D&D 4E Raiders of Oakhurst Reloaded -- Free 4E Adventure (Ennie Nominated!)

[Nahat Anoj]

Sounds like you had a good time. That's good feedback on the information DCs. Do you think they are too high in general, or particularly for the playtest PCs, who weren't really built with roleplay challenges in mind.

That's hard to say - the PCs certainly weren't built to use skills, but I felt there was a lot of juicy stuff that the PCs could hear if the DCs were just a little lower. So I guess a bit of both. However, the DCs didn't look much different from most other DCs from other d20 products - I'm just from a school of thought that feels that it should be relatively easy to gather information, if only to make it easier for my players feel like there's more to the world (I think lowering the DCs by 5 would work for my style).

Skill challenges might work, although I don't know how failure would impact them. Like, if you're trying to get the dirt on who's sleeping with who in the little town of Oakhurst, i don't know how failure would work in there. But, there'll be a preview of the system in the next week or so about it, I think, so we may be able to figure out if it's a better fit.

 

[Lindorie]

Edited to remove my request for more-visible numbers on the maps; I thought I had the latest version.

I just downloaded the pdf again and have to say your surpassed yourself. It is even better than before!

 

[Ricochet]

My impressions and questions that arose are posted here:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=4190858#post4190858

 

[InfernalistGamer]

I'm about to start a "metagame", one in the tradition of Knights of the Dinner Table, Fear the Boot, or Order of the Stick, where a hearty dose of good humor and 4th wall jokes are more allowed...and I think I'm going to use Raiders of Oakhurst Reloaded as my test game. My gamers range from hardcore RIFTS veterans to chatroom-raised freeformers, and run the gamut between them...

This should be very interesting.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

My group's second session of the adventure was done yesterday. I was hoping to get to the black dragon, but we only got through the entry room (the PCs managed to kill Ichi-Ichi before he rang the gong), the kobold "temple", the encounter with Meepo and Ix, and the cavern choker cave.

The PCs had little trouble with the entry room minions. They decided to go up the stairs to the left, encountering the skirmisher and slinger. The skirmisher ran to the wyrmpriest's chamber, and the PCs pursued. As they had spend a lot of their per encounter abilities, the encounter with the wyrmpriest, slinger, dragonshields, and two minions was tough. But the group eventually pulled it out. One of the dragonshields disengaged from combat (I love the Shifty ability ) and ran to Meepo's room, alerting the king.

After resting up, the PCs went to Meepo's room. Then Ix, Meepo, and the dragonshield tore into the dwarf, dropping him to well below 0. Meepo's crossbow ability was nasty. The Rogue slipped in through the back and attacked Ix, only to become Ix's next target (the jump ability was killer). The cleric revived the fighter and rogue with healing words, then ran in to engage the spider. The spider went down soon after, followed by the dragonshield (who had only 6 hp left from the previous encounter). The rogue then flanked Meepo and tried to attack, but Meepo used his dodge ability to redirect the attack to the dwarf, bringing the dwarf down to 2 hp ). But Meepo couldn't handled all 5 adventures, and a few actions later he was dead.

The encounter with the chokers was likewise really hard - the ability to interpose PCs into incoming attacks is *really* nasty. They chokers also just did lots of damage, and I got the rules wrong for escaping from a grab, so it was a bit tougher . The Rogue, Fighter, and Ranger went down in this combat, but the Cleric and Wizard managed to take out the last choker.

Hopefully we'll get to the black dragon this Saturday, but in general the group seemed to warm up to the system a little more. The player who kept making jokes about diagonal movement said he felt the system was pretty good. With only three encounters left in the adventure, I think we'll be able to wrap things up.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Bump in honor of the release of Keep on the Shadowfell (which might just be a Keep somewhere to the southwest of Oakhurst ...)

 

[CleverNickName]

Bump in honor of the release of Keep on the Shadowfell (which might just be a Keep somewhere to the southwest of Oakhurst ...)

Did you get the keyed maps that I posted a while back? I have limited server space here on campus, and would like to move them off...but I wanted to make sure that you had a chance to download them first.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Yep, got 'em. Thanks!

 

[Nahat Anoj]

This Saturday our group finished up the adventure. The encounter with Varkaze was absolutely nasty - the Ranger was knocked unconscious early on in the fight as the hobgoblins wanted to keep him alive for potential slavebait (so I ruled the Ranger didn't have to roll death saves). However, after the group started taking down a few hobgoblins, they monsters started playing for keeps. Btw, the hobgoblin phalanx soldier ability was killer - those two hobgoblin soldiers were really sopping up the blows.

At the end of the fight, only the Wizard was left standing. We decided that he would have to try to use his Heal skill (with a mod of -1!) to try and stabilize the others. We went through a couple of rounds of the Wizard trying (and failing, but I only set the DC as 10!) to revive the Cleric. Unfortunately, the Dwarf died, failing three death saves! The Elf Rogue rolled a 20 on one, so he bounced back up. Then the Cleric rolled a 20 and all was well.

Fortunately for the Dwarf's player, the hobgoblins had recently taken a Halfling Paladin prisoner ...

Then the encounter with the dragon. Well, because no hobgoblins escaped to alert the dragon, I ruled that it was sleeping when the PCs entered. So they got a free round of unleashing their biggest attacks on the beast (I also ruled that the AC and Ref Defense of the dragon was lower, since it wasn't standing and moving). They also used decent tactics, spreading out to avoid the worst of the breath weapon. But I think the group survived because I went a little easy on them - I didn't use the darkness ability as much as I could have, for example. I also forgot to use the fear power - that probably would have made things very bad for the PCs. But in any case, Nightscale escaped and the PCs were victorious.

The only things I'd have to say about the adventure itself is that it felt like we fought a lot of kobolds and hobgoblins, so a greater variety of encounters might be nice. Also, I felt there wasn't enough deep, dark secrets going on in the town (things like villagers secretly working with the monsters). Finally, a skill challenge would be swell. But really, given the limited monster resources and knowledge of the game you had to work with, Olgar, RoO-R was lots of fun and great way to playtest 4e.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

See this thread for some ideas about linking Raiders of Oakhurst Reloaded to Keep on the Shadowfell.