| My First D&D 4th Edition Game |
[Aug. 30th, 2008|03:45 pm] |
I ran a one-shot 4e game last night for my friend ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) codrus, animated_max, seathan, Ray, and Garry. I've been playing in a 4th Edition game run by the excellent Dave Eckelberry and I wanted to give running the system a try. I created a little setting, wrote up a adventure designed to get the characters from 1st level to 2nd level (if we could get through it all), and did some prep work.
I found the prep work a lot of fun! I like the mechanics of building encounters; the system in 4e seems a lot easier than dealing with CRs as in 3/3.5. And it was a blast working up people's characters for them, printing up ability cards, and getting everything ready for a mixture of new and semi-experienced players. I also really like the concept of skill challenges and threw a couple of those into the adventure. Not for role playing situations; I think those should be handled by the players actually role playing, perhaps backup by skill rolls if needed. But I threw in a tracking challenge and a digging challenge, just for fun.
I really like the way treasure is apportioned in 4e; it makes a lot of sense and was pretty easy to do. It was fun picking out magic items that would be useful to the party, both for specific characters and in a general sense. And again, I enjoyed creating the magic item cards to hand out to the players when they found the loot; it reminded me of the old "card items" from our early D&D games.
Adventure:The game started with the players as new recruits in the Army of Summer, doing their mandatory 2-year military service. Everyone does their Deuce when they hit their majority... or when they get caught shirking that duty after reaching their majority. The PCs all met in boot camp, where they somehow each incurred the ire of their drill instructor and bonded over such great experiences as peeling potatoes, cleaning pots, and digging latrines. After a month of that, they were assigned to garrison duty in the distant town of Bel Gorge, otherwise known as the ass-end of nowhere.
The group arrived and met their new CO, Lt. Ellis. It turned out the that squad and the lieutenant was the sole military presence in this isolated mining town of 200 people. Ellis, a drunken and bitter man, had the disturbing tendency to address whichever of the squad members who was closest as "Corporal" soon had them patrolling the area of Bel Gorge. Two days patrolling, one day off. Two routes: Clockwise around the plateau and counter-clockwise around the plateau. And so it went for two months.
One day on patrol, the group saw that Farmer Harold's farmhouse was damaged and Farmer Harold wasn't in the fields to greet them as he normally did. They moved into investigate and were jumped by a group of goblins. It was a pitched fight, and poor Brother Barnabas spent most of it blinded by the vile goblin hexer.In the end, the squad triumphed over the goblins, though the hexer managed to escape.
Game Play: This was a pretty good fight. The encounter was comprised of 4 Goblin Cutters (minions), 2 Goblin Sharpshooters, 1 Goblin Skullcleaver, and 1 Goblin Hexer, for a total of 650 exp. This was a "standard" 1st level encounter, I believe. I'm still getting used to the full build the encounter system.
The fight played out pretty well. Arn, Max's dwarven fighter, did a pretty good job of tanking and Fox, Codrus' rogue, got messed up pretty well. Poor Brother Barnabas, Ray's cleric, got blinded by the hexer and had the worst luck making saving throws. With the exception of Fox, the party survived in pretty good shape.
The newer players caught the hand of the system pretty quickly. There was the standard "I forgot to mark/make him my quarry" things that happen. I broke out some condition markers, and that might have helped people remember. I also should have made a Challenge card and a Hunter's Quarry card for the fighter and ranger to help them remember to always use those abilities.
I hadn't gotten the hang of being as tactical as I should be; the goblin's shifting abilities weren't really used. Of course, the PCs didn't really miss with melee attacks in this fight, so it didn't really matter. :)
Adventure: After rescuing Farmer Harold and his family, the players decided to go after the hexer. This involved tracking the wily and fleeing goblin across the plateau towards the mountain. Fortunately, Halt, Garry's ranger, was an excellent tracker and the rest of the squad was creative in their pursuit. After a couple of hours of pursuit, the party came to a cave mouth and entered.
Game Play: This was the first skill challenge, which was set at level 1, complexity 3, meaning it required 8 successes before 3 failure to complete. The key skills were Perception and Nature (DC 8 and DC 15, respectively.) Looking back, I realize I played it wrong, only requiring 6 successes before 3 failures. The players were creative in trying to bring in other skills that played to their strengths. They had a couple of failures, but in the end found the cave mouth with no problems. If they had failed, they would have been jumped by a party of 8 goblin cutters (minions) coming out of the cave. Minor encounter to get them to expend some resources.
Adventure: Moving through the nature cave, the squad turned a corner and heard low, angry voices that suddenly went silent as someone -- or something -- notice the light spell the squad was using to illuminate their way. Making their way cautiously forward, they found a large group of goblins and hobgoblins, including their old friend, Mr. Hexer! The combat began.
It was a hard-fought battle. Arn bravely engaged the largest hobgoblin, who mustered his friends to surround the stalwart dwarf! Once again, the hexer seemed to delight in blinding the brave cleric. The squad managed to pull out a victory, but only just.
Game Play: This encounter featured 8 Goblin Cutters (minions), 1 Hobgoblin Commander, 2 Goblin Blackblades, and 1 Hobgoblin Warcaster (750 exp). It also had the Goblin Hexer from the first encounter as an added bonus.
This was a tough one, not helped by a string of bad die rolls on the PCs part and some untimely 20s on my part. On the other hand, my big bad commander managed to roll his +13 attack and miss AC 19 3 o r 4 turns in a row. It is amazing how often that guy rolled a 2, 3, or 4.
Throwing the Hexer back into the mix made this fight much, much tougher than it would have been. The hexer shut down the cleric's healing early, and caused Ray to expend a valuable healing word on himself. The hexer's stinging cloud ability knocked Fox to below 0 hit points when he decided to try to more through it after being stuck in place for a round.
The minions fell over pretty fast, mainly because I only put 4 of them on the board as I now realize. Probably a good thing.
Arn was doing a pretty good job of tanking, but the commander used his leadership abilities to get the dwarf doubly-flanked, which really made the blackblades effective. However, my dice were sucking and I missed a lot of good opportunities to put the dwarf down. Arn fell to a nasty 27-point crit from the commander's Thundering Battleaxe +1. Tal'Savian, seathan's wizard, was crossed-classed into cleric and used his daily healing word to get the dwarf back up, in the nick of time. Arn's ability to self-heal with his racial Second Wind as a minor action thing and his Comeback Strike got him back up to a respectable number of hit points.
Fox spent a lot of the fight frustrated because no one was providing a flank for him, which really minimized his damage. He made excellent use of riposting strike, and the bad guys were quite often too stupid to not attack him after that, incurring a second attack.
Arn used his marking ability to good effect on the commander, keeping the big guy focused on him. Given my sucky die rolls, that was a great move, since the sucky rolls would have been hitting the rest of the party.
The warcaster was effective in the first part of the combat, knocking the squad around with his force effects. His recharge rolls were bad and he was brought down by Fox.
Halt was pretty effective in dealing the damage, especially when Garry remembered to use his Hunter's Quarry. On the average, Halt managed to hit with one of his two arrows per round, and his vaunted elven accuracy didn't help with that.
Inn the end, the battle came down to the commander, who's high defenses and high hit points made him really hard to take down. There was some concern on the part of the players (and on the part of the GM) that the commander was going to take them all out. However, they managed to defeat him. In the end, only Fox was down, though everyone was pretty messed up. They did score a couple of healing potions and the thundering battleaxe +1, which they put into Arn's hands.
This fight cost them most of their dailies and a lot of healing surges. After their short rest, they were depleted.
Adventure: There was a lot of debate on what to do next. But Corporal-for-the-Day Halt was determined the group find the source of the goblins, so Fox went to scout forward a bit. He found a goblin and four hobgoblins over seeing some chained goblins, who were trying to dig out a cave-in at the back of the chamber.
Fox returned to the squad and there was more debate. The group finally decided to try to sneak up on this groupl, attack them from surprise, and figure out what was going on. It was a good plan, marred only by Barnabas asking, "Do you think they know we're coming?" in a loud voice as the group was almost at the chamber.
Our brave heroes rushed in and engaged the bad guys. This startled one of the goblin diggers, who turned, hit a delicate part of the wall with his pick and caused a bunch of rock to fall, burying the workers.
These hobgoblins were not nearly as tough as the last, and fell to arrows, magic missiles, and well-placed daggers. The little loud-mouthed goblin seemed to blame the squad for trapping him here, and for the "glowy." He was a lot tougher than expected, but the squad did an excellent job of using their training to keep him pinned and at a disadvantage and took him down with no real problems.
Game Play: This encounter was a Goblin Underboss and 4 Hobgoblin Warriors (minions.) (702 exp)
This fight went very well for the PCs. Though the minion's defenses were high, the PCs managed to hit them, taking them out very early. The underboss had a lot of hitpoints and a cloak of resistance +1 to help him out, but it wasn't enough. Arn kept him focused on attack the tank and while the underboss could hit, he didn't do a lot of damage or have a lot of tricks up his sleeve. Fox slipped into flanking position and went to town on the poor little dude.
The magic cloak ended up with the cleric.
Adventure: It was obvious that something had caused a quake or shake, opening a passage and then trapping the goblins here. Corporal Fox ordered the group back to Farm Harold's farm for food and a night's sleep before the group, now led by Corporal Arn, returned to the site of the cave-in. The group dug at the wall, causing another shower of stones which damaged Fox and revealed an opening leading to a passageway of worked stone. Old, old dwarven work, they determined.
The group walked down the empty corridors and took at right. They came to a set of double doors, which opened into what looked like a grand banquet hall. The walls of the room were covered with exquisite dwarven frescoes, showing scenes from the past. The room contained a fire place and three tables that held the remains of a ancient feast. And the chairs held the remains of the diners... who stood up and rushed towards the doors!
Arn stepped in to hold the doors against the skeletons. Barnabas called upon the light of Pelor and destroyed most of the horde. There was a fight with the 3 remainig skeletons, but again, the squad proved to be too strong for them.
Game Play: 8 Decrepit Skeletons (minions), 2 skeletons, 1 Boneshard Skeleton (700 exp).
This was a chance for the cleric to shine and he didn't disappoint. His Turn Undead ability took out all but of the minions, and threw the 3rd level skeletons to the back of the room, immobilizing them there for a turn.
The boneshard skeleton was a pain in the ass, due to his ability to proc an area attack when bloodied and then again when he was killed. That wasn't fair; I really don't like monsters that penalize the PCs for damaging them. That attacked probably should have killed one of the characters who was already down, if I had been running the game like that.
Wrap up: It was pushing 1 AM and we were all tired, so we held it here. The players have more to go in this adventure, but I don't know if we'll every finish it.
We all had a good time in the game. I really liked running 4e and I look forward to doing so again. I'm starting a game up at work for some of my fellow designers at NCsoft and I'm looking forward to that.
My take-aways:
- Print out the monsters. It's easier to run them that way rather than constantly be flipping back and forth in the monster manual.
- Make sure to get role-playing involved in the skill challenges, otherwise they are just borning die rolling exercises.
- Using status markers for things like marking opponents helps remind the players to use those abilities.
- The game flows well, and combats are fun.
- Prepping for runs is still a bunch of work but a heck of a lot of fun. (OK, so I'm weird that way.)
- I like the feel of the new magic items.
Yeah, I've rambled on way too long on this. That's about it. More thoughts about 4e as I have them. |
|
|
