Playtest: Prophecy of the Priestess, Part 2 (Updated: Part3)

[Scholar & Brutalman]

Prophecy of the Priestess, Part 2 is up. I think Bilsland is a big Warhammer fan.

 

[psionotic]

Battle begins with a surprise round that includes all who awaken at Gerhart’s call. I tried to incorporate some of the rules for character condition following waking up, but I found that they delayed the drama and action and instead moved the PCs directly into battle.

1) There is some kind of surprise system and surprise rounds will exist in some form.
2) There is a new condition for being recently awakened, although Greg B doesn't like it/chose not to use it...?

 

[Shroomy]

There is no way I can fight that dragon until I've had my cup of coffee!

 

[TerraDave]

GregB also takes about playtesting as, well, a player in his blog today, and I am wondering if we haven't read somebody elses description of this (I am seriously loosing track). High lights: a dwarf paladin that may or may not be able to cure, and a "evil" standard that seems to buff.

We (the editors) have played a couple sessions of Chris Sims’ lunchtime game now, and I must say, I’m quite enjoying my stalwart dwarf paladin, Belwin. In our last game, we ventured into a cave and were immediately attack by nasty little creatures that tried to shred us to pieces. At one point, the grid stood thus: my five companions surrounded by four of these creatures—and my dwarf paladin, thirty feet away, being bombarded by five of them. The situation leading to this was a disagreement over an item we’d picked up. They’d retrieved a standard of an evil god (they argued he was also a god of war), and my character would have nothing to do with it, despite the bonuses it offered, so when the human rogue moved into the cave to plant the standard, my character moved to outside its area.

This was perhaps of benefit, because I was able to keep half the creatures busy while the other more vulnerable characters eliminated their group. The rogue fell unconscious twice during combat—by divine retribution for his use of an evil item, my paladin would say. Nonetheless, we all escaped the battle unscathed, but it was close. I had no way left to cure and my group was separated from me when I was dropped at one point to 4 hp.

He also talks about the problem of naming and Expedition to Halloween Town.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

2) There is a new condition for being recently awakened, although Greg B doesn't like it/chose not to use it...?

The way its phrased I got the impression that there are just going to be a bunch of conditions in the game as part of their exception based rules design.

So, for instance, disadvantaged position is a condition, muddled is a condition, etc. I assume the game encourages the use of these conditions by the DM in order to simulate common situations rather than have a specific rule for each situation.

So, disadvantaged position might apply when you were balancing or prone or off balance or climbing or grappling. So that way you only have to remember one condition for a number of situations.

Muddled might apply when distracted or have bright light in your eyes, or just waking up, etc.

And in this case, the DM tried to apply these conditions whenever they were appropriate and found they slowed the game down (likely as all the players waited for the flatfooted condition to go away and to wake up fully from their groggy sleep, and getting up out of bed, etc)

 

[TerraDave]

I think we learned about GregBs house rules from the official play-test report...and more on the new game from his little blog post.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

And Part 3 of Prophecy is now on Greg's Gleemax blog, where it seems it will be posted in future.

 

[Goken100]

The only interesting 4E tidbit I found from installment 3 was this:

"And although it is Wilbur and Valenae that manage to deal mortal blows to the bats, without the support of Kriv flanking and Mal employing his warlord abilities to help keep people up and fighting, the battle might have gone ill. "

So Warlord abilities "keep people up and fighting", do they? That sounds like the Warlord's healing powers will definitely have some sort of martial flare (thank goodness).