Playtest - family group

[Gargoyle]

I ran it for my wife and two boys (11, 14) who played all five characters. The youngest took on the fighter, and the other two split up the others.

I've DM'd and played all sorts of editions since BECMI in 1982. They've primarily played 3e and 4e.

We had a good time, but I think we enjoy 4e more at this point, perhaps due to our style of play.

I presented the adventure with the Find the Heir hook, and with the rumor that the more powerful monsters have claimed caves that are higher and further west.

They set out for the Orc cave, (B) and didn't notice the watcher who came back with more guards. A quick and vicious battle later, the orcs lay dead, mostly by the hands of the wizard's burning hands spell. They ventured west and encountered reinforcements in the banquet hall, and a very cinematic battle erupted on the table. The fighter went down quickly but his companions rallied against the orcs, with the halfling rogue stabbing at their feet and groins from under the table, and the wizard flinging his remaining spells to beat them down.

Healing spells brought the fighter up and they scouted out the common room. At this point, they should have run out. Instead, they set up an ambush for the orcs who were busy putting on armor in the next room. At this point, I knew it was going to be a TPK. They did a great job until then, but I think a combination of knowing that it was a playtest and not having any attachment to their characters and being used to 4e encounter design did them in. 22 more orcs streamed from the two entrances and while a few were cut down with readied actions, they overwhelmed the group.

The rogue and wizard snuck off during the fight while the orcs mutilated the dwarves and human cleric, and since they were cut off from the entrance hid in the supply room. We forgot about the rogue getting a minimum of 10 on Dexterity skill checks and she failed to pick the easy lock, but the wizard used shocking grasp on the door and critted, so I ruled that it busted the lock. He then used ray of frost to seal the door, which held it enough to convince investigating orcs that the door was still locked so they weren't in there. Then they waited a bit, tried to sneak out, and the wizard failed his Dexterity check and so meat was back on the menu for the orcs.

We ran it again with the premise that divinations revealed that the last group sent there investigated the northeastern cave and found no evidence of the missing heir, and so they checked out the kobold cave, and did much better. This time they were too stingy with spells however, and there were nearly a couple of deaths due to that.

The best part of that run was the dwarven cleric in the pit trap, with the dwarven fighter holding the pit door open, and the swarm of rats streaming into the pit. Rolling 2d20 18 times for the rats made the players very nervous, and they laughed pretty loud when I declared that he took 2 points of damage. The cleric rolled a 20 on his Strength check to get out, and so he brushed off the rats before leaping out, and the pit slammed shut trapping the rats within.

The rest of the run featured the rogue scouting ahead, and some decent but boring combats, due to the wizard not wanting to use his spells, and a general lack of deviousness in the design of that part of the dungeon (and possibly lack of creativeness on the part of a tired DM).

My conclusions:

- Advantage/Disadvantage works well.

- I didn't miss the 4e skill system at all.

- Ability checks made the players more likely to improvise.

- A swarm of rats needs to be a single monster. I can only imagine that this was a test of how much dice rolling we can tolerate.

- The fighter was boring and needs a bit more to do. The next time we play, I'm going to add the guardian theme to him as suggested by Mike Mearls.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Playtest: First Round Overview)

We're thinking about granting fighters two themes at 1st level, so if you want to test that I'd suggest grabbing the dwarf cleric's guardian theme and adding it to this fighter.

- Heavy armor is something I wouldn't want to use at all in its current form. The fighter didn't have enough protection and couldn't run away if he wanted to because of the speed penalty.

- Theater of the mind was easy for me, not so easy for my players. It's been many years since I've played that way, so for me it was interesting. Setup time was very quick for me without having to draw anything or find a map, or dungeon tiles, and that's a big advantage. Also it took no table space. However, there were a lot of questions about where everyone was. They kept wanting to seek a tactical advantage, and we all missed flanking and attacks of opportunity.

- Players new to Vancian style resource management are going to struggle. The wizard was very powerful when using his spells, but after the first TPK got gun shy and started getting stingy, using only at wills, and this put the party at risk and dragged out combat. We were ok with this, just takes some getting used to without encounter powers.

- We enjoyed AC as the only defense, no healing surges, and the return of real saving throws. I think with the right modules to add some tactical considerations, 5e might be the system for us.

- I loved the spell descriptions. Readability was good and they were short.

- Favorite classes were the wizard and the clerics. I personally liked the rogue, but I think my players just didn't "get it". We all the felt the fighter was missing something.

I'm going to run it again later this week and have them run only one character each, and bump those characters up to 3rd level and see what happens. I might break out a mat for some of the bigger fights, might not, will see how it goes.

 

[Gargoyle]

My kids were at my mom's, but a friend of mine came by and he and my wife played. They chose the fighter and the human cleric, and I had them play them at 3rd level. I decided against letting them play multiple characters this time.

They chose the goblin caves. I thought it was going to be a very quick TPK. The dwarven fighter took a lot of damage in the first round, but the cleric healed him up and his luck turned for the better, and he slaughtered many goblins. They made it to the guard room with the secret door, and with a well placed sunburst the cleric of Pelor turned the tide and they finished off the remaining goblin guards.

Then things got interesting. My friend is an old school player and the fighter got worried about reinforcements. He started arranging the goblin bodies in various positions to make it look like they got upset over a dice game and killed each other, to disguise the fact that they were being assaulted. Nice idea, but it took a little time to "reassemble" the goblin bodies he just hacked apart. The human cleric decided to scout the corridor ahead with her torch.

I figured this was a bad idea, but they made the dice rolls to pull it off. The fighter made a pretty convincing scene with a good Intelligence check, and the cleric made some great Dexterity checks so she was not heard, and didn't go so far that light from her torch was seen by the dozens of goblins in the next room.

However, I decided there was a chance the ogre next door heard the commotion and would get curious, and sure enough, he made a Wisdom check and decided to investigate while the cleric was still scouting. The dwarf fighter won the Dexterity vs Wisdom contest to hide when he heard the sound of the heavy secret door opening, and the puzzled ogre pushed the rock secret door aside and investigated the scene and completely bought the charade. Realizing that he was in trouble without the cleric there, the dwarf stayed hidden.

Concerned that his source of gold had killed itself off the ogre started bellowing down the corridors, and seeing the human cleric, began crawling down the corridor after her (I had been describing the corridors as maybe five or six feet high) Realizing their peril, the dwarf fighter jumped out from behind the table and hacked the ogre in the ass, while the cleric zapped him with radiant lance. Unable to swing his club in the cramped corridor, he grabbed the cleric. Unsure of grappling rules, I did a Strength attack and hit and ruled that she would take 1d4 + Str mod and was immobilized until she made a Strength or Dexterity contest against his Strength. I probably should have just had her make a saving throw to avoid being immobilized. But it worked out ok, for a scary round she was being crushed by the ogre, then wriggled out.

Disadvantaged on his attacks in the corridor and completely puzzled about why his big butt hurt, the ogre took another hit then crawled out to fight the dwarf in the room where he could swing his club. Meanwhile, goblins were sneaking up the corridor at the edge of the cleric's torchlight, hoping to murder the cleric. But she saw them, and dispatched them with channel radiance, and frightened the rest of the light fearing goblins back to their den.

The fighter meanwhile was backing into the ogre cave, and winning the fight. The cleric ran out to help, and they slew the ogre. Realizing that the entire goblin cave would come down on them, they entered the ogre cave and slid the rock back into place with a good Strength check.

They set some simple alarm type traps at the entrance to the cave, figured they'd hear it if the goblins tried to open the secret door, and took a long rest in the cave to recover their injuries and spells, and then decided to return by way of the secret door. They didn't realize the goblins knew about the door and had laid an ambush.

Arrows and maces flew, and the dwarf fighter went down on round one after taking down a couple of goblins with cleave. Sunburst saved the day, as the surviving goblins again retreated from the light of Pelor. Rather than retreat, the intrepid player characters decided to press their advantage, only to run into another ambush in the common room, with a dozen goblins. They won initiative however, and the cleric held up her torch and holy symbol and bravely ordered the goblins to surrender the lost heir . Charisma contest vs Wisdom was wildly successful.

The goblin king was in the room this time, and ordered his minions to not attack (even though they already clearly were terrified and had no intention of attacking the cleric). He explained that they had already given the kidnapped heir to the "Chaos Priests" and that he was in the high caves. He explained that they didn't hurt him, and despite his fear for the cleric took the opportunity to make a number of rude comments about dwarves.

The dwarven fighter had enough of the insults and finally attacked. Very foolish, but completely in character. I thought things were looking grim, but the cleric cast shield of faith on the dwarf, and due to the goblins attacking only him with disadvantage (until the king ordered them to attack the cleric too), and with some good rolls, they took down the surprisingly tough goblin king, and again the cleric ordered the remaining goblins to surrender, which they promptly did. The goblin king's assistant, who spoke some broken common, pleaded with them for their lives and profusely apologized to the dwarf for the terrible behavior of their previous king, and realizing their precarious position (there were still a dozen goblins) the fighter agreed to do so.

All in all, it was a very fun, exciting adventure.

As they left, the sly goblin picked up the bloody crown of broken pottery the king had been wearing and put it on his head.

 

[TerraDave]

The first report sounded pretty good....but the second one...great stuff, thanks! (and bump to your thread).

 

[Connorsrpg]

Thanks for the report. I esp liked your breakdown of what you liked and what didn't work for you (without the snark). Thanks.

 

[Gargoyle]

Thanks for the comments. I had a good time DM'ing this one. The players chose a very potent combination of fighter and healing cleric, and the fact that the goblins were light sensitive made the cleric of Pelor especially potent.

They made some mistakes, IMO, but they also made some clever decisions and got lucky a few times, so it all worked out. I didn't try to balance the encounters at all, I just ran them, and they adapted and overcame.

I decided to run it in theater of the mind again this time, because I didn't have a lot of time to dig out mini's or dungeon tiles, but the players did graph out a map of the dungeon as they explored, and with only two player characters, it wasn't hard figuring out where everyone was. There were still questions of "where am I standing" but it was all quickly resolved, and describing the huge and stupid ogre was a lot of fun, and I admit that I put more effort into the description of the confused ogre since I didn't have one of my ogre mini's handy to plop down.

All that said, one small concern I have is that the healing cleric seems as necessary as ever. In combat healing seems very important at low levels in any group, but particularly in small groups. I don't necessarily consider this a problem. Healing can be fun, and if it wasn't needed the cleric would have felt useless just casting radiant lance over and over. But it seems to me that their stated goal of designing a game where magical healing isn't needed is not going to be compatible with the other stated goal of supporting small groups of players. I just felt it would be too deadly without it.

If they had chosen the fighter and the thief, it could have worked with clever play and luck, but they would have been overwhelmed I think eventually.

One alternative I suppose is non-magical in combat healing like a warlord, which I dislike. Narrating that the ogre's critical hit crushes your chest then having a warlord brush it away with a stirring speech doesn't work for me. It will be interesting to see how far they take that.

I do like the idea of D&D without the need of someone to play a cleric however, and I can see that with the herbalist theme, it might be possible to get by with potions. I think I would like to see pregenerated characters with some less focused combinations to support smaller parties. A fighter with the herbalist theme to supply some healing potions might be interesting, for instance, and with that in mind, perhaps the system will support play without a healing cleric at low levels just fine, with the right themes, and I'd be ok with that.

On the other hand, I'm ok with a D&D that implies that magical healing is usually available, as long as the cleric can do more than heal, and this cleric certainly was effective in combat too, and so it worked for me.

 

[Piratecat]

I'm really enjoying this, James.