D&D 4E 4E group - first time playing

[Emka]

Hey all,

After some ferocious googling and reading a few threads here I decided to register in hopes of getting some much needed advice.

Me and four friends are about to embark onto the unpredictable waters that is 4E. I've played 3E some 10 years ago for a while and also DMed for a bit. The other players, however, never touched D&D in their lives.

We play Castle Ravenloft on a regular basis which is both a blessing and a curse for this particular group. It's positive because they all know about the Move/Minor/Standard routine, and basics like making checks and reading powers.
Since Ravenloft is a 5 player game and D&D requires a DM (me), the actual party would only consist of 4 players. Herein lies the curse; the players are all pretty attached to their character classes and roles. In pratice this means that the D&D party would consist of a Wizard, Cleric, Ranger(Archer) and Rogue. As you can see, no defender.
I've decided to change the Cleric to a Inspiring Warlord, but I'm not convinced this will compensate for the lack of dedicated defender.

That said, we're trying to get a fifth player so we can cover all bases but in case we don't, is an Inspiring Warlord a good choice here?


Now, while I have DMed in the past I've never DMed 4E so I can use some advice myself
I'm thinking of running a remixed version of Kobold Hall to get the ball rolling. It looks a bit dry as-is so I'm looking at ways to spice it up.
Right now I've added an encounter prior to going to the Dungeon, namely a skill challenge to find the location of said Hall; they can either meet with a rogue named Valek (friend of a friend of the party's Rogue) who has a map, or by going into the woods and trying to find it themselves (opportunity for the party's Ranger to shine). If they choose the former and fail the challenge, Valek will break the deal off and run. The PCs get another shot at getting the map by starting a chase through the streets of Fallcrest. Nothing too original but it does add some tension to the game I think.
The woods, tho, I haven't quite figured out yet. How would a good pathfinding skill challenge work, and what would be the outcome if they fail? Do they get a second chance, and if so how would that fit in story wise? Or would they simply "get lost", wander a day or two through the woods stumbling upon the Hall by coincidence but at the cost of say 2 healing surges per player?

Once in the keep, which of the encounters would you change and/or omit? The skull-skull thing sounds a bit quaint but it might also be a chance for the wizard to creatively use Mage Hand. Then again, the second room with the traps reads like it will be nothing more than a frustrating experience. One might consider removing the kobolds there and just leave the altar. Purely for moodsetting reasons. Perhaps the altar hints at the danger that is the White Dragon clueing players to make sure they're fully rested up before challenging it?

This brings me to the most predictable question.. "the Young White Dragon encounter.. what the hell?!". It seems way out of proportion, if not a drawn out fight. It also has like 232hp (30 more than the MM suggests for some reason). This would need some toning down methinks.
How did you guys deal with this encounter? I can understand beating it with a 5 player veteran party but again, we're all noobs here.
One thing I was thinking of was adding a giant hole in the ceiling of the lair leading all the way up to the surface. Flavorwise, how else would the dragon enter and exit it's lair? Mechanicalwise, this could act as a disguised Deus Ex. The dragon could 'flee' in spectacular fashion after it had taken enough of a beating? Not the most glorious ending of an adventure I admit.. though it does open the door for further adventures come to think of it.

Anyways, I could keep on writing, speculating and imagining (I love to think up heroic tales) but you guys are much more battlehardened than me and probably have a lot more fruitful suggestions.
So, how would you guys tackle these issues?

 

[Rechan]

As you can see, no defender.

That's not the end of the world. There are ways to deal with this as a DM.

You have two characters who are ranged (wizard, ranger), one who's likely melee (the rogue) and one who could be ranged or melee (the cleric; the warlord, if you go with it, is melee).

All characters do not have lots of hit points. What this means is that you have two characters who can put out a lot of damage, one guy who can heal damage and make everyone fight better, and one guy who can effect a group of people. What are you lacking?

Someone who can stop enemies from moving around, and who can take a lot of hits.

Therefore choose your monsters more carefully: use enemies that don't do buckets of damage with their attacks, enemies who have ranged attacks but are weak in melee, minions*, etc.

Use Soldiers** and Controllers more often. They have various effects but won't kill your PCs outright. Use Artillery as real threats - enemies at range that need to be taken out or killed soon, because while weak, they can put the hurt (thus you end up with situations where PCs might want to take cover, and it becomes a shootout).

Use Skirmishers and Brutes sparingly. They can potentially do a lot of damage, and often these are the guys Defenders pin down (to stop Skirmishers from moving/surrounding softer targets, and to keep Brutes from pounding the hell out of everyone else).

Lurkers are a mixed bag - they are about doing a lot of damage once or twice in a fight, but are weak. So they are big threats once, and thus provide a good scare to change a battle. Most lurkers can remain hidden, so have them waiting to pounce on the second or third round.

Occasionally, break these molds. Run an encounter as normal. Otherwise it will look formulaic.

If you do not want to deal with changing monster encounters like this, or if you're still nervous, what you could do is create a Companion Character defender. This has the same relative power as a PC, but has fewer options. Let one of the players basically dictate this character's actions in combat.

*Do not use too many minions at one time. Your strikers will get very irritated because their focus is doing lots of damage, and it doesn't matter how much damage they do to a minion. Minions are the wizard's pinata. For other characters, their intention is to be speedbumps, getting in the way of attacking the higher powered stuff.

**Do not use too many soldiers at once - their high defenses and low damage can make them a grindy pain. One or two to tie up the melee guys/keep them off a controller or artillery is good.

 

[d2OKC]

Rechan's advice is all very good. Follow those and you should be fine.

RE: the dragon:

Personally, though I've never run the module you're planning on running, I'd leave the dragon as is. In fact, the only thing you should do to it is add stuff. Never take things away. The way the module is written really is kind of boring. Give the dragon a reason to be there, and give it some schemes. This way, either the PCs defeat it and stop its plans, or the dragon wins and the PCs have a new villain to fight later in the game. Give it a name, and maybe add some features to the chamber it lives in - a shrine to Tiamat or a map of the Nentir Vale with some ominous X's at important locations. I may be misremembering, but isn't there a stream or something that flows through the chamber? Maybe it can dive down into that and escape through a tunnel underneath, if it needs to? Depending on how you dress it up, give the kobolds some stuff to hint at it (lockets with Tiamat's holy symbol, for example).

As for the power level of the dragon - that's a good thing! Personally, I will never again throw a dragon at my party that is any less than two levels above their own. I take the tack that they should be powerful and feared, and the characters (and players) will never feel that way if every dragon they fight is only a moderate challenge. After a fight with a dragon, I want my party strung completely out on resources. I want it to be harrowing, so that if they have to fight another one, they're much less excited about it (from the characters' point of view - my players themselves tend to enjoy that kind of challenge).

Of course, that is all my own opinion on matters. You might feel completely differently about it all.

 

[Infiniti2000]

A defender companion would be my recommendation, possibly with a standard amount of healing surges. Adding this character is definitely easier if you're planning on running preprinted adventures because then you don't have to try and rebalance every encounter to compensate.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I'm going to disagree a little on the power of the dragon.

Solo fights are cool, IMO, but a solo shouldn't be much higher level than the party, and only if they're a brute (as they've got low AC).

My first two experiences with solos were both three to four levels higher than the party (a black dragon in Raiders of Oakhurst and Kalarel from KotS; yes, I know Kalarel is actually an elite, but I'm still going somewhere with this). Their ACs and defenses were too high, getting them to even bloodied was a challenge. (And the latter was poorly designed, too, I think he only had one encounter power.) This was early on when elites and solos got +2 to most defenses as well, making the problem worse. Kalarel's defenses were about 6 points higher than they should have been for an adventure that ends at 4th-level.

The adventure that came with Monster Vault I haven't run, but the main villain was a 5th-level elite, only 1 level higher than the adventure, in a really cool environment. I've also thrown a "teenaged giant" at the party (a 5th-level solo brute against a 4th-level party) in my Dark Sun game. It did something like 200 damage over multiple opponents in a round or two, but took about the same amount, then it got tripped and ganked fast. The PCs weren't getting frustrated ineffectively swinging and casting at it. They took damage hard, and they dished it even better.

TLDR: Don't use higher level solos. If the dragon is more than a level above the PCs, I'd suggest "nerfing" its level and either giving it backup or even another dragon mate with the same stats, depending on how much behind your PCs are kicking, the number of AP and dailies they still have, etc.

 

[d2OKC]

Well, I wouldn't recommend having every solo be so much highter. Quite the opposite, I just make that exception for dragons. I just want them to feel special. Your points are all completely valid, though. That's why I threw in the caveat at the end that it's all my opinion.

Dragons should be awesome and scary. Other solos should just be challenging.

 

[Rechan]

If you're curious what a companion character would look like, here's Tunnelrat, a dwarven-bred mastiff.

[sblock]Tunnelrat Level 1 Defender
Init: +0 Percetion +3, Low Light Vision
HP 31; Bloodied 15; Healing Surges 12
AC 17 Fort: 13 Ref 13 Will 13
Speed: 5

Defender's Aura: Until you are knocked unconscious, you have an aura 1 around you. Enemies in the aura take -2 to attack rolls on an attack that does not include you.

Battle Guardian (At-Will) Opportunity Action
Trigger: An enemy subject to your Defender's Aura either shifts or makes an attack that does not include you.
Effect: Make a bite attack against the triggering enemy. If the attack misses, the enemy takes 4 damage.

Standard Action
Bite (At-Will)
+7 vs. AC; 1d8+4 damage.

Pull'em Down (Encounter)
+7 vs. AC; 2d8+4 damage, and target is knocked prone.

Move Actions
Push Forward (Encounter)
You shift up to 3 squares to a square adjacent to an enemy.

Minor Actions
Second Wind - gain 7 HP, +2 to defenses until end of next turn.

Traits
When subject to forced movement (push, pull, slide), the effect is 1 less. In addition, when an attack would knock you prone, you can immediately make a saving throw to avoid falling prone.

Skills: Dungeoneering +3, Athletics +9, Endurance +8
Str: 18 Dex: 8 Wis 12
Con: 16 Int: 10 Cha 11[/sblock]I used Dwarf stats (but dropped the poison save bonus and instead gave a +2 to perception). Bite is modeled after a longsword. I also used the Knight's aura as the basis for a decent defender, instead of the Companion Character's "Basic attacks give a mark".

Later today I will post a revamp of the Dragon's stats (using The New Math) and trying to make it more fun. Alternatively you could just use a Cobalt dragon.

 

[Emka]

All sound and useful advice. Thanks for cooking up a Companion, we might use it if all else fails. Obviously having a player control two characters would take away the immersion, especially for new players, but desperate times and all that.

I agree that a dragon should be feared and respected. I understand fighting one should be a memorable encounter. However I would like to avoid dead PCs as being dead is a bigger nuisance than not fully understanding the power of a dragon
The easiest solution for them would be to run if things get too hairy but like I said it's their first time and I don't think retreating is something they would come up with :/

I'll look into the Cobalt dragon and see if I can fit that in there somewhere.


Another question; which of the two Monster Vaults should I initially get? Is Threats of the Nentir Vale of the same level range as MV is?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

MV is from 1st to 22nd level or higher, and Threats to Nentir Vale is 1st to 20th level. Most of the monsters in both book are heroic (1st to 10th) level.

Both are good. I'd get MV to start, just because the monsters there are more generic. (Threats to Nentir Vale monsters, while more specific to a setting, can simply be renamed/reskinned. If you don't mind the counter controversy.)

Dark Sun has some good Survival challenges. I would recommend something like this: easy complexity (4 successes before 2 or 3 failures), and set the skill DCs at about 12 as you want to give everyone a chance. (The new skill rules set "average" DCs lower.)

Skills like Endurance, Nature and Perception will be handy here. If there's even a slight hint of magic involved, Arcana can be used as well, though perhaps the DC should be higher (using Arcana to track the "scent" of magic at a distance, or what have you). Failure results in a slightly-higher-level encounter (say 2nd-level, use lots of 1st-level monsters). Then the PCs can try again. I'd be frankly astonished if the PCs manage to fail that more than once. If so, I'd recommend they end up on some well-known/traveled road, maybe far from where they want to be. This way, not only can they not get lost, but they can speak to travelers too.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I like everyone's suggestions thus far, I have another one for your that you can do one of two ways - along the same vein as the defender companion that [MENTION=60881]Infinity[/MENTION]2000 stated. I've ran solo 4E adventures for people as well as adventures for 2-3 people. Many times I've done a dumb as rocks DMPC who just follows the adventurers around and they can issue simple commands to, but he will not offer any advice or spoilers to the players. This can be ran by you or you can make it and hand it over to someone else to run in combat to make your life a bit easier.

The one that I had most recently really made for some great role playing opportunities and some hilarious moments. I ran an adventure for my brother and another friend so I had a dragonborn warlord for their tank. I told them that the warlord would not think for himself, he was basically just a hired goon to absorb hits for them and if they wanted something specific, they needed to be specific about their commands to him. I was actually running an evil campaign for them and my brother's character (after rescuing a slave-girl just to question her) told the warlord to "dispose of the girl" and the DMPC promptly beheaded her. He became agitated and told him to get rid of the remains, the DMPC promptly opened up the window and tossed them out onto the street much to the chagrin of my brother's PC who had to quickly leave town after that or risk being tossed in jail or worse. We all had a pretty good laugh about it and I reiterated afterwards that he had to issue more specific commands if the wanted the DMPC to do something other than to just run in and fight.

Happy gaming!