D&D 4E 4e Lite: Cavern of Frostwynd

[SlyFlourish]

Based on our discussion in the 4e Lite thread (http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan...s-lite-fast-play-version-d-d-4th-edition.html) , I built a mini-adventure intended for three players and one dungeon master called "Cavern of Frostwynd". This is a 3rd level four-encounter adventure I wrote up to introduce my parents to D&D over thanksgiving (it also gave me an excuse to show off my new Dwarven Forge cavern sets which I adore).

Here's the adventure, let me know what you think!

http://mikeshea.net/4e_lite_frostwynd.pdf

 

[erf_beto]

Your parents should love combat encounters for this to work: there's no exploration, no skill uses, no roleplaying - it's a game of war! If they don't know anything about rpg, make sure to tell them this is only a portion of it. I should know! I could never introduce my lover to d&d with this

It seems all fights occur in the same area. True, they will go really fast from one encounter to the other to be bored with it (thanks to max dmg), but changing the terrain might offer a sense of exploration ("we are going deeper into the caves") and allow for diferent tactics and strategic thinking.

I just glanced at the characters and noticed the Rogue "daily" does not have "attack bonus vs defense", going straight to damage and effect. There also seems to be something wrong with the text in backstab.

I found one big problem: the dragonshield yells "foolish humans", and there are no human pregens! But maybe it's not so big a problem - what do kobolds know anyway?

Good luck with your folks!

 

[SlyFlourish]

All good points. I was trying to keep the whole thing down to an hour so it all takes place in one big room (I have a dwarven forge setup of a nice big room). It could use some skill challenges and some other stuff but I thought I'd start them in with combat.

Corrections made: I fixed a couple of errors with the dwarf fighter, fixed the rogue's trick strike, and changed humons to just "foolsssss".

We played through the first two combats yesterday. With the powerful attacks, the beasts went down in a couple of hits. I guess this is to be expected but it was almost TOO fast. We'll see how they do on the tougher kobolds and the dragon.

 

[Harr]

We played through the first two combats yesterday. With the powerful attacks, the beasts went down in a couple of hits. I guess this is to be expected but it was almost TOO fast. We'll see how they do on the tougher kobolds and the dragon.

Well, you do have a party of level 3's fighting level 1 monsters. I've been doing some playthroughs of some combats to prepare for my sunday game and I've found the max-damage thing makes lower-level monsters into a step above minions (something which I personally find to be appropriate).

Possibly a side effect of max damage is that you can't play around with the levels as much... as monsters go down in levels they'll turn into cake much faster and if they go up in levels they'll quickly become much more dangerous. Maybe the limits to building encounters become n-2 and n+2 rather than the n-4 and n+4 of the regular game.

Nice job on the layout though, I really struggle to produce stuff that's easily readable like that.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Nice job on the layout though, I really struggle to produce stuff that's easily readable like that.

Funny you mention that, my step father had a trouble reading the 1/2 page character sheet so I'm probably going to build some full page versions. Thank you for the complement - Apple Pages FTW.

I think damage and hitpoints should scale appropriately with the max damage thing. I guess the more dice you add in, the higher the damage scales over time. Average or a step above average is probably a better way to go but is tougher to figure out:

1d4 = 3
1d6 = 4
1d8 = 5
1d10 = 6
1d12 = 7

That makes damage less massive as more dice get added. We'll see how they do against the dragon today.

If I were tuning it fully, I'd round all hitpoints and damage out to the nearest five as well D&D minis style. I've done that before and it works out nicely.

 

[Emryys]

Very Nice!

 

[SlyFlourish]

finished

So we finished the scenario today. The max damage thing really doesn't work out too well. For example, the white dragon has a double claw attack normally hitting for 1d8+4. If both hit, he hits for another 1d8+4 and 1d6 cold. If we max all of that out, he hits for 42 damage which kills any of the characters in a single round. If we average it out, it would be about 29 damage which is still a lot but someone could survive.

Also, healing needs to work on downed characters. Having characters out of commission when that much damage is thrown around doesn't work. My mom was wiped out by the dragon's breath and just left the table since there was no way for her to come back.

Anyway, it was very close to a total wipeout except my wife's rogue threw the dragon over the pit with a positioning strike. That gave her enough time to patch up the other two and by the time the dragon flew back up again, they were at full HP though no use of new abilities. Anyway, they won.

So two changes I'd make: 1. average the damage instead of maximize it. 2. Use standard 4th edition healing rules for characters at or below 0.

 

[erf_beto]

Nice to hear how things went.

The real question is: did they have a good time?

It did look like averaging damage was a better way to go, but playtesting is so very important.

I didn't care enough to think about your "healing the dead" rules. There are so many things that go unoticed or can evolve into trouble!

On your future changes, I agree that rounding to the nearest 5 like DDM will definetly speed things up (I even suggested it, for your quick play epic characters), but I wonder if it's ok to do it on lower levels. Heroic tier characters don't do that much damage and things like "add your +2 Charisma modifier to damage" will just fade away. Maybe nearest multiple of 2 or 3 would be acceptable - but is it worth the trouble?

As for the math, I'd use the d4=3, d6=4, d8=5 etc for quickly calculating damage on the spot, but use the "real average values" (2.5, 3.5, etc) when writing statblocks.

 

[Harr]

Heh, meanwhile my group and I played last night with max damage and loved it. Granted, we didn't go up against any solos... mostly 'equal number of equal level enemies of two or three different roles' type of encounters. The system worked like a charm... fast, swingy, exciting at every moment, and the spectre of a wipe never left the table, but the players took this as a personal challenge rather than a detriment.

We all agreed that while the rest of the fast-play rules are still up for debate, the max damage is definitely staying in.

Just goes to show, there's no accounting

PS, wow, that white dragon power is NAS-TY, I hadn't noticed it before. Not even the other-color dragons have one like that. Whew.

 

[Foxman]

Heh, meanwhile my group and I played last night with max damage and loved it. Granted, we didn't go up against any solos... mostly 'equal number of equal level enemies of two or three different roles' type of encounters. The system worked like a charm... fast, swingy, exciting at every moment, and the spectre of a wipe never left the table, but the players took this as a personal challenge rather than a detriment.

Against equal level enemies it should work fine - but if you start adding monsters above or below the party level, or using elites/Solos (or even some brutes) the max/2x max gets a bit swingy...