Another "First Game Impression"

[DrSkull]

Last night we had a 6-hour "test game". There were 7 people present, each of us played a character, while 2 of us had made the adventure and shared the DM duties. We both wanted to play both sides of the screen, and wanted to see as many classes in play as possible.

We pre-generated 5th level characters, and in play we had an example of every class except the ranger. Over 6 hours we had 4 combat encounters, and 2 skill challenge encounters.

Lessons and Observations:

1) We will definitely do the traditional 1 DM at a time per session when we start the regular campaign next week. Some games support doing things fast and loose, but D&D4e requires the DM to be thinking about the monster's tactics, and not about how to save his own guy's bacon.

2) The First Rule of Not Being Stupid, is Don't Be Stupid. I played a Warlord, and absolutely love the class. But in the final encounter, I pulled a complete LEEEROOOYYYY JENKINS, and the Warlord just can't be by himself and feel useful. I double-moved ran forward into the encounter area, triggering the undead horde to rise up from the bones scattered about. I was completely cut off from the rest of the party. I guess I wasn't used to the idea of 3 skeletons being dangerous to a 5th level guy, but they really put the beat down on me, and it took a long time and 3 healing surges before I was back with the rest of the party. I mean, my "to hits" and "damage" abilities seemed good, and my AC wasn't horrible, but I just couldn't do anything with any ummppphh, because my allies weren't anywhere near me.

3) Too many Condiitions/Special States: this is the one element of the game that really seemed too boggy. Trying to keep track of who was under the Warlock's Curse, who was Marked by the Paladin, who was Marked by the fighter, who was Slowed by the wizard, who was bloodied, who was dazed, who was immobilized, who was invisible, turned out to be a regal mess. We had a ton of multi-colored tokens and small poker chips, but they weren't as helpful as we thought they might have been.

4) I love the Monsters: the monster stats are great, and each monster has his own interesting moves to make. It was just FUN to DM the monsters, more so than I've seen with any other version of the game.

5) Teamwork is fun. Using each player's powers to help the others is much more dynamic than with other games I've played, and adds to the overall enjoyment of the game.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

I agree with pretty much everything except point #3. I let the players keep track of who they've marked and remind me if I forget. Takes a load off of my DMing brain.

(It also helps that we play online and I can, if I need to, make notes right on the "minis" themselves...but that's neither here nor there)

My group is totally digging on the whole teamwork aspect of 4e.

 

[Obryn]

Yeah, the marks can be a pain! We managed to make it work with some Alea magnets.

(It was actually the magnets themselves that were the problem. I almost wish they were just weighted plastic discs that didn't push/pull other discs nearby.)

-O

 

[Festivus]

3) Too many Condiitions/Special States: this is the one element of the game that really seemed too boggy. Trying to keep track of who was under the Warlock's Curse, who was Marked by the Paladin, who was Marked by the fighter, who was Slowed by the wizard, who was bloodied, who was dazed, who was immobilized, who was invisible, turned out to be a regal mess. We had a ton of multi-colored tokens and small poker chips, but they weren't as helpful as we thought they might have been.

I have been considering this tracking issue for a while and came up with the following.

Marks, and marking - Colored wire. Give one color to the melee guys, another to the warlock and ranger for curse and quarry.

Conditions - Index cards... Write the condition and effect on it, and what ends it. Hand it to the player in question and have them deal with it on their turn. Keep the cards visible so we all know.

Action points - Blue Colored Glass Beads... yes people forget if they used an action point in the encounter or not, so they get one glass bead at the start of the encounter (provided they have at least one action point available), they hand it back to me when they burn their action point for the encounter.

Death tokens - Fail a death saving throw, get a red glass bead from me. Have three beads? Roll up a new character because this one is dead. Make a 20? Hand me back all the red beads you have.

Thus far the mose confusing thing has been conditions. I haven't tried this yet, but I will be this weekend.

 

[Dragonbait]

I've had to use gmae chits from various Fantasy Flight games (who make a buzillion in each game) to symbolize all the different status effects. We use color-coded poker chips for marks. Each player has 2. One to put under their mini, and one to put on/under the target.