Hi!
 
Yesterday I directed a session of BoL. The group was formed by 2 mercenary beshaari (one noble, one tracker) and 2 inhabitants of malakut, one sorcerer and his spearwoman bodyguard. The idea was that the beshaari noble needed a ritual to summon one of his ancestors in order to recover a long lost heirloom, and the sorcerer asked them to help him find a rare desert lizard (he needed part of his body for his rituals) as payment. The beshaari agreed.
 
Obviously the starting adventure got quite derailed when they had to go up the mountains (not ideal terrain for the desert runners) and a band of fled slaves wrongly (??? So he claims at least… ) identified the sorcerer as their past slaver and proceeded to attack the party. The ex-slaves were obviously under the influence of something greater given their keenness in throwing themselves at the heroes’ blades. The ex-slaves were then tracked down to a valley where a ritual with the paradigmatic wench was being sacrificed in order to destroy malakut and all that fancy stuff. Battle with local cultists and summoned demons ended up with them saving the day and discovering a nice cache of stolen gold and produce from malakut caravans.  Simple and easy, as it should be in a short session.
 
IMPRESSIONS
The triad of attributes-combat-careers worked well. Mind ended up being much more important than what we first thought, so well done. We like the system.
 
The combat system works well and is cinematic if you like to describe what happens instead of just saying “I attack, I shot”. We felt good, and we used a lot of modifiers for over the top descriptions and heroic feats, like the spearwoman using the spear as a pole to jump (all hail pole dancer career) on the back of a large demon monster (red one, obviously) and riding it using the attacked chains to its tusks and horns. The system worked well, even if a high defense (the sorcerer and spearwoman had a Defense of 3) proved a tad high and detracted somewhat from the dangers of combat, since it was difficult to hit for the opposition. When he engaged in a magic duel of spells and counter spells the things were better (he even sacrificed a slave that came his way mid-combat to boost a spell!).
 
Sorcery was played more casually than what the game suggests, but proved OK since the Arcane Power of the sorcerer depleted really fast once we engaged in combat. We allowed him to recover some by the way of sacrifices, but that created a clear horrified look on the part of the beshaari and uneasiness on the part of the spearwoman that brought great roleplaying to the session, so we liked it.
 
We liked the +1 armor for being mounted, and will continue to apply it. The beshaari war cry also proved to be really powerful and thematic: stalking is for weaklings.
 
We believe that a team of 4 heroes might be somewhat too powerful, though. They basically cut through the opposition like a hot knife, even if taking some blows in return. I had to upscale the opposition twice to put them in dire straits, so maybe some indications on how to put challenges that make combat difficult and not a cakewalk would be appreciated.
 
We will try to play again in brief since we liked the 4 characters with clear personalities (flamboyant noble beshaari, sourly tracker that is uncomfortable around city folk, creepy magician and deadly whirlwind flirting spearwoman).

Cheers,
Xavi