pogre's Trailblazer Campaign Notes & Questions

pogre · Nov 6, 2010

Question 1: Is Summon Nature's Ally unchanged or does it operate much the way the Arcane spell Summon Monster does?

Wulf Ratbane · Nov 9, 2010

pogre said:
Question 1: Is Summon Nature's Ally unchanged or does it operate much the way the Arcane spell Summon Monster does?

The philosophical underpinnings behind the change ("Don't let players rifle through the Monster Manual...") are the same.

That being said--

There is a lot less room for abuse with Animals. Most of them should be good to go right out of the monster manual.

Go with what is easiest and least frustrating for both you and the players.

pogre · Nov 10, 2010

Thanks - kind of what I thought. The druid is played my son and he gets real joy out of rifling through the monster manual. I think I will let it stand unchanged because it is more fun for him.

We played our first session this past Sunday. I will post more later, but my initial thought is - Wow! I way underestimated the abilities of first level TB PCs.

Wulf Ratbane · Nov 10, 2010

pogre said:
Wow! I way underestimated the abilities of first level TB PCs.

Yeah, they should be able to handle (with APs, Combat Reactions, teamwork, etc.) about 1200-1500 XP worth of enemies. More enemies is better-- ie, many CR1 critters is better than a CR5 critter.

It's for this reason that you'll want to use the tweaked XP advancement table as shown. You can (and should) hit TB characters harder, but to compensate for that you'll need to push the level-up XP totals out further.

My current campaign has my PCs on track for 2nd level at 3000, 3rd level at 6000, and 4th level at 9000 XP.

Because I want them to level up every 2-3 sessions, and because each session only has time for 1-2 fights, I am hitting them very hard indeed each and every encounter. I wouldn't call that the "default" TB playstyle by any means but it works for our office campaign (meeting every other week for only about 3 hours).

EDIT: I've attached the Excel sheet I use.

pogre · Nov 21, 2010

OK I wanted to post that I finally have the first part of the story hour up.
pogre's Trailblazer story hour

We're playing our 3rd session tomorrow and this is actually only the first half of the first session.

Observations:
1st - As I said earlier, I way underestimated TB PCs.

2nd - Half-Orcs kick even more major a$$ in TB. My son's half-orc barbarian is dishing out ungodly amounts of damage.

3rd - As is common in my campaigns, I have no arcane casters and three divine PCs. The lack of arcane PCs may make this less of a true test run than it should be. We never really had a lot of the problems with 3rd ed. that a lot of folks did because of my players reluctance to play arcane PCs.

4th - Because I undermined some of the assumptions in TB, I have skewed things even further in the PCs favor. They're having a blast though - so I'm not overly concerned. I will definitely have to ramp up the challenges though.

GlassJaw · Nov 21, 2010

pogre said:
OK I wanted to post that I finally have the first part of the story hour up.
pogre's Trailblazer story hour

Sweet! Nice job.

2nd - Half-Orcs kick even more major a$$ in TB. My son's half-orc barbarian is dishing out ungodly amounts of damage.

I played a half-orc druid with 1 level of barbarian in our last TB campaign. Definitely an effective combo. I'm a huge fan of the TB half-orc as well.

Wulf Ratbane · Nov 21, 2010

pogre said:
2nd - Half-Orcs kick even more major a$$ in TB. My son's half-orc barbarian is dishing out ungodly amounts of damage.

Personally I'd chalk that up more to the Barbarian side of that equation...

pogre · Nov 22, 2010

Wulf Ratbane said:
Personally I'd chalk that up more to the Barbarian side of that equation...

True, but in today's adventure the boy fully embraced all power attack, all the time! He said, "Dad, I'm all out power attack unless I say different, which will be NEVER!"

Yes, my son really talks like that. Brian L. would be so proud!

Another quote from Stevie at today's game -

"Bring it meat! I've got some slicin' to do!"

pogre · Nov 22, 2010

OK another legitimate question:

Does anybody have a sort of combat cheat sheet? I try to remind my players of their options, but it's tough and sometimes I forget about some of the cool stuff you can do in TB?

Does anybody have an "all-in-one" level advancement sheet that includes the spiffy Action Point stuff like mythic smite, etc.?

If not, I can put one of my players to work on it. He is cranking out a custom DM screen for our game too.

Wulf Ratbane · Nov 22, 2010

pogre said:
True, but in today's adventure the boy fully embraced all power attack, all the time! He said, "Dad, I'm all out power attack unless I say different, which will be NEVER!"

*stunned silence*

Man... I'm gettin' all teary-eyed myself.

Does anybody have a sort of combat cheat sheet? I try to remind my players of their options, but it's tough and sometimes I forget about some of the cool stuff you can do in TB?

I would at least print out page 95 (Combat Reactions).

And maybe page 17 (Action Points).

Combat Reactions are really more important than Action Points, in my experience. Aid Another (both attack and defense), combined with flanking-- and remember, you can move around inside a creature's threatened area without provoking attacks of opportunity. Suddenly you're talking about +4 to hit in the clutch, which is pretty key when you're power attacking with everything you've got!