KOTS: The After Action Report

[VannATLC]

I find it interesting that all the negative reviews about 4E games have lwft me with a poor opinion of the reviewer (and perhpas thier group) and doesn't hurt my opinion of the game, in fact often improving it.

er..

Uncalled for?

Thanks, Lizard, for the post. And I'm glad to see you generally enjoyed it.

I've been fleshing out the NPCs myself, and I will be running the module once the rules are out.. mostly because I don't want to run into the issues you have had.

I quite like the adventure, and it reduces the amount of work I need to do for my first month or so of our new campaign.. we wrap up our existing campaign this week.

 

[xechnao]

Good report there, thanks a lot Lizard. It was fun to read and helpful about knowing (confirming?) how the game plays.

 

[Torchlyte]

You don't think they might have done that on purpose? They knew a lot of people would buy this module to get a taste of the rules. Offering a bit, but then making means of the PCs upgrading their equipment dependent on other materials is, I'm sure, specifically designed to make people want to buy those books even more. PHB-lite has a lot of info - but not prices. So there might have been some deals galore going on in my game. I'm ok with winging those prices for now; no one is going to be using these pregens in an actual campaign. The half-elf especially seems frightfully unoptimized, and I'm hardly a min/maxer.

So, maybe the merchants accidentally bought and sold at a deep, deep discount. Not having certain answers is intended to make us crazy with curiousity.

I agree with you.

 

[cdrcjsn]

Seems like a balanced review based on their play experience.

Did you use tokens to represent marks and other conditions? I've found them to be a tremendous help and speeds up play by a good amount.

Most of the mechanics issues you had (weak cleric/wizard, magic feeling nerfed) is mostly solved by actually using the PHB to build your own characters. The difference between playing your actual PCs and using pregens is pretty big.

I ran 7 tables of Escape from Sembia this past weekend and the first fight usually takes over an hour to resolve, so the observation about fights taking long is a valid concern, especially since everyone's still learning the rules as they go along. I had the benefit of already knowing the rules as a judge and it still took my tables over an hour for that first fight. However, every single table I've run this past weekend took progressively shorter times to resolve combats after that initial fight.

One of the tables I ran for example, finished their last fight in only 35 minutes against foes suitable for PCs 2 levels higher, and it took them 1 hour and 20 minutes for their first fight against foes of equal level, which shows just how quickly combats can be resolved once players pick up the rules and learn their abilities.

The criticisms on the mod itself were also fair. It did seem a tad schizophrenic as to whom the mod was intended for. Was it for newbies to gaming or veterans to 3e? I also think the mod would be greatly improved by just a little tweaking by the DM once the actual rules come out.

As a dungeon crawl it's a great mod. As an introductory campaign, it falls short of its mark due to the lack of info to run a real campaign.

 

[Spatula]

You don't think they might have done that on purpose?

They didn't give you the necessary information to equip items you find as treasure, on purpose?

 

[drjones]

Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I think the answer to questions regarding the stats of townsfolk is:
Decide if I want what the player is trying to be sucessful.
*roll some dice*
Start BSing

It's not like the PCs are going to create some gameplay imbalance if they pickpocket a few coins or seduce the crazy old man. So long as no one gets stabbed or run out of town the plot should be able to limp along long enough to get the kids into the dungeon.

 

[Rechan]

In the thread about marking, Diirk gave a really good narration:

Think of it in sports terms (eg soccer, basketball etc). You 'marking' a monster means that you're sticking to it like glue and getting in its way when it tries to do certain things (eg attack others). Obviously the positional aspect of that sort of thing is difficult considering you're meant to be on a grid, but feel free to describe it in other ways, like it tries to attack the rogue and you kick in the ankle knocking it slightly off balance type of thing.

In other words, when a Fighter marks an enemy, he's giving Aid Another to any other target's AC.

 

[Hussar]

Lizard - well written review.

On the "couldn't care about the characters thing". Well, they were pregens, so, really, how much can you care about them? They're not "your" character. They're throwaways and everyone at the table knows this. No one is invested in the characters or the adventure in any way beforehand, so, expecting deep experiences is a bit unrealistic IMO.

 

[Torchlyte]

Lizard - well written review.

On the "couldn't care about the characters thing". Well, they were pregens, so, really, how much can you care about them? They're not "your" character. They're throwaways and everyone at the table knows this. No one is invested in the characters or the adventure in any way beforehand, so, expecting deep experiences is a bit unrealistic IMO.

That reminds me. I intend to use a videogame-inspired strategy to get my players invested in the pregens - I'm going to have them described as mercenaries, but the characters will name the mercenary band. Later when they make their own characters, I'm thinking I'll have them come from the same mercenary group.

"Oh, you're like those guys that saved Winterhaven!"

 

[Colmarr]

I'd have pointed the wizard at his wand Encounter ability (+2 to hit), from his Action Boost feat he gets a +3 on attacks when he uses an action point (and +2 from the Warlord's Tactical Inspiration ability). That's a whopping +11 vs. will.

This raises an issue that came up for us on the weekend.

The text for Wand Mastery says +2 to an attack roll. We therefore ruled that the Wizard only got the +2 to one of his attack rolls, even though three enemies were in the area of his sleep spell.

I'm very curious to see whether that interpretation is correct, or whether the full wording of the ability is different to that on the pre-gens.