"loseing is not cost effective"

[GMforPowergamers]

hi again,

I did my best meta gaming for you in your last thread, I warned you to beware the kobolds...(Yes that was a tolda so)

Keep on the Shadowfell is the first published 4e adventure from WotC, and it shows. It's combat heavy and a few of the encounters are very nasty, including one notorious for causing TPKs. It's an rough start for a campaign. Unfortunately not a great intro.

I totaly QFT here...there are atleast 3 sections of this mod that can get very rough, including the above mentioned TPK area, so the DM might just be a little scared that this is setting up a bade presadent...

Don't let it get to you. Your build is fine, and you have strong at wills, so my advice...go with the flow,

 

[DracoSuave]

My advice for playing 4e:

Do not panic when those monsters keep showing up with 30hp or more. 30hp is the minimum. If you go 'Holy crap we just did 10 damage it it's not bloodied?' then relax, deal with it. Eventually you'll get into a mindset where that solo dragon with 300hps is not a problem.

 

[Solodan]

You're fine.

Burning dailies is the whole point of them, especially if things look bad. As you get more comfortable with 4E you'll also be able to use less boom and go longer. Just be careful in general not to think "Well, he used his daily, I should too" because the best course of action is for everyone to use their dailies on differnt encounters.

A lot of times everyone uses their dailies on the last encounter, and it ends up lasting 2-3 rounds because that's it. spreading them out is much better.

You'll be fine without help. In fact, it might be better as forcing you to survive with just at wills and the heal skill will go a long way.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

I would not worry too much about uncorking the big guns at 1st level. You will tend to use a lot of your very limited resources at the first few levels especially in balanced encounters. Remember that most monsters don't heal, and that if you blow away a bunch of kobolds with a daily attack, you will have to rely on encounters and at-wills later, but you probably saved yourself some surges, and got some gold. At firt level, even the mundane equipment that you acquire can have value. And remember, you arent going to run into Orcus at 1st level, more like an ogre among a buch of goblins for a big battle.

An example from our game:

The party's biggest strength is in coordinating your attacks. In our campaign,the party is just shy of 11th, and made an easy encounter of a solo 17th level lurker. (a shade templated vampire lord). He had two potent abilities teleport 20 and dominate with +19 vs. will. Both of these were stymied after the first round by the rogue using encounter powers to blind him, (granting combat advantage), and the wizard using fire wall. Once in the fire wall, the vampire couldn't teleport without line of sight, and the warlord used a daily to stop movement. The sword mage used elemental foible to make him vulnerable to fire, and after that first round, it was more of the same, he's blinded, or knocked prone, or dazed, or whatever, over and over. The only way he had to get out of the fire was in gaseous form, and even then , he got pummeled by ongoing effects, and got pounded to dust as soon as he came out in normal form to attack again. By that time, the party was down to at-wills, but he was vulnerable to fire at that point, couln't hardly move except to teleort (recharge), and he was having some aweful luck getting dominate to recharge. And so it went. at that stage even with at will attacks, his hit points went down very quickly, and he was bloodied before being able to hurt anyone in the party even once. He never got a single blood drain done. This was an opponent that no two or three members of tha party would have had a chance against, but together it was practically free.

The only thing I would add to this is that solo's can frequently be at a large disadvantage compared to a group of pc's The sheer number of actions/attacks the party gets starts to pile up on a single target. Effects like blind, daze, immobilize, stun are good but not overwhelming when applied to a single soldier in a mob of 5-10 creatures but if you land a stun on a solo the enemy lost the entire turn. Bottom line, don;t judge too much based upon solo encounters as they are not indicative of normal game play.

 

[Bagpuss]

So are we ‘screwed’ and not in the good way? Is having less daily’s a bad thing. I know a lot of you have read this mod before, so with minimal spoilers, maybe should we head to the waterfall the kobolds instead? Is that an easier way to run?

Either way is tough, the adventure isn't exactly easy, so be prepared to cut and run if you have to. You can always return to the Winterhaven to recover your daily powers and healing surges if you have to.

Generally using your daily powers isn't as bad as blowing all your best spells was in earlier editions. You still have encounters and at-will powers. not using daily tends to mean the fights will be a little longer and a little harder.

Now to me it makes sense to save your daily powers for the fights you really need them. Using them early means you probably won't use as many healing surges, but you have more of those anyway and can only use a limited number in a single fight so they aren't as valuable a resource. But it also depends on what sort of daily powers you have.

Shield of Faith (Cleric Utility 2 - Daily) which gives +2 AC for the encounter to all allies in a burst, is worth using very early in an encounter since then you get the best use of it. It's also worth using if you meet a large number of foes. Not so good against a smaller group of monsters. A larger group means their will be more attacks it is going to work against, also smaller groups tend to be higher level and thus the +2 doesn't make as much difference to if they hit or not. So this might not be worth saving to a big boss fight, it might actually be better if you meet a larger group of minions and lower level soldiers.

Comeback Strike (Fighter Daily 1) Isn't really worth using unless the Leader's already run out of healing surge granting powers or you are really bad shape. Just using it for the 2[w] damage is a complete waste.

Brute Strike (fighter Daily 1) Isn't really worth using against what might turn out to be a minion or would die from your normal damage anyway, or from a second attack using an action point. But if you do go into a fight without it, it's really only worth another attack when you think about it. So you might end up a round behind on damage dealt out and recieved at most.

Some are daily powers are situational and are usually worth using the first time that situation comes up, unless you can be sure that situation will appear every fight.

Most damage dealing daily powers are a bit like Brute Strike in that they are about equal to an action points worth of damage.

You probably won't lose a fight just because you don't have your daily powers, you just need to be a little more careful because you are going into a fight without 100% of your resources.

Edit: After looking at your blog. Using Frost Backlash against a shifty Kobold probably wasn't a bad idea since they make thing difficult by moving about, but Foresnare would do just as good and you can use that in the next fight as well. I would tend not to use both an Action Point and a Daily in the same fight, unless it's the 3rd or 4th of the day.

By you all using all your daily powers you probably made the fight much shorter and thus saved a bunch of healing surges, but then you can generally only use 3 a combat and you've seen how easy it is too heal up after a fight. Hence Action Points and Daily powers are generally worth saving until your neck is on the line, not early when you have lots of healing still available.

Lucan summoning his Angel of Fire doesn't seem that great an idea, since with kobolds being shifty he won't get that Opportunity Attack very often and it's burst doesn't do that much damage and will also hit allies.

 

[Herschel]

We are in beginning of Keep of the shadowfall. We had a bad encounter with some kobolds, then the next day we got Ambushed on our way out of town by more of those shifty bastards.

So suggestions?

Learn how to play together and the rest will come. I ran a group new to 4E (and two of the five were new to D&D) and I had to fudge large to avoid TPK on that ambush TWICE before they started to figure it out (Leaving one, then two alive to recruit a new party). After that, the encounter in the lair went pretty smooth and they had very little problem with it.

1. This isn't an earlier edition, The rogue going off by themselves usually equals dead rogue.

2. Don't lead with your healer/leader. The Warlord was in front on one of that excursion and was a prime target for concentrated damage. Nothing against Paladins but if they're your only defender and only healer you had better figure out how to get another character to march up front if nobody wants to play a different character.

 

[Herschel]

Though it's best to have some idea of what you're using them on. No point in using a dazing encounter power on a minion.

With some exceptions still. My Swordmage is more than happy to burn his Daily on a squishy minion to begin a big fight and kick in his damage accelerator for teh long haul.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

[...]

1. This isn't an earlier edition, The rogue going off by themselves usually equals dead rogue.

[...]

In which earlier edition could a rogue go off by themselves and not get killed easily? (against an equal level foe)

AD&D 2nd edition: No Armor, no damage, no hp
3rd edition: usually good armor, not so much hp, but also no damage when not beeing able to flank...
Note: per RAW he can´t use sneak attack in the darkness (concealment) or when he is in light: not beeing able to catch his victim flat-footed...

 

[balard]

Spending the big guns in early is not a big problem. Daily attacks are NECESSARY only against the dreadful level+3 fights. Almost all the other situations can be beaten only by encounters and at-wills. You just get to improve your threat assessment, so making early mistakes is ok. Just keep it cool.

Remember, dailies that deals lots of damage, you usually can afford to spend then later in the fight. Dailies that have encounter long effects(like wizard's and warlord's ones) are better used in the very first round. So, just think a little, analyze the opposition, make some knowledge checks. If in doubt, wait 2-3 rounds and unleash a non-encounter long daily.

Dailies are good in a losing situation, and when you need to control the flow of the battle. Take it easy and the right time to use then you come by.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

One of the things that seems to be getting missed here is that those dailies were fired off in the FIRST TWO ROUNDS. This, I would say, was the major problem with why that wasn't the best tactic. Except for a few powers, it's usually not a great idea to have a Daily be your first action in a fight.

Generally, I like to open up with At-Wills for the first round or two to get a feel for the enemies. Then I try to find a good target for my Encounter power, and if all else fails I'll use the Daily. I play a Fighter BTW.

While yes, you can fire off your dailies and still be able to go on, that doesn't mean it's smart. What's better? A Wizard dropping flaming sphere into a bunch of minions to kill them, or a Wizard dropping a Scorching Burst into a bunch of minions to kill them? (With the larger are of Scorching Burst compared to Flaming Sphere needing to be adjacent, let's assume the same number of kills result).

Almost universally it will be better to use the Scorching Burst At-Will to take care of those minions because it doesn't cost you an expendable resources. You can still Scorching Burst the next round and every round after that with no problem, but you can't get Flaming Sphere back (You can sustain it and do other things with it, but you can't recast it).

This is why "going nova" isn't usually the best play style unless you know what you're doing. Obviously if you walk into a room and there's an Ancient Red Dragon you know that it's going to be a tough fight and you might want to fire off some of your Dailies in the first round to start landing some nasty effects...but you'll also be high level at that point and have 4 Daily powers to use and how many Magic Item powers you possess, so it's not consuming the same amount of resources to use a Daily stun power on him.

In the lower levels you should usually stick to At-Will and Encounter powers, and only use a Daily to get you out of a jam. That can mean using it on a Solo in a big fight, saving a PC from dying or turning around a relatively normal combat that's just going terribly wrong. But you should be using them for a reason, not just as a knee-jerk reaction to seeing an enemy.