Shattered Gates of Slaughterguard

[Aus_Snow]

Just a quick question about this adventure (rather than starting up another thread about it).

How closely does it follow the usual formula for required class types and party size? IOW, how badly do you need say, 4-6 PCs, and how badly do you need a healer, a hitter, a thief and a mage? Any other requirements peculiar to this one?

 

[Shadowslayer]

Slaughtergarde & Scourge both seems to have an almost too-wide selection of monsters. Some variety is nice, but the monsters should have some coherent theme, and not seem like they were chosen to make you buy more minis.

I can't speak of Slaughtergaarde, but the Howling Horde didn't have that far a range of critters. <spoiler>Gobs, Hobgobs, Noak, a dog and a wolfy. (oh, and the 2 surprises inside the absent cleric's pad) <end spoiler>

Thats not too outrageous.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I can't speak of Slaughtergaarde, but the Howling Horde didn't have that far a range of critters. <spoiler>Gobs, Hobgobs, Noak, a dog and a wolfy. (oh, and the 2 surprises inside the absent cleric's pad) <end spoiler>

Thats not too outrageous.

I must be misremembering the details for Horde, then ... one of the recent WotC adventures had a truly wild range of critters; so much so that I was like WTF?

 

[RFisher]

Is there any preview of this format available online?

Yes, you might, but how many would. I suspect that a lot of people would already have half of the required minis so buying them again in a set would not be good value to them. Plus, once you start having a lot of these sets you start getting into distribution issues. It's a good idea in theory but I don't think that WotC will ever do it.

I suspect a lot of people who aren't buying the WotC minis would jump at this. I suspect a lot of people who are buying the minis would rather buy them like this. I suspect this could improve the distribution issue by giving D&D a bigger presence in the boxed "boardgame" market.

Especially if such boxed-with-minis adventures were designed as expansions to the "Basic" box. i.e. Reused minis that came in the basic set & included enough of a rules expansion that you didn't have to buy the hardbacks.

I've never been a big fan of the "board game" model, but I think this could have some potential.

 

[Rafael Ceurdepyr]

Just a quick question about this adventure (rather than starting up another thread about it).

How closely does it follow the usual formula for required class types and party size? IOW, how badly do you need say, 4-6 PCs, and how badly do you need a healer, a hitter, a thief and a mage? Any other requirements peculiar to this one?

My group is composed of 4 PCs (2 players): battle sorcerer, cleric, scout and battledancer. I guess we do have those classic categories covered. They've managed through the first section of the adventure just fine, even though we don't have a heavy-hitter for magic or a meat-shield. The battle sorcerer actually deals the most damage. So far I haven't wished they'd chosen alternate classes.

 

[Shadowslayer]

I could be wrong, but don't most WOTC adventures assume the iconic 4 character types? Or is this changing?

One thing I can tell you is that in Howling Horde, each encounter's XP value was stated for varying party numbers : X xp each if there's 2 pcs, Y xp each for 3 pcs etc. I believe the values were for anywhere from 2 - 6 pcs.