Grimstaff
Explorer
So I got to run another short demo 4E session over the weekend. I decided to do a strait dungeoncrawl and coop'd a dungeon map from my B/X online game, renaming it (extra-cheese!) the Forsaken Halls of the Ancients, and jotting down some quick notes. Prep-time maybe a half an hour or so (last time I ran a Wilderlands session and spent about 2 hours for prep, mostly on stuff that never got used for the session 
)
The players picked the wizard, ranger, fighter, and cleric. I let the wizard player keep the staff of the warmage he won last time around. Four players this time, instead of 3 like last time, but this didn't have any noticable effect on length of combat. Has anyone ran 6 or more players yet?
We had a good time overall. There was a lot less frantic scanning of the quickstart rules to find this or that rule, so that sped up things a lot. The 2 1/2 hour session featured 3 combat encounters, 1 trap, and 1 puzzle, as well as some general exploration and "flavor-time". One combat especially took up most of the session, as what was planned as 2-3 seperate encounters turned into one long battle royale due tho the movements of the players.
Most memorable point? The party was pinned down on a bridge over a chasm by kobold slingers with sticky bombs from a crenellated balcony on the cavern wall. The ranger fey stepped (this a one-way trip remember? he didn't) over to the balcony while the rest of the party could only battle forward off the bridge to try to find a way to access the balcony. Ranger kills 1 slinger but gets taken to negative by the other 3, which close in to hack the elf to pieces. The cleric gets off a heal, which as a burst5 just barely reaches the ranger. Ranger gets up, uses his daily, (the 2 shots at once thing) and rolls a nat 20! Which per the power description counts for both victims, so 2 slingers go gown, and the last one runs for cover, but cant get outside the rangers liberal shooting range.
Meanwhile the rest of the party is dealing with a total of 32 minions, 2 casters, 2 skirmishers, and 2 shield kobolds.
The wizard really shone this time, blasting wave after wave of minions, the staff of the warmage doubling the burst range helped too. And he used his sleep on the stronger backline kobolds, which helped alot.
It was time for a full 6 hour rest after that fight, and they holed up in a barren chamber.
This system really handles large numbers of combatants well, its fun wading through hordes of minions just like the B/X days! Light, vision, perception, and stealth also came into play alot, and were intuitive and easily handled. No complaints this time around, and I can't remember what I complained about last time (I'll have to hunt down that thread, I know there was something...) to see if whatever it was went away or just didn't come up.
Total kills for the night:
31 kobold minions
4 kobold slingers
4 kobold skirmishers
1 kobold dragon shield
3 kobold wyrm priests
1 deathjump spider
1 falling rock trap
Total treasure:
3 100gp holy symbols
1 250gp jeweled headress (from a tomb)
89gp assorted pouch change
1 +1 Symbol of Life
Total exp:
515 each
If I do another session, I'll have to worry about leveling up the wizard, ranger, and fighter, who have about 800xp total apiece (I'm assuming this still happens at 1000xp).
)The players picked the wizard, ranger, fighter, and cleric. I let the wizard player keep the staff of the warmage he won last time around. Four players this time, instead of 3 like last time, but this didn't have any noticable effect on length of combat. Has anyone ran 6 or more players yet?
We had a good time overall. There was a lot less frantic scanning of the quickstart rules to find this or that rule, so that sped up things a lot. The 2 1/2 hour session featured 3 combat encounters, 1 trap, and 1 puzzle, as well as some general exploration and "flavor-time". One combat especially took up most of the session, as what was planned as 2-3 seperate encounters turned into one long battle royale due tho the movements of the players.
Most memorable point? The party was pinned down on a bridge over a chasm by kobold slingers with sticky bombs from a crenellated balcony on the cavern wall. The ranger fey stepped (this a one-way trip remember? he didn't) over to the balcony while the rest of the party could only battle forward off the bridge to try to find a way to access the balcony. Ranger kills 1 slinger but gets taken to negative by the other 3, which close in to hack the elf to pieces. The cleric gets off a heal, which as a burst5 just barely reaches the ranger. Ranger gets up, uses his daily, (the 2 shots at once thing) and rolls a nat 20! Which per the power description counts for both victims, so 2 slingers go gown, and the last one runs for cover, but cant get outside the rangers liberal shooting range.
Meanwhile the rest of the party is dealing with a total of 32 minions, 2 casters, 2 skirmishers, and 2 shield kobolds.
The wizard really shone this time, blasting wave after wave of minions, the staff of the warmage doubling the burst range helped too. And he used his sleep on the stronger backline kobolds, which helped alot.
It was time for a full 6 hour rest after that fight, and they holed up in a barren chamber.
This system really handles large numbers of combatants well, its fun wading through hordes of minions just like the B/X days! Light, vision, perception, and stealth also came into play alot, and were intuitive and easily handled. No complaints this time around, and I can't remember what I complained about last time (I'll have to hunt down that thread, I know there was something...) to see if whatever it was went away or just didn't come up.
Total kills for the night:
31 kobold minions
4 kobold slingers
4 kobold skirmishers
1 kobold dragon shield
3 kobold wyrm priests
1 deathjump spider
1 falling rock trap
Total treasure:
3 100gp holy symbols
1 250gp jeweled headress (from a tomb)
89gp assorted pouch change
1 +1 Symbol of Life
Total exp:
515 each
If I do another session, I'll have to worry about leveling up the wizard, ranger, and fighter, who have about 800xp total apiece (I'm assuming this still happens at 1000xp).
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