KOTS: The After Action Report

[OakwoodDM]

OK, I ran KOTS for my usual gaming group. We got through three encounters -- the first kobold attack, the ambush, and the 'rescue the mentor at the pit' encounter.

Bizarrely, that's the exact same section of the adventure I ran my group through! I was ready to throw them at the kobold lair but they showed no interest in investigating them, so it didn't happen.

General consensus was moderately positive. One extreme negative, one fairly negative, and four mixed positives. (Including me in the latter group) No one was agitating to immediately drop 3.5 and switch. The consensus from the two DMs (me and the guy who runs the game I'm in, and who is a player in my campaign), was "We won't drop our current game, but we'll seriously consider 4e for ur next one." I'd say only one person would be in the "If you switch, I won't play" category.

There are only 3 of us in our group. Me, who's the big driving force behind 4e for us. I'm really excited about it. Then there's teh two others, one of whom was curious before and moderately enthused after, and the other was concerned about what he'd heard but considerably happier after play.

The biggest negative was the nerfing of casters.

Interestingly, in my group, which was the Paladin and Wizard, with the Cleric as NPC, the guy playing the wizard came out feeling that it was how he thought wizards should be. He doesn't play many in 3e, but I get the feeling his first 4e character may well be one. His main concern was falling unconscious lots and having to settle for substandard spells sometimes because otherwise he'd toast his friends. Of course, those things he figured were the downsides of being a wizard in the first place.

Despite claims of "Easier! Faster! Simpler!" combat had just as many niggling things to track as in 3e, and they start at first level -- they aren't slowly eased into, part of "extending the sweet spot".

I imagine it's a part of being a smaller group with fewer enemies, but we didn't find the tracking arduous at all. Essentially the marking didn't matter much. In the two kobold fights the paladin and Dragon Shield went at each other (only 1 DS due to scaling down the encounter) and so marking wasn't an issue, and other ongoing effects were remembered by the recipient.

The cleric's low attack bonus -- +3 -- kept her from being able to use a lot of her abilities to heal.

I agree, this was a big problem. Shocking rolling combined with that attack bonus meant the cleric did essentially nothing except Healing Word in the first fight.

minor -- like the cleric's healing word

Whoops! My players will, I'm sure, be glad to know I was screwing them over accidentally by having the NPC Cleric use his as a standard action. That'll teach me to read the sheet more carefully!

Combining that with accidentally using the Gnome's defining power as an at-will rather than encounter power, I'm surprised they survived the Burial Site, let alone dealt with it far more efficiently than the others, even if the wizard found he'd put himself in the front line at one point!


Over all, I'm pleased with my experience with KotS. It was easier to scale than I thought, and a lot of the tactical parts stay in place if you scale carefully, although I imagine for a group any smaller than 3 it would be far trickier. It also appears to have made my players more happy to try the full game, so come June I'll be grabbing myself a copy of all three books.

And thanks for your report, Lizard. As the others said, nicely balanced and honest. And don't blame yourself for the burst problem. It took about 4 different explanations for my players to grasp the difference between burst and blast. They commented it was foolish to name them so similarly.

 

[Ulthwithian]

Well, jeez, maybe I should call myself a 'Lizard fanboy'.

Excellent review. Anyone comprehending what you wrote and calling it biased is IMO simply revealing their own bias.

It seems like you and your players are 'going up the learning curve' and doing quite well by it. I hope that I will have similar luck with a group.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Thanks for the review, Lizard.

I'm hoping I can post up something myself once I actually get it running, but for now it's great to hear well-reasoned feedback from other people.

 

[Pickles JG]

Ah. So I'm glad we ran it as written then. Daaaayumn....

"So, guys, it's about time we played 4e. What characters do you want?"
"Rogue."
"I'm a rogue."
"I think I'll go for rogue."
"Hmmm...rogue."

(Worth noting, BTW, that while the rogue kicked all kinds of ass in the first two encounters, he ended up alone in the pit getting plinked to near-death by the slinger and the skulker with no one to flank with...it's all about the teamwork in 4e, people!)

All of the strikers get bonus dice of damage but while the Warlock & Ranger should have their one die active all the time the halfling rogue only gets his two when he has combat advantage. I assume this is the balance logic. When I ran it (those same enocounters oddly) I think he probably got sneak attacks < half the time but he was not being terribly tactical. He stopped to flirt with the halfling slinger so they duelled in that fight....

Nice review.

 

[Dragonblade]

Nice review, Lizard.

 

[Piratecat]

Good review, Lizard.

Your players' reactions echo mine. I have one player who doesn't particularly like the new rules, one who isn't sure, and five who are quite pleased.

 

[Dave Turner]

As expected, a very solid review, Lizard.

I only quibble with the core of your negative criticisms, which seems to be that KotS didn't provide you with the full range of options that your normal, particular game sessions offer. As others pointed out, it's a limited, preview module designed to give a (combat-oriented) taste of the coming rules. It's a sort of deluxe dungeon-delve.

As you point out, you're not a module man. Hong's point about how Sunless Citadel was similarly hobbled was an important one. I appreciate the notion that one can only review the material between the book's covers. KotS seems very light on NPC and town information. If you were expecting a town and NPCs with more meat on the bones, it's fair to criticize KotS for its shortcomings. As I was reading the first half of your review, I kept saying to myself, "The medium is the message, Lizard!"

A comment earlier in this thread regarding your group's worry about caster nerfing works also works as a metaphor for how your group will hopefully approach 4e. Someone said that if you were playtesting 3e and someone gave you a simple, playtest wizard with only Magic Missile, Shield, and Expeditious Retreat, you'd be tempted to think that all the great utility of a 2e wizard had been purged from the game. Once you saw the full rules, though, you'd see that most of the utility was still there. You've clever enough not to pass judgment on 4e based on the rules and experiences of KotS. I'd be interested to see the results of a full-rules, six-session playtest by your group. If given the opportunity to play a style of game they're comfortable with, including one where they can care about the NPCs and the plot, I wonder how their perception of 4e would shift, if at all?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Jep, nice review^^

What did you do with kobold slingers AC? Or did you just ignore ithe issue?

 

[Lizard]

Jep, nice review^^

What did you do with kobold slingers AC? Or did you just ignore ithe issue?

I pretty much ran everything as written. I wasn't going to assume something was broken/wrong without a lot more data, and if WOTC let critical errors into their flagship "launch" product, well, that's their look-out. It *is* odd that what will be, for most people, their first look at 4e and a factor in their decision to buy or not buy is so...second rate? Recycled maps, incomplete rules, waffling between being a "transition" module and an "intro module"...

How Lizard Would Have Done It:
a)Decide that this module is aimed at active, and especially disgruntled, 3e players. It's not intended for noobs.

b)The main focus will be on "Why 4e is t3h r0xxx0rz!", with all of the "coolest" parts of 4e shown off early on. I'd have done it "Minion swarm encounter, skill challenge encounter, complex mixed encounter, solo boss monster fight" as the primary railroad path through the first part of the module, with branching options from there.

c)Since it would be aimed at existing players, missing rules (like equipment prices) would say "For purposes of this module, you can use your 3e PHB. If you don't have one, use the SRD at blah blah blah."

d)With the space saved from the lack of text aimed at new DMs, I'd have had more uses for skills. At least one "cool trick" per skill, or for the combat skills, at least.

e)Three or four generic human stat blocks. Enough so that the DM could hastily give individual stats to any random NPC who mattered enough to merit them.

f)Eight pregens -- one for each class. Ideally, every race would be in there, too. Include advice on making sure the PCs picked include a healer. (What surprised me was that even with both the Warlord and the Cleric in the party, there was still a lot of damage taken. Things I've learned: What looks like low damage numbers and high hit points plays out very differently due to more frequent AOOs and higher monster counts per encounter.)

 

[Voss]

I think they should have just done KoS as an actual first module, assuming you had the rules, and done up an actual 'quick play rules' (like gurps lite) - official download available, given out at free RPG day, a stack mailed to every bookstore with their PHBs, etc. Yeah, I realize that's a real expense... but it's also advertisement.

I think the product suffered by having to donate space to quick start rules, then not actually being complete or well explained on some of those rules (recharge on monsters, grapple rules, etc), and it also suffers from being a little lacking (in different areas) for both novice and veteran DMs. Like, I'd find it really odd for someone who hadn't played 3e to try and pick it up and play it without the core rules or a bit of research.

Anyhow, good to hear the report Lizard.

I think this is a big thing, not the least because there are two sets of quick start rules- a very incomplete one for the players and a somewhat incomplete one for the DM. While its useful for the DM to have his own copy of the rules, the page count this eats is extraordinarily high.

And yeah, it isn't particularly friendly to anyone without RP experience, which seems a bit strange with an introductory module.