Herobizkit
Adventurer
It looks like the Human Wizard has changed to Human Psion. Talk about six of one, half-dozen of the other.
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More frustration with KotS
- Thread starter Herobizkit
- Start date
Ratinyourwalls
First Post
KOTS was the first adventure built for 4E. It's a shoddy grindfest, and that's after several improvements after the update. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone...it would need to be rebuilt from the ground up. I can't really blame any DM for having a tough time making the module fun. And yeah the 5 hour combats are totally unsurprising. I don' t know what about 5 hour combats make the play testers go "Hey THIS IS A GOOD IDEA TO LET GET TO PRINT."
And as for other adventures? You are kinda sol at this point. There aren't any good 4E 1st level modules.
And as for other adventures? You are kinda sol at this point. There aren't any good 4E 1st level modules.
I've just finished playing through KOTS with 6 PCs (and 6 players)- we played out 25 encounters in total, we played 1 to 3 sessions/week, the shortest being an hour long, the longest being approx. 3 hours. We did lots of cool role-play- we were finished in ten weeks, 26 actual sessions of play, although again at an average of ninety minutes/session.
And I added monsters to make up the numbers because they had six PCs, or at one point seven PCs, I killed a few of them en route however.
Of the six players one of them had played D&D in a previous iteration, the other five had never ever played a rpg (save on a computer) in all of their days- they didn't know anything.
I think what I'm saying is it can be done...
By-and-large I tried to make each encounter spectacular for one reason or another, have the bad guys go for the players throat (where possible and doable) in round one. Or else impose time conditions- any more than six turns and the next encounter will be alerted, or else rewarded PCs with extra APs for doing X, or else do atmosphere in bags with visual/audio effects.
Players get a +1 To Hit bonus for RP in fights- speechifying, or else talking up their action in an amusing/interesting way... if they're quick then they do extra damage. I started out saying that each PC must get through their turn in 3 minutes, were down to ninety seconds- and the players are much more complex with more choices (they're Level 4 and in Thunderspire now).
I think if you want quick (more interesting) fights in 4e then you have to plan for it, and make some rules... And you have to have players that are up for it, and are going to bite the bullet and not think through every option. 4e is a tactical game and players get bogged down in 'if I do this... he can...', don't (or at least don't worry too much until you get your head around all the options)- pretend your heroes slightly out of your depth (a bit of mild panic is good), then go ape crazy with sword and spell- overkill works.
And as a DM narrate a good game- heads should explode, tentacled beasts should appear to drag the bad guy off, one of the PCs should start talking in voices. Kobolds that hit something should dance for a turn, or else squabble with each other. Goblins should be good at sneaking and better at swearing (and from a distance). Every leader (Kobold, Goblin, Hobgoblin) on the way should be a mixture of Napoleon, the Godfather, Colonel Kurtz, and Wile E. Coyote.
And there should be cut scenes, and flashbacks, and it should be a movie, and ninety minutes of interesting with a cliff-hanger is much better than five hours of... and you know this of course. I'll get me coat.
Cheers PDR
And I added monsters to make up the numbers because they had six PCs, or at one point seven PCs, I killed a few of them en route however.
Of the six players one of them had played D&D in a previous iteration, the other five had never ever played a rpg (save on a computer) in all of their days- they didn't know anything.
I think what I'm saying is it can be done...
By-and-large I tried to make each encounter spectacular for one reason or another, have the bad guys go for the players throat (where possible and doable) in round one. Or else impose time conditions- any more than six turns and the next encounter will be alerted, or else rewarded PCs with extra APs for doing X, or else do atmosphere in bags with visual/audio effects.
Players get a +1 To Hit bonus for RP in fights- speechifying, or else talking up their action in an amusing/interesting way... if they're quick then they do extra damage. I started out saying that each PC must get through their turn in 3 minutes, were down to ninety seconds- and the players are much more complex with more choices (they're Level 4 and in Thunderspire now).
I think if you want quick (more interesting) fights in 4e then you have to plan for it, and make some rules... And you have to have players that are up for it, and are going to bite the bullet and not think through every option. 4e is a tactical game and players get bogged down in 'if I do this... he can...', don't (or at least don't worry too much until you get your head around all the options)- pretend your heroes slightly out of your depth (a bit of mild panic is good), then go ape crazy with sword and spell- overkill works.
And as a DM narrate a good game- heads should explode, tentacled beasts should appear to drag the bad guy off, one of the PCs should start talking in voices. Kobolds that hit something should dance for a turn, or else squabble with each other. Goblins should be good at sneaking and better at swearing (and from a distance). Every leader (Kobold, Goblin, Hobgoblin) on the way should be a mixture of Napoleon, the Godfather, Colonel Kurtz, and Wile E. Coyote.
And there should be cut scenes, and flashbacks, and it should be a movie, and ninety minutes of interesting with a cliff-hanger is much better than five hours of... and you know this of course. I'll get me coat.
Cheers PDR
Oliviander
First Post
3 Players - 6 Characters
Double post
Double post
Last edited:
Oliviander
First Post
3 Players - 6 Characters
Interesting Thread as it reflects many of the problems I have in DMing.
When 4e was new I started a (Test) Campaign with 3 Players.
As I wasn't dure about scaling the Adventure to 3 Chars I decided to keep a
NPC with the group most of the time.
After playing through KotS we discussed if we should make changes or revert to 3e.
Actually no one voted for the latter, even as we all thought of the fights to be to slow.
I didn't wanted to have a permanent NPC anymore, because it was slowing me down to much. We then changed (against my advise) to 6 chars.
3 Main Chars per Player (by the rules): Rogue - Warlock - Warlord
and 3 Secondary Chars per Player : Paladin - Cleric - Wizard
The Secondary Chars are fixed to always be 2 levels lower as the main chars
and they don't have action points (everything else is by the rules).
Thus we played throught the PoS and ToH part 1
I don't adjust the Encounters and give out one fifth of the Encounter XP
to each player (as it would be in a 5 player group).
Most of the time the party was rather 1 level to low for the combats as written.
But I think it is ok with extremely experienced players (15 - 30 years of RP)
I think this way everything was well balanced most encounters were interesting.
But on the downside most of the encounters take a very long time,
as I feared in the first place.
1. Because of the many player options and
2. Because of my players trying to optimize every single bit of the combat.
But as long as they are happy with it I will keep it that way.
Because for ma as a DM the outcome of many encounters was quite intersting.
As I nearly never pull punches I am often surprised by my players how creative
they get in using all their options difficult combat situations.
More than once when I was fearing a total wipe, they got away with not even
one dead character.
But if somone else would like to try this I would only recommend this
if the players actually like to play chess in the combat.
( I guess 2 of my players would embrace even more options )
And mainly I would recommend 3 strikers as main characters.
Interesting Thread as it reflects many of the problems I have in DMing.
When 4e was new I started a (Test) Campaign with 3 Players.
As I wasn't dure about scaling the Adventure to 3 Chars I decided to keep a
NPC with the group most of the time.
After playing through KotS we discussed if we should make changes or revert to 3e.
Actually no one voted for the latter, even as we all thought of the fights to be to slow.
I didn't wanted to have a permanent NPC anymore, because it was slowing me down to much. We then changed (against my advise) to 6 chars.
3 Main Chars per Player (by the rules): Rogue - Warlock - Warlord
and 3 Secondary Chars per Player : Paladin - Cleric - Wizard
The Secondary Chars are fixed to always be 2 levels lower as the main chars
and they don't have action points (everything else is by the rules).
Thus we played throught the PoS and ToH part 1
I don't adjust the Encounters and give out one fifth of the Encounter XP
to each player (as it would be in a 5 player group).
Most of the time the party was rather 1 level to low for the combats as written.
But I think it is ok with extremely experienced players (15 - 30 years of RP)
I think this way everything was well balanced most encounters were interesting.
But on the downside most of the encounters take a very long time,
as I feared in the first place.
1. Because of the many player options and
2. Because of my players trying to optimize every single bit of the combat.
But as long as they are happy with it I will keep it that way.
Because for ma as a DM the outcome of many encounters was quite intersting.
As I nearly never pull punches I am often surprised by my players how creative
they get in using all their options difficult combat situations.
More than once when I was fearing a total wipe, they got away with not even
one dead character.
But if somone else would like to try this I would only recommend this
if the players actually like to play chess in the combat.
( I guess 2 of my players would embrace even more options )
And mainly I would recommend 3 strikers as main characters.
