Has anyone else started playing 'Scouring' yet? (Possible Spoilers)
So, my group started out on 'Scouring' on Thursday night, and it went very well. They made it as far as the depository, and everyone has said they enjoyed the mixture of combat and role-playing/intrigue, and are all looking forward to the next session.
I send out an e-mail after each session asking for comments on how they think the session went, and I'll quote one of them now.
"Intrigue, war, a city aflame, rescuing damsels in distress, dragons, weasels, bounty hunters, dogs, bank robberies, moral quandaries... the death of a hero.
What's not to like??"
A big thumbs up from my group then. How is everyone else finding it?
Have been running a prologue for the last couple of weeks while waiting for adventure to be released. Tomorrow night, I hope to wrap up the prologue and start the adventure proper.
Ah, the excitement of starting a new campaign, when players only have vague ideas of how their characters' personalities will turn out, and how they'll deal with unforeseen challenges. I'm not working on the 4e edition, but on behalf of those doing the conversion, I'm sure it isn't a stretch to say that they'd love to hear about your games. It was always great for me to hear how different groups handled the same situations.
__________________ Ryan "RangerWickett" Nock
Author of the War of the Burning Sky serialized novel, free at EN World. Part Two, The Irons Have Tolled, now available.
I'm not working on the 4e edition, but on behalf of those doing the conversion, I'm sure it isn't a stretch to say that they'd love to hear about your games. It was always great for me to hear how different groups handled the same situations.
I must say you are correct. And in response to a previous post, an all-arcane group is going to be challenging! I think the DM will have a tough time keeping them alive...
Depends on the group. I had a player in my initial run -- he played Diogenes, who I ended up putting into Gate Pass -- who figured out all sorts of ways to thwart inquisitor techniques. I'm sure some of the tricks will change under a new ruleset, but he was damned clever.
Stuff like bluffing to draw out a counterspell came early (he compared it to pump-faking in basketball). Then he started bluffing to pretend he was casting a different spell than usual so the inquisitors would counter the wrong way (improved counterspell relied on using the right school of magic).
Soon thereafter came the "duck behind cover (because counterspelling requires line of sight), cast an illusion of yourself, and have it pretend to cast a few spells." He'd keep up the gimmick until the inquisitor gave up trying to counter his spells, and then he'd pop out of cover and cast his real spells. This of course depended on having allies keep the inquisitor's thugs from finding his hiding spot.
I was also fond of his spelldueling tactics. Initially I set up the rules of spelldueling at Lyceum so that if you left the ring intentionally, fell unconscious, or didn't successfully cast a spell three rounds in a row, you lost. So when other mages tried to win with evocatives and summoned monsters, Diogenes just suggested, "Toss your spell components pouch out of the ring."
Man, I miss that player.
__________________ Ryan "RangerWickett" Nock
Author of the War of the Burning Sky serialized novel, free at EN World. Part Two, The Irons Have Tolled, now available.
We'll be starting this Sunday. Our group consists of:
a Dwarf Shaman
a dwarf battlerage fighter
a human ranger
a halfling rogue and
a 1/2 orc avenger
A little sad we don't have any arcanists for the Inquisitors to go after and not having a controller means that combat encounters with minons will take longer. On the positive side, we did some pre-game metagaming and we've got most skills but history trained for those skill encounters. I assume Torrent does NOT get involved in those unless she gets a cut of the exp...? HAving three strikers will be nice against the solos they meet, too.
Torrent only divides the XP award if she gets bloodied (Campaign Guide). The idea is that she can help get people out of a jam (The DM's helper), but doesn't significantly impact any one encounter. If she gets bloodied, she is clearly doing a lot and so the XP award per character suffers. In the first adventure, there are many encounters available where she isn't even present, so those are the ones you will have to worry about.
Make sure you re-read her motivations and how she will react in most combats. I tried to create plausible reasons for her to take a back seat most of the time.
Of course, if a player loses a character, she is all about dishing out the pain!!!
A little sad we don't have any arcanists for the Inquisitors to go after and not having a controller means that combat encounters with minons will take longer. On the positive side, we did some pre-game metagaming and we've got most skills but history trained for those skill encounters. I assume Torrent does NOT get involved in those unless she gets a cut of the exp...? HAving three strikers will be nice against the solos they meet, too.
How I'm handeling this is making it all spell casters Divine, Arcane, Natural, unless they swear an oath of Allegiance to Leeska (brain far on name sorry if that's not right). Someone who has actually sworn the oath has a Brand on his/her right hand, so they are easilly identifiable as loyal citiczens...
Torrent only divides the XP award if she gets bloodied (Campaign Guide). The idea is that she can help get people out of a jam (The DM's helper), but doesn't significantly impact any one encounter. If she gets bloodied, she is clearly doing a lot and so the XP award per character suffers. In the first adventure, there are many encounters available where she isn't even present, so those are the ones you will have to worry about.
I got that bit; I was just curious about skill challenges in particular.
I must say you are correct. And in response to a previous post, an all-arcane group is going to be challenging! I think the DM will have a tough time keeping them alive...
Why do you think it will be difficult to keep them alive?
Our campaign is starting next Tuesday...We've spent alot of time devleoping characters and backgrounds in the hopes of sustaining a long-term campaign beyond a straight-forward crawl. Having siad that - we all agree we like our combat too! For any that are interested, we've put together a fairly nice (IMHO) campaign site to document all the intrigue andplot points at War of the Burning Sky
So, we just finished our first run and I think it was a lot of fun! The flavor, descriptions, and intrique make this excpetional! Still, combat wise, I'm going to have to severely bump up the opposition. I knew that two of my party members were optimizers so I decided to dump the dogs, scouts, and thugs on the PC's in one round where they'd be nice and bunched up and flanked. Didn't matter: The party's dwarf shaman drops a daily power with a burst 5 effect and annihilates 3 of the 4 black horse minions, 2 of the 3 dogs, and injures some others. From there, our twin striking bow ranger and battlerage vigor fighter tore up the enemy with a little help from the rogue and avenger. The ceiling traps were a minor annoyance to them that ended up killing the last dog and finishing off a bloodied black horse thug.
Torrent, I decided from round one, got hit by a falling timber and was out. They didn't need her.
I thought it would be wise to send Kathor off to live to fight a harder encounter. Action points, the shaman's spirit, more arrows and some such were directed at his horse (which I made a level 3 warhorse brute to help him get away) and the 58 hp beast was dropped in 1 round. After the 1st hit on Kathor, he got his Trillith true strike and rolled a 1. *sigh* The party didn't slaughter him, but he gave his word to stay away. One character came close to bloodied; no healing surges were used by anyone.
They nearly obliterated Larion too before he could escape with his 40 remaining hp (and this is after the solon healed him). So, for future fights should I just:
1) add extra badguys,
2) or use the DMG rules to level up their enemies? In either case, I'll have to cheat down the experience values a bit and use the story-based system.
Next game they're slated to fight the "Fallen Devil" and I've already decided that he can't be bloodied or they'll laugh over his corpse by the end of round 3 at the lastest.
Last edited by kumagroo; 15th June 2009 at 03:43 AM..
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