Elodan
Adventurer
I got to play the 4E scenarios at a local Con (2+ hour drive) this past weekend. I'm on the fence when it comes to upgrading. I played with two friends, one fairly anti-4E (Dave) and one who's ambivalent (Bob).
I have been paying attention to 4E tidbits but haven't been following closely. This is also a modified version of what I sent to the rest of my group so bear with the repeated information.
I was actually pretty excited about trying 4E. There were two sessions. Scalegloom Hall was a delve designed to show off the new combat system. Escape from Sembia introduced some skill uses (and was more enjoyable). Unfortunately, the first DM didn't really have a grasp of the system. The majority of his answers are “I don’t know” or reverting to what you could do in 3.5. The second DM who later ran us through Escape from Sembia and did a much better job running and explaining what’s new. I have to say, as with all versions of D&D, the DM was key to our enjoyment.
I’m going to not go into too much detail. Just try and give you some of the highlights of what I liked and didn’t care for.
Scalegloom Hall
This was the first scenario we played. This adventure is basically a series of combats versus a bunch of kobolds. There are six first level characters provided. I grabbed the dwarven fighter, Bob the human cleric, Dave ended up with the halfling paladin.
The first encounter was in a room with a slime pit in the middle and a single kobold in it.
* Characters get 3 actions in a round; a minor, move and standard. You can change a higher-level action for a lower one, i.e. a standard for a move. I liked this a lot. It made it pretty easy to determine what actions you can do on your turn.
* Everything is measured in squares. 5’ step is now shifting and counts as an action.
* Moving diagonally goes 1-1-1 instead of 1-2-1. The characters really fly around the mat.
* Each character has powers at-will, encounter and daily. Most of my fighter’s powers seem to be about handling multiple enemies at once. Because of the slime pit and the other’s ranged attacks I was able to use my cleave power once. It would be the fourth encounters before I could use any of my powers again.
Second encounter involves 3 kobolds in a room with 4 coffins.
* Action points. Start with one and earn another after every encounter. Reset back to one after an extended rest. These give you an extra action. No limit one which type of action but you can’t use to get another use of an encounter or daily power. I pretty much use them as soon as I get them. Simple and elegant, I like.
* First time the cleric heals. Costs you and healing surge and plus a dice roll.
* Healing surges. Give you back a fixed number of hit points. You only get so many per day and any time you’re healed counts against it (except the paladin’s lay on hands which count against his). I get 13 as the fighter. Sweet. Only 5 when I play the ranger later, not so sweet.
* The DM allows us to use as many healing surges as we need between encounters. The means we essentially have full HPs at the start of each encounter. Not liking. We later find out you’re only supposed to use one per short rest. Better.
* Set off trap. Beats my reflex. Can’t move so I essentially miss a turn. Not fun. I’m not sure about saves as defense. I see where it saves dice rolls but it feels like things are out of your control.
Third encounter, kobolds at end of room up on platforms.
* Damn ranger with his bow, warlock with his eldritch blast and wizard with his magic missile. Take out the kobolds before I can get to the other side and up to the platforms. All I have is 2 hand axes as ranged weapons.
* Used my Second Wind (kobolds on platform using me as target practice). Get my healing surge value and a +2 to all my defenses. Get to use as a minor action because I’m a dwarf. Nice.
* Dave drops. Get to see the death and dying rules in action. Seems like a decent system.
Fourth encounter, kobolds on raised platforms with a boulder moving about the room.
* Double moved across the room and then used an action point to climb up platform.
* Finally, more than one kobold around me. Use my Tide of Iron power to push one off the platform in front of the boulder. Nice. Probably could have done the same with a bull rush.
* First crit. Roll a 20 and as long as you would beat the AC of your enemy, it’s a crit. Max damage. Miss rolling double damage.
Last encounter, fight a black dragon. This is the characters can die in 4E encounter.
* This battle lasted about 20 rounds before we all eventually died. Unfortunately, we didn’t know that the heal skill triggers a healing surge (neither did the DM). Also, when in negatives healing starts at zero. So if you’re at –5 and someone heals you for 6 (your surge value). You’re at 6 HP. If you knew this there was a good chance of beating it.
* Monster power recharge. Roll a d6 and if the number matches they get the power back. So the dragon’s breath would come back if you rolled a 5 or 6 on the die (don’t think those are the actual values).
* Ongoing effects suck. Dragon’s acid carries to the next round. You take 5 points of damage at the start of the round, do your actions and save at the end. If you don’t save the effect continues. Save is 10+ on a d20, no modifiers. Nothing worse than being at 2hp, failing your save and knowing that you’re going to take 5 points of damage and there’s nothing you can do about it. Really dislike this.
Escape from Sembia.
Here you’re on a mission to deliver a message to a contact. The Sembian guard intervenes and you must flee the country. Since there are only 5 of us, no one gets to play the warlock. I grab the Eladrin ranger, Dave gets the cleric and Bob the dwarf fighter.
First encounter, meet the contact and the Sembian guard cause problems.
* First experience with Opportunity Attacks, formerly AoO. Seems that even with reach you can only get AoO against those within 1 square around you. Can only use your basic attack to make an AoO. Not a fan of them changing the terminology everywhere.
* Discover that burst spells cover a pretty wide area. Early we though burst 1 meant 4 squares, like a 10’ burst in 3E. It really means 9 squares. You pick one in the middle and all the ones around it are the 1 square burst. Burst 2 covers 25 squares. Really easy to figure out spell areas.
* Lots of “marking” going one. If you don’t attack who “marked” you, you take a minus to attacks. I don’t know who’s marked me or who’s marking others. Pretty confusing.
Second encounter, in order to escape the guards we’re going to decide what we do and make skill checks to see if we succeed or fail.
* I don’t know if this was how it was in the adventure or if the DM says this on his own, but the description was that this encounter showed how 4E allowed greater role-playing because you got to decide which skill to use to accomplish the task as opposed to the DM giving you the skill and a DC. It was pretty insulting. I could and have done the same thing in 3E.
* Essentially, you need to accomplish a number of victory points before you hit so many failures. It seems like a decent system, but I don’t see it encouraging role-playing any more than 3E with a good DM.
Third encounter, run into undead on the pass through the mountains.
* I get beat up by the skeletons so *BAMF*. I use my Eladrin encounter power to teleport on top of some rocks out of harms way. I actually enjoyed using this power a lot.
* We’re attacked by a variety of skeletons. Regular, one on fire and one that shot bone shards when it’s “bloodied,” half hit points. This is one of my favorite things about 4E, a variety of monsters playable out of the book.
Fourth encounter, we fight some NPCs
* By this point we had the basics of the system down and things went well. Fun watching the wizards toss magic missiles at each other and miss.
* It does seem that instead of falling back on attacks like you do in 3E, you fall back to a core of at-will powers (they’re a little more powerful than your basic attack).
In some places 4E is much simpler and elegant. In other cases it seems just as complex and convoluted as 3E, if not more so. The Paladin and Wizard had something like 9 powers each. It looks like it could be pretty easy to get confused about who’s “marked”.
Dave plans on sticking with 3E. He'd play 4E if it was that or board games (he compared it to a board game). Bob saw no reason to switch.
Overall, I had fun. I still haven’t seen anything that makes me say must upgrade and am leaning toward keeping 3E (technically Arcana Evolved) as my system of choice, but I’d definitely play 4E. I’m keeping my 4E pre-order and will reassess once I see the whole system. Worse case, I steal the good ideas and use in 3E.
I have been paying attention to 4E tidbits but haven't been following closely. This is also a modified version of what I sent to the rest of my group so bear with the repeated information.
I was actually pretty excited about trying 4E. There were two sessions. Scalegloom Hall was a delve designed to show off the new combat system. Escape from Sembia introduced some skill uses (and was more enjoyable). Unfortunately, the first DM didn't really have a grasp of the system. The majority of his answers are “I don’t know” or reverting to what you could do in 3.5. The second DM who later ran us through Escape from Sembia and did a much better job running and explaining what’s new. I have to say, as with all versions of D&D, the DM was key to our enjoyment.
I’m going to not go into too much detail. Just try and give you some of the highlights of what I liked and didn’t care for.
Scalegloom Hall
This was the first scenario we played. This adventure is basically a series of combats versus a bunch of kobolds. There are six first level characters provided. I grabbed the dwarven fighter, Bob the human cleric, Dave ended up with the halfling paladin.
The first encounter was in a room with a slime pit in the middle and a single kobold in it.
* Characters get 3 actions in a round; a minor, move and standard. You can change a higher-level action for a lower one, i.e. a standard for a move. I liked this a lot. It made it pretty easy to determine what actions you can do on your turn.
* Everything is measured in squares. 5’ step is now shifting and counts as an action.
* Moving diagonally goes 1-1-1 instead of 1-2-1. The characters really fly around the mat.
* Each character has powers at-will, encounter and daily. Most of my fighter’s powers seem to be about handling multiple enemies at once. Because of the slime pit and the other’s ranged attacks I was able to use my cleave power once. It would be the fourth encounters before I could use any of my powers again.
Second encounter involves 3 kobolds in a room with 4 coffins.
* Action points. Start with one and earn another after every encounter. Reset back to one after an extended rest. These give you an extra action. No limit one which type of action but you can’t use to get another use of an encounter or daily power. I pretty much use them as soon as I get them. Simple and elegant, I like.
* First time the cleric heals. Costs you and healing surge and plus a dice roll.
* Healing surges. Give you back a fixed number of hit points. You only get so many per day and any time you’re healed counts against it (except the paladin’s lay on hands which count against his). I get 13 as the fighter. Sweet. Only 5 when I play the ranger later, not so sweet.
* The DM allows us to use as many healing surges as we need between encounters. The means we essentially have full HPs at the start of each encounter. Not liking. We later find out you’re only supposed to use one per short rest. Better.
* Set off trap. Beats my reflex. Can’t move so I essentially miss a turn. Not fun. I’m not sure about saves as defense. I see where it saves dice rolls but it feels like things are out of your control.
Third encounter, kobolds at end of room up on platforms.
* Damn ranger with his bow, warlock with his eldritch blast and wizard with his magic missile. Take out the kobolds before I can get to the other side and up to the platforms. All I have is 2 hand axes as ranged weapons.
* Used my Second Wind (kobolds on platform using me as target practice). Get my healing surge value and a +2 to all my defenses. Get to use as a minor action because I’m a dwarf. Nice.
* Dave drops. Get to see the death and dying rules in action. Seems like a decent system.
Fourth encounter, kobolds on raised platforms with a boulder moving about the room.
* Double moved across the room and then used an action point to climb up platform.
* Finally, more than one kobold around me. Use my Tide of Iron power to push one off the platform in front of the boulder. Nice. Probably could have done the same with a bull rush.
* First crit. Roll a 20 and as long as you would beat the AC of your enemy, it’s a crit. Max damage. Miss rolling double damage.
Last encounter, fight a black dragon. This is the characters can die in 4E encounter.
* This battle lasted about 20 rounds before we all eventually died. Unfortunately, we didn’t know that the heal skill triggers a healing surge (neither did the DM). Also, when in negatives healing starts at zero. So if you’re at –5 and someone heals you for 6 (your surge value). You’re at 6 HP. If you knew this there was a good chance of beating it.
* Monster power recharge. Roll a d6 and if the number matches they get the power back. So the dragon’s breath would come back if you rolled a 5 or 6 on the die (don’t think those are the actual values).
* Ongoing effects suck. Dragon’s acid carries to the next round. You take 5 points of damage at the start of the round, do your actions and save at the end. If you don’t save the effect continues. Save is 10+ on a d20, no modifiers. Nothing worse than being at 2hp, failing your save and knowing that you’re going to take 5 points of damage and there’s nothing you can do about it. Really dislike this.
Escape from Sembia.
Here you’re on a mission to deliver a message to a contact. The Sembian guard intervenes and you must flee the country. Since there are only 5 of us, no one gets to play the warlock. I grab the Eladrin ranger, Dave gets the cleric and Bob the dwarf fighter.
First encounter, meet the contact and the Sembian guard cause problems.
* First experience with Opportunity Attacks, formerly AoO. Seems that even with reach you can only get AoO against those within 1 square around you. Can only use your basic attack to make an AoO. Not a fan of them changing the terminology everywhere.
* Discover that burst spells cover a pretty wide area. Early we though burst 1 meant 4 squares, like a 10’ burst in 3E. It really means 9 squares. You pick one in the middle and all the ones around it are the 1 square burst. Burst 2 covers 25 squares. Really easy to figure out spell areas.
* Lots of “marking” going one. If you don’t attack who “marked” you, you take a minus to attacks. I don’t know who’s marked me or who’s marking others. Pretty confusing.
Second encounter, in order to escape the guards we’re going to decide what we do and make skill checks to see if we succeed or fail.
* I don’t know if this was how it was in the adventure or if the DM says this on his own, but the description was that this encounter showed how 4E allowed greater role-playing because you got to decide which skill to use to accomplish the task as opposed to the DM giving you the skill and a DC. It was pretty insulting. I could and have done the same thing in 3E.
* Essentially, you need to accomplish a number of victory points before you hit so many failures. It seems like a decent system, but I don’t see it encouraging role-playing any more than 3E with a good DM.
Third encounter, run into undead on the pass through the mountains.
* I get beat up by the skeletons so *BAMF*. I use my Eladrin encounter power to teleport on top of some rocks out of harms way. I actually enjoyed using this power a lot.
* We’re attacked by a variety of skeletons. Regular, one on fire and one that shot bone shards when it’s “bloodied,” half hit points. This is one of my favorite things about 4E, a variety of monsters playable out of the book.
Fourth encounter, we fight some NPCs
* By this point we had the basics of the system down and things went well. Fun watching the wizards toss magic missiles at each other and miss.
* It does seem that instead of falling back on attacks like you do in 3E, you fall back to a core of at-will powers (they’re a little more powerful than your basic attack).
In some places 4E is much simpler and elegant. In other cases it seems just as complex and convoluted as 3E, if not more so. The Paladin and Wizard had something like 9 powers each. It looks like it could be pretty easy to get confused about who’s “marked”.
Dave plans on sticking with 3E. He'd play 4E if it was that or board games (he compared it to a board game). Bob saw no reason to switch.
Overall, I had fun. I still haven’t seen anything that makes me say must upgrade and am leaning toward keeping 3E (technically Arcana Evolved) as my system of choice, but I’d definitely play 4E. I’m keeping my 4E pre-order and will reassess once I see the whole system. Worse case, I steal the good ideas and use in 3E.
