4e Campaign - KoTS - Do we miss 3E?

Session 7 - The Second Level to KoTS

The party has completed a full rest, by barricading themselves (using a ritual) in one of the Sarcophagi rooms of level 1 on the KoTS. I provide them with some additional information based upon this wise tactical decision. I inform them of the regular hobgoblin patrols. The Hobgoblins have noticed that the KoTS is being assaulted. They successfully time their departure from their sanctuary around the hobgoblin patrol, and proceed safely into the Hobgoblin lair.

The last session went great with a combined "goblin" encounter, so I go for the same thing here. We're starting off the evening with a Level +4 encounter. I built the encounter to begin with a potential skill challenge, with success granting two easier "equal level" challenges. Nope, they were out for blood from the get go, summarily ignore the call for a "password" from the hobgoblins, and the melee ensues. The wizard dropped his daily in an inconvenient spot for me - where most of the hobgoblins were attempting to enter. The fighters do a nice job of "bottlenecking" and not "chasing" for this fight. In retrospect, the Hobgoblin lair needed better ranged attacks to be as big a threat as the goblins. It goes much smoother than the goblin's lair (in spite of being a higher level encounter). Again, the concept of running a "lair" encounter as one "large" encounter instead of several sub-encounters plays very well in 4e, and makes for a much more interesting and dynamic dungeon.

The party proceeds to the room with the Gelatinous Cubes and undead. I love old school Gelatinous Cubes, and the party picked up on the "unusually clean" passageways, as soon as I mentioned it. I was impressed how well the passive perception and invisibility rules worked for this encounter. It made it noticeably more difficult, but not necessarily overwhelming. It was also a very simple mechanic (skill check) without significant complications (targeting, etc.). I also got to surprise the party by adding a second cube to "trap" them in the hall. This made for a fun surprise for me! The players were pleasantly surprised that unlike in 3e, where fighters or melee combatants would be of "no use" in a slime/jelly/ooze encounter. One of the strikers, a ranger, unloaded with his dual weapons and hit with all four attacks (using an action point), and even critted on one...49 points of damage! Wow, that was an eye opener. The player at the time commented how great it was to be "useful" in this encounter.

The next encounter was the enormous trap room. This thing was hysterical. Most of the PC's entered the room to get whacked by the statue. Meanwhile, the wizard runs headlong across the room in an attempt to avoid the statue...only to be trapped in the whirlpool. It was hysterical. The party dealt with it well from there, knocking over the cherub statues. At one point, the wizard asked if he could "ray of frost" a vase to freeze the water? I checked the trap, noticed that a successful "arcana" check vs. DC20 was considered a success, and ruled on the spot he would pull it off with a successful arcana check. He was happy with that answer, and it gave a cool "story element" to what happened in the encounter. In the debrief after the session, I mentioned that I considered running this entire room as a giant skill challenge, with very high complexity (four or five). One player indicated it would have taken a lot longer to run (30+ minutes). Another player thought that would have made for a cool "Indiana Jones" encounter. They were less than thrilled when they discovered the traps required four or more "successes" to disable, each. For this party, with a part time thief, they were severely outmanned on this encounter.

The last encounter of the night was the undead room with zombies, zombie minions, and ghouls (I simply played the imp as straight "rp" to the story). The players loved the "zombie...brains..." swarming around them. They thought it was great how the zombies could "hold" a person while the ghoul used his vicious bite attack to attempt a brain eating. The ghouls were very tough, and their powers played well, even against the tough and high -AC fighters. The minions did not play well and got destroyed, once grouped, by the turning and the opportunity attacks of the fighters. Once the minions, and several zombies were routed, the fight turned significantly less difficult, and the party had a clear upper hand, especially with easy access to radiant damage.

We ended there for the night and recapped things that we learned. On one hand, we were very pleased and with the fact that everyone's actions are valuable and useful to the party in all encounters. We also really liked how some villians powers played extremely well with one another. The Hobgoblin warchief with his soldiers and minions, the ghoul with the zombies, and the dragon statue traps with the titan statue traps were all examples of this. On the other hand, we started to notice that we miss some elements of 3e. It was surprising how tactically simple the combat with the Gelatinous Cube became, when the fighters could mark it, and each round that it tried to "move" to engulf, the fighters each would get an OA and their mark powers allowed them to "cease" it's movement. Everyone could easily, equally damage the cube. It had a ton of hit points, so it's no pushover, but it wasn't a big "tactical" concern to the party. I loved how simple the "escape" checks are (Athletics or Acrobatics vs. Reflex defense), but this was a particularly easy roll for the fighters that were initially engulfed. It turned out to be much scarier "sounding" than it actually was in play. The cube certainly loses much of it's "EDGE" when compared with a similiar encounter in 3E or 1st Ed where getting stuck in the cube meant a degree of loss to that character and/or his items.

We also really noticed tonight that some of the tactical considerations that added flavor to the combat, the monsters, the PC's, and the story are completely washed away with 4e. There is no "spiked chain fighter build" in 4e, for example. Fighters in generally are much more interesting to play, with marking, a host of different powers, there are many more things they can do, but they're different things.

Do we miss those elements of 3E flavor? Enough to go back to 3e? We got a little "reminiscent" in our musings tonight, but nobody has made any direct overtures or suggestion that we change. In fact, many players suggested their just now starting to get a real flavor for their PC's potential, and how best to play them to unlock it.