Update:
Played more today. We tried some tougher encounters, and a bit of different stuff generally. It was interesting, because we saw a couple of things it seemed like 4E would have rules for, but didn't.
Building stuff - Not "crafting" or what have you, but in this case, knocking together a series support for an array of mirrors (don't ask). Maybe this is meant to be just assumed that we can do, but it felt wierd to do all sorts of other stuff as Skill Challenges, but we couldn't do a sort of "A-Team" Skill Challenge, because absolutely none of the skills had influence on this (apart from perhaps perception for finding the
This kind of follows on from the wierdness of not having any skill for lassoing things, I guess. I'm mean, I'm glad to be rid of Rope Use, but... I guess the best solution is to use Dungeoneering + Incorrect stat again (I seem to remember reading a blog where on of the designers used Dungeoneering for people jumping out of a cart, so I guess it's reasonable).
Prohibitive skill DCs on default traps - The group thought it was outright stupid that the default DC to disarm a single pressure plate on a trap was 25 (for a level 2 trap), and after discussion, and considering "niche protection" and so on, I must agree. Unless the trap is meant to be something of truly fantastic complexity, non-trained people should have a chance (without resorting to silly business), and Trained non-optimised people should have a good chance (like at least 30%). Still, easy enough to modify the DCs. I also allowed traps to be defeated simply by good description of how they were going to break them, seems reasonable to me though I suspect some might find it "impure".
Harder Monsters - Worked out very well. PCs were more pressed/stressed, but no-one died and the only scares were due to clear tactical errors or lucky mob rolling. The final boss went down pretty easily, but this was mostly due to a scary Brute Strike crit (after two misses - thank goodness for Reliable, eh?).
Making up Monsters - Still really easy. At one point I improvised a monster for an area I hadn't detailed simply by making it's stats up on the spot (keeping them in line with what I'd expect), and worked out nicely.
Turn Undead - Nice to see this is silly a decent ability, at least a level 1. Also kind of hilarious when you get multiple crits on it whilst facing zombies.
At-wills can seem a bit repetative - Maybe this is a level 1 thing, but it seemed that after a while, the use of At Wills was getting close to as repetative as the old default attacks. Virtually all the characters had one at will they used constantly and another they used very rarely. The Ranger finally worked out why Exploits were called Exploits though "Ooooh in
that sense of exploit, I see!", says he.
Racial abilities actually useful - Saw the Elf racial get used every single fight, and the Dwarf and other ones came up pretty often.
Kwalish Kid said:
I wouldn't worry about adventures. I've found that adapting adventures from previous editions is pretty easy. I've run a couple of converted scenarios (some bits from 2E, some from 3E, some coming soon from 1E) and I've found that the scenarios there can be adapted pretty easily. More variety has to be thrown in, but it's not something hard to get the hang of. With the variety of things that PCs and monsters can do, I've found that a couple of things to give cover or to fall into may be all that's needed to make an interesting encounter setting. Plus, the old 1E adventures also seem to have interesting terrain features that can really shine in 4E in a way they never could.
I'm not sure I've got the hang of traps yet, though. Ask Holy Bovine in a month or two to see if I can get the hang of it.
Yeah, I'm not worried about converting 1e/2e stuff, to be honest, I think that'll go pretty easily. It's certainly piss-easy to build reasonable monsters in a reasonable time even if the "default" version is no longer the right level for the adventure. Indeed I'm tempted to do this simply as an interesting exercise. Hmmmmmm. Quite agree about 1E stuff, that and some early 2E stuff really seems to have more interesting terrain.
What I'm worried about is new, cool stuff like Paizo's stuff. Most new adventures are not going to be to our taste, so for my purposes, the deeper the pool to choose from, the better.
SweenyTodd - Tbh, it's not like we miss Grey Elves. We just like mocking fashion victims/"Filfalderil"-types, and Eladrin, by default have a major case of both. I like them as they are. If you've not got some kind of Elf to mock, you're not living a full life, I say! Extra elf-mocking points if the Elf in question doesn't have "Elf" in it's name. Double-plus extra elf-mocking points if the Elf has a "fancy" name with no "Earth meaning" (the Amethyst setting being discussed on the boards has to like an amazing degree, but that's a whole other thread). The new Elves who are actually called Elves recieve less mockery than usual because the Eladrin have stolen their most mockable traits, I note.
Blustar - As someone enjoying 4E, I have to say it STRONGLY reminds me of BD&D and 2e, in tone and in actual play. This is no bad thing, for my group's money. It certainly feels a lot more like 2E/RC D&D than it does 3.5E to me. The restrictiveness and speed mostly seem to work for it. The holes it has are generally the same ones previous editions had, too. Frex, we had the "no A-Team'ing rules" issue - we'd have had that in BD&D or 2E as well, but in 3.5E we'd have had rules, probably detailed ones. I'm not entirely sure which situation is better, but I know I can work through not having rules.
Henry - Yeah, I was certainly excited about they adventure I'd written, because writing it had been so much less of a chore than 3.5E could get!
