Maybe I'm playing it wrong...

[Uller]

One other thing, Uller, that you may want to keep an eye on for yourself the next time you play... is how exactly you, yourself do when you play the other two PCs.


Best of luck!

Oh, I'm certain I'm giving neither the monsters nor the PCs the time they need to be played properly (I have always generally been opposed to DMs running PCs that can potentially "steal the show" from the players...but in this case we are just learning so I think it is appropriate)...I purposely chose the two "harder" characters so my son could focus mainly on his own character.

My goal is two fold...most of my son's close friends are his hockey team-mates...a great group of kids but all very busy and most probably not the sort to sit down for 2-4 hours playing a table top game (one is into Starwars Legos and another loves to play games like Risk...so you never know)...however now that he's in middle school, his circle of friends is growing beyond hockey. He has some opportunities for after school clubs and activities outside of sports. He's really good at math but not so great at reading, writing and expressing ideas...when I was his age, D&D brought me out of that and probably has contributed more to my success in life than school (which is good considering how much gaming distracted me from school....) He has a great imagination and spends a great deal of his free time "pretending" with Army men, Starwars Legos and minis, etc and even makes up his own games...so my hope is to take that imagination and move it to develop a love of something that encourages reading, exchanging ideas and interacting with others (something other than sports). If he develops an interest here, his teacher and I have agreed to help him start a D&D group after school. Or maybe he and I will just run adventures for eachother when we are on the road for hockey (we travel A LOT).

Also, my life has become so busy I have very little free time. I am considering a lunchtime gaming group at lunch...maybe once a week for 1.5 hours in a conference room...That's how I got started into 3e when it first came out...I created a group at work. I don't work with those folks any more but some of them still play...My hope was that 4e would provide an adventure path for a group of new players that requires very little DM work...just show up and play (pre-read the adventures of course). I used to spend crazy amounts of time preparing for gaming sessions. That is just time I don't have right now.

 

[buddhafrog]

This is exactly right IMO.

4/5 PC can make a difference certainly. And if in doubt, significantly lower the monsters HP if needed - it'll make the combat much faster than lowering the monsters' damage. Making it easy at first is not a bad idea for any beginning player, but especially a kid. Later, and soon, you'll have plenty of chances to bring death and fear! Also, if the PC's are winning and the combat is taking too long, make the monsters retreat - they don't all have to fight to the death. I've been known to change monsters into minions on the spot if I think the PC's are overwhelmed or the battle is taking too long. This works well.

But what DEFCON 1 said is correct. Try not to run the PC's - it's just too tough to do it justice, it'll take too much time, and take away some of the fun for you. And if your fun is lessoned, your players' fun will be lessoned -- probably even more so if that player is your son.

Have your son invite at least one friend. Adding one other voice to the group will make all the difference in the world - I promise. I play with my son and several kid games every week (through my ESL classes). I've tried doing one PC games but it just doesn't have the energy. I've tried running PC's but it makes me less of a DM.

Ideally, even if you have just one friend join you, both PC's can 1/2 control another PC. For some of my 2 PC groups, when they reached 2nd level I gave them a trimmed down 1st level player that the PC and I shared control. It added a lot of role-playing, it provided PC's that could die before the kids' PC's, allowed to run adventures that were not so weak trying to adapt to only 2 PC's, and also gave new players the feel of playing different classes (my one rule was that their other character had to be a different class).

Lastly, during game play I often emphasize the difference b/t their character "you" and the other character "He". This helped them to keep their major focus on one player and to become immersed in that player's story.

 

[monboesen]

I don't see it...the fighter was attacking with a +9 attack, 1d12+7 damage. That's an average of 13.5 per round with a hit on a 6. The rogue could do +9 attack, 2d6+5 (avg 12) on a backstab but that wasn't always possible. The cleric was doing +5, 1d8+4 and the wizard with his magic missile spell was doing +4 vs Reflex, 2d4+4

There's a lot more to take into account here.

The fighter stats seem to measure up just fine. But with the at-will there should be some kind of rider effect. Like doing Str damage to another enemy with Cleave (auto-killing a minion is always nice), sliding/pushing the enemy with Tide of Iron/Footwork Lure (setting up Flanking) or gettin a bonus to hit and damage with Brash Strike.

The Rogue should be doing 3d6+5 damage (1d6 by weapon and 2d6 by Sneak Attack). And again the at-wills should either increase damage (Sly Flourish for +2-3 damage) or accuracy (Piercing Strike for attacking Reflex rather than AC).

The Cleric should be at +6 attack vs AC or +4 vs other defense (18 str or wisdom) and though the damage isn't great the rider effect could be stuff like +2/+3 bonus to one of his allies attacks. That increases the fighters or rogues chance to hit by 10-15%.

The wizard should often be attacking 2-3 enemies at the same time with a burst at-will. That increases damage outpout very nicely.


If they were figting goblin warriors good tactics would see the fighter and rogue flanking and attack the same goblin each turn.

A goblin warrior has
HP 29; Bloodied 14
AC 17, Fortitude 13, Reflex 15, Will 12

So the fighter attacking with +11 vs AC will hit on a roll 6+ (75%) and the Rogue attacking with +11 vs. Reflex hits on a roll of 4+ (85%). Thats 0,75*13,5 + 0,85*15,5 = 23,3 (the occasional critical will increase the actual number a bit). The fighter could either pile on a bit more damage (about +3) or damage another goblin (5 more damage). Thats very close to offing a goblin warrior each round.

The cleric will add at least enough damage to make it 1 dead goblin a round. While at the same time healing and adding bonuses to hit.

The wizard should be able to attack 1-3 goblins every round. Lets say 2 on average. I'll assume a Burst 1/Blast 3 (+4 to hit vs. Reflex for 1d6+4 damage). Thats 2*0,5*7,5 = 7,5 damage per round + some kind of rider (slide, psuh, other effect).

All in all and including encounter powers I would expect the party of 4 should go through 1,5 goblin a round. So a standard encounter of 4-5 goblins should take 2-4 rounds.

 

[Thor]

Uller, it looks like the Rogue was not using his Sneak Attack. He gets an additional +2d6 when he has Combat Advantage, and he should be able to achieve it almost every round.

The Rogue from the Red Box is not quite as beefy as the Rogue built using Heroes of the Fallen Lands, but based on a base of 1d6+5, he should be averaging 15.5 damage per hit with his Sneak Attack, or 19 per hit when he also uses his Backstab encounter power.

If the Rogue and the Fighter flank an enemy, they'll be hitting AC 15 80% of the time (due to the +2 to hit from Combat Advantage) and averaging 28 damage to that opponent per round, or an average of 39 if the Rogue uses his Backstab and the Slayer uses his Power Strike.

The goblins you're facing in the adventure have 30 HP, so even if the Rogue and Fighter don't use their encounter powers, either the Cleric (8.5 average) or the Wizard (9 average) should be able to finish that opponent off.

The Guard Drake is a level 2 brute with 48 hit points and the Hex Hurler is level 3 with 46 hit points. Figure the goblins should take one round each, the drake should take one or two rounds depending on how well they roll and the same for the Hex Hurler. Maybe give him 3 rounds since he has some nasty debuffs.

You shouldn't see a lot of misses, but assuming one or two characters miss for a round or two (the Hex Hurler is able to blind after all), The combat still shouldn't take more than 8 or 9 rounds at most, and that's if the players aren't rolling too well.

 

[Neonchameleon]

It wasn't so much the potential of "losing" that was the problem...it was that the combats took sooooooo long. I think the second fight was upwards of 15 rounds and not only exceeded my son's 12 year old attention span...it exceeded my 38 year-old one (not that my attention span is that long...I'm riddled with ADD)...

1e and 2e certainly had the potential of death, especially for 1st level characters....The kobald swing his club and hits an AC 9...your magic user's AC is 10...thats a hit. He does 3 damage...you have 2 HP? Your dead...sorry you didn't get to cast your one Magic Missile spell...go roll a new character...

I guess it just wasn't what I was expected so I'm wondering is this the way 4E is supposed to be (longer combats)? Is it just this adventure? We just made crappy characters and bad tactical decision? Some combination of those?

4e combats are supposed to be longer and more in depth tactically - but what you have described sounds like a nightmare. Anything over six rounds is far too much - four is about right for most fights.

One obvious part of your math - whenever the rogue has combat advantage (normally flanking), the rogue does 2d6 extra damage. So instead of doing 2d6+5 damage on a backstab* he should have been doing 4d6+5 (average 19) - with 3d6+5 (average 15.5) being normal for a sneak attack - and remember the +2 to hit from combat advantage and further +3 from backstab. One-shotting a non-minion is hard work. But two shotting is quite possible, especially with a rogue.

*I'm assuming a Thief here - with the backstab encounter power being separate from sneak attack. If you've got a PHB style rogue then you're looking at 2d6 (sneak attack)+d4(dagger) + static damage (dex mod, possibly cha as well if using sly flourish) every round with more for your encounter power. And rogues should ahve CA every round.

 

[Aegeri]

Yup, I noticed these, too. To be honest I'm unsure if these are really supposed to do this damage. In the Dark Sun Monster Compendium, Brutes 10 levels higher deal the same amount of damage, so something's fishy here.

You may also have noticed, that some of the monsters in the intro adventure use the old damage progression and some use the new damage progression. If I was playing the adventure, I'd adjust all damage expressions to resemble the guidelines (level+8; +25% for brutes).

The problem is these are limited attacks generally. So whoever made them has followed the guidelines, unfortunately they've just sort of not thought about what they were doing. The monsters as a result are doing 75% more damage, as a limited power by the new damage rules can be increased by up to 50% more. Add on the brute bonus and it can be quite easy to see why these things are doing whacky damage. Things that should get +50% bonus should be Lurkers, who often deal no damage for a round anyway as they need to be hidden, invisible or whatever whacky thing they are doing.

Brutes at most can get +50% on an attack, which would be +25% brute, +25% additional for a limited attack. 75% is extreme until paragon and epic levels, where it is more acceptable.

 

[Dausuul]

The rogue could do +9 attack, 2d6+5 (avg 12) on a backstab but that wasn't always possible.

Backstab should be 4d6+5. 1d6+5 for short sword, +2d6 for sneak attack, +1d6 for backstab.

Edit: Ninja-ed. How appropriate.

 

[OnlineDM]

If the first level, 18 INT spellcaster has the "Staff Expertise" feat, and is wielding a staff, then wouldn't he get a to-hit bonus of 5?

Yes, that's right. I was trying to show the full reasonable range of first-level to-hit bonuses. If that spellcaster doesn't take an expertise feat at first level, then they'll be at +4 to hit. If they take expertise and a 20 in their primary stat, they'll be at +6, and so on.

 

[Azlith]

Someone said earlier that the PCs should be doing enough damage to kill or nearly kill the baddies in a single hit.

I think they were saying that concentrating fire on one target should result in the death of one enemy per round. They actually give an example of this in the Player's Strategy Guide. You can reduce the amount of damage your party takes significantly by ganging up on one creature to kill it faster then moving on to the next one.

 

[RigaMortus2]

There's a lot more to take into account here.

The fighter stats seem to measure up just fine. But with the at-will there should be some kind of rider effect. Like doing Str damage to another enemy with Cleave (auto-killing a minion is always nice), sliding/pushing the enemy with Tide of Iron/Footwork Lure (setting up Flanking) or gettin a bonus to hit and damage with Brash Strike.

The Rogue should be doing 3d6+5 damage (1d6 by weapon and 2d6 by Sneak Attack). And again the at-wills should either increase damage (Sly Flourish for +2-3 damage) or accuracy (Piercing Strike for attacking Reflex rather than AC).

The Cleric should be at +6 attack vs AC or +4 vs other defense (18 str or wisdom) and though the damage isn't great the rider effect could be stuff like +2/+3 bonus to one of his allies attacks. That increases the fighters or rogues chance to hit by 10-15%.

I was under the impression that they were using Essentials characters. Essentials characters use Basic Melee Attacks are their main attacks (the martial classes do anyway) and don't get the option of choosing Tide of Iron or Cleave and the like.