Here I am, rock you like a hurricane (playtest 2 spoilers)

[RangerWickett]

Our 2nd session of the 2nd playtest, we have a halfling warlock lurker, an elf rogue archer, a human necromancer shaman, and a dwarf fighter somethingorother.

One of our players has been stressed out lately, and since this game isn't a long term thing, he's not taking it too seriously. He just wants to kill stuff and let off steam, and so we've been rushing into stuff super fast.

"What, gnomes want us to kill a giant earth elemental? Okay, let's do that."

No, we say, let's not rush into it.

"Gnomes want us to get rid of pechs? Okay, let's do that."

Hold on, the pechs say they can help us with the elemental.

"Gargh, okay, let's go fight the elemental."

Well, we kill some orcs along the way to him. And now we've met the elemental, and it's pretty obvious he's too tough for us. He's invulnerable to non-magic attacks, and we're pretty sure he's evil because he wants to destroy this sacred thing the gnomes love.

"Hey, elemental, you want to destroy this sacred thing the gnomes love? Sounds great. Let's do that!"

Elemental says, sounds great. Meet me in spot X in one day, or I'll destroy you all. We sigh and decide to go along with it.

The pechs tag along and say that when the elemental is in the presence of the sacred thing, he'll be vulnerable. And they'll be able to protect us. So when we get to the holy site and the pechs form a ring and the giant elemental earth/air whirlwind monster gets suspicious, what do we do?

WE CHARGE AND ATTACK.

And the elemental monster turns into a hurricane of dust and debris, dealing 1d8 damage per round to everyone in the cave (I have 6 HP), and you have to make Strength checks to move through it.

And the elf archer who is outside the area? She's ambushed by a drow and her two pet bugbears.

And we EFFING WIN!

I have no blinking idea how that happened.

My warlock turns ethereal and glides through the ground to get back to the protective circle. The dwarf and sorcerer fight their way through the hailstorm, so the elemental can't hurt us, but our elf ally can't possibly get back to us without being torn to bits by rocks.

The three of us start throwing axes and eldritch blasts, and rays of frost at the bugbears as our elf just spends turn after turn withdrawing and running to cover. We never miss on any of our attacks. I crit the drow with an eldritch blast for 18 damage. The dwarf crits with a throwing axe for another ridiculous amount of damage. The elf risks one attack at close range against a bugbear and takes it down, and is then knocked out by the other one.

The elemental hailstorm moves away from the protective circle and starts trying to grind up the unconscious elf, and the remaining bugbear scoops up the unconscious drow to rescue her (and steal our loot). But the dwarf hits with his 6th throwing axe of the fight (perfect score!), and a ray of frost finishes him off.

Then we blast the elemental from our safe little bastion before the elf drops too low, and when the hurricane finally collapses, we sprint out to stabilize her. Ridiculous fight, no fatalities, sweet loot, I have no bloody idea how in the hell we pulled it off.

The sorcerer says, "So, where'd that drow come from? I wonder if we could follow her tracks back to her lair. Let's do that!"

 

[MortalPlague]

Unreal! Thanks for sharing the story! The more I play, the more I DM, the more respect I have for 5th Edition's PCs. They are powerful beyond what you'd expect!

 

[Rhenny]

That was exciting. What are some of your comments or perceptions of the characters and/or mechanics?

I owe you some xp...can't give them to you now. Gotta spread the love.

Cheers.

 

[RangerWickett]

I was making smoothies for the group during part of the combat, but in general, my thoughts go like this:

Yeah, that's D&D. I might tweak this or that, but it's D&D.

I feel like I picked a crappy warlock power (Breath of Night -- knocks out light source and gives you darkvision; kinda useless in the underdark when only your own team needs light, and the monsters can just attack from the darkness), and that I don't have many 'tricks,' but I'm fine for that at 1st level.

As for our power level? Well, it's realistic. A single attack probably takes us down, two at most. Ditto for other humanoid foes. You throw an axe and hit a person, and they're probably down or in really bad shape. We're lucky in that every PC has a fairly effective ranged attack, which lets us strike first.

I would not want to be an all-melee party in this game. Thankfully, this isn't like 4e, where fighters had a devil of a time being effective beyond 5 ft.

 

[Rhenny]

I hear you. Ranged combat in this game will be very important. I like how PCs and monsters can take shot and then duck under cover. Or..move, attack, move. That really opens it up.

In my session, I had three goblins (it was my own adventure not Bling) cower behind barrels and pop up on their turn and throw rocks at the PCs. The fighter got wise, took out his throwing axe and readied an action. He hit one of the goblins square in the face after it poped up again. Very satisfying kill.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

You throw an axe and hit a person, and they're probably down or in really bad shape. We're lucky in that every PC has a fairly effective ranged attack, which lets us strike first.

I would not want to be an all-melee party in this game. Thankfully, this isn't like 4e, where fighters had a devil of a time being effective beyond 5 ft.

I think this is big - the fact that any fighter can use Deadly Strike to attack from range (without needing a series of specific feats to avoid AoOs and penalties for firing from/into melee, or to spend a bunch of minor/free/whatever actions to grab a throwing dagger from your belt) means that an enemy can't just hover 10 feet in the air, or attack from a nearby rooftop, in order to render the fighter almost useless.

 

[Halivar]

Fighting and winning a no-win scenario? That's my D&D.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Fighting and winning a no-win scenario? That's my D&D.

Yep. I'm with you.