ShockMeSane
First Post
I know we've had plenty of these, but I figured I'd share mine. We ran Raiders of Oakhurst (the non-reloaded one). Two of the regular players in my 3.x campaign were out of town for the week, so there were only four of us and playing the demo was a bit of a last minute decision. I DM'd, which is pretty much standard. A few notes before I go into the actual playtest:
Out of the three playtesters, all had heard about 4E but none had really looked into it particularly deeply. One of them really prefers 2E to 3.x, and the other two had never played anything but 3/3.x. I would say that they all went into it with an open mind.
We agreed that we were running the demo purely to speculate on 4E combat mechanics, largely because I had only made a cursory glance of the adventure in the first place, and none of my players enjoy roleplaying pre-gens. We are in general a pretty "softcore" group of gamers. We definitely enjoy D&D as a beer and pretzels game, with an occassional overemphasis on the beer. Oh, and we play with mini's and a laminated mapboard and dryerase marker.
Two of the players decided to play 2 characters each, as they wanted to experience a greater breadth of the system. The third player looked a little intimidated when she picked up the Warlock, and said she would prefer to just run a single character. The other two ran the Ranger/Warrior and Cleric/Wizard respectively. The Paladin didn't make it into our game, which I was dissapointed with because he seems pretty cool.
The players began at the entrance to the cave, where I explained that the townsfolk had been being raided, etc etc, had won their sympathy and they had followed the trail of devastation. I also strongly hinted that I did not expect them to survive, to which they all laughed. The ranger snuck down into the cave and evaded detection, noticing the kobold by the gong. He went back up to the entrance and it was decided they would sneak in as far as the Ranger thought it safe, and then he and the Wizard would sneak up the rest of the way (it was noticed that the Wizard had the same Stealth as the Ranger at this point, to our ongoing amusement and several Ninja-academy-of-Wizardry jokes and some more off-color ones about where the wizard must have been sneaking out to during his studies), where they managed to surprise the kobolds and damage the guard pretty severely in the surprise round. Both players were shocked to see a kobold survive two hits.
Anyways, most people know how this combat is supposed to go. The 4 kobolds in the alcove to the right ran to join the battle immediatly, and in a hilarious turn of events were ALL killed by the Wizard in a single Flame Burst or whatever that spell is called. Of course, I think he used up most of his good rolls for the night in that one attack. The Ranger was cornered, and used his teleport very effectively to escape, while the Warrior tanked and the Warlock thought Eyebite was the coolest spell in the world. There was definitely a bit of confusion regarding the Cursing and Quarrying mechanics. The players would occassionally forget that they had the abilities, or that they could only be used on the closest targets. I chalk that up to a glut of information on the pre-gen character sheets and the fact that it was an entirely new mechanic.
The Hobgoblin Warcaster used his big Force cone thing and severely damaged both the Ranger and Warrior (who was on fire from the kobold slinger as well...). But, just as I thought the group might perish, the Warrior stood up and charged the caster, who went down almost immediatly to a Witchfire crit from the warlock. As this is getting quite long, I'll go on to say that the players killed Meepo, the Spider, and the other three hobgoblins with relatively little difficulty. They arrived in the Dragons room, and were immediatly highly suspicious about the lake. Of course, already feeling absurdly powerful for first level characters, the Cleric threw a stone into the water and shouted out a challenge in the name of the Sun God. Queue the Dragon.
I nerfed the Dragons defenses by 3 because I didn't want the fight to go on all night, and I have to say the players really performed admirably. After the first breath weapon, they managed to position themselves in such a way, aided by the fact that they only had 1 melee character, that the Dragon could never hit more than 1 person with its breath. The Fighters mark certainly saved the Ranger from death (whose careful shots were causing it the most overall damage). The players blew all their dailies, encounter abilities and action points on the first round, after which it basically devolved into a slugfest. The players actually defeated the Dragon pretty handily, only the fighter was knocked unconcious. I think they may have even beaten it without the defense nerfing, but it would have just meant another 5 rounds of combat and another player knocked out.
Impressions:
*People (myself included) were a little underwhelmed by Crits. They didn't really feel very critical, and as they only occur on 20's, seemed fairly weak for how rarely they occured. I showed them some of the magic items that have been previewed and how many weapons add additional damage on crits. Another player hypothesized that there may well be feats that increase crit range or crit damage as well. In the end we decided this was probably just being nitpicky.
*We discussed that particularly in the Dragon battle, after the first round everyone just used the same powers over and over. This did seem a bit anti-climactic, but we also agreed that at level 1 in any other edition, not only would you not be fighting any size of dragon, but that the wizard would have been shooting a crossbow and the combat would have been no more dynamic. The battles against larger groups of foes were more interesting and tactical.
*The Cleric mentioned that having only two uses of his heal per encounter seemed a bit restrictive, but then said that seeing as how nobody died and with the Second Wind mechanic, more probably weren't needed at first level anyways.
*Saves were a mixed bag. The players made virtually every saving throw against the Dragon's acid, sometimes before they even took damage from it due to the Cleric's ability to grant an ally a Save on a successful attack with one of his spells. It is certainly more of a duration mechanic now, but with their incredible rolls, particularly on the Cleric's part, the Acid went from a potentially large threat to a pretty underwhelming one.
Overall we enjoyed ourselves. It was agreed that with our full group of players, characters that they actually created, and an ongoing campaign that they can invest themselves in, 4E should be a nice change of pace. We've still go to finish up the 3.x campaign, but our overall impression of 4E was definitely a good one, particularly in all the non-dragon encounters.
Out of the three playtesters, all had heard about 4E but none had really looked into it particularly deeply. One of them really prefers 2E to 3.x, and the other two had never played anything but 3/3.x. I would say that they all went into it with an open mind.
We agreed that we were running the demo purely to speculate on 4E combat mechanics, largely because I had only made a cursory glance of the adventure in the first place, and none of my players enjoy roleplaying pre-gens. We are in general a pretty "softcore" group of gamers. We definitely enjoy D&D as a beer and pretzels game, with an occassional overemphasis on the beer. Oh, and we play with mini's and a laminated mapboard and dryerase marker.
Two of the players decided to play 2 characters each, as they wanted to experience a greater breadth of the system. The third player looked a little intimidated when she picked up the Warlock, and said she would prefer to just run a single character. The other two ran the Ranger/Warrior and Cleric/Wizard respectively. The Paladin didn't make it into our game, which I was dissapointed with because he seems pretty cool.
The players began at the entrance to the cave, where I explained that the townsfolk had been being raided, etc etc, had won their sympathy and they had followed the trail of devastation. I also strongly hinted that I did not expect them to survive, to which they all laughed. The ranger snuck down into the cave and evaded detection, noticing the kobold by the gong. He went back up to the entrance and it was decided they would sneak in as far as the Ranger thought it safe, and then he and the Wizard would sneak up the rest of the way (it was noticed that the Wizard had the same Stealth as the Ranger at this point, to our ongoing amusement and several Ninja-academy-of-Wizardry jokes and some more off-color ones about where the wizard must have been sneaking out to during his studies), where they managed to surprise the kobolds and damage the guard pretty severely in the surprise round. Both players were shocked to see a kobold survive two hits.
Anyways, most people know how this combat is supposed to go. The 4 kobolds in the alcove to the right ran to join the battle immediatly, and in a hilarious turn of events were ALL killed by the Wizard in a single Flame Burst or whatever that spell is called. Of course, I think he used up most of his good rolls for the night in that one attack. The Ranger was cornered, and used his teleport very effectively to escape, while the Warrior tanked and the Warlock thought Eyebite was the coolest spell in the world. There was definitely a bit of confusion regarding the Cursing and Quarrying mechanics. The players would occassionally forget that they had the abilities, or that they could only be used on the closest targets. I chalk that up to a glut of information on the pre-gen character sheets and the fact that it was an entirely new mechanic.
The Hobgoblin Warcaster used his big Force cone thing and severely damaged both the Ranger and Warrior (who was on fire from the kobold slinger as well...). But, just as I thought the group might perish, the Warrior stood up and charged the caster, who went down almost immediatly to a Witchfire crit from the warlock. As this is getting quite long, I'll go on to say that the players killed Meepo, the Spider, and the other three hobgoblins with relatively little difficulty. They arrived in the Dragons room, and were immediatly highly suspicious about the lake. Of course, already feeling absurdly powerful for first level characters, the Cleric threw a stone into the water and shouted out a challenge in the name of the Sun God. Queue the Dragon.
I nerfed the Dragons defenses by 3 because I didn't want the fight to go on all night, and I have to say the players really performed admirably. After the first breath weapon, they managed to position themselves in such a way, aided by the fact that they only had 1 melee character, that the Dragon could never hit more than 1 person with its breath. The Fighters mark certainly saved the Ranger from death (whose careful shots were causing it the most overall damage). The players blew all their dailies, encounter abilities and action points on the first round, after which it basically devolved into a slugfest. The players actually defeated the Dragon pretty handily, only the fighter was knocked unconcious. I think they may have even beaten it without the defense nerfing, but it would have just meant another 5 rounds of combat and another player knocked out.
Impressions:
*People (myself included) were a little underwhelmed by Crits. They didn't really feel very critical, and as they only occur on 20's, seemed fairly weak for how rarely they occured. I showed them some of the magic items that have been previewed and how many weapons add additional damage on crits. Another player hypothesized that there may well be feats that increase crit range or crit damage as well. In the end we decided this was probably just being nitpicky.
*We discussed that particularly in the Dragon battle, after the first round everyone just used the same powers over and over. This did seem a bit anti-climactic, but we also agreed that at level 1 in any other edition, not only would you not be fighting any size of dragon, but that the wizard would have been shooting a crossbow and the combat would have been no more dynamic. The battles against larger groups of foes were more interesting and tactical.
*The Cleric mentioned that having only two uses of his heal per encounter seemed a bit restrictive, but then said that seeing as how nobody died and with the Second Wind mechanic, more probably weren't needed at first level anyways.
*Saves were a mixed bag. The players made virtually every saving throw against the Dragon's acid, sometimes before they even took damage from it due to the Cleric's ability to grant an ally a Save on a successful attack with one of his spells. It is certainly more of a duration mechanic now, but with their incredible rolls, particularly on the Cleric's part, the Acid went from a potentially large threat to a pretty underwhelming one.
Overall we enjoyed ourselves. It was agreed that with our full group of players, characters that they actually created, and an ongoing campaign that they can invest themselves in, 4E should be a nice change of pace. We've still go to finish up the 3.x campaign, but our overall impression of 4E was definitely a good one, particularly in all the non-dragon encounters.
