D&D 4E Which 4E adventures did you play?

[RichGreen]

I think you're right about high level 3.x but 4e slower at lower levels.

 

[MerricB]

I actually thought 4E combats tended to run quicker than 3.5E combats - especially at higher levels where 3.5E had parties spending so much time buffing before combat and then debuffing the bad guys to start the combat.

Low-level 3E combats take about as long as equivalent combats in 1E. An orc can be killed by a single blow by the fighter in both systems.

The time taken by 3.5E combat increases significantly as levels are gained. It's been a while since I played pure 3.5E, but I got the impression that by about the time you reached levels 10-12, challenging combats were taking about an hour. By the time 20th level was reached, 2-3 hours was not uncommon. (My experiences with Pathfinder APs were shorter combats, but mostly due to bad match-ups with foes).

Most 4E combats take in the range of 40-70 minutes. The number of players is a big deal - six players takes well over an hour, but three or four players can bash through them very quickly. Essentials made combats a lot quicker as well, especially at lower levels.

With the HPE series, the later adventures have a strong storyline running through them. Basically P3-E3 is one story. It wasn't implemented well, but the concepts were really good.

Cheers!

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Because the game system does have problems when trying to run D&D adventures of previous editions. 4E can do really good adventures, but it requires a different style of writing to what was seen in 1E-3E. That it can't run some adventures that are key to the D&D feel is an actual problem. (snip)

Actually, I can run the classic 1E adventures in 4E but they do need some tinkering.

Firstly, I prefer to reduce the levels of monsters to their 1E hit dice. That requires a bit of re-statting but Adventure Tools makes that fairly straightforward.

Secondly, 4E seems to work best around the delve-like three encounter format. Using G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief as an example, each level of the structure is probably best compressed into about three encounters, two warm-ups and a single major set-piece. And, of course, you can throw in some minions as largely ineffective speed bumps along the way.

The mistake of the HPE adventures is not to leverage the strengths of 4E and instead give us combat-fests with little exploration or role-playing. But that doesn't mean that the underlying system doesn't have problems.

There are some issues with 4E - like all editions of D&D, it's best to stop when the PCs reach around 11th-15th level (arguably earlier with 3.xE/Pathfinder) - but I think (IMO/YMMV) it's now at a point where it just works and those DMs and players who run it have a good enough handle that it can continue to work.

As for the HPE adventures, they weren't just combat fests; they were crappy combat fests in the main, in large part because not enough attention was paid to the actual story which leads to...

(snip) My problem with 4e adventures from Wizards was that the ones I saw in my local gaming store didn't seem to have much connection to one another. I like Paizo's Adventure Paths ... (snip) ... they encompass an entire campaign and run together logically.

... the HPE adventures often feel like the encounters have been designed by random generation. Rather than looking at the story issues, there seems to be the sort of thinking that goes something like, "Oooh, this is an 11th-level wolf pack encounter and I need two 10th-level soldiers - oh, these foulspawn will do", without any thought being given to whether or not the foulspawn, using my example, make sense.

And with this "random generation" mindset at work, it's no wonder that the HPE adventure path simply doesn't feel like an adventure path for much of its run. Ditto for the almost-as-appalling Scales of War.

IMO, you need a sense of story-inspired verisimilitude to really bring the roleplaying and exploration "pillars" to life and, frankly, to make the combats feel important/meaningful/worhtwhile rather than simply required (but randomly generated) stops on a railroad. The HPE series didn't get this... nor did they get the need to able to simply stop and smell the roses at various times, or at least to have that as an option.

Anyway, the real lesson of the HPE series is this: this is not how to run a 4E campaign or any other campaign for that matter. The corollary to that is: yes, you can design a much better campaign/adventure path for your players than WotC can.

 

[Thunhusthelord]

I have DMed for 4e group:
Dungeon 178: Elves of the Valley
Dungeon 165: Remains of the Empire
Dungeon 192: Evard's Shadow
Pathfinder #7 Curse of the Crimson Throne Chapter 1: "Edge of Anarchy" (partly)
Rise of the Runelords Chapter 1: "Burnt Offerings" Thistletop island section
Madness at Gardmore Abbey (partly)
Dungeon 196: Reflections of Ruin
Dungeon 197: Heart of the Scar
Dungeon 197: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief
Dungeon 169: Hall of the Snake God
Dungeon 164: Worse Than Death
H1 Keep on the Shadowfell
H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth
P1 King of the Trollhaunt Warrens
P2 Demon Queen's Enclave
Dungeon Delve: Bloody Maul of Kord
Dungeon 146: Serpents of Scuttlecove
E2 Kingdom of the Ghouls (partly)
E3 Prince of the Undeath (partly)

Thunhus

 

[Starfox]

#7 Curse of the Crimson Throne Chapter 1: "Edge of Anarchy" (partly)[/FONT][/SIZE]

I also converted and played this in 4E. Some of the maps felt very confined, which oddly hindered the goblins more than the players. Overall I felt it was an interesting scenario to convert, and worked pretty well. Do you have any special experiences of it, considering you only played parts. Was it that bad, or did just parts of it fit your campaign?

 

[keterys]

I actually ran two groups through Curse of the Crimson Throne (whole thing).

 

[Starfox]

I ran the adventure path for one group, but the first adventure seemed the most interesting, really. And perhaps the hardest to 4E-ize, with all the small encounters you had to clump up into bigger encounters.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I actually ran two groups through Curse of the Crimson Throne (whole thing).

Using 4E rules, or 3.5E or Pathfinder, or something else?

 

[Starfox]

4E, hence the post here.

 

[keterys]

Ayep, in 4E. Was a good opportunity to make a lot of custom creatures and try out some wackiness.

Like there's one section where you fight some folks that have wishes, who go "I wish you'd go to hell" "I wish you were dead" etc and the PCs make a bunch of saves to avoid being planar shifted or instantly die in the original adventure. Super 'fun' stuff, dontcha know. In 4E, I made it things like "I wish you'd burn like our city burned" and "I wish you knew the betrayal we felt" and things like that, and the PCs would get scary ongoing fire they couldn't put out and/or lose all their allies, etc.

People still make references to Blood Pig, years later. Cause 4E (bloody) football? Yeah.