The 4E World of Errin #2

Where to start? Where to start?

First off, we’ve confirmed that 4E combat is not quicker. They just made all of the combats take longer.

I know I’ve said it before, but that was with us only having played a few sessions. Now that we’ve played for 7 months, we’ve confirmed it.

In 3E, non-special level 1 combats took 10-20 minutes and similar level 7 combats took 1-2 hours.
In 4E, the same types of combats take 30-60 minutes and 1-2 hours respectively.
The last time I checked, 30 minutes was more than 10.

But maybe I’m wrong. I did go to public school after all.

Second, on more than one occasion the players in my group have stepped on each other’s toes when using their powers.
Player A wants to use cool power X on his turn, but that is ruined when player B uses power Y.

The only solution to this problem is full communication of everyone’s abilities before combat and stating what you intend to do, or reading everything everyone can do and still communicating what you intend to do during combat.

So now, to keep the combat flowing, each player has to be tactically aware and be able to decide quickly what he’s doing.

Now you’re probably thinking “Well most of those issues will go away when you learn the classes better.”
Maybe, but I’m not betting on it. They’re adding several new classes and races each year.

Now I’m not saying everything about 4E is bad, but the above 2 issues are pretty big and they can’t be ignored (like social skill challenges).

So far I like that everyone has cool abilities, casters never run out of spells, healers are not absolutely required (arguable), action points, combat situations are simplified, and yes – the easier job a DM has (double-edged sword huh?).

Plus we can’t go back to 3.5 D&D. Aaron sold all of his books.

Though I do have several copies (10+) of the Basic D&D books (the RBGBG books and the Rules Cyclopedia) we could use if we just up and abandoned this edition D&D.

Why do I have so many copies of the old game? Because I can.

Comment: Dale read on the WotC forums that it’s “bad form” for a DM to ignore the marks the PC’s put on monsters during combat. My response to that is “Shut the hell up! Play monsters how they would act in the situation; knowing the consequences of their actions.”

Monsters aren’t playing footsy; they’re fighting for food, treasure, etc.
Monsters should not simply be mobile chunks of XP.

Now for the game.

Our cast of characters:
Brian’s human swordmage Kal (job = defender)
Scott’s dragonborn cleric Sephira (job = melee striker/healer)
Mike’s human bard Renald (job = miscellaneous)
Aaron’s dragonborn fighter/cleric Shamash (job = defender)
My halfling ranger/rogue Wildeyes (job = striker)

Looking at the math a little closer, I think I might have been wrong on my character doing more damage in the long run than a pure rogue or rogue/ranger multiclass. I have changed my mind to that they are about the same overall in damage output. Roughly, rogues hit half as often, for twice as much.

My hope is that having 2 magic weapons gives the ranger a bit of a boost because in 4E, critical hits are king. Having double chances at a crit gives the ranger a slight edge. The problem is getting two magical weapons.

We last stopped after losing a lot of body hair to some fire beetles, all for 15gp a piece.

Dale either ret-conned us or failed to let us know that we had made it to the fire beetle lair by riding a barge downstream for a day. So we had to walk back to Hillside over 3 days.

(We didn’t mind. Random encounters = XP.)

First we came across a halfling named Stoat. He proclaimed that he was the fellow in charge of this toll road and we had to pay up.

And wouldn’t you know it; he had misplaced the appropriate signed and notarized documents.

Wildeyes keen ears confirmed what we suspected; there were others hiding behind some trees.

Things did not go as well as Stoat had hoped. Not only did we not pay his toll, we killed him, his 3 sneak attacking flunkies, and his pet wolf. And then we skinned his wolf, and got a nice price for it later.

We found a note on Stoat stating his purpose from “the big man” was to harass people on the road and to leave the kobolds alone. Ooh, foreshadowing.

We saw no evidence of kobolds anywhere along the way, but made note of it for possible checking later.

Next we were surrounded and ambushed by some wolves. They put up more of a fight, but we killed and skinned them too.

Mike kept rolling crit after crit with his ranged attacks. I, on the other hand, hit consistently but with no crits, and rolled pathetic damage. Where last week I was doing kick ass damage. Some striker I am.

We were on a streak of random encounters, but Dale decided the third one would be a force of Michaeline knights on patrol (think of them as a very zealous anti-evil highway patrol).

The eight knights investigate our camp, and ended up sharing it with us.

Although Wildeyes isn’t a big fan of cops, they won him over when they gave us 85gp as a reward for taking out Stoat and his bandits and we rode with them back to Hillside.

We did tell them about the kobolds, though we realized later that they would probably wipe out the kobolds, thus removing any chance for us to make any money off of it.

Once we were back to town, Captain Dathry extended an invitation to have dinner with him sometime soon.

Back in town we first turned in the fire beetles to the halfling Mitt Woodweller, owner and proprietor of the Singing Trout Inn, and mater culinary chef.

Think of him as a talkative 4’ tall used car salesman.

Although he was a bit disappointed that we brought none back alive, he was still quite pleased and invited us to stay and try out the first beetle he cooked. We left the place fat, happy, a small bit richer, and Kal was working on a scheme for us.

One of the things we had at the Singing Trout was some Mithril River Dolphin. This really disturbed Kal and he was able to convince Mitt to give us 1000gp in starting money to create a Mithril River Marine Animal Conservation Group (the name is still being worked on).

Later Kal was able to get us a boat from Bob’s Boats to travel the river on our mission.

Now Wildeyes has no care about the mithril river dolphins. They’re tasty and delicious. But he wants his 200gp cut of that 1000gp.

We told Mitt and Bob that we were going to help the dolphins by taking out their predators. We didn’t mention who or what we might consider to be predators.

We checked with Burgoyne about new jobs. He had none for us and he was ticked at us for tipping off the Knights of Saint Michael about the kobolds.

Wildeyes heard of a ranger’s guild/school called Rinita’s School of Blades and Bows. He paid 10gp to join with the hopes that he could use the place as a contact point or to find potential adventuring jobs.

The barkeep at the Magic Mushroom mentioned that there was a warlock name Trulor who might be a step up from Burgoyne in finding us jobs, but he doesn’t work with new groups.

The next evening we took up Captain Dathry’s offer to eat with the Michaelines, and it was nothing short of a feast fit for royalty.

Dathry also told us that the local temple of Moradin had need of some guards who would be willing to escort a funeral procession into the Underdark to a place known as the Hall of Ages.

The next morning we met with the dwarven priest Kosar Soulhammer and agreed to the escort job.

He mentioned something about a necromancer being active in that area.

That’s ok. We’re surprised Dale was able to contain himself to throwing undead at us until week 3.

It was a little early, but the fight would have taken more than an hour, so we stopped for the week.

The 4E World of Errin #1

Yay, I’m done running another bad WotC module.

Now Dale gets to experiment with making his own encounters.
For my sake, I hope he doesn’t overestimate our skills. Not that I’m any expert on that…

We have an old story we keep bringing back up with Dale when we question his judgment of our PCs’ strengths.

It was early 3E, and we had paused going through the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil because Dale was getting bored with it (another module with a good beginning that turned to junk in the middle).

Dale sent us to a land under siege by undead, led by “the big C” (a.k.a. Cthulu).

We were levels 8-10 then Dale attempted to throw 4 alhoons (mind flayer liches) at us and Cthulu.

A minor player revolt got him to reduce it to one alhoon and no “big C”.
“You guys can’t take just 4 of them on?”
“Taking on just one will be a tough fight.”

So we took on the one alhoon, and barely won.

For this campaign, check out Dale’s weblog (link on the right). It’s not exactly laid out in an easy to read manner, but I’m only going to repeat things here that I need to.

All of us made it to the session and hopefully the holiday interruptions are over.

Our new cast of characters:

Aaron made a defender fighter with some cleric multiclassing so he can heal himself if need be. He’s a dragonborn named Shamash. Aaron has clearly stated that this guy is meant to take the hits, grab attention by marking, and not deal much damage. Which is what a defender should be.

Brian is playing a human swordmage name Kal. My understanding is that he’ll be a melee controller.

Scott is playing a dragonborn battle cleric named…sigh…Sephira (because plagiarism, even of crap books, is ok with a D&D character.)

Mike is playing Renald, an elven bard, using rules he pulled from being a paying member of the Digital Initiative. So far he seems to be a combination ranged striker and controller.

Justin is playing a dwarven druid named Ergot. His abilities remind me a bit of a ranger mixed with a wizard for moderate damage in and out of melee. Mike gave Justin the information for the druid from the DI as well.

And I’m playing a halfling ranger with rogue multiclass named Wildeyes. His job is to be a melee striker.

Now you’re thinking that if I wanted to do a lot of damage, I should have made the guy a rogue with ranger multiclassing. But I noticed that when Aaron was running his rogue, he missed half the time, effectively ruining the extra damage he did.

My solution was to make a melee ranger so he’d get twice the chances to get any bonus damage. I added the rogue multiclassing to get the Thievery skill and an extra 2d6 damage with a sneak attack.

For short combats this will pay off, but not so much for longer ones.

I know this because during our first combat of the night, I did 5d6+3 damage with an encounter power (2d6+3), Hunter’s Quarry (1d6), and Sneak Attack (2d6). That is with 2 attack rolls, and only one hitting.

It is possible I could have done 7d6+6 melee damage. In fact, in limited circumstances, I could do the same with ranged attacks.

And finally I chose halfling as a race because of, once again, what I saw Aaron’s rogue deal with. Valenae took a royal beating in melee. Halfling get +2 bonus to their AC versus opportunity attacks, and they get to force the DM to reroll monster’s attack once per encounter.

This group has a lot of potential to do well in combat. Though I think we actually have too much melee control and not enough ranged control. All in all, I believe that’s a minor concern.

To accommodate some of the changes 4E has brought, Dale introduced a one-way portal that many races, such as dragonborn, entered through. I assume tieflings entered via this portal as well.

The initial setting for the campaign is the city of Hillside. I could best describe it as an adventurer’s training ground. There are plenty of small jobs that the city can’t take care of.

Future potential for expanded adventuring is that this city is flirting with the idea of seceding from the control of the city-state of Oceanside. This is mainly because the city receives little from Oceanside, but pays much in taxes. The biggest obstacle preventing this is Oceanside’s large standing army, which just needs an excuse to be parked right on top of Hillside.

As you can see, Dale’s names can sometimes are a bit easy to remember: Hillside…rests on a hill, Oceanside…an ocean port city, Whitehall…the capital of a good land, Greystone…the capital of a neutral land, and Blacktower…the capital of an evil land.

We individually gathered together at different points during the day in the city of Hillside, with all of us finally congregating at the dwarven run inn known as The Magic Mushroom, a place famous for its fungus-based whiskey drink known as Mushroom Boom.

We were there to be hired by a dwarf named Burgoyne for a simple job, since all of his other groups were out on assignment.

Our job was to discretely clear out a warehouse for an unnamed and presumably wealthy family. We were told it had a rat infestation. We were not told how bad the infestation was.

Note: there was a lot more role-playing going on this night than I’m relaying. I was glad to have some.

The good news was that we killed several giant rats (minions), a pair of rat swarms, a “mama rat”, and a “ratzilla”.

The bad news was that Renald, Shamash, and Sephira contracted a disease from the rat bites. I think by the end of the session, all three of them still had it on some level.

And the worst news was that this simple fight took for-freaking-ever! People learning their PC’s abilities combined with discussing the best option made this simple fight take an hour. That was when I decided that 3 PC’s of our 6 having “slide opponent X squares” will require some learned teamwork and a tactical leader.

We returned to Burgoyne, got our reward, and found that he had no new task for us. So we set about finding someone else who might want to hire us for some special services.

And we found someone in the form of a halfling who owns the Singing Trout Inn. The owner considers himself a bit of a culinary expert and he was currently in the mood to experiment with fire beetles.

He wanted them alive if possible and gave us directions to their usual spot.
We said thanks, but not to hold his breath on the “alive” bit.

It took us a day to find their nesting grounds, and they weren’t inclined to just let us take them away.

In fact, they nearly killed half of us. But that’s mainly because we kept on grouping together so they could hit 3 of us at a time with their fiery blasts.

When the group was all bloodied (not me), we finally started working together. It probably helped that the beetles didn’t regen their fiery blast very quickly.

It was late, so we stopped there.

Next session, I start pushing ideas of working together, thinking before acting, and discussing your plans with the rest of us before carrying them out.