D&D 4E My 4e Playtest Comments...

[mach1.9pants]

Wow, thats too bad to hear. I hope that person ended up ok.

My thoughts to that person as well.
About the 4E I have played, we had no problem condition tracking. We don't use miniatures only grid paper, pencil and eraser! No more of a prob than 3E.
The big things that came out of our tests were:
1. It sucks big-time when your per day misses (on our 1st run through they ALL missed)- we have house ruled 1 AP re-roll to hit and accept the second roll whatever.
2. We have become gluttons for options! Giving us more than just ftr hit/hit/miss/hit/miss etc has my players now saying we want MORE at will powers! The wiz wants to have 4 or 5 spells to choose from. We will see how the full ruleset goes first, I think. Hopefully it won't be too unbalancing to go for MORE at wills....

 

[Jack99]

Wow, thats too bad to hear. I hope that person ended up ok.

I shouldn't have mentioned it, it has nothing to do with the game. But thanks for thinking of him.

 

[Xorn]

I've run 3 fan adventures of Raiders of Oakhurst now (check that thread for write-ups) but I'd like to add to one of the points made here that hasn't been mentioned as much from what I've seen:

DMing. I have LOVED DMing the fan playtest games! I'm running Return of the Burning Plague this Saturday, and I might run The Second Son this Sunday. I can't get my players to finish the v3.5 campaign yet--I joked that we'll be running fan playtests till WotC shells out that Shadowfell adventure!

But I have never had so much fun DMing, ever. I'm not talking about the ease of tracking marks or bloodied, or concealment, or who has +2 on their attack roll because of Lance of Faith. When the fighter made his attack roll, he mentioned the lance of faith--didn't need MY help. But it's the creatures.

I really ENJOYED playing the NPCs! It's like... hey, *I* get all kinds of fun powers to use, too! In 3.5, how did you know you were fighting kobolds? Because they were 1st level warriors with crappy stats and size penalties. That's it. How do you know if 4E? Because your wizard didnt' contain the minions, and now the paladin is surrounded and just got dropped by a skirmisher with +6 to attack from the shifting/flank/swarm and an extra die of damage, despite that 20 AC!

So I'm so excited to DM 4E. I haven't been this excited to run a game since I got Mentzer's red box in 1984 when I had the chicken pox.

 

[EATherrian]

I'm happy to hear that people are enjoying their playtests, but I have one question. I hate playing with miniature et. alia, so I was wondering if anyone has done a playtest sans them? I'd like to hear any such experiences also to see if I can go back to my old style of play.

 

[RayJ]

I've run a handful of 1-night adventures using the DDX characters (and a human rogue we've engineered with the available powers) The monsters work very well, but a couple could use a few tweaks here and there to spice them up a little. Mechanically, I haven't had a problem with any of them.

At the end of our last session, I handed every person in the party a single magic item and faced them off against the black dragon. The fight lasted an incredible number of rounds (somewhere around 20), but after about 10 rounds it seemed to get a little boring. The dragon and all the PCs were both rolling really low numbers, and the bulk of the damage the dragon received was from the Paladin's mark ability.

Mid to late-fight the dragon began using his cloud of darkness ability to keep a smokescreen up and maneuver about the dungeon forcing lots of movement on the part of the PCs. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have drawn out the fight for them, but it didn't make sense for such an intelligent creature to run into a group of adventurers with only 20 hp left. In the end, the paladin killed it with his daily power.

We've had a blast with it so far, and we're eagerly awaiting May 20 and June 6 so we can get our hands on more rules.

 

[Dragonblade]

I'm happy to hear that people are enjoying their playtests, but I have one question. I hate playing with miniature et. alia, so I was wondering if anyone has done a playtest sans them? I'd like to hear any such experiences also to see if I can go back to my old style of play.

You know, I was thinking about this. Given how easy I found it to track marking and conditions, I think it would be easy to do mini-less 4e combat. At least as easy as 3.5 was. And I did play 3.5 without minis several times. Heck, I only play with minis now because the people I currently game with really like minis. I'd take it old school if they'd let me.

But I would just run it the way you have always done mini-less combat. The only change I would make is to just make some notations next to the HP totals of your monsters. For example, put a B when its bloodied and put a PM for Paladin Mark, or a FM for Fighter Mark. Since mini-less games are totally based on narrative description and imagination for positioning, this is important so there is no disputes coming up later ("Hey! I wasn't marking that guy! I was marking this other guy!"). For example, if I had a Bloodied kobold with 11 hp left that had been marked by the Paladin, I would write down "11 B/PM".

I also recommend some scratch/grid paper in case you need to roughly draw out positions of certain monsters and environmental hazards like pits, rope bridges, water, etc. You probably wouldn't need it though unless there was some confusion. I never used minis in 1e and 2e, but we always kept scratch paper on hand for this purpose back then too.

 

[TerraDave]

...First of all the pacing was unbelievable...After that, it just clicked for everyone and rules questions seldom came up again....Powers - Were simple and easy to use... Power level -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

...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.

Yep.

I am still a little concerned about power tracking at higher levels, but considering what clerics or wizards (or paladins, rangers, druids, bards...) already go through...

My takeaway is pretty much the same.

And its great you had a novice there who could take it all in.

 

[Dragonblade]

I'll make another comment about mini-less combat. If a monster gets hit without an ongoing effect just write down Poison 5, or Fire 5, or whatever.

No big deal, and no different than having to track that monster X is held for 5 rounds and tracking the remaining spell duration like we did in prior editions. Its a bookkeeping wash as far as I'm concerned. Also since we don't have to track buff durations anymore, I'll even say that 4e is a bit easier in this regard.

 

[Xorn]

I've run a handful of 1-night adventures using the DDX characters (and a human rogue we've engineered with the available powers) The monsters work very well, but a couple could use a few tweaks here and there to spice them up a little. Mechanically, I haven't had a problem with any of them.

At the end of our last session, I handed every person in the party a single magic item and faced them off against the black dragon. The fight lasted an incredible number of rounds (somewhere around 20), but after about 10 rounds it seemed to get a little boring. The dragon and all the PCs were both rolling really low numbers, and the bulk of the damage the dragon received was from the Paladin's mark ability.

Mid to late-fight the dragon began using his cloud of darkness ability to keep a smokescreen up and maneuver about the dungeon forcing lots of movement on the part of the PCs. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have drawn out the fight for them, but it didn't make sense for such an intelligent creature to run into a group of adventurers with only 20 hp left. In the end, the paladin killed it with his daily power.

We've had a blast with it so far, and we're eagerly awaiting May 20 and June 6 so we can get our hands on more rules.

I've done the dragon fight 3 times now, and the first was really bad for the players (they clustered, and got stomped), the second they did very well (they spread out, and the tanks kept her from moving as much), and the third time they literally took her apart (though they were pretty tore up at the end).

The mistakes I was making was not taking the mark seriously. The -2 to hit and damage really hurts, when they are trying to get every defensive advantage they can, and suddenly the dragon is having trouble hitting. So I stomp over and fight the paladin! You want a challenge? Here's your challenge--deal with a dragon stomping a mudhole in your keister!

It doesn't seem like the -2 is much till you figure another -2 from cover, then the warlock (who's nailing him over and over attacking is weak defenses) has another +2 from concealment, and the party is spread out making the breath weapon much less deadly... and a cleric who's handing out saving throws like candy!

But my first dragon fight was the most boring, and I blame myself as much as my players, we weren't really exploring the synergy of the characters, and I wasn't giving due respect to their powers.