4E is here!
Hooray, 4E is here!
Despite all of my love-hate rants of 4E in the past 10 months, I was glad the game was here.
Third Edition, in spite all of its vast improvements over Second Edition, had kind of run out of steam for me.
High level combats took ridiculous amounts of time to prepare for and run. Dispel Magic in a most combats took several minutes to readjust all of the math from the new list of buffs on the party.
Low level games were fun, but after a while they became repetitive. When new books were released they certainly added something to the game, but it was temporary.
I just hope 4E can deliver what was promised, and so far the potential outlook is good.
We played a short episode with Dale as the DM, and a few of us took part in the Worldwide D&D Game Day at Yottaquest.
I took half a day off at work to get the books as soon as I could (then went home and took care of babies for the next 5 hours with little reading of the books).
Brian had the day off as well (he has no babies, so he read plenty of the PHB).
Justin had gotten the PHB about half an hour prior to the session.
Dale and Aaron ordered the books online, meaning they would be getting their books later (1-3 days).
The first thing we did was to sit down and plan out what we were going to do as a group. Something we really hadn’t done very well for a couple of years.
Brian was debating on taking a paladin or a wizard.
Aaron was debating on rogue or cleric.
Justin was unsure, but melee classes are always his preferred.
I was debating on a paladin or warlord.
Dale was busy mentally devouring my copy of the DMG or MM.
To cover the controller task, Brian took a wizard.
To cover the striker task, Aaron took a rogue.
To cover the defender task, Justin took a fighter.
To cover the leader task, I took a warlord.
It took us nearly 3 hours to make our characters, 1 hour creation + 2 hours BS’ing. We just couldn’t resist ourselves. They added things that reminded me of Diablo 2 (3 stages of armor), and they added lambas bread from Lord of the Rings!
And here are our results:
Brian made Hadrei, the human wizard.
Aaron made Valenae, the eladrin rogue.
Justin made Stout, the dwarven fighter.
I made Tornok, the tiefling warlord.
(If you’re wondering why I made a tiefling PC when I ranted about using them, it was just to try it out.)
First we agreed on a few ground rules for the game:
First – We are going to make mistakes since we have new rules. We’ll just deal with them as best we can. (An example for this night was Cleave vs. minions.)
Second – We make no long-term house-rules until we understand the rules of the game sufficiently enough to make changes that won’t disrupt the whole game.
Third – Pay attention. Everything we’ve heard shows that this version of the game requires more attention from everyone.
Dale’s campaign is going to be a standard village with all kinds of problems that only heroes can fix.
We had less than an hour for us to play after character creation, so Dale ran us through the first room of Raiders of Oakhurst – a fan-made module he downloaded.
The plot was the standard, someone needs help somewhere, and some brave adventurers are needed to kill bad guys doing bad things to people who need help.
(Yeah I forgot the specifics of the module, there was a lot going on that night.)
The first room we entered had a bunch of kobolds (minions) around a fire with there leader nearby.
We go on initiative.
The leader of the kobolds in the room (named Ichichi I think) goes first and raises the alarm with a gong and drops a bunch of caltrops around the ground near us.
As we took out the minions, more minions show up.
When we took out Ichichi, a kobold skirmisher and caster join the fray.
It took us a while to kill the skirmisher and make the caster run away, but we won.
We did well as a group overall.
Justin did what he needed to with his fighter, wade into melee and take the brunt of the damage taking out the minions with Cleave and used his encounter attacks on non-minions.
Aaron did what he could with his rogue, getting into back stabbing position against non-minions.
My job was to keep Justin’s fighter decent on hit points with my limited healing, and to help Aaron get into position. I did about as well as I could, but hope to do better once we’ve gotten more used to the new system.
Brian did his job of staying in the back while concentrating his attention on the more dangerous non-minions. I think he made the mistake of using his daily power against the caster instead of saving it. But that’s ok; we made the mistake of getting too far away from him, leaving him open to melee attacks.
Live and learn.
We ended the night when the combat was over, anxious to try this new game again.
That particular combat lasted longer than 30 minutes. I would consider that a bad sign of things to come, but I think it was really because new combatants kept entering the fray, so it was really two combats with no rest in between. So if that’s the case, then I’m happy with those results.
Now if we can keep that up at level 10 and up, then I’ll be happy.
The next day I was able to get away from home for about 6 hours and was able to get some more game time in for 4E.
I played in two D&D events, a 2 hour mini-module that was a series of fights to save some kidnapped children from an evil wizard, and a half hour fight against a watered down white dragon (on the Hailstorm Tower DDM map – one of my favorites).
One thing that a lot of people were talking about (and making fun of) was the total lack of DDI being ready as originally touted. I wasn’t surprised but haven’t been keeping track of it. My bet is that WotC bit off more than it can chew and bugs ran rampant.
Anyway, Dale and I played together in the 2 hour mini-module. For this one I really wish we’d had a different DM (I think only Dale liked the guy’s game, Dale is pretty easygoing). I don’t want to go in to specifics, but had the other 3 players in the group not made the best of it, I’d have probably walked away.
I didn’t let the disappointment of the first game get me down, we still won the module (though I think the DM dropped a combat), and I was ready for the dragon-fight module.
Now lest you think I’m overly harsh on DM’s, the guy who ran this module was good (in spite of him being an Eberron lover). He enjoyed when the players did well and added some quick descriptions of what we did when we hit or missed our attacks (something I’ve never gotten the knack of).
I was hoping the dragon-fight was higher level PC’s vs. a tough dragon, but it was a watered-down white dragon meant to take on the same level 1 PC’s from the other mini-module.
Since I was last to sit down this time, I was “stuck” with the dwarven fighter. Hah! Their loss was my gain.
We started in a safe corner of the map and I went one way and the rest of the group stuck together and went another way. Lucky for them the dragon missed with its breath weapon (it then flew back to the tower).
We then swarmed the tower from two sides, and somehow it ended up with me being alone on one side. So I went on figuring I’d be dead soon enough.
That dragon had 200 hit points and somehow we tore it up. My dwarf and the other human fighter surrounded the dragon and trapped it in passage.
Using my daily attack and an encounter attack (with an action point) I did 60 points of damage in one round, plus another 10 when it tried to fly away, which ruined its attempt to fly away.
The dragon tore me up a bit, but I was still standing (and had to use my Second Wind).
For the first half of the combat only the other fighter, the cleric, and myself did anything to the dragon, but eventually the wizard and rogue players figured out how to best use their characters and helped us finish the thing off.
The cleric got in to melee and hit it with some Pelor type fire attack, gutting the poor dragon.
We impressed the DM, and I was glad to have a fun combat.
Despite all of my love-hate rants of 4E in the past 10 months, I was glad the game was here.
Third Edition, in spite all of its vast improvements over Second Edition, had kind of run out of steam for me.
High level combats took ridiculous amounts of time to prepare for and run. Dispel Magic in a most combats took several minutes to readjust all of the math from the new list of buffs on the party.
Low level games were fun, but after a while they became repetitive. When new books were released they certainly added something to the game, but it was temporary.
I just hope 4E can deliver what was promised, and so far the potential outlook is good.
We played a short episode with Dale as the DM, and a few of us took part in the Worldwide D&D Game Day at Yottaquest.
I took half a day off at work to get the books as soon as I could (then went home and took care of babies for the next 5 hours with little reading of the books).
Brian had the day off as well (he has no babies, so he read plenty of the PHB).
Justin had gotten the PHB about half an hour prior to the session.
Dale and Aaron ordered the books online, meaning they would be getting their books later (1-3 days).
The first thing we did was to sit down and plan out what we were going to do as a group. Something we really hadn’t done very well for a couple of years.
Brian was debating on taking a paladin or a wizard.
Aaron was debating on rogue or cleric.
Justin was unsure, but melee classes are always his preferred.
I was debating on a paladin or warlord.
Dale was busy mentally devouring my copy of the DMG or MM.
To cover the controller task, Brian took a wizard.
To cover the striker task, Aaron took a rogue.
To cover the defender task, Justin took a fighter.
To cover the leader task, I took a warlord.
It took us nearly 3 hours to make our characters, 1 hour creation + 2 hours BS’ing. We just couldn’t resist ourselves. They added things that reminded me of Diablo 2 (3 stages of armor), and they added lambas bread from Lord of the Rings!
And here are our results:
Brian made Hadrei, the human wizard.
Aaron made Valenae, the eladrin rogue.
Justin made Stout, the dwarven fighter.
I made Tornok, the tiefling warlord.
(If you’re wondering why I made a tiefling PC when I ranted about using them, it was just to try it out.)
First we agreed on a few ground rules for the game:
First – We are going to make mistakes since we have new rules. We’ll just deal with them as best we can. (An example for this night was Cleave vs. minions.)
Second – We make no long-term house-rules until we understand the rules of the game sufficiently enough to make changes that won’t disrupt the whole game.
Third – Pay attention. Everything we’ve heard shows that this version of the game requires more attention from everyone.
Dale’s campaign is going to be a standard village with all kinds of problems that only heroes can fix.
We had less than an hour for us to play after character creation, so Dale ran us through the first room of Raiders of Oakhurst – a fan-made module he downloaded.
The plot was the standard, someone needs help somewhere, and some brave adventurers are needed to kill bad guys doing bad things to people who need help.
(Yeah I forgot the specifics of the module, there was a lot going on that night.)
The first room we entered had a bunch of kobolds (minions) around a fire with there leader nearby.
We go on initiative.
The leader of the kobolds in the room (named Ichichi I think) goes first and raises the alarm with a gong and drops a bunch of caltrops around the ground near us.
As we took out the minions, more minions show up.
When we took out Ichichi, a kobold skirmisher and caster join the fray.
It took us a while to kill the skirmisher and make the caster run away, but we won.
We did well as a group overall.
Justin did what he needed to with his fighter, wade into melee and take the brunt of the damage taking out the minions with Cleave and used his encounter attacks on non-minions.
Aaron did what he could with his rogue, getting into back stabbing position against non-minions.
My job was to keep Justin’s fighter decent on hit points with my limited healing, and to help Aaron get into position. I did about as well as I could, but hope to do better once we’ve gotten more used to the new system.
Brian did his job of staying in the back while concentrating his attention on the more dangerous non-minions. I think he made the mistake of using his daily power against the caster instead of saving it. But that’s ok; we made the mistake of getting too far away from him, leaving him open to melee attacks.
Live and learn.
We ended the night when the combat was over, anxious to try this new game again.
That particular combat lasted longer than 30 minutes. I would consider that a bad sign of things to come, but I think it was really because new combatants kept entering the fray, so it was really two combats with no rest in between. So if that’s the case, then I’m happy with those results.
Now if we can keep that up at level 10 and up, then I’ll be happy.
The next day I was able to get away from home for about 6 hours and was able to get some more game time in for 4E.
I played in two D&D events, a 2 hour mini-module that was a series of fights to save some kidnapped children from an evil wizard, and a half hour fight against a watered down white dragon (on the Hailstorm Tower DDM map – one of my favorites).
One thing that a lot of people were talking about (and making fun of) was the total lack of DDI being ready as originally touted. I wasn’t surprised but haven’t been keeping track of it. My bet is that WotC bit off more than it can chew and bugs ran rampant.
Anyway, Dale and I played together in the 2 hour mini-module. For this one I really wish we’d had a different DM (I think only Dale liked the guy’s game, Dale is pretty easygoing). I don’t want to go in to specifics, but had the other 3 players in the group not made the best of it, I’d have probably walked away.
I didn’t let the disappointment of the first game get me down, we still won the module (though I think the DM dropped a combat), and I was ready for the dragon-fight module.
Now lest you think I’m overly harsh on DM’s, the guy who ran this module was good (in spite of him being an Eberron lover). He enjoyed when the players did well and added some quick descriptions of what we did when we hit or missed our attacks (something I’ve never gotten the knack of).
I was hoping the dragon-fight was higher level PC’s vs. a tough dragon, but it was a watered-down white dragon meant to take on the same level 1 PC’s from the other mini-module.
Since I was last to sit down this time, I was “stuck” with the dwarven fighter. Hah! Their loss was my gain.
We started in a safe corner of the map and I went one way and the rest of the group stuck together and went another way. Lucky for them the dragon missed with its breath weapon (it then flew back to the tower).
We then swarmed the tower from two sides, and somehow it ended up with me being alone on one side. So I went on figuring I’d be dead soon enough.
That dragon had 200 hit points and somehow we tore it up. My dwarf and the other human fighter surrounded the dragon and trapped it in passage.
Using my daily attack and an encounter attack (with an action point) I did 60 points of damage in one round, plus another 10 when it tried to fly away, which ruined its attempt to fly away.
The dragon tore me up a bit, but I was still standing (and had to use my Second Wind).
For the first half of the combat only the other fighter, the cleric, and myself did anything to the dragon, but eventually the wizard and rogue players figured out how to best use their characters and helped us finish the thing off.
The cleric got in to melee and hit it with some Pelor type fire attack, gutting the poor dragon.
We impressed the DM, and I was glad to have a fun combat.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 7:18 AM
2 Comments:
Been following you since your WLD days (found your blog linked from ENWorld), and I look forward to hearing more of your 4e 'exploits.' (Heh.)
Everyone seems to have messed up Cleave versus minions - what was your specific problem? (When I played in the demo, the DM wasn't sure if Cleave's followup attack should work against minions, because he thought they needed a specific attack roll to take down. But he let it work anyways, and it seems that that's as it should be.)
Thus far, my experience with 4e has been largely positive - I like the fact that it can do both large swarm-type battles and powerful single combatant fights, and still make them relatively equally challenging. Here's hoping it doesn't break down at higher levels!
Happy gaming!
Glad to hear my ENWorld signature has worked :)
Our goof with Cleave was, of course, vs. minions. Luckily the PHB has a a specific mention of Cleave in the glossary for minions.
I'll get this past Friday's session in as soon as I can (later this week).
It will have my usual yapping about 4E.
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