Essentials Game Day recap

[thewok]

I think our group was weird. We damn near wiped in the first encounter due to bad positioning on our part (some younger players, who liked to stay close), which let the orc archers use their area shot much too often. But, we kept going, and with some fortunate rolls and some solid healing on the part of the cleric (if I do say so myself), we survived. near the end, though, the cleric and one other (the human slayer, I think) were down and rolling death saves.

After that, we had no problem at all, really. In fact, our group took down the black dragon's underlings within just a couple of rounds, and then we surrounded it and beat it to death in a couple more. It was pretty underwhelming, actually.

Still, I had fun. The cleric was okay, though I prefer caster clerics myself. I never got the chance to use Smite Undead, as I kept having to use Healing Word to keep the troops going.

 

[tuxgeo]

I played my first game of D&D in my life at yesterday's Game Day event. (I was too old for D&D when it was invented, and have been shuttling between hinterpin and doorpost (to coin a phrase) for years without having had the time to sit down with anyone and play.)
We gamed in a sandwich shop on Willamette Street (the dividing line between East and West street addresses), and there were seven people who wanted to play. (When I signed up to play online, I was the third; I imagine that some of the others didn't bother to sign up ahead of time.)
Since I had never played before, I got the human fighter, Brannus. The seventh to arrive got a spare copy of the Dwarf fighter, so we had three Fighters in the group. The Elf Rogue, Thia, was played by the minor child (Reneé?) of the cook-and-counterman in the shop, so it was family-oriented from the start. The Halfling Rogue, Ander, was played by a guy who had played D&D 3.5E, but never 4.0 before; so he and I were the two newbies at the table.

My Initiative scores through four encounters were 10, 10, 18, and 15. For a front-line Fighter, I spent a lot of time in the back ranks waiting for my turn to arrive. Yes, that's with an INIT bonus of +8: I rolled natural 2's the first two encounters! Even then, it took us six hours to emerge victorious.
Re: somebody's earlier question about saving against the "vulnerable to Acid, and -2 penalty": I did take an action to try to save; with a WIS bonus of +0, I thought my 13 wouldn't suffice, but the DM said that was enough. My fault, maybe, for not knowing what DC I was trying to hit. . . .

I set off a fire trap. (Double-offset, and Ander's player pointed at me on a roll of 2.) I made a save.
Ander dropped at one point, but didn't die. (I forget how.)
Our mage pushed the dragon. I didn't know you could do that.
Our DM used a Large Green Dragon to depict the Black Dragon. There were plenty of minis and dice supplied by the organizers.
My main impression was that you couldn't plan, from round to round, what you were going to do next, because with seven PCs and lots of monsters each taking a turn, the situation would be vastly different each round. And each round took a while, because of the plethora of characters taking actions.

Oh, yeah--the sandwich shop: I had a BLT ("bacon-lettuce-tomato") on wheat, and it was good.

 

[jimmifett]

After that, we had no problem at all, really. In fact, our group took down the black dragon's underlings within just a couple of rounds, and then we surrounded it and beat it to death in a couple more. It was pretty underwhelming, actually.

Did you win initiative against the dragon?

If you did, that counts for a LOT against the dragon

 

[cavalier973]

Did anyone get to cast "Slimy Transmutation", or was that daily spell not available for this event?

 

[Festivus]

The new young black dragon you faced has been discussed here. You did a good job beating that thing.

Not exactly the same dragon, but built on the same chassis. It only had one initiative count for example.

Spoilers[sblock]
My table was one of the few that didn't TPK on that encounter, mainly because I rolled crappy initiative for both him and his hobgoblin attendant.

As DM, I felt the rune trap room needed some spicing up so I adjusted to traps to make things more challenging... I think I made it too challenging but it worked. If I ever run that game again I know what I would change. What I did with the traps was to make them close burst 1 with a trigger being within that burst. Next time, I'll probably give only a 25% chance of being a close burst one (the sonic one I think). As written, the first time I ran it, they just tiptoed past the runes and they essentially played little part in the encounter as I couldn't get enough forced movement and the wizard never connected the dots of sliding bad guys across them (in two games nobody thought of that).

Nobody chose to go into the undead room in the two times I have run it... so sad as I wanted to see how the Zombies played out.

Overall, one of the better written adventures for a game day. I have run every single 4E gameday adventure and LFR gameday, it's one of the top 3 I think.[/sblock]

 

[giant.robot]

I had a blast at the Game Day. When I got my Red Box a few weeks ago I felt like I was ten years old again opening up my first Red Box. The Game Day was likewise similar to me first D&D game. The pregens were fun to play and on the whole well put together. I brought my friend along who had never played D&D or any other RPG before. She had a really good time as well. She played Brannus and enjoyed bashing kobolds and orcs with her greatsword.

We did pretty well on the first encounter. The rogues climbed up on the roof and sniped through the holes in the ceiling. I played Korzon and it was interesting. I had the highest AC and doled out tons of damage. I wasn't used to playing such a hard assed cleric.

We fumbled the stealth checks outside of the dragon's chamber. We opened the door only to face a phalanx of orcs. We closed the door right before the dragon spit acid into the doorway. We tried to get clever and run towards the second door and trick the orcs into going up the stairs. That didn't work and we burst into the crypt. Luckily by super high religion check upstairs got us some favor with Kord. We called it in and the zombies joined up with us to take down the orcs, the "defilers".

The dragon burst through the back door as the zombies shuffled down the hall to deal with the orcs. We held our own for a while and had the dragon on the ropes and he was about to flee but used his breath weapon against us dummies bunched up in front of him. This incapacitated three of us. Luckily Brannus ran up and nailed the dragon for a ton of damage using every bonus available. Then the Mage (played by the store owner Mel) popped around the corner and nailed the dragon with magic missile. Down the dragon goes. It was a great solo battle and had an epic end.

 

[boolean]

After taking an extended rest to restore death saving throws to 3, I will let them know how close to death they came.

A "rest" resets the count. Any type of rest, not just an extended one, so a short rest will do.

 

[thewok]

Did you win initiative against the dragon?

If you did, that counts for a LOT against the dragon

Two of us had higher initiative than the dragon. One thing that helped is that we entered the room from multiple entrances. Three of us came in from behind a wall and were able to kill the orcs pretty quickly (they were all minions, as I recall). The others came in from the side, where the wizard dropped her daily Fountain of Flame right on top of the dragon, which had moved to the center of the room. The non-minions that started near the dragon were dispatched quickly thereafter. The dragon couldn't find a decent grouping of us for its breath weapon for a round or two, but it finally let it go, and it finished off two or three of its own buddies for us at the same time.

Afterward, we found out the the DM had gone easy on us and forgotten to use the aura, which would have made the breath weapon worse. So that may be the big part of it. Still, tactically, it was a simple matter of divide and conquer. We removed the smaller ones before they could pose a threat, which allowed us to concentrate on the dragon itself. And, as we all know, focus fire hurts.

In answer to Festivus' spoiler above...
[sblock]Using a spoiler because Festivus did, and he's the only one I've seen mention the undead so far.

My group chose the undead room. The zombies seemed like pretty standard fare. At least, I don't remember anything really special about them. We actually got lucky and crit on two of them (zombie weakness ahoy!). The wizard was able to knock out half the skeleton minions before she moved in to take the others. Other than the rogue that ran out into the middle of the room to get wailed on by the big skeleton, it was actually a pretty easy fight.

I'd really like to see this adventure's writeup myself. If anyone can make that happen, I'd be obliged.[/sblock]

 

[nookiemonster]

I played the mage in this game; The first two encounters went OK. Used the Beguiling Strands as written, shifted the monsters around to give the slayers combat advantage, and that helped in the first. Second one was a target-rich environment, blew away I don't know how many minions with Beguiling Strands. Went into the first chamber with the humans and orcs. I played badly here, concentrated on trying to decipher the trap rather than just shoving the bad guys around onto the trap squares; for some reason I had the idea the trap would not affect them. Wasted my daily here. We got knocked about badly.

Then... the fight with the dragon. I went forward a bit to blast as many minions as possible with Beguiling Strands, but the monsters' initiative was just after mine and I got mobbed. Knocked unconscious very quickly, so the hobgoblins and minions lasted much longer than they should have. I got healing worded and knocked unconscious twice more. The Cleric was a rock in this encounter, healing everyone (and getting knocked unconscious once). Just when it was looking like a TPK, I daze the dragon with my encounter power and the Elf thief nails it with a huge damage roll, setting alight to an arrow with the astral fire from the braziers, adding in Backstab and Sneak attack, doing just enough damage to finish it off. High fives all around.

Tough adventure, would have been easier with players who were used to working together and who had more experience with their characters. I enjoyed the game though.

I did think that the black-and-white map was s**t. The Red Box seems to have a split personality, in one way it's designed to bring in new players (I mean, they're selling it in Target and other general retail stores) in others it's designed to appeal to old-school gamers. It's two completely different groups. Modern gamers expect full-colour, sexy maps, not blue on white (or in this case, black on white) maps.

 

[Aegeri]

From what I understand of the Dragon fight, the essentials characters did very well to survive it and I wish we had non-essentials characters to compare. I'd love to know how "standard" characters would have fared in that encounter.