Rodney Thompson's Playtest Report on Gleemax

[JoeGKushner]

I've never had a 20 round combat at 2nd level take two hours. 8th level? Maybe. But then again, it's rare that I have a continous rounds of combat for that long anyway.

If it scales that way so 20th level fights take two hours for 20 rounds, great.

And the guy sounds like a good GM. A bad GM would've probably killed the party. Something Mike hit on a little in his talks about making good GMs.

 

[Rechan]

I've never had a 20 round combat at 2nd level take two hours. 8th level? Maybe. But then again, it's rare that I have a continous rounds of combat for that long anyway.

Emphasis mine.

I really hope that 4e stretches combats out, round wise, while speeding it up. Monsters surviving 2-4 rounds is just a little unexciting, for me. It's like "Boo!" *smack* "Augh!"

 

[Rechan]

In fact, I wonder if part of the minion rules isn't a 'gang fire' rule, like batteries of weapon in Saga edition: rather than several separate rolls, it makes one roll with a big bonus (from the assist action). If each little cluster of minions just makes one roll, that could be a big speed-up.

True, but if one cluster of minions rolls one roll - and they all hit - that's what, 4 separate damage rolls? That can get harsh.

 

[Traycor]

I really hope that 4e stretches combats out, round wise, while speeding it up. Monsters surviving 2-4 rounds is just a little unexciting, for me. It's like "Boo!" *smack* "Augh!"

Agreed.

 

[Traycor]

True, but if one cluster of minions rolls one roll - and they all hit - that's what, 4 separate damage rolls? That can get harsh.

If it is done this way, then it would probably be like the rules for mass combat. The minions make one attack roll... and only one damage roll.

 

[Intrope]

True, but if one cluster of minions rolls one roll - and they all hit - that's what, 4 separate damage rolls? That can get harsh.

IIRC (I don't have the Saga book handy), the gang fire doesn't itself multiply the damage--but if the gang attacker scores well above what it needed, it got a bonus to damage.

 

[Traycor]

Actually, we're 2nd level. We might hit 3rd, depending on how much XP we got last session (we ended at like midnight, so Chris didn't have time to give us XP).

Hey man, I run two Star Wars games a week, I gotta get my game on some time. I just happy to be lucky enough to play in a game run by Chris Perkins, the Best DM of All Time. Besides, I've done more on 4E than just playtest, but it's not slowing down the Star Wars stuff.

Keep in mind that one of us died, the rest of us barely got out alive, and most of the goblins were minions. Not every fight is like that.
Also, I'm pretty sure the copper dragon was something of Chris' own invention, but I can't say for certain. We got lucky in taking it down.

Fully keeping in mind that mine is a biased opinion, yeah, I like it. I feel like I'm playing D&D, and at the end of a session I don't feel like we've done anything that we wouldn't have done in a 3E game. I'm liking my wizard, and enjoying playing an eladrin (though it's taken me a few sessions to get a good mindset down for him). There have been a few speed bumps, but each revision of the game seems to be fixing more and more of those. Am I confident in it? Well, yeah. It's hard not to be. But then again it seems like the kind of game I would like: lots of options, quick gameplay, and I never feel like the "second banana" in combat (whereas my paladin of Heironeous in the last game was largely relegated to a support role). It's also a very cooperative game, which is right up my alley; as I mentioned, finding the nice little interplay between my wizard and the warlord was one of those epiphany moments in last night's game that made me enjoy the session a lot.

I dunno, maybe it's just me (and I'll fully accept that as fact if it's true) but I really feel like the experience I'm having at the table is what I've come to expect from D&D over the last 8 years.

Putting on my game designer hat for a second, though, I think 4E is going to be SO much easier to design and develop material for. Having already done so a bit, and having seen how the mechanics are put together, it kind of amazes me that it wasn't done this way sooner. I know this is going to frustrate people a lot with its vagueness, but having all the math essentially done for us ahead of time seems to be letting us focus more on the creative side of things than on the balance side of things.

So, umm... why wasn't any of this cool info added to the front News Page?

 

[JoeGKushner]

Emphasis mine.

I really hope that 4e stretches combats out, round wise, while speeding it up. Monsters surviving 2-4 rounds is just a little unexciting, for me. It's like "Boo!" *smack* "Augh!"

Not me.

I don't want more rounds in the same amount of time as shorter longer rounds. Even in computer games where the PC is doing all the math that becomes a grind.

 

[Smerg]

Just a couple of points.

1> There was another playtest report with characters around level 2 to 3 at most (they had survived their first dungeon crawl). In WotC GregB campaign, he describes in his playtest 5 report where the Eladrin fighter traveled far enough in one jump to leave his companions at least a couple of gaming rounds behind the character. This teleport ability appears to have some legs to it and is not going to be any short 10 to 20 foot hop. Being able to travel far though had its problems as the fighter was then cut off from the group.

A further thing was Blue from GamerZero talked a couple a weeks ago of her rogue character getting knocked off a cliff edge and using a rogue ability to keep herself from the fall and staying at the top of the cliff.

2> When it comes to the copper dragon and the power level. One of Mike Mearle's posts that appeared in a thread on Mega dungeons did describe that players have a larger room of cushin to mix it up for a round or two with a tougher opponent then they should theoretically be able to handle.

Given the description of the encounter, I am willing to hedge with the writer's opinion that the encounter was originally supposed to be a plot hook encounter and not a combat encounter. Players though being players have a tendancy to go where they will and do what they will. This resulted in the DM having to adjust the situation on the fly. The exploding ship and the goblins jumping into the fight was likely part of an attempt to fix a looming TPK.

I think the DM then had the copper dragon use an illusion power like invisibility in the end to escape. For the DM it would be a chance to explore and see what the real limits of the group were if they choose to push the 4e rules and find out where the balance lay. Add in one dead player as a reminder that the DM is not pulling punches when players choose to think with fists instead of brains.

3> I am still amazed at the pace of 20 rounds in 2 hours. Even with players making sure to have their actions planned out in advance and then just doing a move, roll, and ajudicate it was great to figure that likely 30s per player was required. I get my value by taking the 6 min per round and allocating half the time to the players for their move, actions, and rolls and the the other half of the time to the DM for all his NPCs. Still, that shows the value of one roll to hit and comparison to save verses one roll to hit and then another roll by each creature affected to save. It also shows something of how easy it must be to control the monsterized goblin mages and uber mage along with the many regular goblins and minions.

4> Most importanty, IMO, is the value of the new slot system when it comes to the casting classes. A 2nd level fight in 3e that lasted more than 4-5 rounds would see a mage fully depleted of all spells but a couple of 1-3 hp level 0 spells (if they were lucky). The mage here was spell slinging through the whole battle which suggests a way better balance instead of shoot once or twice and then pull out the crossbow.