SunRaven01
First Post
As my group was switching from 3.5E to 4E, I elected to start us off with the WotBS 4E conversion. Neither I, nor any of my players, have played 4E before, and 2 of the players are D&D newbies to boot.
However, they were all very excited about giving things a go, so off we went.
I'm a big fan of props and handouts, so I went ahead and built a cardstock terrain version of the Poison Apple Pub, printed out the copy of the closure notice (and posted it up on my front door for the players to read), and filled the pub with lots of cardstock props like tables, chairs, and a bar.
Playing through we have:
A Dragonborn Paladin of the Raven Queen
A Dragonborn Cleric of Kord
A Wild Magic Halfling Chaos Sorceress
An Elven Wizard
A Tiefling Hybrid Rogue Warlock
The pub conversation was a little hard for them. They got right away that they needed to go with Torrent to the Depository to get the intelligence from Rivereye, but Torrent was unable to convince them to come up with a plan for escaping the city before they left the pub. The closest they got was the idea to ask Rivereye if he had some secret ways out of the city (since he was a former spy). Eventually Torrent went along with it, worried that they were wasting too much time spinning their wheels around the table.
The pub combat was a little too easy, I think, but not as a result of the encounter as written: I have the worst dice luck ever. They love me to DM, my dice luck is so bad. The two Dragonborns were thrilled to find out that the Black Horse Recruits were minions, and had no problem mowing through them to clear a path out of the front of the pub. The Thug got ganged up on by the Paladin and Cleric when I made the mistake of shifting him one square into the pub (through the front door).
No one tried to escape through the side door, and the cleric even intimidated one of the scouts into surrendering to the cleric, and then they were able to pool together enough money to convince the scout to hire on with the party. (He agreed and later made his escape while they were in the Terror Skies encounter, pushing his way off through the crowd while the party was distracted. The cleric was very put out by this.)
The pub combat took us about two hours to get through, since everyone was new to 4E -- so be aware if you're playing this for the first time, that first combat is slow, especially with the large numbers of NPC attackers.
After they left the pub -- sending Kathor running off with his tail between his legs (the dogs were VERY effective in nomming on the Paladin), they eagerly stopped to help the refugee family, attempted to save the building jumper (failed strength checks and she went splat ... The cleric was disappointed, but the Paladin roleplayed it to the hilt and dedicated the death to the Raven Queen), and completely refused to look for Kiki.
We pick up again two weeks from now, with the Depository encounter. I've built the blueprints for my Depository terrain, now I just have to build it out.
Lessons learned:
I. Terrain is priceless. It's incredibly helpful for clearing up line of sight and cover questions. If you can build it, I really really recommend it.
II. Make sure new players are crystal clear on how to use the power cards from the Character Builder. The Sorceress had a bit of a difficult time grasping that the +attack, damage expression line at the bottom of the card really did include all relevant bonuses (before any buffs or debuffs applied in combat).
III. Minis or monster counters: Use them if you have them. I forgot to print out monster counters ahead of time, winged it with dice, but I really prefer the monster counters. Mount them on some scrap foamcore if you have it, and give the counter to the player landing the deathblow as a trophy. They eat it up.
However, they were all very excited about giving things a go, so off we went.
I'm a big fan of props and handouts, so I went ahead and built a cardstock terrain version of the Poison Apple Pub, printed out the copy of the closure notice (and posted it up on my front door for the players to read), and filled the pub with lots of cardstock props like tables, chairs, and a bar.
Playing through we have:
A Dragonborn Paladin of the Raven Queen
A Dragonborn Cleric of Kord
A Wild Magic Halfling Chaos Sorceress
An Elven Wizard
A Tiefling Hybrid Rogue Warlock
The pub conversation was a little hard for them. They got right away that they needed to go with Torrent to the Depository to get the intelligence from Rivereye, but Torrent was unable to convince them to come up with a plan for escaping the city before they left the pub. The closest they got was the idea to ask Rivereye if he had some secret ways out of the city (since he was a former spy). Eventually Torrent went along with it, worried that they were wasting too much time spinning their wheels around the table.
The pub combat was a little too easy, I think, but not as a result of the encounter as written: I have the worst dice luck ever. They love me to DM, my dice luck is so bad. The two Dragonborns were thrilled to find out that the Black Horse Recruits were minions, and had no problem mowing through them to clear a path out of the front of the pub. The Thug got ganged up on by the Paladin and Cleric when I made the mistake of shifting him one square into the pub (through the front door).
No one tried to escape through the side door, and the cleric even intimidated one of the scouts into surrendering to the cleric, and then they were able to pool together enough money to convince the scout to hire on with the party. (He agreed and later made his escape while they were in the Terror Skies encounter, pushing his way off through the crowd while the party was distracted. The cleric was very put out by this.)
The pub combat took us about two hours to get through, since everyone was new to 4E -- so be aware if you're playing this for the first time, that first combat is slow, especially with the large numbers of NPC attackers.
After they left the pub -- sending Kathor running off with his tail between his legs (the dogs were VERY effective in nomming on the Paladin), they eagerly stopped to help the refugee family, attempted to save the building jumper (failed strength checks and she went splat ... The cleric was disappointed, but the Paladin roleplayed it to the hilt and dedicated the death to the Raven Queen), and completely refused to look for Kiki.
We pick up again two weeks from now, with the Depository encounter. I've built the blueprints for my Depository terrain, now I just have to build it out.
Lessons learned:
I. Terrain is priceless. It's incredibly helpful for clearing up line of sight and cover questions. If you can build it, I really really recommend it.
II. Make sure new players are crystal clear on how to use the power cards from the Character Builder. The Sorceress had a bit of a difficult time grasping that the +attack, damage expression line at the bottom of the card really did include all relevant bonuses (before any buffs or debuffs applied in combat).
III. Minis or monster counters: Use them if you have them. I forgot to print out monster counters ahead of time, winged it with dice, but I really prefer the monster counters. Mount them on some scrap foamcore if you have it, and give the counter to the player landing the deathblow as a trophy. They eat it up.