Heard a ridiculous thing at encounters tonight

[bargle0]

It's the second week of Encounters. Dude needs to lighten up or find something else to do on Wednesdays. I say this as a frequent Encounters DM.

 

[Saracenus]

No prob. It's amazing how store owner attitude can make or break a D&D scene. Its a business, not your personal platform for your one true way of gaming. Sorry you got Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.

 

[OnlineDM]

I'll just chime in to echo the others. Having a party with balanced roles is not "optimizing" or anything unseemly to me.

 

[corwyn77]

It's especially not optimizing in Encounters where you often have numerous rookies. This week we had one table which was mostly 2nd time players. You think they're likely to come back if they spend most sessions TPK'd? I had TPKs a number of times last season with balanced parties.

And I wasn't trying - honest.

It was actually kinda amusing last night. Two newish guys, early 20s, maybe 8 or so sessions under their belt, no previous experience. One forgot to add stat to damage, the other forgot how to mark as a fighter. They expressed interest in trying out Lair Assault.

I like these guys, but I think they might get a bit frustrated playing LA. Eventually I agreed to run a game near the end of the first LA run (November) if they felt they were ready.

Actually a number of Encounters guys seem to be interested - mostly players who, IMO, think they're better than they actually are because Encounters tends to be pretty lax (aside from the Dark Sun season). But it wouldn't really be fair to run LA and go easy on them , would it?

OTOH, if they're good sports, it might teach them something. I'll have to wait and see what the adventure looks like as well.

 

[corwyn77]

Um, would it make you cry if I told you the store where I coordinate D&D Encounters at ran 8 full tables last week?

Sorry,

Ouch, I'm just glad that our turnout has steadily increased over the past several months. When I first joined (season 2, I think, right after Dark Sun) we ranged from 3 to 6. Now we range from 12 to 15 most weeks. I think our biggest turnout has been three tables of 6 when everyone showed. Last night we had 16 including DMs but we were missing 3 or 4 regulars.

 

[ExploderWizard]

My FLGS just started running encounters yesterday. I will have to ask about turnout. I wish it was on a weekend. My commute isn't friendly to any weeknight gaming.

 

[D'karr]

We started last night, GenCon really did a number on getting all the packages to the DMs.

We had 12 people signed up to play at 2 tables. We ended up with 21 people at the game. We ran a table of 9 and a table of 12 simply because it would have sucked to send all those people away without playing.

The DMs adjusted some of the challenge accordingly and the groups had a blast anyway.

I really sympathize for people that don't have an FLGS.

This season started with loads of fun for all. Now I have to see if I can find a 3rd DM for next weeks session.

 

[wlmartin]

We had twelve players and two DMs. When they were trying to decicde how to split the groups betwee the two tables, I suggested everyone be divied up so that each table had all four roles covered.

One of the DMs repsonded (sarcastically, I think...) "make sure you optimize those characters too."

My immediate response was "I'm not optimized. That's why I want a defender and leader in my group. So I don't die."

The rest of the encounter, I couldn't stop running my mind through through various fantasy stories, heist movies, super hero teams, power rangers episodes, sports teams, and I can't think of a single shred of precedent to suggest that a team of complementary specialists is somehow meta or has no place in a serious roleplaying game. The most homogenous team I can think of is the Seven Samurai, but even they had specialties: a rogue, a tactician, some brutish guys, some light fighters...

I just can't abide this idea that wanting to cover all roles in a party of six is a bad thing.

In the end, my table had 2 leaders, 3 strikers, 1 controller and almost TPKed when the dragon got bloodied. Fortunately, our halfling bard was able to force a reroll on that attack, resulting in a miss which only managed to bloody the entire party.

Personally I think the the way 4e is balanced compared to previous editions, MinMaxing is not as much of a problem on gameplay as it used to be.

 

[Herschel]

We started last night, GenCon really did a number on getting all the packages to the DMs.

We had 12 people signed up to play at 2 tables. We ended up with 21 people at the game. We ran a table of 9 and a table of 12 simply because it would have sucked to send all those people away without playing.

That's....um, good to hear. Well, except for the lack of warning/DM thing but hey, that's a nice turnout.

 

[shamsael]

Repsonses to various questions...

If we had bothered to split the groups the way I'd suggested, I'm pretty sure we would have enough defenders.

The Snarky DM in question was not a regular DM. One of the two regular DMs was out, and he was filling in.

The Non-snarky DM rolled a single attack for the close burst to save time and even if he wanted to play it that way, I also agree that RAW and RAI should have had him roll a side attack for the Bard. We got the dragon to bloodied in 2 Or 3 rounds because we were so striker heavy and had no legit way to deal with the triggered burst except to keep our mouths shut when the DM decided he missed the whole group. This only confirms the fact that the groups were split poorly if it was necessary to fudge something that hard to keep the encounter from ending at round 2.

EDIT: Clarifying, the DM I wound up with was not the one who dissaproved of group optimization. The fudged die roll was from the regular DM.