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Message: <blockquote data-quote="apesamongus" data-source="post: 2129802" data-attributes="member: 27703">Note, these comments are based entirely on areas A and B#1  Nothing in the dungeon makes the slightest bit of sense.  Places that should be connected aren't.  Secret doors are placed randomly and without any usefulness whatsoever.  Traps are pointlessly placed.For example, there is an encampment of goblins and a shrine where they worship.  Between these two places there is but a single path.  That path requires passing through a room full of undead paladins.  Somehow there are <6 hp goblins that regularly make it through that room alive.#2  Things get repetative fast.  Area A involves fighting the same thing over and over again.  Area B involves multiple traps that don't accomplish anything.  We ended up skipping over 1/3 of area B - and that's not counting the entire goblin political conflict that we handled with diplomacy instead of the dozens of "kill these 12 goblins - again" fights that we thankfully avoided.#3 Lots of fights are stupid.  Creatures that are really only effective when combined with other creatures and not a threat alone are included by themselves.  Large creatures with no ranged attacks or magic are put into rooms with 5' doors so that the PCs can easily bottleneck them.  It seems that for most of the fights so far, the combat is assumed to start after the PCs have rushed blindly into a room unprepared.#4  No NPC has anything resembling a believable motivation for doing anything, and some (mid-level) NPCs are given no more personality than "fight to the death".  A couple of cases convice me that the designers don't know about hold person and non-lethal damage, because they state that the PCs will never be able to capture/question certain NPCs, and consequently, don't give any help whatsoever in handling those situations.  NPCs enter the dungeon to get something even though they can't leave with it, and not a single NPC so far seems the least bit bothered that they are trapped in a dungeon that they can't leave.  #5  Several places include instructions for NPC behavior that are not supported by the rules.  Example #1  "NPC easily runs away and avoids PCs because he knows the layout of the dungeon better than them"  Except, that he has 20' movement and always encounters the PCs in small rooms where they can easily catch him if they win initiative.  And opening most of the secret doors require more than a free action, so running through them isn't fast.  Example #2  "NPC grabs random PC and threatens to snap his neck if the PCs don't do what he says". Wha?  I don't know where to even begin with something that stupid.  If you can do that with a 16 strength, our 22 strength guy has a new strategy.#6  Encounters don't have victory conditions, so somethimes it's hard to know if you overcame the challenge.  Seriously, do you get XP from an "encounter" where nothing happens if you don't attack?  What about getting XP from a trap that you avoid because it's not in your way and isn't guarding anything you want?#7  After the first area, the players were alreay joking (and metagaming to a certain degree) about the fact that monsters/traps and treasure were never found in the same room.  Untrapped secret door = magic item.  Almost impossible to disarm trap that can insta-kill rogue = sack of rotted food and barrels of vinegar IDENTICAL to the stuff in the room before the trap.  Why guard one and not the other?  Hell, I don't even know how the stuff got into the room in the first place, because the people with the food and vinegar weren't the same people as those that set the trap.  So, in theory, someone managed to bypass the trap long enough to store the goods there, but there were no NPCs with the skills necessarty to do that.</blockquote>

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