tafkamhokie
First Post
I know some are bored by these, but a few like to read them, so here goes.
I ran a sample adventure at RavenCon in Richmond, Virginia last weekend.
The game was a bit slow getting started. I was late contacting the Con gaming chair about my interest in running a 4e playtest, so it was not listed in the printed literature. I ended up just setting up at a table in the gaming room with a sign saying “4e Playtest.” A couple of people showed up, then they went to recruit a few of their friends, then a few more wandered by and we finally had enough to play.
I would probably characterize all the players as curious or interested. None were openly skeptical or antagonistic about the new system. So I did not have to fight that fight. Also, I had never met any of them before.
The adventure was basically four encounters:
1. Kobold wyrmpriest, 2 kobold slingers, 10 kobold minions.
2. Hobgoblin warcaster, goblin sharpshooter, 2 goblin picadors
3. 4 squid dogs (ENWorld reader created monsters)
4. Shadar-kai chainfighter, Human Mage, 3 human bandits
The kobold encounter was fairly straightforward. The minions were positioned to ambush, but their weak AC and damage had the party laughing at them after the first round. But then the slingers and wyrmpriest showed up and started dishing out some real damage. The warlock went unconscious twice and the ranger took a ton of damage, but overall it was not too bad. I really like the shifty feature of the kobolds, especially in the wide open terrain.
The next encounter was great fun. The picadors were at ground level in a room with several 5 ft wide pits. The hobgoblin and the sharpshooter were on a ridge 10 ft above ground level. The hobgoblin hit the paladin with a force lance and moved him into one of the pits. The goblins then harpooned the dwarf and dragged him into the pit on top of the Halfling.
This is where the fun started. The paladin marked the warcaster, but the warcaster didn’t have line of effect to the paladin and the paladin couldn’t get out of the pit. So the paladin started shouting insults from inside the pit trying to get the hobgoblin to “come down here and fight me honorably.” I figured that was within the spirit of the paladin mark, so the hobgoblin was taking damage.
The dwarf then tossed the Halfling out of the pit and another goblin dragged the harpooned warlock into the pit on top of the dwarf. So the dwarf tossed the warlock out too.
The ranger teleported to the top of the ridge and made short order of the hobgoblin and sharpshooter. The paladin then marked one of the picadors whose harpoon was still stuck in the dwarf (thus he was unable to attack the paladin) and quickly succumbed to challenge damage.
It is difficult to describe all the intricacies of that fight. But all in all, there were good tactics, a fair amount of humor, and some creative problem solving by the players. We all really enjoyed that one.
After that, two of my players had to leave and three more wanted to join. So character sheets were passed and we kept going with one additional spectator.
The squid dog fight went pretty quickly, except the wizard got torn up. At one point, the wizard was just hit with the “eviscerate” attack and was dropped to zero hit points, prone, stunned, grabbed, and being held over top a fissure in the floor that spouted steam once per round. At that point, the player of the wizard had to leave and the spectator took over. Rough way to enter a game.
The final fight went better for the party than I thought. I figured taking on the chainfighter and the mage at the same time would be pushing a TPK, but the party had done a good job conserving their daily powers and action points and I let it slip that the “final encounter” was coming. So they unloaded in the first two rounds with everything they had. The chainfighter went down in round 3, and the rest went down by about round 7.
My overall impressions:
I like the minion mechanic. This makes it much easier to drop hoardes of annoying bad guys on the party without making the encounter trivial.
Given that I had a lot of mid-game player turnover, people seemed to pick up the rules and the flow of the game quite quickly. Their only comment was they wished powers were organized according to activation (minor, move, standard) instead of usage (at will, encounter, daily). When they had completed their action and still had a minor action left, they had trouble figuring out what their options were quickly.
I like the pace of the game. In my 3.5 game, it seems like an appropriate encounter takes 1.5-2 hours to resolve and only lasts about 3 rounds. In 4e, encounters are resolved in about 45 minutes in 5-10 rounds…thus giving each character more turns.
I have really warmed up to the new rule for charging. MUCH more flexible for the player and simpler to remember the effect.
The healing surge concept was a big hit. Easy to grasp, easy to use. The ranger did enter the final fight with only one surge left, though.
One of my concerns has been the marking mechanic. In this particular playtest, no one had any trouble with it. We did not use tokens or anything, but everyone was able to remember who marked whom at all times.
The ‘buff-buff-buff-buff-obliterate bad guys-rest’ sequence of 3.5 has long been one of my annoyances. A properly buffed party is nearly invincible. An unprepared party is almost too easy to TPK. I like that 4e has eliminated most of your pre-fight buffs. But if you really need to go into a fight “prepared,” you just save your daily powers for that fight. A party with all their daily powers left who is not afraid to use them all at once does a good job of mimicking a fully buffed 3.5e party.
The final comment of one player was that he was not sure what he just played was D&D, but it was fun.
I ran a sample adventure at RavenCon in Richmond, Virginia last weekend.
The game was a bit slow getting started. I was late contacting the Con gaming chair about my interest in running a 4e playtest, so it was not listed in the printed literature. I ended up just setting up at a table in the gaming room with a sign saying “4e Playtest.” A couple of people showed up, then they went to recruit a few of their friends, then a few more wandered by and we finally had enough to play.
I would probably characterize all the players as curious or interested. None were openly skeptical or antagonistic about the new system. So I did not have to fight that fight. Also, I had never met any of them before.
The adventure was basically four encounters:
1. Kobold wyrmpriest, 2 kobold slingers, 10 kobold minions.
2. Hobgoblin warcaster, goblin sharpshooter, 2 goblin picadors
3. 4 squid dogs (ENWorld reader created monsters)
4. Shadar-kai chainfighter, Human Mage, 3 human bandits
The kobold encounter was fairly straightforward. The minions were positioned to ambush, but their weak AC and damage had the party laughing at them after the first round. But then the slingers and wyrmpriest showed up and started dishing out some real damage. The warlock went unconscious twice and the ranger took a ton of damage, but overall it was not too bad. I really like the shifty feature of the kobolds, especially in the wide open terrain.
The next encounter was great fun. The picadors were at ground level in a room with several 5 ft wide pits. The hobgoblin and the sharpshooter were on a ridge 10 ft above ground level. The hobgoblin hit the paladin with a force lance and moved him into one of the pits. The goblins then harpooned the dwarf and dragged him into the pit on top of the Halfling.
This is where the fun started. The paladin marked the warcaster, but the warcaster didn’t have line of effect to the paladin and the paladin couldn’t get out of the pit. So the paladin started shouting insults from inside the pit trying to get the hobgoblin to “come down here and fight me honorably.” I figured that was within the spirit of the paladin mark, so the hobgoblin was taking damage.
The dwarf then tossed the Halfling out of the pit and another goblin dragged the harpooned warlock into the pit on top of the dwarf. So the dwarf tossed the warlock out too.
The ranger teleported to the top of the ridge and made short order of the hobgoblin and sharpshooter. The paladin then marked one of the picadors whose harpoon was still stuck in the dwarf (thus he was unable to attack the paladin) and quickly succumbed to challenge damage.
It is difficult to describe all the intricacies of that fight. But all in all, there were good tactics, a fair amount of humor, and some creative problem solving by the players. We all really enjoyed that one.
After that, two of my players had to leave and three more wanted to join. So character sheets were passed and we kept going with one additional spectator.
The squid dog fight went pretty quickly, except the wizard got torn up. At one point, the wizard was just hit with the “eviscerate” attack and was dropped to zero hit points, prone, stunned, grabbed, and being held over top a fissure in the floor that spouted steam once per round. At that point, the player of the wizard had to leave and the spectator took over. Rough way to enter a game.
The final fight went better for the party than I thought. I figured taking on the chainfighter and the mage at the same time would be pushing a TPK, but the party had done a good job conserving their daily powers and action points and I let it slip that the “final encounter” was coming. So they unloaded in the first two rounds with everything they had. The chainfighter went down in round 3, and the rest went down by about round 7.
My overall impressions:
I like the minion mechanic. This makes it much easier to drop hoardes of annoying bad guys on the party without making the encounter trivial.
Given that I had a lot of mid-game player turnover, people seemed to pick up the rules and the flow of the game quite quickly. Their only comment was they wished powers were organized according to activation (minor, move, standard) instead of usage (at will, encounter, daily). When they had completed their action and still had a minor action left, they had trouble figuring out what their options were quickly.
I like the pace of the game. In my 3.5 game, it seems like an appropriate encounter takes 1.5-2 hours to resolve and only lasts about 3 rounds. In 4e, encounters are resolved in about 45 minutes in 5-10 rounds…thus giving each character more turns.
I have really warmed up to the new rule for charging. MUCH more flexible for the player and simpler to remember the effect.
The healing surge concept was a big hit. Easy to grasp, easy to use. The ranger did enter the final fight with only one surge left, though.
One of my concerns has been the marking mechanic. In this particular playtest, no one had any trouble with it. We did not use tokens or anything, but everyone was able to remember who marked whom at all times.
The ‘buff-buff-buff-buff-obliterate bad guys-rest’ sequence of 3.5 has long been one of my annoyances. A properly buffed party is nearly invincible. An unprepared party is almost too easy to TPK. I like that 4e has eliminated most of your pre-fight buffs. But if you really need to go into a fight “prepared,” you just save your daily powers for that fight. A party with all their daily powers left who is not afraid to use them all at once does a good job of mimicking a fully buffed 3.5e party.
The final comment of one player was that he was not sure what he just played was D&D, but it was fun.
