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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nathal" data-source="post: 5104077" data-attributes="member: 1809">I sat down with my wife last night to play my very first session of 4E, with her as my solo player. It was in the wee hours, after the kids were in bed, so we had about an hour to play. I hadn't played 4E since I sat in on a few sessions in a local game shop almost a year ago. So here are my observations from my short session:Setting up the scenario is no different, so I just went with your typical hook of some plea for help, and just to be funny, I used the ol' rat in the wine cellar routine. Why not, right? It made me remember how funny the Bard's Tale video game for Xbox was I played a few years back (but that's a different subject).My wife is using a Dragonborn. We used the free DDI Character Builder, and that worked out fine. At first I forgot her character's power drew from sources other than the PHB, and it confused the heck out of my wife as she flipped through the print book. Once I cleared that up, explaining powers and such was easy. It seems A subscription to DDI really makes owning Players Books unnecessary where there's computer and internet access. So after some old fashioned role-playing with the denizens of town, the dragonborn warrior found herself alone against a dire rat. This encounter resulted in about five rounds of combat, and the rat inflicted a filth disease. I worried it would devolve into a slug fest, but the variety of powers made each round a little different. I found myself looking things up in the book like a total newbie, trying to learn the particularities of 4E and how they differ from prior editions (I used to have page numbers memorized!). That wasn't a problem however, especially since I didn't have five or six 4E veteran players sitting around grumbling at me. That's another good thing about solo adventures, I'd think; it's great practice when just learning the system!Anyway, it was helpful to describe the rat as "bloodied" after a few rounds, because it provided some indication that progress was made toward it's dispatchment. I think if I had added a few rodent minions (like 2 or 3) our hero would have still prevailed, even if it exceeded the XP budget, but it would have increased "swing" in the battle quite a bit. One poster on this thread suggested using encounters 4 levels below (which, obviously would work best when the solo character is at least 5th level), and I can see this as good advice for having her face multiple opponents without being overwhelmed. As for me, I liked how NPCs and monsters worked. I could run any monster out of the book directly with no real prep work. The new stat blocs are easy to read and manage. And creating Non Player Characters was fast...though I think I'd benefit from a DM's screen to reduce page flipping (true of any edition). I always felt creating NPCs in 3rd Edition encouraged me to build from the ground up, matching the mix of PCs' powers...it took longer, and I could never quite get past that feeling that it was 'extra work', whether right or wrong. So, from limited experience and a few short sessions, my first impressions of 4E are positive even for solo play. We'll see if that changes in the sessions to come!</blockquote>

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