Dark Sun Encounters: Sub-Par Characters

[jbear]

With out giving any spoilers please*

I was wondering if there is some note included for the DM as to why the characters have been built to such a sub-par standard. Do characters in the Dark Sun Setting have less Healing Surges than normal characters?
Or is it an error?

I'm playing Yuka, the party's fighter. Its my job to stand in the way of things. I've been doing an ok job of that but by encounter 3 I am unable to do that anymore. The monsters damge has been huge. Some of the monsters have been able to hit my pitiful will defense on a roll of 4... an that caused me to grant combat advantage... meaning a 2 would still be a hit... And I only have 7 healing surges... Dont fighters start with 9 healing surges? And my CON is 14... so I should have 11. Which means right now I could heal myself and carry on doing my job. As it is we can't go any further and have been forced to hole up for the night... so we are sitting ducks in the middle of the desert full at the DMs mercy. Killing us now would be childs play. An outing from the local kobold kindergarten that stumbled across us could finish us off now.

Anyone qualified to comment on this have any insight why my character might have 4 less healing surges than he is meant to have? I haven't looked at the other characters, but they are similarly weak.

The damage output of the monsters (far above anything Ive seen at lvl1), the
the weak defenses, low hps and pitiful surge count, the tactical advantage monster have via terrain and initial positioning and the near impossibility to rest seem to point the pcs to a brief and violent existence that ends in complete and utter defeat. I get that this is the Athas flavour... but Im sure it would be challenging enough with decent characters.

 

[beverson]

If I recall correctly from looking at that character's sheet, the "7" next to healing surges is the VALUE of each surge, and the number of surges you get is equal to the boxes to the right of that...which I think add up to 12.

 

[Solvarn]

With out giving any spoilers please*

I was wondering if there is some note included for the DM as to why the characters have been built to such a sub-par standard. Do characters in the Dark Sun Setting have less Healing Surges than normal characters?
Or is it an error?

I'm playing Yuka, the party's fighter. Its my job to stand in the way of things. I've been doing an ok job of that but by encounter 3 I am unable to do that anymore. The monsters damge has been huge. Some of the monsters have been able to hit my pitiful will defense on a roll of 4... an that caused me to grant combat advantage... meaning a 2 would still be a hit... And I only have 7 healing surges... Dont fighters start with 9 healing surges? And my CON is 14... so I should have 11. Which means right now I could heal myself and carry on doing my job. As it is we can't go any further and have been forced to hole up for the night... so we are sitting ducks in the middle of the desert full at the DMs mercy. Killing us now would be childs play. An outing from the local kobold kindergarten that stumbled across us could finish us off now.

Anyone qualified to comment on this have any insight why my character might have 4 less healing surges than he is meant to have? I haven't looked at the other characters, but they are similarly weak.

The damage output of the monsters (far above anything Ive seen at lvl1), the
the weak defenses, low hps and pitiful surge count, the tactical advantage monster have via terrain and initial positioning and the near impossibility to rest seem to point the pcs to a brief and violent existence that ends in complete and utter defeat. I get that this is the Athas flavour... but Im sure it would be challenging enough with decent characters.

The encounter design for the first module isn't bad, it is just inconsistent with the goals of Dungeons & Dragons, and Encounters in particular.

There isn't a lot you can do to optimize some of the characters, the other ones aren't too bad. Well, some ranged weapons might have been a nice thought. In case, you know, you run into things with range.

The main issue is the poor editing and character building, in my opinion. I don't feel like the Encounters were playtested with the party provided.

 

[Greatwyrm]

I was wondering if there is some note included for the DM as to why the characters have been built to such a sub-par standard. Do characters in the Dark Sun Setting have less Healing Surges than normal characters?
Or is it an error?

I haven't examined the pre-gens, but there could easily be an error like that. I can't think of any reason they'd weaken characters in a setting where only the strong survive.

And honestly, for being the masters of the game, the WotC folks seem to have a knack for making pre-gens that make you say "bleh".

 

[MerricB]

The folks in the local store who play D&D Encounters have really hated the Dark Sun season so far: bad characters, bad adventure. When I look at it, I really can't understand what the designers were thinking.

Let's take one example of pathetic design: In the first part, there's an ongoing skill challenge over the five sessions. Good idea for playing all the parts at one sitting. For D&D Encounters, where the players, characters and even the DM are not assumed to be the same for each session? It's a complete disaster, which is made even more ludicrous by not actually providing any advice for tracking how many successes/failures there are in the challenge, or what happens when players/DM change from session to session.

I DMed one encounter, which included a bunch of goblins on top of large rocks, flying from rock to rock. If you climbed on top of a rock, you took massive amounts of damage from the terrain (which the goblins were nicely immune to). The group is full of melee pre-gens with no ranged ability at all.

Urgh. Wizards will have to do a *lot* better with their third season of Encounters.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I DMed one encounter, which included a bunch of goblins on top of large rocks, flying from rock to rock. If you climbed on top of a rock, you took massive amounts of damage from the terrain (which the goblins were nicely immune to). The group is full of melee pre-gens with no ranged ability at all.

There seems to be a fairly large wizards contingent that think that terrain which doesn't affect the monsters is somehow fun, and they put it in pretty much every encounter they write.

 

[TikkchikFenTikktikk]

I'm DMing Encounters as well as organizing the events for my FLGS.

First, make sure your DM's are following along at the official forums:
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They're forgiven for not knowing it exists, because it's hidden in the D&D "group" forums instead of the regular D&D forum. Just one of many WTFs surrounding the program.

It has become clear that this program doesn't have a focused director, lots of things feel rushed, and the adventure didn't receive a proper playtest. Also, the begining of the season saw a huge, completely unanticipated turnout which stretched resources.

All that said, the forum I linked has some smart people posting, including the author of the adventure. Several clarifications, corrections, and changes have been propagated via the forum that make the adventure much more playable. It is important to note, too, that DMs are supposed to have pretty significant leeway to alter the encounters, adapting to the game that is being played out rather than some idealized version that only ever existed in the author's mind.

As far as the pregens go, not only are they are clearly not optimized, as printed they have several typos or errors in creation. Another WTF: WotC can't create characters for their own game? We have lost a few players because they can't stand the thought of playing a pregen, let alone unoptimized pregens. But the majority of players have taken the pregens and made them their own--not just noobs, but experienced players too.

View the pregens as an opportunity to try something outside your comfort zone. You might grow as a player and you'll definitely have more fun--as will the players around you--if you find a way to have fun instead of groaning about something it's too late to change. (It is halfway through the season. Are you just starting now?)

Good luck, have fun, keep in touch.

 

[MerricB]

There seems to be a fairly large wizards contingent that think that terrain which doesn't affect the monsters is somehow fun, and they put it in pretty much every encounter they write.

Mind you, I just ran an encounter in P3 where there was terrain that *only* the monsters were affected by. My group - which are very controller-based - dropped the Big Bad in the terrain and watched him *burn*!

(Thank you, Shawn Merwin!)

Cheers!

 

[Aegeri]

There seems to be a fairly large wizards contingent that think that terrain which doesn't affect the monsters is somehow fun, and they put it in pretty much every encounter they write.

Depends on what the terrain is. Would you think that a monster that is aquatic not drowning underwater isn't logical? Or a fire immune creature happily living in lava? Actually I made a comment about this on Tomb of Horrors, where the encounter is easily trivialized by terrain that the author put in, but forgot to mention the creature involved was immune to. Meaning that a simple push into it trivializes the encounter. Not to mention it's not even logical it affects the creature, as why does necrotic goo bother a monster that lives in it anyway?

Noting that sometimes this isn't very logical. For example, bandits around a fire pit aren't going to be immune to it if tossed in. Most enemies dislike being pushed down a huge pit as well as another example. It really depends on the terrain and how it is supposed to interact. I see it as being a continuum of terrain from something that entirely aids the monsters (it's THEIR dungeon after all, it's not YOUR home it's theirs. They'll live places that help them in the end), is in between or even aids the PCs in some manner (Consecrated ground in a graveyard is an example I used).

As for the Dark Sun DDE, I think they jumped the gun far too much on it and it suffered a lot as a result. Had they held back, not forced people to use reprehensibly terrible pre-gens and thought more about the encounters it would have been better (the first encounter and the ambush with the dust devils were awful).

 

[chitzk0i]

It is important to note, too, that DMs are supposed to have pretty significant leeway to alter the encounters, adapting to the game that is being played out rather than some idealized version that only ever existed in the author's mind.

Last season and this season have taught me one thing: those authors don't care that they were involved with these modules. It is your responsibility as DM to make sure your table has fun. When people complained that the monsters did way too much damage and the terrain wasn't even counted in the XP total, they didn't accept any responsibility. It's your fault because you didn't change it.

And that's why when there's a monster in an LFR module with ridiculous defenses, I don't care that I'm not technically allowed to bring in new monsters from outside the module or reduce a monster's defenses by more than one. I'm not going to sit around two hours while the players continually miss a ridiculous AC. I'm going to do something about it.