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

[Nahat Anoj]

Yesterday my group and I started the Raiders of Oakhurst Reloaded adventure. We decided to just start the adventure right at the entrance to the Stone Table (so no way to use those nice overland maps tovokas made ).

The party consisted of the half-elf warlock, eladrin ranger, halfling paladin, tiefling wizard, and the EN World elf rogue. Before going down the tunnel, the ranger said he wanted to scout ahead, so he did, getting I think a 24 on his roll. He easily beat the kobolds' Perception, and I let him roll a Perception check to notice Ichi-Ichi (in retrospect I think that was a bad idea). In any case, he went back to the party and relayed what he saw, so the party hatched a plan to go in. Rolling supremely good initiatives (the kobolds' all sucked), they got to go first, with surprise. During the surprise round, the wizard used Acid Arrow to boil all the kobolds in the center of the room.. The rogue, warlock, and ranger then ran to Ichi-Ichi's position and made short work of him - this was all before he could have a chance to sound the gong.

So the PCs looked around the room a bit, and then decided to set a trap and ring the gong. The four kobold minion reinforcements came rushing in, *every* *single* *one* of them missing the ranger (I even used their Shifty ability to ensure that they all could get attacks in). They were soon blasted by the wizard's force orb (next time, I'll make the kobolds spread out more when they know a wizard's around).

The two normal kobolds then come rushing up. They managed to score a hit on the warlock, then the paladin full moved to the skirmisher and marked it. The rogue laid into the skirmisher, then the ranger finished him off. The artillery kobold then fled, and we ended there (although the warlock really wanted to chase him).

We didn't play much, but here are my observations. The wizard was super effective against the minions. He blew his daily before I told the kobolds they were minions and had no hitpoints, so he probably could have used his force orb for similar results.

There was a momentary bit of surprise among some of the players regarding at will powers. The paladin player looked over his powers, then just double-checked with me to be sure if he could actually use those powers at any time. The rogue was going to do just a normal attack when she attacked Ichi-Ichi, but I reminded the player that her character had at will powers, which seemed to amaze the player somewhat.

The paladin felt a little useless, because all the ranged characters seemed to be wiping the floor with the monsters. When he marked the skirmisher, I forgot to remind him to use an action point to get a swing in, which may have helped him.

The group felt all in all it was a good time, and they wanted to keep playing next week. Hopefully next week we have a little more time to do this.

 

[Ghostwind]

Now we just need all of this great stuff combined into a single pdf again.

 

[DeusExMachina]

Playtest of the Stone Table

So yesterday I tried out the Stone Table area from Oakhurst Reloaded for my first 4e trial session. We spend about an hour going over the rules and characters with my 6 players (so we had a full party) and then entered the cave. The ranger rolled extremely high on his stealth check while going up ahead and scouted out the 4 minions sitting around the fire, but did not find Ichi hiding out around the corner. Anyway, the rest of the aprty showed up and they managed to get a surprise round in.
The fighter charged in and with cleave took down 2 minions, the other 2 went down in the same turn. The apaldin found Ichi Ichi and charged him, making it impossible for the kobold to ring the gong or us ethe caltrops. The wizard then disabled the gong.
Then the next 4 minions showed up from the next round (I said they heard the battle going on) and the skirmisher and slinger from the area on the left. These went down in about 2 rounds and kind of made me wonder about minions and how many you exactly need for them to have some effect. Anyway, that battle was over with the kobolds having done only 10 damage in total or so.

With a little exploring the ranger found one of the family quarters and told the rest. The warlock then went in and while the fighter blocked the door to keep the paladin from going in, the warlock proceeded to kill them all. So this nearly enede up in a party fight, but I just ruled that the paladinw ouldn't hurt the fighter while trying to get past him, but should just roll athletics vs fortitude to try and shoulder the fighter out of the way and save the last few kobolds. Unfortunately he succeeded in this too late.
Meanwhile the ranger had found the other family quarters and managed to guide all of the females and young out while the rest was focused on the paladin/fighter argument.
All in all I kind of liked this interaction.

Anyway, we then went on to the next area, which was the shrine with the Kobold priest Morro andhis guards. This battle went totally different from the first one. First of all they split their forces to engage Morro and his guards in the shrine as well as the 2 guards in the guard room. Unfortunately for the players, I rolled extremely high in initiative and managed to get the priest to use his AoE power on 3 characters in the hallway and then block the hallway with a Dragonshield Soldier. It took a bit of time before the fighter could effectively use his Tide of Iron to move the Soldier so the rest of the party could get in and in the meantime the priest kept throwing orbs and doing some severe damage.
Anyway, eventually the party did manage to do some damage, kill a few kobolds and drove Morro and one last kobold slinger back into Meepo's throne room. The fighter enthusiastically followed and promptly went down as Meepo started shotting his crossbow to deadly effect (I don't think I missed a single time with him). The rest of the party followed and started a series of very unlucky rolls. The kobold priest, stuck at 5 hitpoints, managed to survive at least another 8 rounds while everybody missed (the warlock even missed 11 attack rolls in a row). Ix the spider jumped around and chewed down on the party as well, while Meepo still usedhis crossbow while standing on his throne. The wizard then used his daily (sleep) and managed to hit Meepo, who fell asleep the next round and stayed asleep for 2 or 3 rounds, making combat a lot easier for a little while. However, the party was running out of second wind/healingwords/lay on hands and after a while our cleric died after a vicious bite of Ix (dealing 13 damage). Seeing how the battle wasn't going well for the party, they began to retreat, leaving the body of the dead cleric and the body of the dying fighter behind.
This was the sign for Meepo to overeagerly take out his rapier and charge in, hoping to drive off the invaders. However, the paladin still had his daily left and whacked Meepo down to 5 hitpoints with it, who then promptly surrendered.
They regrouped, stabilized the fighter and interrogated Meepo (though not very well), taking his items away from him, while he spilled his guts about the hobgoblins (but not the dragon) and then begged not to be killed. The party ran him out of the cave and yelled at him to never come back or they'd take care of him permanently.

Anyway, at this time it was close to dinnertime (that second battle took a long time), so we decided to quit and kind of see what we liked and didn't like.
First of all most of the players were enthusiastic about it. They felt the game flowed smoothly, that it was more tactical than 3.x and in general more fun.
One of the players who is now running a heavily houseruled 3.5 campaign immediately wanted to convert it to 4e, but we put that on hold until we have the complete rules (we are at level 10 in that campaign and with all the houserules and homebrew classes it'll be impossible to convert it now).
People liked the way the new classes worked. The wizard seemed genuinely excited about being able to use scorching burst at will, the fighter liked that even the fighter had tactical movement and attack options and the ranger did an awesome amount of damage during the battle.
Some of the more controversial rules like 1-1-1 movement, healing surges and martial dailies seemed absolutely no problem for them and they took it mostly as is and enjoyed it.
Only the paladin didn't seem to have much fun, which is probably two fold. Firstly he is not a very tactical thinker, so 4e might be less his cup of tea than for the others. I also think he hated getting stuck with the halfling paladin (usually plays evil sorceresses and such), but he'll probably come around when he gets to play a warlock or something like that.
Also the ranger didn't like being a striker that much, but then he's probably one of the few people who likes playing a Tank in WoW and he is now enamoured with the abilities of the Fighter class and will probably play one of those.

A thing I did notice was that even the starting room seemed fairly small with 6 characters and 8 kobolds running around in it. There wasn't a lot of room to maneuver and even if there was everybody could get pretty much everywhere with only 1 move action. This also meant that all the pushing/sliding/pulling wasn't very effective just yet, but maybe that will change in the other areas of this dungeon (like near the waterfall, or the room with the chasm and bridge in it).
I think that if I keep playing with 6 players I will need to make the rooms a fair bit larger than the ones on the Stone Table map, but I ordered a Megamap from Paizo, which should allow me to take care of that.

All in all we had a great time and are probably going to continue our Stone Table run in a few weeks and hopefully make it to the end then. In the meantime I think I made quite a few converts to 4e D&D.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Cool. Looking forward to the conclusion of your Stone Table run, and a full playtest report from the folks that are trying out the expansions to see how the new additions are received. I'm particularly curious as to what DMs and players do with the new NPCs, and how the revised hobgoblin encounters work out.

 

[MightyThor]

Hey folks, I'm looking to run this tomorrow with my group, and I'm wondering how you think it would go for 3 players? Should I GMPC a 4th?

I know it has a list of changes to make, but has anyone actually played it with only 3?

 

[Horus_sungod]

After reading this, I was pretty pleased (dex for damage with ranged weapons, two stats for saving throws). However, i looked at shift (basically a 5ft step) and it says that it takes a move action. I know that this movement does not create an AoO but it's still wierd to spend a move action to move 1 square when you could move 6!

Please, tell me that it's a small mistake and that a 5ft step is a free action.

 

[Baron Opal]

Nope, it's a move. Unless you are a kobold, then it's a minor, but it's never free.

 

[Xorn]

That's exactly the point of the shift:

You can either use your entire movement to shift one square, without provoking an Opportunity Attack, or you can move normally, and risk getting nailed by the OA.

In the case of a fighter, if their OA lands the target is immobilized.
If you're adjacent to say... a Skeleton Warrior (+2 attack and +1d6 damage on OAs), trying to just move away from them can be very risky. You can also Shift then use your Standard action to move normally, but you're sacrificing the ability to attack (or cast, etc) in order to get away without the OA.

Of course, there's a very good chance whatever you ran from is just going to charge you now. So there's an interesting tactical mechanic happening now--moving without OAs is a very powerful ability. But suffering that OA is just as dangerous--after all, if you eat a nasty OA, are you going to blow your standard action to Second Wind? Something else I've noticed is 1/4 of your HP is crap--a Second Wind might be the difference in a very close fight, but it's no substitute for a healer.

Kobolds can Shift as a minor action--so keeping them in place is very difficult. Hobgoblin Soldiers are able to shift around each other (as long as they stay in formation/adjacent) as they attack.

Really, this mechanic isn't much different in ending effect than v3.5: if you don't make any other movement, you can take a 5ft step. It's just much clearer in 4E. You burn your Move Action to Shift. Move 1 square, and no OAs are triggered from threatening foes.

 

[Horus_sungod]

ok

it also says that a saving throw to end an effect is 10+ and not dependant of the DC of the original spell. Is it me or does that makes not sense at all?
It's like the god of poison poisons a lv 1 PC and he shrugs it off one time out of two after his first turn.

 

[Oldtimer]

ok

it also says that a saving throw to end an effect is 10+ and not dependant of the DC of the original spell. Is it me or does that makes not sense at all?
It's like the god of poison poisons a lv 1 PC and he shrugs it off one time out of two after his first turn.

The 3.x style saves and save DCs are now worked out through the attack and the defences. It's just that the die roll is in the other hand.

The 4.0 style saves are actually the random duration of an effect. In 3.x poisons affected you twice. In 4.0 its duration is a bit more random, but it's still simulating the duration, not the strength, of the poison.