4e Fan Creations and House RulesWorking on variant powers? Statting up a PC race or your version of a monster? Creating or converting an adventure? Put it here!
Sounds like you had a good time. That's good feedback on the information DCs. Do you think they are too high in general, or particularly for the playtest PCs, who weren't really built with roleplay challenges in mind.
That's hard to say - the PCs certainly weren't built to use skills, but I felt there was a lot of juicy stuff that the PCs could hear if the DCs were just a little lower. So I guess a bit of both. However, the DCs didn't look much different from most other DCs from other d20 products - I'm just from a school of thought that feels that it should be relatively easy to gather information, if only to make it easier for my players feel like there's more to the world (I think lowering the DCs by 5 would work for my style).
Skill challenges might work, although I don't know how failure would impact them. Like, if you're trying to get the dirt on who's sleeping with who in the little town of Oakhurst, i don't know how failure would work in there. But, there'll be a preview of the system in the next week or so about it, I think, so we may be able to figure out if it's a better fit.
I'm about to start a "metagame", one in the tradition of Knights of the Dinner Table, Fear the Boot, or Order of the Stick, where a hearty dose of good humor and 4th wall jokes are more allowed...and I think I'm going to use Raiders of Oakhurst Reloaded as my test game. My gamers range from hardcore RIFTS veterans to chatroom-raised freeformers, and run the gamut between them...
My group's second session of the adventure was done yesterday. I was hoping to get to the black dragon, but we only got through the entry room (the PCs managed to kill Ichi-Ichi before he rang the gong), the kobold "temple", the encounter with Meepo and Ix, and the cavern choker cave.
The PCs had little trouble with the entry room minions. They decided to go up the stairs to the left, encountering the skirmisher and slinger. The skirmisher ran to the wyrmpriest's chamber, and the PCs pursued. As they had spend a lot of their per encounter abilities, the encounter with the wyrmpriest, slinger, dragonshields, and two minions was tough. But the group eventually pulled it out. One of the dragonshields disengaged from combat (I love the Shifty ability ) and ran to Meepo's room, alerting the king.
After resting up, the PCs went to Meepo's room. Then Ix, Meepo, and the dragonshield tore into the dwarf, dropping him to well below 0. Meepo's crossbow ability was nasty. The Rogue slipped in through the back and attacked Ix, only to become Ix's next target (the jump ability was killer). The cleric revived the fighter and rogue with healing words, then ran in to engage the spider. The spider went down soon after, followed by the dragonshield (who had only 6 hp left from the previous encounter). The rogue then flanked Meepo and tried to attack, but Meepo used his dodge ability to redirect the attack to the dwarf, bringing the dwarf down to 2 hp ). But Meepo couldn't handled all 5 adventures, and a few actions later he was dead.
The encounter with the chokers was likewise really hard - the ability to interpose PCs into incoming attacks is *really* nasty. They chokers also just did lots of damage, and I got the rules wrong for escaping from a grab, so it was a bit tougher . The Rogue, Fighter, and Ranger went down in this combat, but the Cleric and Wizard managed to take out the last choker.
Hopefully we'll get to the black dragon this Saturday, but in general the group seemed to warm up to the system a little more. The player who kept making jokes about diagonal movement said he felt the system was pretty good. With only three encounters left in the adventure, I think we'll be able to wrap things up.
Bump in honor of the release of Keep on the Shadowfell (which might just be a Keep somewhere to the southwest of Oakhurst ...)
__________________ "The Soul of D&D?It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru
Bump in honor of the release of Keep on the Shadowfell (which might just be a Keep somewhere to the southwest of Oakhurst ...)
Did you get the keyed maps that I posted a while back? I have limited server space here on campus, and would like to move them off...but I wanted to make sure that you had a chance to download them first.
__________________ "The Soul of D&D?It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru
This Saturday our group finished up the adventure. The encounter with Varkaze was absolutely nasty - the Ranger was knocked unconscious early on in the fight as the hobgoblins wanted to keep him alive for potential slavebait (so I ruled the Ranger didn't have to roll death saves). However, after the group started taking down a few hobgoblins, they monsters started playing for keeps. Btw, the hobgoblin phalanx soldier ability was killer - those two hobgoblin soldiers were really sopping up the blows.
At the end of the fight, only the Wizard was left standing. We decided that he would have to try to use his Heal skill (with a mod of -1!) to try and stabilize the others. We went through a couple of rounds of the Wizard trying (and failing, but I only set the DC as 10!) to revive the Cleric. Unfortunately, the Dwarf died, failing three death saves! The Elf Rogue rolled a 20 on one, so he bounced back up. Then the Cleric rolled a 20 and all was well.
Fortunately for the Dwarf's player, the hobgoblins had recently taken a Halfling Paladin prisoner ...
Then the encounter with the dragon. Well, because no hobgoblins escaped to alert the dragon, I ruled that it was sleeping when the PCs entered. So they got a free round of unleashing their biggest attacks on the beast (I also ruled that the AC and Ref Defense of the dragon was lower, since it wasn't standing and moving). They also used decent tactics, spreading out to avoid the worst of the breath weapon. But I think the group survived because I went a little easy on them - I didn't use the darkness ability as much as I could have, for example. I also forgot to use the fear power - that probably would have made things very bad for the PCs. But in any case, Nightscale escaped and the PCs were victorious.
The only things I'd have to say about the adventure itself is that it felt like we fought a lot of kobolds and hobgoblins, so a greater variety of encounters might be nice. Also, I felt there wasn't enough deep, dark secrets going on in the town (things like villagers secretly working with the monsters). Finally, a skill challenge would be swell. But really, given the limited monster resources and knowledge of the game you had to work with, Olgar, RoO-R was lots of fun and great way to playtest 4e.
See this thread for some ideas about linking Raiders of Oakhurst Reloaded to Keep on the Shadowfell.
__________________ "The Soul of D&D?It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru
And for those lucky winners of the buy.com lottery ... here's a ready-to-run adventure for you!*
*Rules may not be exact. I didn't win the lottery
__________________ "The Soul of D&D?It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru
__________________ "The Soul of D&D?It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru
This probably deserves its own thread ... but Raiders of Oakhurst Reloaded was just nominated for an Ennie in the category of Best Fan Product!
You'll note that this is the only 4E product this year that is eligible for an Ennie .... so if you're a big 4E fan who enjoyed this adventure, make sure you get to the Ennies site between 21 July and 3 August and vote!
__________________ "The Soul of D&D?It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru
Remember 4E fans, this is the only 4E-compatible product eligible for an Ennie this year!
__________________ "The Soul of D&D?It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru
Xorn, tovakas, CleverNickName ... if one of you is going to GenCon, please contact me!
hawkstrike (at) yahoo (dot) com
__________________ "The Soul of D&D?It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru
Well, we didn't win ... but it was great to be nominated! Congrats to all the Ennies winners!
__________________ "The Soul of D&D?It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru
The game started in the cave mouth (stone table) then after one fight back tracked to why they were there. Some of the session was spent roleplaying in Star's Hallow - yes I stole the town from Gilmore Girls, and converted it to D&D. Since it is so well developed I will keep Oakhurst around for the next small town they come across. Starshallow had blessed 5 chickens for the sumer festival. The kobold raiders then stole the chickens. PCs were offered 20 gp each for the return of the Blessed chickens.
Players rolled easily through the first room, then without stopping went onto the next room, Skull-Skull from the back of the DMG. Where they actually took enough damage to need a short rest. Although they could hear the chickens they were sent to retrieve down the hall.
Session 2: went back in, got into a fight with the priest, dragonshields and Meepo, over the chickens. With that much support meepo was deadly and the entire party was KO'd except for the wizard. He retreated through Skull-Skull when the rogue made a nat 20 recovery save. the rogue climbed the back stairs and rode the swinging skull back into combat.
Later they killed the women and children, although the wizard accuracy predicted that one of the kids had surrived and would threaten them again. They learned orcs had taken over the dungeon and were occupying a room above the waterfall. Another short rest and they easily cleared the waterfall, using the skull-skull rope as a bolo to knock down a kobold slinger. The final encounter was an orc raider, berserker and evil eye who replace the hobgoblins. The orc priest had the force lance power, so that people could be pulled into the chasm (now only 10' deep with increased falling damage.) Once again the fighter and warlord were knocked out leaving the cowardly but suprisingly durable staff-mage to finish off the orcs (final hp 3, 8) the rogue managed to survive by using riposte strike again and again.
It was a fun game but the Warlord was frustrated by the fact that he is a front line fighter who cant protect himself, only adjacent allies. We had two near party kills in lvl 3 fights (625 xp) but the party acknowledges its poor tactics.
As a DM I can plan good tactics ahead of time, but don't do well adapting tactics to the changing situation. The Players are exactly opposite, plunging in stupidly, but getting smarter as they near getting wiped out. It will be interesting to see who adapts to the possibilities of 4e faster.
I just realized i forgot the boulder trap on the waterfall no wonder it was so easy...
__________________ Game Quote:
"Shut up! a giant blue smurf eats your character...zzzz"
(sometimes its important to stop gaming and sleep)
"You all are the worst emissaries, ever!" the silver dragon declares, shaking with rage.
"Its a game, a game, I'm only playing. " E. Wiggen My PbP games , Roll Dice
Last edited by Evilhalfling; 7th September 2008 at 08:27 AM..
Reason: Plot
LinkBack to this Thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/222233-raiders-oakhurst-reloaded-free-d-d-4th-edition-adventure-ennie-nominated.html
) and ran to Meepo's room, alerting the king.
Linear Mode
And yet another word from our sponsors
