I kicked off my Session 0 last night, and so as I start my campaign I'll just post some random feedback that I hear from my players as we go.
After a few more sessions, some additional notes: (4/15/2022)
New Notes 4/20/2022
New Notes 5/11/2022
New Notes 7/27/2022
So its been a bit since I've posted. My group is now 7th and their survival game is now on Day 133 (in actual game time).
Its day 200 in game time and the party is now 8th level. So they are starting to uncap some of their new "cool" abilities.
In general I like LUs approach to give players more exploratory abilities to use. However, I think the system sometimes does it well, and sometimes poorly. Here is the example:
My rogue player has picked up quick frisk. They have to touch a target and make an opposed check, then you get to know what they are carrying. I think this is a good ability, its fun and cool, the rogue loves it (hehe one time the rogue used it to tell what was the sex of a baby a woman was "carrying"....just for some fun). However, the ability has some counters. We have had a few tense moments of "are you sure you want to walk over and touch that person?" Further, some of my big NPCs are just not accessible like that, allowing me some natural curbing of the ability in game. And even though the opposed check is highly in favor of the rogue, its not a guarrantee.
Now compare it to the Size up Fighter ability for the Ranger/Fighter in the group. With a glance, the character can tell the CR of any creature they encounter. Suddenly that mysterious Fey master they met....oh what's its CR? No check, no effort....just spill the beans, how strong are they really. Oh that statue that looks like a person, is it actually a creature with a CR? (aka a threat) or it is just a statue? Is that treasure chest actually a mimic (creature with a CR) or just a treasure chest? Suddenly as a DM I have to ensure every NPC I have created has CR stats just because of this ability. Its not magic, so nondetection doesn't block it, it only requires sight....so I'm limited in options there. Sure I can DM hand wave and say "it doesn't work on person X"....but anytime as a DM your in that territory you have to question if the ability is proper. And...it doesn't really make flavor sense. A rogue frisks someone to get a feel for their items...sure. A person literally meeting someone for the first time and knowing that they are a powerful CR 20 creature and not this small frail looking guy, just doesn't make sense.
The first ability is cool, unique, and well balanced. The second one is gamey and abusable.
- Ranger ability to swap favored enemy everyday seems really silly.
- Ranger grub ability limited to once per day doesn't make any sense. The ability seems weak now.
- I want a ranger subclass that doesn't involve a pet or spells, can I pick an O5e one?
- Warlocks can be int, wis, or cha? That's neat, I like that.
- Exploration tasks sound cool. I can harvest for like spell components and things....that's cool.
- Now that the ranger understands the importance of supply in this game, they no longer think the grub ability is weak, it has come in very useful.
- Ran a custom CR6 legendary monster for my group of 5 4th level adventurers, and used the stock CR6 stats. Combined this with 4 CR 1/4 wolves (which were upgraded to CR1/2 due to the low tier of adventurers). Now the guidance does say that hard encounters at this level can turn deadly. However, even though I never actually got the DPR that is expected for the CR6, nor did I ever crit....I almost killed two party members. Again, the warning is in the book, though it did feel the stock DPR number was a bit high for just a hard encounter.
- The ranger archer is having a lot of trouble finding good maneuvers to take so far, and actually just swapped one of his maneuver schools (which I allowed for free) to find some reasonable manuevers to use. In making some custom characters this has been my issue as well, there seems to be a lot of maneuvers until you actually have to choose schools, and suddenly it can be very hard to find more than a few good choices.
- Considering the much larger amount of various abilities to track, I've found it difficult to keep track of everything. I dropped the critical success/failure for skills (except for journey activities) just because I kept forgetting the tables and didn't want to stall things out by looking them up.
- The players are definately enjoying all of their little abilities. The warlocks ability to force march for an extra 4 hours has actually come in quite handy so far. The ranger's ability to use multiple journey activities at once is a huge boon in this survival heavy game.
- The discovery and boons table has a lot of fun stuff, I've been using it quite heavily with all the exploration my group is doing. What I wasn't expecting is that the shortcuts are some of my party's favorites, they have been making great use of them to backtrack into important areas.
- I started the game with a doomed character, basically the father figure of the party. I am running a "countdown" on him, every week I roll the countdown in front of the party to see if I finally dies. I think its added a good narrative element to the game, though it has taken some convincing to explain to my group why they can't heal him up, and they are really set on finding something to fix him.
- One element that has come up a lot....recently killed enemies and supply. Generally how I have run this, is if the party kills an edible enemy in a day, that covers all their needed supply for the day. However, without a means to preserve the meat, they can't store the supply for later. It would be nice to see some guidance on this though in future books, it has come up quite a bit in my game.
- On the times to craft weapons, the spear tends to stick out. Spears are dirt simple to make IRL, so the time in the book seems awfully long. The time looks reasonable for most other simple weapons, but the spear is an exception.
After a few more sessions, some additional notes: (4/15/2022)
- I'm enjoying the doomed condition combined with a countdown clock. I have set up a new NPC, a little girl with a magical disease called "mind fire", that gives her psychic powers, but whose powers are killing her. She is "doomed", and has a 3d6 (5 or 6) countdown per week to death....but there is a known cure. The party is now considering an expedition to save her, they are debating it as they in theory have some time, but you never know with the clock, and they do have other priorities to consider. This I find is working better than my original "doomed + countdown" of their father.... without a way to fix it, I can tell my players are not fully liking the "he's doomed, just....doomed....no way to save him....none?" With the girl, by giving them an option, its motivating the players instead of frustrating them.
- We finally got to see a crit, and I think my players enjoyed the double damage, they were clearly excited.
- Once again, the ranger subclasses are pretty underwhelming. My ranger player has been frustrated by them, and frankly, I am too. None of them seem particularly compelling.
- I like the idea of specializations but I kind of wish they were rarer. Basically all of my players have one, and its hard to keep track of all of them and all of their special little abilities.
- My players are enjoying expertise die, though they still keep forgetting that 2 dice = d6.
- I have found the critical success and failure tables just too much to keep track of. I can never remember them, and its too slow to go look them up everytime it comes up.
- I have started to give out the rare spells as some fun rewards. The cleric has been contacted by a "foreign power", and as a gift, was given the rare version of call lightning. It was a temptation that cleric couldn't resist, and has already used the spell in combat. It was a great way to give them a neat power, and to highlight the "strangeness" of this foreign power by granting a spell that is not the norm.
- There are certain things that are split between the books I have found a little frustrating. A recent example, one of my players was asking about a specific poison (Ether). So I open up T&T and look at poisons, and can't find it. Takes me several minutes of flipping before I realize that's a "common" poison located in the AG. I don't mind a few poisons showing up in AG, but would have liked those renoted in T&T so all the poisons are together.
New Notes 4/20/2022
- All of my players have now given me consistent feedback:, they find the first level of strife way too penalizing. Perhaps its the prevalence of things like perception (and passive perception), as well as in a survival like game penalties to survival are a big deal, but all of them flat out said "its just too much". I am going to swap the 1st and 2nd level of strife, and all of them agreed that was a good idea.
- One thing I tried out tonight way a "partial doom recovery". I've been using a countdown clock to determine when the doomed character will die, and I gave the players a super healing salve (after a series of trials) that they gave to their father, which reset his countdown back up to maximum. It was a way to give the players a victory without undoing the effects of doomed, the father is still dying, but it gave them some means of countering it, and I could tell it went well with the players.
- Funny enough, one of the greatest sources of fatigue in my game so far as been the long distance travel rules. Often the players have pushed themselves several hours past the 8 hour window to get from A to B speedily, and so will often roll multiple con saving throws. I have found this a pretty good balance, the rolls start off easy but very quickly ramp up, so I think its a good mix of risk and reward.
New Notes 5/11/2022
- The ranger's "alpha strike" power is providing to be incredibly good, to the point where my players are starting to grumble. The reason is the current style of play where time is passing quickly and its mostly exploration, so there are only a few combat encounters. As such, the ranger doesn't feel penalized for using all of their wisdom charges and making a single "super strike". For context, the ranger in the last game did 45 damage on their first round, whereas as the spellcasters are doing ~13-16 damage a round.
- The cleric's new turn features the players think are pretty cool (ie the ability to turn all evil subtypes, or fey, etc). The cleric has long been seen as very bland to my group in 5e, so this was a welcome reaction.
- I continue to really like rare spells. In the last game, the players found a shard of the dead creator of magic (which is actually one of the PC characters from my first campaign). The player got to get a memory from the shard (which was a fun easter egg for them) and the player got a rare spell as a boon.
- One of my two warlock players is making heavy use of the ability to "when you fail a lore check, you get an inkling on where you can find out more about that lore". In such an exploration heavy game, its given them a lot of subtle clues.
- Last game the party found a "portable haven" for 6 people, and are really excited about it.
- I continue to find rare spells one of my favorite LU things. Its been great to give them out as fun little gifts for exploration. One of my players find a tiny remanent of the soul of the essence of magic (who happened to be another of the player's characters from a campaign many years ago). This gave them both a little vision of that previous character (which the party loved), and a new rare spell as a cool gift.
- I am finding it difficult to "balance" the various destinies, as the innate pace of inspiration is pretty radically different between them. Excellence for example comes up organically just due to the amount of checks that happen over time, nat 1s are eventually going to fall. Whereas something like devotion often requires more active DM effort. In general destinies have been one of the weakest pieces to me, I find them very hard to remember as a DM, and I don't think they have been a big RP element to my players either.
- My players last game wound up curing their "Doomed" father, by making a big pact with a Fey master (the result of a lot of negotiation). I'm very happy I chose not to stick to the letter of the law and allow no way to remove doomed, this turned into a major motivation for the players. The Doomed concept + using the "countdown" mechanic to create the "Doom Clock" was one of my favorite uses of LU rules in the game so far.
- Speak with Dead has come up in the game a few times. The fact that the range was changed from 10 feet to touch in LU actually came up in the last game (but the players found it weird that such a minor change was made). Also Speak with Dead doesn't have any limits in LU unlike in O5e (in O5e you can only cast this spell on a target once every 10 days, in LU as long as you have slots you can keep doing it). I don't like that change personally, I already think Speak with Dead is one of those crazy powerful divinations once a party learns to understand its power, so limits are good. I didn't reimpose the strict limit but my group has an understanding not to try and milk it toooo much.
- hehe one funny thing from last session, our party rogue: "So can I use my painful pickpocket....but not do any damage or hurt them?" DM: "You mean......pickpocket?" Rogue: "Oh...uh, yeah!"
- I've been trying out the bulky item rules perodically. The rogue has a cursed stone on them that counts as a bulky item (and it meant that the ranger with the 8 strength was not able to pull them out of a hole one time). The cleric is also carrying this "heavy gravity magic item" that I said counts as a bulky item. It hasn't had a major impact, but I think the concept is easy and it drives him that certain gear is problematic and requires strong people.
New Notes 7/27/2022
So its been a bit since I've posted. My group is now 7th and their survival game is now on Day 133 (in actual game time).
- One way I've been using the journey challenges is at pre-set "markers" on specific days. For example on Day 130 the area they were in was hit by the "Hoar Frost" challenge. That's been a solid way to insert them in a scenario where my party is constantly traveling.
- In a funny irony, what I've settled on is using my version of journey activities when the group is in camp, and not when they are off adventuring. So the game has evolved into two pieces: Sometimes the group is off traveling and adventuring. Then they will spend time in their main camp with their 250+ commoner people, and they will perform the various journey activities as kind of a "build up the home base" scenario. I have found this balance working better because again so much of this game is traveling around, that it makes the journey activities a good portion of the game without me having to work with them all the time.
- The Ranger/Fighter once again has been struggling to find bow related maneuvers and basically gave up on this level, and are just trying out more melee maneuvers.
- The party is enjoying the various "fatigue reducing" abilities, and clearly sees the value. The warlock and Ranger/Fighter both now have ability to let them "force march" longer, and the cleric just picked up an ability to ignore 1 fatigue per day...which has drawn some envious comments from the other players.
- Speaking of Forced Marches, I have found this mechanic very nicely balanced to me. The party has various shortcuts (through the boons table) that often cut their travels from 2 days down to 1.5 days, and so they will do a 4 hour forced march to get it done in 1. I found the 4 Con saves (at DC 10,11,12,13 respectively) to be strong enough that the players do debate it if they are worried about trouble, but reasonable enough that they will often chance it. And again, they have taken abilities specifically to be stronger in this area, so they can see clear value in the faster movements.
- Shortcuts are also things I have let me players do as journey activities. Because they are traversing the same large areas over and over again, they have worked on a form of the scout activity to find new shortcuts. They have really enjoyed this, its a way that they are "taking control" over aspects of the terrain.
- While the cleric does have new spells and abilities, I still feel like it's all about spirit guardians. Even with the slight nerf, it still represents such a large portion of the class'es offense, I consider a cleric that doesn't use that spell to be significantly nerfed. I really wish that ability was just a class ability at this point.
- a character took the well-heeled feat, but since I haven't really been using the prestige system, I took an opportunity to try out the stronghold rules. So I let the feat "unlock" an upgrade to their portable haven so that it can literally grow into the "house" type estate, giving them those bonuses. The players seem to really like this concept; so far so good.
- The party finally has enough resources so they are considering some magic item creation, so I may get a chance soon to see how those prices work out.
- I mentioned previously that I stopped tracking supply for my PCS, instead supply is a general number for their camp. This has worked well in my game, supply gain and loss is basically a measure of "camp health"....and it did come up in the week they had to move their camp and couldn't hunt as regularly. Its also a way to track how nasty some of the land challenges are, for example when I did the hoar frost challenge, it did 9 supply damage, but the camp had 20, so it weathered it well. In those situations, I roll only a small number of camp members lost. But if supplies drop down to 0, then the death numbers become significantly higher.
- The ranger wants to start training an elk to be a mount..... problem is there are no rules in the book about this I could find
- I changed inspiration from advantage into a reroll. I found that my players kept assuming it worked that way (they kept forgetting to apply the inspiration before rolling), and inspiration is rare enough in my games that I want to give it that oomph. I find as a reroll its a more interesting bonus to the players.
- A few Monster notes:
- Tried a Hydra along with a horde of skeletons: the party dealt with the hydra pretty readily, and spirit guardians started blasting through the skeletons. The warlock asked if corpse explosion could work on the skeletons (as they are "corpses" right?). I went with rule of cool and let them make a DC 20 religion check to attune their energies to the form, whcih they made and then went to work blowing up bodies....they had fun
- They were climbing a beanstalk (yep Jack and the beanstalk style) and got attacked by a Roc. The party blasted it at range but the roc finally got close and wailed on the ranger. The ranger confidently went to finish the roc, but took its reactive bit and got knocked out, that was a big surprise to the party!
- They have seen an Emerald Dragon (though haven't encountered it yet), and they like the "mad revenge focused flavor". They are already scheming of ways to manipulate the dragon....not yet aware of how mad they can become by interacting with it
- Tried a Hydra along with a horde of skeletons: the party dealt with the hydra pretty readily, and spirit guardians started blasting through the skeletons. The warlock asked if corpse explosion could work on the skeletons (as they are "corpses" right?). I went with rule of cool and let them make a DC 20 religion check to attune their energies to the form, whcih they made and then went to work blowing up bodies....they had fun
Its day 200 in game time and the party is now 8th level. So they are starting to uncap some of their new "cool" abilities.
In general I like LUs approach to give players more exploratory abilities to use. However, I think the system sometimes does it well, and sometimes poorly. Here is the example:
My rogue player has picked up quick frisk. They have to touch a target and make an opposed check, then you get to know what they are carrying. I think this is a good ability, its fun and cool, the rogue loves it (hehe one time the rogue used it to tell what was the sex of a baby a woman was "carrying"....just for some fun). However, the ability has some counters. We have had a few tense moments of "are you sure you want to walk over and touch that person?" Further, some of my big NPCs are just not accessible like that, allowing me some natural curbing of the ability in game. And even though the opposed check is highly in favor of the rogue, its not a guarrantee.
Now compare it to the Size up Fighter ability for the Ranger/Fighter in the group. With a glance, the character can tell the CR of any creature they encounter. Suddenly that mysterious Fey master they met....oh what's its CR? No check, no effort....just spill the beans, how strong are they really. Oh that statue that looks like a person, is it actually a creature with a CR? (aka a threat) or it is just a statue? Is that treasure chest actually a mimic (creature with a CR) or just a treasure chest? Suddenly as a DM I have to ensure every NPC I have created has CR stats just because of this ability. Its not magic, so nondetection doesn't block it, it only requires sight....so I'm limited in options there. Sure I can DM hand wave and say "it doesn't work on person X"....but anytime as a DM your in that territory you have to question if the ability is proper. And...it doesn't really make flavor sense. A rogue frisks someone to get a feel for their items...sure. A person literally meeting someone for the first time and knowing that they are a powerful CR 20 creature and not this small frail looking guy, just doesn't make sense.
The first ability is cool, unique, and well balanced. The second one is gamey and abusable.
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