Winter Fantasy 2016 and D&D AL

[darjr]

Post it here. I'll at least try to bring it to their attention.

 

[Motorskills]

Yeah , quite a few people have been posting Facebook pics and Im seeing large tracts of Carpeted area which could of been used to spread the tables out. Thats something attendees should really give feedback on though (if there were feedback forms)

I did mention it to the Admin HQ on Thursday or Friday. I was brushed off that [the space] was going to be used for a Magic tournament at the weekend. Since this was my first event, I took them at their word.

It wasn't the case, and even if the Magic guys had needed space, there would have been room.

 

[Tyranthraxus]

So people around the table couldnt just pick up their table and movie it a bit further out?

 

[Will Doyle]

a) blow up the "Vital Intelligence". My PC argued that it was more likely to be "Vaguely Important Information", but I suspect a bunch of T2 tables probably disagreed....

b) hand over the Serious Stake of Serious Vampire Staking to the vampire in question... *

Brilliant! I'm guessing your PC was charmed by the vampire?

 

[Motorskills]

Brilliant! I'm guessing your PC was charmed by the vampire?

Slightly more complicated (and funnier!) than that.

We heard the announcement that a T1 team in the graveyard had (accidentally) released a vampire.

Well it wasn't us, so it was presumably our only other counter-parts. We didn't think anything more of it, sounded like a job for "Important PCs" to deal with with.

So of course the vampire shows up and charms one of our party. We threw what little we had at it.
I threw a Blindness at the charmed PC while the others jumped on her and bound her.

The vampire got bored and wandered off, presumably to harass more worthy PCs than us low-level footsloggers.

The charmed PC got off a witchbolt or something.

Yes, my PC suffered the only damage he took all evening from one of his own team. <sigh>.
(Hey, it's hard enough being the boss without getting lamped on as well!)


Towards the end of the night we came across a haunted animated tree shambling mound thing, which caused us all sorts of problems, despite our ridiculous firepower (we each had 2 NPC guards helping us out).

Eventually it went down, and we secured the Stake of Stakiness from its branches.2

So of course vampy shows back up and we have a go at staking it with the Stake of Stakiness.

We all take turns with the stake. Everyone misses. Horribly.

I was the last in the impromptu rotation.

I also swung and missed.

Then our charmed PC casts Charm on me, and I hand over the stake to her...and she hands it to the vampire.


Cue lots of eye-rolling and scurrying hilarity from the ref team.




If you were in the room at the end of the night, I was the guy in the bright yellow soccer shirt, pointing out the traitor in our midst when these shenanigans were being announced.

 

[Will Doyle]

Then our charmed PC casts Charm on me, and I hand over the stake to her...and she hands it to the vampire.

Oh, that's so cool.

 

[skerritthegreen]

Post it here. I'll at least try to bring it to their attention.

I'd suggest posting it on the forums over on their website to increase your chances.

 

[Eltab]

We heard the announcement that a T1 team in the graveyard had (accidentally) released a vampire.
Well it wasn't us, so it was presumably our only other counter-parts. We didn't think anything more of it, sounded like a job for "Important PCs" to deal with.
The vampire got bored and wandered off, presumably to harass more worthy PCs

Yes, it was us (by elimination). We were in a crypt finding Secret Potions, opened the hidden chamber, and it got foggy. Nothing else happened so we continued with our mission. A little later - we were ready for the next mission - a Ref shows up and announces that she is a vampire. I called her 'Stradh' and told all our magic-users to Alpha Strike her. She tried to Charm our Wiz3 but failed, while everybody else did trivial damage to her. I'm equipped with a Longbow+1 so I took a shot at her too. No visible effect from all of it, and the Vampire left.
I don't know if she visited you first or us first.

(Hey, it's hard enough being the boss without getting lamped on as well!)

OUR group's leader had to deal with ME - only L4 present and an IRL wannabe Warlord to boot - giving everybody, including the DM, advice on how to organize things to keep it all moving.
I should add that 4 / 7 PCs were L1, and 2 of those had never played in an Epic or Battle Interactive before.

Towards the end of the night we came across a haunted animated tree shambling mound thing, which caused us all sorts of problems, despite our ridiculous firepower (we each had 2 NPC guards helping us out.)

We only ran into that at the end of the night. For simplicity, I suggested that our minions attack its minions, and we PCs dump our attacks on the Shambling Mound / Gulthias Tree. The DM did the minion battle 'off-map'.

Due to a beneficent rain of Plot Favors, we entered EVERY fight with (a) a surprise round; (b) Advantage on all attacks in Round 1; AND (c) a follower apiece. The Gulthias Tree looked like a porcupine when we were done with it.

Eventually it went down, and we secured the Stake of Stakiness from its branches.2

We had TIME called on us before we could get to that point.

A while after the first Vampire visit, I had an idea: my character is ridiculously over-equipped (150 lbs of stuff, I figured out during a session for which I had no ticket to adventure). So, to chase off vampires, I told the group I was pulling out my Fishing Tackle and breaking off the end of my Wooden Rod to make a stake, and putting a Steel Mirror in my belt, just in case. Had the Vampire shown up again, I was going to pause "playing Ranger" and demonstrate to our Monk1 what an experienced Monk actually does for a living.

If you were in the room at the end of the night, I was the guy in the bright yellow soccer shirt, pointing out the traitor in our midst when these shenanigans were being announced.

I saw that. I did not understand the importance of it; too much room noise.

 

[RulesJD]

Okay I have to say, I was disappointed by the T3 Epic track. Everyone in T1 and T2 has fantastic stories and changes that impacted their game throughout the night. Both tracks got fantastic magic items usable by at least 1 or 2 people at each table almost guaranteed, and items that can't be found anywhere else. Hell T2 got freakin mounts out of it.

T3 got it's living expenses paid for in Phlan. On T3 characters that have 10,000+ gp each. One of the magic items that we got was restricted to a particular race, and likely only to a particular class or two within that race, and that already exists elsewhere. Literally no one at our table could use it, nor really wanted it. Nothing changed during our entire game session. No wandering monsters (unless you count the Vorgansharx "encounter" that was woefully short and not even a real fight). I couldn't feel the impact any of our actions were having on other tables, or other tables having on us.

Was this by design because it was expected that T3 was supposed to be hard enough already? Everyone at our table was prepped for a WWIII fight against the dragon. What we got was Desert Storm with us being the allied forces that could declare victory almost before it even started. Even on "lethal+" levels of difficulty we were steamrolling encounters. No Vampire Lord showing up or anything other than several straight forward encounters in a row. We literally finished in a continuing survival encounter because there was nothing else to do.

I can't imagine the prep that has to go on for these things to happen. Maybe no one expected that many T3 tables and so more prep was put in to T1 and T2 tracks. But everyone at my table left feeling, well, honestly the word "cheated" most aptly describes how we felt. Not even a special race or mount cert.

All in all, I recommend going to a con and doing an Epic. But from everything I've heard, do it at T1 or T2, you'll be disappointed by T3. At least if you go in expecting something, well, Epic.

 

[Alphastream]

Then our charmed PC casts Charm on me, and I hand over the stake to her...and she hands it to the vampire.

That's a great story. I know the player in question (she's awesome) and when she told me the story I was super-happy to hear that these kinds of great moments are still being facilitated by the design.

I had a great time at our T3 table. I was asked to leave my group to join another table so it had enough people, and you never know how that will end up - the table was great! We had a lot of fun and did very well even though our party was far from optimal. Our DM was excellent and I liked the encounter design. The only downside we had was that the dragon never even showed up at our table! But, we could at least see that our accomplishments were impacting the battle and we enjoyed seeing the dragon visit other tables and the effect that had.