D&D 4E Raiders of Oakhurst: A 4E Fan Playtest Adventure

I as well will be running this tomorrow. For my Girlfriend, brother and sister, and a few nieces.
I'll report back when done.
Thank you all so much for the work you put into this.

Glory to Gary. And to Meepo.

Well my group played this module today, and I must say we enjoyed it, although the fight with Varkaze was tough, and Meepo seemed to dish out a lot of damage...the big encounter was Nightscale, and man oh man, the look on their faces when they saw it! They were scared. The party did extremely well, and had, fun, although Nightscale managed to drop them in round 10...they did manage to get her to a whole whopping 41hp, which I thought they could have dropped her, but it was a TPK nonetheless

Now we wait for Keep on the Shadowfell, oh well...

I just finished the adventure and found the new combat rules to be fast and fun.Easy to pick up aswell. I ran it for four friends and things went smoothly. Minions are a blast and the dragon fight ,fun but not as hard as it should have been (Forgot to use its tail slash whenever pcs missed :\ ). No big issues though. Great adventure too. Thanks for posting it .

My play group fell apart! Due to unexpected occurences we didn't have a game going at 10 AM like we were supposed to. In fact it was pretty late by the time we got started. Three players played 5 of the characters, and we just ran the first room before deciding to stop and run it again tomorrow, when all six people will be on.

As far as Encounter 1, they loved it, and I really had a great time. Due to the wonderful power of chatlogs, I'm going to post the fight in a blogstyle post, and link it here momentarily (with screenshots)...

Short Version: They stomped the first encounter, no second winds used, two dailies used (LOL), some of the worst rolls I've ever seen from the guy playing the Paladin & Warlock, and the cleric used Healing Word once after Varkaze gave him the old "How's yer father?" with Force Pulse. They picked up on the synergy pretty quick, and were really excited about the varying decisions they have. I liked when the warlock caught on fire and dove into the stream--I gave him an automatic save.

Long Version:
Entire Chatlog with nine screenshots!

Note that I cleaned up the chat log a little, and rearranged a bit of the text to make it easier to read. We handle all OOC chat over Ventrilo (though some of the funnier stuff leaks into chat) and in-combat everything is handled over voice. When your turn finishes, you "summarize" it all in text, while I move onto the next person. When reading the chatlog it can look weird as one person is making attack rolls, then the previous person posts their "flavor text" as we like to call it. (Combat moves a lot faster this way.)

For THIS chatlog I fixed it so the flavor text summary appears at the right chronological spot, but for tomorrow's game, when we do the full run, I'm not going to adjust it. This will be my explanation on how to view the chatlog. I promise to take a stupid amount of screenshots, again.

Nice work, Olgar. A few of my players joined me last night for an impromptu session to experiment with your quasi-4E adventure. By and large, we had a really good time. I was a little leary heading into that first combat, concerned that the repetitive nature of some characters' primary attacks would affect our mood... but it was nothing to be concerned about. We managed about 10 rounds of combat in what it typically takes to do 3 or 4 in our 3.5 games, and the players were having a blast. The guy playing the halfling paladin was hamming it up, using highly effective combinations of his powers and crying out challenges and praises to Tymora the whole time. (He especially loved making me reroll an attack that would have flattened him...)

I did note that some of the excessively bad die rolls were particularly devastating to the players. A couple of the characters used their daily powers and missed, both by just a point or two on the die. My favorite moment in the first battle was when the paladin was in the midst of the kobold minions, kicking ass and taking names until he was down to just the Skirmisher, and Varkaze let loose with his Force Pulse and knocked him prone into the firepit. You should have seen the look on his face.... *grins*

I managed to get through the battle with the hobgoblins before we had to hang it up, so I never got to run the encounter with the dragon. I hope to give it a shot some other evening. All in all, we had a good time... and that's all that really matters.

I didn't have time to run the full adventure so we ran two encounters. One with 8 kobold minions and 1 skirmisher. And the second encounter was with Meepo, 1 skirmisher, 1 artillery, and the Deathjump Spider.

The party consisted of the Cleric, Warlock, Wizard, and Ranger.

The party walked through the first encounter. Just stomped all over the kobolds. Once they realized the skirmisher was tougher than his allies, they all concentrated fire on it and took it down easily.

Because they had such an easy time in the 1st encounter, I made the 2nd one much harder. The 2nd encounter almost ended up as a TPK. Both the ranger and the cleric died. And the reason for this was a combination of poor dice rolls and subpar tactics. They had no defender so they put the cleric in front to act as a defender. The party came in through a narrow cave entrance so they thought blocking the cave would funnel all the attacks through the cleric and give the ranged guys lots of time to take down the enemies.

Well what happened was that since the enemies couldn't get through the cleric, they all attacked the cleric and dropped him. Then the ranger tried to step into the defender's role and got dropped also. Although by this time both the skirmisher and the spider had been killed and Meepo and the artillery kobold slinger had been sufficiently hurt that the wizard and the warlock were able to take them down without too much further trouble since they had hoarded their dailies and unleashed them now that their allies had dropped.

Some additional observations and comments:

Movement is vastly different. Without the punitive cost for diagonal movement, I was able to move bad guys all over the map relatively easily. Most of the players were still in the 3.5 mindset of make small movements, and attack. Only the warlock player and the ranger player really grokked that they could pretty much move anywhere and took advantage of that. Going back to my 3.5 Pathfinder game, it felt like my monsters were all wearing ankle weights.

Having a defender is important. And if you don't have a defender, its almost better for the party to spread out to prevent enemy attacks from focusing on a character that is not suited to be a defender. Conversely, while spreading out to diffuse enemy attacks, its a good idea for the party to focus their attacks on one enemy at a time so that they drop them faster. The group didn't really focus their attacks on any one foe and that hurt them since their enemies stayed alive longer and thus could do more damage round over round.

The warlock player had played 1e/2e extensively, but only played 3e when it first came out in 2000. He burned out on 3e and had quit D&D by the time 3.5 came out. When being explained the rules and looking over his character sheet, he commented that it felt somewhat like a videogame. I asked him neutrally whether he thought that was a good or a bad thing, and he responded that he didn't know yet. He'd have to play first.

After the game, he said that while there does seem to be a slight videogame feel from his perspective, he really enjoyed it. He loved cursing the bad guys without them getting any save against it. He loved using eyebite to make himself invisible to his foes, and he liked the teleport step he could take when dropping a cursed foe. He also took advantage of the movement rules and was all over the map. I suspect that his lack of 3.5 baggage helped him grok the new system faster.

I lent him my 4e preview books, and showed him the scanned pages from D&D XP with the monster stats and stuff. He said he was only mildly interested in 4e before today, but now he is totally hooked, and jokingly accused me of peddling D&D crack.

He said he will get the 4e books and probably run a game for us. Which is cool because he ran some great games back in high school.

Where are the links to the characters?

I can't seem to find them.

Aluvial

Nicely done adventure Olgar. I ran this adventure last night with the full complement of characters, and a good time was had by all. Surprisingly the first encounter was one of the longer combats (5 rounds), as the party had some trouble hitting the kobold minions in the middle rounds. The map was excellent and provided lots of opportunities for use of daily/encounter powers. For example, when the two kobold skirmishers appeared on the raised corridor, Skamos used his encounter orb power to blast them (after they had hit him for some good damage), quickly followed by Riardon, who teleported behind the skirmishers and used his split the tree power to deal them a good deal of damage from behind. Varkase showed up as in the encounter description but lasted only 2 rounds, but not before pushing the cleric and paladin into the fire pit with his ranged attacks.

The encounter with Meepo and the spider went more quickly, as the fighter nailed the spider with her daily power and the cleric rolled a 20 using his lance of faith and power of amanuator power on poor Meepo. Then it was on the encounter 4 and NIghtscale, which led to TPK.

Overall the adventure was fun and really showcased the 4e mechanics. I enjoyed it so much I immediately went to amazon and pre-ordered the 4e rulebook compilation. I really like the new healing system and combat seems so fluid and intuitive now, but I am trying to reserve overall judgment on the game until we see the whole package.

Thanks for providing a mechanism for those of us who could not attend DDXP to give 4e a "test drive."

I played yesterday. Dedicated to E. Gary Gygax.
Ran my Brother and Sister and Girlfriend and Mom. All grown adults.
Brother, 27, played Wizard - D&D 3.5 Epic Level player every weekend. Plays with mad crazy House rules and some serious firepower. Also a Videogamer.
Sister, 30, played Fighter - Played D&D 3.0 about 4 years ago. Great Roleplayer. Not so great with rules. Has also played EQ and WoW, poorly.
Girlfriend, 24, played Rogue - Has played nothing. 1 session of D&D starer set. 1 session of DDM. Halo. That's about it. But willing to try and that's why I love her.
Mom, 50-ish, played Warlock - Plays anything you put in front of her. But doesn't quite grok D&D.

Ok, here's how the session went and then I'll give you their impressions.

Kobolds.
They didn't know there was a difference to the minions for a long while. They missed alot. I loved moving kobolds around, the movement was good stuff. They worked well together. The Warlock's Curse was able to take out about 3 or 4 minions by itself. That was cool. And she still got to attack skirmishers. Fighter got in there and marked things, and it made sense to attack her most of the time, but I also was able to attack others if I wanted to, taking -2. I liked it and I understood how that works well. The rogue finally got the idea of combat advantage near the end and worked hard for those 2d6 extra damage. I think she did it twice against minions. I let her roll damage and everything so she felt good. They didn't need to know they only had 1 hp. heehee.
Used a few encounter powers. No dailys. Did well with resource management. Didn't use ANY surges, but probably should have. They did their roles well. Fighter and Rogue got hit. Warlock and wizard were not injured.

King's room.
Meepo was warned so he wasn't there. but I left the minion that ran with the alarm there. And the spider had surprise. I gave it a standard attack action and then rolled initiative.
The Wizard, thinking this was the end, used his Daily Acid Arrow, doing mass amounts of damage, then used his Action Point, cast a MM and critted. The spider never got another attack. minion died instantly and that was that.

They then fought the Hobgoblins.
Probably should have reduced the numbers. Ran 1 warcaster, 1 archer and 2 soldiers.
The archer hit his first 4 rounds. The Rogue and Fighter never moved out of the water and the warlock and wiz stayed behind them. The Soldiers just came up and started chopping them down. Mom moved around the most. Probably because she was the least knowledgeable of D&D and didn't know that most people used to not move in 3.x.
Rogue went down. Fighter went down. Wizard went down. Rogue died. Fighter saved and came back. And went down. And Died. Wizard died. Warlock down. Died.

Only thing I think I would have done is move the fight to the archer and warcaster. the whole fight took place right next to the wizard and warlock. Other than that the problem, like so many others, was low rolls on the PC's part vs. High rolls for the Monsters.
If 3 outta 4 hit in a round, that's about 24 damage. Focused attacks might have helped but they just had bad luck.

All in all, fun for everyone anyways.

As for a debrief, both my brother and sister said they really liked it.
We used cards with all powers written on them, and EVERYONE loved it. you turned them upside down and when they refreshed you turned them back up. It worked really well for my Mom and Girlfriend. I highly recommend them.

As for the DM side, I loved the rules. Simple and easy to adjudicate. Monsters did so much more than just attack. I can't wait.

And finally, why I love 4e, I'll be able to play with my brother and sister weekly with the DDI. I moved 4 years ago and this will get us together and I'm super excited.

So my group finally ran this today We intended to run about an hour or one encounter befor transitioning to our regular 3.5 campaign, but went two hours as the 1 encounter became ... extended. Everyone had lots of fun. I'll provide an overview of what happened first, then provide observations.

The Adventure
When everyone arrived, we divvied up characters ... ending up with all seven in play (six D&D XP characters plus the EN World elf rogue). This made the party a bit more resilient than the adventure anticipated; I corrected by adding some additional kobold minions but didn't go quite far enough (more below).

They started by coming down the steps single file and hailing the kobolds around the fire, which resulted in the alarm being raised immediately. The fighter, paladin, and warlock charged into the room, and minions began dropping to wizard, cleric, and warlock at-will powers. The fighter and paladin, both played by the same player, rolled extremely poorly and were sorely pressed by Ichi-Ichi and three minions. Kobold reinforcements arrived, and engaged the first group, plus the rogue and ranger who had moved farther into the room. There were all challenged by the skirmishers ... and despite my use of goblin minis for the non-minions, and descriptions of them as "tougher" kobolds, they didn't concentrate fires, and switched back and forth between attacking minions and tougher foes. The ranger (fighting with his longsword) and rogue were soon bloodied, and it took the cleric a while to decide to assist with some healing as he was having too much fun blasting opponents.

The kobolds tried to send a runner to Meepo, but he was dropped to an opportunity attack, so finally Otto-wombo went for help, just as (a round late, on round 4) Varkaze entered, firing off a Force Pulse. I rolled badly for Varkaze the entire time, and not a single one of his spells hit, so as he retreated the PCs began to concentrate on him.

I gave the players an option at that point, as the remaining two enemies (Varkaze and Otto-wombo) were retreating: continue to pursue and stay in combat rounds, or break the encounter and let the enemy withdraw. They chose to pursue (much to the chagrin of the ranger player, who wanted to use some healing surges) -- throwing light spells and sun rods ahead of them for light as they separately pursued the retreating monsters in separate directions, splitting the party.

The rogue pursued Otto-wombo to Meepo's room, caught the spider with a Perception check, and decided discretion was the better part of valor and turned tail to rejoin the rest of the party.

The rest of the party pursued Varkaze, who beat a fighting retreat, pausing to fire blasts behind him, all of which missed, while he was steadily being worn down in hit points by the wizard, cleric, and warlock. He managed to make it back to his allies, who pincushioned the pursuing fighter, before the cleric finally dropped him. Then the party ganged up on the hobgoblin soldier, eventually bringing him down, and then were finally able to mop-up the two archers (with the fighter/paladin player finally having fun by killing the last two).

Total: ten rounds of combat, all the opponents from rooms 1 and 3 defeated except Otto-wombo, room 2 sighted but not engaged, 3 action points spent, two daily powers used, 3 second winds/lay on hands spent, and 4 characters bloodied (the rogue twice, though no character reduced to unconscious).

We stopped at that point to swith to our main campaign, so they didn't go on to face Nightscale.

Observations

Pro

1. Everyone had tremendous fun.
2. 1st level characters are tough -- they charged in with abandon. They admitted afterward that had these not been playtest characters, they would have been more cautious. The warlock player played his low Wis to the hilt -- it was he who pursued the warcaster despite the others wanting to stop.
3. They enjoyed the mottoes on the character sheets -- after each spell cast, the wizard would say "You know, this isn't as easy as it looks."
4. They definitely had lots of options to choose from, which made it fun for everyone -- no character lacked for an interesting option.
5. It felt like combat moved faster than it actually did; those rounds flew by even with a lot of questions about how certain powers or rules worked.
6. The movement-based powers were a lot of fun; the warlock and ranger were shifting, fey-stepping, teleporting, etc all over the place.
7. Monsters have some cool features, and the encounters are easy to plan using the XP-based system.
8. Minions = teh fun. Easy to run for the DM, fun to kill for PCs.
9. Rolling lots of dice & lots of damage = happy players.
10. Action points -- made for combining cool combos when a character had at-will or encounter powers across multiple action types.

Neutral
1. Several players remarked: "This feels so much like World of Warcraft" -- which was a positive for some, a negative for others.
2. 1-1-1 movement definitely speeded movement up, but was seen as a bit of an exploit as diagonal movement quickly became preferred.
3. The cleric and warlock were viewed as being more powerful than the other characters ... which might have had a bit more to do with die-rolling success. The cleric and warlock player really enjoyed their PCs, as did the ranger player.
4. As a DM, it was easy to put the encounters together, but harder to synergize the performance of the monsters (though I chalk this up to my own unfamiliarity with the monster abilities).
5. Fun was still proportional to die roll luck -- the fighter/paladin character had a bit less fun as he never landed any of his cool powers.
6. Crits. They enjoyed not rolling to confirm, but missed rolling extra dice (the preference seemed to be for the double-damage potential even if that risked rolling two 1's). What's a crit for a minion who does 2 damage? 2 damage.

Con
1. At least two players asked "This is supposed to be easier/simpler/faster?" It certainly didn't feel that way to them. These players were relatively new to 3E, too, so there was some adjustment there, and didn't have a lot of time studying their sheets -- the ranger missed out on some of his best powers as it took a while before he figured out how to use his powers with his bow. Familiarity should improve that ... but the number options were a bit intimidating for the newer players.
2. I can see DM load on multiple effects becoming tedious. We didn't have too many in play as the warcaster never managed to land anything, but if he had it would have increased my workload a bit.
3. 1st level PCs seem a bit too hardy ... it was remarked that they enjoyed the additional caution required at low levels, where an orc was quite threatening ... it didn't feel the same with 20+ hit points plus action points & healing surges.
4. Need some rules clarifications ... one of the risks of playtest without full rules (see below).
5. You do need a way to track marks & ongoing effects ... it's harder to wing combat with each PC seemingly tied to a particular opponent by different mechanics. "Marks" and similar powers are the major challenges here, at least from this playtest.
6. Multiple defenses mean you have to change how the players and the DM announce attacks. You can't just say "I hit an 18". I kept having to ask "Is that an 18 against AC, Fort, reflex, etc?" -- usually because it was the wizard, cleric, or warlock attacking. I think a good SOP would be to announce the attack type then result; for example: "Hit AC 18" or "hit Fort 15". This adds a bit of complexity to attacks, where before an attack was always against an AC and the other defenses came up as saves.

Rules Clarifications
As can be expected, we came across some unknown or wonky things as a result of not having full rules, and could have used clarification:

1. How do Run and Charge interact with difficult terrain? I went against 3.5 rules on a whim, and allowed running/charging over difficult terrain, but in hindsight that was a bad idea as it minimized the impact of the terrain (even though it still cost double the move cost).
2. How does concealment work? The warlock had several powers that had concealment, which we weren't completely sure how to adjudicate (I ended up ruling that his move power gave Concealment 5, so a roll of 6 or better allowed an attack to proceed, while Invisibility granted Concealment 11).
3. Which powers are spell-like and draw opportunity attacks when used in a threatened area? We made reasonable judgments, but I didn't see how to determine that clearly from the power descriptions.
4. If you do use a spell-like at-will ability when threatened, and draw the OA, what happens? There isn't a Concentration skill ... is it rolled up into something else?
5. Are there any limits on single round combos? I don't think so ... we had the cleric blast off multiple powers by combining powers based on minor, move, and standard actions, with an Action Point, in one round ... but I think that's probably how the game is designed.

The Adventure
1. The first encounter is probably fine for 5-6 PCs; I should have added a slinger or skirmisher for 7 PCs, in addition to the two extra minions.
2. The hobgoblins in room 3 would be more interesting with 2 soldiers and 1 archer rather that 1 soldier and 2 archers ... so the soldiers could use their phalanx fighting ability. Otherwise, the balance is right for 5-6 PCs to provide a bit more challenging fight (and it becomes even more so if they split the party, then charge into it without stopping to recover per-encounter powers!). It probably would have been more deadly had the warcaster not rolled so poorly, nor the cleric so well.
3. Sadly, didn't get to run Nightscale this time ... maybe next time we meet.

We did leave, after a fun session of our regular campaign, wanting to try out some more 4E, so I'd consider that a successful experiment.