How many practice sessions did you have?

[Zustiur]

Recently I've determined that a lot of my initial hatred of 4E stemmed from one source - not understanding the game.
This may seem like an obvious statement, but what I'm getting at, is the first character I created, I was stuck with for nearly a year. It got to the point where my character died, and I nearly rejoiced, until I was stunned to find that our 1st level party was able to raise him from the dead.
To his credit, my DM did allow characters to be rebuilt after the first session, but with only one session under my belt I still didn't understand just how badly I'd built my character (including overlooking the fact my cleric wasn't proficient in shields). Consequently I made no changes. I'd have been happier if there had been a few designated 'test' sessions, where we got to play a number of different characters, and got to really know the rules.

This brings me to wondering how many test sessions other groups had, and how that has affected their enjoyment of 4E.

 

[Thanlis]

We started from scratch; the campaign is still going 20 sessions later.

 

[Dice4Hire]

My group did a few sessions, maybe 3-5 and hten did a total character rebuild, in which a couple players changed classes or build ideas.

Actually most of heroic was that kind of process. In my home games, we don't worry much aboout consistency, so changing characters at level-ups happens sometimes.

 

[Holy Bovine]

No practice sessions here but I do allow pretty open changes to characters as they level. Feats, powers and even the occasional ability point are all allowed to be changed if the player really wants. Of course I still have a player who wants to change his character wholesale every single level. I've since put a stop to that nonsense.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

No practice sessions here but I do allow pretty open changes to characters as they level. Feats, powers and even the occasional ability point are all allowed to be changed if the player really wants. Of course I still have a player who wants to change his character wholesale every single level. I've since put a stop to that nonsense.

Speaking of which... can I remake Wil as a Seeker?

I should note that in my game, I allow a greater amount of retooling than suggested, but usually coordinated around the release of new products. Sometimes, if I think a PC isn't as effective as they could be, I'll throw a magic item their way to improve a shortcoming.

 

[Nifft]

"Campaign started at day 1", but we did have a bunch of practice-ish sessions, and we still revise and refine when we (collectively or individually) learn stuff we ought to have already known. We take the relaxed approach -- that we are all always continuously learning -- rather than a hardline or competitive stance.

For our 4e games, we have regular "character amnesty" rebuild points.

For my Exalted 2e game, I'm offering unlimited "amnesty" -- rebuild anything at any time, just show me explicitly how you spent your character creation points and XP.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Glyfair]

I ran Mike Mearls' Return to the Moathouse as a warmup for my game. At the time, a good percentage of the players had played some 4E, though.

 

[Stormonu]

No practice sessions, but I've played or run at least 3 different campaigns, though we got disgusted/bored by about 3rd-4th and scrapped the game.

I'll be trying again for a "one-shot" this Halloween, and hope to try out Dark Sun, but it's become clear 4E is not a game I really like, and I haven't found anything to change my perceptions of the game.

 

[malraux]

I think its crazy that playing a new system with complicated rules like 4e that the DM wouldn't let you do a rebuild. That said, the 4e retraining rules are really flexible. With the exception of your initial stats, you can swap out just about anything else over the course of a few levels.

 

[DragoonLance]

Did one session as a trial run with pre-gen characters, some of the players liked it, others hated it. Went back to the drawing board, walked the ones that didn't like it thought the character creation process and let them build characters with me and other experienced players helping them with a build that was what they wanted in a character and still effective.

Then I took my old army training approach to the next session (crawl, walk, run.) This session had four encounters. Encounter one was the PC training in the "dojo" to give them the basic concept of movement on the board, flanking and basic melee attacks. Encounter two was a mock battle with other students, adding initiative, basic ranged attacks and conditions. They won their "fight." Encounter three was dealing with the angry team that lost using a skill challenge (and introducing skill challenges at the same time.) Encounter four was a brawl vs the gang of young punks they had angered, introducing them to their powers and how they worked. Overall this worked much, much better and got positive reactions from everyone.

I really didn't think of doing this at first because many of these players usually ask to just play and pick up the game as it goes, but I think 4th really needs a sort of tutorial setup for the casual player.