The Order of the Mithril Dolphin #3-4
Sorry it’s taking so long get a post up. We’ve had a busy few weeks at the homestead.
Check out my wife’s blog to see all the things we’ve done.
This session write up will consist of 2 sessions for the reasons above.
To start off, I’d like to change my complaints of “marking” in 4E being a time sink for combat. I’ll change it to any power or ability that suddenly stops the flow of combat. This includes some aspects of marking, but isn’t limited to marking alone.
I won’t name any specifics because a lot of it is just being prepared, but I don’t believe anyone’s turn should take longer than 30 seconds unless they’re using a daily power at a very crucial moment.
Beyond that just pick your target, pick your power, and roll the dice.
If you find yourself trying to determine the best spot for everyone on the battlemap on your turn, stop it. This is D&D, not chess. Worry about where you are at on your turn and point things out to others when it’s not their turn (such as “move to here so we’ll have flanking”).
Granted it can’t always be that easy, but it should be that easy more often than not.
And finally, don’t use complicated attacks when the combat is almost done and all you’re attacking are mooks. In other words, if the boss is dead and no one on your side is in bad shape, just use simple at-will attacks. That is not the time to use your dailies or even encounters.
Well the last couple of sessions were pretty similar to the first couple; we hired with quest-giver X to go kill a few low level monsters all while making various contacts in the city to go kill more monsters later.
We are now generally pretty friendly with the local Order of Saint Michael (a.k.a. the Michaelines, or the cops), a couple inn owners, a few other business owners, and the local dwarven priesthood of Moradin. So we’re probably making a name for ourselves, though much of it has to do with dolphins.
Our third session had (all level 1):
Shamash (Aaron), dragonborn fighter/cleric, defender
Renald (Mike), human bard, leader
Wildeyes (Me), halfling ranger/rogue, striker
Sephira (Scott), dragonborn cleric, defender/striker
Kal (Brian), human swordmage, defender
Ergot (Justin), dwarven druid, controller
Our fourth session had all but Ergot (most were level 2 by then).
The first step in PC survival is getting a DM who can’t roll for squat. Dale is perfect for that. He rolls more natural ones on d20’s than all but one other DM I’ve played with.
(If your DM supplies that step for you, no other steps are needed.)
Our third session consisted of a combat in the Underdark against some skeletons (we had good teamwork) to help the dwarves, then later on we killed some kobolds who had a white dragon as their patron (Dale is stonewalling us on finding the dragon though).
Using the gold we received from Mitt Woodweller, Wildeyes was able to buy two short swords +1. And in an awesome display of dice rolling, I had several crits with those swords at the right time. Taking out tough combatants early in a combat with good use of daily and encounter powers may be worth more than the healing surges used later to recover from the damage done by that combatant.
In session 4 Dale was trying to hurt us, but rolled so pathetically he couldn’t do much to hurt us at all. We rolled average, which still wins.
We were stopped by bandits on the road again (I’ve forgotten why we were even on the road). The bandits were this time some wererats aided by some pet giant rats and rat swarms. No one was diseased this time around.
Our “Protect the Mithral River Dolphin” campaign is hitting some legal snags. Apparently seeing the mayor of the town takes several weeks time and several hours waiting in line to even make an appointment. It’s going to take at least 4 more weeks for our campaign to be legit.
Wildeyes did “find” a 40gp opal during the 5 hour wait in line though.
After some discussion our adventuring group will be known as The Order of the Mithril Dolphin.
Though we have yet to actively save a single dolphin, we’re hoping to be more effective than PETA at saving those delicious dolphins. Come to think of it, we’ve never seen a dolphin that wasn’t on a plate in front of us.
Next we were out adventuring again at the behest of Burgoyne to clear out some areas of the nearby Underdark of pests.
Note: the town is partially in a cave with connections to the Underdark, so any monsters from there could wreak havoc.
First we had to eliminate a nest of kruthiks and a lurking stirge. The combat was relatively easy barring that the kruthiks were hiding on the ceiling and waiting for us to walk under them.
Next was a small goblin outpost consisting of a hexer, several brutes, and a pair of needlefang drake swarms.
The room they were in was tactically bad for us as they had us pinned in and it was quite hard just to get flanking. This also gave the goblin hexer ample opportunity to screw with us for a good long time with spells that could blind us.
But once we broke their front line, they were doomed to a slow death.
We stopped there for the session.
We probably won’t rest for the night as we each still have several healing surges.
Check out my wife’s blog to see all the things we’ve done.
This session write up will consist of 2 sessions for the reasons above.
To start off, I’d like to change my complaints of “marking” in 4E being a time sink for combat. I’ll change it to any power or ability that suddenly stops the flow of combat. This includes some aspects of marking, but isn’t limited to marking alone.
I won’t name any specifics because a lot of it is just being prepared, but I don’t believe anyone’s turn should take longer than 30 seconds unless they’re using a daily power at a very crucial moment.
Beyond that just pick your target, pick your power, and roll the dice.
If you find yourself trying to determine the best spot for everyone on the battlemap on your turn, stop it. This is D&D, not chess. Worry about where you are at on your turn and point things out to others when it’s not their turn (such as “move to here so we’ll have flanking”).
Granted it can’t always be that easy, but it should be that easy more often than not.
And finally, don’t use complicated attacks when the combat is almost done and all you’re attacking are mooks. In other words, if the boss is dead and no one on your side is in bad shape, just use simple at-will attacks. That is not the time to use your dailies or even encounters.
Well the last couple of sessions were pretty similar to the first couple; we hired with quest-giver X to go kill a few low level monsters all while making various contacts in the city to go kill more monsters later.
We are now generally pretty friendly with the local Order of Saint Michael (a.k.a. the Michaelines, or the cops), a couple inn owners, a few other business owners, and the local dwarven priesthood of Moradin. So we’re probably making a name for ourselves, though much of it has to do with dolphins.
Our third session had (all level 1):
Shamash (Aaron), dragonborn fighter/cleric, defender
Renald (Mike), human bard, leader
Wildeyes (Me), halfling ranger/rogue, striker
Sephira (Scott), dragonborn cleric, defender/striker
Kal (Brian), human swordmage, defender
Ergot (Justin), dwarven druid, controller
Our fourth session had all but Ergot (most were level 2 by then).
The first step in PC survival is getting a DM who can’t roll for squat. Dale is perfect for that. He rolls more natural ones on d20’s than all but one other DM I’ve played with.
(If your DM supplies that step for you, no other steps are needed.)
Our third session consisted of a combat in the Underdark against some skeletons (we had good teamwork) to help the dwarves, then later on we killed some kobolds who had a white dragon as their patron (Dale is stonewalling us on finding the dragon though).
Using the gold we received from Mitt Woodweller, Wildeyes was able to buy two short swords +1. And in an awesome display of dice rolling, I had several crits with those swords at the right time. Taking out tough combatants early in a combat with good use of daily and encounter powers may be worth more than the healing surges used later to recover from the damage done by that combatant.
In session 4 Dale was trying to hurt us, but rolled so pathetically he couldn’t do much to hurt us at all. We rolled average, which still wins.
We were stopped by bandits on the road again (I’ve forgotten why we were even on the road). The bandits were this time some wererats aided by some pet giant rats and rat swarms. No one was diseased this time around.
Our “Protect the Mithral River Dolphin” campaign is hitting some legal snags. Apparently seeing the mayor of the town takes several weeks time and several hours waiting in line to even make an appointment. It’s going to take at least 4 more weeks for our campaign to be legit.
Wildeyes did “find” a 40gp opal during the 5 hour wait in line though.
After some discussion our adventuring group will be known as The Order of the Mithril Dolphin.
Though we have yet to actively save a single dolphin, we’re hoping to be more effective than PETA at saving those delicious dolphins. Come to think of it, we’ve never seen a dolphin that wasn’t on a plate in front of us.
Next we were out adventuring again at the behest of Burgoyne to clear out some areas of the nearby Underdark of pests.
Note: the town is partially in a cave with connections to the Underdark, so any monsters from there could wreak havoc.
First we had to eliminate a nest of kruthiks and a lurking stirge. The combat was relatively easy barring that the kruthiks were hiding on the ceiling and waiting for us to walk under them.
Next was a small goblin outpost consisting of a hexer, several brutes, and a pair of needlefang drake swarms.
The room they were in was tactically bad for us as they had us pinned in and it was quite hard just to get flanking. This also gave the goblin hexer ample opportunity to screw with us for a good long time with spells that could blind us.
But once we broke their front line, they were doomed to a slow death.
We stopped there for the session.
We probably won’t rest for the night as we each still have several healing surges.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 7:19 AM
2 Comments:
Do you hate your wife, or your readers? Give her an actual link!
The Order of the Mithril Dolphin.
The Order of the Squeak.
She's got a link.
It's on the right as "My wife's blog"
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