain’s Shadow will bring.

Whew, this was a long post.

#Pathfinder #pathfinder 2nd edition #Pathfinder Playtest #Dungeons and Dragons #trpg #session