The Chamber of Mazarbul: Dungeons and Dragons

Investigation: The Horseshoe Isle Settlement (Session 3)

2012-01-29T19:38:00.000-08:00

Cast

Keyleth Arwyl: Elven Protector Druid (Circle of Shelter, Beastwalker Circle)
Fen Silverfang: Longtooth Shifter Berserker (Temperate Lands)
Sophia Vermillion: Half-Elven Valorous Bard
Miyako "Mia" Sotoko: Human Centered Breath Monk
Zeus: Dwarven Wrathful Invoker

The Crossing

The party began by waiting until cover of night to paddle over to the next island in the chain. During this time Keyleth gathered some more ritual components to reduce the cost of Sophie's Remove Affliction ritual. Under an overcast sky, they set out. Zeus and Fen rowed, while the 3 girls acted as lookouts. The pirate captive was gagged and tied up. About halfway to the other island Sophie spotted 3 shark fins heading toward their small boat. Mia wins initiative, but the best she can do is throw a dagger at one of the sharks. Soon they're charging at the boat, attacking those on board. At one point one of the sharks grabbed Fen, threatening to pull him under. It wouldn't have gotten far, however, since Fen had been using Run Down to keep it slowed, and it was also in Keyleth's Nature's Growth zone (a tangle of seaweed). Keyleth used Charm Beast on an adjacent shark, and then commanded it to attack the one grabbing Fen (which was a kill).

A couple of rounds after the first shark is bloodied, 3 more sharks appear, attracted by the scent of blood. They all attack the bottom of the boat, severely damaging it. At first everyone tries to stay in the boat, but once the reinforcements arrived Mia jumped in the water to use her burst attacks more effectively (only 1 shark remained adjacent to the boat at the water's surface). Shortly afterwards Fen jumped in to get as many of the sharks in his defender's aura as possible in an effort to keep them from attacking the boat. Keyleth soon followed, using Wild Shape to turn into a sea turtle before using Predator's Flurry to daze 2 of the sharks (because sea turtles beating up sharks is awesome). The one shark still above water wouldn't go down too easily with just Sophie and Zeus taking potshots at it, and it used one of its final actions to attack the boat, finally destroying it. Under too much stress already, it fell apart and Sophie and Zeus fell prone in the water (both were wearing chainmail, and had Athletics scores of 2 and 1, respectively). Fortunately, either Fen or Mia (I can't remember) killed the last shark, and Keyleth immediately rushed underwater to save the bound and gagged captive, who was sinking.

Fen let Zeus use his large (wooden) shield as a paddleboard, and they swam the rest of the distance to the other island. Fen propped the prisoner up onto some boat debris, and dragged her (him having the highest Athletics bonus). Everyone ensured they would at least stay afloat by utilizing pieces of wreckage. Only Sophie failed her Endurance check, slowing the others down and losing a healing surge in the process.

The Ambush

The swim took quite a long time, and it was about 5 am by the time they reached the island. They were exhausted, and Keyleth did a quick sweep of the beach to look for tracks (which she found), and they made camp in a densely vegetated spot away from the tracks. Zeus took first watch, and it was during his watch that they were ambushed (he failed his Perception check). During the surprise round, he was peppered with arrows and brought down to bloodied. Initiative was rolled, with the PCs generally moving more quickly than the monsters (only Fen rolled low).

The opposition consisted of 6 humans; 2 archers and 4 melee fighters, 2 of which were beefier than the others. Keyleth summoned a Pack Wolf next to one of the weaker melee guys and an archer, and used an Action Point to Charm a nearby strong melee guy. The wolf knocked the weaker guy prone. Being prone (having been woken up), Mia was forced to simply chuck a dagger. Zeus used his usual tactic of blasting guys with Hand of Radiance, as well as using his second wind. On Fen's turn he stood up (minor action, thanks to Acrobat Boots) and charged the 2 enemies near the Pack Wolf, protecting it and keeping the enemies in his aura. The archer didn't fare too well in this scenario.

Mia's nova round consisted of a move+attack a bunch of guys encounter power, followed by Spinning Leopard Maneuver (a similar daily) via an AP. She ended up hitting every single enemy on the field, ending near the guys tied up by Fen's aura. Her total damage was 150 for that round (there was a crit in there). Speaking of crits, Keyleth had some odd luck; she rolled two crits, but one was Charm Beast (no damage), and the other was with her Pack Wolf (no crit dice thanks to the lack of the Implement keyword on SNA). She also crit-succeeded a saving throw. Frustrating to see nothing special happen for all of those 20s!

Zeus, Fen, and Mia all got beaten up a fair amount, but nobody went down. Keyleth's Pack Wolf was never hit (and only attacked once), so it got 4 or 5 attacks in. To be fair, the DM thought it was like the Shaman's SC and so didn't attack it, but even so it was protected by Fen the majority of the time anyways. Even though nobody was in much danger, a couple of dailies were used and almost everyone used an AP. Certainly the most challenging encounter of the adventure so far, and it was fun as well. Still, this DM tends to lean to the easy side when building encounters, and it's something I've mentioned before. This was a good start (being a random encounter and all), and I hope the upcoming encounters are very challenging.

For now, this was where we ended the session. We played a little under 3 hours, and there was only a little bit of roleplaying with most of the session being the 2 encounters. On average, that's a little over an hour for each encounter which is longer than I prefer. It is worth noting that the cats provided a lot of distractions (from watching their antics, to cleaning up after they'd knock something over, to keeping them off the table) so we weren't running at full efficiency, and there seemed to be a lot of thinking over options when it came to a player's turn. Even my turns took a little longer than usual, and I have my characters' powers pretty much memorized. I guess I just wasn't thinking ahead as much before my turns came up (especially with Keyleth, who is more tactically complex than Fen being a controller and all). While I really enjoy playing Druids, they really do require you to be on your game. A good portion of their control comes from positioning enemies (and/or yourself) just right after dazing/proning them to deny actions and/or generate OAs. While it's certainly engaging most of the time, sometimes I wish control consisted of more straightforward effects like stun, blind, and dominate as opposed to dazes and prones. I can't wait until I pick up Repel Charge in Paragon, as this will make my positioning options more flexible.

Anyways, that's all for now. The DM hopes we'll be done in one more session, but I personally have my doubts, lol.

Investigation: The Horseshoe Isle Settlement (Session 2)

2012-01-23T11:03:00.000-08:00

Cast of Characters

Keyleth Arwyl: Elven Protector Druid (Circle of Shelter, Beastwalker Circle)
Fen Silverfang: Longtooth Shifter Berserker (Temperate Lands)
Sophia Vermillion: Half-Elven Valorous Bard
Miyako "Mia" Sotoko: Human Centered Breath Monk
Zeus: Dwarven Wrathful Invoker

Battle Aboard the Merry Jane

The previous session ended with The Spooner nearly destroyed, and the PCs raising a white flag in mock surrender to the pirate ship. The idea was to wait until the ship got close enough that the crew could board them, and then the party would attack. The Spooner being a small fishing vessel, the pirates shouldn't expect resistance. As the ship (called The Merry Jane) pulled alongside the Spooner's port, the PCs could see 4 thuggish looking deckhands with grappling hooks nearest to them, clearly preparing to board. There were also 2 buff looking pirates, 2 pirate archers, and 2 tough-looking pirates that appeared to be in charge. Before the deckhands could toss their grappling hooks, the party attacked and initiative was rolled.

Zeus rolled highest, and blasted 3 pirates with Searing Orb (1 was a deckhand, which not surprisingly turned out to be a minion). With 1 enemy down and the other 2 blinded, Mia used Crane's Wings to easily jump aboard the Merry Jane, and she went straight for the blinded pirates. Keyleth was up next, using Vine Serpents to contain 3 different pirates and setting up her Nature's Growth zone nearby, the limit the mobility of the enemies around Mia. Nobody else blew any dailies, and Sophie, Keyleth, and Zeus pretty much stayed aboard The Spooner as artillery. Fen was able to just clear the jump (the distance between the 2 ships was 2 squares) as part of a charge toward one of the archers. He used an AP to attack the archer again, bloodying him and knocking him prone. This was the only AP spent during the encounter.

The following are some observations and highlights from the rest of the battle:

In general, though we didn't plan for it our party is extremely AoE heavy and also happens to have a lot of forced movement at their disposal. The fact that Zeus and Keyleth have Hand of Radiance and Magic Stones, respectively, is interesting, and regardless of what Mia is doing she can slide someone with Centered Flurry of Blows. Though it didn't occur in this battle, I'm keeping an eye out for opportunities to use Magic Stones to group enemies in Fen's aura (MS is a push 2 for her). Mia can then blast the crap out of them while protected by Fen, and if Fen gets overwhelmed Prescient Warning and Curtain of Steel are great retaliatory attacks (CoS will trigger Fen's Fury, which will score him 16 THP).
Vine Serpents absolutely wrecked this encounter. Most of the pirates in the zone didn't have ranged attacks, so while they were immobilized/restrained they couldn't do anything. One of the archers was in the zone, but every time he shot out of it he took 9 auto-damage. Mia (and eventually Fen) parked next to the zone just outside, so once enemies were no longer immobilized/restrained they still took damage for attacking outside of the zone. Add in the party's proclivity for forced movement and you can see why the enemies went down quickly.
Mia was the only combatant to knock someone overboard, using Crane's Wings (with FoB as a backup in case the pirate made her saving throw to avoid getting pushed off). That pirate was the only one to survive the battle, as Keyleth threw a rope down to her afterwards so they could ask her about the settlement (and gather info on the area's pirates).
Fen was never even bloodied, only taking a single hit. The DM was rolling really badly for attacks most of the night. Mia was the only PC to take any appreciable damage, but the only healing that had to be dished out was Revitalizing Incantation.
Keyleth rolled a 3 with her Charm Beast attack, and the Elven Accuracy roll was a 2. Boo. The DM wasn't too happy to learn that the pirate was dazed anyways, leaving Fen as his only viable target.
Fen went into a Fury late, getting to make only two attacks as a striker. The first was a bad miss, the second was a charge that critted the last archer (who had only 3 HP left) for 40 damage. As he sliced the head off of the pirate, he caught the head in mid-air as the body was thrown overboard by the force of the blow, then he slammed the head onto the deck.

The Settlement

After the battle, the party went below deck of The Spooner and called the crew (and Captain Jack) over to The Merry Jane, their new ship. Jack immediately went below deck, and the crew requested Mia's assistance as this was a bigger vessel and they were now shorthanded. Keyleth went up to the crow's nest as lookout. Sophie, Fen, and Zeus interrogated their captive. They learned that this area is the territory of the Pirate League, and that they've made it a point to get rid of any settlements they find. They also learn that Captain Jack was kicked out of the Pirate League, and their captive was responsible for him having only 1 eye. They also questioned her about the "monstrous tracks" reported by the supply crew, and she informed them that many pirates in the area enslave various monstrous creatures to do their bidding.

It wasn't long before the ship got as close as it could get to the beach, at which point the PCs rowed to shore, taking their captive with them (you know, we never did catch her name...). The settlement was very primitive with just a few thatched huts and some rudimentary buildings (a mill, shop, etc). Bodies were indeed everywhere, and Fen (being trained in Heal) went over to them to determine cause of death. He rolled a 19, which made for a 29 total, so the DM answered pretty much every question I had regarding the injuries. They had died about a week ago, most of them with slash wounds inflicted by swords. A few, however, were bludgeoned pretty badly and suffered from bite wounds that were inflicted while the victims were still alive. Meanwhile, Keyleth decided to investigate the large tracks that were reported, aided by Zeus, Mia, and Sophie. Keyleth critted her Nature check to ID the tracks, which combined with the +6 from the three aid rolls resulted in a total of 40. She pretty much instantly recognized them as troll tracks. The tracks were mixed with humanoid tracks, with a trail leading to the settlement from the woods, and then going back into the woods the way they came. Knowing that trolls were difficult to take down without acid or fire damage, the party took stock of their resources. Sophie's Dilettante was Burning Spray, and this was their only fire attack. At least it was something.

The group (with their captive in tow and gagged now) followed the trail through the woods for about a mile. At this point they reached a beach, where the tracks ended. It looked like a small boat had been drug up on the beach, and had likely come from another island about a half mile across open water from this beach. Using the spyglass that one of the crew members had lent her before the pirate attack, Sophie looked for anything of interest on the other island. It appeared that there were some smoke plumes coming from the mountainside, and possibly some structures there as well. They walked back to the settlement, portaged their rowboat through the woods to the second beach, and spent the rest of the day waiting for the cover of darkness, at which point they would row to the island.

Our DM needed to get some sleep so we ended here.

Investigation: The Horseshoe Isle Settlement (Session 1)

2012-01-16T10:42:00.000-08:00

Cast

Keyleth Arwyl: Elven Protector Druid (Circle of Shelter, Beastwalker Circle)
Fen Silverfang: Longtooth Shifter Berserker (Temperate Lands)
Sophia Vermillion: Half-Elven Valorous Bard
Miyako "Mia" Sotoko: Human Centered Breath Monk
Zeus: Dwarven Wrathful Invoker

Introduction

The Red Frogs are finally back in action after a several-week hiatus! The DM for this campaign decided to scrap the Prologue that we previously ran because of the time gap and changing ideas. Worked out well though, because since then Heroes of the Feywild was released, and now I get to run some new builds from it (Keyleth and Fen) instead of being locked into playing Lyra and Berylis again. Worth noting is that when Sophie was leveled, she took some new powers from that book as well (Revitalizing Incantation and Prescient Warning). The combo I'm thinking about is that when Fen is getting clobbered by several enemies Sophie will use Prescient Warning, and then immediately afterwards I'll go into a Fury via Curtain of Steel. Should prove to be a pretty devastating nova round, especially if I follow it up with an action point on Fen's next turn.

Another point worth noting is that this party is very AoE heavy. All of Mia's encounter powers are bursts (even if they may not be the best power of that level), Zeus is very AoE heavy (actually, he often spams Hand of Radiance), and Keyleth and Sophie both have their fair share of area attacks (Keyleth has Magic Stones, which can be used to clump enemies to set up her burst/blast-happy allies).

The Village of Tarvarin

Our heroes begin in their headquarters (technically an unspecified satellite HQ, as the main headquarters in Fallcrest has established geography that conflicts with this adventure's needs). They learn that the guild has been contracted by the Gold Coast Trading Co., which has been trying to establish settlements fairly heavily along the Strait of the Winds. There is a heavy pirate presence in the area, and GCTC hopes to secure the location with a strong presence there. They lost contact with a recent settlement on Horseshoe Isle about a month ago, and the latest re-supply ship found the village ravaged. Material goods were looted and bodies were scattered about like confetti. The supply ship's crew quickly retreated without further investigation, as they noticed large, monstrous tracks and feared for their lives. GCTC wants the Red Frogs to investigate further.

The party heads south down the road to the village of Tarvarin, 3 days away, which sits across the Strait. On the way there they encounter bandits who try to rob Fen. Big mistake. Keyleth, disguised as a dog, is the only one who notices and she barks a warning. The party attacks and quickly dispatches the bandits. Fen is the only one to specify a non-lethal "kill shot" on the bandit who robbed him, no less. He takes her weapons and armor (and the party splits the gold that the bandits had) and dump them in a hidden spot down the road. His way of teaching her a lesson. Overall, the encounter was ridiculously easy and was over in just 2 rounds. Keyleth and Mia were the only ones to even get hit (once each, Mia's being an OA she provoked), with Fen never getting the chance to Fury.

When the party reaches town they check into the first inn they see, the Upturned Mug. At this point the player of Sophie and Mia went to pick up food, and he authorized me to control his characters. Big mistake I guess. I had Sophie go drink-for-drink with Zeus, and she ended up passing out after puking her guts out in the alley. She woke up with a (female) Half-Orc and a fun new rash (which we all assumed was herpes...this was more the DM's fault than mine, I just wanted her to be hung over in the morning since she's the party face). Quote of the night from Sophie's player: "This was never supposed to happen."

In the morning Keyleth and Zeus took point talking with Gils Brooks, GCTC's owner/manager. He gave more details, and was unfortunately unable to spare a ship at the moment. The party did get the name of one of his contacts at the docks; One-Eyed Captain Jack (those of you who remember the original prologue will see some similarities here). They found him later, and Sophie was feeling well enough to haggle with him (Words of Friendship) on the price (including possible hazard pay) for passage on his fishing schooner. He told them to be ready by morning, and Zeus and Fen invited him to have a drink with them later at the Upturned Mug (despite the fact that he was already cradling a bottle of rum).

Disembarkment

With passage on a ship secured, Sophie, Keyleth, and Fen headed to a local temple to Melora to see if Sophie could get her rash cleared up (Keyleth's Senses of the Wild confirmed that it was indeed a disease, though she couldn't identify it specifically). The Remove Affliction ritual proved pricier than expected, so Sophie tried to haggle to work out a deal. Keyleth (who had spent much of her childhood/young adulthood professionally collecting herbs for an apothecary in the Feywild city of Shinaelestra) identified the requisite components (via a Nature check) and offered to reduce the cost by providing the components. After a less successful nature check, she came back with a smaller bundle than expected barely putting a dent in the cost. She offered to continue collecting on their journey so that when they returned she could provide the temple with a fairly large stock of components, knocking the price down as far as possible.

While she was out collecting (with Fen's assistance) Sophie tried other negotiation tactics with Brother Gabriel, the priest. He revealed that there may be one other thing she could do for him; in an adjacent town someone from one of the temples there (allegedly) stole a holy book from him. It's rumored that they've gotten involved with some dark practices (necromancy), and Brother Gabriel wants Sophie to gather some intel on the situation and return the book. This would earn her a major discount on the ritual. Sophie tried to get him to perform the ritual first, but he insisted that if she wanted the discount, he needed his book first.

Afterwards they all met up at the Upturned Mug for drinks. Sophie performed for tips (while being hit on by Captain Jack the whole time), Zeus drank everyone under the table, and Keyleth and Fen retired early enough to be the first up in the morning (needing to kick Jack awake, as he'd passed out in his booth). They all followed Jack to his schooner (named The Spooner), and met his first mate (Levi) and the other 4 crew members.

All seemed to be going well until they spotted a large ship in the distance. The Spooner was fighting the current to get to Horseshoe Isle, while this new ship had the current on its side. It soon became obvious that they were being pursued. Levi was at the helm, Jack still being drunk. Sophie got a spyglass from one of the crew members and noticed that the crew of the other ship were definitely moving around a lot on deck. It soon became obvious that they were loading cannons. Shortly afterward, The Spooner took a hit to the hull. They were about 300 yards out from the island and only had a single dingy that could fit 5. While desperately trying to think of a course of action and coming up with nothing particularly brilliant, the ship took another hit to the deck. Sophie jumped away in time, but one of the crew members was tossed overboard, limp as a rag doll. Keyleth ordered the remaining crew below deck to start lashing Jack's rum barrels together into a makeshift raft. Jack dejectedly went below deck after muttering that "you (the PCs) might actually be kept alive for ransom, but they'll just kill me and the crew."

When they were still a couple hundred yards out from the isle and it was obvious that The Spooner couldn't take another direct hit, Keyleth ordered the party to quickly put together a makeshift white flag to signal that they surrender. The party agreed that their only chance was to get close enough to allow the pirates to board. They stood a much better chance against the crew than The Spooner did against those guns, and if successful they would have a new ship.

It was at this point that we called it a night, since there is a pretty large battle coming up. Keyleth, Zeus, and Sophie all have forced movement powers so the best tactic is obviously going to be to try to knock the pirates overboard (while avoiding being knocked overboard themselves!). Should be fun.

Building a Better 5e

2012-01-14T19:38:00.000-08:00

By now you've probably heard that 5e has been announced, and if so you're also aware that public playtesting is going to be heavily emphasized. The idea is to let the fans have a larger say in making D&D how they want it, with the (probably unrealistic) goal of trying to please everyone by introducing a modular system that caters to a specific group's preferences.

There's a lot of discussion circulating around the internet, so all that I will do at this point is list some things that I think would make for an ideal game. I may expand upon these later.

Easy to DM, including encounter-building that is quick and intuitive enough to be done on-the-fly fairly easily. 4e does very well here, and 5e's going to need to be just as good or better to sit well with me (which may prove difficult due to possible complexities with modularity).
Class balance should follow 4e's paradigm where all classes are similarly competent across all levels (yes, exceptions exist in 4e but it's done better than any other edition in this regard).
Less feat bloat, and no "obvious" feats that virtually all builds take. A corollary of this is that the underlying math should be ironed out right out of the box, eliminating the need for "feat fixes." Feats like Expertise or Improved Defenses need to go.
Possibly have different categories for feats (combat vs non-combat?) that are gained at different times. Feats like Linguist wouldn't have to compete with combat options this way.
A streamlined skill list (more akin to 4e than 3.5), but do away with 1/2 level scaling and introduce a mechanic with slightly more customizability (but not as fiddly as 3.x's skill ranks). Perhaps training in x number of skills at character creation, and then at set levels (6, 11, 16, 21, and 26? Maybe just 11 and 21?) you can assign a certain # of bonuses (+2?) to some skills. Basically anything that prevents your training from being overshadowed by scaling abilities (or lack thereof) as you level.
More equitable distribution of skills. I get that Rogues and Bards have a skill monkey flavor, but why penalize Fighters so heavily? Also more liberal class skills.
A better magic item system, because this is my biggest problem with 4e. Fewer items gained over a PC's career, less build-defining items, and make items feel more special. When making higher level PCs I dread picking out equipment for them, as this takes just as long as everything else on the character sheet combined.
Martial classes that aren't prohibited from being "4e style." In other words, I want the option at least of playing Fighters that get to do lots of cool things and has the same resource types as casters.
Leaders that heal/buff either as part of their attack, minor actions, etc. Point being, a leader shouldn't spend their standard action just to heal.
Streamlined list of standardized status effects, much like 4e.
At-will powers (or their functional equivalent). No more Wizards needing to carry around crossbows as a backup.
Front-loaded class features. For example, I hated in 3.x when I played a Druid I had to wait until level 5 just to shapeshift, since that's a class-defining feature. I love that the 4e Druid's Wild Shape is not only available out of the box, but at-will.
Self-contained monster stat blocks that are at least as simple as 4e's, if not moreso. This goes along with point #1.
I like the tactical depth of 4e combat, but action-paralysis can admittedly be a problem at higher levels. I think 4e characters having 4 encounter powers, 4 daily powers, and 6 utility powers in addition to item, racial, and theme powers is too much. I think that multiple uses of some powers, ways to modify certain powers (if kept straightforward), and/or "unlocking" uses of powers in combat would work better.
Some sort of momentum-building mechanic that allows for better variation in the length of the adventuring day (this sort of goes along with point #1 as well). Action points are a good start, but they're not quite enough. Unlocking uses of your daily powers as you win encounters or reach milestones would not only allow you to progress through lots of encounters, but it would prevent you from unloading all of your dailies if you know you'll have a single encounter day. Resource management would be key here (i.e. getting to choose which dailies you unlock, and at what times, possibly options for doing so in response to battlefield conditions for a price) to keep things interesting. Though many players would balk at the suggestion, some sort of mana system would work well here.
Surges or a surge-like mechanic. Basically, anything that makes characters less reliant on a dedicated healer, with options like second wind or being able to heal up outside of combat for minimal cost (though obviously less efficiently than a healer could patch you).
Preserve different monster types (minions, elites, solos) and roles.
Possibly less numeric scaling as you level in general. I'd rather have dice be more relevant for damage than static modifiers at high levels, and there's no reason for monster HP to scale so high (obviously PC damage would scale more slowly as well).
Keep F/R/W as defenses to actively target like AC, as opposed to reactive saving throws by the target. Preserves the feel that the attacker is doing something, and for the superstitious among us allows the player to roll his/her own dice to determine an attack's outcome.
Get rid of +x weapons. Obviously inherent bonuses can replace them in 4e, but I'd rather eliminate that source of scaling altogether. They're boring, require you to fill your 3 main slots with up-to-date items (see point #7), and create situations where the DM screws you over by taking your equipment away, either requiring him/her to give it back (or alternative equipment) fairly quickly, or adjust monsters/encounters to compensate.

As you can see based on this list, I largely prefer the direction that 4e has taken the game. Obviously if 5e radically departs from this paradigm (especially if it takes a more "retro" approach) I can always just keep playing 4e. Indeed, I'd probably be more inclined to put a concerted effort into really fixing its flaws and catering more to my preferences if I knew that paid game designers weren't eventually going to do it for me.

PC Profile: Fen Silverfang

2011-12-20T13:49:00.000-08:00

Backstory

Fen Silverfang was a respected berserker warrior of the Moonsilver tribe, an all-Shifter society whose territory included a Fey crossing to Brokenstone Vale. The crossing lies in a wide valley surrounded by tall mountains, one of the only productive winter hunting grounds for the tribe. Lycanthrope raids are common, and despite their ancestry the Moonsilver’s are their bitter enemies. The tribe relies heavily on its warrior caste, which includes the elite berserkers and bear warriors who have learned to channel the Primal Spirits to come to their aid in battle. Most members of the tribe (including Fen) fear the Feywild, and avoid the crossing.

While escorting a party of the tribe’s best hunters over a high mountain pass, Fen and his allies were ambushed by werewolves. The fight was brutal, and several good warriors were slain. Fen was grievously injured, and only survived after being pushed over a small cliff and landing in an icy tarn. He slowly returned back to camp, noticing an unusually large amount of werewolf tracks. When he finally made it back he learned that attacks had grown much more frequent, and that the tribe was planning on abandoning their territory. Within days they had packed up what they could and left the valley.
It didn’t surprise the Moonsilvers to learn that they were feared in most of the civilized lands. They ended up making a temporary camp in the foothills of the Dawnforge Mountains, relying on bundles of Wolfsbane hung outside of their huts and a few silvered weapons for protection against any werewolves that may have tracked them.
After several months of relative safety, the Moonsilvers decided to try and improve their situation. About half of the warriors were left behind to guard the camp, and emissaries escorted by warriors were sent out to look for anyone friendly toward Shifters. They weren’t openly shunned in Fallcrest or Nenlast, and so several members of the tribe settled in these towns temporarily. A friendly Shifter tribe that patrolled the coast of Lake Nen proved worthy allies, and they also had dealings with an Elven village on the outskirts of the Harken Forest.
Some of the warriors, including Fen, were sent out to seek the wealth necessary to amass more silvered weapons. The plan was eventually to increase their numbers and equip themselves better so that they could re-take their former territory. Each warrior went about this task in a different way, but Fen’s decision was to join up with the Red Frog’s mercenary guild...

Description

Though his disposition is generallyamicable, people are often uneasy around Fen Silverfang. Hislycanthropic bloodline shows with a thin, silky coat of darksalt-and-pepper hair, thickening to wolf-like fur on his shouldersand jaw (though this “beard” is nearly all black). His lips arethin and jet black, with a slight sag where his upper caninesprotrude slightly from his jaw. Most wolf-like, perhaps, are hislong feet which are unshod and bear large claws halfway between awolf's and a bear's. An efficient gait places his heel on the groundonly when walking at very slow speeds. When you first meet Fen, hisamber eyes often give the uncomfortable impression that he's sizingyou up (and he is). If you shake his large, thickly padded hand(criss-crossed with scars) you're surprised by a light grip thatbrings to mind the gentleness of an alligator carrying her young inher mouth. Looking back up to his eyes you notice the sombre longingof a warrior who grew up too fast and simply wants to settle down inpeace. But that's not to diminish his skills as a fighter. He'sabout the size of an average human, but far stronger than mostwarriors of that race (and far less visibly muscle-bound). Histechnique confirms that he's been fighting all his life, though bychanneling the Primal Spirits in battle he can go from precise,opportunistic strikes and parries to a full-on, trance-like statewherein his brute force is fully realized. His worn hide armor andthick, wooden shield suggest a primitive upbringing far fromcivilization, and yet his gleaming sword resembles the finestburnished silver and appears to be a curiosity (until you learn thatwhat he grew up fighting were lycanthropes).

Character Sheet
Longtooth Shifter, Temperate Lands Berserker

Trained Skills: Athletics, Endurance, Perception
Languages: Common, Elven

Feats: Weapon Prof (Bastard Sword), Shield Prof (Heavy), Master at Arms, Berserk Vitality

Powers:
A-W: Run Down, Stalk and Strike
E: Batter Down, Implacable Advance, Curtain of Steel
D: Sweeping Cut, Rage of the Crimson Hurricane
U: Feral Rejuvenation, Cull Weakness

Equipment: Vanguard Bastard Sword +2 (silvered), Magic Handaxe +1, Magic Hide +2, Vanguard Shield, Acrobat Boots, Lesser Badge of the Berserker +2, Belt of Vigor, Wolfsbane (4 bundles), Potion of Healing (2), Grey Rain Cloak, Standard Adv. Kit (with extra rope).

PC Profile: Keyleth Arwyl

2011-12-20T13:42:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd create a post for each of my PCs that I could link to from the "Cast of Characters" section of my session reviews. For now I'll focus on my new adventurers, who get to see their first real play in the next adventure (which we should start up in the next week or so).

Backstory
Note that I used the "Build Your Story" option from Heroes of the Feywild to jump start this (indeed, this was the character that I made when I first tried that chapter out!). The link to that post is here. Below is a somewhat abbreviated (and yet, expanded) version.

Keyleth was orphaned at a young age, and grew up in the city of Shinaelestra in the Feywild where her foster parents moved after fleeing the Gnoll force that destroyed their village. They made a meager living as farmhands at one of the local vineyards, and when Keyleth was old enough she was hired by an apothecary to collect rare herbs (in the Feywild, and in the Mortal Realm after Shinaelestra's nightly worldfall).
After learning that her parents were actually respected members of the Druidic Circle of Shelter and had left her in order to pursue a dangerous mission in search of a necromancer (Decius Derakh), she departed on a quest to learn what may have become of them. She suffered a mishap in the goblin-controlled Murkroot swamp, and was sold into Fomorian slavery for a time before escaping into Brokenstone Vale, the Valley of the Lycanthropes. There she befriended a werebear tribal elder, who advised her to seek out the Citadel Arcanum in Mithrendain. She was captured by the guards, but not before discovering records showing that Decius had attempted to get through the Maze of Fathaghn to steal a branch from the Mother Tree for some dark ritual. He was no match for the Dryad Queen that resided there, but perhaps she could be of help to Keyleth in locating him now.
On her way to the Maze the Primal Spirits began whispering to her, starting her on the Druidic path. The Dryad Queen was sympathetic, pointing her to where she had banished Decius into the Mortal World (and giving her a magical fire box that showed his face in its smoke). She advised Keyleth to seek out members of her parents' Circle.
Despite the Dryad Queen's warning, upon entering the Mortal Realm Keyleth became singularly obsessed with hunting down Decius. Though she slowly developed a mastery of Primal magics, they began to manifest her wild recklessness. After developing an unpleasant reputation, an elderly member of the Circle of Shelter (Bryce Calanor) sought her out and presented her with a task; he would train her in the ways of the Beastwalker Circle, and then she was to go on a personal quest. She was to remain in beast form with no outside contact “until her reflection acknowledged her.” This was the path to Wisdom.
Unable to make sense of her end goal, she alternated between many different animal forms for nearly a year. Most other creatures were wary around her, and avoided her despite her guise. Then one evening, while foraging through the forest in the form of a black bear, Keyleth heard the mournful howl of a wolf. For no reason that she could explain, with a swift leap she took wolf form and bounded toward the sound. She encountered a litter of yearling pups that had struck out on their own, and they greeted her enthusiastically. She traveled with them for several days, hunting and lounging and frolicking. She let her concerns about Decius and her quest melt away. Then, one of the young wolves approached her, sat down, and turned into Bryce! By opening her mind to the influence of the Primal Beast she had learned to view the world from a new perspective, and to shed away her dangerous single-mindedness.
Though he had no information about Decius or Keyleth's parents, Bryce advised Keyleth to live her life and to see the world, seeking out a variety of experiences and perspectives. The Dryad Queen's fire box would alert her when an opportunity to seek Decius arose. In the meantime, he pointed her to a treasure-seeking mercenary group that he had helped co-found years ago, the Red Frogs...

Description

In her elven form Keyleth's moss greeneyes slowly scan the room, with a focused patience behind them. Withjust a momentary wolf-like glance, you can sense her connection withthe Primal Beast. Her dark brown hair (which shows flecks ofautumn-gold in the sunlight) is long but tame; a braid on each sidecorrals it in place down her back as they weave through to beautifulbut practical effect. An elven technique, to be sure. Everymovement of her lithe-but-field-tested limbs portrays a calculatedgrace, as if she is at home in any environment, which the slightsemi-permanent curve of her mouth confirms, conveying a relaxedjoviality. And yet her gear reveals that she's not to beunderestimated. Worn over her finely-spun woolen tunic are plates ofreinforced animal hide – the thick but supple tanned armor ofwoodland bison which bears the evidence of averted injury. Aroundher left forearm is tied a short length of wood adorned with variousprotective wards, including carved runes and talismans of bone andgemstone. In her right hand she carries a full-length staff carvedwith the shapes of sinuous vipers and wrapped in a snakeskin grip. Light, thinly padded moccasins and the sure footing of a mountaingoat allow her to travel with speed across any terrain. Her favored beast forms are the black bear, wolf, and dog (wolfhound mix, mostly for civilized areas), though her forms vary based on her mood.

Character Sheet

Elf, Circle of Shelter Protector

Trained Skills: Athletics, Insight, Nature, Stealth

Languages: Common, Elven, Goblin

Primal Attunements: Air Spirit, Senses of the Wild, Call the Spirits

Feats: Superior Implement Training (Accurate Staff), Beastwalker Circle, Staff Expertise, Cunning Stalker

Powers:

A-W: Grasping Claws, Magic Stones

E: Gust of Wind, Predator's Flurry, Charm Beast

D: Summon Natural Ally, Vine Serpents

U: Sudden Bite, Camouflage Cloak

Equipment: Staff of the Serpent +2, Aversion Staff +1 (reflavored), Pouncing Beast Armor +2, Claw Gloves, Lesser Badge of the Berserker +1, Siberys Shard of the Mage, Hamanu's Terrible Roar (boon), standard adventurer's kit (with extra rope), Dryad Queen's fire box (story item)

Civilization Board Game

2011-12-20T13:19:00.000-08:00

This past week we took a short break from D&D to play the Civilization board game, which one of our players picked up. Such breaks can keep a campaign from becoming monotonous, in addition to providing a much different experience for "game night." I'm not going to go into a full review (because quite honestly, I don't know the game well enough to do so), but I will offer some first impressions.

It was obvious from the second I walked into the room that this was going to be a complicated game with a lot of depth. The "board" was actually made up of 16 (if I remember correctly) smaller pieces, and there were several different types of cards, many different tokens, and a player card for everyone that had multiple dials in addition to the traits of your civilization. As we finished setting everything up, I started to get a vague sense of how the game played (though it wasn't until we were a few turns in that I really got the hang of it). All told, the game has a lot of depth. In addition to the general complexity, there are several different "tracks" that you can build up to win the game (military, technology, economic, and culture).

In brief, each player (2-4) gets to choose one of 6 different civilizations (America, Germany, Russia, China, Rome, and Egypt). The "homeland" tiles are placed in each corner, with the rest of the board tiles placed face down (these lands haven't been discovered yet). Everyone starts out with a capital city which you can place wherever (though there is a recommended location on your tile), as well as 2 armies and a scout/settlement party. Each tile is broken up into a grid, and each grid square has a terrain (mountains, forest, grassland, desert, and water), as well as different trade values, production values, and resources (iron, wheat, etc). The turn is broken up into phases, and you go around to each player during each phase. Start of turn phase you can activate certain cards, change your government, and you build cities (a lot of the time nobody does anything in this phase). Trade phase is when you collect your trade points (move your trade dial up by however many points are adjacent to your cities/settlements) and you can trade resources with other players. This is rather open-ended. City Management Phase is a big deal, since this is when you can actually build your civilization up. Each city you have gets one action, and you can use these actions to build in a square adjacent to your city center (for example, put up a library). The different buildings have different resources, production, and trade values that you can take advantage of. You can also build up your military (through artillery, mounted, and infantry cards, and eventually airplanes), or build another army or scouting party. Construction buildings or adding units/building your military all key off of the production value around your cities (you can spend trade value to increase production as well). Another action is to harvest a resource (for example, mine iron). Finally, you can use this turn to devote your city to the arts, which moves you up on the cultural track and gives you access to different sets of cards with some nifty abilities. After that there's the movement phase, where you move your armies and scouting/settlement parties. You can use a square of movement to flip over a tile "discovering" new land. New areas will contain huts and villages (huts you can take over without a fight and gain resources from, villages you need to fight to obtain). When you move your scout/settlement party you can use them to obtain resources, or if they're placed favorably you can build a new city (which "absorbs" that unit) during the next start of turn phase. The last phase is the research phase, where you can spend your trade value (if you have enough) to research new technologies. Technology is leveled 1-5, and you need at least 2 of a lower level tech in order to research 1 higher level tech (in addition to higher trade cost).

So far the game is a lot of fun, but we didn't finish it despite playing for around 3 hours. We're planning on picking it up this week, though, and perhaps getting a little D&D in if it doesn't take too long. The civilizations in play are China (me), America, Germany, and Russia, and all of them have different strengths (which seem to favor at least 2 different victory tracks). Interestingly, we're all going for different tracks, perhaps to subconsciously avoid direct competition. I'm going for Cultural, Russia is going for Tech, America is working on Military, and Germany is focusing on Economic. Of course you can't just focus on one single thing, and our game was somewhat complicated by "alliances" that were drawn early (China and Russia vs America and Germany). Interestingly, my Cultural track gave me access to a lot of cards that allowed me and Russia to trade our Tech knowledge, giving me increased ability (some of the techs directly impact Culture) and moving him along the Tech track faster. America and Germany have emphasized military a lot more, as has Russia to a lesser extent, but I personally have only expanded my military by 1 card, and haven't attacked any villages. Risk, this is not :P

Heroic Tier Sweet Spot

2011-12-13T09:15:00.000-08:00

For this post I'll simply link to an article from Dungeon's Master, The Golden Level of Heroic Adventure. Though I would disagree that level 12 is a sweet spot (there's a greater power jump at 11, which is when you finally get to experience Paragon tier), I think that the author is otherwise right on the money. I'd add that the sweet spot starts at level 5 when you get your second daily, peaks at level 6 (which as the article mentions is an important feat level and you get a utility power, which is one of the most customizable elements in the game), and continues into level 7 (having three encounter powers increases your offensive capacity, particularly nova or alpha-strike in many cases, and boosts your overall versatility for many classes). Level 8 gives those PCs who started with even abilities (which is probably most of them) their first numerical boost, and the feat is certainly nice, but this is where you start inching toward Paragon tier and the challenges become much more difficult before you're fully equipped to deal with them. Status effects begin to creep up more often, and many fights pit you against Paragon level monsters (level + 3).

I think the most important issue that the author touched upon, however, is that as a DM you should use these sweet spots as benchmarks for your campaign's pacing. Something should culminate within the level 5-7 range, and after that a more difficult challenge should rear its ugly head. I've found late Heroic (levels 8-10, but especially 10) to be almost as challenging as early Heroic precisely because of the Paragon level threats that the Heroic PCs will face regularly. Using the same encounter design principles that you've been using (perhaps throwing a little more at the PCs since they're gaining power) will result in the PCs feeling slightly overwhelmed without much effort by you as a DM. Make sure that the plot matches this increase in difficulty, and then have the PCs finally reach a major turning point at level 10 or 11. At level 10 the PCs will be struggling by the skin of their teeth to defeat the final "boss" encounter. At level 11 you have a couple of choices as the DM; either use the power boost as a narrative element corresponding to a major advantage that makes the boss fight easier (showcasing the new power of the PCs), or take advantage of the PC's newly-acquired power to go all out with the boss fight (something that the PCs would be unlikely to have survived in Heroic tier). Either way, it pays to be aware of these sweet spots as you try to set your campaign's pacing.

Recovery: Viral's Diary (Session 3)

2011-12-08T20:33:00.001-08:00

Cast of Characters (Level 6)

Lyra Cinderfield - Human Staff of Defense Wizard
Berylis Lindelenon - Elf Panther Shaman
Unit 27 - Warforged Weapon Talent Fighter
Rozzle - Elf Brutal Scoundrel Rogue
Zeus - Dwarf Wrathful Invoker

Approach to the Tomb

The PCs began this session continuing their journey down the river, eventually coming to a small clearing that led into a very old and overgrown cemetery. As Nero had warned them, the party circles around the cemetery to find Midos' grave near the back. Rozzle and Berylis scout ahead to keep an eye out for danger. It's too bad they didn't have tremorsense; as they follow Nero's tracks skeletal hands burst out of the ground and knock Rozzle prone, as well as grabbing him. The party is soon beset by several more skeletons, two of which can hurl fire from range. Given the undead theme of this adventure, we'd really missed Zeus last session. Unfortunately, his dice were extremely cold tonight (actually, he was borrowing mine, and that's usually one of my hottest D20s), and he missed with his first 4 attacks. Disappointing to be sure. Ultimately we were able to protect Rozzle (who had only 2 surges remaining) really well, but at a huge cost to both Berylis and Zeus (Zeus used 4 surges in that combat, and Berylis ended up down to only 2 as well).

I continue to be impressed by the Shaman class (in the Heroic tier at least, Spirit Hunt and Twin Panthers end up being equivalent to optimized striker powers). I'm finally starting to get used to the "splash heal" style of Healing Spirit, which was really useful for healing up what little damage Rozzle took without dipping into his two remaining surges. Despite the fact that I don't normally like strikers, it's nice to have hefty damage in your back pocket, in addition to all of the fun positioning and control tactics that the spirit companion entails. My trend of "not feeling" the Wizard recently continued tonight (at least in combat; she proved invaluable OoC later). Missing with Charm of Misplaced Wrath sucks quite a bit, and it seems to happen quite a bit. My multi-target control power (Icy Rays) has been serviceable, but unless I blow a daily it's usually the most interesting thing I have to do. At-wills have tended to be underwhelming; I don't think I've used Beguiling Strands this whole level, and the best thing about Winged Horde has been its minion-sweeping utility (the Rogue is mobile enough to avoid OAs on his own most of the time). I'll be glad to get back to playing a Druid again, though I'm sure I'll pick Lyra back up at some time during this campaign.

Into the Tomb

The PCs find the gravestone they're looking for, and Unit 27 unceremoniously picks it up and tosses it aside to expose the tunnel. Berylis and Zeus notice that the tunnel was only dug within the last year or so. It opens into a hole in the floor, which leads into the tomb's interior. Lyra sends Helo, her Dragonling familiar, down to scout it out and make sure the room is safe (which it is). It's a large room with an altar at the center. The altar has a round well and a square well on it, with a round and square lantern on a nearby table. A glass sphere (actually, it's more oblong) hangs from the ceiling above the altar. Two pillars flank a sealed black door (which presumably is the front entrance that we were warned by Nero to avoid). The pillars do not reach the ceiling, and dials on them cause gas to emanate from the tops. Opposite the black door is a purple door with a symbol of the sun above it. On the remaining walls are a door each; one red, and one blue. After playing around with a pebble that had Light cast on it (carried around the sphere via Mage Hand) it became obvious that a light placed on the line between the glass sphere and either pillar caused a beam to focus on the sun symbol above the purple door. Since the PCs were warned to beware the blue door, they started with the red one. Behind it was a large room with a red flame burning on the opposite side. Being paranoid, Lyra simply used Mage Hand to carry the lantern across the room and sweep it into the flame. The lantern lit, and she placed it onto the pillar with the dial turned (focusing a red beam of light above the purple door). It turns out that by using Mage Hand and not entering the room, the party was able to avoid a combat encounter altogether. Sweet!

The blue door revealed a long (25 square) hallway, which was only 3 squares wide. The floor was made of extremely slippery tile, with a pattern of blue tiles winding back and forth across a matrix of red tiles. Lyra had her dragonling step on one of the red tiles, which triggered a dart trap (which missed the familiar, not that it would have mattered). Crossing the hall without triggering red tiles looked to be extremely difficult, as evidenced by the body lying near the opposite end (at which a blue flame burned). Though this flame was out of range for Mage Hand, Lyra simply cast the Familiar Mount ritual and flew across the hall on Helo (recovering the body, which turned out to be Nero). The heroes lit the blue flame which unlocked the purple door, and placed Nero's body in their bag of holding. Once they were finished here, they would give him a proper burial, including fare for the boatman.

Viral's Chamber

The purple door revealed a simple room with a long, stone bridge across a subterranean creek. The bridge led to another door, which Lyra opened via Mage Hand and sent her (now large) Dragonling to scout out. Helo poked his head it to find 3 women sitting on a large bed, and a man that looked to be in his 30s reading a book at a desk. The man looked shocked to see Helo, who retreated. Lyra used Ghost Sound to imitate the sound of a large army crossing the bridge toward the room (succeeding her Bluff check to fool the occupants), and the party entered. The man seemed excited to see the PCs, exclaiming that it's not often that he receives visitors. When questioned about his diary, he explains that Emaf (the PC's current employer), Gibs (the adventurer-turned-zombie, Athos (the farmer whose daughter the party rescued earlier), and himself were once an adventuring party themselves. They discovered this very tomb, and within it woke the relic of a mysterious deity. They were each granted 1 wish. Emaf wished for fame and glory, which he was granted via knowledge of many ruins which he plundered for their artifacts. The deity, it turned out, was not benevolent, and turned each wish against its recipient. Emaf eventually looted all the ruins that he could find, and sought to once again find the tomb where they now stood. He had lost knowledge of it, however, and it had driven an insane obsession (which eventually led to his hiring of the party). Gibs just wanted to retire, settle down, and live a quiet life. He was given a nice house in Deadwood Falls, but he never specified that where he settled down would need to remain forever safe (obviously he paid his price for that). Athos wished for good health and longevity for his family. While his daughter reaped this award, he himself was killed.

When the party asked Viral what his wish was, he kept trying to evade the topic. They worked out that he was trapped down here (had a lot of time to read), and he let slip an implication that perhaps he sought immortality. The party asked why he couldn't just walk out, and whether the women were free to do so. When he finally admitted that it was the creek that kept him in his chamber, the PCs knew that they were dealing with a vampire. They suspected that he was feeding on the women, and so they kept questioning him without letting him know that they were on to him. He kept pressing them to stay, but they wanted time to regroup and think things over. They tried to let 27 (who has no blood for a vampire to feed off of) stall him with conversation while they went back into the hall to talk things over in private, but the door slammed shut. Two invisible creatures (Pale Reavers) materialized near it, and the party immediately rolled initiative.

The fight turned out to be fairly difficult, and quite appropriate for a final battle. After 1 initial attack the party focused their status effects on Viral (the most effective which was Zeus' Silent Malediction). The women turned out to be minion Pale Reavers who could take human form, and halfway through the battle more Pale Reaver reinforcements showed up. Berylis, Rozzle, and Zeus all had a fairly typical encounter, with all of them performing their roles admirably. Unit 27 and Lyra had a quirky fight. First of all, it should be mentioned that the Pale Reavers could drain healing surges, which was extremely dangerous for Rozzle and Berylis, who each had only 2 left. I was extremely surprised to learn halfway through the battle that Unit 27, in contrast, had TWELVE surges yet! It hadn't occurred to me before this, but he really wasn't suffering very many hits at all before this, and this encounter was no different. This was partially because he was being missed (there were many rounds where he dutifully protected Rozzle), but a lot of the time he was off on his own going toe-to-toe with a single enemy. I think that the player controlling him was more focused on running Rozzle overall, and he often just got somewhat forgotten. He was usually locking down minor enemies instead of the biggest, baddest target that a defender should be going after.

After suffering a nasty blow, Lyra took her second wind early on (round 2 I believe) and then activated Fire Shield. Her plan was to move away from the Pale Reaver that was causing her trouble, and park herself adjacent to one of the minions who happened to be backed into a corner. She was going to provoke an OA to deal Fire Shield damage to it, and after all why not? The Reaver was marked, she had her defense bonus from Second Wind, and she hadn't used Shield yet. Her effective AC was 29 (at level 6), without accounting for the Mark (so it was actually 31). Simply put, the Reaver could only hit her with a natural 20, and if it took a swing it would be sucking fire damage. Well, it took the swing and it made that crit, leaving Lyra with a scant 10 HP. Fortunately, the cornered minion tried attacking her, killing itself with Fire Shield damage (I think the DM felt sorry for Lyra's luck, lol). But the shenanigans didn't stop there. It was during this round that the Dark Reaver reinforcements arrived, and two set themselves up in a flank with Lyra. I dared the DM to set them up that way, knowing that I still had my second wind bonus (and Shield was unused). Before CA they could only hit me on a natural 20, and including CA into the equation doubled their odds (19-20 would be a hit). The DM rolled ANOTHER FRICKIN' TWENTY!!!!! Poor Lyra took 30 damage, while she only had 10 HP remaining. This was two away from her negative bloodied value of 22. Talk about a close call! Sucks that my "fire tank" strategy backfired so badly, but who expects 2 crits in a row after becoming nearly untouchable thanks to second wind + shield?

In any case, the party was mopping up by the time Lyra got an opportunity to act again. It was pretty late by this point, and we all decided to call it a night immediately after the fight without RPing the conclusion. We'll probably take care of that next session. Overall, it seemed like we were all running a little slow, and there were a lot of distractions (the cats and dog were being quite rambunctious). It was a fitting end to the adventure though; an unexpected plot twist (we figured Viral was dead, not undead) followed by a suitably challenging final encounter. I'll certainly remember Lyra's terrible luck for a good, long while after this.

First Look: Heroes of the Elemental Chaos Art

2011-12-06T19:42:00.001-08:00

I recently discovered Tyler Jacobsen's blog, which showcases some of the art that he does (including some published D&D pieces). He recently posted a first look at some of the new characters that will be in HotEC. The new subclasses presented in this book will be the Elementalist (rumored to be a Sorcerer build), the Shugenja (rumors point to Monk), and the Sha'ir (a confirmed Wizard build). Actually, truth be told the Sorcerer and Monk rumors may have been confirmed at some point (I vaguely remember reading that), but I can't be sure so I'm going to play it safe. Anyways, the current speculation is that Anise is the Sha'ir, Galafaer is the Shugenja, and Scar is the Elementalist. Now, the current builds for all of these classes should (interestingly enough) all be wearing cloth armor. So if Scar's appearance seems problematic for a Sorcerer, the same would be true for a Monk or Wizard as well.

It is, of course, possible that he's supposed to be a different class with an elemental flair (and that a named Elementalist character is not included in the book's art); after all, HotF featured Rowena (a Warlock/Hexblade) and Viltham (a Wizard, likely Illusionist) in addition to examples of the 4 subclasses featured in the book. It's also possible that this plate doesn't include all of the named characters from the HotEC art. But what if Scar is the Elementalist? There's already a precedent for Sorcerers fighting with weapons (namely daggers) in melee; what if HotEC simply stepped it up a notch? After all, the Cleric (and Bard, and Warlock) supports both a ranged-caster archetype as well as an armored weapon-user, so what's preventing the Sorcerer from doing the same? Sorcerers have a history of being a bit more physical (if only marginally so) than Wizards, and this would be a nice way to further differentiate the two classes. A differentiation that is sorely needed in my opinion, since well-built blaster Wizards can already beat the Sorcerer at his own game. One of the more radical possibilities is a dual source Martial/Arcane Sorcerer.

A while ago there were rumors (though I can't recall how reliable they were) of a simplified Essentials-style caster. A boomstick Sorcerer, if you will, that functioned very much like the basic attack spamming builds (Slayer, Thief, etc). Or maybe people just wanted such a build (why should spellcasters always be more complicated?). This being the case, it's possible that the designers went the lazy route and made a MBA-spamming Sorcerer build, either like a Skald or a Slayer with an Arcane flavor. I actually hope this isn't the case, because it strikes me as disingenuous. A ranged basic attack spammer would have been interesting. Sure, the concept has been touched upon with the Hunter and Seeker, but those guys aren't lobbing fireballs around. A simplified design for a caster that just wants to make things go "boom!" is fitting. Forcing the Sorcerer into the MBA (but with magic) spamming mold is much less so. Since the "blow stuff up" ranged guy is out based on that picture, and I don't like the lazy MBA spamming possibility, I'm hoping that something much more innovative was done with the Elementalist. Something similar to the Berserker's dual role, perhaps? A unique take on a gish? Maybe a character that plays as a defender until some trigger causes an uncontrolled burst of elemental energy to surge through his veins, turning him into a controller or a striker? Pure speculation, of course, but that picture of Scar just begs for it!

On a related note, he also published plates of the HotF characters: Keldar, Andronus and Rowena, and Viltham, Lyrindel, and Nistyncia. I'll just say that I love this picture of Lyrindel, and I'm at a loss as to why this wasn't included in the book. All of the other pictures of her look a bit "cartoon-y," and some seem almost like caricatures compared with the art of the other characters. I never got the sense for what a Hamadryad would really look like from the book's art, but this picture hits it perfectly. She looks like a more alien version of a Elf, with the dark blotches giving her an almost reptilian flair. Perhaps not the paragon of beauty that her Nymph aspect is supposed to evoke (nor does it have any plant-like characteristics reminiscent of the Dryad aspect), but I like it nevertheless. I imagine this being her "default" form, with her racial power offering a peek into either her Autumn Nymph heritage or Dryad future (think Galadriel when Frodo offers her the Ring in Lothlorien). A transformation that lasts only for a split second, but forever affects all who behold it.

Random Playtesting Thoughts

2011-11-30T21:08:00.001-08:00

I've run a couple more playtests using the same party as my last one. Quick recap of the party:

Keyleth: Elf Protector Druid (Predator)
Fen: LT Shifter Berserker (Temperate)
Albanon: Eladrin Warlock|Swordmage (S-K|Assault)
Bharash: Dragonborn Warlord (Bravura)

One playtest was against a bunch of random Orcs, the other was against leveled Dragonborn (including a custom elite, the Legion Champion). Both were level +3, with the party at level 6.

Calling the Fight
My second playtest showed very well why this is important. The party had swiftly dispatched 2 level 7 Dragonborn Mercenaries (Skirmishers), and shortly after that the Dragonborn Soldier (level 8). All that remained was the Legion Champion (level 8 Elite), who was still unscathed. Bharash went down, and shortly after that the party bloodied their foe. Bharash eventually failed all 3 death saves, and Keyleth failed 2 heal checks to revive him (given that it's a DC 10 and she has a +7 modifier, this was unexpected. She rolled a "2" twice). So there was a man down (the leader, no less) and the remaining enemy was now in pretty bad shape. Still, I pressed on. Fen had started mop-up with almost full health and all of his THP from Berserk Vitality. Well, a few double attacks later and he was badly bloodied, and a round after that he was well below his negative bloodied value. In hindsight he should have fallen back and let Albanon (who wasn't hit the entire encounter) tank. He and Keyleth could have dispatched the Champion pretty quickly (Keyleth had only been hit once during the encounter, though she had also lost a surge when her Giant Toad was destroyed).

Now let's think about this scenario. The Legion Champion is an intelligent enemy who presumably has a sense of self-preservation. The party has seen how hard his double attacks hit. By mop-up the Champion knows he cannot possibly win, even if he can take out a PC or two as his final act. Still, he'd probably much rather live to see another day. With Bharash down, the best option for the party would be to let the Champion escape and tend to their comrade's wounds. Heck, even if the DM asks for a surge expenditure to "call the fight," it's better in the long run than possibly dying. Combat is dangerous. The party started this encounter with guns blazing, and had it well under control until the string of bad luck in the mop-up phase.

Bharash the Bravura Warlord
Ok, so this build has been around for a good long while, but it's new to me so I'll say a few quick things. First of all, Bravura Presence has got to be the best option for Warlords by far. If an ally is going to spend an AP, that usually means it's a nova round. What better than to get an extra attack? Though it didn't quite work out this way, Albanon could have conceivably used Fey Step (+Eladrin Swordmage Advance), Standard, AP, and the free attack to use Eldritch Strike 4 times in a single turn. As it turned out, he killed the only foe in range with his standard, so his AP was used later for a 3 attack turn. Fen opened the encounter with Batter Down, AP Run Down, free MBA, hitting with all 3.

The problem I've been having with this guy is that his immediate actions tend to be difficult to use. He has two (Vengeance is Mine and Inspiring Reaction). The vast majority of the time when I'd really like to use one of these I can't because it's either my turn (provoking OAs or granting attacks with Brash Assault) or an attack just knocked me unconscious. In this most recent encounter I did use Vengeance is Mine, but both attacks missed. Later that round I wanted to use Inspiring Reaction, but since I'd already used my IA I couldn't. Bummer.

Fen the Berserker
Alright, moving on to some Heroes of the Feywild stuff. Before this encounter with the dragonborn I'd been using Fury too late in the battle, resulting in the THP from Berserk Vitality never being used. This time I used Fury earlier (plus the encounter lasted longer than most), and the THP not only got chewed through, but Fen got knocked past negative bloodied. Go figure. Now that I've seen him in a Fury for more than a couple of rounds, however, I'm getting the sense that Berserkers might be slightly better in defender mode. They still deal top-notch damage for a defender, have a VERY painful punishment, and are simply more durable thanks to the AC boost. If enemies trigger your punishment you'll end up doing more damage than you would in a Fury anyways. This will likely change at level 7, however, when I inevitably pick up Curtain of Steel, and the scales will tip even further at level 13 when Storm of Blades becomes available.

Keyleth the Druid
In the encounter vs the Orcs Nature's Growth proved very useful. I'd been counting on slowing an orc that was charging past me with Grasping Claws, but the attack missed. Once the orc continued his movement, however, I realized that he was 1 square short of reaching his target because he had to move through 2 squares of Nature's Growth! The room happened to be cramped (I was using the cave map from MV2), and in these circumstances it seems like Nature's Growth really shines. It was also useful in the encounter vs the Dragonborn, as I placed my Toad and the zone in front of a Merc and the Legion Champion in round 1, leaving those monsters unable to reach Keyleth or Albanon without charging (the Merc instead went for Bharash, and the Champion attacked the Toad).

Even without an Alfsair Spear for prone shenanigans, Magic Stones proved to be a very good power. The push was moderately useful against one target in the Orc fight, but the real kicker was that I got to attack 3 creatures, critting with the 3rd attack. For my first level encounter power I went with Gust of Wind, which actually simulates what I would be doing with Magic Stones had I gone the polearm route. Assuming you have Grasping Claws, this is probably the best power for action denial at this level. Position yourself 1 square away from whoever you prone, and when they charge past you to get at your allies you can slow them (stopping their movement, since they've moved 2 squares once they provoked) if you hit with your OA. Since the push is an effect you may even get some action denial out of it if you miss. In the Dragonborn encounter I missed with it, and followed the push up with a Camouflage Cloak. The other obvious use would be to push enemies into a pit or off a cliff, if one is available. The last power I'd like to discuss is Wind Wall. You'll only get the full effect situationally (if there's ranged enemies that target AC or Reflex present), but fortunately it's still a solid blaster power (I've been reliably hitting 2-3 targets with it), and in the dragonborn encounter the slide was useful in bringing an enemy within 3 squares of my Toad, which otherwise would not have gotten an Instinctive Action that turn. I still miss Predator's Flurry (which is better for action denial), but Wind Wall definitely gives it some competition.

Sandbox Resources

2011-11-29T17:55:00.001-08:00

As I mentioned in the commentary of my last Red Frogs session summary, when designing an adventure or campaign it's really common for many DMs to adopt a railroad style. In my experience, the problem stems from the fact that when planning, you get this idea for a "story" in your head and it becomes so entrenched that you expect it to be followed during play. After all, a D&D adventure is really just a story with the PCs as the heroes, right? Many DMs begin playing the game as players, and have participated in many a memorable narrative with their PC as one of the stars. But DMing is more than just creating a story to be populated by the PCs. D&D is, more specifically, cooperative storytelling. Everyone at the table plays a part in telling it, even if the DM usually does the most work.

Most people who GM RPGs are aware of the distinction between a railroaded adventure and a sandbox. In the first type of game the story is on rails, and the PCs can't really get off the track. The DM creates a linear set of events or encounters, with each one leading to the next in the series. Most new DMs panic when the PCs try to diverge from the rails, and do everything in their power to steer them back. It almost always feels forced, leaving the PCs at a loss for a sense of freedom (which, after all, is one of the biggest strengths of tabletop RPGs vs video games). In the second type of game, the DM supplies the world which the PCs are free to explore and influence as they desire (much like a child playing in a sandbox, building sandcastles, etc. wherever they desire). There's often not an obvious "hook," and the PCs won't have an employer that meets them in a tavern to tell them exactly what they need to go and do to obtain the treasure. It feels very much like a living, breathing world.

The problem is that railroad adventures are much easier to design because you know exactly what you'll have to plan for. While DMing a sandbox, you need to be prepared for almost anything, and you need to be at least reasonably comfortable improvising. What sometimes gets overlooked, however, is that these two styles are not always dichotomous, and most campaigns exist somewhere between the two on a spectrum. Indeed, this is probably for the best. Not all players have the creativity or motivation to move forward in a sandbox campaign, and even those who can won't necessarily be doing it all the time. Sometimes glimpses of a track are necessary to show players the way, or to get the creative juices flowing. Likewise even the most apathetic of players will sometimes do something unexpected that causes the party to veer off the rails, and it usually works out for the better if the DM just goes with it (in an interesting and engaging manner), before eventually steering everyone back to the railroad.

A good DM will be able to fine tune their campaign depending on their group, or even on how their players are feeling on a given day. In other words, they need to be able to move across the spectrum in either direction without too much effort. Because I personally have more trouble designing sandbox style campaigns, and because my group tends strongly toward railroading when they DM, I'm linking some helpful resources that I found pretty much by chance today.

The West Marches describes a specific campaign that lies very far toward the sandbox end of the spectrum. The DM is explicitly neutral and has no ulterior narrative motive. He just provides an interesting and detailed world which the players (which are many) are free to explore. This type of campaign honestly sounds like a whole lot of fun. The obvious downside is that there's no narrative structure, but that's by design. It's just a different type of game, really.
The Slaughterhouse system uses a lot of sleek 4e design elements to organize sandbox campaigns. The world is divided into zones (the author gets bonus points for using Metroid as an example) and zones are populated by factions (the exact meaning of which is left intentionally vague). Each zone gets its own stat block, and are event assigned one of 4 roles (Lair, Outpost, Contested Territory, Uncontested Territory). The stat blocks state who (which faction) occupies or uses a zone, how they use it and how they behave when confronted, their numbers, how the zone can be re-populated, and how its role can change. Since the PCs will be directly affecting these things, each zone actually has multiple stat blocks describing possible outcomes (and since outcomes are very general and relates to the zone's role, this is far less intimidating than it sounds). While I might not use this system exactly as presented, I'm definitely planning on heavily borrowing its elements as a way of providing tangible structure for a sandbox-style adventure. It seems to me that just by actively using it the system encourages sandbox thinking over railroading, and therein may lie its biggest value.

Surprise, Surprise, More HotF Stuff!

2011-11-28T07:37:00.001-08:00

An article about Heroes of the Feywild just went up today on the WotC website, and I figured I'd share it here. Most of the discussion on the WotC forums has been regarding mechanical optimization, and I like that these articles take a step back and view the book from a different angle. Seeing as I've had the book for several weeks now I've already soaked in much of the information, but this article provides some interesting tidbits that I overlooked as well as the author's reactions to some of the material.

First of all, tying together the references to fey bargains and souls was a nice touch. There was a lot of backlash over why the Witch wasn't a Warlock build since the two are both arcane spellcasters who make pacts with otherworldly entities (and there is even a controller subclass of the Warlock, even if it is terrible). I was admittedly among those who thought making the Witch a Wizard build was stupid. But the thing is, difference between the two classes isn't who their patrons are or even the nature of the pact, but rather how that pact is made. It's a subtle distinction, but I think it's important. The Warlock deals directly with his patron, whether that's by physically meeting with them or through some other means. It's straightforward, even if the Warlock doesn't necessarily know all of the terms of the agreement. The Witch, on the other hand, is chosen by their patron and visited by the familiar, which is the patron's emissary.

There is an air of secrecy in everything about the Witch - the Witch's power is gained by the familiar speaking arcane secrets (as opposed to the Warlock, who just gets his power). This is why it makes sense that the Witch uses Int, since it takes a sharp intellect to interpret those secrets and employ them. The Warlock's power is determined by their Con (how much power they can handle) or Cha (how much they can persuade the patron to give them). At the end of the day, the Witch is still studying for her power, albeit from a very biased source (the patron, through the familiar). Augury is a divination feature that allows the Witch insight into some of the campaign's secrets. Finally, a Witch has to be secretive about how she practices, since (as the article emphasizes) there are witch hunters everywhere. I hadn't really thought about the covens much since I haven't looked much at the Witch in general, but I like this structure for class features (it parallels the different circles that Druids join).

I hadn't caught the "fey bargain" mechanics of the Sidhe Lord theme, and I hadn't thought much about the powers for the Tuathan that I noticed. Now that it's laid out though, it does fit the flavor of the Feywild very well. Even if those options aren't terribly strong mechanically, becoming a minor patron of sorts could be appealing to a lot of people. I especially like the story of how the author's character convinced the Warlock that the Winter King would buy his contract from Asmodeus. VERY nice touch.

Perhaps my favorite part of this article is the author's discussion of the book's art. I'd registered that the art tells a story, but I hadn't paid enough attention to note how much it conveys the characters' personalities. Of course Andronus ate the hag's cookies, because Satyr's are hedonistic! Now that you mention it, that's one of my favorite pieces as well. Seeing these specific illustrations next to each other also provided a contrast between Lyrindel's and Nistyncia's very different reactions to how his aloofness and lack of caution can cause trouble.

And then there were Pixies indeed. This discussion almost makes me want to play one of these little buggers. The depth that he goes into regarding depicting the child-like nature of pixies is impressive, and I hadn't really thought too much about what implications that would have. It does sort of highlight how disruptive a Pixie can be, both in terms of RPing and mechanics. That's not to say that I think they're broken (even if they are "bent"), but they'll certainly be a source of friction in the party.

Anyways, that's about it. Awesome book overall, and well worth picking up. It's officially joined my "elite list" of 4e books, which include DMG2, MV, MV2, and Underdark. You're in good company Heroes of the Feywild, and you're the first player book to make the cut!

Recovery: Viral's Diary (Session 2)

2011-11-27T20:41:00.001-08:00

Well, it's been over 2 months but the Red Frogs are adventuring once again! And we should be back to a weekly schedule for a while, which is definitely welcome. We're continuing the Viral's Diary arc, although the next DM in the lineup has said that he's scrapping his original adventure (the prologue of which we've already played). This actually works out fine for me, because it allows me to try out some of the Heroes of the Feywild options in actual play sooner. But I digress. On with the session summary.

Cast of Characters

Lyra Cinderfield (my character): Human Staff of Defense Wizard
Berylis Lindelenon (my character): Elf Panther Shaman
Rozzle: Elf Brutal Rogue
Unit 27: Warforged Weapon Talent Fighter

Note: The player of Zeus, our Wrathful Invoker, was out of town. Hopefully he'll be joining us for next session.

Note 2: I'd set Lyra up to be my primary character, but for this session I pretty much played Berylis as primary. His skills were more relevant, I had more fun with him in combat, and I was just feeling his personality more than Lyra's today. Perhaps it's also me distancing myself from her since I plan on possibly running a Druid again, and it would be a bit silly for me to run 2 controllers when there's also an Invoker in the party.

Deadwood Falls

The party arrives at the edge of Deadwood Forest, following the directions found in the farmhouse. Lyra uses Create Campsite to hide them because the forest had a reputation for being treacherous. They wake to a heavy fog, and make their way through the forest. Berylis and Rozzle scout ahead, and soon they hear something crashing through the undergrowth. The party gets into position just before a party of goblins comes rushing ahead. We roll initiative and attack. The goblin leader gets a low initiative roll, but when his turn comes up he simply calls the other goblins off and says "no fight!" in halting Common. As the party decides what to do, Berylis hears some rustling off behind them, and Lyra throws a stick in that direction. All of the sudden 2 spider swarms erupt from under the dead tree that Lyra, Berylis, and 27 are under, and 2 Deathjump Spiders join them. At this point Rozzle is across a small gully with all of the goblins, separated from everyone else (1 of the deathjumps is on their side). The spiders are dispatched (with some help from the goblins), and the party continues their questioning. They are able to gather that the Goblins are running "from Death," but they're unable to describe what they mean any further. In any case, they're coming from the direction of Deadwood Falls, which is of course ominous.

Outside of Deadwood falls, the party comes to a clearing where many people are hung from nooses. Berylis searches the area for tracks, and finds some that go off running, but it looks like the people were chased and then captured again. Rozzle notices some nooses that were snapped, and it looks as though they were chewed threw. With a very high Nature check, Berylis determines that the chew marks were from a humanoid. Finding nothing else of interest, they head toward town, which is deserted. It looks to be in shambles, and eventually the party stumbles across a child's arm clutching a diary. The most recent entry talks about Gibs (the man that the party is seeking), who would always invite the local children into his blue house and tell them stories, and about how he became sick after returning from his latest adventure. People who visited him also became sick, and they were all taken into the woods and didn't return with those who took them. Eventually Gibs did come back, but everyone started screaming and Milty (the boy) was instructed to hide. Sounds like a zombie infection if ever we saw one.

Berylis searched the town's perimeter and found tracks leading everywhere. He followed a set until eventually they confirmed the zombie theory. They dispatched the zombie and then returned to town to look for a blue house. With Unit 27 and Lyra standing guard outside, Berylis and Rozzle searched the house. Gibs appeared to be a hoarder, and had some minor valuables as well as some magic items (these turned out to be a Skull Mask, which Berylis took, Surefoot Boots for 27, Scale Armor of Resistance (Necrotic) which was somewhat useless since only 27 could use it and he already had +2 Magic Armor, and 2 Sunblades which nobody in the party could make good use of. There was also a chest on the second floor with 2 keyholes, one of which contained no tumblers (so Rozzle couldn't pick it). Upon searching further, Berylis found a key which fit into the hole without tumblers, and Rozzle was able to then pick the other keyhole. In the chest was many papers (including the deed to the house, which Rozzle claimed), as well as a journal detailing Gibs' last trip to Viral's Tomb. Apparently, you had to get their by paddling a canoe downriver, deep into the forest.

When the elves rejoined Lyra and 27 outside, Berylis heard approaching footsteps. Soon the party was surrounded by zombies, which were approaching from all sides. This zombie apocalypse encounter ended up being really fun, as it featured 10 zombie minions, 3 regular zombies, and a Dread Zombie (the former Gibs) that could only be killed by radiant damage (and since the entire party failed their Knowledge checks it was essentially invincible as far as they could tell). For the next 4 rounds a new wave appeared, and each wave had an additional regular zombie and 5 more minions. In total, the party blew through 30 minions, 7 regular zombies, and they had to flee from the Gibs, who they had no apparent way of killing. Rozzle became pretty beat up trying to repeatedly kill the Dread Zombie (especially since he spent much of the fight out of range of Healing Spirit), and Lyra was the undisputed MVP with Stinking Cloud and enlarged Winged Hordes. One of the players commented that the wire outline that I used for the Cloud's zone might as well have been an eraser as I moved it around the battlefield. Also notable was Berylis' nova round, which consisted of Spirit Hunt followed by Twin Panthers via an action point, resulting in 60 total damage which was higher than Rozzle's nova round. A zombie walked around his spirit companion later that round to bring the round's total damage up to 78. Oh yeah, Panther Shamans are definitely formidable.

On the River

After fleeing from Gibs the party eventually located his old canoe and paddled down the river. It was pretty late by this point, so they paddled in shifts (Berylis and Unit 27 while Rozzle and Lyra rested). A few hours in a ghost appeared on the river, holding out his hand. Berylis brought the canoe to the bank to talk with him. His name was Nero Wimsley, and he fully admitted that he had been somewhat of a douche in life. He surmised that the party was headed toward Viral's Tomb, offering to provide them information seeing as this was where he died. However, this information wouldn't come free. Nero was unable to move on because his body still lay in the tomb. He asked the party to place 2 coins in his mouth and bury him, so that he could pay the ferrymen. Berylis agreed to this, while muttering under his breath what ridiculous superstitions humans had. Nero then informed the party that Viral's tomb was guarded, but behind the ancient cemetary there was a tunnel through the tomb of a man named Midos that led into Viral's tomb. He also mentioned that there was a shrine to Avandra along the river that the party could spend the night resting in. He warned them not to camp in the forest, for it was very dangerous at night. He also told the party to be wary of a blue door in the tomb.

After departing, the party decided to press on straight for the tomb instead of stopping at the shrine. Whether or not this was a good decision remains to be seen. Rozzle had only 2 healing surges left, but everyone else was perfectly fine (this is why glass cannon strikers annoy me sometimes). Everyone was good on APs, and everyone but 27 had blown a daily in the zombie encounter (so he had 2 left). So press on we did. Unfortunately, luck was not on our side (sorry Avandra), as we kept seeing fleeting glimpses of ghosts through the trees as we paddled downstream. Eventually, a group of ghosts became openly aggressive and attacked. Rozzle played conservatively and didn't take any damage that I can remember (though he didn't deal much, either), however, Berylis and Lyra both got focus fired pretty hard at various points in the encounter (the crits didn't help either), so they are now significantly down on surges as well (Berylis has 3 and Lyra 4). Still, no one was knocked unconscious and the party focus fired efficiently. It was at this point that we stopped the session.

Further Commentary

The DM has asked that we "grade" his performance, which I think is very valuable for a new DM. I've thought a little about it, and so I figured I'd post my thoughts here. For overall adventure structure I think he's fallen into the tendency to railroad, as most new DMs do. The information as described often presents 1 obvious option, and when pursued the party discovers new information that leads them to another obvious option. Also, the contrivance of "party finds and NPC's journal which tells them what they need to do and where they need to go" is very much overused. It doesn't seem organic, and it doesn't offer much in the way of roleplaying opportunities. It feels very much like the PCs are forced to follow a script, and the only say that they seem to get in the matter is the style with which they go through the motions. It's worth noting that most published 4e adventures share this shortcoming as well. This is admittedly a really difficult habit to break as a DM, or at least I think so. I still tend to imagine a sequence of events in my head and design my adventures in such a way that everything leads to the events in the correct order. I think it was a big shortcoming of my last adventure, and part of that is the format of switching DMs for episodic mini quests. With just 1 level (about 3 sessions for us) to work with, it's tough to really create multiple strands of plot and a sandbox of unique options. For my level 8 and 11 adventures I'm already planning on departing a little from the railroad-style adventure, and I'll link elements from level 5 with these adventures. In fact, I've decided to take advantage of the interstitial period between these adventures to move things forward behind the scenes, which will allow me to present the party with a wide variety of challenges and link events in ways that might not be possible if the PCs were involved every step of the way. At least that's my hope. In any case, the take home message here is to move away from the obvious railroading, with an acknowledgement that it's a tough thing to do and probably won't happen all at once. I'll give adventure structure a C, because this is pretty much what you can expect from most new DMs.

The other obvious element to grade is encounter design, and the DM has come a long way since his last foray into the world of DMing. Despite the fact that some of these encounters were admitted to be filler encounters, none were pointless or boring. Interesting terrain was provided in all cases (even the simplistic layout of the zombie encounter had multiple enemy "sources" and choke points). The first encounter had a nice twist when the goblins turned out to be so desperate to avoid combat, and there was always a tension with Rozzle being alone with just the goblins on their side of the gully (even though the DM was adamant that the goblins didn't look like they wanted to appear threatening to the party). The mix of deathjump spiders and spider swarms was a good one, and deathjump spiders happen to be one of my favorite monsters as well. In any case, RPing the conversation with the goblins provided a sense of the frustration of the language barrier without being annoying, as well as set the ominous mood for the rest of the journey. All told, for a self-described "random, filler encounter" this certainly didn't feel like a waste of time. A solid B+.

The zombie apocalypse encounter struck a very good balance on multiple counts. First, the balance between minions and regular monsters was spot-on, letting the strikers (I'm including Berylis in this description) as well as the controller shine. There were enough minions to make it feel like the PCs were against an entire army, but enough standards to keep things tactically interesting. The second point of balance was the number of waves. An encounter like this can easily turn into a grindfest where there's so much of "the same" that it becomes boring. On the other hand, too few zombies doesn't feel like an "apocalypse," and blowing through an encounter like that can feel really anti-climactic. It ended up running a little over an hour, which I think was just about right. The DM also openly stated that he accounted for the presence of Lyra, as he's seen her enlarged AoE's and what Stinking Cloud is capable of. This is why I believe the balance that was struck was intentional (consider that in a striker-heavy, AoE-light party 30 minions plus 8 standards would have been a terrible idea). The encounter was damn fun, highlighted how the town could have gotten to be in such bad shape, and provided a strong incentive for the PCs to hightail it away as fast as possible. Indeed, I think this would have been a more appropriate incentive to leave town than Gibs' journal entry (and more tension could have been created if the journal had been discovered after this encounter, with the party desperate to find a clue about where to go). As far as the encounter itself goes, this one is a solid A.

Finally, the ghosts. According to the DM, he included this encounter as a specific consequence of the PCs neglecting to rest at the shrine. Which is funny, because that was a last minute impulse by me to make things interesting. I figured the shrine was added to prevent a random encounter while the party slept, and didn't think that one would be sprung on us while traveling the river. In hindsight it should have been obvious, but oh well. In any case, having the woods filled with ghosts was a nice touch. As an experienced backpacker who has had several jobs that involved walking around the woods all day, I don't find forests the least bit frightening and I usually detest the "scary, sometimes dangerous forest" trope. However, if there's a reason behind a specific forest being scary (haunted, in this case) then it paradoxically appeals to me. I like that these woods are crawling with ghosts, and that some of them will lash out against the living. As for the encounter itself, it was pretty straightforward. Still, an abundance of trees and the dynamics of the canoe on the river kept the terrain interesting, especially since the ghosts had phasing and some hid inside of the larger trees. Annoying, but realistic, and to have just a couple employing this tactic was a good balance. Lurkers would have been really appropriate here, but to be fair the actual monsters used was an on-the-fly decision (I don't think the DM expected us to turn down a rest in the shrine!). The one near-miss was that at first he had a level 12 monsters on the map because it was a quickly-designed encounter, and the experience added up. I immediately explained that this was a bad idea and he added 2 lower level monsters in its place. Just to reiterate, monsters that much higher-level than the party are far too difficult to hit, which results in a grindy, boring, frustrating combat. Add in the complication that the monster will also have an absurdly large pool of HP for their level and the problem is exacerbated. Going along with this problem, monster HP actually scales too fast at higher levels, and in the early levels of a tier in particular it's assumed that PCs have achieved their massive power-jump. Basically, the difference between a 10th and 11th level PC is greater than that between a 9th and 10th level PC, and a level 12 monster assumes you're on the other side of the Heroic-Paragon boundary, with its increase in damage-boosting options. Quite simply, the system is not designed for this kind of thing. If you want to represent a tougher-than-average monster, that's what Elites and Solos are for. This allows for monsters of varying strength while keeping the basic mathematical assumptions of hit rate, damage, etc. intact. Ignoring that almost-mishap, the encounter was somewhat run-of-the-mill but had a good atmosphere, and was a tangible consequence for a decision that the PCs made. Altogether probably a B-, which really isn't too bad at all.

In short, encounters all had a narrative purpose and were an appropriate challenge. This DM's previous adventure saw us through several trivially easy encounters followed by an absurdly difficult one that resulted in a TPK. A big step forward. What needs the most work is overall adventure structure, keeping in mind that paid game designers often don't do much better. Still, improvement in this area is definitely something to aspire to. Providing multiple meaningful choices that allow the PC's decisions to matter, having stuff going on in the background, and working on improvising are all good things. One thing that I've found helpful is the actually plan less. Draw up encounters, but don't provide a road map to them. Let interactions with NPCs flow naturally in response to PC actions as opposed to being completely scripted. Make sure that major events can play out in more than 1 way. For example, say that the king has been getting death threats. Don't assume that the party will accept an offer to protect him simply because that's what the DM planned. Have the party learn about the point of view of a rival, such that the whole situation is muddled in shades of gray. Maybe the party instead decides to help the rival and ignore the king's plight, or even to help the king's assassins. In short, give the PCs enough "say" to be able to drive much of the story. It makes DMing easier in a lot of ways if the players do so much of the work for you.

Heroes of the Feywild Playtesting

2011-11-23T11:08:00.001-08:00

I decided to playtest some of the new builds from HotF using the same encounter as my last playtest, which consisted of 3 Raven Roost Outlaw Veterans, 2 Raven Roost Sharpshooters, and 4 Human Thugs (minions). This was a level 9 encounter for a group of 4 level 6 PCs. This was the party:

Keyleth Arwyl (I built her backstory using the last chapter of HotF): Elven Protector Druid (Predator). Note that she has the Beastwalker Circle feat, so she can Wild Shape. New powers from HotF include Magic Stones (at-will), Gust of Wind (E1), Wind Wall (E3), and Summon Natural Ally. Other powers include Grasping Claws, Summon Giant Toad, Sudden Bite, and Camouflage Cloak.
Fen Silverfang: Longtooth Shifter Berserker (Temperate Lands). I went with Run Down and Stalk and Strike for his at-wills, and thanks to heavy shield proficiency his AC is top notch while his aura is up (25). His other powers are Batter Down (E1), Brutal Slam (E3), Sweeping Cut (D1), Rage of the Crimson Hurricane (D5), Savage Growl (U2), and Cull Weakness (U6).
Bharash Kenkholtet: Dragonborn Bravura Warlord (with Battlefront Leader). I probably should have went with a Skald, but I've always wanted to try one of these guys and all of the great MBAs in the party were just too tempting. He has Brash Assault (with Harlequin Style) and Intuitive Strike as his at-wills (enabling and attack buffing). Encounters are Vengeance is Mine and Devastating Offense, Fearless Rescue and Staggering Spin for dailies, and utilities include Shake It Off and Inspiring Reaction.
Albanon Izariel: Eladrin Warlock (S-K) | Swordmage (Assault). Eldritch Strike and Swordburst (no surprises there) at-will, Grasp of the Iron Tower (re-fluffed to Uel's Warding Curse) and Dimensional Vortex for encounters, Vanishing Blade and Emerald Shield for dailies, and Ethereal Stride and Armanthor's Step for utilities. This guy's a teleport-spammer, and has Eladrin Swordmage Advance.

Interestingly, Keyleth, Fen, and Albanon all have very similar DPR with their basic attacks. Assuming CA Keyleth has 16.05 DPR, and she has the easiest time getting it thanks to Cunning Stalker. At one point she had a Horned Helm which had her charging DPR at 20.1 (well into Striker territory), but I decided to trade it out for Hamanu's Terrible Roar to make Magic Stones more interesting. With CA vs a cursed enemy Albanon has 16.375 DPR (14.425 without CA). Even though he tends to have the most difficult getting CA, in theory his total damage is beefed up with extra attacks (Aegis of Assault and Eladrin Swordmage Advance). Fen's DPR with CA is 13.075 (or 16.85 while in Fury). If he has CA and charges, his DPR is the highest (assuming Fury) at 21.85. In any case, Bharash will do very well regardless of who he hands out free MBAs to. It's funny, since I didn't plan this party around MBAs, it just sort of happened that way.

The Encounter

The fight ended up lasting 6 rounds, but the final 2 rounds were mop-up and involved chasing down the Sharpshooters who were perched up on very defensible ledges. If I remember correctly the only attack that was made in round 5 was Keyleth's Pack Wolf (SNA), because everyone else had to take double moves (actually, Albanon was able to charge but missed). In a game I probably would have had these guys surrender after round 4. Two action points were burned (Keyleth to administer a Heal check on an unconscious Bharash without losing her attack, and Albanon for a nova round). One daily was used (Summon Natural Ally to summon a Pack Wolf). After the short rest everyone healed within a few HP of full, and surge expenditure was as follows: Bharash 3, Fen 2, Albanon 2, Keyleth 1.

Now, on the to good stuff. Instead of offering a round by round commentary, I'll just hit the highlights, organized by PC. In general, the encounter was somewhat swingy. The bad guys got an early advantage by rolling well for Initiative (whereas the PCs rolled crappy, except for Keyleth). In round 2 Fen and Bharash both dropped, but once they recovered the PCs cleaned house.

Bharash: Dragon Breath was used to pop a minion, which means Inspiring Breath was useless. Battlefront Shift was used to get Fen into position to somewhat compensate for the party's crappy initiative. Fen took a huge beating in round 1 because of it, but he took it well. Bharash was unable to use Vengeance Is Mine because the two hits that I remembered I had it were from a minion and an attack that dropped him. I think there was 1 opportunity where I could have used it but forgot. Overall I was impressed with his performance, and he definitely lived up to the Warlord hype (I hadn't played one since before MP). His risky playstyle (especially Brash Assault!) was really fun.

Fen: It's a good thing Berserkers get such high AC, because he got attacked by almost everyone in the first/second round and stood up to the punishment really well. After getting nailed by both Sharpshooters, Keyleth protected him with both a Camouflage Cloak and a Wind Wall, but one of the Raven Roost Vets managed to get some lucky hits in despite the invisibility. He ended up critting with Batter Down, which contributed to him dealing the most damage of any PC despite mostly staying in defender-mode. I did probably Fury too late (round 4), as none of the THP from Berserk Vitality got touched. It would have been beneficial to Fury in round 3 instead when there were still a couple of melee enemies present, since Brutal Slam would have kept him sticky for a turn anyways and Savage Growl could have been used after that. It'll take a few encounters before I get used to pinpointing the optimal moment to Fury. I ended up never using Stalk and Strike but there was 1 round when I wished I had Aggressive Lunge. Still, I think most of the time S&S will be the better choice, so I'll keep that in mind as I do more playtesting.

Keyleth: Wind Wall was VERY effective against the archers in this combat, and was also able to easily hit 3 targets. Obviously your mileage will depend on how often ranged enemies show up, but in my group archers in particular tend to show up a lot. Unfortunately, I completely forgot about Nature's Growth so I can't comment on how useful it would have been. I do remember some enemies shifting, and obviously that could have been prevented depending on the zone's positioning. Gust of Wind was also a worthwhile power. I ended up popping a minion with it and pushing a RR Vet 2 squares and knocking it prone. I then Wild Shaped bringing me 1 square away with the shift (Pouncing Beast Armor). All of my allies were behind me, so all the Vet could do was stand up and charge. I hit with Grasping Claws for my OA, stopping his movement instantly (since he'd moved 2 squares already). A perfect showcase for how Druids can eke more action denial out of prone and daze than other controllers. I ended up using Magic Stones once, but the archer that I tried to push off the ledge with it made his save (and I missed the other one entirely). Still a useful power, and had there been more minions I'm sure I would have had fun killing them 3 at a time with it! The Pack Wolf was largely irrelevant since I'd summoned it next to one of the sharpshooters early on. Its damage wasn't impressive (since SNA lacks the implement keyword) and without an OA it didn't stop the archer from shooting even after standing up from prone. Against melee enemies it would be useful to deny their actions (in hindsight I should have summoned the Giant Toad instead).

Albanon: Not much to say, except that he had some major action economy problems. I never even got to apply his Aegis.

As a final note I'd just like to mention that I tried something new while playtesting this time. I transferred all of the important info from the character sheets onto index cards, making mini character sheets. It really reduced the clutter while playtesting!

Heroes of the Feywild: Build Your Story

2011-11-10T21:42:00.001-08:00

In my review of Heroes of the Feywild I mentioned that the final chapter of the book contains a choose-your-own-adventure style background generator, which can be used in place of an existing background. Curious about how this process would actually play out, I decided to utilize it for a Protector Druid that I'm creating. I'm not sure if I'll actually use this character in-game, but I am planning on running some playtests of the new builds, and I figure now's as good a time as any to give this backstory generator a try as well! After making the basic choices presented in the book, I wrote up a more fleshed out story based on that. Here's what I came up with.

Overview of Choices

Foster Parents (kind) > Peasants (Elf) (Heal or Nature)
Shinaelestra > Studied Wilderness (Acrobatics, Endurance, Nature) > passed Wis check
Discovery > True Identity
Murkendraw > Found Murkroot Trade Moot (Goblin, Intimidate, Stealth) >Failed Int check, Goblins turned on you and sold you to slavery
Captured
Harrowhame > Enslaved (Dungeoneering or Nature) > passed Con check, escaped tunnels into Brokenstone Vale
Brokenstone Vale >Traded Goods, bartering with civilized lycanthropes (Bluff or Insight) > passed Wis check, Acclaimed (civilized location, activity, skill without making check)
Sent to Mithrendain > Broke into Citadel Arcanum (Bluff, Stealth, Thievery) > autopass from acclaimed
Maze of Fathaghn (chosen from Acclaimed) > Dealt with Dryad Queen (Diplomacy or Insight) > Passed Cha check (rolled 17), Made Powerful Ally (go to any location)
Fey Crossing Hamlet > Cross Into World
Trained skills chosen from backstory: Nature (Druid makes you anyways), Endurance, Insight, Stealth, and Goblin as a language.

Narrative

Onceupon a time there was a young elven girl named Keyleth, who grew upwith only the vaguest memories of her parents. Her foster parents,Theren and Adrie Celedor, were from a neighboring village, and hadtold her that during a Gnoll raid her parents were driven into thewild to make what living they could, constantly being harried by theever-growing Gnoll population. They gave Keyleth up to the Celedors,who had relatives in the Feywild whom they were going to stay with toescape the Gnolls more or less permanently. It was Keyleth's bestchance to lead as normal a life as possible.

Unfortunately,the Celedors had no idea that life in Shinaelestra would be so tough. They worked as farmhands on one of the local vineyards, at leastwhen the city wasn't under attack by the fomorians. Thanks to thecity walls and the tireless efforts of Calenon Thray's rangers, itwas at least a safer existence than Keyleth left behind. As she grewolder she took to exploring the wilderness outside of the city duringher free time, both in the Feywild and in the mortal realm after thenightly worldfall. She became adept at identifying plants, andeventually got hired to collect rare herbs for a wealthyritualist/apothecary.

Onenight while wandering a familiar path in the mortal world Keylethhappened upon an old half-elven traveler. She stopped to chat, andthe old man's eyes lit up when Keyleth told him her name, as somelong-lost memory resurfaced. He had lived in the village where shewas born, and he informed her that her parents had been influentialDruids in the Circle of Shelter, and that their true mission had beento confront Decius Derakh, a powerful necromancer who was responsiblefor mobilizing the Gnolls (to distract people from his dark business,it was rumored). With heavy hearts her foster parents confirmed thetraveler's story, for they knew that she would now want to discoverwhat fate befell her birth parents.

Afterdiscussing the matter with her employer, Keyleth decided that herbest lead was to travel to the Murkendraw and seek out the MurkrootTrade Moot. Their illicit wares were known to make it outside of theFeywild to the mortal world, and a powerful necromancer would havebenefited greatly from such a resource. She spent several years onthe outskirts of the Murkendraw seeking out the Moot, and eventuallyit paid off (sort of). A naïve newcomer is an easy target, andKeyleth was not cautious enough. Goblin traders took advantage ofher inexperience and captured her. She was soon sold to King Bronnorand worked as a slave in the tunnels of Harrowhame. She toiled formonths, but eventually she learned the tunnels well enough to make anescape, only to emerge in the lycanthrope-infested Brokenstone Vale.

Shewas much more cautious now, and soon earned the respect of some ofthe more civilized lycanthropes. She collected herbs throughout theVale and sold them to a werebear witch doctor. She soon became awelcome guest of their tribe, and after ensuring that she could trustthem she explained her situation to the tribal elders. After muchdeliberating, they advised her against going back to the Moot. Perhaps she would have better luck in Mithrendain, as the CitadelArcanum has some of the most extensive records around. It was wortha shot, anyways.

Afterbeing denied entry into the Citadel, Keyleth wandered Mithrendain forweeks trying to come up with a solution. Though she kept trying torationalize against it, in the end there was only one option: shewould have to break in. She spent the next week and a half planningit, and then it was time. The records were not as heavily guarded asother portions of the Citadel, and she had enough time to not onlyfind the relevant books, but give them a fairly thorough reading aswell. She learned that about a decade after she was born Decius hadentered the Feywild through a crossing in the Murkendraw and made hisway to the Maze of Fathaghn. There he had planned on taking a branchfrom the Mother Tree to use in a dark ritual, but he hadunderestimated the Dryad Queen and was defeated. Details were scant,but it was the best lead she'd yet uncovered. Unfortunately, theguards soon discovered her. The Watchers of the Night were impressedwith her skill, and did not detain her long. They saw that she meantno harm, and she was given a light sentence of 1 year's banishmentfrom Mithrendain. No matter, as Keyleth had another destination inmind anyways.

Asshe got closer to the Maze Keyleth began to hear soft voiceswhispering to her, and in a strange way they were actuallycomforting. The boundary between the mortal realm and the Feywildwas thin here, and the Primal Spirits had a strong influence. Despite her goal, she lingered in this place and listened to what theair, the earth, and the water had to say. She soon found herselfcapable of producing minor magical effects as she became more attunedto the spirits. She first learned to call upon the spirits of theair, and once she mastered this the breeze whispered that it was timeto go on. The vegetation grew more densely as she neared the edge ofthe Maze, and the forest more quiet. For all the dangers of thatplace she found herself able to pass through unmolested, though shecould sense the presence of many eyes watching her the entire way. Time ceased to mean anything, and after many hours (or days, or weekseven?) she stopped in a clearing with a small spring-fed pool. Stooped beside the pool collecting water in a large pitcher was themost magnificent dryad she had ever laid eyes on. The air seemed topulse with her power, and Keyleth became very frightened. As theDryad Queen turned around she fixed her gaze onto Keyleth, studyingthe Elf for what felt like an eternity. When the queen finally spokeit was as if the air had come alive as an orchestra, and yet lookingback Keyleth could not recall the exact sound of that music, for suchis the Dryad Queen's magic.

Theirwords were brief, and the queen was sympathetic. Druids from manycircles had warned her ahead of time of Decius' plans, and he did notget very far into the Maze before she had found him. Though heconsidered himself powerful, he was as nothing compared to a greatQueen of Faerie. She stripped him of much of his power, opened up aportal into the mortal world, and tossed him through. She gaveKeyleth a general description of where she had banished him to, whichFey Crossing would get her there safely, and then conjured up a smallwooden box. Within this box sat a tiny fire spirit that burnedwithout need of fuel or air. In the smoke that emanated from the boxwas the image of a face; the face of Decius Derakh. At their partingthe Dryad Queen cautioned Keyleth not to pursue him sosingle-mindedly, but that eventually they would meet. In themeantime though, there was other work to be done. Keyleth's ties tothe mortal realm and its spirits were strong, and the queen advisedher to seek out members of the Circle of Shelter. Not only wouldthey help her to realize her potential, but if anyone had news of herparents, it was them. The queen then waved her hand, and Keyleth wastransported to a small Fey Crossing Hamlet. After gathering whatsupplies she could in town, she crossed over into the mortal world,into strange lands where she'd never been.

Magic Item Bloat

2011-11-09T08:51:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, this topic has been beaten to death (even if not necessarily by me). The basic problem is that there have been way too many magic items published in 4e, and only a very small subset of them see any actual use. I probably just skip over 85-90% of everything in the Adventurer's Vaults, as it's gotten to the point where most characters that I create have the same go-to items. For example, what character doesn't automatically go after Item bonuses to damage? Anyone with melee attacks will probably pick up Iron Armbands of Power, and the vast majority of spellcasters gravitate to the Staff of Ruin (to the point where some specifically multiclass to gain proficiency with Staffs). We've recently adopted a house rule in our Red Frogs campaign that fixes this (well, "recently" is an exaggeration, as for personal reasons we haven't played in over a month). It was inspired by the inherent bonuses system, and it basically gives you an inherent bonus to damage that doesn't stack with item bonuses. This virtually obsoletes certain auto-pick items, but as a consequence it allows players to branch out and pick up magic items with other neat effects that simply weren't worth losing out on damage before. It also gives the DM more freedom to include such items as treasure, whereas before players would get resentful because the item interfered with their damage bonus (or they just sold it for reduced cost). Perhaps most importantly, it evens the playing field for PCs who for whatever reason couldn't get that item bonus to damage (Shamans come to mind off the top of my head).

Here's the progression:

+1 at levels 1-5
+2 at levels 6-10
+3 at levels 11-15
+4 at levels 16-20
+5 at levels 21-25
+6 at levels 26-30

An alternative system would be to simply double the enhancement bonus of your weapon/implement when calculating your damage modifier (whether or not that bonus comes from the weapon/implement itself, or through the existing inherent bonus rules). In any case, in my opinion any attempt to make PCs as independent of items as possible is a worthwhile endeavor.

On a semi-related note, I'd like to mention that Heroes of the Feywild (which I reviewed in a previous post) seems to indicate that this trend might be ending, or at the very least active contribution to the problem is dwindling. The vast majority of gear in the book is flavorful out of combat stuff as opposed to a bunch of combat-relevant magic items with huge discrepancies in power between them. The combat-items that are present are 3 new magic totems, all of which are pretty useful. Besides, totems have gotten notoriously sparse support, and this helps to alleviate that. Case in point, with my inherent damage bonus house rule in place I'm most likely going to be using the new Shepherd's Totem when I roll up my first Protector Druid.

The Fey Magic gifts in particular are things that I can see myself giving out as a DM, even if not necessarily in place of an actual magic item. These all have mundane applications, but players immersed in their characters will appreciate such minor abilities. Some examples include being able to pick up flames without needing fuel and without getting burned, sniffing out gold, silver, and gems, gaining the ability to talk with animals, and increasing the volume of your voice (which also grants a bonus to Intimidate checks). There's plenty of roleplaying potential here, and it's also a good way to make a character seem a bit more magical or otherworldly. After all, nobody comes back from the Feywild unchanged...

Heroes of the Feywild Review

2011-11-05T22:19:00.000-07:00

Introduction

I was fortunate enough to get my hands on an early copy of Heroes of the Feywild. I was excited about this book ever since it was announced, but was cautious about getting my hopes up after the recent material that's been released over the last year or so. Essentials provided some innovative class design, but much of it was underpowered and many builds were "pre-chosen." Then came Heroes of Shadow which fortunately did not interest me much, because the material was largely pretty poor. The Vampire and Binder were jokes, the Death domain and Necromancy and Nethermancy schools left me feeling unenthusiastic even if they were mechanically not terrible, which leaves the Blackguard and Executioner as the only solid builds (neither of which were of interest to me). I could go on about the rest of the content for HoS, but I digress. Point being, I feared HotF would suffer similarly, in which case it wouldn't be worth picking up. But then previews and spoilers started trickling in, and my interest was piqued. My hope increased. A couple of days after the spoiler thread was started (which meant that premier stores got their advance copies in) I called up a FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Shop) to see if they had it. They did, and I soon got to see for myself how great this book was!

Welcome to the Feywild

The introductory chapter gives a brief overview of how a player character will view the Feywild (whether they're a native to that plane or an outsider) and outlines some of the major locations in the land of Faerie. A map is also provided, and I must say I love the aesthetic of it even if I don't necessarily use it in my campaigns. It reminds me of a cross between a Middle Earth and Narnia map, and takes me back to that sense of wonder and curiosity that I get when reading those stories. The art is top-notch (my only gripe is the portrayal of hamadryads), with small pictures of stone art, runes, leaves, toadstools, and impish little creatures scattered throughout. Very evocative overall. Finally, many of the sidebars in this book are short stories known as Bard's Tales. These are meant to provide inspiration, and have a very "fairy tale" feel to them. The color scheme and plant borders also serve to enhance the fairy story aesthetic as you read or reference this book, without being too over-the-top or cheesy.

Races of the Fey

I think a good balance was struck here. Whereas HoS provided races with penalties that were obviously inferior to most of the existing races (aside from the Revenant, which already existed in Dragon), this book's races are all on-par balance-wise, if not slightly above the curve (in the case of the Pixie). Hamadryads are a bit of a stretch as a playable race seeing as Dryads are typically bound to a specific home tree, but they justify it by defining the bond as not spatially restricting the Dryad (even though most Dryads don't stray too far from their tree). Oddly enough, this race is technically an intermediate stage of an autumn nymph on the path to becoming a dryad. Fair enough I guess. They're always female, have Forest Walk, get a bonus to the most debilitating status effects (daze, dominate, and stun), and have a variety of minor benefits wrapped into the Oaken Vitality trait (don't need to sleep, conditional endurance buffs). Their racial power is similar to the Wilden in that the Hamadryad gets to choose between 2 different aspects.

Pixies are the controversial race because they're Tiny and have a fly speed. I'll say right now that I don't think they should have been made a playable race. The altitude limit, while necessary for game balance, strains suspension of disbelief. It will certainly provide a unique play experience though, and I'm sure a lot of people will really enjoy playing them. My personal feelings aside, the designers did do a really good job of walking a fine line here; at first glance, Pixies appear to be a top-tier race that joins the ranks of Elves, Dwarves, Humans, and Half-Elves without outright surpassing them. Admirable, given that their mechanics are so "out there."

Finally, the Satyr. Arguably the most "traditional" race in the book (aside from being restricted to male only), it has relatively conservative features. Still, the racial power looks like it can synergize really well with certain powers (it tacks a slide and CA onto an attack that hits), giving an otherwise average race a unique mechanic.

Classes

Not surprisingly, this is the most exciting chapter in the book. Four new subclasses are presented, and not only are none of them failures (I think the last time this happened was PHB2, unless you count DSCS), but three of them look downright awesome!

Barbarian (Berserker): This is the first class that explicitly covers 2 roles. It starts out as a martial defender (with an aura/punishment mechanic that is competitive with the Knight's) until you enter your Berserker Fury, at which point you become a primal striker. You can trigger Fury by using any primal attack power, or by using a minor action while bloodied. Your defender aura goes bye-bye for the rest of the encounter, some of your powers gain additional benefits (damage), and your MBAs gain extra striker damage. Note that the MBA buff occupies the niche that Howling Strike, the PHB2 Barbarian's bread and butter at-will, does, so you need not be "taxed" into choosing it. Existing Rage powers notably stack with Fury, although some Berserkers will undoubtedly pick up some of the new defender-oriented daily powers. At each level there's typically one primal striker power and one martial defender power to choose from. The martial powers look more appealing to me at first glance, but given that primal powers can be freely chosen from PHB2 and PP I don't see this as much of an issue. The class will definitely present some interesting tactical options and I for one can't wait to try it out! Even though I'm normally not too fond of strikers, I can see this being one of my favorite classes.

Bard (Skald): This is meant to be a more martial style of Bard as opposed to the overtly magical PHB2 Bard, but the truth is nothing stops you from freely choosing powers from either source (or AP), giving you a wide spectrum to work with. O-Bards can even take a feat to replace Majestic Word with the Skald's Aura, allowing for multiple avenues for "hybridizing" the 2 subclasses. Speaking of the Skald's Aura, it's a new take on a leader's healing class feature. Instead of two (or later, three) uses of Majestic Word the Skald has an aura 5 that is always active. You or any ally in the aura can spend a minor action to heal, or they can allow an adjacent ally to heal. This is a subtle difference, but it means that a) whoever doesn't need their minor actions could do the healing, freeing up the Skald's minors, and b) healing need not be done on the Skald's turn. That last one has some pretty important tactical implications, and is certain to reduce the amount of lost turns from allies being KO'd. The Skald's at-wills all confer additional properties onto the aura as a minor action, which are triggered when the Skald hits with a MBA. Keep in mind that you're perfectly free to take O-Bard at-wills instead without gimping the build in the slightest (in fact, I think they're probably more powerful unless you're making a lot of OAs). The new dailies work similarly, giving the aura additional properties at the cost of a minor action. Encounter powers follow 3 basic patterns: 1) effects triggered when you hit with a basic attack, 2) minor action "enchantments" with a target of "1 weapon", and 3) immediate action effects triggered by various things (ally getting hit by an attack, enemy getting hit by attack, etc.). This opens up more nova capacity, as a Bard can fire off 2 minor action aura (or weapon) enhancements (including a dailies if desired), charge with a MBA, and then utilize an immediate action encounter power, all in round 1 of combat. Mixing and matching powers from O-Bards and Skalds will result in a lot of interesting builds, allowing for a wide spectrum of playstyles.

Druid (Protector): Druids have sorely needed more humanoid caster support for a while now, and this book delivers on that! Protectors get Nature's Growth, which is a minor action AoE encounter power that creates a zone of difficult terrain that lasts until the end of the encounter! Most controllers conspicuously lack a class feature that directly supports their role, but this is exactly that. The area scales by tier. The obvious applications of difficult terrain are preventing enemies from being able to shift and slowing enemies down (particularly useful if an enemy is slowed, dazed, or prone). Protectors also must choose a Druid Circle, which are the Circle of Renewal (Primal Guardian class feature plus allies in or adjacent to Nature's Growth heal more) and the Circle of Shelter (Primal Predator class feature, plus allies ignore the difficult terrain of Nature's Growth). They get a Primal Attunement feature which are very similar to cantrips, and finally they get Summon Natural Ally, which gives them fixed summoning daily powers that are based on their circle. As you level, you gain access to more powerful summons. Each time you use the power, you can pick any of the options in your "pool" of summons. The summons follow the pattern of other Druid summons, in that they cannot make OAs but they do get Instinctive Effects. The instinctive effects are pretty much standardized to "attack adjacent enemy if possible, or move adjacent to enemy," and there aren't any summons reminiscent of the Giant Toad that can instinctively attack from range (none that charge either). However, their attacks are more damaging than past summoning powers, each attack has some type of status effect tied to it (often mobility-denying), and some summons have encounter powers that are worth spending a standard action on if the summon can't attack instinctively. In other words, they're competitive. Protectors can also spend a feat to switch a use of SNA out for a standard daily attack power, and this feat also notably gives them Wild Shape (the only way to get both Wild Shape and Nature's Growth). Like the Berserker and Skald, mixing and matching previous powers is very easy. And speaking of the new powers, there's some good stuff, especially on the encounter power front. Some early Heroic encounter walls exist, and virtually all of the new encounter powers have effect lines (usually the damage is tied to a hit and the control happens in the effect, but sometimes a hit provides additional control as well). My personal favorite is Charm Beast, which is a level 7 encounter dominate that dazes on a miss, to boot.

Wizard (Witch): I'll say it right now that this subclass has me the least excited. While the Witch is certainly solid compared to other controller classes, it's slightly inferior (and blatantly so) to other Wizard builds, and given that Wizards can just freely poach the Witch powers anyways I find this to be bad design. A lot of the new powers are close attacks, and oddly enough some healing utilities are introduced. Unfortunately, Witches are not as durable as some of the other Wizard builds out there (Staff of Defense, Necromancers, Nethermancers), so I can see a lot of Witches becoming a liability if they choose a lot of these close burst/blast spells (unfortunately your 1st level encounter powers are auto-picked). It definitely feels like a Witch through power selection, but from a pure optimization standpoint I feel like in the vast majority of cases there's always going to be an existing Wizard spell that's better (there is a handful of gems in here though). Perhaps that shouldn't be surprising given how much support Wizards have gotten, but it definitely makes this the weak point of the book.

Character Options

Four themes are presented, the best being the Fey Beast Tamer which is almost the Sentinel's animal companion without getting stuck playing a Sentinel. The Fey Beast Companion attacks are much less damaging than a Sentinel's (especially at low levels), but for an OA and damage sponge (not to mention the aura) they do their job just fine. The Sidhe Lord gets a Daily summoning power, though the Sidhe House Guard is pretty weak (HP= to your healing surge value?!?!). Still, it has an immediate interrupt that allows it to take a hit for you, so it's at least going to give you access to a surge in combat and absorb status effects. Tuathan is a theme that gets 2 options each time a choice is made, but is sadly limited to humans and half elves. There's a focus on heroic luck and animal transformation (unfortunately, the latter is only available as a utility swap instead of a starting feature). Finally, the Unseelie Agent is designed around a "Shadow Weapon," which is basically a free vanilla magic weapon that won't be as good as what most PCs will want. It's a pity, as this theme has some great story hook potential.

Each new subclass also has its own Paragon Path. Most are solid if not terribly spectacular, with the Deadly Berserker probably being the best of the bunch. The 3 Epic Destinies are Shiradi Champion, Wild Hunter, and Witch Queen (seeing as I've never played in Epic I can't really say whether or not they're any good).

The feats section has the usual mix of good, ok, and bad. Racial feats are apparently back, with the 3 new races in addition to elves, eladrin, gnomes, and wilden all getting new feat support. The long-awaited Totem Expertise is finally here (ignore partial cover/concealment), and chargers get more unnecessary support with Two-Handed Weapon Expertise. Two new familiar feats are pretty underwhelming, as are 2 of the 3 Fey feats. Fey Shift, however, is awesome as it gives you a 2 square teleport speed (obviously it's epic). The Barbarian feat is great (THP equal to surge value when you enter your Fury), while the Bard and Druid feats facilitate mixing and matching class features (O-Bards can get Skald's Aura, O-Druids can trade a daily for a use of SNA, and Protectors can trade a use of SNA for a daily, plus they get Wild Shape to boot). Multiclass feats are a mixed bag; the Witch M/C is nearly useless (you get Augury?!?!), Berserker and Protector are solid (1/day use of Fury and Nature's Growth, respectively), and the Skald is simply incredible (1/enc Skald's Aura, giving you a 1/enc heal!).

The gear section lists some semi-magical mundane items from the Feywild, some of which look pretty amusing for the price. Some new magic totems (including 1 that increases forced movement, and one that's essentially a "Vicious" totem), Wondrous Items (mostly "meh"), and Consumables (solid) are also presented. Finally, Fey Magic Gifts are a new alternative reward, though by and large they're more mundane utility based as opposed to being comparable to magic items. Still, some look fun for roleplaying purposes.

Build Your Story

The last chapter of the book is an interesting new take on creating a backstory. There are sections on Upbringing, Locations (Civilized Lands, Wilderness Locations, and Dark Lands), and Events. You go through several different options choose-your-own-adventure style, with ability checks largely determining how you fared in a given situation. Each scenario has a few associated skills, and you can choose your trained skills based on what you picked up through this story as opposed to what class skills you normally get (you're still limited by the number of trained skills your class has, though). You can use this chapter to generate an idea for a PC completely at random, or you can use the individual sections for inspiration. It's a little gimmicky, but an interesting backstory generator nonetheless. Most of the choices are open-ended enough to allow for creativity, but there's also enough detail to provide a cohesive backstory for players that aren't usually interested in coming up with something.

NOTE: I've written up a post on a test run of this process, as I create an Elven Protector Druid.

Conclusion

I highly recommend this book. Granted I might be biased because I really like the Feywild and how it was handled in 4e. Furthermore, Druids, Wizards, Bards, and Barbarians are some of my favorite classes anyways, and to see them all get support in the same book is pretty cool. Regardless of my personal tastes, there's simply a lot of really good design in this book. The Berserker looks like a blast, is flavorful, and appears to be solid as both a defender and a striker. First dual-role subclass was a success in my book! The Skald's Aura is a tactically interesting healing mechanic, and there's a lot of unique new powers that interact with it. The Protector provides much-needed caster Druid support, in addition to introducing an effective controller class feature. The Witch is admittedly a bit disappointing, but there's enough to poach that it's not a complete waste, and if nothing else there's a lot of flavorful if not optimal powers. Most of all I like the return to the classic AEDU design even if some Essentials style elements are incorporated (the Skald's emphasis on basic attacks, for example). Unlike recent class design in the post-essentials era, these classes are not straight-jacketed into features and powers. Existing powers work perfectly with the new builds, and older builds can take the new powers. The designers even went a step further by including the Skald and Druid feats that let you mix and match elements of the different builds. Overall there's a return to customizability exemplified by a high degree of compatibility between subclasses despite the fact that unique, new mechanics were introduced. I applaud that the designers were able to not only pull this off, but to keep everything balanced by pre-Essentials standards*.

*Essentials marked a huge design shift, and in general the developers were overly conservative when balancing the new stuff, resulting in a lot of underpowered builds and subclasses. It seems like the subclasses in this book have been brought back up to the appropriate power level, and I have a feeling that in-game play will support that.

Leveling Up Monsters

2011-10-20T09:47:00.000-07:00

In Chris Perkins' latest article (the same article that I linked to in my last post on NPCs) he mentions that the stat block for one of his NPCs is a level 9 Succubus leveled up to 25. Now, the DMG specifically warns against leveling monsters up or down more than a few levels from the base stat block. Though I'd never thought about this before reading about Chris' over-leveled Succubus, I think this is an example of the DMG being too conservative rather than Chris doing something crazy and unconventional.

Because the math for monster scaling is so simple and transparent in 4e all of the basic numbers (defenses, HP, attack bonuses, and damage) will add up with no problems. That's part of why customizing monsters is so easy and painless in this edition (cuts down on prep time, too!). So what's the problem perceived by the DMG authors? Most likely, it's status effects and riders that are tacked onto powers, or other traits such as auras, conditional damage, and off-action attacks (or number of attacks). Not surprisingly, monsters get more dangerous at higher levels than their raw base stats can account for, which makes sense because players get more access to feats, items, powers, and paragon path/epic destiny features. Leveling an Epic monster down for Heroic PCs would make for a disproportionately challenging encounter (possibly impossible in some cases), and leveling a Heroic monster up to Epic might make for a cakewalk.

For example, lets look at the Efreet Flamestrider, a level 23 Skirmisher. I picked this guy at "random" since he was the highest level standard monster in the MV. He has an aura that multiplies ongoing fire damage, a MBA that inflicts ongoing fire damage on a hit, and an at-will ranged attack that both immobilizes and deals ongoing fire damage (save ends both). And of course there's the at-will 20 square teleport (even if it does require fire, which any DM will build into the encounter while using this creature). Even leveled down, Heroic characters don't have enough ways to trigger saving throws to easily counter his ongoing damage and immobilization (and teleports will be much more rare as well). Their healing ability is also more limited, so PCs within the aura can easily find themselves overwhelmed by raw damage. Finally, Heroic PCs will be more dependent on status effects like immobilized, slowed and restrained because they probably won't yet have wide access to dominates, stuns, and blinds, meaning that the efreet's teleport makes him very tough to hinder. Likewise, a level 1 Goblin Cutthroat with just straight damage and some minor shifting tricks won't be much of a problem for Epic tier PCs.

After pointing out the problems of over-leveling, I'm still not going to advise against doing it, at least assuming you're reasonably familiar with the system. The thing is, after pointing out the problems with the efreet simple common sense (and possibly a quick comparison with the Goblin Cutthroat) can inform which further changes must be made. It's clearly too powerful when leveled down without further adjustments, but what if we made the following changes on the fly:

The ranged attack becomes a recharge or encounter power so it can't constantly immobilize PCs.
The teleport becomes an encounter power so it can't constantly escape the common status effects and re-position itself.
Either get rid of the aura, or get rid of the ongoing damage with the MBA. Specifically, either have ongoing 5 damage and no aura, or have no inherent ongoing damage with the attack but have the aura inflict ongoing 5 damage if a creature is hit with a fire attack. These 2 methods look identical, but keep in mind that with the latter option a ranged fire attack from a second monster can gain ongoing damage against PCs in an efreet's aura.

BAM! Your Efreet is now ready for Heroic tier play. Similarly, you can level a Goblin Cutthroat up to epic and give him additional abilities based on a quick glance at several other epic creatures. You can even just make stuff up pretty easily thanks to 4e's concise list of status effects; call his blade poisoned and have it inflict ongoing poison damage and possibly another status effect (blind and weakened seem thematically appropriate for poison). Maybe give him an encounter or recharge power that stuns. Rogues get to do stuff like that at higher levels, so it's not too big a stretch.

So now that I've demonstrated that you can level monsters across the entire spectrum of levels for just a little bit more work than with a more narrow level range, why should you? It's mostly a matter of personal taste. Do you want a specific monster for your adventure? Use it regardless of its base level! What if an off-level monster has a set of abilities that you really want to use for something else? Level it down/up and re-flavor it, or tack its abilities onto an appropriate-level monster. Are your PCs sick of fighting the same orcs over and over again? Find a different monster with some interesting mechanics, level it as appropriate, and call it an orc! Or, simply modify the existing orcs by giving them different abilities. One of the great strengths of 4e is its modularity. It's not only possible to mix and match elements from different monsters and different levels, but it's fairly easy as well! So when you plan encounters, don't necessarily limit yourself to the pool of monsters in a given level range; branch out for more ideas and give the players something unexpected (especially important if your players also DM, and thus have access to the same monsters that you do).

Fleshing Out NPCs

2011-10-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

Chris Perkins says it better than I could, in his new article on 3D NPCs. I would love to play in one of his campaigns! Anyways, I'd highly suggest anyone who DMs read this article.

In particular, I'd like to highlight the parallel between an ongoing D&D campaign and a serialized TV show. Obviously with the PCs being the main characters a lot of the complex relationships will grow organically as the players interact amongst each other, thus making the comparison a lot less daunting for DMs! However, DMs still must think about this since the PCs aren't the only people populating the campaign world. Each "adventure" should feature at least a few fleshed out NPCs (more than just background NPCs, like the random shopkeeper or barmaid), and you should have a vague idea of these characters' personalities, motivations, and backstories. This obviously doesn't need to be too in-depth, but at least summarize each of these 3 traits in a sentence or 2. It doesn't have to be elaborate either; most NPCs are much more mundane than the Heroes!

For example, let's look at one of the main NPCs from my Talamhlar campaign, Gaknar (this campaign ended prematurely when I moved away for a seasonal job, and due to the months that passed before I came home we just never resumed it). To re-cap, that campaign started with the PCs captured in a castle, regaining consciousness with the place in chaos. A group of mages were doing various arcane experiments in the castle, including the creation of super-soldiers. Not surprisingly, the mages lost control of the super-soldiers, were largely massacred, and the magical containment was broken, freeing the PCs. In the room their was also a goblin named Gaknar, and he promised to show the PCs to where their equipment was and how to get out of the castle if they freed him (he'd been a servant for the mages). He accompanied the PCs throughout the campaign, becoming a valued member of the party (well, most of the PCs liked him). There were a few times where he acted somewhat suspiciously and was caught lying, and so was never 100% trusted. He even disappeared "on business" once, refusing to tell the PCs what the business was. So what was the deal with Gaknar, and what ideas did I have floating around in my head for him?

Backstory: Gaknar was a runt in his tribe, always picked on for it, and some semblance of a conscience (moreso than most goblins, anyways) didn't help matters. During a raid he left his tribe, but finding it difficult to fend for himself ended up working for the mages.
Personality: Sycophantic, and has quirky ways of showing affection. Sly and sneaky like most goblins, but with a greater sense of loyalty.
Motivations/Secret: On his errands away from the mage's castle, Gaknar began to see what life was like in the civilized worlds. He became a spy for someone in the nearby town of Marblemount, helping to gather info on the mages to help shut them down.

Gaknar's secret never got a chance to be revealed in-game, and in fact I hadn't even fleshed out who he would be working for in Marblemount, what their exact goal was, or even whether it was a single person or an organization. I didn't need those details until an opportunity arose for me to incorporate them into the game, and they would ultimately depend on what direction the campaign was headed. I didn't plan on when that might be, but for things like that you just sort of know when the time is right. I just really liked the idea of a goblin double-agent traveling with the PCs, who was ostensibly good but with a shadow of doubt. And that concept came built in with a possible future story hook for later, even if I didn't know what that hook would be.

Holy Statistical Anomolies, Batman!

2011-10-18T21:17:00.000-07:00

I'd like to qualify this post by saying that I was bored tonight, and really in the mood for D&D. Given that this wasn't a night that the group is available, that means that I decided to do a random playtest. Feeling particularly ambitious, I decided to transcribe everything that happened in this encounter (which I normally don't do). The PCs are all level 6, and the enemy forces are a 9th level encounter for 4 PCs.

In one corner, we have our PCs (some of which you may recognize from the Red Frogs campaign): Lyra Cinderfield (Human Staff Wizard), Berylis Lindelenon (Elf Panther Shaman), Albanon Izariel (Eladrin Assault Swordmage | Charisma Warlock Hybrid, with focus on teleportation), and Unit 27 (Warforged Weaponmaster Fighter). In the other corner, we have the Raven Roost strike force: 3 Raven Roost Outlaw Veterans, 2 Raven Roost Sharpshooters, and 4 Human Thugs (minions). I used the poster map that came with MV2, specifically the one in the woods near the water, with the small cabin (which is where the PCs started out).

This encounter turned out to be the epitome of an encounter-gone-wrong due to cold dice. Albanon missed a total of 10 times out of 16 attacks, for a hit rate of 38%! Doing a rough calculation assuming Eldritch Strike is used, he should have had a 70% hit rate versus the Sharpshooters, 65% vs the Thugs, and 80% vs the Veterans. But the dice just were not on his side, even with attacks granted by Aegis of Assault and Berylis' Claws of the Eagle. Normally I hit the mark pretty well with these playtests, defeating encounters in 4-6 rounds. This one took EIGHT! Healing Spirit was used both times, and Hearth Spirit was also used (both Lyra and 27 took advantage of the 2nd wind as minor despite poor positioning, all made possible by a strategically placed enlarged Winged Horde). Still, nobody ever fell unconscious so the encounter wasn't too challenging, it was just turned into a grind by all of the missing (specifically on the part of the party striker). Surge expenditure (including post-battle recovering back to full health) was as follows: Lyra used 2 surges, Berylis 1, Albanon 2, and 27 3. For much of the encounter Albanon was in danger (bloodied), and Lyra spent several rounds getting between enemies and him (fortunately she has both Shield and Staff of Defense, both of which negated attacks).

Now, I'll fully admit that cold dice weren't the only factor. I'll usually roll randomly before a playtest to determine which PCs have action points available and what, if any, Daily powers can be used. I didn't do that this time, so 1) nobody had action points, and 2) the only dailies I used were Icy Terrain (from Lyra's wand, which I hadn't used in play yet since picking it up with some leftover cash) and Hearth Spirit (because either Lyra or 27 or both would have gone down if I hadn't). Upon further reflection I also didn't focus fire as well as I should have, and tactics were more focused on action denial than anything (Albanon probably could have gotten more consistent CA if I'd tried harder...though to be fair I usually rely on a combination of Stalker's Strike and Claws of the Eagle for that, but they always kept missing).

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time this has happened. At the start of the Red Frogs campaign (before it was even named) the party was TPK'd in a very close fight; one in which my Hunter (a very accurate class) had an absurd missing spree where I rolled 5 or 6 twos and threes. It doesn't seem like anyone else I play with is quite as prone to such severe bouts of bad luck; perhaps I need to stick with a single d20 and develop some superstitious dice rituals (our player who rolls the most crits notably sticks his dice in his mouth a lot...maybe I'll try that?).

So what's a player to do in such circumstances? Well, aside from picking up the standard accuracy boosters (expertise, accurate implements, +3 weapons) one of my strategies is to favor controllers. The more attack rolls you make, the more likely you are to hit something. Definitely enjoying playing Lyra more than that poor Hunter. I'm also fond of implement users that can be flexible about which defense to target. Lyra does exactly this, with an emphasis on Will, which is just perfect. Auto-damage is also nice. Though Lyra hasn't been struck with a major missing streak yet, I think as I level her I may enchant a Wand of Beguiling Strands (my least-used at-will) and trade out that power for Heroic Effort. For the same reason I tend to favor Elf PCs as well. Interestingly, in this playtest encounter I ended up critting with Spirit Hunt in round 1 thanks to Elven Accuracy (talk about a hard-hitting power to crit with!), though lady luck balanced that out when I rolled a 20 for Charm of Misplaced Wrath and a 2 for the attack that it grants. Yeesh.

Multiple-Arc Campaigns

2011-09-29T07:49:00.000-07:00

Chris Perkins has a column on the WotC website called The Dungeon Master Experience. It's by far the best column that the website currently has (if you're a DM, that is) and this week's pertains to something I've been thinking about lately: the balance between a "sandbox" style and a "railroaded" campaign. Most campaigns occupy a middle ground between the two, and I think that's best overall. From a player's perspective (I enjoy that I play almost as often as I DM) too much railroad makes me feel like my character's actions don't matter, and too much sandbox can make the whole venture seem aimless (not to mention the fact that it could easily catch the DM off guard, and I don't care how good of a DM you are, you're not going to be running as optimally if you're trying to improvise a random direction as opposed to something you've planned, or at least considered).

I have a feeling that most DMs think about this spectrum in relation to the current adventure, because after all the players are going to react to things happening in the present. It's tougher, however, to compromise throughout the span of an entire campaign arc (at least I think so). Generally it's either unplanned and the DM just goes with the flow (often leading to a string of semi-related adventures) or the DM has a good idea of where he wants the campaign to go. Planning for multiple (in this case, three) different arcs gives the DM focus because he's thought about the possible arcs and in general knows where they're headed (he just has no idea when and in what order the players will tackle them in), but it also gives the players a lot of choice in what they want to pursue because the DM has thrown several well-thought options out there. Obviously this will work best if the DM allows even the arcs that weren't pursued to "progress," perhaps making the situation "worse" and providing the PCs with more and more difficult choices.

Anways, here is a link to the article. It's a good read.

Recovery: Viral's Diary (Session 1)

2011-09-25T20:53:00.000-07:00

Cast of Characters

Lyra Cinderfield (my character): Human Staff of Defense Wizard (Helo - Dragonling Familiar)
Berylis Lindelenon (my other character): Elf Panther Shaman (Legadema - Spirit Companion)
Rosil: Elf Brutal Scoundrel Rogue
Unit 27: Warforged Weapon Talent Fighter (Hammer and Board)
Zeus: Dwarf Wrathful Invoker

The Amber Farmhouse

The Red Frogs were hired by a man named Aramis Emis to find the diary of an archaeologist named Viral. It is reputed that Viral discovered a powerful magical artifact, and the diary is thought to provide clues to its whereabouts. The last man known to have seen Viral was Amoz Gib, but he lives in a secluded village called Deadwood Falls located deep within the dangerous and labyrinthine Deadwood Forest. Few find their way through the forest alive, but the party does have one lead: a local farmer/merchant by the name of Athos Amber regularly visits the village, and so the party travels to his farmhouse in order to enlist his services as a guide.

As the party approaches the property, they see a golem with a sack of corn on its back standing in the middle of the path. Upon approaching the construct, it animates and plays back a recording of a man's voice. Assuming the man is Athos Amber, it sounds like his wife was killed by some unknown assailants, and that he was able to hide his daughter in the "attic" before he too was killed. Lyra examines the magical workings of the golem while Rosil investigates its mechanics, and they determine that it's non-sentient, and essentially a piece of sophisticated farm equipment. So they investigate the farm house (which has an attached barn) cautiously. Lyra sends Helo ahead to peer through the windows, but nothing can be seen. The party goes into the barn which houses not farm animals, but a workshop containing another (inactive) golem as well as a bunch of random junk. They enter the house through the door that connects to the barn, and find nothing of interest on the ground floor. Upstairs Rosil scouts the individual rooms; the first contains a desk and a blue chest, the second is a bedroom that appears to be the site of a struggle, and the third contains the horribly mangled body of the wife. The party returns to the first room where Lyra detects the presence of magic in the blue chest, which Rosil picks the lock to revealing a book, several loose pieces of paper, and a magical key that's warm to the touch. The book seems to be an atlas with random notes scrawled into it (including the names of some influential merchants), and fortunately a route through Deadwood Forest is laid out. Among the loose papers is the will of Athos Amber, who appears to be very rich for a simple farmer.

As the party makes their way back to the barn, the key grows warmer in Lyra's hand. It reaches its hottest in front of a very tall pile of junk, which turns out to be an illusion hiding a ladder and a trapdoor in the ceiling. The secret loft contains many crates, and the party suspects that Millie Amber (the daughter) is hidden in one of them. Lyra uses Ghost Sound to emulate the voice that the sentinel golem recorded, and Millie (about 10 years old) emerges from a crate thinking that her father has returned. The party asks her what happened, and she reports that about 5 days ago she was woken up in the middle of the night by her father and told to hide in the (well-provisioned) attic until he came to get her. The party doesn't tell her that it looks like her parents are dead, but offer to escort the girl to Winterhaven where her grandparents live (it's on the way to Deadwood). As they get back to the ground floor of the barn, the doors slam shut and Lyra orders her to return to the attic. Lyra fires several enlarged Winged Hordes out of the windows in an attempt to catch their ambushers off guard, but it doesn't sound like she makes contact. Three regular Wraiths and 2 Mad Wraiths float in through the windows and initiative is rolled.

Before anyone's turn came up Lyra yelled for Zeus to focus on the 3 Wraiths, and the two of them largely succeeded in keeping them out of the fight while the Mad Wraiths were dealt with. Berylis led off with Spirit Hunt after the Mad Wraiths caused Unit 27 to attack Lyra. Zeus caught 2 of the Wraiths with Rebuke Undead, after which they moved forward (unable to do anything else thanks to the daze). Lyra hit them both with Icy Rays, immobilizing them. Rosil critted a Mad Wraith, and Unit 27 stuck close to the Rogue in order to protect him. The controllers double teamed the Wraiths with a combination of area damage and status effects (eventually Berylis finished two off with Twin Panthers), while 27, Rosil, and Berylis took care of the Mad Wraiths.

Once the battle was over, the party escorted Millie to Winterhaven where they found her grandparents. Lyra made sure that they were capable of taking care of the child, and offered to check up on them on their way back through (Lyra was herself an orphan). They then traveled the rest of the distance, with Lyra studying the book (and their route) throughout the journey. Finally the made it to the border of Deadwood Forest, and it was at this point that we ended the session.

Commentary

The DM for this adventure made a "rookie" mistake, which was forgivable since this was only his second time DMing 4th edition. The mistake was that he used wraiths from the Monster Manual instead of the new ones from the Monster Vault. BIG DIFFERENCE! MM Wraiths are infamously grindy, with the insubstantial property (they take half damage from most attacks) and attacks that inflict the "weakened" condition (target deals half damage). Thus, damage was often quartered when fighting these guys. Also, aside from the recharge power on the Mad Wraiths (that force PCs to attack their allies) their damage is pathetic. Oh, after looking at the stat block those wraiths also have regeneration, which the DM forgot to apply. Anyways, these monsters easily make for some of the most boring combats in 4e being non-threatening and yet dragging out combat by being difficult to actually hurt. The DM ended up calling the fight into round 4 when it was blatantly obvious that the party was going to win (even if it would take a couple more rounds) and sustain no meaningful damage.

I advised the DM to use Monster Vault monsters in the future, and so a very important lesson was learned; 4e had some pretty crappy monster design at first, and an inexperienced eye can't always tell which monsters are the worst offenders. For example, the Monster Vault wraiths don't have regeneration and they don't weaken, so insubstantial is the only damage-reducer that PCs need to worry about. The wraiths also deal almost twice as much damage as their MM incarnations, and they gain the ability to become invisible. If invisible when they attack, they more than double their already improved damage. In short, they actually function as Lurkers. Though MM wraiths are labeled as the same, they actually function more like skirmishers (and not very effective ones at that). I honestly hadn't examined the differences between the 2 versions that closely (I learned early on to simply pretend that wraiths didn't exist precisely because of the aformentioned problems), so I'm actually glad the mistake was made because now I realize that MV wraiths are not only useable, but look pretty fun!

As for my characters, I'm really happy with them so far. I've been agonizing over Lyra's power selection a bit, and before this adventure decided to switch out Color Spray for Icy Rays at pretty much the last minute. Even though Icy Rays isn't enlargeable (and doesn't synergize with Helo's "breath" ability), I think it'll be a better choice. In playtesting multi-target daze often doesn't reliably deny standard actions (it's tough to get a set-up where everyone is denied charging), and the unfriendliness was a concern with relatively inexperienced 4e players. Plus now that Icy Rays slows on a miss it's a phenomenal opening move, and I generally like powers with very flexible targeting capacity (Icy Rays can be used against two creatures that are far apart from each other, meaning that you hamper exactly which enemies are most dangerous regardless of positioning relative to each other). We'll see how it goes.

I also gave Berylis Spirit Hunt shortly before starting play with him, replacing Spirit of the Slavering Bloodlust. Without being an Eagle Shaman, the buffs from SotSB are unlikely to reach the damage potential of Spirit Hunt, so personal damage won out in this case. Besides, I'm waiting to see how well the other players respond to my Spirit Boon before I add more buffs that rely on Legadema's proximity into the mix. So far so good on that front, though; the Spirit Boon came into play almost every round, even if I did have to remind the players about it. Between the Spirit Boon and Strengthening Spirit, I don't think it will be too long before everyone realizes that it pays to be next to Legadema (though I certainly need to do my part and make sure that I actively position her next to people). Anyways, between high personal damage, granted attacks (Claws of the Eagle), and the Spirit Boon it seemed like Berylis dealt comparable damage to Rosil, perhaps being slightly lower (hard to say, as Rosil rolled the only 2 crits of the combat). This being Heroic tier (where Rogues shine) and Rosil being fairly well-optimized means that Berylis is probably exceeding the damage of some strikers, at least this early in the game. As he levels his damage will probably be more indirect (from buffs), though I'm sure personal damage will remain competitive as well. I'm already looking forward to a combat where several enemies are bloodied on the field and Lyra and Zeus simply park themselves next to the spirit and blast away (with the backing of a hard-hitting spirit boon). You can get a lot of mileage out of the Spirit Boon via area damage.

"Filler" Encounters

2011-09-15T20:58:00.000-07:00

In my previous post I talked about why it's important to give your combat encounters narrative significance, however big or small it may be. This is largely because the complicated nature of 4e combat makes it a significant time investment, and "breaking away" from the story to fight some random battle can easily be perceived as a waste of time. Just because the "default" 4e encounter doesn't lend itself to minor scuffles or "filler" encounters doesn't mean it can't be done, though. Such encounters just need to be designed very deliberately. Indeed, these types of encounters should be included from time to time because it's admittedly impossible to make every encounter relevant.

My focus here will be creating encounters that are resource-draining but tactically (and usually narratively) irrelevant. Perhaps irrelevant is too strong a word, but in any case these are encounters that don't pose much of a threat and that are over very quickly. There are several ways to evoke this feeling, the simplest probably being an at-level or lower encounter, designed more or less "normally." The problem with this is that monsters that are too low level are a complete non-threat (PC attacks will virtually auto-hit them, and they'll be unable to hit the defenses of the PCs), and those that are a threat tend to have enough cumulative hit points to drag the encounter out to a decent length. One way to keep combat short is to simply keep the at-level monsters, but use fewer of them. If the PCs outnumber weak monsters 2:1 it shouldn't last more than a couple of rounds, but during that time the PCs should take some damage (which they'll need to spend surges to fix), and might even blow a daily if they misjudge the encounter's difficulty.

Here are a few more ways to create quick and dirty "filler" battles:

Use terrain that gives the PCs a massive advantage. Describe it so that it's really obvious that the PCs can use it to quickly dispatch monsters. If you want to maintain the level of danger present in a standard encounter but make it happen much more quickly, have the monsters use this advantage first, but allow the PCs to quickly turn it against them. This way the PCs take boatloads of damage in round 1 (or even a surprise round), and then end the fight quickly by subjecting the monsters to the same effects. Some examples include pools of lava or acid that creatures can be pushed into, buckets of lava or acid that can be thrown, large and heavy objects that can be knocked onto creatures, or containers of explosive substances that can be ignited to create a nasty explosion.
Use cowardly monsters. After a couple of rounds, perhaps even before most of the monsters are bloodied, have them flee. Maybe they'll lure the PCs into a trap or ambush, or perhaps they'll simply reinforce a later encounter. Depending on the situation they might just run away, and sometimes the PCs may simply let them. If the PCs insist on chasing them down, instead of rolling loads of dice to whittle away at their HP simply describe the situation narratively: "knowing they're outgunned, the bandits use double moves to run full speed, and the party finishes them off with arrows, javelins, and spells." It might be more interesting, however, to use creatures that can actually flee effectively (flight, fast speeds, invisibility, phasing, burrow speeds).
Finally, use copious amounts of minions! These guys were practically built for encounters like this. You'll definitely need to tailor encounters to your party's capabilities, though; a party with strong AoE capabilities might be able to kill a dozen or more minions in 1 round, whereas parties lacking AoE would end up being in for a really long battle, which is the opposite of what you're going for! Also keep in mind that if there's a disparity within the group, as there almost certainly will be, AoE-capable PCs will be the stars of the show for a while, whereas high-damage single-target strikers might feel quite useless. Wizards with Enlarge Spell can be particularly problematic, as the areas they're capable of affecting can be quite large.

You can make the argument that easy encounters increase verisimilitude, as they give the impression of a dynamic, living world that exists beyond just the PCs and their current adventure. The orcs that the PCs fought in Heroic tier may still be there in Paragon tier, and it's appropriate that the PCs have a much easier time in dealing with them. You might also consider sprinkling impossibly difficult encounters into your campaign using the same argument, but if you elect to do this make sure that your players know about it ahead of time! It's no fun to fight to the death just because "the DM wouldn't let us fight it if we couldn't beat it."

Encounter Narrative

2011-09-15T20:12:00.000-07:00

Because combat in 4e is very tactical (moreso than previous editions of the game), it also has a tendency to take pretty long in real time (though your mileage may vary). This isn't always the case, but for tactically minded groups combat can almost be a game in and of itself (heck, it's one of the reasons why playtesting isn't as boring as it sounds in practice). A hefty length of time and a different strategic mindset separate you from the "roleplaying" aspects of the game during combat, which is great for creating a varied play experience but it could also be a bit jarring for the pacing of the story. For these reasons, the vast majority of major encounters should have some narrative significance.

In previous editions of D&D encounters with "wandering monsters" and dungeon crawls through miles of subterranean passages populated by all manner of random creatures were highly encouraged. From what I understand, combat in earlier editions was much more swift in real-time, though I only have experience with 3rd edition (indeed, the longest combat encounter I've experienced was in that edition, though save-or-die spells could make encounters equally swift and arguably inconsequential). If a fight ended up being uninteresting it didn't really matter, because it would probably be over quickly. Because of that, an encounter didn't need to have any particular importance because you were back to the story (or the next encounter, in more of a hack 'n slash style campaign) in no time. Because the default 4e encounter is assumed to be somewhat involved, this edition isn't quite as friendly toward that old style of play.

Ultimately, the take home message is that when designing an adventure, every encounter needs to have some kind of significance. Some encounters can be justified by being exceptionally interesting in and of themselves; monsters with cool powers, traps, terrain, puzzles, or engaging tactics can all make an encounter interesting enough that it doesn't matter if it doesn't have a strong link to the story. If you need "filler" encounters to give the players something to do as they make their way through the dungeon--an obstacle to their eventual goal--then they better be interesting. But every encounter can't be over-the-top and exception, because if that becomes the norm then it's no longer very exceptional! This is why most encounters should have a direct relevance to the adventure narrative.

But what does that mean, exactly? Obvious examples are encounters with the foes that the PCs set out to confront in the first place. This can be as epic as a final "boss battle" with the BBEG (big bad evil guy), or as simple as tracking down the group of bandits that have been harassing the local merchant caravans. Other ways to make combat relevant are to use the encounter to introduce NPCs (whether they're combatants or non-combatants, allies or enemies), to provide PCs with some kind of information, item or clue, to introduce a new conflict (perhaps a side quest), to foreshadow a future plot point, or to characterize an NPC (perhaps an NPC betrays the party, or maybe they die defending the party who will thereafter seek revenge). A more intricate encounter might present 2 or more decision points where the choices that the PCs make affects the story. Perhaps the choices are meant to reveal a character flaw, tempt, or highlight the chivalry of a PC. Any time you give the player the means to help develop his/her character more fully is time well spent. An encounter's relevance could also be as simple as providing a direct obstacle that stands between the party and their goal (i.e. they want to get into the Wizard's keep, but first they need to deal with his golems).

From a pure mechanical standpoint, encounters exist to challenge the party and put a strain on their resources. At its most basic, combat is the reason why characters have healing surges, encounter powers, and daily powers and any encounter will allow (or force, depending on how you look at it) the characters to use these resources. It's up to the DM and the players to use these mechanics to tell a story, and as the one designing encounters the DM shoulders most of this load. The story is what immerses the players in the world, and keeps them coming back for more. While a delve style game where players simply move through the map and kill a random assortment of monsters is certainly valid, it's simply not enough for some players (or groups). Those that care about story will enjoy the game much more if the story informs combat; an hour-long scuffle that turns out to be pointless can be an annoying distraction if it happens too much.

Rescue: Against the Bloody Toads (Prologue)

2011-09-04T20:47:00.000-07:00

Since I finished up my arc last session, we were due to start a new DM's adventure (at level 6). One of our players couldn't make it, however, so instead the DM for the level 7 adventure offered to run a one-shot "prologue" for his adventure, which would serve as an introduction to his arc and wouldn't require a full party (plus we didn't want to start the level 6 arc with a player short). So here is a summary from my point of view as a player.

Cast of Characters

Lyra Cinderfield: Human Staff of Defense Wizard (my character)
Berylis Lindelenon: Elf Panther Shaman (my other character)
Meryl "Wiggy" Wiggins: Gnome Chaos Sorcerer
Miyako "Miya" Sotoko: Human Centered Breath Monk

Session Overview

The party from the Red Frogs was hired by Tirel Thygus, a noble from the small port town of Kirkston (southeast of the Nentir Vale). Kirkston looks to have seen better days, and the PCs soon learn that the economy is doing really poorly. Somehow, Tirel has managed to maintain his wealth through the crisis. Though this seems odd, the party doesn't question their new employer about it. He reveals that his daughter Lileth has been captured by a group of pirates known as the Bloody Toads. They've asked an outrageous ransom for her which, despite the fact that he can afford it, he doesn't want to pay out of principle. He notifies the party that the Bloody Toads are based on an island chain a short distance off the mainland, but that their main stronghold is magically hidden. He also asks the party to report on or bring back any powerful sources of magic, which he only says he has a strong interest in. Other than that, he claims to have no other leads for the party, and cannot even offer a ship.

The party splits into two teams to gather information around town; Lyra aids Berylis (who uses Speak with Spirits) but the two find nothing, though Wiggy and Miya have much better luck and learn that the guy they want to seek out is One-Eyed Jack. One-Eyed Jack hangs out at the Sailor's Tavern, just off the docks. The party heads to the tavern, and Berylis spots their quarry right away after again seeking guidance from the spirit world. Turns out the nickname One-Eyed was a bit generous; the man has actually had both eyes removed, and wears a bandana with a single eye painted on it over his face. This bandana seems to give him some amount of perceptive power, despite the fact that he is actually blind. Lyra and Wiggy approach the surly fellow, asking if he could provide them with information. He seems disheartened because nobody ever asks for his skill (as a sailor) anymore, at which point Lyra tries flattering him, assuring him that they actually do need a ship and that they'd be happy to employ him as their captain. He claims to know these waters better than anyone, and admits to being a former Toad himself (it was they who took his eyes out and marooned him on an island). Once he agrees to help the party, Lyra reveals the identity of their employer, who Jack informs them was a former Toad himself! Apparently Tirel Thygus had somehow struck a deal which granted him great power, which he was to use to make Kirkston a safe haven for the Toads. He betrayed them, keeping this mysterious power for himself, and though he doesn't grant them protection in town, he also doesn't attempt to interfere with their raids (which is why the town is currently so impoverished). Clearly Tirel isn't exactly trustworthy, and the PCs will proceed on this mission with caution.

Jack tells the party to meet him at the docks the next day, and they will try to find a ship. During that time Jack managed to put together a 3 man crew: Hagger is a short, broad-shouldered human (and former Toad), Fira is a young woman who was a former pirate hunter, and now seeks revenge on the Toads for some reason, and Victor is an Elf who knows where the party can obtain a schooner. They follow up on Victor's lead and pay the schooner's captain, Brutus Mars, a visit. The schooner is a piece of junk and the party tries to haggle a low price from Brutus, who can see that they clearly need a ship and assures them that they aren't likely to find a cheaper one anywhere. He demands 1/3 of the group's profits (though the party declines to inform him of their mission), and they ask him why he deserves a share of the treasure if he's not coming with them. Apparently he intended to be their captain because Jack is a damn fool that can't see anything, but Lyra sticks up for Jack assuring Brutus that he will do just fine. Brutus soon agrees to a lower price, but requires that the PCs transport some cargo in secret; he says that he doesn't know exactly what it is, but assures them that it's important. Lyra asks to see it, and Brutus pulls out a small, orange book. Lyra detects magic and learns that it's enchanted to hide the words on its pages, and informs Brutus that it's a pretty simple spell. She then bluffs that it's a dangerous item, and the hazard of transporting it should lower the cost of the schooner rental. Brutus grudgingly agrees, asking for 150 gp now and 150 when they got back. He then gives them the coordinates to an isle where a man is being held captive, and this man is who they need to deliver the book to (he claims not to know why, because the book was given to him by someone else). Lyra whispers in Jack's ear via Ghost Sound asking if he knows how to get to the island based on the descriptions, and whether it's out of their way. He simply tells her that that's where they're headed anyways.

So they set sail in their newly acquired schooner. The hidden base can only be reached by using a magical compass that only Bloody Toad captains have, so the basic plan was to sail out looking like a tempting target until a Toad ship took the bait. On their way the party passes the island where Jack was marooned, and continue on their way (Lyra keeps a light spell active to make them easier to spot). Soon they come across a ship, but it's an unusually large warship that is probably captained by someone very important within the organization. According to Jack, this wasn't a ship that they wanted to get captured by, as they were very unlikely to win in a confrontation. The schooner turned around and headed back toward the island, where they would have an advantage given that they could get closer to the island with their much shallower keel. And so they waited. The ship sent out 2 rowboats to pursue the schooner into a bay when it could go no farther. Lyra stood up on the edge of the ship, staff held high and the wind whipping her robe in an attempt to look powerful and wizardly. She boomed "you shall not pass!" as loudly as possible with Ghost Sound. Berylis called his spirit companion, Legadema, and sent her as far as possible out over the water. Lyra used Ghost Sound to give her a terrifying roar. The combined magical display was intimidating enough to send 1 of the boats fleeing back to the main ship in terror (the main ship ended up shooting the cowards with a barrage of cannon fire).

When the boat finally came within range, Legadema was in a perfect position to make OAs on 2 of the 4 rowers as they sped past her. Lyra used a readied Arc Lightning to blast them as well. Initiative was rolled as the boat was now in range, with Lyra leading off with Stinking Cloud. Since the boat wasn't fast enough to make it through the cloud in a single move action the rowers could either double move or make their ranged attacks at a severe disadvantage. They consistently elected to row as fast as possible toward the Schooner, with Lyra constantly moving the Cloud to auto-damage them and deter them from using ranged attacks. Berylis simply kept moving Legadema ahead of the cloud and reading a Stalker's Strike (or Twin Panthers once they were in range) for when they emerged from the cloud. She was also able to use Spirit's Fangs whenever the boat rowed past her. Wiggy also readied his ranged attacks for whenever the boat emerged from the cloud, and Miya was unfortunately unable to do much of anything until the boat came close enough for her to jump onto it. When this finally happened 2 of the rowers were already dead, and the remaining 2 were well past bloodied. Crane's Wings finished one of them off, and an Eternal Mountain (via Action Point) nearly finished the last one. He used a free action to surrender to the party, at which point Lyra took his weapons with her Mage Hand while Berylis tied him up and brought him on board. He explained that he'd take his chances being a captive of the Red Frogs, since fleeing back to the Toad's ship would get him just as killed as fighting to the death. At this point the party decided to head for the southern edge of the island to put some distance between them and the warship, besides the fact their prisoner informed him that Bloody Toad ships often docked in the bays of the island's southern coast. It was at this point that the session ended, with the party seeking easier prey on the other side of the island.

It's notable that in the night's only encounter the PCs did not suffer a single attack. The rowers kept using double moves (and at one point both rowers were slowed and one was also dazed), and the party kept pummeling them with a combination of readied ranged (or melee spirit) attacks, Stinking Cloud's auto-damage as Lyra kept moving it over the boat, and Legadema's Spirit Fangs as the rowers moved past. The last rowers were at death's door by the time they reached the schooner. It's also worth noting that this was the first time that I used the playtest version of Stinking Cloud in actual play (I'd been using Visions of Avarice to avoid the nerfed SC). Stinking Cloud may not be the powerhouse blaster power that it once was, but it's still exceptionally useful. It'll still deal reliable auto-damage (at the very least when you use your move action to plop it back on top of enemies) on top of your normal standard action, and you can still keep it between the party and ranged enemies to ruin their day. It certainly trivialized this encounter, even if it was arguably the perfect set up. Had I been DMing the encounter I probably would have had the intimidate delay the second boat by a round instead of causing them to outright flee, and I would have applied some ranged pressure. I also would have considered continually popping the SC instead of constantly making double moves. As it went down, the party was in a position that was way too defensible for the attack to be anything but futile.

Playtesting

2011-09-04T13:13:00.000-07:00

Sometimes an encounter will look great on paper (or in your mind) but when it comes time to actually play through it, it falls flat. Sometimes this is a matter of certain monsters just not working as well together as you'd planned (or perhaps working too well together). Sometimes the terrain just doesn't do what you expect it to. Perhaps things would have worked out better with an extra terrain feature, or a different arrangement of features. Perhaps the starting positions of the monsters should have been moved. Or, maybe you're not sure how certain combinations of monsters and terrain will affect the difficulty. How do you resolve these issues without turning your PCs into lab rats? Playtest them yourself, of course!

Now I'm not advocating playtesting every single encounter that you ever put together. Playtest encounters tend to run longer than real encounters since you need to keep track of everything, monsters and "PCs" alike. I generally only playtest when I have time to kill, and when an encounter is more complex than normal. Also, if you're a new DM, new to encounter-design, or simply returned from a fairly long hiatus playtesting your encounters can be a great way to see what works and what doesn't when the dice start flying.

So how does one go about playtesting? It's just as simple as it sounds. Draw up your map and place all of your monsters down (or at least the ones that the PCs will be aware of just before the fight). This is just the same as if you were running the encounter for a group. The difference, of course, is that the "group" is controlled by you as well. Using PCs that are similar to your party's characters works best, but it can also be fun to mix things up to see how other classes fare (or, if you're like me and rotate DMing duties, you can get some more in-combat practice with your own character). You can also utilize playtesting as a player if you're trying to decide between 2 different classes or builds and want to test drive how they "feel." This is how I learned that most essentials classes are not really for me, despite the fact that I appreciate what they add to the game (and in some cases was really excited to see how their mechanics worked in play).

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you need to wear 2 different hats, and keep them separate. What I mean by this is when a monster's turn comes up, play that monster as if you were DMing and have it act like it would act. Don't refrain from attacking your "favorite" PC or move into position just so you can set up for a PCs power. Likewise when it's a PC's turn have them utilize the tactics that they normally would in-game. If your group is good at focus-firing and using the best tactics, play the "party" that way! If your group has trouble operating as efficiently as it could if you were running everything, try to emulate that. On the other hand, it could be interesting to see how differently things turn out depending on how much strategy is effectively used (by either side).

The bottom line is that sometimes things work differently in play than they look on paper. Conducting a test run (if you have time), is a great way to bring some of those differences to light, in addition to experimenting with different variables (monsters, terrain, PCs, tactics, etc.).

Monster Roles, part 2

2011-08-31T10:37:00.000-07:00

In part 1 I discussed the primary monster roles; here, I will move onto secondary roles. The secondary roles are standard, leader, minion, elite, and solo.

Standard

These are the bulk of monsters, and they also serve as a reference point for the other monster secondary roles. For example, 4-5 minions equals 1 standard, 1 Elite equals 2 standards, and 1 Solo equals 5 standards. An encounter composed of all standards will typically have the same number of monsters as the PCs, or see the PCs slightly outnumbered. Individually standard monsters aren't much of a threat to an adventuring party, but by working together they can become greater than the sum of their parts.

Leader

A leader monster is unique in that it is almost a tertiary role (albeit the only one in the game); leaders can be found among standards and elites, as well as any of the primary roles (though some are more likely to be leaders than others). They don't usually function very much different from a normal monster of their type, except that they have either a trait, power, or possibly both which directly helps their allies. These can consist of offensive or defensive buffs, granted attacks, granted movement, or healing. Not every encounter needs a leader, but it's a good way to mechanically represent the guy that's in charge to make him feel like he's in charge. Prepare to have standards, minions, or more rarely elites directly protect the leader if he gets into trouble, because he will be a priority target. Once he goes down, all of the other monsters get worse at what they do (depending on how significant his abilities were).

Minion

I'm of the opinion that minions were one of the best things to come out of 4e. Each minion has only 1 HP and their attacks are extremely simple (they have set damage instead of rolling for damage), so they require virtually no book-keeping on the part of the DM aside from removing their minis/tokens when they die and remembering their initiative order. They also allow you to run balanced encounters where the monsters vastly outnumber the PCs, which tend to be cinematic affairs with PCs mowing through their foes. Just because they're pushovers though, doesn't mean that they're not deadly. They're designed to swarm around PCs, threatening them with many OAs, blocking off squares, and causing high damage attacks to be wasted. Even if each of them attacks for relatively low damage, that damage can really start to add up! Besides, they have the normal defenses and attack rolls for their level so despite being easy to bring down, they're not necessarily any easier to hit. Best of all, they add tactical variety to the age old single target vs multi-target damage issue. Before their introduction into the game, single target attacks were obviously superior because injury doesn't impair a monster's ability to fight until it's knocked down to 0 HP. Therefore, it's in everyone's best interest to take single-target attacks (which deal higher damage per target) and to focus fire on a single enemy, bringing it down as fast as possible so that next round it isn't present to attack. Well, that's a bad idea when dealing with minions. AoE attacks are the way to go here, because you can wipe a whole swath of minions off the map with a single action. Focus firing on stronger enemies is still a very useful strategy, but now the game rewards the multi-target strategy as well (that's not to say that multi-target PCs are simple glorified minion poppers; multi-target attacks also allow you to spread status effects to more enemies, and to finish off severely injured enemies while simultaneously softening others up).

I would highly recommend that encounters featuring minions also featured them in waves. This way if the controller gets rid of all of the minions in round 1 there will be more to harass the PCs later. It's also important to balance having minions swarm PCs to overwhelm them (where they're vulnerable to AoEs), or to keep them safely spread out (where they're less likely to be as annoying). One of my favorite tactics is to use artillery minions that can focus fire on PCs while staying spread out at the same time. This shouldn't be the only way to use minions, but it's a good way to keep them around longer. Just remember that most PCs like clearing a half dozen enemies at once, even if you might be slightly disappointed that you didn't get to "use" them. Even minions that die right away have done their job, by putting a grin on the face of the player that single-handedly took them all out.

Minions tend to interact differently with PCs of different roles, so keep in mind your party makeup when designing encounters. Strikers hate minions, because any time they attack them is a waste of their high damage (the exception being the Sorcerer and Monk, who have plenty of AoE attacks in their repertoire). Defenders usually aren't fond of minions either, because the number of marks and/or punishments they can dole out are limited, and so they typically want to go after the toughest-looking soldier or brute and keep him busy while the other PCs finish everyone else off. Defenders also typically work with melee strikers to protect them as they slaughter priority targets, and minions can a) keep the defender from getting to those targets and/or the striker, or b) harass the striker despite the defender's presence, since he can't stop all of them. That said, a defender provides very effective area denial against minions, who can't afford to take a single OA because of their single HP. Controllers love minions, which shouldn't come as a surprise. They have the greatest selection of AoEs and multi-target attacks, in addition to zones and walls which are a hindrance to most monsters, but downright lethal to minions. The very threat of a controller's AoE may be enough to prevent minions from clumping together to focus fire. A Leader's opinion of minions often depends on their secondary role or the party make-up, since a leader's main job is to act as a force multiplier and make everyone else more efficient. If a leader can buff a controller's attack he may like minions just as much as that controller. An enabling leader, on the other hand, just wants to give the striker extra attacks, and he doesn't want to waste those on minions any more than the striker does.

Elite

Elites are relatively straightforward, in that they are beefed up monsters meant to count for 2 standard monsters. This alone makes them priority targets, since killing one eliminates 2 monsters from the field. Their high HP makes them able to endure roughly twice as many attacks, however, so it's much tougher for PCs to bring them down early. Because of this they can be "trap" priority targets, since it's often more efficient to take down weaker enemies first to reduce the amount of incoming attacks. Beware of controller PCs, however; each successful status effect applied to an elite reduces your side's effectiveness twice as much as it would a standard. Furthermore, elites are less likely to have effect-shaking abilities like solos (though they do get a saving throw bonus). The most important piece of advice on Elites, however, is to look it over before you use it!!! Many elites from earlier sources may have had double the HP of a standard, but only slightly higher offensive capabilities. An elite's attack should deal roughly twice as much damage as a standard monster of the same level and role, whether that comes from stronger attacks, the ability to attack multiple times per turn, or significantly more powerful recharge or encounter powers. Also keep in mind that elites get an action point, so they're able to front-load their offense very efficiently (use it early to really frighten the pants off the PCs!!!). Elites tend to be slightly more complicated to run, as they often have more "big hit" powers (recharge or encounter) and more traits. As a final note, don't be afraid to provoke OAs with your Elites; they can afford to take the hits, and if it gets them into a favorable position it may be a good move (also, movement makes a combat dynamic).

Solo

I'll lead off with a warning here - examine any solo monster carefully, and as a rule outright avoid the ones published before MM3 unless you personally tweak them. Because a solo counts as 5 standard monsters but is wrapped up in 1 body it has a significant impact on how an encounter plays out. First of all, AoE powers are reduced in effectiveness, as are powers and class features that trigger off of bloodying or killing enemies. Status effects, however, have the potential to completely shut down the encounter if the solo is improperly designed. Save penalties can often cancel out the solo's save bonus at high levels, allowing a controller PCs to remove five monsters from the fight with a single status effect. Newer solos get the ability to shake off the more powerful status effects more easily, somewhat ameliorating this weakness. Another potential pitfall is that a solo battle could turn into one where the PCs all crowd around the monsters and both sides exchange blows. Well-designed solos will be more resistant to this outcome, such as the new dragons that get a move + attack outside of their normal turn. And that brings us back to offense. A solo needs to have even more reliable offensive output than an elite. This is usually accomplished through one or more of the following: making multiple attacks per turn, making attacks in response to triggers (like being hit), having impressive "big guns" powers, and getting multiple turns in the initiative order. Solos also have 2 action points. A solo's stat block is usually much longer than that of a standard monster's, with a lot of different triggers, recharges, etc. to keep track of. Still, you're only running the one monster in place of 5, so it evens out.

Finally, my biggest piece of advice is not to take the term "solo" literally! A well-designed solo encounter will feature an at-level or level +1 solo, with a smattering of other monsters to ramp up the total encounter difficulty to level +3, 4, or even 5. A solo is most often the BBEG (Big, Bad, Evil Guy) that the party has been searching for, defeating many encounters with his lackeys before confronting him. BBEG's don't get where they are without being intelligent, and an intelligent creature will have his minions do some of his fighting for him! A solo can usually put off getting attacked for a few rounds while the PCs deal with his underlings (which they should do; it won't take very long to kill them, and killing them reduces the amount of attacks that the PCs need to endure. Imagine going for the solo for 5 rounds while suffering from not only his attacks, but also his minions for that whole time!). Have solos fight smart, and keep in mind that they got to be so powerful by surviving. They'll very rarely fight to the death unless absolutely forced to, which gives you a perfectly believable excuse for "calling the fight" early, especially if it ceases to be exciting. Solos have a LOT of HP, but if they know that they're not going to defeat the PCs they certainly aren't going to stand there while they whittle away at it. As with Elites, don't be afraid to provoke OAs with solos, especially early on.

Monster Roles, part 1

2011-08-31T07:10:00.000-07:00

Much like player classes are split into leaders, controllers, defenders, and strikers, monsters in 4e are also categorized by role, or their function on the battlefield. This is a great tool for DMs because they can glance at a monster stat block without reading any of the powers and have a pretty good idea of how that monster is going to behave. In this article I'll discuss primary roles: artillery, brute, controller, lurker, skirmisher, and soldier.

Artillery

These are probably my favorite type of monster to use because they're easily identified priority targets. They have high single-target damage output and often some AoE's as well, and because they're using ranged attacks their targeting capacity is excellent. Simply pick one of the PCs, move to get a clear line of sight (i.e. eliminate cover) if possible, and fire. From the DM's side of things, it's the easiest way to have the monsters focus fire, which provides the greatest threat to the PCs. They're also easily protected by front-line enemies, terrain, and other hazards which can serve as challenges that the PCs must strategically overcome in order to engage the artillery. It's often getting to the artillery which provides the real challenge, and PCs are rewarded with the fact that artillery defenses and HP are the lowest of any other monster role, meaning they go down quick.

Brutes

This is my other favorite monster role, and I'd go so far as to say that they provide the best "base" for an encounter. That is to say, when you're designing most encounters you should start by adding in some brutes and going from there. They're simple to run, since they usually walk up to a vulnerable looking target and start swinging away. They deal high damage so they pose a sufficient risk to PCs (and after all, combat is fun because it's risky!), and they have high HP which gives them some staying power. They also have notably low defenses (except Fortitude, usually), which means that when PCs attack them they're likely to hit. Basically, DMs like running them and PCs like fighting them, so you might as well use them a lot.

Controllers

The most important thing to keep in mind with controller enemies is don't go overboard! Most fights probably shouldn't contain a controller, and the ones that do should almost never contain more than one. Why? Controllers screw over PCs by taking away their actions. PCs would rather have their HP taken away, because they like doing stuff. As a DM, you also like when the PCs do stuff because otherwise the encounter stagnates. That's not to say you should never use controllers because they do pose a different kind of challenge, and it's always nice to keep things varied and interesting. Use them when you really want to maintain tactical control of the battlefield, whether that's to ramp up the challenge level, to keep certain monsters around longer, or to make it more difficult for the PCs to complete some other objective (i.e. keep them away from the trap so they can't disarm it).

Lurkers

These guys are a lot of fun, and can be very tactically rewarding. More than any other monster role, these will put the threat of death on your players. Most of them appear every other round to deal massive spike damage, and then use their standard action to disappear or become really tough to hit or damage in between damage spikes. They also tend to be mobile, adding in an element of suspense; you never know where the lurker will strike from! Because they put such intense pressure on the PCs, you generally only want to include 1, or sometimes 2, in any given encounter. They provide a great incentive for PCs to focus fire on the rounds when they're actually vulnerable, but beware that if your players are not tactically savvy they can really wreak havoc. Many of them can be really swingy as well; if they don't hit, then that's usually 3 rounds where the PCs didn't suffer any of their massive damage making their contribution minimal. If, however, they crit or roll high for damage they are very likely to outright kill bloodied PCs by bringing them down to their negative bloodied value (and by playing tactically there's no reason why a lurker wouldn't go for the most vulnerable PC). For this reason alone they should be used somewhat sparingly; after all, the more lurkers you use the more likely one of your crits is going to come from them.

Skirmishers

Skirmishers tend to deal respectable damage, often dealing more conditionally (if they have CA, or if they've move a certain number of squares). The most significant way that they harass PCs, however, is by their mobility. Defenders and controllers often have a really tough time locking them down, so they often have their pick of the juiciest targets (usually a squishy PC or one that's already suffered a lot of damage). Despite this, they usually have solid defenses meaning that they won't be the low-hanging fruit that an artillery or brute is. They're great for harassing the party, and can be a very effective distraction as the PCs try to take these annoying little buggers out instead of the real priority targets (artillery, controllers, lurkers). They're safe to use frequently, and their function will often vary depending on what other types of monsters are present. They'll usually try to occupy a certain PC's attention and then avoid (or mitigate) the consequences of doing so, or they'll focus fire much like artillery, since they too have excellent targeting capacity.

Soldiers

These are the typical front line guys that attempt to keep the party away from the rest of the monsters. They will almost always be the lowest priority target because their job is to get in the way more than being a legitimate threat. Personally I use them somewhat sparingly, often using a combination of brutes and minions to substitute their function on the battlefield. Why avoid them? They deal relatively low damage so they're more of an annoyance than a legitimate threat to most PCs, and worst of all they tend to have very high defenses which means that PCs end up missing more often (especially if the soldiers are higher level than the party; try to keep them at level or level +1 to reduce missing). Players get frustrated when they're constantly missing. In short, they're not really fun to fight. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't use them, though. They hinder PCs quite well, and as long as the PCs employ tactics to circumvent them and save them for last they do create an interesting dynamic. Feel free to make them more likely to surrender or flee if the PCs are in mop-up stage; they'll know that they don't stand much chance of defeating the PCs without help from high damage allies. Furthermore, mop-up against high defense enemies that don't pose much of a damage threat is extremely monotonous; everyone knows what the outcome will be, so why roll all of those dice since the battle has ceased to be exciting at this point?

Putting it all together

Like a party of PCs monsters are not designed to exist in a vacuum; it's assumed that they'll fight as part of a team, and utilize appropriate terrain and tactics (assuming they're intelligent). Even if you mix it up occasionally, you should try to pair monsters that work well together up. The classic example is a front line of soldiers blocking access to artillery, who are barraging the PCs at range. Most of your encounters should also have an obvious priority target or two so the encounter's not just a slugfest against some random enemies. Artillery, controllers, and lurkers are almost always high priority, though brutes and skirmishers can sometimes fill that role too. Don't forget the effects of level, either. A line of level-1 artillery may end up being less dangerous than a single level +4 brute. Everything I've said has been a generalization, since there is a great amount of variability between monster level, the actual powers a monster has, or even their damage dice vs their static modifier (high dice, low modifier attacks will be more swingy, and crits will probably hurt more). Fine tune your encounters by picking out monsters based on their powers and/or traits, and feel free to tweak monsters if you can't find exactly what you're looking for.

Delivery: The Emerald Iron Scepter (Session 4)

2011-08-30T19:48:00.001-07:00

Cast of Characters

Meryl "Wiggy" Wiggins - Gnome Chaos Sorcerer
Sophia - Half-Elf Valorous Bard
Tavar - Deva Retribution Avenger

The King's Welcome

The players reached the city of Ostengard, which happened to contain a landing pad for the airship. The Lander (Dwarf that anchors the airship as it lands) asked them upon exiting the ship why they didn't take it to the Astral Sun's private docks. They played it confidently, saying they were in a hurry and to just let them pass. The Lander stopped them as the hobgoblin and bugbear appeared, saying that they don't allow evil creatures such as them in the city. They were escorted to the dungeons, and they PCs were told they could pick up their captives when they left. They delivered King Norvi (a jovial, charismatic fellow) his scepter, and he promptly invited them to a banquet that night so that they could tell him the tale of their delay. The banquet, which turned out to be a traditional forum for laid-back business meetings in the city, was host to 20 or 30 people. Norvi made his introductions, and the PCs were surprised to learn that 3 members of the Astral Sun were present: Vargus Heskan, the scion of an Arkhosian noble family, Misha Silvertree, a Half-Elf Ritualist, and Morthos Akkenon, a Tiefling Explorer.

Norvi bustled around after eating very little, offering his guests plenty of ale in return for good tales. The PCs began their story before Norvi was called over to another group (no matter, as Sophia was still working on her performance). The PCs noticed that of the Astral Sun representatives, Vargus Heskan seemed stiff but very polite, Misha seemed noticeably irritated by the whole situation, and Morthos was thoroughly enjoying himself (and the King's ale). When Norvi finally came back around to the PCs, Sophia sang her Ballad of Bruce Wyllis, which was received with much applause and raised glasses. Afterwards, Morthos came over to chat with the PCs and share his own stories of far away lands and priceless treasures. They were wary of saying too much to him, but it was soon obvious that he was completely sincere in his interest and didn't seem to be involved in the attack. Still, the PCs were able to glean some information about the Astral Sun and it's operations from him (it is a magical trade guild with outposts in several cities in these lands). When asked about his companions, Morthos vouched for them completely, saying they were admirable and excellent (though he'd never personally worked with them). When asked about the scepter, Morthos merely recounted legends of it, which stated that it was forged by Norvi's ancestors but lost in an Arkhosian raid of Ostengard back when the empire was strong. Perhaps a Dragonborn might feel that he had a rightful claim to this heirloom?

The PCs decided to approach the Vargus (Vargus is an Arkhosian military rank, meaning "captain"). He was exceedingly polite, though it seemed like he was annoyed by them. They asked him what his job was at the Astral Sun, and he stated that he mostly dealt with security. They asked if it was his responsibility to guard the fleet of airships, but he said that he was mostly involved with guarding valuable objects in transit. When he spoke the words "valuable objects" the PCs noticed that he inadvertently glanced directly at the Emerald Iron Scepter. The PCs had heard enough. They returned to their seats and kept an eye on him, but he left 10 minutes later.

Failed Pursuit

The PCs tried tailing him, but thanks to Wiggy's low stealth roll he heard them and dashed off around a corner. The PCs found themselves in the outer city (Ostengard was halfway inside of the mountain, halfway outside in what seemed to be a section of mountain that had been removed to create the outdoor courtyard). Wiggy decided to head to their captured airship to make sure it was still secure, while Tavar and Sophia kept in pursuit of Vargus Heskan. The courtyard was bustling this evening, but the Dragonborn was easily spotted moving amongst the Dwarves. He crossed the courtyard, dashing into a house on the other side. The PCs tried the door, but it was locked. They were soon spotted trying to pick the lock, and the bystander immediately shouted "Thieves! Burglars!!" Sophia tried to bluff her way out of it ("I just lost my key!") but the Dwarf said that he didn't know of any Half-Elves that lived in this neighborhood. Soon the guards approached, asking what the problem was. Sophia tried to talk her way into letting the guards turn a blind eye because this was important business for the king, but they weren't having it. They said that they were pursuing someone whom they suspected of trying to steal the King's newly returned scepter. The guards scoffed at this, saying it was unlikely that anyone would breach the King's security. The PCs again attempted to persuade the guards, saying that speed was essential or the suspect would get away. They stated that they had to investigate suspicious characters as well, but that they had actual authority to do so. In one last attempt, Sophia used Words of Friendship to convince the guards to at least take them directly to the King so that they could explain.

The King heard their tale, thanking them for bringing the situation to light but warning them that they had no authority in the city. He spoke to the Vargus' companions and while Morthos, ever the apologist (and drunk at that) stood up for the guy, the disgruntled Misha said that he'd come to the city only recently, and already he'd had a mishap where he failed to register an airship on official business. Upon hearing this, Norvi sent his guards to investigate the house and the records of the Astral Sun. He advised the PCs to enjoy the banquet and then go back to their rooms at the inn.

The next morning the PCs were summoned to King Norvi's throne room. He told them that the investigation was complete, and that his guards had discovered a secret passage in the house. Vargus Heskan had escaped, and his activities in the Astral Sun had implied that he was actually a mole, possibly working for some other organization. Norvi thanked the PCs again for bringing him the scepter, and for warning him of the danger in his midst. They were handsomely rewarded, and then they returned to Fallcrest (bringing the liberated prisoners, Valthrun and Tiktag, with them).

The Ballad of Bruce Wyllis

2011-08-30T19:27:00.000-07:00

Come on people and gather round!
A story I have for you.
A tale that may be very sad and grim,
The Ballad of the day Bruce Wyllis said adieu.

A day Oh nice, not unlike today,
A sky of sun and blue.
The goblin raiders happened to attack,
Bruce Wyllis knew what to do.

They battled and fought, thick and thin
But the blimp came down and crashed;
But Bruce, like us, survived the blight;
The blimp, mangled and mashed.

Then not too far, an ambush was placed,
To thwart your favorite dude,
They battled and bashed, their hobgoblin ass
But Bruce, up their ass, he shoved his shoe.

One was left, a pitiful coward that ran,
Bruce, to him he deserved it too
When a bulette came out and swallowed up Bruce;
What's left? A finger between two.

So my friends, don't forget,
The most badass person you could ever know;
We miss him a lot, and wish he was back;
Bruce Wyllis, goddamn, fuck you!

*************

Sophia's player came up with this on the fly at King Norvi's banquet. It was composed in about 10 minutes, but gets the job done!

Delivery: The Emerald Iron Scepter (Session 3)

2011-08-28T19:51:00.000-07:00

Cast of Characters

Meryl "Wiggy" Wiggins - Gnome Chaos Sorcerer
Sophia - Half Elf Valorous Bard
Tavar - Deva Retribution Avenger
Tordek - Dwarf companion character (defender)

The Wizard's Cellar

After killing one dark drake and routing the other, the party was free to explore the rest of the basement. The first room that they investigated appeared to be the scene of a magical experiment gone awry; there had clearly been an explosion in the room, and there were pieces of destroyed implements everywhere. Nothing of interest in there. The next room contained a stone face on the opposite wall, with a jaw that appeared to be moveable. When the PCs entered the room an iron door slid shut behind them, with 3 locks automatically latching shut. The mouth opened, and water poured out of it and began to fill the room (this was the Water-Filling Chamber from DMG2, p. 67). In each corner of the room, magical turrets that shot force bolts also appeared (this was a trap of my own devising). Without Bruce the party was at a loss for strength checks; one failed attempt to close the statue's mouth in an attempt to slow the water flow was all it took for the party to abandon that tactic. Wiggy was able to successfully pick the first lock, but when I randomly decided which character took 2 turret hits (4 turrets, 3 PCs) Wiggy was the unlucky one and ended up bloodied due to 2 high damage rolls. He was also soon swimming since he was small, and the room was filling up quickly. Not much progress was made in the escape attempt the next round, though Wiggy was able to use Arcana to disable 2 of the turrets for a round (by suppressing the magic of the glyphs that were powering them). Next round another lock was picked, and Wiggy failed to sustain his hold on the turrets but managed to pick the last lock. Tavar then slid open the iron door and the turrets deactivated when the water rushed out of the room. The stone face animated, and in a booming voice yelled "You are worthy of my counsel and my master's greatest secret. Step forward and I shall look into your future." A niche also opened up in the wall, which contained a magical mirror, though layers of enchantments hid the mirror's true function (into Wiggy's top hat of holding it went for later). When Sophia stepped forward to have their fortune read, the statue simply stated: "Start by going where you struggle to breathe. From there, follow the wind into the fire. If you succeed, prepare to be a careful judge of character." The face then returned to normal, and the PCs left the room. The only other room in the cellar contained a half-dissected Vrock, and some fungus growing in a corner which Wiggy (through a successful Dungeoneering check) informed the party improved vigor if eaten (it would restore 1 healing surge). Wiggy had the fewest surges so he at the mushroom.

Airship Capture

The party left the cabin and re-discovered the trail of the goblin scouting party. Soon they smelled a strong, sulphurous odor as they descended into a wide valley. Discerning that the source of this odor (a thermal vent in a bog) was where they would "struggle to breathe," the party headed toward it instead of continuing to follow the trail. They reached the vent, and then followed the direction of the wind (which happened to roughly correspond to the direction of the airship). So far their fortune seemed promising. When they reached the top of a small hill they saw a large clearing below them, in which was parked the airship. A bonfire burned in front of it, but they couldn't discern how many goblins there were. Tordek, though still injured from the battle and crash on the original airship, volunteered to help capture the goblin ship. The party came up with a pretty ingenious plan to approach the ship, which I honestly didn't expect when I designed this adventure. The non-combatants were all shoved inside of the top hat of holding with the Deepfarer's Pouch as a reliable source of air. Tordek, Tavar, and Wiggy all got into the bag of holding while Sophia chugged the potion of mimicry to gain the appearance of a hobgoblin. Though Sophia didn't speak goblin, when the hobgoblin leader addressed her as she approached the ship she convincingly appeared to be in a bad mood, merely grunting disgustedly (very successful Bluff check). Her failure to speak eventually aroused suspicion though, and several goblins and bugbears moved their hands toward their blades. She quelled their suspicion with a surprisingly successful Diplomacy check (despite a hefty penalty for using only body language and casual grunting), and moved forward between the leader (a magic type) and the airship, as if to come talk to him. Her surprise round was spent dumping the combatants out of the bag of holding and into an advantageous position in the clearing. After several more goblinoids closed the distance to attack them, Sophia used Shout of Triumph to knock 2 Bugbears into the bonfire. The leader, who was a modified Daggerburg War Mage (from Monster Vault 2) used his icy stream attack to slide Tavar into the bonfire. Later in the battle Sophia was also slid into the bonfire (and was actually knocked unconscious there!). This was a textbook example of a terrain effect being utilized by both sides, which added a fun dynamic to the encounter. Reinforcements came bursting out of the airship in round 2, and overall the party handled the encounter quite well. I should mention that this was a level 9 encounter (level +4), which I was unsure about given the difficulty that level +2 and +3 encounters were posing to this party (and the fact that Tordek was a companion character, and thus weaker than a normal PC, seemed like it might make matters even worse). Surprisingly, the first half of the encounter was practically a breeze. I was rolling really low for monster attacks (they missed more than half the time), and in one round Wiggy hit 5 creatures with a lucky Chaos Bolt (3 of which were minions!). Again, the Wild Sorcerer proved to be much more effective than I'd previously given them credit for, though they're admittedly swingy and at the mercy of the dice. At some point the battle took a subtle turning point though, despite the fact that most of the enemies were down (only the war mage and 2 Bugbear backstabbers were left). Focus fire is a lot more effective when the monsters aren't missing all the time (and the backstabbers were utilizing heavy undergrowth to remain practically perma-hidden), and soon almost all healing resources were used up (both Majestic Words, all second winds, and 2 of the 4 potions), and most of the party was bloodied. Sophia's Stirring Shout was also a boon, albeit an unreliable one (I'd given the War Mage an ability from Monster Vault's Goblin Hex Hurler, where ranged attacks could be deflected onto adjacent allies. This made up for the Daggerburg traits that I removed from it). One of the backstabbers was finally killed though, and the War Mage brought down to only 4 HP. Even though the remaining backstabber rushed to his aid, the hobgoblin threw down his staff and surrendered, begging for mercy. Since the PCs needed someone to pilot the captured airship anyways, they let him live.

Aftermath

After verifying that both the hobgoblin and remaining bugbear could indeed pilot the ship, the hobgoblin tried to convince the party to inventory a bunch of supply crates that were sitting in the clearing, claiming that they contained many useful supplies. The party was smart enough to instantly recognize the stalling tactic, suspecting that there were still goblin patrols in the forest that may have heard the sound of combat. Therefore the PCs loaded their captives into the airship quickly and forced the goblins to take off (as they gained altitude, looking down they saw that there were indeed several goblins that rushed into the clearing in vain). The airship contained 2 prisoners that the goblins had manacled to the wall - an insane kobold chief named Tiktag and a human sage from Winterhaven, Valthrun. Tiktag was mostly muttering in Draconic, but would occasionally let slip a few curses in common. He would also occasionally shout things like "those idiot goblins will feel the wrath of Vestapalk!" Valthrun informed the party that Tiktag's tribe frequents the hills northwest of Winterhaven, and that Vestapalk is a green dragon who has shared visions with Tiktag and has thus allied himself with the tribe. Partially out of fear of the dragon (who could potentially be in pursuit of the ship, the PCs reasoned), but mostly because they were still pondering the final words of the stone face in the Wizard's cabin --"prepare to be a careful judge of character"-- the PCs unbound Tiktag in addition to Valthrun, and gave them both some rations (they had been mistreated by the goblins, suffering beatings and going days at a time with no food, if you can even call what the goblins did give them food). The PCs explained to Valthrun that they were heading to Ostengard, but that they would return to Fallcrest after completing their mission. They also attempted to explain this to Tiktag, and some of the malice seemed to disappear from his eyes at the news, though he still crouched by himself in a corner muttering in Draconic. Valthrun had no information about why he or Tiktag was captured by the goblins; he had been tending a shrine just outside of Winterhaven when they captured him for no apparent reason.

As the PCs had overcome their predicament and escaped the foreign wilderness, it was determined that this would be a good stopping point. Next session will conclude my adventure, and will likely see the start of the next DM's adventure.

New series on encounter-building advice

2011-08-27T20:17:00.000-07:00

The title says it all, really. Because of the nature of 4e's tactical combat, encounters can be quite a bit more complex compared with previous editions. That's not to say that encounters are tougher to design and run in 4e, because in my experience the opposite is true. 4e as a rule is extremely DM-friendly, and is significantly easier to plan for and run than 3.x edition (despite the fact that encounters typically have more going on).

Because of the importance of movement, terrain, and a general increase in the amount of tactical options 4e encounters have more potential than 3e encounters; defenders can actually do their job, leaders have a bigger toolbox and more available actions per turn, controllers have a more nuanced job to do, and strikers (as well as everyone else) genuinely need the support of the rest of the party. This is inherently more exciting that walking up to a single enemy and standing toe to toe with them, round after round, unloading full attack actions (ok, perhaps "exciting" is too subjective a word, but it's certainly more dynamic). But enough with edition comparisons. I merely want to illustrate that, while 4e combat can be run in a simplistic way like this, it can also be much more interesting, and that obviously starts with encounter design.

Terrain Basics

One of the most commonly touted pieces of advice that I hear about 4e combat (and to some extent with combat in any edition) is that it all starts with terrain. Fighting on a flat, featureless plain or in a 5x8 "box" of a dungeon room is neither evocative nor does it offer anything for the combatants to interact with. At the very least a DM should provide a couple of pillars, overturned tables, or bushes to be utilized as cover and perhaps some sections of undergrowth or rubble to serve as difficult terrain. These things are easy enough to add to a map, and while they're pretty simple features they still present a spatial goal to both the monsters and PCs; occupy terrain that provides an advantage, and try to hinder your enemy with terrain that provides a disadvantage. If the PCs aren't taking the bait, as a DM you should make the monsters set an example! One important piece of advice is don't overuse difficult terrain! If most of a map is a field of rubble, encounter after encounter, it ceases to be interesting and becomes merely annoying.

Terrain can of course be much more complex than the example stated above, and may even consist of things like terrain "powers" (see the DMG2) or hazards. Pools of acid, pits, cliffs, or fire pits are great when combined with forced movement because it encourages PCs to interact with their environment in a really obvious way. Make sure the monsters have some form of forced movement if you feature such hazards, if for no other reason than to ensure that the PCs need to be on the defensive. If a monster has no native forced movement powers, it's easy enough to add one! Just tack a push onto a melee basic attack and call it a different standard action. Don't go overboard with altering monsters like this, though; if all of your monsters conveniently have push attacks the technique will grow stale, and it will challenge verisimilitude.

Since most dungeons commonly involve the PCs invading the territory of their enemies, it makes sense that many of those enemies (especially the intelligent ones) will know how to best take advantage of the local terrain, and may even have modified it to suit their needs (including things like setting traps and ambush points). For example, artillery should generally have cover to hide behind so that PCs have to close the distance to them before they can attack without penalty. Additionally, it should be hard and/or dangerous for PCs to get to ranged enemies, whether that is because brutes and soldiers are blocking their paths or because the terrain is hindering them in some way. Perhaps there is difficult terrain that skirmishers and flying enemies can easily skirt around, but PCs are slowed down by.

The main goal of terrain in general is simply to entice the pieces on the board to move around, which is a big part of keeping an encounter dynamic. Sure, PCs might think it's a good idea to stand in front of a doorway to bottleneck enemies, but what if there is a holy altar in the middle of the room that grants creatures adjacent to it attack and/or damage bonuses? What if there are hostages in the room that need to be rescued? What if monsters in the room will alert their friends unless dealt with swiftly and their escape routes cut off? What if you simply sprinkle a liberal amount of enemies with AoEs in your monster repertoire (that'll teach PCs to instinctively scatter!)? Be creative, and take lessons from encounters that may not have gone quite as well as you expected!

Waves

There is one more subject which I would like to address in this post, and though it's mostly unrelated to terrain it's something that doesn't take much explanation (and thus doesn't warrant its own post). It's a good idea to plan at least some of your encounters to occur in waves. That is to say, the PCs encounter a group of enemies, and then in later rounds "reinforcements" arrive. This is a common tactic to use with minions, since minions provide a good excuse for there to be many enemies on the map. Waves are a great tool for several reasons:

They allow you to fine-tune encounters on the fly. Are the PCs destroying your enemies far too easily? Increase the number of monsters in the second wave, or even if you didn't have another wave planned have one show up anyways! Are the monsters giving your PCs more of a beating than you expected? If you had another wave or 2 planned, consider reducing the number of reinforcements, or eliminating them altogether. The whole point is that you don't put all your cards on the table in round 1.
They allow you to create larger-scale battles. Focus fire can really kill PCs, but if you expect a few monsters to be dead before a second wave shows up you can afford to plan more difficult encounters since the PCs won't actually be dealing with the entire encounter at once. Essentially you're refraining from "alpha-striking" the PCs in round 1. This is the same logic that makes the controller role tick, except controllers are the ones forcing the DM to act with fewer monsters.
They can dramatically alter the tactical landscape, which can be great if the encounter has stagnated for whatever reason. For example, if the ranged PCs are sitting comfortably behind the frontline "tanks," simply have a second wave appear from the opposite direction! Now the party needs to form a second frontline, or somehow delay the advance of one force or the other.

One note of caution when dealing with waves: try not to draw an encounter out overly long. Nobody likes a grindy combat, so don't keep throwing monsters at the PCs just because you can. Following the natural tempo of combat the PCs are supposed to have an easier time toward the end of combat, during the "mop up" rounds. Don't throw more enemies at them just because things have gotten easier. And on a related note, feel free to "fast forward" mop-ups when it's obvious that the PCs will win without expending many more resources. Nobody likes to chip away at HP when the monsters are no longer a threat (and the monsters probably don't want to stand there and take it; have them flee!).

Delivery: The Emerald Iron Scepter (session 2)

2011-08-27T18:18:00.000-07:00

Cast:

Meryl "Wiggy" Wiggins - Gnome Wild Sorcerer
Sophia - Half-Elf Valorous Bard
Tavar - Deva Retribution Avenger
Brucarius "Bruce" Wyllis - Human Sword and Board Fighter

Setting Off

When we last left our heroes, they had managed to survive the crash of the airship, albeit with a loss of healing surges (due to the rough landing, since both the pilot and co-pilot were killed). They led the surviving passengers of the airship in the general direction of the goblin airship, which had landed ahead of them. Survivors included Mindartis (an Eladrin prince), Rangrim (a Dwarf banker), Tordek (a Dwarf soldier), and Adelé (a Human merchant). Several miles into the journey, the party came across signs of a bulette (specifically, the mound of dirt where it had emerged from the ground and a swath of broken trees where it had ambled through the thick forest). They hastily continued, veering away from the bulette's path. Soon they came across a standing stone marked with a single rune just outside of a clearing. As far as the PCs (Meryl and Sophia, anyways) could discern the rune marked a "gate" or "entry" in an archaic form of Elvish. The clearing contained strange trees and a circle of exotic mushrooms, which Meryl identified as a crossing to the Feywild (though it wasn't currently active). Upon leaving the vicinity of the mushrooms, the trees seemed to bewitch the party, disorienting them and interfering with their compass. They confirmed with Mindartis (who had lived in the Feywild as a child) that this was indeed a crossing, and that the trees were native to the plane of Faerie (the Feywild). Without a compass, all the party could do was head in the general direction of the enemy airship.

Ambush!

While walking through the forest, the PCs were ambushed by a scouting party from the goblin airship. A Hobgoblin Warmonger commanded 3 Bugbear Thugs and 2 Hobgoblin Battle Guards (all from Monster Vault). The bugbears charged Tavar, who was in the lead, in round 1 (Tavar's passive perception prevented a surprise round - fortunately heavily armored and/or large goblinoids aren't terribly stealthy). The party did a fair job of killing bugbears and hobgoblins until the start of round 3, when a young bulette emerged from the ground out of nowhere, seemingly attracted to the sounds of battle. It randomly attacked combatants, and unfortunately the dice seemed to hate Tavar as he was attacked by it twice in a row (round 3 and round 5). The fight proved tough, as the goblinoids were employing sound tactics (focus-firing, flanking, etc.) and the bulette was wreaking havoc with its high damage attacks. Wiggy had some exceptional luck with Chaos Bolt, however, nailing 4 opponents with it one round. I've never been a huge fan of the Wild Sorcerer; I guess I'm just distrustful of randomness. From the DM's side of the screen, though, it seems that I was under-estimating the build's effectiveness. It wasn't too long before the Bugbears and the Hobgoblin Battle Guard's were defeated, leaving only the Warmonger left. He had charged into melee to flank Wiggy, but was soon routed after seeing his allies hewed to pieces. Tavar was unconscious at this point, and Bruce Wyllis was eager to finish the leader off, moving and then charging. The hobgoblin was cut down, but just at that moment the bulette (who was currently burrowed underground) got to randomly decide to attack a PC. The dice couldn't crap on Tavar with him being out of the action, and so the bulette chose to go after Bruce (who, to be fair, probably made the most racket charging down that hobgoblin. Bruce was already bloodied, and the bulette happened to crit. That's 48 damage to a 5th level PC who was already pretty well injured; needless to say this was more than enough to bring him below his negative bloodied value. And so the bulette leapt up from the ground, snatching Bruce Wyllis and devouring him nearly whole. The powerful jaws severed one of his hands off as he bit down, but not before that hand had managed to extend his middle finger in protest. Wiggy kept the hand as a memorial to Bruce's fighting spirit (in a top hat that he'd turned into a bag of holding).

The Moat

The disheartened PCs followed the trail of the goblins through the woods (a trail that was very obvious in the thick vegetation). If there was any doubt cast upon them by the disorienting spell of the Feywild trees, it was now dispelled; they had a clear path to follow, as these goblins must have come from the airship. They followed the trail uphill into increasingly rocky terrain, until they came upon a bare, rocky bald with noticeably strange geological features (the rock didn't look quite natural up here). At the other edge of the bald stood a castle. As the PCs made their approach, they noticed that the castle's moat did not contain water, and that it was climbable on their side but perfectly sheer on the other side (which was approximately 100 feet away). Great chunks of earth had seemingly been ripped from the bottom of the moat, and were now magically floating as a series of platforms leading across (assuming one was brave enough to jump from platform to platform over a 20 ft deep moat). Two gargoyle statues stood upon two of the platforms. Well, needless to say the party which now consisted of an Avenger, Bard, and Sorcerer wasn't the most athletic. All of them ended up failing to jump across gaps at some point, and they hadn't even gotten halfway across the moat. Their solution was to toss a grappling hook onto one of the gargoyle statues and climb up onto the platform, which was roughly halfway across. At least now getting across would only require 2 more jumps! Sophia and Tavar made it across to the next platform when 2 earth elementals (leveled up from the MV versions) emerged from the very rock of the platform. After the surprise round, 2 air elementals (also leveled up) appeared as well, and the gargoyles shed their stone forms and attacked (with devastating spike damage). I should mention that by this point Wiggy had only 1 healing surge left, so being cut off from the group and flanked by a gargoyle and an air elemental was a bad spot to be in. He ended up using that last surge during the fight, but managed to escape falling unconscious with 0 surges left by the skin of his teeth. The encounter taxed the party's resources (almost all remaining Dailies were used, and everyone used an action point), and they were desperately in need of an extended rest. Note that they hadn't used any dailies prior to this encounter, so while they had the means to really give it their all, they probably would have been in better shape if they'd used dailies in the previous 2 encounters.

The False Castle

As Tavar investigated the castle after clearing the moat, he was discouraged to learn that it had no doors! Sophia walked up, instantly recognizing it was an illusion. The party simply walked through the illusory castle wall and saw a small cabin. They were welcomed to the cabin by a horrible stench, which they soon found out was its owner who had been dead for months. Tavar's heal check revealed the cause of death to be a stab wound to the back. The party searched the room, finding an assortment of magic items (several different potions, a Silent Crowbar, a Deepfarer's Pouch, and a Bag of Holding, among other things). They learned that the deceased owner was clearly a Wizard (big surprise, given the castle illusion), and they also discovered a trapdoor in the kitchen. After smelling an even more horrible stench upon opening it, the party decided to fetch the NPCs and camp outside the cabin but within the confines of the illusory castle walls. Feeling refreshed after the extended rest, the party then went back into the cabin to explore the trapdoor. They discovered a room that contained 1) a dead Shadar-kai assassin, 2) a teleportation circle, 3) a broken line of residuum that had apparently acted as an arcane barrier before the Shadar-kai disturbed it, 4) a huge, rotting pile of strange meat, and 5) a Hellghost Dark Drake (Monster Vault 2) eating said meat pile. The drake immediately attacked the party. In round 2 a (the?) Dark Drake of the Moon Hills appeared in the hallway behind the party (the drake has the ability to gain insubstantial/phasing, after which it becomes invisible). While the Hellghost Drake was quickly dispatched, the Dark Drake proved problematic. I played the creature as it would reasonably act, using its ability to become invisible every other round and following it up with a devastating attack on the weakest-looking PCs. Soon everyone was bloodied (including the Drake), and healing was completely gone. I believe Sophia was down, and one more attack would easily bring either Wiggy or Tavar down (possibly killing them outright if I rolled well). With the drake down to its last HP, however, I simply had it flee through the door ahead. Tavar and Wiggy revived Sophia, but with the threat of an invisible opponent lurking ahead Wiggy decided to pursue the beast instead of letting it flee. It was secretly waiting on the other side of the door with a readied action, and fortunately I rolled poorly or Wiggy could have been in very big trouble. Seeing that Sophia was now back up (and attacking it), the Drake decided to phase through the wall outside of the cabin. Fairly sure they were safe (and unable to pursue the drake through walls even if they weren't) they searched the room. They found a significant haul of residuum, a book of teleportation circle destinations, and a ring on the Shadar-kai that depicted a wilted rose and was adorned with onyx gems. This seemed to be the symbol of some type of organization, though the PCs didn't recognize it. Seeing as this was a good stopping point, we ended the session here.

Closing Thoughts

I'd never used lurkers much before this, and I think I used them too much in this session. This was partially due to the improved monster design which made lurkers seem so much cooler. The young bulette, the gargoyles, and the dark drake were all lurkers, and these were all consistently the most problematic enemies for the PCs. The biggest problem was that I tended to roll critical hits with these guys, and given their extremely high damage dice the PCs were regularly at risk of dying. The first encounter with the goblin ambush was already won when the bulette snatched Bruce Wyllis up before fleeing with a full belly. I didn't intend to kill a PC here, and honestly I really didn't think it was all that likely! I was simply trying to put pressure on them by draining their surges, adding an element of desperation to the rest of the journey.

I like the tactical possibilities that lurkers present - you really need to prioritize them during the rounds that they're vulnerable because their spike damage is so high. I also like the suspense that they generate when they aren't yet taken out, because the PCs all know that they're going to appear out of nowhere in another round and deal some really hefty damage. Perhaps this group is a little too inexperienced to make full use of all of the tactical possibilities. Perhaps the party simply isn't optimal (2 relatively low-damage strikers and no controller). Or maybe it was just dumb luck. I really have been critting a lot during the last 2 sessions (which is funny, because I never seem to crit as a player and I'm using the same gorram dice!). I honestly didn't have these problems when I playtested the encounters (with the Wizard and Panther Shaman that I'll be using in this campaign, as well as a Warforged Fighter and Eladrin Brutal Scoundrel Rogue). I think at the very least I should use lurkers more sparingly. I devised (and playtested) these encounters at different times, and I didn't realize how similar they were to each other (in their lurker-heaviness) until playing them consecutively!

Delivery: The Emerald Iron Scepter (session 1)

2011-08-25T21:23:00.000-07:00

So it's my turn to DM, and this session took place last week. The naming convention for our adventures specify the general task followed by a specific detail, so it should come as no surprise that the PCs will be delivering an ancient heirloom called the Emerald Iron Scepter. They're en route to the kingdom of Ostengard, where they are tasked with delivering the long-lost scepter to its true heir, king Norvi (Dwarf). Because it's been so long since we've played, most of this "session" involved leveling up characters, players re-acquainting themselves with character details, and in one case searching for lost character sheets which weren't found, so an older character had to be brought into the fold.

The cast of characters for this adventure are as follows:

Myril Wiggins - Gnome Wild Sorcerer. I've taken to calling him Wiggy (Gnomes need a silly nickname, right?)
Brucarius "Bruce" Wyllis - Human Sword and Board Fighter. Big. Bald. Bad.
Sophie - Half Elf Valorous Bard, filling the critical leader role
Tavar - Deva Avenger (I believe he has Censure of Retribution...this was the last minute character)

Because so much time was spent on character stuff, the group only got through 1 encounter. I opened the scene with the entire party on an airship (a zeppelin-like craft kept aloft half with technology and half with magic), on their way to Ostengard. The cabin contained 4 large fixed tables, and several NPCs. As soon as I finished describing the scene, I had 2 large cannonballs burst through the cabin, exiting the other side. This resulted in powerful streams of wind that slid characters who entered or started their turn in its path. A mix of goblins and hobgoblins immediately swarmed in, with most NPCs ducking under the tables as noncombatants (the only other warriors on board were a human standing near the opening when the cannonball came through and presumably thrown out of the ship, and a Dwarf who took on some of the goblins). A hobgoblin commander and a bugbear set up shop near the door to the cockpit, and stood guard, only attacking when a PC came too close.

The PCs were at the rear of the ship, and started attacking foes that were closest to them. In round 2 I had another wave scramble into the cabin, and a noise coming from behind the door revealed that the cockpit too had been breached by a cannonball, and goblins were likely flooding into it as well. In the 3rd round the final wave of goblins showed up, and the PCs were mostly trying to clear the cabin of enemies. I'd expected them to prioritize the guards at the door, but you really can't ever predict player behavior, can you? After the 4th round the party heard a scream coming from behind the door (the goblins killing the pilot). After round 5 another scream (the co-pilot's death). After 6 rounds they finally made it through the door (after defeating every last foe), only to find goblins swinging out of the hole on ropes, their jobs complete. The PCs all tried to aid the Avenger in landing the ship as safely as possible. Its balloon had been slashed open during the attack, so it had been losing altitude the entire time (I also forgot to mention that this resulted in quite a bit of turbulence, which caused chairs to hit random combatants during the fight, damaging them and knocking them prone. Ironically, the dice chose to mostly hit the character that thrives on randomness, the Wild Sorcerer). During the descent, the PCs saw the goblin ship also descending (unharmed), landing several miles ahead of the crash (presumably in a clearing somewhere, as the land is heavily forested). Everyone tended to their injuries (and the injuries of the NPCs), and it was decided that the NPCs would accompany the PCs as they headed toward the goblin airship in an attempt to commandeer it and get to Ostengard. The PCs pilfered their ships navigational map and compass, so they have a good idea of which direction they're heading in.

Red Frogs progress update (quick summary of Investigation: The Black Powder)

2011-08-25T21:01:00.001-07:00

Wow, I've been really bad at updating this blog! That's partially because our group had a 3 1/2 month hiatus due to me working out of state, but we're back now, and we have an official name!

Just as a reminder, currently our group is rotating DMs because I have the most experience, and 2 of the other players want to get more experience DMing. Thus, our characters are all part of a mercenary guild called the Red Frogs, and each DM does a single adventure, with all characters leveling after each adventure. Because it's a small group, players usually control 2 characters each, and these can be rotated out between adventures.

Before our hiatus the second new DM tried his hand at DMing, and his adventure was actually really well-constructed and he ran it fairly smoothly. Basically the campaign was a Law and Order style investigation where a dockworker who was a member of a small criminal organization was intercepting small amounts of black powder from shipments that were coming into town. He'd been storing the black powder in the sewers below the town hall, where the party defeated him before he was able to cause any damage. My memory of the details of fuzzy (it was several months ago, after all!) so that summary will have to suffice.

The strong point of the adventure was definitely the engaging "investigation" plot. We began with very little information but just a few leads, and clues and hits were appropriately doled out. We (the PCs) probably played things out a bit more cautiously than most groups, but that was part of the fun. We wanted to get as much information as possible before acting, and I think that lends itself well to this style of adventure (if the players are willing to go along with it!).

If there was one criticism of the new DM's adventure, it's that encounters were slightly easy and somewhat repetitive. This player had DMed 3rd edition, and 4e requires a bit more boldness in encounter design, I think. Of course you can make the argument that quick, easier encounters allowed us to focus more on the plot, so it's not like it detracted much for the experience. He might have also been trying to play it safe after the first new DM's adventure, which resulted in a TPK (see recaps for session 1 and session 2).

The cast for that adventure was as follows:

Lyra Cinderfield - a Human Wizard, control focus with strong blaster secondary, Staff of Defense class feature (one of my characters).
Thorfin Gelgithar - Dwarf spring Sentinel with Fire Hawk as an at-will and a Shaman M/C. Very competent healing for that level (my other character).
Meryl Wiggins - Gnome Wild Sorcerer
Brucarius "Bruce" Wyllis - Needs no introduction :) But he's a human sword and board Fighter.

The Red Frogs, Session 3 (part 2)

2011-02-02T20:20:00.000-08:00

Here is part 1 of this session. Hopefully these characters won't die so I don't have to keep posting new characters. Anyways, the player that couldn't make it tonight planned on making a Sorcerer of some kind, and he may or may not make a second character (though he will be running one, most likely Ghesh unless I decide to roll up a Knight for him to choose between the two).

The first encounter of the night pitted us against 3 Hobgoblins and a Bugbear. I was running all 3 of my characters, and the fight was more or less a breeze. Thorfin's SC strolled right up to one of the Hobgoblins, who spent most of the encounter attacking it ineffectually. He kept rolling low for damage, and couldn't pop the thing. Personally, if I were DMing I would have had him disengage from the thing after the first attack obviously did nothing, but that still would have bought me a turn since the World Speaker's OA stops movement. Direct charging paths were blocked. Lyra opened with Charm of Misplaced Wrath on the Bugbear, moving it 1 square from both Ghesh and Fang, who blocked a charge line to everyone else. I then had the poor sop attack himself, which hit. One of the Hobgoblins turned out to be an archer, so on Lyra's next turn she used Winged Horde to hit the Bugbear and 2 of the Hobgoblins (it was enlarged), allowing anyone to freely stroll past them and engage the archer in melee. Fang and Ghesh took the bait, and Lyra spent her 3rd turn immobilizing the other 2 Hobgoblins (which were melee) with Icy Rays. One was still whacking at the SC, the other couldn't do anything.

Thorfin engaged the Bugbear while Fang was off dealing with the Archer (Combined Attack), largely to keep it from getting at Lyra. The archer was quickly dispatched, after which Ghesh finished off the Bugbear. Mopping up the last two hobgoblins was a cakewalk. Fang didn't drop once the entire combat (though he did end it low on HP), and the only PC who needed to heal up afterwards was Thorfin, who spent 1 surge.

Next the party faced off against a young white dragon. It rolled low for initiative, so the entire party was able to spread out pretty well before it acted, in anticipation of its breath weapon. Lyra's initial attack turned out to be quite the blunder, as she missed with CoMW and even though the dragon did hit itself, it had resistance to cold damage, which its bite dealt. Needless to say she didn't even attempt to use Icy Rays during this encounter, which was an at-will spam-a-thon for her (Winged Horde was used to good effect one round, but other than that she just blasted away with Arc Lightning). This dragon has a trait (Instinctive Rampage) that allows it to act on 10+ its initiative check, moving through creatures squares and making claw attacks. It was already surrounded when the opportunity to do this came up, so it drew OAs from Ghesh and the SC. Thanks to the lovely World Speaker OA, the dragon was stopped in its tracks. Awesome power, even if it is 1/enc.

The encounter was otherwise unremarkable, with Ghesh dealing loads of damage, Thorfin using Fire Hawk and Combined Attack, and Lyra spamming away. I would like to point out that the dragon's Instinctive Rampage is absolutely awesome from a design standpoint. When fighting a solo, it's easy for the encounter to stagnate into a boring mess where the party simply surrounds the bad guy and everyone pummels away at each other. Instinctive Rampage guarantees the dragon excellent mobility (combined with some out of turn offense) every round, helps speed up the encounter via all of the OAs it draws (even if it does gain resist 5 during the movement), and keeps everything dynamic. A surrounded dragon that can only catch 2 PCs in its breath weapon can easily re-position itself to catch everyone in its breath weapon (alas, during this encounter the only time it recharged was the automatic use when it was bloodied). At one point the dragon pummeled through the melee guys surrounding it and went straight for the Wizard that had been pew-pewing it from the back of the room. It didn't have enough movement to move through the Wizard's space (so it couldn't use its claw attacks), but it definitely gave poor Lyra quite a fright!

The dragon was appropriately challenging for the party, as it did knock 2 PCs out of the fight at one point (Thorfin and Ghesh). Thorfin rolled a 20 on a death save which turned the fight back into the PCs favor (Lyra couldn't get to Thorfin to make a heal check during her turn), but Ghesh spent 2 rounds unconscious, and they were the last two rounds of the encounter. Thorfin healed him up, but the dragon was slain before he got to act (actually, I believe Thorfin's Fire Hawk finished it off). Actually, one huge advantage of Thorfin's that this situation brought to light was the fact that I could use Healing Word and Healing Spirit on the same turn. Normally a leader can only use a Healing Word type power once per round, but since HW and HS are two different powers Thorfin is able to supply some nova healing if needed.

For the third and final encounter of the night, the DM's sister joined us. She had zero previous experience with DnD and never expressed any interest in the game. She reluctantly agreed to try it out back in the 3.5 days, but I pretty much lost her as we were creating her Sorceress. The character never actually got played. With the Slayer's exceptionally simplified design, Ghesh was perfect for her to run! I quickly explained the core mechanic to her, pointed out her defenses, initiative, etc, and went over attacking a couple of times. I told her to assume that she was in the Berserker's Charge stance unless I otherwise pointed out that she should switch (I had all of the various charge bonuses written in the margin, so it was pretty easy for her to follow), and to use her 2 Power Strike's as early as possible.

The encounter was against several Lizardfolk, and she ended up one-shotting her first target with the help of an action point. At this point I explained the differences between the 4 roles, emphasizing that her job was to kill things fast. She hit with every attack, taking out the next Lizardfolk in 2 turns and severely softening up a third. Thorfin performed fairly well, though I wasn't concentrating very hard on my own characters as I was teaching the basics of the game, so I completely forgot about my spirit companion's existence until 3 rounds in. I also had Fang bouncing around a lot trying to keep distant enemies focused on him, which is normally what I'd have the SC doing. Because of this, Fang's aura wasn't where it was most needed for a couple of rounds. Oh well, the encounter was pretty easy so it wasn't too big of a loss. Lyra ended up getting pretty screwed in this encounter because one of the Lizardfolk was a mage that decided dueling with another Wizard was a good idea. It was 3 rounds in before the mage was engaged in melee, and even though it didn't deal much damage to Lyra, she did spend most of the encounter immobilized, and one round immobilized and dazed. Oh well, it's a good thing none of the melee guys were able to take advantage of that (indeed, Lyra did successfully hold some of them off with CoMW and Icy Rays). At one point early on I did use Beguiling Strands to bunch a couple of Lizardfolk up (would have been 3 but I rolled low vs the mage). My intention was to use Phantom Chasm on them with an action point, but for some reason I decided against it (I'll blame being distracted with teaching someone the game, lol). Instead, this was the turn I used Icy Rays which worked ok, but a) the action point was wasted because the enemies didn't need to be bunched up for Icy Rays, and b) I never ended up using a daily the entire time (with Thorfin either), which was a bit of a waste.

Just goes to show what I already knew: you have to pay attention to run a tactically advanced character like a Wizard (or tricked-out-for-summoning Sentinel). Speaking of which, with all of my characters I kept forgetting about little abilities that they had. Like Lyra's Stoneskin Robes...I never used a minor to gain the THP until after I got hit, several rounds in. Likewise Ghesh never used his Screaming Armor's power (or Minor Resurgence), and it would usually be a couple of rounds into the encounter before I remembered about Dragonfear. While I like the experience that comes with running multiple characters, overall I definitely prefer running just one since it's easier to keep track of everything. I guess that's just a disadvantage of running a 2 player group though.

Red Frogs, Session 3 (kind of)

2011-02-02T19:40:00.000-08:00

We weren't going to let last session's TPK stop this campaign from continuing (such is the advantage of doing a rotating, merc guild style campaign). We did, however, roll up some new characters. Unfortunately, one of our 3 players couldn't play tonight, but I decided to run some of my characters while our next DM in the lineup threw some encounters at me (he's new to DMing 4e, and wanted to get some experience running it). Here were the 3 characters I ran (normally I'll be controlling 2).

Lyra Cinderfield

Level 4 Human Wizard (Staff of Defense)
Initiative: +7

Str: 8, Con: 14, Dex: 13, Int: 19, Wis: 15, Cha: 10

AC: 20, Fort: 16, Ref: 18, Will: 18

HP/Bloodied/Surge value: 36/18/9
Number of surges: 8

Attack (staff): +9
Damage (staff): +7

Feats: Unarmored Agility, Staff Expertise, Enlarge Spell, Superior Implement Training (accurate staff)

At-wills: Arc Lightning, Beguiling Strands, Winged Horde

Encounters: Charm of Misplaced Wrath, Icy Rays

Dailies: Phantom Chasm/Flaming Sphere

Utilities: Shield/Spectral Image

Comments: This is pretty typical of how I like to build my Wizards. Control is the main focus, but I definitely like to be a decently competent blaster as well. She's rocking a Staff of Ruin with a Siberys Shard of the Mage, and she off-hands an Orb of Nimble Thoughts for the Initiative bonus.

Thorfin and Fang

Level 4 Dwarf Spring Sentinel
Initiative: +3

Str: 10, Con: 19, Dex: 13, Int: 11, Wis: 19, Cha: 8

AC: 21 (19), Fort: 19 (17), Ref: 15 (17), Will: 17 (17)

HP/Bloodied/Surge value: 46/123/11
Number of surges: 11

Attack (spear W/I): +11/9
Damage (staff W/I): +5/6
Animal Attack: +9 vs AC (+free CA); 1D8+8 dmg

Feats: Spirit Talker (World Speaker's OA), Versatile Expertise, Mending Spirit

At-wills: Animal Attack, Fire Hawk

Encounters: Combined Attack x2

Dailies: Summon Pack Wolf

Utilities: Barkskin

Racial: Dwarven Resilience

Commentary: Yes, I've built another Sentinel. And another spring Sentinel, at that. Honestly, I really want to gain more play experience with this class, so I won't let a character death keep me from doing just that. Thorfin has more of a summoning/healing focus than Albus did, which is represented mechanically by the fact that he has a spirit companion and an animal companion, will take mostly (if not all) summoning Dailies, and has Fire Hawk, which is a summon-flavored at-will. He should definitely be able to fill the shoes of party healer, given that he can use his own second wind as a minor action, has 2/enc Healing Words, and 1/enc Healing Spirit. Plus he can revive Fang whenever he goes down as a minor action. Where Albus used Grasping Tide to make Padfoot sticky and deal area damage (and exert action denial), Thorfin uses Fire Hawk to make Fang sticky and emphasizes single-target ranged damage. He and Fang will be absolutely devastating to artillery. Finally, with 3 creatures (ok, so the SC is actually a conjuration) being able to move with each move action I take (2 of which are superb damage sinks), Thorfin is great at holding choke points and advancing toward enemies that I want to stay put. I was torn between picking up Mending Spirit this level or Battlewise, because initiative is obviously going to be very important for this guy to move his minions into position before the enemy can move.

Ghesh Abraxus

Level 4 Dragonborn Slayer
Initiative: +5

Str: 19, Con: 12, Dex: 17, Int: 8, Wis: 10, Cha: 14

AC: 20, Fort: 19, Ref: 16, Will: 15

HP/Bloodied/Surge value: 45/22/12
Number of surges: 10

Attack (Gouge): +11
Damage (Gouge): +10

Feats: Weapon Proficiency (Gouge), Spear Expertise, Surprising Charge

Stances: Berserker's Charge, Duelist's Assault

Encounters: Power Strike x2

Utilities: Minor Resurgence

Racial: Dragonfear

Comments: I built this guy to hit like a truck. His gouge is a Vanguard weapon, and thanks to Fang's aura he can get CA for Surprising Charge fairly easily. Dragonfear is a great opener to gain CA from as well, in case Ghesh goes before Thorfin/Fang in the initiative order (or if he wants to attack someone that's not adjacent to Fang). My main goal with this guy was to act as a "backup" character that anyone could pick up and run, so the simplistic design of the Slayer made it the obvious class for that. Also, since I will likely be running Lyra and Thorfin the vast majority of the time, I wanted a guy that could dish out serious damage but off-tank as well (I figure with Thorfin's off-tanking and control abilities an actual defender probably wouldn't be as necessary.

Solo playtesting impressions

2011-01-31T21:17:00.000-08:00

I was bored today, and so I decided to playtest a couple of encounters with my solitaire party. The party consists of a Human Staff of Defense Wizard, a Half-Elf Spring Sentinel, an Elf Scout (light blades), and a Dwarf hammer Knight. The first encounter leveled them from 7 to 8.

The Wizard

I've played wizards in 4e only occasionally, despite the fact that they're one of my favorite classes. At least in solitaire sessions, this has largely been because I've always put a Druid in the party as the controller. So some of my Wizard impressions may be a bit of "old news," but nevertheless I'll discuss it.

I love having 3 at-wills, and that was the primary reason why I went with a human (which is a race that I tend not to play that often). Several times during the two encounters I rolled low enough to miss, but high enough that Heroic Effort would have turned the miss into a hit. Drat. I have Winged Horde, Beguiling Strands, and Arc Lightning as my at-wills, and I'm honestly not willing to give up any of them. Arc Lightning is obviously the weakest link from an optimization standpoint, but I just love being able to shoot lightning from my outstretched hands at-will. And besides, WH and BS are both pretty low-damage spells (which is fine since they both offer great control), so I like to have a nice blaster option in my arsenal. Arc Lightning is particularly nice in that the targets don't have to be near each other. I love being able to pop a minion (or finish off a badly bloodied monster) and still soften up another target halfway across the room (or, conversely, finish off two minions/bloodied enemies). It's a nice spell, and making two attack rolls (albeit against different creatures) can somewhat make up for taking a hit in accuracy by not having Heroic Effort (oh, how tending to play Elves has spoiled me...).

Charm of Misplaced Wrath is absolutely awesome. I was leaning toward picking up an AoE encounter spell at 1st level, but decided to give CoMW a try instead. Oh boy am I glad I did. The fact that you slide the target before dazing them means that it's so easy to set up action denial vs a melee opponent, or really screw over a ranged opponent. You can move a melee dude into the exact spot that screws up any chance of it charging, and for ranged enemies just park them next to a couple of your melee allies and see whether they eat several OAs firing at range or waste their turn shifting away. In my first encounter, I screwed over a Gnoll Gorger by sliding him away from the (badly wounded) Scout and left him dazed 1 square away from the only two enemies he would normally have been able to reach. Plus I had him attack himself, and those guys actually deal a respectable amount of damage! My reservations over picking up a single target power just melted away. Just pick out a hard-hitting enemy and do top-notch control alongside near-striker damage. In the second encounter I had very little luck with it, unfortunately. I missed with the control effect, and the Ogre Juggernaut missed when I had it attack itself. Still, that's a rare circumstance now, especially against Brutes (which have low Will...I think I needed like a 6 to hit it and rolled a 2, plus their attack bonus is actually good now with the new monster design, so combined with a still-low AC they're usually going to hit themselves with the effect).

In the second encounter I used Flaming Sphere, because who doesn't love Flaming Sphere? I realized though, that it requires a very specific clumped set up to work most efficiently, and even though I'd effectively get 2 attacks each round (1 an auto-hit on the monster's turn after I moved the sphere adjacent to it), having to use both my minor and move action on it caused some minor inconveniences (large area, I ended up being out of Arc Lightning range during mop-up). Using Beguiling Strands to clump enemies around the sphere would be a reasonable strategy, but the whole point of the Sphere is to make the Wizard actually deal decent damage for the encounter (and sometimes to force enemies to flee from the sphere's tactically-placed location). Beguiling Strands is so low-damage that it's often not even worth it. Now I'm not saying that Flaming Sphere is a bad spell, because it's really pretty great. It's just that I probably would have preferred my other level 1 Daily, Phantom Chasm. The zone doesn't need to be sustained, and I can effectively use Beguiling Strands to repeatedly knock multiple enemies into it, potentially resulting in some very nice control. Plus the initial attack is much better than FS's. The area is kind of small, but it's enemies only and besides that's what Beguiling Strands + Action Point is for.

Sentinel

I've already discussed the Sentinel here, and as well as in the recaps for my current campaign. Therefore, this shall be brief. I was very much able to use Combined Attack to its full potential several times. The Sentinel won initiative in the second encounter, and the first thing he did was walk up to a minion (hyena) while the wolf veered around (2 Ogre Juggernauts and 4 War Hyenas formed a line in front of 2 Gnoll Far Fangs). The Spirit Companion (from Shaman M/C) walked straight up to one of the Ogres in an attempt to lock it down somewhat (encounter OA is the World Speaker's). The Sentinel used Combined Attack to pop the minion and sent the wolf the rest of the way around the front line to attack the nearest Gnoll. Finally, he ended his turn by using Barkskin on the Scout (the wolf was out of range, and the Scout was most likely to need the extra protection). The Gnoll shifted + shot at the wolf instead of using its encounter AoE on the rest of the party (who hadn't acted yet, and were thus still clumped up).

Scout

I'll clarify up front that I'm operating under the house rule assumption (which will hopefully soon become an official errata) that Power Strike and Dual Weapon Attack can be used on the same turn. Otherwise, the Scout would quite frankly be terrible, since it would never be a good idea to choose the encounter power over the striker feature (effectively leaving the build with no encounter powers or dailies). So the Scout led off with his typical first-turn nova. The Sentinel had killed the hyena furthest on the right flank, so the Scout was able to walk around the front line to reach the Gnoll that had shifted away from the wolf (with its speed of 8, the wolf got to the archer with only 1 square to spare. Since the Scouts speed is 7, the only reason he made it was because the Sentinel had killed that minion, which otherwise would have gotten an OA against the Scout). Typical turn 1 involves charging, and between Cunning Stalker and the wolf's aura this attack almost always has CA. Sneak Attack (from Rogue M/C) is used, which in combination with the charge + vanguard weapon, and Power Strike. This results in 3D8 + 2D6 + 12 damage (14 if in Aspect of the Lurking Spider) at level 8. And then the turn is rounded out with a Dual Weapon Attack (which also benefits from Lurking Spider). This brought the Gnoll nearly down to 0 HP, and an Action Point finished him off. While that's not as good as a regular Ranger's nova round, it's not bad considering the Scout's at-will DPR is better.

Aspect of the Cunning Fox could be used whenever the Scout needs to hit and run, and this strategy naturally worked really well in conjunction with the Wizard's encounter powers.

Knight

Honestly, there's not much to say here. It's a simple build that works pretty brilliantly. He got Shield Block at level 8, and just happened to start the encounter adjacent to the Wizard. When the Gnoll Far Fangs went before all but the Sentinel, the second one used its encounter AoE on the Knight, Wizard, and Scout (remember the first had attacked the wolf, which had penetrated the front line). The Wizard got hit hard by the attack (the roll was too high for Shield to come into play), but Shield Block was able to soften up the hit. Just in case the party gets ambushed (or if the monsters simply roll higher for Initiative) it's probably a good idea for the squishiest party member to be adjacent to the Knight in the marching order.

Red Frogs, Session 2

2011-01-28T09:29:00.000-08:00

See session 1 and it's further commentary here. Note that this session was also posted first on the WotC forums, and so there may be some out of context discussion. Copy + paste is just so much easier than re-writing everything though.

Well, I'd planned on posting a little bit more on this thread even though Auspex's character was no longer active. Last week's session got skipped, and this morning we played briefly until my Hunter (and Sentinel) met an untimely end as well (TPK). This encounter was 3 levels above us (I talked with the DM about how level + 6 encounters were a no-no), but alas it ended up fatal.

Encounter Synopsis

With resources stretched thin from the last fight (Albus had used 5 of his 11 surges), we decided that it would be best to try to avoid combat as much as possible. Immeral snuck around and listened at every door as we explored the castle. We avoided doors where he could hear voices, and eventually we'd explored every non-occupied door, finding a hidden door in the fireplace of the kitchen that lead to a trapdoor. Thievery couldn't open it, and it was the only way forward, so we'd have to find someone with a key. We walked down to a nearby door, and bashed it in.

We had walked into a barracks, which contained a gnome, as well as a bunch of humans and goblins. There were 3 goblins huddled together in one corner, so on Albus' turn (he rolled a 19 on Initiative, for a total of 21) he nailed them with Grasping Tide, hitting all of them. Padfoot moved toward another group of goblins to block access to Immeral and Albus through the corridor between the rows of beds. The Gnome went next, and hit Albus with an area attack (a painful one, at that; the Gnome eventually finished off the party when he was the only one left). Next was Immeral's turn (alas, she rolled a 3, still putting her at 16 total), and a Rapid Shot bloodied the goblins that Grasping Tide had softened up (in the DM's own words, "more than bloodied").

Much of the rest of the encounter was a colossal failure. The DM seems to roll 20's far more than the average person (in the last 4e campaign I DMed, his archer Ranger would crit 3-5 times during a single session). Naturally, using his magic D20 the monsters critted several times against us. And I missed on about 2/3 of my remaining turns. With a freakin' Hunter. I did manage to get one more successful Rapid Shot off (taking out 2 goblins and revealing the "real" Gnome after he used a mirror-image type power to make 3 copies of himself), but other than that I kept trying to use Clever Shot to knock one of the Humans prone as he advanced upon Albus, who was blocking a 1 square wide corridor between beds such that if he kept shifting back if the human had stood up + moved forward, he could have "held" the chokepoint for Immeral for several rounds. Well, I missed with Clever Shot 3 or 4 rounds in a row. Our lucky DM kept pounding on Albus, who had to use both Healing Words on himself, in addition to his second wind. Meanwhile, Padfoot was holding off 2 goblins which kept missing him, so while my nifty little damage sink was doing his job tactically, (holding off 2 enemies while the Sentinel + Hunter dealt with 1) it wasn't really helping. Well, it probably delayed the inevitable because of unlucky dice rolling. Oh, and Albus also popped a daily, so there was a Pack Wolf helping out Padfoot for a couple of rounds before I dismissed it to conserve surges (an attack had nearly killed it, which is the perfect time to dismiss a summon).

Meanwhile, the Fighter was taking on a human, a goblin, and that darned Gnome. He too missed more than usual, though he wasn't doing as badly as I was. Unfortunately, he simply couldn't pin down the Gnome, who had a teleport encounter power + his meat shields holding a choke point. The Gnome just kept sniping Albus and Immeral (there was 1 round where I'd forgotten about his AoE and had the two characters too close to each other, and another round where both were cornered, so there were a couple of positioning mistakes on my part).

At one point Albus went down, and Immeral spent a turn administering a potion (it's not like he was ever hitting anyways). For a few rounds, Padfoot was attacking and I got to actually hit stuff! It was really nice to take actions with the companion even though the Sentinel was down. His two goblins eventually dropped, one Clever Shot was successful (allowing either Albus or Immeral to hit the human again, killing it), and then the Gnome dropped Albus, and then Immeral. The Fighter killed the Gnome's last meat shield (with a Comeback Strike!), and moved forward. Padfoot charged forward to help finish the Gnome off, thinking the little midget was finally cornered (Immeral and Albus were both dying, though both had passed their death saves). Then the Gnome shifted back. "Oh crap!" I remembered, the Fighter hadn't attacked him last turn so even though he was adjacent, he wasn't marked! His AoE dropped Padfoot well below 0 HP, and the Fighter was just under 0 HP. Vanquished, with victory so close.

Discussion

This was a good example of how vulnerable small parties are. When one PC goes down and another has to spend a round reviving his/her comrade, it hurts. When one player keeps rolling really badly (in this case the player controlling 3/4 of the party, including the companion) it REALLY hurts.

I'd like to point out that Immeral needed to roll a 6 or higher to hit the Humans (in Aspect of the Dancing Serpent), which is who I kept gunning for in order to keep Albus alive. I know this because for 4ish rolls in a row (including Elven Accuracy), I either rolled 4's or 5's. The one Clever Shot that actually connected did so because I remembered my action point and got lucky for once with a 6. I cannot emphasize enough how absolutely frustrating it is to keep missing with a character built around accuracy. I'd also like to note that Auspex's build was much better at dealing with that than mine, since Micah had the Noble Adept theme and Heroic Effort. Had I been running Micah in this encounter, that would be 2 rounds where Clever Shot would have hit, saving Albus from taking hits (and dropping), probably saving Immeral from reviving him, and probably allowing us to keep the humans/goblins and focus fire on the Gnome. Oh, and there probably would have been a Healing Word for the Fighter, too, not to mention the fact that a conscious Albus would have been able to immediately revive Padfoot after the Gnome's assault. That's not to say that Human is always a better choice than Elf for a Hunter (after all, Elven Accuracy will usually work to turn a miss into a hit, and Elves also get a Wisdom bump, a base speed of 7, and Wild Step, as well as the passive skill bonuses), but in this case it's interesting to think about how being Human could have possibly changed the outcome of the encounter.

Even though the room was bigger than the last encounter, the beds still made things fairly cramped, and thanks to the large amount of (standard) enemies Rapid Shot and Grasping Tide were both very useful (when they hit). Which reminds me, every time I tried to hold enemies off with Grasping Tide, I would inevitably roll low on the OA to knock them prone. Usually if I catch 3 enemies with that power I'll deny at least one action (if not all 3, which I have done before), but like I said, I was rolling really poorly today (especially considering how well the DM was rolling).

Red Frogs, Session 1 further commentary

2011-01-28T09:20:00.000-08:00

For the main recap of session one, click here. This post will be a more in-depth analysis of the difficult encounter, and specifically my impressions of the Sentinel and Hunter classes.

The other Sentinel that I'm playtesting has Tending Strike instead of Grasping Tide, and I think I like Grasping Tide a whole lot better on a Sentinel. Even though I never got a chance to use it to keep enemies glued to the wolf, it was very useful as a source of area damage (especially in combination with the Hunter's Rapid Shot) and it's just so nice to be able to take advantage of the wolf's aura with a ranged attack. I didn't really miss the Shaman M/C that much, but that's largely to do with the playstyle of this DM and his penchant for mapping small areas for us to fight in. There was one instance where Albus was flanked (would have been doubly had it not been for Padfoot being adjacent) and I would have liked to have a SC to cover another side of him, but I was able to re-position myself out of the flank the following round. In any case, the Sentinel M/C would have meant giving up Versatile Expertise and/or Toughness, and given that I was pretty much the tank and that I was rolling really poorly, I wasn't willing to give up either. And given that I didn't even use my Healing Words in combat at all, Mending Spirit would have been superfluous.

I would like to point out that part of the reason why I didn't need Healing Words was because the wolf took a large amount of attacks. I did spend 3 surges reviving him in combat, and two of the attacks that dropped him dealt more than 10 HP more damage than the wolf had HP left. The third attack only overshot his remaining HP by 4, but that alone is over 24 damage soaked just by being dropped. There's also the damage soaked by starting the encounter at full HP (despite dropping just costing a surge), recharging HP after the encounter (he was under 10 HP when the encounter was won), and the extra HP granted by Friends Gift (companion slot item) every time I spend a surge for the wolf. Over the course of the encounter I'd estimate that the wolf soaked almost 50 damage (damage that didn't drain any of my resources), and took 3 surges worth (so 33). Even the damage taken that cost me surges was a boon though, since it was just one more way that I could spend my surges in combat, which is when I need them. Final verdict: I'm very pleased with the Sentinel's performance.

The Hunter, too, was a blast. She probably didn't have the same impact on the battle that the Sentinel did, but she definitely held her own. Rapid Shot is absolutely devastating, but there were several attacks that I missed thanks to the -2 penalty. My rolls were largely pathetic, which didn't help (I rolled 4 or 5 ones, and about the same, if not more, twos). Elven Accuracy helped, but one time I did roll just as bad with the re-roll, and in this instance Heroic Effort would have been more useful. In general I think this is the case with classes that are already very accurate, since I'm hitting on a 5 or 6 usually.

In the difficult encounter I saved a Disruptive Shot for halfway through the battle to remain safe after using Invigorating Stride, and I'm glad that I did. I'd almost used it before that, but decided that Clever Shot's prone would be good enough instead. I would definitely advise any Hunter players to carefully consider situations where the power would be useful: will prone or slow (save ends) work just as well? If so, use Clever Shot instead! There might be a need for immobilizing or dazing later, plus ranged basic attacks will usually be more accurate/damaging thanks to their item support.

Additional Thoughts

It's worth noting that all of this is stuff that I'd previously posted on the WotC forums. The following are insights that I wrote down in subsequent posts. If it seems a bit disjointed, that's why.

"I would like to point out that this evening I realized that when I had Albus use his second wind, I'd forgotten to give Padfoot his free HP. This actually would have only worked out to be 6 extra HP, since I'd just revived him that same round and Friend's Gift got him up to 16 HP. Still, that's 6 extra HP that he would have soaked. I don't remember if that was before he was dropped by an attack that only dealt 4 damage beyond his remaining HP, but if so it would have kept him up an extra round and the next attack would have likely overshot his HP by more than 4. It's funny how 6 HP can sometimes be worth more than just 6 HP.

Also, I realized that Disciple of Stone would be extremely useful for Sentinels. You spend a surge every time you revive your animal companion, meaning that a Sentinel's healing surges are more accessible during combat than those of pretty much any other class. Since Albus was getting attacked in that fight just as much as Padfoot, those THP would have really helped out. I doubt I would have used all of them simply because a lot of attacks missed vs Albus' high AC, but I suspect that DoS would have a greater defensive impact than Toughness. Well, at least in terms of simple math. In truth, Toughness does boost the companion's HP, which could very well be the difference between an attack downing the companion and the companion having a couple of HP left. So it's hard to tell which is better, but most Sentinels probably want to pick up DoS at some point (even if they re-flavor it, as I would do)."

"Actually, another thought just occured to me. When my Sentinel was boxed in and thus couldn't use his Daily without provoking multiple OAs, I could have moved the Wolf such that any enemies adjacent to me took OAs on him, allowing me to safely fire off a ranged attack. Obviously you have to balance taking attacks so that PCs don't have to (soaking monster standard actions), and taking them just to give yourself a tactical advantage (soaking monster OAs), but it's definitely a nice trick to have up your sleeve in an emergency!

I've also been thinking about another aspect of the encounter that we had. We were very much outnumbered after the reinforcements arrived, and from a metagame monster optimization standpoint I couldn't help thinking that if as many monsters as possible attacked a single character we would have lost. Instead, the DM had 2 or 3 guys attacking each member of our party (which was still focus fire, I guess). When this happens, is that an example of a DM "going easy on the party?" That thought was certainly in the back of my mind yesterday, but then I started thinking about how such a set up may have given us an advantage as well. That would require even more clumping of the enemies than we already enjoyed. Between Grasping Tide and Rapid Shot, the enemy forces probably would have gotten mown down pretty fast, assuming that we made sure that we gave ourselves space to shift in order to get ranged attacks off without provoking OAs (Immeral, at least, has Invigorating Stride which makes him difficult to pin down too long). Plus since Albus and Immeral were staying separated, swarming one character would leave the other perfectly open and safe to fire at-will. The first thing that Albus and Padfoot had done when they entered the room was pin the human archers against the back wall, forcing them to fall back on crappy melee attacks (so the enemies didn't really have a focus-fire-without-clumping option).

I didn't think about it at the time, but the enemies actually did a pretty good job of spreading out such that only about 2 were usually in a burst 1 at any given time (at least in the middle rounds of the fight). It's likely that this was either a subconscious or conscious decision on the part of the DM to avoid another round where 6 of the monsters were caught in a Rapid Shot, especially since after they were up the stairs, Albus (who didn't have line of sight to them for that round) would have been able to follow up with Grasping Tide. Rapid Shot's high damage may not help Hunters minion sweep any better than Scorching Burst, for example, but for forcing standard enemies to spread out it's amazing. Even though it doesn't ignore concealment or deal full damage to Swarms, it still has its niche and functions very well in it. Before I actually played the Hunter I was skeptical about Rapid Shot's usefulness, but now I'm convinced that it's a solid weapon to have in your arsenal. Sometimes area damage really is just what the doctor ordered."

Red Frogs, Session 1

2011-01-28T09:07:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago I started a campaign with 2 other players. We hadn't played 4e together for a while (these are two of the players from the Talamhlar campaign that sort of fizzled out), and a lot of new stuff has been released (namely, Essentials). Plus these two players both wanted to get some experience DMing 4e, so we decided on doing a "campaign" where we would all rotate DMing duties, switching at the end of each mini-adventure. With only 2 players and the DM, it was also decided that the players would each run 2 characters. The cast of PCs would also rotate, with each player having a pool of characters (with some even being common to anyone), choosing 2 before each adventure. Basically, they're all in a mercenary/treasure hunting guild, so the characters have a reason for sometimes traveling with different parties.

Because I haven't posted here regularly in a while, I've decided to blog about this "campaign" from my own perspective. This will probably be equal parts session re-cap and class/build analysis. As a player I enjoy reading things like this because it gives me insight into how a class actually plays, even if I haven't necessarily played that class. And even if I'm experienced with a class, it's always nice to learn how they work in the hands of other players, or under different circumstances.

My Characters

Immeral
Level 3 Elf Hunter
Initiative (with Aspect of the Pouncing Lynx): +13

Str 10, Con 13, Dex 18, Int 11, Wis 18, Cha 8

AC: 18, Fort: 14, Ref: 17, Will: 16

HP/bloodied/surge value: 35/17/8
Number of surges: 7

Attack (Ranged): +11 (+5 damage)
Attack (RBA): +11 (+7 damage)

Feats: Crossbow Expertise (class), Weapon Prof. (superior Crossbow), Improved Initiative

Stances: Aspect of the Pouncing Lynx, Aspect of the Dancing Serpent

Utility Powers: Invigorating Stride, Elven Accuracy

Encounter Powers: Distruptive Shot x2

Albus and Padfoot
Level 3 Half Elf Spring Sentinel
Initiative: +2

Str 10, Con 18, Dex 13, Int 11, Wis 18, Cha 8

AC: 20 (18), Fort: 18 (16), Ref: 14 (16), Will: 16 (16)

HP/Bloodied/Surge Value: 45/22/11
Number of Surges: 11

Attack (implement): +8 (+5 damage)
Attack (weapon): +10 (+5 damage)
Animal Attack: +8* (+8 damage)

*functionally +10 since Padfoot always has Combat Advantage from his own aura

Feats: Versatile Expertise (spear, Alfsair spear), Toughness

At Wills: Animal Attack, Grasping Tide

Utilities: Knack for Success, Verdant Bounty

Encounters: Combined Attack x2

Dailies: Summon Pack Wolf

Session Re-cap

The adventure was a little cliche (somewhat intentionally so), but basically we had to infiltrate a castle and rescue a princess from an evil villain. We were given magic carpets so that we could enter the castle through the skylight, and upon peering through it noticed a small room with just 1 goblin that appeared to be half asleep. The Fighter smashed the skylight with his greatsword, and Immeral and Albus both readied attacks to snipe the goblin as soon as the skylight was smashed (Clever Shot and Grasping Tide, respectively). This was a surprise round, and Immeral easily won initiative and killed the goblin with another Clever Shot. We entered the room, finding three glowing magical doors and one double door that wasn't magical. A nasty lightning trap greeted Albus as he tried to enter one of the magical doors, so we decided to abandon that route. We were told by the DM: "you shouldn't have killed that goblin, he was supposed to tell you how to get through those doors." Oh well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it I guess. Onward through the non-magical door.

A stairway led into a small room with a human and two goblins on either side of the doorway. In addition to the magic carpets, the party was also given 1 invisibility cloak which the Fighter used to make his way into the room. He quickly revealed himself, using his breath weapon on the two goblins. Albus and Immeral decided to delay their turns until after the human went, because presumably he would engage the fighter and then neither would need to provoke OAs from him. It worked like a charm. Another newbie mistake on the part of our DM: the rooms were very small for 4e combat. All of the enemies were perfectly positioned to be hit by an area burst 1. Albus was first into the room (he got a 21 for initiative on a roll of 19, whereas Immeral rolled a 4 and still had a 17 total), and he positioned Padfoot adjacent to the human. This gave him combat advantage for Grasping Tide, which hit all targets. Then Immeral entered the room, and used Rapid Shot on all targets (again, benefitting from CA vs the human thanks to Padfoot's aura). I can't remember which enemy was left standing after all that, but I think it was one of the goblins (Rapid Shot missed 1, even with Elven Accuracy). Anyways, the Fighter finished off the last target. Cakewalk encounter, check!

Immeral then scouted down another hallway with the invisibility cloak, listening at 3 different doors. He heard voices behind 2 of them, and the other he discovered to be a storage closet (which would later come in handy during a short rest, as I asked whether any medicinal plants could be found in there. Albus was thus able to benefit from his Herb Lore wilderness knack). After Immeral reported back, the party decided to break down the nearest door. The Fighter stood in the hallway, while Albus and Immeral stood back, readying ranged attacks for the first foe that passed into the hall. Unfortunately, the Fighter used his breath weapon to hit 2 goblins, but forgot to shift back. Since he blocked the doorway, that was a wasted round for my two guys. Two goblins descended a flight of stairs in that room (which obviously only the Fighter saw), and 4 humans attacked him. Next round went better, as the Fighter moved out of the way and a human stepped out, only to be immobilized in the doorway by Immeral's Disruptive Strike. Perfect. Bottleneck. Honestly, we could have slaughtered the opposition in this manner but instead decided to take pity on our poor new DM and prioritized engaging the humans before the two goblins came back with reinforcements. Two of the humans were archers, and so didn't crowd the doorway. After the first poor sop was killed, Albus sent Padfoot into the room toward the archers, provoking an OA from the remaning melee warrior. Since Padfoot and Albus use the same move action, and creatures can only make one OA per turn, Albus was safe to pass without provoking. They ganged up on an archer (with Padfoot adjacent to the other one, who was conveniently positioned between Padfoot and a wall), and used Combined Attack. And missed with both attack rolls. Boo. Time to switch out d20's (not that it helped, I rolled terribly the entire time. Thanks a lot Auspex, I think you cursed me, lol). Then Immeral passed through, stood near the stairs, and pummeled an Archer with Clever Shot. The Fighter drew the remaining melee warrior outside the room, which would turn out to be a HUGE mistake.

Reinforcements arrived next round, and it consisted of 4 goblins and 2 more humans. Luckily they all rushed up the stairs at once, and Immeral was able to attack them all with Rapid Shot. Oh, the carnage that ensued. He critted one of the goblins, bloodying it, and damaged all but 1 of the others.

After that, I can't remember the round-by-round synopsis very clearly. The reinforcements poured into the room, with two of them parking themselves at the doorway so that the Fighter couldn't return to us for several rounds. Fortunately Sentinels can take a lot of heat, because Albus and Padfoot got focus-fired on hard. Padfoot dropped 3 times during the encounter, and as Albus was stuck in a corner of a small, enemy filled room, he couldn't even move into a position to summon his Pack Wolf without taking multiple OAs. Immeral was slowly backed into a corner as well, since he kept shifting + firing (Rapid Shot) each turn. I do remember one turn where he rolled I believe 2 2's and a 1, hitting only 1/4 enemies with Rapid Shot. Once he appeared cornered for good, Invigorating Stride allowed him to weave back to safety so he could play the shift + fire game in the opposite direction. Fortunately, at this point half the enemies were dead, and only 1 goblin was bothering him. Disruptive Shot stuck him in his place (literally), and shortly afterwards the Fighter finally made it back into the room and Immeral used Clever Shot and slid the remaining 2 enemies toward him and away from Padfoot (who was low on HP and wanted to remain untouched since his HP would recharge after the encounter anyways) and Albus (who had already used his second wind, plus he was 3 surges down just from reviving Padfoot). One enemy actually died from the Clever Shot that slid him, and the other was quickly dispatched by the Fighter.

We had actually made it through the entire encounter without having to use any of Albus' Healing Words, and in hindsight I probably should have used one instead of having Albus use Second Wind (though the defense buff did help when he was surrounded). The Fighter did use a healing potion when he was off by himself though, but overall Albus took the brunt of the punishment in this encounter. Which was fine with me, because his AC was 1 higher than the Fighter's, and he had I think 3 or 4 more HP (thanks to Toughness, and the fact that the Fighter's Con wasn't terribly high). I asked our DM what the total experience value of the encounter was, and he added everything up and told us 1,300! According to the DMG, that was over a 9th level encounter (given that we had only 3 PCs), which is 6 above our level! Fortunately he had forgotten about some of the enemy's powers and was pretty much using basic attacks, but in light of the difficulty (and the Fighter's mishap) I think we performed rather well!

UP-TO-DATE 4E Video Review

2011-01-17T20:05:00.000-08:00

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Most video reviews I've seen are either less-than-objective, outdated (i.e. only consider the original PHB1, DMG, and MM1), or both. While this review does bash 3.5 a little in the beginning (actually, most of part 1 examines the weaknesses of this and other past editions), it's much more subdued than many other reviews (on both sides of the argument).

There were some things that he briefly touched upon that I think are quite important, so I'd like to expand upon them. First of all the updated monsters in MM3, Monster Vault, and the Dark Sun Creature Catalog. The stat blocks are even more user friendly than the original ones, many monster abilities are more interesting and stretch the limits of the rules more, and most importantly the decreased defenses (namely Fortitude) and HP, and increased damage expressions, all go a long way toward reducing "the grind." This all points to something very important, which is that the developers have learned from some of their early mishaps and fixed them. Also, long/grindy combat was probably my biggest criticism of 4e at first (I got around it by arbitrarily house-ruling down HP depending on the monster, and sometimes boosting offense), and the fact that this weakness is so easily patched is saying a lot about the overall design of the system.

Essentials was also only briefly mentioned, and that's likely because that topic is a whole new can of worms that probably could have spawned another 3 part video. Overall, I'd like to put it out there that I like how the 4e system can accommodate classes that are more reminiscent of 3.5 classes. Not only that, but it does them better. For those critics that don't like how Fighters get at-will, encounter, and daily powers just like spellcasters, this is the solution. Martial classes are built around basic attacks, their encounter powers almost all function to enhance basic attacks in some way on-the-fly, and they lack dailies completely. Moreover, their "at-wills" are usually stances (or situational powers for specific weapons in the case of the Assassin, and special movement "tricks" that enhance attacks in the case of the Rogue) that augment basic attacks in some way. The end result is that even though these classes are still just spamming basic attacks like a 3.5 Fighter, there's still a lot of tactical options to work with in combat. These builds have a fresh feel to them, they're still balanced against any other 4e class, and they offer an additional layer of choice/customizability. There are plenty of pro-4e anti-essentials critics who dismiss these builds as merely appealing to "grognards" and taking a step back in design, but I think there's room for all sorts of class builds in 4e and welcome the new guys. Besides, a lot of good things have come out of them. Certain classes have builds that are even more user friendly than they were before (Knight/Cavalier, Thief, Warpriest, Slayer, and Hexblade stand out the most), having recommended stats that make more sense and being overall easier to build and play. Rangers do more than just Twin Strike (archers with really cool effects and Dex-based two weapon wielders that actually play like mobile skirmishers!), and even if they're not quite as powerful as the original ranger can still hold their own and are much more fun and engaging (in my opinion). Animal companions finally done right (oh so right). This is something that 4e sort of failed with at first with the beastmaster ranger (their companions didn't have to fear death as much as a 3.5 companion did, but at the same time they weren't nearly as useful in combat thanks to poorly scaling offensive capabilities). The Sentinel, however, gets a mechanically unique companion that allows it to defy definition within the traditional role system of 4e, yet it still manages to be effective without becoming overpowered. The class has some flaws, but the design is overall very impressive.

Oh, he also mentioned how awful 3.5 familiars were, but didn't really elaborate on how 4e does them so much better. They can never really permanently die in combat, and even if they do drop you don't get these huge penalties but rather just don't get their active benefits (you still get their passive benefits, however). Most arcane classes that want one will just grab the entry feat to get the familiar (IME this is mostly motivated by character concept, but you do get rewarded with some nice mechanical boons for the cost of the Arcane Familiar feat), but for those that really want to emphasize their familiar there are additional feats that can be taken and different powers that use the familiar in interesting ways.

Bah ha ha ha!

2011-01-16T11:11:00.000-08:00

Comic

First Impressions of Pathfinder: The good, and the bad

2011-01-08T09:07:00.001-08:00

See part 1 and part 2 of this series. For my final post, I'm basically just going to make a bullet point list of some improvements, and some gripes that I have with the system. These will be more or less random, so bear with me.

The Good

Combat Maneuver attack and defense. Finally, random actions like grapple, trip, sunder, etc. are consolidated into a single number.
Domains, Spell Schools, and Bloodlines give casters more magic to fall back on at low levels. This is more fun than busting out a stupid crossbow or sling.
Some trap feats got fixed. Toughness comes to mind, as it's essentially an extra hit point per level, but the first 3 are front-loaded so first level characters still get a nice boost.
The classes are more balanced than 3.x, though they're still not up to the level of 4e classes. Given the nature of the system, it's unlikely that they could be, so good effort Paizo.

The Bad

Too. Many. Status. Effects. Dazed, dazzled, cowering, panicked, frightened, fatigued, exhausted, shaken, sickened, nauseated (why is this different from sickened?!), staggered, paralyzed, stunned, pinned, grappled, entangled, confused, blinded, and even a few more. A lot of these things sound exactly the same, and even mechanically could be consolidated so easily it's not even funny. The list in 4e is so much easier to memorize, and reference if you do forget something, it's not even funny. All conditions are summarized on a single page (and it's not even a whole page!). Pathfinder takes over 3 pages to summarize everything, and the print is a LOT smaller. It's bad enough that some spells are several paragraphs of description, but then you have to read even more if a status effect is referenced! Way. Too. Overly. Complicated.
Dex mod still isn't added to ranged damage, yet Str mod is still added to damage of composite longbow. News flash: if you get hit with an arrow, it's going to deal damage to you regardless of whether it came from a regular longbow or a composite longbow. The composite will likely have more range, because yes it will launch the arrow with more force. But if you're going that route with the simulationism, you might as well add damage to hits at closer range because the arrow has lost less energy. Point being, the contribution of Str is negligible. Adding Dex to ranged damage makes more sense, because a high Dex character has better aim, and so is more likely to hit a vital area of the body, which would translate to more damage. Even from a simulationist view the 4e system makes more sense. Likewise, weapon finesse should add Dex to damage as well as attack rolls. Rapiers deal damage through technique, not brute strength. Same argument applies; an agile character is more likely to hit an exposed/vital area with a rapier.
The skill list from hell still exists. But the funny thing is, Pathfinder consolidated Spot, Listen, and Search in Perception (just like 4e), but didn't consolidate any other skills! It's more a slap in the face than anything, really. That's just more stupid numbers that I have to erase and change every time I level.
I only briefly scanned the section on combat, but despite the new Combat Maneuvers system it still looks like grappling is overly complicated.
Stat blocks are just as bad as ever, CRs still exist, and the end result is that it looks just as annoying to DM as 3.x ever was.
Spells are still walls of text that require a lot of prep work before playing, or a lot of referencing during the game. Summoning is particularly annoying since you need all relevant monster stat blocks at hand.
Starting gold still penalizes certain classes. Yeah, I get that I normally won't need to buy a longbow as a Druid, but if I'm an Elf I'd at least like the option to do so.
EDIT: Wow, full round actions sure are stupid, especially at 1st level for summoning. Basically, I get to spend my entire turn "casting" (even though nothing is happening), to get a summon onto the field 1 round later, and for only 1 round (at first level, at least). So I sacrifice my turn now to get 2 turns next round. Doesn't make sense, since that's one more round that the enemies are alive and hitting the party. Delayed damage is why the original Assassin is literally the worst striker in 4e. Granted, at higher levels summoning makes sense because you sacrifice an early round for several rounds where you essentially get multiple turns, but from a gaming standpoint that's still not great because it bogs down play. Really makes me appreciate the elegance of 4e summoning/pets. But most importantly, consider this: a round is 6 seconds, and each turn just details what everyone does during that round. It's all happening simultaneously, so a full round should be the same time as a full turn. Why can't my summon just pop up at the end of my turn? I don't give a crap if I can't attack with it until next round, I want enemies to see that it's there so they attack it instead of me! Especially since during that round where I'm just "casting," if I get attacked I can lose the spell if I fail a concentration check. For a game that seeks to be more simulationist that gamist, there sure are some wacky rules.

Alright, that's all I'm going to list for now. I feel like there are a few other things, but I can't remember them right now. I may go back and update this list.

First Impressions of Pathfinder: The Character

2011-01-08T08:11:00.000-08:00

For part 1 of this series, click here. Turns out, I lied a little about picking up where I left off (with Druids). First I'll set the stage. After going months without playing D&D with my original gaming group, I have been making plans for some 4e games. Because of schedules, right now only a 1 shot is in the works. Turns out though, they've been playing Pathfinder regularly while I've been out of town, and I broke down and decided I'd give it a shot. After all, they described it as having fixed everything that was wrong with 3.5. Well, we'll see about that. I wonder if a taste of CoDzilla will teach them a lesson (in what few high level games we played, nobody ever rolled a Cleric or Druid, so I'm not really even sure if they're aware of the problem with them).

Unfortunately, the DMs were rotating and the new DM decided to start everyone at level 1. So much for making the 1 man version of an adventuring party. Still, I did my homework on Pathfinder just so I knew what I was getting myself into. Turns out, CoDzilla has for the most part been slain.

The Druid's Wild Shape is an odd middle ground between 3.x (where you essentially became a monster stat block) and 4e (where you keep your own stats and movement modes, but you gain access to beast form powers): You keep your stats, but gain the new forms movement modes (sort of), attacks, AC, and some other bonuses depending on size and level. The end result is that you're effective in melee while Wild Shaped...only if you're built to melee in humanoid form and sacrifice your spells. Uhhhh...ok, that's lame, 4e preserved the feel of Wild Shape (flinging spells as humanoid, being a melee character while Wild Shaped) without making it overpowered. Pathfinder may have reigned in the power level of Wild Shape, but they sacrificed some of the ability's "essence." Would it have been that hard to let you substitute Wis for Str while making attacks? You'd still be using your stats. Whatever. In any case, the alternative is being a full caster and using Wild Shape to turn into a bird and fly around casting spells (because you will pick up Natural Spell). Well, that's what I decided to go with.

Now we come to the Animal Companion. I stopped playing Druids in 3.5 because the DM always went straight for my companion and killed it as fast as he could. He said, "don't have it rush into melee if you don't want it to get hurt!" Well, what am I supposed to do, have it hang back and waste a class feature? As angry as I was about him "screwing me" at the time, I realize that it's more a design flaw than anything (but I still think he was screwing me a little bit too). I'd have to spend the next 24 hours calling a new companion, or else live with not having one for a while. Talk about a buzz kill. Fast forward to the release of Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms, and we get a 4e Druid that gets an animal companion! Best part is, it can be revived whenever you want, for the cheap price of 1 minor action and 1 healing surge! Sure, the healing surge mechanic doesn't exist in 3.x so the animal companion couldn't work like this...but then that's just another reason to prefer 4e, isn't it? Now, some might call this an example of gamism (4e) vs simulationism (3.x), but is it really that unrealistic (from a fantasy standpoint, mind you) for a Druid who has bonded him/herself to a specific animal to be able to heal that animal (using his/her own surges, albeit) at-will? Such a Druid can already heal allies! Just say it's the same type of healing magic, but since the Druid and companion share a magical bond it eats up the Druid's own healing surge. It's elegant, and allows the companion to act like a damage sponge without being at risk of disrupting adventuring. And such a damage sponge mechanic is a unique contribution to the party, and offers an interesting way to "lead."

I've been playtesting the Sentinel, so I thought about this as I was building my Pathfinder Druid. I couldn't go back to the "old way" of doing animal companions. I opted to pick up the Cleric domain instead. I wouldn't have a melee buddy/tank to protect me and flank with me, but I'd get a few extra domain spells to use per day, plus extra domain spell slots. At this point I'd like to take a moment to commend Pathfinder, because they did add a mechanic that really helps casters out at low levels. Clerics (and Druids who choose them instead of the companion) get Domains, Sorcerers get bloodlines, and Wizards get school specializations. All of these class features grant a choice, each of which offers a minor spell that you can cast a number of times per day equal to 3 + relevant ability mod. That's a good number of rounds where you would normally have to pull out a crossbow/sling/javelin and ineffectually pelt enemies because you're out of spells. It's vaguely reminiscent of 4e's at-will mechanic, though obviously it's much more limited since it's still "Vancian" at its core. So Pathfinder did patch the weakness of casters at low levels. They're still not as balanced as 4e casters/non-casters, but it's manageable. From what I've heard, however, high level casters do still dominate non-casters, though perhaps not to such an extent.

Another fun aspect of the Druid class is spontaneous casting, which is the ability to turn any prepared spell into Summon Nature's Ally on the fly. Which is sweet, because summoning is awesome, especially for a Druid who opted to give up the animal companion. It's a source of extra damage, and it's a great source of ally-friendly action denial in this game (enemies beating on summons aren't attacking allies, and you don't even lose healing surges because this game doesn't have them!). This is why I love the Druid's spontaneous casting more than the Cleric's; a Druid prevents damage (equal to the summoned creature's HP + however much damage the attack overshot it by), whereas the Cleric repairs it (with the Cure spells). Plus the Druid gets to deal damage while it's doing this, and it feels more "active." Plus the Druid can just grab a wand of whatever Cure he can afford and be able to patch up his allies just fine. So clearly I like the idea of summoning in Pathfinder/3.x, but there's a catch. You have to reference monster stat blocks all the time. Which you already sort of have to do with Wild Shape. And since I hate looking crap up in the limited supply of books at the table, I'm going to have to either copy a bunch of stat blocks down by hand, or make some kind of electronic cheat sheet using the SRD. Plus I have to do that for all of the spells that I think I'll use regularly. I'll admit that this is a problem with 4e, too, as I write out power cards on index cards by hand. But at least those are concise. A lot of Pathfinder spells, like 3.x spells, are walls of text.

To sum up the 1st level Druid I created, it seems like it'll be a fun character. Pathfinder did make an attempt to balance out the classes, but in doing so made some design choices that don't appeal to me. It annoys me that for full casters, using Wild Shape to fight in melee is not viable. Most of the time. I did manage to get around this, by picking up Weapon Finesse. Seeing as I'm Dex secondary, I can at least hit with my natural attacks, even if they won't be quite so damaging. And since I'm an elf, the feat also helps me hit with the rapier that I carry around for when I run out of spells.

First Impressions of Pathfinder: Introduction

2011-01-08T07:39:00.000-08:00

I'm going to take a bit of a departure from my normal subject on this blog (D&D 4e) to talk about Pathfinder. First, some background. I started playing D&D 3.0e, which was actually my first experience with tabletop roleplaying. It wasn't too long before I wanted to purchase books of my own instead of bumming off of my friend's, so I picked up the 3.5 PHB (I didn't know that it had that many changes from the 3.0 PHB). It took a little bit of time, but pretty soon my regular group had upgraded to 3.5. Then I went to college, and there was less time for D&D, not to mention the fact that the few people in my school's gaming club that played D&D played a weird homebrew version where everyone had a pre-selected character: either a really powerful, kick-ass dragon, or a dragon "tamer" with a crossbow and short sword. Guess which type of character I had to be? Guess who never came back after the first session...

After graduating, I worked at Great Smoky Mountains National Park for a summer, and one of my fellow seasonal workers happened to pick up the 4e PHB. I was shocked, for I had no idea that there was a new edition coming out, and upon examining the book I was even more shocked with all of the changes. "This is blasphemy, this isn't D&D, it's a whole different game! BLAH! But I'll give it a try, I guess..." Unfortunately, my pilot session occurred toward the end of the summer, so it was the only session that we ended up playing. But the seeds were sown, even if I didn't know it at the time. Playing it "felt" more or less like D&D, and my melee Ranger was certainly performing better than melee rangers in 3e had. Plus the Cleric was healing people and attacking them, the Eladrin Rogue was teleporting to advantageous positions, and the Wizard...well, unfortunately the Wizard player wasn't at all interested in the game, and whenever her turn came up just yelled "I cast magic missile!" Which is what low level Wizards in 3.x usually did anyways, so I didn't think anything of it.

When I got back home, I started playing a 3.5 campaign. I didn't really have any strong negative impressions of that edition yet, I just recognized that there was another "version" of D&D out there that I'd played. One day I decided to find out more about 4e, so I spent a few hours on the internet researching it, reading reviews, hanging out on the WotC forums, etc. This went on for a few days, and my interest just started snowballing. The whole role systems intrigued me, even though I'd recognized that it had informally existed in previous editions. But this time you didn't need a Cleric! Any leader would do. But Clerics were actually pretty cool now, they weren't just healbots! But what really struck me was the balance between the classes. Everyone started off at roughly the same power level, and nobody blatantly outstripped anyone else as the levels went on. Given that I love playing casters, and that the vast majority of our 3.x games started out at 1st-3rd level and lasted 2 sessions if we were lucky, balance was important to me. I was sick of being weaker just because I liked casting spells better than smacking people across the head. It didn't matter that casters became godly later, because there was never a later for me. I played 1 game where I was a mid-level Wizard and it was the best game I'd ever played. The class had hit its stride, and I was able to be very creative with my spells and remain effective. Our usual DM (who swears by Fighters, even at high levels, for some odd reason...) made this Frankenstein-zombie boss called Stitches, who I decided to take out on my own when I was separated from the rest of the party (admittedly there were only two players...). I solo'd Stitches and won. Not only did I win, but I mopped the floor with this guy. And this DM is known for subjecting us to some pretty nasty bosses. So this is what it's like to be a high level Wizard...

Too bad it never happened again.

In any case, I don't want to write an entire book about the differences between 3.x and 4e. Some people prefer one edition, others the other. It wasn't long before I became a staunch proponent of 4e. Skills were more concise, balance was much better, casters never "ran out" of spells, Fighters had interesting stuff to do, leaders could heal as a minor action, the power blocks were simple, concise, and easy to reference compared to 3.x spells, and, as I later found out when I tried to convert my old gaming group, this edition was MUCH easier to DM. DMing was actually fun! The monster stat blocks made sense! Monsters had levels instead of this bogus CR crap. And page 42, oh how can't say enough good things about page 42.

And finally, once some more splatbooks were released, if I wanted to play a summoner or a Druid, I didn't have to memorize 5 million stat blocks from the Monster Manual, fuss around with templates, etc. Everything was designed to run smoothly. And I'll pick up here in part 2.

Further impressions of the Knight

2010-12-04T10:01:00.000-08:00

My initial playtest encounters with the Knight went well, but I recently pitted the party against a group of enemies that included 4 highly mobile skirmishers (Thri-Kreen scouts) and 2 brutes with a push on their MBA's (Blackscale Lizardfolk). Against enemies like these, the Knight is virtually helpless.

The Lizardfolk weren't a problem for my Knight, per se, because he's a Dwarf. But any non-Dwarf Knight is extremely susceptible to forced movement, as enemies can push you away from their allies (leaving them out of your aura, utterly preventing you from doing your job). With the traditional marking mechanic even if you were unable to punish enemies too far away to violate your mark, at least they still had the -2 penalty to attack against everyone but you.

The Thri-kreen had an encounter power that lets them jump their speed without provoking OAs. Deathjump spiders are another nasty skirmisher that can do this. Point being, the enemy neither attacked an enemy while in the aura nor shifted, so the punishment mechanic doesn't apply. The movement itself doesn't provoke OAs, so they can basically move wherever they want and the Knight can't stop them. The Scout in my playtest got obliterated when multiple Thri-kreen swarmed him, and he spent about half the fight on the ground dying.

This makes the Knight the swingiest defender I've seen in action. They can be extremely effective, but have a situational weakness that renders them inadequate as a defender.

Balanced Spring Sentinel build

2010-12-02T10:12:00.001-08:00

Purpose of this build:
This build is designed to be a versatile, playable leader that focuses mostly on defensive buffing, healing and funneling damage to the companion or a summon, while still packing some offensive punch. Summons serve a double purpose of increasing your damage soaking capabilities (which ultimately prevents damage to the party), while incidentally boosting your DPR in the process.

Damage funneling is accomplished in several ways. 1) The summons chosen provide lockdown capabilities, which set up the summon or companion as the only available target for a monster to attack, 2) Utility powers and your at-will are used to buff melee allies taking advantage of the wolf's aura with AC boosts, invisibility, and THP. Enemies can either attack buffed allies with reduced effectiveness, or attack the unbuffed companion and have damage wasted, and 3) the wolf's CA-granting aura should be enough to incite many enemies to attack it and get rid of the offensive buff, especially if you have allies that can do extra damage with CA (Rogues, Scouts, and Wild Shape Druids).

This build has a respectable amount of healing, especially from Paragon onward. It should be plenty for any party, especially given how much damage prevention is emphasized via buffs, THP, and most importantly the damage-soaking companion and summons. Save-granting ability is fair, with Knack for Success providing some respite in Heroic, and Clear the Chaff being your big-guns, mass save granter/buffer.

You don't actively grant many (if any) offensive buffs, but the wolf's aura is active as long as it's on the field, providing a solid, consistent boost for ally attacks. You also pack more personal offensive power than most leaders thanks to Combined Attack. Your typical nova round looks like this: Standard action: Combined Attack. Action Point: Tending Strike (you can only use Combined Attack 1/turn, despite having multiple uses of it). Instictive Action: whichever summon you have active. Basically, if you have a summon out and use an action point, you're making 4 attacks in a turn, which isn't too shabby at all.

Race: Half-Elf
Class: Druid (Sentinel)
Paragon Path: Spiral Wind's Ally
Season: Spring
Level: 11

I chose Half-Elf because the new racial power offers some leader functionality that otherwise isn't available to low-level Sentinels. Dwarf is also a superb choice, as your companion regains a surge's worth of HP for free when you second wind, which the Dwarf can do as a minor action. The Paragon Path is currently the best option for improving the leadership capabilities of a Druid, offering plenty of additional healing. Spring was chosen because the Wolf's aura provides a good counterbalance to the otherwise highly defensive nature of this build. Obviously the Bear works well for a purely defensive build, but I prefer a more balanced approach. All leaders should contribute to offense in some way.

Ability Scores:

Str-11, Con-21, Dex-14, Int-12, Wis-21, Cha-9

Con and Wis were bumped at each opportunity. Alternatively, you can switch Dex and Int around which reduces your Initiative, but you can qualify for Blade Initiate (Swordmage M/C) which allows you to use heavy and light blades as an implement. Doing so frees up your weapon enchantment for something other than an Alfsair Spear.

Hit Points / Bloodied: 93/46 (12 base + 21 Con + 50 level + 10 Toughness)
Healing Surges: 14 (7 base + 5 Con +2 Durable)
Healing Surge Value: 28 (1/4 HP + 4 Swift Recover +1 Belt of Vigor)

Since you want your animal companion and summons to soak as much damage as possible, you want to make sure that you have enough HP and surges to take that punishment. More importantly, you want your surge value to be as high as possible. This is because when you re-summon your companion after it's been reduced to 0 HP, it comes back with HP equal to your healing surge value. It also gets free HP equal to your healing surge value when you use your second wind, so the higher your surge value the more damage your companion can soak.

Defenses
AC: 27 (10 base +5 level +5 Con +2 enh +3 Hide +1 shield +1 feat)
Fortitude: 24 (10 base +5 level +5 Con +2 class +2 enh)
Reflex: 20 (10 base +5 level +2 Dex +2 enh +1 shield)
Will: 22 (10 base +5 level +5 Wis +2 enh)

Initiative: +7 (+5 level +2 Dex)

Speed: 6

At-Will Powers
Animal Attack
Tending Strike

This build is primarily focused on defensive buffing, so Tending Strike is a natural choice. It's best to buff up melee allies that focus on enemies within your wolf's aura; this way enemies must choose to either attack a buffed PC, or the damage-soaking companion. Either way you're doing your job.

Encounter Powers
Combined Attack x3
Spiral Gust

Combined Attack can't be traded out, so you might as well make the most of it. Focus fire on an enemy that a Summon will use its Instinctive Action on for impressive burst damage for a leader. It'll be your go-to attack when Tending Strike's THP aren't needed. It's also useful for shuffling around your companion's position (Move action: you move adjacent to an enemy, companion shifts. Standard Action: Combined Attack allows companion to move its speed as a free action, and you both attack target).

Daily Powers
1: Summon Pack Wolf
5: Life Blood Harvest
9: Summon Crocodile

The Pack Wolf synergizes extremely well with the Wolf companion, resulting in enemies being locked down (via the Pack Wolf's prone and companion's OA) next to a summon and a companion, both of which you want to funnel attacks onto. The Crocodile works much the same way, only by directly grabbing an enemy and holding it in place (make sure that place is in your Wolf's aura). Life Blood Harvest gives you a nice emergency heal for when your Healing Words and buffing/damage funneling just won't cut it.
Variant 1: Destructive Harvest makes a good alternative to Life Blood Harvest if you find that you don't need the healing all that much (especially true if there's another leader in the party). It's great against solos and elites, as it provides a nice damage buff to allies adjacent to the target. Works particularly well if you have a lot of melee multi-attackers in your party (Rangers, Monks, and Whirling Barbarians).
Variant 2: This is another variant on your level 5 selection. If you want to go with a full summoning theme, and if your party can coordinate to keep enemies from running away, Summon Shadow Ape simultaneously brings a defensive buff, a DPR boost, and damage funneling to the table.

Utility Powers
2: Barkskin
6: Camouflage Cloak
10: Clear the Chaff
F: Swift Recovery (heal)

Barkskin and Camouflage Cloak both provide excellent defense buffs to allies with a minor action. They can both help you funnel damage onto a summon or your companion if you use them on melee allies that are taking advantage of the wolf's aura. Once again, enemies must choose between attacking buffed allies or the annoying wolf that's providing CA. Clear the Chaff is a phenomenal save granter, which by this level is probably going to get plenty of use. Prior to this Knack for Success was the only way you could grant saves.
Variant: If you prefer to have more offensive buffing power, choose Guided Shot (perception) for your skill power, which turns an ally's missed attack against AC into an attack vs Reflex (which will likely hit, if it didn't miss by much initially).

Misc Powers
R: Knack for Success
U: Restore Life

Knack for Success is the major reason why Half Elf was chosen for this build. Because Sentinels get Combined Attack forced on them, they have fewer leader options during combat that other leader classes.

Feats
1: Melee Training (Wis)
2: Versatile Expertise (spear weapon, spear implement)
4: Swift Recovery
6: Skill Power
8: Toughness
10: Durable
11: Armor Specialization (Hide)

Other feats that work well for this build are Improved Defenses, Superior Will, Strong Willed Summoning in late Heroic or early Paragon, and Battlewise if you prefer getting your wolf into position before your allies take their first turn (however, since you don't specialize in offensive buffing or de-buffing, you don't really need to go first as much as some of the more aggressive leaders or your controller counterparts). Blade Initiate is an option if you want to wield something other than an Alfsair Spear, and if you want to focus more on off-striking with Combined Attack then damage boosting feats like Weapon Focus, TWF, etc are useful. Check out Initiate of the Faith (Cleric M/C) if you want an extra Daily heal, though you may want to train it out once the build's healing capabilities start to pick up.

Items
Main-Hand: Alfsair Spear +2 with Siberys Shard of the Mage +1
Off-Hand: Light Shield
Armor: Lifeblood Armor +2
Neck: Healer's Brooch +2
Arms: Iron Armbands of Power
Waist: Belt of Vigor
Companion: Friend's Gift

Lifeblood Armor makes sure that you're buffed with THP at the start of every encounter. You'll need the Alfsair Spear to use both Weapon and Implement attacks. You'll definitely want to use implement attacks, as Summons are much better than most of the weapon-based dailies. The Shard and Iron Armbands keep your damage up to par since Combined Attack pretty much forces you to be an off-striker. Belt of Vigor boosts your surge value, and the Friend's Gift gives your Animal Companion extra HP when you spend a healing surge to have it re-gain HP. This definitely works when you second wind, though it's unclear whether it works when you re-summon. "Doing so causes your animal companion to appear in the nearest unoccupied space, with hit points equal to your healing surge value." IMO it works fine since the companion goes from 0 HP to surge value HP as a direct result of you spending a minor action and a healing surge, but the wording is a little ambiguous.

Essentials Playtest

2010-12-01T21:22:00.001-08:00

Long time since I've posted! I guess that'll happen when you've been living in free Forest Service "housing" for several months.

Anyways, I decided to take some of the new builds out for a spin, via a couple of "solitaire" encounters. The party was 6th level, and consisted of a Half-Elf Spring Sentinel, an Elf Scout, a Dwarf Knight, and an Elf Predator Druid (since I know the class well, and I wanted at least one non-essentials PC).

Knight: I'll start with this guy since he was released first in HotFL. It was kind of nice, especially for a solitaire encounter where I was controlling everything, that the mechanics for defending were so simple without compromising effectiveness. The defender aura is more intuitive than marking, and doesn't require minis or tokens to be labeled. Honestly, it was a pain before when multi-marks (from Come and Get it, for example) would end after a turn and I'd have to remember to remove labels so I didn't over-extend marks accidentally. One less thing to book-keep.

Mark punishment was brutal! Since it's an OA instead of an immediate action, you can punish multiple enemies per turn. Plus you benefit from whatever stance is active, and you can make punishment more deadly by using Power Strike with it. Higher level elite brutes usually have no qualms about triggering punishment and soaking the damage to do whatever they want, but when the punishment is enhanced with a stance effect and a Power Strike even they start to think twice! Even with two stances, I found it tactically engaging to juggle them on any given turn. You may want one stance for your standard action attack, but another one might work better with your OAs. Assuming you're already in melee, you can switch stance, attack, and then switch stance back. Both of my stances (Defend the Line and Hammer Hands) were useful for standard action attacks and OAs, albeit under different circumstances. A savvy player could certainly be satisfied with the tactical options that the Knight presents, despite its apparent lack of variety in powers.

I'd like to note that I started the first encounter with Measured Cut, and for the first 2 or 3 rounds found myself wishing that I had Hammer Hands. I basically just stayed in Defend the Line for those rounds, and finally decided "screw it, it's a playtest so I'll trade out stances mid-encounter!" As frequently as Hammer Hands was useful, I actually didn't have much luck with it, though that was purely the fault of the dice. Fortunately the Predator could cover the forced movement whenever the Knight missed, but at the expense of other options.

Sentinel: I was really excited about this build, but the play experience was a little dry. That may have been because the Knight and Scout were so surprisingly fun whereas the Sentinel was pretty much what I expected it would be. I also made some "beginner" mistakes with the positioning of the wolf. Basically, the wolf and Knight didn't play all that well together because there were several occasions where I wanted to use Hammer Hands, but it would have pushed the enemy outside of the wolf's aura. Plus you almost always want the wolf to get attacked since it's such an effective damage sponge, but the Knight's aura basically shut that function down. The wolf should almost always go off to establish a "second front" to attract the rest of the party to a focus-fire bonanza, with the Sentinel either joining it or helping the defender. It's hard to judge with a solitaire experience, but I found that the Sentinel itself didn't get attacked all that much. Obviously they want the pet to take the brunt of attacks, but early to mid encounter it's beneficial give the companion free HP via second wind before it's knocked out. The Sentinel just never took enough damage to justify using a second wind. Perhaps he was hanging around the Knight too much.

I can see new players possibly being unsatisfied with the Sentinel, because it's difficult to appreciate how the companion prevents damage. I also found myself spamming Tending Strike most of the time, and it got to the point where the encounter didn't seem all that dangerous between monsters having to chew through THP and wasting attacks on the companion and summon. Effective, yes, but in a very passive way. In two higher level encounters (with one party member short, no less) I actually only used one Healing Word. I'm guessing that this subtle defense was a major motivating factor for the developers locking this guy into Combined Attack. I must admit it was nice respite from all of that damage prevention. Too bad I missed with the initial attack 3 out of 4 uses of it (at least the wolf always got to hit!).

Overall, the wolf's aura was pretty amazing. There was not a single round in 2 encounters that the Predator and Scout lacked for CA (it also helped that both had Cunning Stalker). The lockdown synergy with Summon Pack Wolf worked brilliantly, and I was almost sad when the monster was finally killed.

Scout: Ever since the first PHB I've wanted a Dex-based melee ranger, though the real disappointment had always been that Twin Strike spamming was so gosh-darn boring. Finally, my wishes have come true, and it doesn't disappoint! Between the Wolf's aura and Cunning Stalker this guy could pretty much do whatever he wanted and count on having CA for it (same goes for the Predator Druid, who had never gotten so much use out of Claw Gloves!). My Aspects were Lurking Spider and Cunning Fox, which was a very fun combination. Can't beat Lurking Spider for straight damage and nova rounds, but I found myself mostly sticking with Cunning Fox. Never have hit and run tactics been so easy and fluid to employ. Let me tell you, Scouts absolutely thrive in parties with a good controller that liberally applies immobilized/restrained/dazed/prone. Speaking of which, World Serpent's Grasp turned the Predator Druid into an absolute beast, especially with the Knight constantly slowing with Defend the Line. Probably another reason why these encounters seemed like cakewalks :)

Scouts may not pack the nova punch of their Two-Blade Style cousins, but they're not too shabby. I picked up the Rogue M/C feat for an encounter use of sneak attack (I literally always have CA, and use a rapier + short sword, so it's kind of a no-brainer). My nova round typically involved charging a lone enemy or an enemy in the wolf's aura (with a vanguard rapier). I'd be in the Lurking Spider stance for the extra damage, and I'd blow a Sneak Attack and a Power Strike, then follow up with a Dual Weapon Strike. Bazinga! Between charging, CA, and using light blades accuracy was not even remotely an issue.

I'm usually not the biggest fan of strikers, and the ones I do like tend to be good secondary controllers (Monks, Rogues, and Warlocks). But skirmishing around with the Scout was a blast! It's certainly not as tactically engaging as a controller or leader, but between bouncing around everywhere and juggling stances there's enough there to keep you entertained. Plus I love the Ranger archetype, so it's nice to finally have my vision of the class realized mechanically.

Looking forward to logging some more time with these guys, particularly some more challenging encounters.

Unifying Controller feature?

2010-07-09T13:57:00.001-07:00

In a recent article on the upcoming D&D Essentials line, Mike Mearls notes that a new rules update that will be released with the rules compendium will give Wizards miss effects with their encounter powers. The example that they used was that Burning Hands will now do half damage on a miss (and this seems to be whether or not you're playing the original class or the Essentials version of a Wizard). Personally, I'm really hoping that this change will affect not just Wizards, but all controllers (Druids, Invokers, Psions, and Seekers, as well).

As was brought up in the blog Square Fireballs, this would make for a perfect "controller feature" to unify all of the controller classes, much like all leaders get a minor action 2/enc heal, all defenders mark, and all strikers get bonus damage. Thus far, controllers have fulfilled their role almost solely through their powers. Technically they'd still be doing that with this feature, with the major difference being that their encounter powers simply work fundamentally differently from the encounter powers of other roles. The precedent of powers working differently has already been set with the Psionic classes that use power points (Psion, Ardent, and Battlemind).

Ideally, the miss effects would embody more than just half damage - after all, controllers are typically more about status effects. Half damage would be the easiest blanket errata to implement, but miss effects could also be implement without re-writing every single encounter power. Perhaps effects could be ranked, such that a power that dazes on a hit might slow on a miss. The penalties of debuffs could be halved on a miss. For effects that don't have an obvious "weaker version," a -2 attack penalty could be inflicted (fluff-wise, the enemy was able to shake off the effect but the effort distracted and/or drained them enough to compromise their offense). Or perhaps missed powers with effects could still inflict the original effects, but would instead deal no damage.

Overall though, even just half damage would be pretty nifty, as a controller would be making a positive contribution every time it used an encounter power, guaranteed. Given that controllers tend to have a lot of AoE's, multi-target attacks, and/or "splash damage" attacks, even missing the majority of targets would result in decent total damage spread out over multiple creatures. Plus their ability to destroy minions would be unparalleled, such that a Monk with Five Storms or a Swordmage with Sword Burst could no longer become just as effective a minion sweeper as a controller.

The only concern would be that this type of feature might place controller classes slightly above the power curve, relative to the other roles. Or perhaps I've just gotten used to the balance of power as it currently stands. I still hear plenty of complaints about controllers, even if I personally find them perfectly competitive and sometimes brutally effective.

D&D Essentials classes

2010-07-09T13:25:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a long time since I've posted, but with all the buzz surrounding the recent Cleric preview from the upcoming Essentials line I figured I might as well throw in my opinion. The similarity to previous editions, where new class features are gained through leveling, is readily apparent. This is actually one thing I didn't like about 3.x edition (the edition that I started playing; I can't comment on anything earlier), so I'm a little nervous about that. I always felt like certain class features were a big part of the appeal of a given class, and I kind of felt gypped when I didn't start out with them. The Druid's Wild Shape is the perfect example, as a Druid didn't gain that ability until 5th level. Our campaigns generally started at 1st or 3rd level, and were almost always one-shots. A failure of the group, I know, but I was still stuck with playing a Druid that didn't quite feel right (I liked shapeshifting). I know my group couldn't have been the only one that didn't get past low levels very often. After all, everyone likes to get experience with different classes.

The fact that the Druid gets Wild Shape right out of the box, and the Wizard can always cast spells (thanks to the at-will system), etc., were some of the biggest reasons why I was drawn to 4e. So a step backwards to level-dependent class features seems like exactly that-a step backwards. But then again, 4e classes obviously gained different abilities when they leveled; it's just that they were called powers. The main difference being that no one power comprised a huge chunk of a given class's essence, and there were often multiple "versions" of an ability at different levels. Scorching Burst may not be called Fireball, but for all intents and purposes it serves the same thematic purpose. Your Wizard could blast multiple enemies with arcane flame. Perhaps the Essentials class features will feel more like powers (or rituals), in which case I wouldn't mind such a progression.

Another major difference is that different classes will have varying levels of complexity. This is a welcome change, as new players would benefit from simpler classes, but also veteran players who control multiple PCs, for example, but don't want something quite as streamlined as a DMG2 companion character. Besides, the point that's been made about Daily powers on Martial characters not making sense is valid. I can live with it because it makes Fighters, etc much more interesting, but there's an appeal to having the more "realistic" version as well.

This brings me to my final point, on why I think that the Essentials line is overall a very good thing for the system. It adds variety, and has the potential to appeal to more people. This is especially nice in the case of those classes that have original versions and Essentials versions (Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, and Warlock, for now). Say, for example, you really like the Wizard archetype. Now you have 2 different ways to play a Wizard within the same system. This goes beyond having a choice of builds. What the Essentials classes do is give you a different mechanical interpretation of a class. Personally, I'm very interested in how they re-imagine these classes. These new takes on classic classes may appeal more to some people than the original 4th edition version. And the beauty of it is that they don't render the original versions obsolete, because there are invariably going to be people who prefer those versions to the new ones. Personally, I expect that I'd rather play the original Fighter, even if I do recognize that a simplified non-Daily version enhances the game. And given the cross compatibility, and the fact that Essentials versions are free to pick up any class power, including the original ones, it seems like players can even create a class that's a happy medium between the original version and the Essentials version.

As always, more options are good.

PHB3 Skill Powers

2010-04-04T09:12:00.000-07:00

First of all, the reason for my recent lack of posts is because I have a seasonal job for the Forest Service, and where I'm living I don't have consistent internet access. Still, I may post something every now and then.

Now on to the subject of the post. I skimmed through the skill powers in the PHB3 and thought "meh." Some looked sort of useful, worth the Skill Power feat but probably not a replacement for a class utility power slot (unless, of course, it's one of the newer classes with fewer power choices, which inevitably leads to levels with no interesting choices). Then I was reading the WotC message board, and someone commented about all the new ways to heal, citing skill powers as one of them. My interest was piqued. I hadn't really read through the powers for Heal, but there are some real gems in there!

Starting as early as level 2, you can get an encounter "let an ally spend a surge" (albeit, a dying ally). At level 6 there's 2 melee range powers, one that lets you or an ally spend a surge, and one that lets an ally second wind without taking an action to do so (the former is a standard action, the latter a minor). At level 10 you can allow an ally to regain second wind. And at level 16 you essentially get the Cleric's CLW (underpowered for its level, but still).

Endurance is even better, at level 10. And immediate reaction to spend a healing surge when you become bloodied! As an encounter power!

So why are these skill powers that facilitate healing so significant? Simply put, it mitigates a role imbalance that has been present in 4e from the outset, namely that the most important role to have in your party is the Leader. Sure, every character has a second wind, but for difficult encounters most parties will need more than that to survive. Now, any character with the Heal (or Endurance) skill can boost the party's (or their own) survivability by trading out their own class Utility powers, or even better, for the price of a feat.

Leaders are still extremely valuable (for buffing, and for easier healing resources), but now most groups will feel less pressured to include a leader in the party just because they feel that they have to (especially since controllers share the responsibility of buffing/debuffing with leaders).

Plus, skill powers obviously make skill choice more meaningful. Heal and Endurance were fairly low priority skills before (at least in my experience), and this makes them more competitive. So in general, while skill powers tend to be slightly underpowered compared to class powers, they can be invaluable in filling gaps in the party, and having the option to either trade out a class Utility or spend a feat (or do both) provides even more options for customization.

Talamhlar - Session 6

2010-02-23T21:03:00.000-08:00

Cast of Characters

Garret Kahneus - Half Elf Valorous Bard
Alaric Rose - Elf Archer Ranger
Zelmar Tarien - Eladrin Orb Wizard
Gaknar - Half Elf (formerly Goblin) companion character (striker)
Annie Ramsey - Human companion character (defender)

Into the Underdark

After they defeated Finch's debt collectors, the party entered a tunnel that took them gradually down, about 300 feet below the surface. Garret soon learned that the maps that they'd obtained were of fairly poor quality, as there were many side tunnels that weren't drawn in and many blank spaces. Still, the party traveled through the nearly total darkness (phosphorescent fungi and small lodes of glowstone occasionally offered dim light) until they rounded a bend in the tunnel and noticed a brighter (though still dim by surface standards) light up ahead. Alaric scouted it out, and discovered the King's Highway. On the map it showed up as simply a large tunnel, but this unique Underdark feature was carved by the god Torog himself. After being wounded and then cursed by his Primordial rival right before he delivered a death blow, Torog's injuries are unable to heal themselves, and he is trapped in the Underdark. He made the King's Highway in the late stages of the Dawn War as he rampaged, nearly insane with frustration, through his new domain. This section happened to carve through large lodes of glowstone (hence the light), and contained (as is common along the King's Highway) puddles of the god's immortal blood.

After walking several miles, the party heard footsteps coming from one of the side tunnels. They readied themselves at the entrance, and out stumbled Zelmar. He recently escaped a cave-in as his mentor stayed back to battle a rival, and unable to return the way he came he has been wandering through the tunnels for about a day. Alone in a dangerous place, he decided to travel with the rest of the party. He did use Mage Hand to grab a sample of Torog's blood in a vial, though when he turend it upside down it slowly started to dissolve the cork, so he keeps it out while they travel (the Mage Hand holds it, floating beside him). As they traveled further, they were forced to make camp in a small side tunnel just off of the King's Highway. They also heard footsteps and felt a strong mental presence while traveling the Highway, and were terrified as an Illithid passed through a junction in the tunnels opposite them. The intrusive presence that accompanied it seemed to be pre-occupied and in a hurry, which was lucky for the party. It simply looked at them and moved along. A few minutes down the Highway, they found the body of a humanoid that had had its brain eaten by it. Testing the effect of Torog's blood on flesh, Garret and Annie dipped the corpse head-first into one of the puddles. The blood seemed "excited" as it rippled slightly when the head was submerged, but otherwise it had no effect.

When the party finally reached Forgehome they were turned away at the gate. Security was heightened recently, and no outsiders were allowed in the city without being vouched for by a local. They tried to convince the guard to send for Brocc (the Gnome that they were seeking out), but he didn't allow them to pass. As they made camp nearby, they were approached by a Dwarf. His name was Heldrek, and he told the party that if they helped him out, he would get them into the city. He was a mining prospector that was currently working on a small mine nearby. About a week ago, his workers never returned. After a few days he assembled a team to investigate, but they never returned. Now it was the party's turn. They followed him and descended into the shaft. There were dozens of bodies (the miners), and all had been stripped of all metal (the wooden handles were all that remained of their tools). Their hands were all missing, and several large fungal orbs floated lazily about, with some fungal humanoids (Myconids) standing guard. The fight was extremely tough for the party, as the spore orbs floated in and boxed them at the bottom of the shaft. When killed, the orbs exploded. Zelmar's first round in the party was an awful one, as his AoE missed the 2 Myconids but hit 2 spores (catching everyone in the explosion). This was after the Myconids had used AoE's of their own. The party was already low on HP at this point, and it only got worse from their. The Myconids had the ability to spread damage, making focused fire virtually useless. The party never maneuvered out of their corner, making them easy targets for the Myconid's AoE's and the spore's explosions. Zelmar's dice were determined to cursed, as he consistently rolled extremely low (and with all of his AoE's, he had many chances to roll). Even Alaric's normally crit-enchanted dice were of little help. The combat dragged on with the party boxed in and constantly on the defensive, with many characters getting knocked unconscious often. Alaric spent standard actions to perform Heal checks on more than one occasion, and at one point Garret was able to spend a surge after rolling a 20 on his death save. Second Winds were used, and Garret's Majestic Words were all spent. Many potions were also drunk. In the end, Gaknar and Annie were both killed.

Garret was ambivalent toward Gaknar's death and for a while it was assumed that the party just left his body in the mine (after this fight they fled the mine). Heldrek wanted them to investigate further, and Garret finally agreed that if he payed for Annie's resurrection they would clear the mines of all hostile creatures. Heldrek wanted something valuable to keep as collateral. Garret offered the crystal that they were going to show Brocc, but Heldrek didn't think it looked like anything special. So while Alaric and Zelmar stayed with Annie's body at a temple of Moradin, Garret and Heldrek sought out Brocc. Heldrek went to an Alehouse (no outsiders allowed!) to learn the Gnome's whereabouts, and then they headed off to meet him. When Brocc opened the door a bucket of water fell on Garret's head. He then had Garret come inside (Heldrek, distrustful as he is, insisted that the Brocc meet them outside) to prove that nothing else would happen, but when Garret stepped back out a pressure plate caused a black, oily substance to spray in his face. Brocc found the practical joke amusing. Garret said that his friend just died and he wasn't in the mood, but Brocc didn't see what that had to do with anything. He offered to look at the crystal, but then ran into his house and shut the door. Garret simply sat down and cried for about 10 minutes, at which point Brocc came back out grinning, and stated "third time's the charm!"

Brocc was actually very impressed with the crystal. He told Garret that not only was this a Fenorian crystal, but it was a stable Fenorian crystal. The last time he'd seen one was when his grandfather helped Aston Grimslade (now a vampire, as the party discovered at the Grimslade Ruins) figure out how to stabilize them. Normally Fenorian crystals release a steady stream of uncontrolled energy, but once stabilized that energy can be more reliably harnessed (usually as part of a specific magical effect requiring a command word). Stabilized crystals are extremely rare largely because Aston Grimslade and Brocc himself are the only two people who can reliably stabilize them. A few other individuals (namely Vistun Selfeer) are known to be less capable at the process, often being unsuccessful or only temporarily stablizing the crystals. When Garret tells Brocc that this crystal was originally used to augment an Arkhosian sword, Brocc says that given time he can probably discern the crystal's function. He offers to trade it for the only other stable Fenorian crystal that he has - one of Aston's original creations. It's part of a ring that, when worn, protects the wielder from the effects of unstable Fenorian crystals. Garret tells Brocc about the Volksair monster, and Brocc agrees that it's almost certain that much of its power comes from unstable Fenorian crystals. The ring might allow the party to escape should they have another encounter with the monster, but they should excercise extreme caution when confronted by it, as the ring is unlikely to give them enough of an advantage to defeat it.

Satisfied of its value, Heldrek accepts the ring as collateral. The party then waits while Annie's ritual is being completed. Alaric decided that he would miss Gaknar, and Zelmar agreed to provide half the cost to have him brought back to life. Jokes about the two having joint custody ensued. Just for fun, they wanted to have Gaknar Reincarnated instead of simply Raised. So I drew up a Reincarnation chart, set the ritual's level at 6 (2 levels lower than Raise Dead), gave it a lower component cost, and finally rolled the d%. Turns out Gaknar was reincarnated as a Half Elf, and upon the party's request a d4 was rolled to determine his gender. So now Gaknar is a female Half Elf, though he still has the same voice and is still attracted to females (indeed, his new set of Half-Elf hormones have resulted in him finding Annie "cuter than she was before"). If Gaknar had been a source of comic relief before, the Reincarnation just stepped it up a notch. To top it off, now that Gaknar is the same race as the party member who dislikes him/her the most, I even gave him/her a Bard power as his/her Dilettante.

After a night at a very barebones inn (their rooms were a small cave with a boarskin on the floor for a bed), the party re-entered the mine. The next encounter was against several more Myconids. Dwarven bodies littered this area as well, though these seemed to be warriors. A rust monster was also present, and it went straight for metal-clad Annie and devoured her armor. The fight was still won fairly easily, and this is where we called it a night.

Talamhlar - Session 5

2010-02-10T13:42:00.000-08:00

Cast

Garret - Half-Elf Valorous Bard
Alaric - Elf Archer Ranger
Gaknar - Goblin companion character (striker)
Annie - Human companion character (defender)

Back to Argondale

The party remained in Darhadash long enough for Garret to finally master several rituals which there hadn't been time for earlier. Alaric explored the city and the caverns around it, finding a way out that didn't involve going upstream in the river. Gaerbin decided to stay in the city and study it more thoroughly (the character's player will be unable to play for quite some time, so this was a convenient place for him to part ways with the party--for now).

After leaving the ruined city they traveled for several days along a path that followed the river. At one point Alaric spotted several sets of tracks. Some were barefoot Shifter tracks, and others were light, moccassined tracks (likely Elf). Sure enough, the next day they came upon a clearing that contained a structure of standing stones (akin to Stonehenge), where about a half-dozen Elves and Shifters were meeting. They reported that a local group of Gnolls has gotten extremely organized recently, and took out their respective tribes. They were the only survivors, and planned on dispersing into the forest and laying low for a while. The Gnolls marched onward toward the village of Whitehall after they conquered the tribes, and the PCs decided to follow them. Of course, upon getting to the main road they saw the Gnoll tracks heading north, but an odd set of tracks headed south toward Argondale. The left foot was a Warforged's, but the right foot was narrower and more humanoid-shaped (but very heavily booted). They headed south after this strange creature, and about a mile into their journey they encountered a large crater and pieces of some type of humanoid - just like the craters they'd encountered in Lyria Castle. So the Volksair monster was still running around.

As they travelled along the west side of the lake, they heard a lot of shouting coming from the northern wall of Argondale. They rushed to the ferry to the West Gate, finding an evacuation in progress. Annie knocked Garret out because of his irrational fear of water, and threatened the dock worker with her greatsword to let them onto the ferry on its trip back to the city for the next group of people. They woke Garret up by dunking his head in the water, and then attempted to pass through the gates. There were guards around, however, and they were trying to protect the people and wouldn't let the party pass. Garret tried to convince them that they could stop the monster (though the guard was not persuaded, he let them pass because they may have been the city's best shot against it). They stopped at the Moonveil Inn and found it abandoned (and in a hurry; Gaknar was able to loot several high-end drinks for his waterskin), then continued north toward the Oakroot Inn where Skamos was hiding (they assumed that Tintrim had sent the monster after Skamos). When they neared the North Wall, they saw about a hundred archers shooting down at the outside, and an occasional loud bang against the stone. They quickly slipped into the Inn, finding Skamos frantically trying to get things together from the trapdoor. He fled toward the South Gate, with the party in pursuit.

Once outside the city wall (though still on the island), Skamos turned left toward the eastern wall. Their way was blocked by a congregation of guards. Skamos' annoyance quickly turned to terror as he saw several guards go flying through the air from around the bend. The Tiefling's face turned white, and he fled to the ferries. Alaric, Gaknar, and Annie followed him, along with several of the guards. Garret wanted to try an experiment; he would stand still against the wall and see if the monster would ignore him. Soon the monster came into view; it was an amalgamation of several different creatures stitched together. It's head looked small, as it was from a medium humanoid (Human? Elf? Half Elf?), and it had a cannon attached to one of its arms (though it didn't replace a functional hand). As it passed, it struck Garret, sending him flying ~15 feet into the lake (and Garret has a reason for hating water; low athletics combined with chainmail and a shield). He managed to swim slowly forward, bloodied, until his feet scraped the mucky lake bottom.

Meanwhile, Skamos and the rest of the party made their way into the crowd (violently), and were relieved to find that the monster headed straight into the city via the South Gate. It would be several ferry trips before they could make it off the island though, so Skamos ran back the way he came, explaining that Kaeleth was preparing a private boat for him on the eastern side of the island. They weaved through all of the dead bodies to find Kaeleth dead, but the boat minimally damaged. Skamos, Gaknar, and Alaric set about repairing it while Annie coaxed the sodden Garret up. Skamos launched the boat before they caught up, and a rope was thrown to them (the boat was too small for everyone anyways, so Annie and Garret were stuck clinging to the back of it after pulling themselves along the rope). Annie kicked to help them move faster, but Garret clung in terror, about to pass out. When they reached the far shore of the lake, Skamos ran into the woods. The party followed slowly behind and made camp, deciding to head to Marblemount instead of following Skamos.

Marblemount

The next day the party traveled back to the main road, witnessing the destruction that the Volksair monster had left in its wake. Hundreds of people were camped out in the farmland surrounding the lake, and there was a sickeningly large pile of bodies at the docks on the island - those that didn't make it to the ferry by the time the monster came back out. The journey to Marblemount took 11 days (on foot), and the party was able to stock up on basic supplies (food, rope, arrows) in small villages along the way.

Being a town that sits on a mountain pass, the guards of Marblemount (a heavily fortified city) allowed the party to pass no questions asked (apparently it wasn't out of the ordinary for all races, including Goblins, to travel through the city, as it was the only way over the mountains for miles). They asked about Baern, the Dwarf that Tintrim had planned on sending the bounty hunter Orsir after when he refused to help the Wizard. They learned that he was a very well-respected sage that resided in his own fortress (which has been in his Clan for generations). They sought an audience with him, and learned that Tintrim wanted Baern to allow him passage through the city with a steady supply of slaves. This was the proposal that Baern had refused, and the reason why Tintrim was going to send Orsir after him. Shortly after this occurred, people started disappearing in Marblemount and the crime rate decreased sharply. Baern told the party that if the crime rate goes down that much, then the Shadow Vipers (the most powerful thieve's guild in the city) were busy with something other than crime. Baern suspects that they're working for Tintrim.

Garret also asked Baern about the crystal that Annie had recovered from the Arkosian sword near the Grimslade ruins. He referred them to Brocc, a Gnome expert on magical crystals. Brocc lived in the Dwarven mining city of Forgehome, in the Underdark. So the party split up, with Alaric finding Underdark maps, Garret selling party loot, Annie securing a room at an inn, and Gaknar disappearing on "business," which he simply told the party was "secret" when they questioned him later that night (after a few drinks). The next morning he bought the entire party the best breakfast that the inn offerred, as this "business" had apparently earned him some coin. The party is suspicious of the "shady" behavior that Gaknar is exhibiting, despite the fact that he's saved their lives on multiple occasions.

The party was ambushed on their way out of the city by a group of debt collectors seeking Garret, who owes quite a bit of money to a man named Aaron Finch. When all but the leader (a mage) were dispatched, he fell to his knees and surrendered. Alaric knocked him out and Garret left a note on him, saying that if Finch wants his money he'll have to come get it himself. They looted the mage and headed out of the city. After following a path for about a mile, they entered into a cavern that led deep underground.

Martial Power 2 Preview: Combat Styles

2010-02-08T08:33:00.001-08:00

Today WotC previewed Combat Styles from the upcoming Martial Power 2. And there seems to be a lot of them! Lesser styles are feats that can be taken to modify at-will attacks (those listed for the feat), whereas greater styles affect encounter powers (again, only those listed). Styles only work while wielding a certain weapon, and they're also limited by class. It looks like there will be multiple greater style feats for each lesser style (likely to provide fewer restrictions on encounter power selection).

Overall, I really like this system. It serves to differentiate between weapons more (since the feats are weapon-exclusive), but since there's multiple styles per weapon it also allows you to make a unique character for any given weapon. What I like most about it is that it could provide some inspiration for backstory, as certain combat styles might be common only among a specific race or for a specific region. And despite being an extra "complication" for new players (in that it's an extra mechanic), it serves to guide players along a certain theme. If a newbie reads a description of a specific style and finds it interesting enough to base their character's fighting style off of that, then they conveniently have a list of powers specified in the feat(s) that are compatible. Those players intimidated by the thought of searching through 3 different books (PHB, MP, MP2) every time they level up just to pick the "best" power can rest easy; even sub-optimal powers will be more competitive with the bonus associated with a given combat style feat.

I'm actually pretty surprised that the developers have been able to keep the content for this book fresh and interesting. Of course the biggest variable that remains to be seen are the powers; there's already been some redundancy creeping into the system with just the first iteration of "Power" books, and I'm sure the authors were hard-pressed to come up with so many "new" things for a given class to do. Obviously the powers that are associated with the new builds will be unique (though they may resemble powers from other classes, which is fine by me). My concern is that the amount of redundant powers will be increased, and in that situation there's always one power that's "better" than similar powers, invalidating certain options. The classic example of this is the Barbarian's level 3 encounter powers Hammer Fall (PHB2) and Brutal Slam (PP). Brutal Slam is so much better than Hammer Fall it's sick; both do the same [W] damage, but whereas Hammer Fall knocks the target prone, Brutal Slam pushes it 2 squares, knocks it prone, and deals damage to an enemy adjacent to the target. Essentially, instead of tripping the guy you send him sailing through the air and he crashes into his friend. Brutal Slam has cooler imagery and it's mechanically superior. Hammer Fall, which used to be a decent pick, is not going to be picked anymore by players that have Primal Power. In effect, you've "de-valued" your PHB2 by picking up PP because certain powers become wasted space.

I'm not saying this is a huge problem; obviously with so many different powers to choose from some are bound to be great and some are bound to be sucky. What bugs me is that sometimes sub-par powers can be a viable choice if they adhere to a specific mechanical and/or roleplaying concept, but not if there's a better power that does essentially the same thing. It's probably not a big enough deal to worry about in the first set of Power books; I just hope that it doesn't become more widespread in the sequels.