[Donjon] First level sucks.

[Vaxalon]

Played Donjon last night.

I was DMing, my wife, Heather, and Steve (our usual gaming group) were playing.

I liked the way it set up... character creation was nice and quick and snappy, likewise dungeon outlining.

We had a lot of frustrations getting things done at first level, though.  Maybe I was just rolling good, but the two spellcasters in the group never managed to get more than two spell dice out of any particular "gathering power" roll, and the little goblins were beating them up badly all the time.

The fact that noone took healing magic hurt, too.

We resolved to play again, but start from fourth level next time.

[TonyLB]

What tactics did you see from the players?

[Vaxalon]

I'm not sure what you mean by "tactics".

[TonyLB]

Well, having only dealt with Donjon by reputation and posting, I may not be the best person to put this question, but... well, were their brains in gear with the rules system?  Were they looking for ways to exploit it?

My understanding, for instance, is that a successful Perception Check in Donjon can let you narrate what you perceive.  Did they make up secret passages to lead them past the worst of the goblins, or something like that?  A sleeping guard on duty that they could silence quickly?

What, in short, did they do that went above and beyond "The game expects me to roll dice now, so I'll roll dice"?

[ Edited for spelling ]

[Vaxalon]

Oh, yes... they understood that... though I think they used it less than they could have.  That wasn't the source of the frustration, though.

The frustration had more to do with combat than with exploration.

[TonyLB]

Well... did you notice how each of my "exploration" ideas gave them a substantial combat advantage?  I think exploration is a combat activity.  It's the advantage that the players use to overcome the odds that are otherwise (as you rightly point out) stacked heavily against them.

I guess my question is, if the players did a poor job of exploiting the system, and therefore their characters got slapped around, where's the problem?  That sounds like useful negative reinforcement to me.  It'll learn 'em to use all the tools at their disposal.

[Vaxalon]

I think we may be defining exploration and combat differently.

Can you give an example of how that works?

[TonyLB]

Well, since I don't know the rules (except, as I said, from other people's actual play posts), I certainly can't give a rules example.  But what's wrong with the examples I gave above?  Like the secret passage that leads where they need to go, so that they don't have to engage in a lopsided battle?

[Vaxalon]

Oh, they did that... I didn't present them with any lopsided encounters.  I used the guidelines in the book... All of the encounters, actually, were with small numbers of first level monsters.

[Bankuei]

Hi V,

As I understand it, fact narration is the prime way to win in Donjon(at least, compared to dealing with whiff factor, which has been known to happen).  

For example- in the middle of combat, a character could make a perception roll and use their successes to declare- "I see a nasty rusty spike sticking out of the wall behind me, and I see the goblin is going to charge me, so I'll take the rest of my successes as bonus dice to jump out of the way at the last second- hopefully getting him to impale himself!"

These kind of rolls can not only give you control over the "undiscovered" environment, but also the elements in play as well.  One idea I can't wait to play with is "Dungeon Diver" with abilities like, "Find hazards", "Push enemies into hazards", etc.  

Chris

[Matt Wilson]

The gathering magic power thing has been previously criticized as being too easy, so I'd say maybe the dice were acting up in that regard.

As for fighting the goblins, remember the rule of rollover dice. The players can do something like "spot weakness in armor," and use the successes as bonus dice for their next attack. That's where the butt kicking comes from.

[Christopher Weeks]

Why was gathering magic hard?  I'd think that a serious spell-slinging Donjon character, even at first level, would be rolling seven or more dice against (normally) three, right?  I'd expect to see more than two successes from time to time (like five and stuff).  Further, a second gather might be called for allowing a few more dice to accumulate.

If the spell casting abilities in question have few dice and Cerebrality is low, then you can assume that spell casting is low priority to the player and character and a couple of spell dice is a nice and flexible tool, but not super-powerful.

If the party is statted out so that fighting three level one goblins is too tough, then they could manipulate your encounters by finding smaller numbers yet or preparing traps or whatever.

[Vaxalon]

I was consistently rolling sevens and eights on the difficulty of the gather magic roll; this is the average, in fact.  Most of the time, with their seven and eight dice gather magic pools, they were getting just two points out of the gather..

The highest gather we had in the evening was four dice, and we had two threes.

They had one spellcaster with cerebrality 5, ability 4, and one with 4 and 4.

The PC's never tried to use one action in combat to rollover dice to the next.

[Christopher Weeks]

I was consistently rolling sevens and eights on the difficulty of the gather magic roll; this is the average, in fact.

I'm not following this.

[Vaxalon]

Oh, sorry...

I should clarify.  I forgot, we were using D10s instead of D20's because we were too short of D20's.

Double the numbers there, if it makes more sense.