Yet another look at KotSF/4th Ed.

[Henry]

Three thoughts occur to me:

1) The fighter's marking and "suckage" -- Were you giving the fighters the free attack when the enemy went wandering off after the squishier PCs? Every time the enemy wanders off, the fighter gets one, mark or not, and it's nto as easy to avoid as op-attacks were. That's pretty strong incentive not to wander away from a fighter more than once.


2) Minion problems -- that's by design, and really works for me. In fact, if you ever mixed monsters with and without class levels in 3e, it worked this way, except that the unleveled creatures were often not a threat. At least this way, there is a reason for minions to be on the field. I love the change to this part of the rules myself.


3) As for the Daily resting, It's bittersweet. We changed off of Vancian casting to get a system that still encourages the same thing. However, I'm willing to bet that in practice, most groups won't go resting every single time they so much as use a daily ability - that would be like filling up your gas tank every time before you leave home or work for a 5 mile drive.

 

[legiondevil]

Three thoughts occur to me:

1) The fighter's marking and "suckage" -- Were you giving the fighters the free attack when the enemy went wandering off after the squishier PCs? Every time the enemy wanders off, the fighter gets one, mark or not, and it's nto as easy to avoid as op-attacks were. That's pretty strong incentive not to wander away from a fighter more than once.

Actually, it's been said that the free attack only applies to the Marked enemy. I think it's in the FAQ, at this point.

 

[LostSoul]

Ultimately, I'm not going to find it easy to use my preferred narrative approach to action scenes. This, I feel, limits the role-playing by making every single fight a prolonged tactical encounter.

What is your preferred narrative approach to action scenes?

I'd suggest that, in order to make "story", you ask each player: "What does your PC want?" Then make the action scenes lead towards resolution of that goal - either push him further away from that goal (failure), or bring him closer to it (success).

That way you can hang dramatic weight on the tactical encounter.

 

[JohnBiles]

3) As for the Daily resting, It's bittersweet. We changed off of Vancian casting to get a system that still encourages the same thing. However, I'm willing to bet that in practice, most groups won't go resting every single time they so much as use a daily ability - that would be like filling up your gas tank every time before you leave home or work for a 5 mile drive.

Given you can only rest 1/24 hours to get back dailys, there are plenty of ways to discourage people from trying to take an extended rest after every encounter.

 

[The Eternal GM]

Well, that WAS the intention: trade the crossbow for some simple, flavorful spell.



Uh... It has two! A 3x3 square at range 10 (scorching burst) and a 5x5 square adjacent to you (burning hands). What more do you need? You sure you understand how an area burst 1 works?

Meh, may as well just have a crossbow then. 'Magic Missile' isn't exactly a flavourful alternative to me.

Burning Hands is a one off each fight (damn good one mind you!) and scorching burst isn't reliable enough to protect the wizard all the time. We only had four of five characters in play, meaning the wizard faced melee quite a bit in the bigger fights.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Actually, it's been said that the free attack only applies to the Marked enemy. I think it's in the FAQ, at this point.

Yeah, the FAQ mentions that the benefits of the Fighter's Combat Challenge ability only apply to marked targets. Regardless, I can't imagine why the fighter wasn't sticky vs his mark. The fighter gains a free attack against the mark almost no matter what and he hits fairly hard (2d6+3= 10 avg). Was the fighter just rolling terribly?

 

[Fanaelialae]

Meh, may as well just have a crossbow then. 'Magic Missile' isn't exactly a flavourful alternative to me.

Burning Hands is a one off each fight (damn good one mind you!) and scorching burst isn't reliable enough to protect the wizard all the time. We only had four of five characters in play, meaning the wizard faced melee quite a bit in the bigger fights.

When playing a wizard I'd rather have a magic missile that works like a crossbow than a crossbow, IMO. Aside from stylistic reasons, magic missile will scale with your implements (there's a wand +1 in KotS if I remember correctly), whereas a crossbow needs to be upgraded seperately.

Did your DM scale the encounters down to account for the fact that you had one less player than was intended (I think this would be accomplished by removing 100 xp worth of enemies at level 1, 125 xp at level 2 and 150 xp at level 3)? If not, the adventure would have been a bit more difficult than it was intended to be.

 

[The Eternal GM]

When playing a wizard I'd rather have a magic missile that works like a crossbow than a crossbow, IMO. Aside from stylistic reasons, magic missile will scale with your implements (there's a wand +1 in KotS if I remember correctly), whereas a crossbow needs to be upgraded seperately.

Did your DM scale the encounters down to account for the fact that you had one less player than was intended (I think this would be accomplished by removing 100 xp worth enemies at level 1, 125 xp at level 2 and 150 xp at level 3)? If not, the adventure would have been a bit more difficult than they were intended to be.

No idea about the DM's scaling of the encounters to be honest. Seemed okay generally, barring a certain goblin...

I maintain, magic missile ought to be magic missile... Auto-hitting and all! not grognardy or anything, just preference. Plus I don't have a problem with magic-users relying on mundane staffs, bows and so on as well as magic.

 

[hong]

I maintain, magic missile ought to be magic missile... Auto-hitting and all! not grognardy or anything, just preference. Plus I don't have a problem with magic-users relying on mundane staffs, bows and so on as well as magic.

Your preferences are very grognardy.

 

[Zil]

Really? I thought Sunless Citadel was awful. And Forge of Fury even worse (and far deadlier). I have run Forge of Fury three times back in the day and each time it resulted in a TPK. Once from the Roper, and twice from Nightscale.

I only experienced both of those adventures from the player side, and I would have to agree with you that Forge of Fury was pretty bad - we never finished it and this effectively ended that campaign. However, we did really enjoy the Sunless Citadel. I rather liked the twig blights and the corrupted druid and tree. I was playing a druid at the time and for a bit there, I was tempted to side with the tree and become the new caretaker. No comments on KoTS - still haven't seen it.