I ran the Heathen adventure from Dungeon #155 over the weekend. It was the first 4E run for both me and the players. We had a group of 5 characters, freshly minted at 5th level, including a dragonborn fighter, dragonborn warlord, eladrin ranger, eladrin rogue, and tiefling warlock. I thought I'd post some thoughts on the adventure, but also on my experience with 4E rules and playability (with some feedback from the players thrown in). Note that there may be some minor spoilers from the adventure in here, but I'll try to minimize those if I can.
Overall, it was a lot of fun. Our group gets into mostly hack-and-slash type of adventures, but needs a lot of atmosphere as well (not so much extended dialog with NPCs, etc). It took a few encounters before everyone was comfortable with the flow of things in 4E (all have been playing since 2E or earlier). We used a battle mat and some miniatures (we usually don't, so this was new) for all of the combat encounters. The play flow is very much more centered around encounter vignettes than my usual style. This turned out not to be too bad, since it was a good excure for bathroom breaks, meals, etc.
The rulebooks aren't off when say to estimate one hour per encounter. Almost every encounter was about an hour long (the shortest was about 25 minutes), with the exception of skill challenges and trap encounters, which went by pretty quickly.
The players enjoyed the way the characters worked. Again, it took a few encounters before the details of how to make best use of stealth, remember to curse, mark, and quarry, etc, took hold.
The skill challenges (there are two, complexity 5, and complexity 3) went much smoother than I thought, given the various threads I've been reading. It looks like this adventure set the DCs (at least some of them) fairly well for the group. The major comment was that the structure of the skill challenges felt more constraining than a more free-flow interaction would. However, the structure did make a little easier to organize things from the DM perspective. The highlight was definitely the warlock leading some cultists of Bane in an appeal for personal strength set to a disco beat.
The combat encounters were a little harder than I expected overall. Maybe it was mostly the early ones, while people were getting used to the rules, but when the monster roll well, things get pretty hairy. This adventure has no minions, and for the first two thirds it is set up with one encounter per day. This was good, because the group ended up needing to burn all of their dailies for most of those encounters.
One general complaint was that monsters seem so much cooler than PCs. This is mostly a problem with solo humanoid monsters, but even some of the other monsters caused some baddie envy. I think that this will mellow out a bit with experience with the 4E system, but still, it does seem like some monsters get abilities that aren't available to PCs at all or until much higher levels. (The bugbear stranglers garrote and body shield, the hobgoblin warcasters force pulse, and the tiefling darkblades cloak of lurking and ever-poisoned short-swords brought the biggest howls.)
The treasure for the adventure felt a little light. It had the right number of magic items, but the money itself felt like less than I expected (although it may be in line with the DMG--I didn't check). The selected magic items were pretty appropriate already--although I did swap out the diadem of acuity for a +2 safewing amulet.
The encounter maps are fairly well thought-out, with interesting features (hazards, difficult terrain, obscured terrain, etc) in most of them. They did however, inspire some meta-game complaining ("We're totally paranoid and would never camp there"). The players took a while to get used to the increased opportunities that such features provided. It might be a hazard of players expereienced with previous versions, but there were several fights that ended up being fairly static once a couple of fey steps, etc had been used up.
-chmiwasm
Overall, it was a lot of fun. Our group gets into mostly hack-and-slash type of adventures, but needs a lot of atmosphere as well (not so much extended dialog with NPCs, etc). It took a few encounters before everyone was comfortable with the flow of things in 4E (all have been playing since 2E or earlier). We used a battle mat and some miniatures (we usually don't, so this was new) for all of the combat encounters. The play flow is very much more centered around encounter vignettes than my usual style. This turned out not to be too bad, since it was a good excure for bathroom breaks, meals, etc.
The rulebooks aren't off when say to estimate one hour per encounter. Almost every encounter was about an hour long (the shortest was about 25 minutes), with the exception of skill challenges and trap encounters, which went by pretty quickly.
The players enjoyed the way the characters worked. Again, it took a few encounters before the details of how to make best use of stealth, remember to curse, mark, and quarry, etc, took hold.
The skill challenges (there are two, complexity 5, and complexity 3) went much smoother than I thought, given the various threads I've been reading. It looks like this adventure set the DCs (at least some of them) fairly well for the group. The major comment was that the structure of the skill challenges felt more constraining than a more free-flow interaction would. However, the structure did make a little easier to organize things from the DM perspective. The highlight was definitely the warlock leading some cultists of Bane in an appeal for personal strength set to a disco beat.
The combat encounters were a little harder than I expected overall. Maybe it was mostly the early ones, while people were getting used to the rules, but when the monster roll well, things get pretty hairy. This adventure has no minions, and for the first two thirds it is set up with one encounter per day. This was good, because the group ended up needing to burn all of their dailies for most of those encounters.
One general complaint was that monsters seem so much cooler than PCs. This is mostly a problem with solo humanoid monsters, but even some of the other monsters caused some baddie envy. I think that this will mellow out a bit with experience with the 4E system, but still, it does seem like some monsters get abilities that aren't available to PCs at all or until much higher levels. (The bugbear stranglers garrote and body shield, the hobgoblin warcasters force pulse, and the tiefling darkblades cloak of lurking and ever-poisoned short-swords brought the biggest howls.)
The treasure for the adventure felt a little light. It had the right number of magic items, but the money itself felt like less than I expected (although it may be in line with the DMG--I didn't check). The selected magic items were pretty appropriate already--although I did swap out the diadem of acuity for a +2 safewing amulet.
The encounter maps are fairly well thought-out, with interesting features (hazards, difficult terrain, obscured terrain, etc) in most of them. They did however, inspire some meta-game complaining ("We're totally paranoid and would never camp there"). The players took a while to get used to the increased opportunities that such features provided. It might be a hazard of players expereienced with previous versions, but there were several fights that ended up being fairly static once a couple of fey steps, etc had been used up.
-chmiwasm
