Game Day Observations

[WalterKovacs]

A couple notes:

When the bard does his healing word, he also slides the target. That would get you off the trap. Not to mention the invoker had a pretty easy to use slide power as well. Between the two of them, getting slid off the trap shouldn't be too problematic.

My players, in the final encounter, benefitted from the Invoker's power to bump everyone's initiative up by 6, it let the barbarian go first (And go nova), and everyone acted before the runespiral demons, so they were able to spread to avoid getting caught in the AoE. They were sort of bottlenecked by the devil, but the bard was able to use a few invisibility powers to get some people by it, and the paladin (and avenger) concentrated on the devil while the barbarian destroyed the Mezzodemon and the invoker worked on the runespiral demons.

 

[kenmarable]

Invoker, a class I felt very "meh" about when I'd skimmed it in PHB2, turned out to be really fun; I enjoyed playing the Invoker a lot more than I did playing a Wizard, but that might have a lot to with her being level 11 rather than 2.

I agree 100%. When I first saw the invoker preview, I was fascinated by the concept, but wasn't really taken in by the mechanics (I think I tend to favor strikers in general, or at least thought that until yesterday). I played the invoker and it was a ton of fun! I kept the quickling locked down with a constant barrage of slow and restrained effects. Then in the 2nd fight, I just sat back and kept pushing and sliding everyone into the millstone.

I haven't played a wizard, but from the looks of it, the wizard seems more like a "damage lots of people" controller. With the invoker, I barely inflicted any damage compared to everyone else, but I was moving and locking down enemies all over the place.

I had to leave before the last encounter. Not sure how WotC thought that could be 2-3 hours, we were 4 1/2 hours by the time we finished the second combat. Of course, the first one took almost 2 hours on its own because we were still learning the PCs and the barbarian and paladin had to pound on the freakin' dire bear forever before it dropped. One table was on the 3rd fight, so probably wrapped up at 5 hours, and the last table TPK'ed on the second combat.

The store had requested 6 kits but only got 3... and wound up turning away about a dozen people because the 3 tables were full.

Couple other fun notes - It was nice that people got into their characters a bit even though they were pregens we just saw a few minutes earlier. I kept having the unaligned tiefling invoker of the Raven Queen tell the LG paladin, "Uh, sorry pal, but I have to drop a burst on you and the bad guys. No hard feelings. *snicker snicker*" Or the warforged barbarian named Squeaks that we weren't sure if he was called that because he's loud when he moves or because he has an embarrassingly high-pitched voice - which of course was the source of his rage growing up.

 

[Ruined]

Hey, I see you are in Cary, NC. Did you play at Sci-Fi Genre or Lost Goblin Games?

I'm pretty sure he was at All Fun 'n' Games, out on the border with Apex.

Unfortunately, I believe Lost Goblin closed their doors at the beginning of this year.