Dragonblade
Adventurer
I played in a 6 hour 4e game last weekend and these are my thoughts.
Now, I admit I'm very pro-4e and have been since WotC announced the new edition. I freely admit that I went into the game with a positive outlook, ready to have a good time.
Still, I had some concerns going in. Like how much of a pain would tracking conditions like marked or bloodied be? How hard would it be for new people to pick up (we had one D&D newbie in the game). How hard would it be for veteran gamers to pick up? How hard would it be for a DM who had only skimmed the DDXP rules handout before running the game? How would 1-1-1 movement impact play? Would people feel that game was video-gamey? And would that be good or bad?
We played the Second Son adventure, though the DM mixed things up a bit since he had a copy of a 4e monster compilation from online.
The game was awesome! First of all the pacing was unbelievable. We got through 6 encounters vs. multiple opponents and one solo encounter (the DM improvised on the fly a lot) in about 6 hours, including a good chunk of time spent role-playing. We had 5 players but used all 6 DDXP characters. I had the best handle on the rules so I played both the Wizard and the Cleric.
The paladin player was totally new to D&D, but he picked up everything fast. He loved the paladin's mark ability and the mark and run tactic never even occured to him (I was waiting to see if he would figure that out). The only slow combat was the first one while everyone kind of got a feel for their powers and what kinds of movement and actions they could take on their turn. After that, it just clicked for everyone and rules questions seldom came up again. The only rules issue that came up later was whether forced movement could force enemies off ledges or into dangerous areas. I know some people who played in the Sembia game ran into that but I couldn't remember what the mechanic was so we just ruled that you could push them off and left it at that.
Anyway here are my thoughts on different areas of play:
Movement - 1-1-1 movement worked just fine. Not having to count diagonal squares made movement much easier and faster. My fellow players from our 3.5 games are notorious for metagaming their movement for the optimum route with minimum AoO's. I saw none of that in the 4e game. With no movement penalty for diagonals and with the streamlined OA rules, movement was quick and easy. People just moved their minis and took their turn and were done. Also without the diagonal movement penalty, your character's movement felt freer and more dynamic. And for the new guy, I just told him how many squares his character could move on his turn. That was it. He got it and it was easy. He never once mentioned anything about movement not being "realistic" because we didn't count diagonals in some special way. And the veterans? None of them cared. After the first fight, movement just became something you did instead of something you thought about.
Marked and Bloodied - Through the course of the game mark and bloodied came into play every time and we never used any pins or stones or anything else to mark it. And was it a problem? Not at all. The players with marks always remembered who they were marking and most of the time the players remembered who was bloodied. If they didn't we would just turn to the DM and ask if a particular opponent was bloodied. The DM would look down at his sheet and say yes or no. Simple. Took all of two seconds and no one was confused or thought that it slowed the game down in any way. I was pleasantly surprised.
Powers - Were simple and easy to use. The new player understood all his powers right away. This power you can do one time and don't get it back until your character rests for the day. These powers you can do once per fight. And these powers you can do whenever you want. You use a basic attack when you charge and a basic attack when you OA. Got that? And he got it. At least once he got through the first fight and saw how it all worked in practice. I never had to explain it again. And everyone enjoyed their powers. A couple times people critted with their dailies and there were shouts of joy and triumph and much excitement. And the Eladrin player really got tactical. He liked to use Fey step to move onto a high place and then turned all sniper on us. He loved it and we loved it.
Power level - The new guy had no basis, but the D&D veterans of the group really loved the feel of level 1. They likened it to playing level 3 in 3.5. And everyone mutually agreed that was a good thing
DMing - I didn't DM but one of our experienced 3.5 DMs ran the game. He looked over the rules from DDXP and the monster stats and the adventure before we played. I answered a couple questions about how it all worked. Like what Recharge did, and then we were off. He got into it right away. He commented numerous times about how he LOVED 4e monster design. It was so simple, and so elegant. Evertything you needed was right in the stat block. And all the monsters had cool flavor. He said it will be tough going back to two page stat blocks in his high level AoW game. He also got into it so much that he adlibbed two encounters on the fly. A fight with some kobolds and then a tentacled river monster that he made up so we could really try out the new grapple rules. Everything worked as smooth as silk. He loved it.
Final Verdict - Everyone had a great time. The new guy really wanted to play again and the veterans all lamented that we still had to wait for 3 more months. The DM was chomping at the bit to start running homebrew again instead of Adventure Path, something that 3.5 rules discouraged with all the prep time once you got into higher levels, IMO. Somewhat surprisingly, no one commented about videogame or boardgame feel.
The game was also a sharp contrast to our AoW game where we are around level 15 now and starting to fight opponents that are unleashing Save or Die/Lose spells all the time.
Anyway, I was pro-4e going in and I'm pro-4e coming out. But playing this really confirmed for me that 4e will end up being my D&D of choice.
Now, I admit I'm very pro-4e and have been since WotC announced the new edition. I freely admit that I went into the game with a positive outlook, ready to have a good time.
Still, I had some concerns going in. Like how much of a pain would tracking conditions like marked or bloodied be? How hard would it be for new people to pick up (we had one D&D newbie in the game). How hard would it be for veteran gamers to pick up? How hard would it be for a DM who had only skimmed the DDXP rules handout before running the game? How would 1-1-1 movement impact play? Would people feel that game was video-gamey? And would that be good or bad?
We played the Second Son adventure, though the DM mixed things up a bit since he had a copy of a 4e monster compilation from online.
The game was awesome! First of all the pacing was unbelievable. We got through 6 encounters vs. multiple opponents and one solo encounter (the DM improvised on the fly a lot) in about 6 hours, including a good chunk of time spent role-playing. We had 5 players but used all 6 DDXP characters. I had the best handle on the rules so I played both the Wizard and the Cleric.
The paladin player was totally new to D&D, but he picked up everything fast. He loved the paladin's mark ability and the mark and run tactic never even occured to him (I was waiting to see if he would figure that out). The only slow combat was the first one while everyone kind of got a feel for their powers and what kinds of movement and actions they could take on their turn. After that, it just clicked for everyone and rules questions seldom came up again. The only rules issue that came up later was whether forced movement could force enemies off ledges or into dangerous areas. I know some people who played in the Sembia game ran into that but I couldn't remember what the mechanic was so we just ruled that you could push them off and left it at that.
Anyway here are my thoughts on different areas of play:
Movement - 1-1-1 movement worked just fine. Not having to count diagonal squares made movement much easier and faster. My fellow players from our 3.5 games are notorious for metagaming their movement for the optimum route with minimum AoO's. I saw none of that in the 4e game. With no movement penalty for diagonals and with the streamlined OA rules, movement was quick and easy. People just moved their minis and took their turn and were done. Also without the diagonal movement penalty, your character's movement felt freer and more dynamic. And for the new guy, I just told him how many squares his character could move on his turn. That was it. He got it and it was easy. He never once mentioned anything about movement not being "realistic" because we didn't count diagonals in some special way. And the veterans? None of them cared. After the first fight, movement just became something you did instead of something you thought about.
Marked and Bloodied - Through the course of the game mark and bloodied came into play every time and we never used any pins or stones or anything else to mark it. And was it a problem? Not at all. The players with marks always remembered who they were marking and most of the time the players remembered who was bloodied. If they didn't we would just turn to the DM and ask if a particular opponent was bloodied. The DM would look down at his sheet and say yes or no. Simple. Took all of two seconds and no one was confused or thought that it slowed the game down in any way. I was pleasantly surprised.
Powers - Were simple and easy to use. The new player understood all his powers right away. This power you can do one time and don't get it back until your character rests for the day. These powers you can do once per fight. And these powers you can do whenever you want. You use a basic attack when you charge and a basic attack when you OA. Got that? And he got it. At least once he got through the first fight and saw how it all worked in practice. I never had to explain it again. And everyone enjoyed their powers. A couple times people critted with their dailies and there were shouts of joy and triumph and much excitement. And the Eladrin player really got tactical. He liked to use Fey step to move onto a high place and then turned all sniper on us. He loved it and we loved it.
Power level - The new guy had no basis, but the D&D veterans of the group really loved the feel of level 1. They likened it to playing level 3 in 3.5. And everyone mutually agreed that was a good thing
DMing - I didn't DM but one of our experienced 3.5 DMs ran the game. He looked over the rules from DDXP and the monster stats and the adventure before we played. I answered a couple questions about how it all worked. Like what Recharge did, and then we were off. He got into it right away. He commented numerous times about how he LOVED 4e monster design. It was so simple, and so elegant. Evertything you needed was right in the stat block. And all the monsters had cool flavor. He said it will be tough going back to two page stat blocks in his high level AoW game. He also got into it so much that he adlibbed two encounters on the fly. A fight with some kobolds and then a tentacled river monster that he made up so we could really try out the new grapple rules. Everything worked as smooth as silk. He loved it.
Final Verdict - Everyone had a great time. The new guy really wanted to play again and the veterans all lamented that we still had to wait for 3 more months. The DM was chomping at the bit to start running homebrew again instead of Adventure Path, something that 3.5 rules discouraged with all the prep time once you got into higher levels, IMO. Somewhat surprisingly, no one commented about videogame or boardgame feel.
The game was also a sharp contrast to our AoW game where we are around level 15 now and starting to fight opponents that are unleashing Save or Die/Lose spells all the time.
Anyway, I was pro-4e going in and I'm pro-4e coming out. But playing this really confirmed for me that 4e will end up being my D&D of choice.
