KesselZero
First Post
Playtest Report
5/26/12
On Saturday I played the 5e playtest packet for the first time. The adventure was being run by a trio of local DMs who had tried it out Friday night for the first time. We had, I believe, 14 players there for the playtest, so while our table had exactly five, one had only four. (They ended up in the orc caves and got slaughtered.) We each picked one of the pregens and got rolling. I chose the wizard, since I was really interested in testing out the combo of Vancian and at-will spells.
I made a point of sitting at the table of one of my favorite DMs; he always goes the extra mile in his game prep, so I wasn't surprised when we started the session off not at the entrance to the Caves of Chaos, but with a bit of quick backstory about how we were an adventuring crew who hopped a caravan to a ramshackle frontier town called Bastion. We arrived at Bastion on a damp, gray day, seeking adventure of course, and there we introduced ourselves to the guardsmen:
Sir Reggie Rockwise: male dwarf, a knight and cleric of Moradin, extremely self-important
Tris Prior: female human, a healer and cleric of Pelor, interested in helping others and spreading the light of her god
Emmy: female dwarf, a warrior
Dicarius Darksword: male halfling, an ex-blacksmith turned to a life of crime
Eladrio the Soft-Handed: male high elf, a wizard on his study abroad from magic college, drew the short straw and got sent to the boonies, finds the whole situation distasteful and dirty. Played by yours truly.
Lacking much in the way of funds (most of the character sheets don't seem to have any money listed on them) we prepared to spend the night in the stables, until the DM kindly reminded Reggie Rockwise that as a knight he could swing free or cheap accommodations for himself and his party. In addition, Lou, the barkeep at the Golden Griffin Inn, had a soft spot for religious types.
So we headed to the Golden Griffin for the night. Before bed we spent some time asking around about the Caves of Chaos, and were rewarded with various rumors. This was the first time we rolled dice that afternoon, and here I'll jump in just to say that this DM often changes or trashes rules he doesn't like. This didn't come up often yesterday but here and there he houseruled things. I'm not sure I agree with this approach, since it's, you know, a playtest of a brand new set of rules, but he didn't change anything major. He allowed us to use either Intelligence or Wisdom for perception/spot/listen type checks, as opposed to (I believe) it being explicitly Wisdom in the rules. I didn't argue, since Int was my top stat at 17 (+3). My high elf Keen Senses gave me advantage on such rolls anyway so I was doing quite well. I also lucked out on my single Charisma check once I stopped to ask some farmers about the orc raids I overheard them discussing.
Anyway, we learned the following rumors, which I believe were taken from the original B2 module and not the playtest packet: various monster tribes live in different caves, there is a hoard of magic armor in the southern caves, altars are dangerous, the bugbears in the caves fear dwarves, and there is a fair maiden being held somewhere in the caves. At this point Tris, the healer, almost joined an NPC party of adventurers, which just goes to show you how popular healers are. We hustled her off to bed before she could defect.
The next day dawned bright and clear and we made our way to the Caves of Chaos in an uneventful half-day's walk. All was quiet at the ravine, so we promptly began examining the nearest southern cave entrances, intrigued by the rumor of treasure. (I'll also admit that I've run bits and pieces of B2 in my life, so I was pushing the party away from the area I know, the kobold caves to the north. I wanted to play something I'd never looked at before). Tris used her Wilderness Lore to identify the tracks outside these caves as mostly goblin, with a few tracks of something bigger, perhaps an ogre or troll. She also noticed a goat path that would make climbing up to the second level a bit easier. My Forbidden Lore told me a bit about the ecology of goblins, ogres, and trolls. I was a bit unsure about this use of the skill-- what exactly constitues "forbidden lore?" I like the skill system so far, especially how open-ended it is, but it definitely leaves a lot to the DM's discretion about what a skill means and when it will apply. This might lead to a lot of begging on the part of players to be allowed to use a certain skill-- for example, I wanted to use my Nature Lore skill to help me chat up the farmers back in Bastion ("How are the pumpkins this year?" etc. etc.). The DM ignored me.
Tris also found some scraps of cloth amongst the footprints. She threw a detect magic spell into the nearest cave entrance but came up with nothing. I'm not sure why but we decided to climb up the goat path to the higher cave entrance. Reggie Rockwise climbed up easily (making two Strength checks to cover the whole distance) then tied off a rope and tossed it down (no check needed). We followed. With a mighty Strength of 8 I failed two of my Strength checks to climb up, despite the DM ruling that we had advantage from the rope. I took 2 damage from bumping into the rocky cliff face. Emmy the dwarven warrior took 1 damage from the same. This was the first place I noticed our DM ignoring/changing/forgetting the rules as written. The hazard rule for climbing says you fall if you roll a certain amount below the DC (not sure I can give the specifics) which none of us were, so I believe as written those of us who failed should simply have been stuck for a round. Meanwhile a few of our party had high enough Strengths that I believe the auto-success rules should have triggered, but our DM had everybody roll.
At the upper cave mouth we found more goblin footprints, with no sign of anything bigger, so without further ado we entered, thinking it safer than the caves below. Our dwarves immediately ID'ed the crude stonework as of goblin make, so feeling bold we headed up a flight of stairs immediately in front of us. We sent the rogue Dicarius ahead to scout, and his player rolled very well on her Stealth check. Dicarius followed a passage to the west that turned a few times before ending in a darkened room from which the sound of muttering in a strange language could be heard.
Dicarius returned to share this info, and feeling bold, I followed him back to the room, rolling a decent Stealth as well despite no training and only a so-so Dexterity. Then I stood in the doorway and, despite having no idea what was in the dark room, blasted the crap out of it with Burning Hands. (Before this there was a discussion of whether I would really do this since, in the dark and given her Stealthiness, I had no idea where the rogue was. I decided that my character would assume the rogue wasn't dumb enough to walk into a room full of monsters in pitch-blackness, so I could stand in the doorway and blast away with impunity. I was right, fortunately.) In the light of the flames I saw a mess hall, with tables and chairs and some straw sleeping pallets (all now burning) plus six hobgoblins eating some sort of large meat pile. The DM rolled to see how many of the hobgoblins were caught in my blast-- five of the six. Three failed their saves and were instantly fried when I rolled max damage (what we call a "ghetto crit" in Nashville) and dealt exactly as much in damage as hobgoblins have in HP. Nice. The other two made their Dex saves and took half damage. Nice and easy.
That was our surprise action, so then we rolled initiative. Emmy the dwarf won initiative and came running up the hallway (having hear a loud "whoosh" and some sizzling). I had initiative second, so I dropped Sleep on the remaining three hobgoblins. Two of them failed their saves and dropped unconscious. Only one left! "These guys aren't so tough," boasted my extremely sheltered mage. The rest of the party ran up the halls and Dicarius attacked the lone conscious hobgob with his sling but missed.
That one hobgoblin was not thrilled about me murdering his friends, so he came right at me and hit my terrible AC with ease, dealing 5 damage. The next round started and Emmy saved my bacon with the first natural 20 of the day, dealing a huge amount of max damage to the hobgoblin and splitting it from skull to crotch. On my turn I wiped the blood of my face and allowed as how dwarves weren't so bad after all, then walked up to one of the sleeping hobgobs and Coup de Graced it with Shocking Grasp to the face, frying its brain and melting its eyeballs. Despite Unconscious creatures granting advantage, Reggie missed a Coup de Grace on the other, but Tris finished it off with her Radiant Lance. (There was some brief discussion about the Sleep spell-- it says the target is unconscious until it takes damage or is intentionally wakened. We wondered if Reggie missing twice with a big hammer and hitting the floor right next to its head would wake the hobgoblin, but eventually decided magical sleep was deeper than normal sleep and so played it by the book. That's a heck of a spell.) I would say the whole combat took about 15 minutes, maybe 20, but it was our first and there was a lot of rules consulting and character-sheet pondering going on. It felt plenty satisfying to me, but then again, I single-handedly took out five of our six foes.
Flush with our victory we looted the room and found about 60 sp worth of melted silver clumps on the fried corpses. We found no secret doors, so Tris used a charge from her healer's kit to let me use my one paltry hit die. I rolled a 3 and felt a little better. (Around this time we also had a long discussion with another table, the one that was getting beaten up by orcs. They had a PC stabilized at -4 HP, with no magical healing left. We poked around the healing rules and eventually agreed that all that party could do was hole up or retreat, since without magical healing, the only thing that can bring a PC back to 1 HP is a few hours of rest, and the healer's kit/hit die rule AND the long rest/back to full rule can only be used by PCs at at least 1 HP. In other words, if you can get back to town at -4 HP you just rest a few extra hours and you're fine, but if you're deep in the dungeon where camping is dangerous, you might be in trouble. I'm starting to revise my initial assessment that 5e healing is too quick and easy.)
Anyway, we determined that there was nothing else up these stairs so we headed back down and took a passage to the east. This split east and south but we kept on eastwards, eventually reaching a crude wooden door. Behind it we heard the muttering of many voices in the same language we heard before. Deciding that a room full of hobgoblins was probably a bit much, we turned around, but before we could sneak off a tiny goblin head poked itself out the door. It was just a baby! Nevertheless we were out of AoE attacks so Sir Reggie Rockwise made a Diplomacy check to hush the child and gently turn it around and send it back into the room with no fuss. Then we got the heck out of there.
We tried the passage to the south we'd seen back a little ways, and found that it ended in a large, dimly lit room. From the room Dicarius heard two goblinoid voices arguing loudly and a smattering of human voices, though he couldn't make out the words. Feeling confident, we rushed the room, gaining surprise against the two hobgoblin jailers in there. (At this point we looked up the surprise rules, since our DM thought we just got a bonus round like 4e and I reminded him it's actually a huge penalty to Initiative to all who are surprised. The table agreed that it would be a lot easier to just give a huge bonus to everyone who has surprise, since the ones being surprised tend to end up with negative Inits, which is kind of weird. Either way I like this rule a lot, since it means that if you're lucky or fast, surprise won't necessarily hit you as hard as it has in previous editions, nor will it hit all members of a group equally hard. This makes sense to me.) With our huge Init advantage we tore through the hobgobs in about two minutes table time, as the rogue sneak attacked with his sling and rolled a crit, killing one. (The player forgot that she had advantage when attacking from hiding, and rolled a natural 1. She was bummed until the table reminded her she could roll twice. Her second roll was a 20. Not gonna lie-- it was a great moment.) I stung the second hogoblin with a Magic Missile and Reggie Rockwise finished him off with his hammer. Tris and Emmy didn't even move.
In the room we found a gang of prisoners and some torture implements. There were four humans-- a merchant, his wife, and two of their guards, all of whom had been taken from a caravan by the goblin tribe-- plus a battered orc and a wild gnoll chained up far from the rest of the prisoners, foaming at the mouth and rattling his chains as he tried to break free. We quickly decided to put the gnoll out of its misery, which I did with a string of Magic Missiles from a safe distance. (I definitely enjoyed an auto-hitting at-will for things like this.) The merchant offered us 25 gp each if we would take him and his party safely back to town, to which we readily agreed. But first we tried to communicate with the orc, who was in bad shape and didn't seem very aggressive. None of us spoke orc or goblin or anything of the sort, and I hadn't prepared Comprehend Languages, opting for all combat spells, so we communicated with sign language. He seemed to understand that he would be let free if he agreed not to attack us, so we freed him. He crawled along the floor-- apparently his leg was broken-- and grabbed his axe from a pile of weapons then exited the room. We're hopeful that if we run into the orc tribe in the future, this one may remember our act of kindness.
We had a straight shot back to the cave mouth, so we took the merchant and his crew out into the ravine, where night was falling. We saw our orc friend slowly climbing up the ravine walls to a cave mouth at the far west end, then debated whether to camp in a secured room in the hobgoblin caves, in the ravine, or in the wilderness. Eventually we decided none of these was a good idea so we marched all night and reached Bastion safely. (We left the rope that Reggie had tied up dangling down the cliff, figuring that we needed it to get down, and it wasn't like the hobgoblins wouldn't know we were there, anyway.)
We spent the next 24 hours resting up, and flush with our reward from the merchant we did some shopping. Tris informed us that she could make potions of healing at the cost of-- hurray!-- 25 gold each in components, so she spent a few hours making those for most of the party. I spent my reward on the material components for an Alarm ritual, thinking that we likely wouldn't be so lucky as we were this time in escaping from the caves easily.
Here we took a short break from the game. The table who'd been beaten up by orcs was also breaking, so we swapped war stories and battle tactics. That table had had the brilliant idea of putting the wizard just behind the dwarf warrior, letting the wizard throw AoE spells (including a Burning Hands over the dwarf's head) without being as vulnerable. I filed that one away for future expeditions. Here I'll say that this was where the old-school feel of 5e hit me the most. A big argument that we hear from old-schoolers is that the great stories of D&D don't come from a plot that the DM has come up with in advance; rather, the stories we retell later are about what arises naturally during the course of play as our characters face impossible odds in the dungeon. This held very true as I bragged about decimating the hobgoblin mess hall, we heard how the other table's dwarf got taken out by orcs, and Dicarius's player told the tale of her fumble/crit advantage roll. I enjoyed this hugely, and I think the rest of the room did as well. The room was loud with excited laughter all afternoon, but most of all during this break.
Rested and refreshed and back at max HP for everyone, we set out once again to the Caves of Chaos. We quickly decided that we wanted to finish exploring the hobgoblin cave; there was one passageway we hadn't checked out yet. When we reached the Caves they were certainly not quiet like the last time. There were six hobgoblins with spears and slings-- and they were guarding our rope! Two each stood on the ground, at the point where the rope was tied off, and a level above it up the ravine wall.
Reggie Rockwise immediately yelled "That's our rope!" and charged at the ground-level hobgobs. "Breeee-yark!" yelled one of the guards, and one of the two near the higher cave entrance scuttled into it. We quickly realized that there was no way we were going to be allowed to sneak around the caves exploring rooms one by one, so we reset our goal to be "get the rope back." And thus was the Battle of the Rope begun.
We bombed the initiative, but luckily the hobgoblins weren't great with their slings. The two on the ground rushed Reggie with their spears but missed, and Reggie ignored them, cast Divine Favor on himself and ran for his rope. (No Opportunity Attacks here!) He got hit for 5 damage by the last of the slingers. I hit one of the two ground-level hobgobs with Sleep, and Dicarius quickly cut its throat. The rest of our party missed their attacks.
Reggie then used Healing Word on himself, and was still allowed his attack; he returned to the living hobgob on the ground and hit it, then ran back to his rope (taking full advantage of the new rule that movement speed can be split up). Emmy finished that one off. I heard movement in one of the lower caves and peeked in to see eight goblins (not hobgoblins, whew!) preparing to rush out. Uh oh! Time for Burning Hands. The DM ruled that it hit all of them, since they were arrayed right at the cave mouth, and the three that failed their saves were killed. I would have killed the other five if I'd rolled a bit better damage, since goblins have low HP. They immediately started running away. Dicarius picked off one off them as they fled back into their warrens. Tris killed one of the hobgobs near the higher cave mouth with a Radiant Lance, and Emmy killed the other one with her crossbow. (I will say that the flatter bonuses mean that every character can have meaningful melee and ranged attacks, which is awesome.) Only one was left, high above the caves. It hit Reggie with its sling, taking him down to only 4 HP, but he shrugged it off and untied his rope then slid down the ravine wall. He bombed his Dex check, fell, and took… 4 damage. Whoops.
Emmy grabbed Reggie in a fireman's carry, the rope dangling from his unconscious hand, and we began our hasty retreat, our objective achieved. Reggie's player suggested I use Mage Hand to give the remaining hobgoblin the finger (previously I had been plinking him with Magic Missiles just out of spite) at which point I said "Oh yeah! I could have just used Mage Hand to get our rope!" and the table dissolved in uncontrollable laughter.
And that's where we ended for the day! We played for about three hours, and fit in roleplaying, exploration, two big combats and one small one. The rules as they stand absolutely have an old-school feel to me. We spent a lot of time discussing tactics, not in terms of "I'll shift here to get flanking if you can slide the hobgoblin to that square," but in more natural terms of shooting over dwarves' heads, sliding down ravine walls, carrying friends out of battle, and so on. We also dealt with resource management given our somewhat limited healing (though being able to get a few potions from Tris helped a lot, as did her ability to let us use our HD) though torches weren't an issue since almost the whole party had low-light vision and I could cast Light at-will. (Our worst lighting issue was not being able to see very far down unexplored passageways.) Finally, we had absolutely no illusion that every combat would be evenly balanced and there to be won. We steamrollered one, won a second handily, and won the third with some luck and tactics-- but we also were very relieved to avoid a room full of goblins, no matter how many of them were adorable babies. The combats definitely could have gone differently if I hadn't been so lucky with my AoEs, we hadn't gotten a few well-timed crits, or if my dwarves hadn't been so good at keeping me safe. (Regarding the argument about the wizard being too strong, I do think that I was more effective in the adventure than the rest of the party. My daily spells were encounter-changers every single time, and then I had solid at-wills to fall back on, though I didn't use them too often given how few rounds combat took.) That said, we played smart, stealthing as much as possible and sending the rogue ahead, then trying to get the drop on our enemies. I also think it helped that we had a great DM, who has played the old-school style before (back when it was new) and knows how it runs. Overall, I had a fantastic time. I loved the speed of combat and the tense dungeoncrawl feel of the whole adventure. After playing the playtest I'm more excited for 5e than I was before, which seems impossible, but there you go.
5/26/12
On Saturday I played the 5e playtest packet for the first time. The adventure was being run by a trio of local DMs who had tried it out Friday night for the first time. We had, I believe, 14 players there for the playtest, so while our table had exactly five, one had only four. (They ended up in the orc caves and got slaughtered.) We each picked one of the pregens and got rolling. I chose the wizard, since I was really interested in testing out the combo of Vancian and at-will spells.
I made a point of sitting at the table of one of my favorite DMs; he always goes the extra mile in his game prep, so I wasn't surprised when we started the session off not at the entrance to the Caves of Chaos, but with a bit of quick backstory about how we were an adventuring crew who hopped a caravan to a ramshackle frontier town called Bastion. We arrived at Bastion on a damp, gray day, seeking adventure of course, and there we introduced ourselves to the guardsmen:
Sir Reggie Rockwise: male dwarf, a knight and cleric of Moradin, extremely self-important
Tris Prior: female human, a healer and cleric of Pelor, interested in helping others and spreading the light of her god
Emmy: female dwarf, a warrior
Dicarius Darksword: male halfling, an ex-blacksmith turned to a life of crime
Eladrio the Soft-Handed: male high elf, a wizard on his study abroad from magic college, drew the short straw and got sent to the boonies, finds the whole situation distasteful and dirty. Played by yours truly.
Lacking much in the way of funds (most of the character sheets don't seem to have any money listed on them) we prepared to spend the night in the stables, until the DM kindly reminded Reggie Rockwise that as a knight he could swing free or cheap accommodations for himself and his party. In addition, Lou, the barkeep at the Golden Griffin Inn, had a soft spot for religious types.
So we headed to the Golden Griffin for the night. Before bed we spent some time asking around about the Caves of Chaos, and were rewarded with various rumors. This was the first time we rolled dice that afternoon, and here I'll jump in just to say that this DM often changes or trashes rules he doesn't like. This didn't come up often yesterday but here and there he houseruled things. I'm not sure I agree with this approach, since it's, you know, a playtest of a brand new set of rules, but he didn't change anything major. He allowed us to use either Intelligence or Wisdom for perception/spot/listen type checks, as opposed to (I believe) it being explicitly Wisdom in the rules. I didn't argue, since Int was my top stat at 17 (+3). My high elf Keen Senses gave me advantage on such rolls anyway so I was doing quite well. I also lucked out on my single Charisma check once I stopped to ask some farmers about the orc raids I overheard them discussing.
Anyway, we learned the following rumors, which I believe were taken from the original B2 module and not the playtest packet: various monster tribes live in different caves, there is a hoard of magic armor in the southern caves, altars are dangerous, the bugbears in the caves fear dwarves, and there is a fair maiden being held somewhere in the caves. At this point Tris, the healer, almost joined an NPC party of adventurers, which just goes to show you how popular healers are. We hustled her off to bed before she could defect.
The next day dawned bright and clear and we made our way to the Caves of Chaos in an uneventful half-day's walk. All was quiet at the ravine, so we promptly began examining the nearest southern cave entrances, intrigued by the rumor of treasure. (I'll also admit that I've run bits and pieces of B2 in my life, so I was pushing the party away from the area I know, the kobold caves to the north. I wanted to play something I'd never looked at before). Tris used her Wilderness Lore to identify the tracks outside these caves as mostly goblin, with a few tracks of something bigger, perhaps an ogre or troll. She also noticed a goat path that would make climbing up to the second level a bit easier. My Forbidden Lore told me a bit about the ecology of goblins, ogres, and trolls. I was a bit unsure about this use of the skill-- what exactly constitues "forbidden lore?" I like the skill system so far, especially how open-ended it is, but it definitely leaves a lot to the DM's discretion about what a skill means and when it will apply. This might lead to a lot of begging on the part of players to be allowed to use a certain skill-- for example, I wanted to use my Nature Lore skill to help me chat up the farmers back in Bastion ("How are the pumpkins this year?" etc. etc.). The DM ignored me.
Tris also found some scraps of cloth amongst the footprints. She threw a detect magic spell into the nearest cave entrance but came up with nothing. I'm not sure why but we decided to climb up the goat path to the higher cave entrance. Reggie Rockwise climbed up easily (making two Strength checks to cover the whole distance) then tied off a rope and tossed it down (no check needed). We followed. With a mighty Strength of 8 I failed two of my Strength checks to climb up, despite the DM ruling that we had advantage from the rope. I took 2 damage from bumping into the rocky cliff face. Emmy the dwarven warrior took 1 damage from the same. This was the first place I noticed our DM ignoring/changing/forgetting the rules as written. The hazard rule for climbing says you fall if you roll a certain amount below the DC (not sure I can give the specifics) which none of us were, so I believe as written those of us who failed should simply have been stuck for a round. Meanwhile a few of our party had high enough Strengths that I believe the auto-success rules should have triggered, but our DM had everybody roll.
At the upper cave mouth we found more goblin footprints, with no sign of anything bigger, so without further ado we entered, thinking it safer than the caves below. Our dwarves immediately ID'ed the crude stonework as of goblin make, so feeling bold we headed up a flight of stairs immediately in front of us. We sent the rogue Dicarius ahead to scout, and his player rolled very well on her Stealth check. Dicarius followed a passage to the west that turned a few times before ending in a darkened room from which the sound of muttering in a strange language could be heard.
Dicarius returned to share this info, and feeling bold, I followed him back to the room, rolling a decent Stealth as well despite no training and only a so-so Dexterity. Then I stood in the doorway and, despite having no idea what was in the dark room, blasted the crap out of it with Burning Hands. (Before this there was a discussion of whether I would really do this since, in the dark and given her Stealthiness, I had no idea where the rogue was. I decided that my character would assume the rogue wasn't dumb enough to walk into a room full of monsters in pitch-blackness, so I could stand in the doorway and blast away with impunity. I was right, fortunately.) In the light of the flames I saw a mess hall, with tables and chairs and some straw sleeping pallets (all now burning) plus six hobgoblins eating some sort of large meat pile. The DM rolled to see how many of the hobgoblins were caught in my blast-- five of the six. Three failed their saves and were instantly fried when I rolled max damage (what we call a "ghetto crit" in Nashville) and dealt exactly as much in damage as hobgoblins have in HP. Nice. The other two made their Dex saves and took half damage. Nice and easy.
That was our surprise action, so then we rolled initiative. Emmy the dwarf won initiative and came running up the hallway (having hear a loud "whoosh" and some sizzling). I had initiative second, so I dropped Sleep on the remaining three hobgoblins. Two of them failed their saves and dropped unconscious. Only one left! "These guys aren't so tough," boasted my extremely sheltered mage. The rest of the party ran up the halls and Dicarius attacked the lone conscious hobgob with his sling but missed.
That one hobgoblin was not thrilled about me murdering his friends, so he came right at me and hit my terrible AC with ease, dealing 5 damage. The next round started and Emmy saved my bacon with the first natural 20 of the day, dealing a huge amount of max damage to the hobgoblin and splitting it from skull to crotch. On my turn I wiped the blood of my face and allowed as how dwarves weren't so bad after all, then walked up to one of the sleeping hobgobs and Coup de Graced it with Shocking Grasp to the face, frying its brain and melting its eyeballs. Despite Unconscious creatures granting advantage, Reggie missed a Coup de Grace on the other, but Tris finished it off with her Radiant Lance. (There was some brief discussion about the Sleep spell-- it says the target is unconscious until it takes damage or is intentionally wakened. We wondered if Reggie missing twice with a big hammer and hitting the floor right next to its head would wake the hobgoblin, but eventually decided magical sleep was deeper than normal sleep and so played it by the book. That's a heck of a spell.) I would say the whole combat took about 15 minutes, maybe 20, but it was our first and there was a lot of rules consulting and character-sheet pondering going on. It felt plenty satisfying to me, but then again, I single-handedly took out five of our six foes.
Flush with our victory we looted the room and found about 60 sp worth of melted silver clumps on the fried corpses. We found no secret doors, so Tris used a charge from her healer's kit to let me use my one paltry hit die. I rolled a 3 and felt a little better. (Around this time we also had a long discussion with another table, the one that was getting beaten up by orcs. They had a PC stabilized at -4 HP, with no magical healing left. We poked around the healing rules and eventually agreed that all that party could do was hole up or retreat, since without magical healing, the only thing that can bring a PC back to 1 HP is a few hours of rest, and the healer's kit/hit die rule AND the long rest/back to full rule can only be used by PCs at at least 1 HP. In other words, if you can get back to town at -4 HP you just rest a few extra hours and you're fine, but if you're deep in the dungeon where camping is dangerous, you might be in trouble. I'm starting to revise my initial assessment that 5e healing is too quick and easy.)
Anyway, we determined that there was nothing else up these stairs so we headed back down and took a passage to the east. This split east and south but we kept on eastwards, eventually reaching a crude wooden door. Behind it we heard the muttering of many voices in the same language we heard before. Deciding that a room full of hobgoblins was probably a bit much, we turned around, but before we could sneak off a tiny goblin head poked itself out the door. It was just a baby! Nevertheless we were out of AoE attacks so Sir Reggie Rockwise made a Diplomacy check to hush the child and gently turn it around and send it back into the room with no fuss. Then we got the heck out of there.
We tried the passage to the south we'd seen back a little ways, and found that it ended in a large, dimly lit room. From the room Dicarius heard two goblinoid voices arguing loudly and a smattering of human voices, though he couldn't make out the words. Feeling confident, we rushed the room, gaining surprise against the two hobgoblin jailers in there. (At this point we looked up the surprise rules, since our DM thought we just got a bonus round like 4e and I reminded him it's actually a huge penalty to Initiative to all who are surprised. The table agreed that it would be a lot easier to just give a huge bonus to everyone who has surprise, since the ones being surprised tend to end up with negative Inits, which is kind of weird. Either way I like this rule a lot, since it means that if you're lucky or fast, surprise won't necessarily hit you as hard as it has in previous editions, nor will it hit all members of a group equally hard. This makes sense to me.) With our huge Init advantage we tore through the hobgobs in about two minutes table time, as the rogue sneak attacked with his sling and rolled a crit, killing one. (The player forgot that she had advantage when attacking from hiding, and rolled a natural 1. She was bummed until the table reminded her she could roll twice. Her second roll was a 20. Not gonna lie-- it was a great moment.) I stung the second hogoblin with a Magic Missile and Reggie Rockwise finished him off with his hammer. Tris and Emmy didn't even move.
In the room we found a gang of prisoners and some torture implements. There were four humans-- a merchant, his wife, and two of their guards, all of whom had been taken from a caravan by the goblin tribe-- plus a battered orc and a wild gnoll chained up far from the rest of the prisoners, foaming at the mouth and rattling his chains as he tried to break free. We quickly decided to put the gnoll out of its misery, which I did with a string of Magic Missiles from a safe distance. (I definitely enjoyed an auto-hitting at-will for things like this.) The merchant offered us 25 gp each if we would take him and his party safely back to town, to which we readily agreed. But first we tried to communicate with the orc, who was in bad shape and didn't seem very aggressive. None of us spoke orc or goblin or anything of the sort, and I hadn't prepared Comprehend Languages, opting for all combat spells, so we communicated with sign language. He seemed to understand that he would be let free if he agreed not to attack us, so we freed him. He crawled along the floor-- apparently his leg was broken-- and grabbed his axe from a pile of weapons then exited the room. We're hopeful that if we run into the orc tribe in the future, this one may remember our act of kindness.
We had a straight shot back to the cave mouth, so we took the merchant and his crew out into the ravine, where night was falling. We saw our orc friend slowly climbing up the ravine walls to a cave mouth at the far west end, then debated whether to camp in a secured room in the hobgoblin caves, in the ravine, or in the wilderness. Eventually we decided none of these was a good idea so we marched all night and reached Bastion safely. (We left the rope that Reggie had tied up dangling down the cliff, figuring that we needed it to get down, and it wasn't like the hobgoblins wouldn't know we were there, anyway.)
We spent the next 24 hours resting up, and flush with our reward from the merchant we did some shopping. Tris informed us that she could make potions of healing at the cost of-- hurray!-- 25 gold each in components, so she spent a few hours making those for most of the party. I spent my reward on the material components for an Alarm ritual, thinking that we likely wouldn't be so lucky as we were this time in escaping from the caves easily.
Here we took a short break from the game. The table who'd been beaten up by orcs was also breaking, so we swapped war stories and battle tactics. That table had had the brilliant idea of putting the wizard just behind the dwarf warrior, letting the wizard throw AoE spells (including a Burning Hands over the dwarf's head) without being as vulnerable. I filed that one away for future expeditions. Here I'll say that this was where the old-school feel of 5e hit me the most. A big argument that we hear from old-schoolers is that the great stories of D&D don't come from a plot that the DM has come up with in advance; rather, the stories we retell later are about what arises naturally during the course of play as our characters face impossible odds in the dungeon. This held very true as I bragged about decimating the hobgoblin mess hall, we heard how the other table's dwarf got taken out by orcs, and Dicarius's player told the tale of her fumble/crit advantage roll. I enjoyed this hugely, and I think the rest of the room did as well. The room was loud with excited laughter all afternoon, but most of all during this break.
Rested and refreshed and back at max HP for everyone, we set out once again to the Caves of Chaos. We quickly decided that we wanted to finish exploring the hobgoblin cave; there was one passageway we hadn't checked out yet. When we reached the Caves they were certainly not quiet like the last time. There were six hobgoblins with spears and slings-- and they were guarding our rope! Two each stood on the ground, at the point where the rope was tied off, and a level above it up the ravine wall.
Reggie Rockwise immediately yelled "That's our rope!" and charged at the ground-level hobgobs. "Breeee-yark!" yelled one of the guards, and one of the two near the higher cave entrance scuttled into it. We quickly realized that there was no way we were going to be allowed to sneak around the caves exploring rooms one by one, so we reset our goal to be "get the rope back." And thus was the Battle of the Rope begun.
We bombed the initiative, but luckily the hobgoblins weren't great with their slings. The two on the ground rushed Reggie with their spears but missed, and Reggie ignored them, cast Divine Favor on himself and ran for his rope. (No Opportunity Attacks here!) He got hit for 5 damage by the last of the slingers. I hit one of the two ground-level hobgobs with Sleep, and Dicarius quickly cut its throat. The rest of our party missed their attacks.
Reggie then used Healing Word on himself, and was still allowed his attack; he returned to the living hobgob on the ground and hit it, then ran back to his rope (taking full advantage of the new rule that movement speed can be split up). Emmy finished that one off. I heard movement in one of the lower caves and peeked in to see eight goblins (not hobgoblins, whew!) preparing to rush out. Uh oh! Time for Burning Hands. The DM ruled that it hit all of them, since they were arrayed right at the cave mouth, and the three that failed their saves were killed. I would have killed the other five if I'd rolled a bit better damage, since goblins have low HP. They immediately started running away. Dicarius picked off one off them as they fled back into their warrens. Tris killed one of the hobgobs near the higher cave mouth with a Radiant Lance, and Emmy killed the other one with her crossbow. (I will say that the flatter bonuses mean that every character can have meaningful melee and ranged attacks, which is awesome.) Only one was left, high above the caves. It hit Reggie with its sling, taking him down to only 4 HP, but he shrugged it off and untied his rope then slid down the ravine wall. He bombed his Dex check, fell, and took… 4 damage. Whoops.
Emmy grabbed Reggie in a fireman's carry, the rope dangling from his unconscious hand, and we began our hasty retreat, our objective achieved. Reggie's player suggested I use Mage Hand to give the remaining hobgoblin the finger (previously I had been plinking him with Magic Missiles just out of spite) at which point I said "Oh yeah! I could have just used Mage Hand to get our rope!" and the table dissolved in uncontrollable laughter.
And that's where we ended for the day! We played for about three hours, and fit in roleplaying, exploration, two big combats and one small one. The rules as they stand absolutely have an old-school feel to me. We spent a lot of time discussing tactics, not in terms of "I'll shift here to get flanking if you can slide the hobgoblin to that square," but in more natural terms of shooting over dwarves' heads, sliding down ravine walls, carrying friends out of battle, and so on. We also dealt with resource management given our somewhat limited healing (though being able to get a few potions from Tris helped a lot, as did her ability to let us use our HD) though torches weren't an issue since almost the whole party had low-light vision and I could cast Light at-will. (Our worst lighting issue was not being able to see very far down unexplored passageways.) Finally, we had absolutely no illusion that every combat would be evenly balanced and there to be won. We steamrollered one, won a second handily, and won the third with some luck and tactics-- but we also were very relieved to avoid a room full of goblins, no matter how many of them were adorable babies. The combats definitely could have gone differently if I hadn't been so lucky with my AoEs, we hadn't gotten a few well-timed crits, or if my dwarves hadn't been so good at keeping me safe. (Regarding the argument about the wizard being too strong, I do think that I was more effective in the adventure than the rest of the party. My daily spells were encounter-changers every single time, and then I had solid at-wills to fall back on, though I didn't use them too often given how few rounds combat took.) That said, we played smart, stealthing as much as possible and sending the rogue ahead, then trying to get the drop on our enemies. I also think it helped that we had a great DM, who has played the old-school style before (back when it was new) and knows how it runs. Overall, I had a fantastic time. I loved the speed of combat and the tense dungeoncrawl feel of the whole adventure. After playing the playtest I'm more excited for 5e than I was before, which seems impossible, but there you go.
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