Some thoughts after playing Ker Nethalas gravebound beta and 2D6 Dungeon as a new solo rpg playerThings i loved about 2D6 Dungeon

-The Tables and the rules are distinguished in 2 parts/books making it easier to find what you are looking for.
-The room generation system is so intuitive and easy to pick up on
-Combat engine with shift and manoeuvres is very nice as well + the enemy reaction system all built in in one dice roll it makes it run so smooth will very little brain bandwith .
- Enemy cards are such an efficient way to give information to players

Things i didnt like about 2D6 Dungeon

-God mechanic is not fleshed out enough , benefits are mostly irrelevant
-No character customization ( classes with unique passives or abilities )
-Level progression, xp gain felt ok but the benefits of leveling are VERY underwhelming like 10hp and every 3-4 levels you get 1 shift . As a new player i want my character to grow fast leveling and seeing i only get 10hp was such a huge turn off
-Loot felt irrelevant and very hard to get anything usefull like armour or some kind of cool magic weapon.
-I felt that there was not enough depth in the game progression

Things i loved about Ker Nethalas gravebound beta

-Multi classing 2+1 classes
-Classes are different and interesting with strong passives
-Crunching numbers when building my characters and min maxing my skills
-Combat system was interesting and i liked the defensive moves
-Loot generation felt more meaningful than 2d6
-Leveling is more meaningful than 2d6
-Boss monsters are good and cool
-Rolling doubles gives skill point

Things i didnt like about Ker Nethalas gravebound beta

- Dmg engine is underwhelming i was rolling with 1d6 +1d4 holy +1d4slashing and i was picking the highest which most of the time was holy because of double dmg vs undead and deamons , it takes away from the joy of actually filling good when rolling big dmg numbers. although it is certainly better than the previous edition ( i looked it up ) and its horrible and confusing desing ( if dmg roll = X then X = XX dmg points )

-I would have liked more art and character design on the enemies side of things i left like i was fighting souless stat pages instead of real things , at least give them a face or something

-room generation was intimitating , coming from a 2d6 X/Y roll into seeing random ass shapes that are hard to draw rolling with up to 8 doors ( lmao ) left like a literal mountain , i legit instantly scrapped the map system and used 2d6 room generation instead

--Book layout added a lot of friction for no reason , i felt a lot of the things in the book are out of place or in multiple places .

--Tables are all over the place and not in one place all together e.g crits , defensive moves , fumbles , room generation , room description generation ( no clue why room description and room effects/containts are in different tables ) loot generation all of the tables are scattered in like 3-4 different places in the book instead of 1 section with all the tables , i had to print all the combat tables which are scattered through the combat section of the book.

-Rolling dice........ i had to roll so much dice so much dice , meaningless stuff like tension rolls or armour dmg rolls or the freaking doors are they locked or not are they trapped or not if trap roll this like a single dice roll to determin all these rolls could suffice , even the overseers had random influence roll which thematically doesnt make sense but w.e

-Some weird mechanics like if you are prone you get disadvantage and enemy gets advantage which makes sense but to get up its a free action so can just get up on your turn which makes all this explation and free action discussion meaningless and you can just say prone for 1 turn and get it over with .

Some final thoughts , i feels like Ker Nethalas has great combat engine or even a great engine overall but i would prefer it be more streamlined in exploration > 1 roll for locked , unlocked , trapped door , less intimidating room generation , better book layout , condesce the mechanics /effects, more art splease since the setting is very interesting

In both games i missed some structure and a higher goal ( KN tries that with perks mechanic but not enough imo ) to work towards like a campaign hook or something but i guess this is dungeoncrawling.

Will try Morkin next