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So I'll be out of town (Crete) from this Friday (18th) till late next Sunday (27th). Anyone who likes can run Illes while I'm gone.
So here's his utility belt...
-When he sings, use Inspirational Boost (swift) for an extra +1/+1 on the music.
-He can try to impair the demon's spellcasting with Distort Speech (50% miscast), but I don't think his low DC will really cut it vs a demon.
-CLW Wand
-Alchemist Fire x3
-Tanglefoot x2
-His bow and whip are non-magical so probably useless.
-If she starts throwing sonics or language dependent magical attacks, Illes countersong is nearly unbeatable, but requires him to keep it running as his action continuously to override the save for a spell with duration.
Hudak's finta get him one of them pole arms.
I wanna do the old three stooges ladder bit with a halberd; all turning around and smackin people up side the head with it.
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Sorry for being so quiet over the last week or so – the weather here is now very hot (which I loathe) and work was a little bit heavier than normal last week. However, it was also partly that I was preparing for my first game of 4e, which I DM’ed on Saturday with relative novice players (they have played a little bit of 3e, and little bit of earlier editions, but not much and not recently). The observations might not be universal, but anyway here they are.
We are playing RotRL, converted to 4e. In fact, we played the first session about six weeks ago, in 3.5, and then I converted the characters to 4e for the second and ongoing sessions. The conversion process itself was interesting, as I effectively created five characters (the standard party size now, though that is a coincidence in the context of this game) in 4e and so got a look at, at least, what a 1st level character looks like. The party was/is as follows:
Human rogue to human rogue
Elven fighter (bow specialist, looking to multiclass with wizard) to eladrin ranger
Human cleric (evil-ish) to tiefling paladin (of Asmodeus, so very lawful and very evil – effectively, a hellknight)
Human wizard to human wizard
Human cleric (this guy didn’t play last time, so his character was created from scratch)
On the two where the race and class changed, the reasoning was as follows:
Eladrin ranger – the elven fighter progenitor of this character was a bow specialist, which is basically impossible to do with the 4e fighter who is all about melee, so he had to go ranger to keep that up. I went with eladrin because of his stated desire to go with multiclassing as a wizard, and eladrins (with an INT bonus) are better for that than elves (which instead get a WIS bonus). Interestingly, you can “multiclass” at 1st level, as in 4e multiclassing is about taking a series of feats and being able to take some of the powers of another class. I did that, giving this 1st level character a wizard power. In addition, eladrin have the ability to carry out a limited teleport once per encounter, and this seemed to be a fairly cool “magic” power for a wannabe wizard too.
Tiefling paladin – the original idea for this character was a cleric of Hextor, but the war god in Golarion is more Gorum and less in the fascist camp, so we went originally with a cleric of Gorum with the greatsword thing. However, given that the 4e paladin has no alignment restrictions, plus the stated preference of the player to kill stuff rather than be a healbot, I went with a more martial class. The paladin (and fighter) is not really a massive damage machine in 4e – that is really the warlock, ranger and rogue – but instead more of a taunt-and-defend sort of class, but nevertheless it is much tougher than the cleric in the front line. Once I went with the Asmodeus angle, I then thought about tiefling, mainly for the “kewl” angle than anything else (I knew the player would be pleased when I told him character was a “spawn of Satan”). I considered multiclassing with warlock, but decided not to to avoid complication (a tiefling paladin already has loads of powers without adding on another one from the warlock list). Interestingly, though, I had to convert some of the powers as evil PCs are not very well accommodated by the rules - paladins do a lot of “radiant” (i.e. positive energy) damage, which didn’t feel right for a devil-worshipper, so I simply converted radiant damage to fire damage instead (“necrotic” also not feeling right in the context of Asmodeus).
Of the other characters:
Human cleric – he stepped into the cleric of Gorum role with the greatsword. Clerics are still the best healers, but they are not much better than warlords who share the same “leader” role.
Human rogue – not massively changed in concept, though of course I had to select a series of powers that I didn’t have to worry about before. Many of the rogue powers move the opposition about, so I went with those (though in the end they didn’t get used much).
Human wizard – it is interesting to see what differs here. On the one hand, the wizard gets a series of at-will powers (Magic Missile, for example), encounter powers (like Burning Hands) and daily powers (like Acid Arrow – yup, at level 1). On the other, you don’t get to change it much – at-will powers are sort of fixed from level 1 onwards, and then you get one encounter power (which you can change, but only when you level) and one daily power (though you do get a spellbook, and can memorise a few other things instead). That said, some of the at-will powers are good (someone flipped a goblin into the furnace at the glassworks with a Thunderwave power) and overall, especially at level 1, you have lots to do. But it doesn’t increase much as you go up – maybe a repertoire of four daily spells at high levels, though you do get some more encounter powers to compensate. It gives the wizard a fairly different, rather sorcerer-like feel. There are also no familiars, though you can bond with a type of wizardly implement (a choice of orb, wand or staff) and derive benefits from that.
In general, that is the case – all character get the same number of powers at-will, encounter, daily and utility powers at the same levels, which gives the characters a slightly standardised feel (though mechanically it is probably a good idea to preserve balance) plus a few character class abilities. Most of the character class abilities have clear precedence in 3e, though changed to fit mechanically into 4e. While the powers are highly reminiscent of the Book of Nine Swords, the mechanic has been extended to cover all character classes. Each class has two sorts of suggested build in the PHB, which roughly means that their powers split down to attacking different defences and specialising in that.
However, the proof of the game is in the combat pudding, and we had a couple of combats in the session. It is worth caveating that I didn’t properly read the section in the DMG about setting up encounters, so in the end they were overpowered (but they got out alive) but nevertheless I had the following observations.
Firstly, combat really was very similar in its basic form to 3e combat, with similar rules on flanking, attacks of opportunity, conditions affecting combatants and so on. It certainly was not radically different, though of course the PCs powers interacted with that to change some things, though only in fairly small but interesting ways (the above mentioned goblin-roasting).
The big difference is the four types of defence – AC, Fort, Ref and Will. Instead of being hit by a spell and having to make a saving through, an attacker makes their attack roll, which might be based off any of the six stats – for example, CHA vs Will. In this example, the attacker would roll d20 and add their CHA attack bonus (an attack bonus is, basically, equal to the stat bonus plus half the character’s level, plus various circumstantial bonuses) and compare it with the target’s Will defence score (which, similarly is the higher of the CHA or WIS bonus plus 10 plus half the target’s level plus whatever bonuses pertain). If the attack roll is equal to or greater than the defence being attacked, the attack succeeds. In other words, there are now four “armour classes” covering armour cladding (AC), physical resilience (Fort), mental toughness (Will) or nimbleness (Ref).
Another change is that, instead of the “standard action/move action” that you get in 3e, you now get three actions - a standard action, a move action and a minor action (a sort of move-equivalent action for drawing an item or weapon or loading a crossbow). You can also spend an action point (though you only start with one) to get an extra action.
In addition, the opposition has been radically retooled along with the PCs. For example, a typical level 1 monster is the goblin warrior. In 4e, he has 29 (29!) hit points, +6 to hit doing 1d8+2 damage, AC 17 and a series of groovy powers (the hp I don’t quite understand, since that is double what a 1st level character can expect). Considerably more powerful than a typical basic goblin in 3e, I am sure you will agree. Also, as a result, combat takes quite a long time since it involves less swatting of pesky goblins and more attritional combat to wear them down – combat in 4e can be lengthy, even without iterative attacks (which don't happen in 4e - instead, the powers just deal more damage at higher levels). In the second combat, I naively put them against about eight goblins and a goblin caster. That should not have been much trouble for a prepared party of five in 3e, but in the end they had to flee since they were out of healing due to the fact that the gobos were both hard to hit and hard to kill if you did (powers don't do radically more damage than a normal hit most of the time, and weapon damage is about the same as it was in 3e).
Anyway, we had an enjoyable session. I won’t say that it was better than 3e, but I won’t say I had less fun either. It does feel slightly restrictive in terms of character building, but this might get better with the PHB2 and more classes. Combat is long but fun, and to some extent the non-casters have more options while the casters might have a few less (though they also don’t have to unlimber the crossbow after the first two rounds). I think to say it isn't D&D is pretty dumb - I still think that 3e was more radically different to 2e than 4e is to 3e - though I can understand that it might not be to all tastes (especially in respect of the spellcasting classes).
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Aubrey, maybe you can explain to me - what the hell is a warlord, and how can you have a first level one??
Apart from that ... sounds like you had a good game. Did it take long to convert things? How will you handle things like sin spawn?
As for 4th not being D&D or whatever, well I can't really comment. But from what I have seen and heard, mechanics-wise it is probably no more different (or even less different) from 3rd than 3rd was from 2nd, but it seems there's a more radical departure in terms of flavour, fluff etc.
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Interesting 4e recap. I didn't like the sound of how the wizard works, but otherwise it sounds quite reasonable. I like the four different defense mechanisms. But what's up with the hard-ass goblins?
Not sure. There is a class of monster called a "minion" (basically, a meatshield for the big boss) and gobin minions exist. The thing about minions is that they only have a single hp, so when you hit them, they go down. While I have no real problem with the concept as such (they are mainly there to provide entertainment and dies in battalions to make the PCs feel good) the PCs will really be able to tell the difference when a level 1 (or level anything) minion has 1 hp and everything else has literally tens or hundreds - the play experience would be very different, and probably provoke a metagame reaction ("Aha, these go down easy - they must be minions!").
I didn't use goblin minions, I used the basic badass goblin with 29 hp. Why they are so tough I'm not sure, but I wonder if the hp of monsters go up much as they level (since damage doesn't scale quite so much with level) - that's just a thought I had and will check in the book. However, the level 3 caster had 46 hp, which is much less then three times that of the level 1 monster.
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Aubrey, maybe you can explain to me - what the hell is a warlord, and how can you have a first level one??
Apart from that ... sounds like you had a good game. Did it take long to convert things? How will you handle things like sin spawn?
As for 4th not being D&D or whatever, well I can't really comment. But from what I have seen and heard, mechanics-wise it is probably no more different (or even less different) from 3rd than 3rd was from 2nd, but it seems there's a more radical departure in terms of flavour, fluff etc.
A warlord and a cleric share the same "leader" role, which basically means they buff and heal, and their powers affect other party members (hit the target and an ally can use a healing surge, hit the target and an ally gets +2 to hit for a round, and so on). I think the title is a bit duff, and not really having looked at them in detail I can't say precisely what they do. But Heathy is right - the basic idea is similar to a marshall, though mechanically they are very different (no auras, for example).
Conversion didn't take any time at all, mainly because I didn't have any time since I spent the week converting the characters. Obviously, I am pretty familiar with the scenario, so I just busked it and threw some goblins at them straight out of the MM (the monsters all come in different versions - there are five varieties of goblin all serving different roles, from minion to "brute" to "skirmisher" to "controller" to "artillery". The hassle came when I miscalculated what the PCs could handle and nearly overwhelmed them with a second encounter underneath the glassworks, but that was my problem rather than the game itself.
I left out Tsuto - I might create an NPC for him (a straight rogue seems most appropriate) but he won't be at the glassworks (and nor will Ameiko, since the PCs ran away before they rescued her - she will be at Thistletop now). I haven't decided what to do about the sinspawn and the the monster goblin in the catacombs - if I have time I will do something bespoke, using the monster creation rules in the DMG, otherwise I will pick and MM monster and "disguise" it.
On the fluff - well, they certainly junked Greyhawk, or reduced it to a somewhat vanilla shadow. That said, some of the changes do make logical sense, and is in any case deliberately intended to be non-world specific. And the D&D fluff varies dramatically depending on what world you are in - FR v Athas, for example - so I don't necessarily think that is a big deal. The game does focus a little bit more of combat and movement and playing on a grid, but 3e really made that leap and the basic "die rolling experience" feels pretty similar to me. The main issue I have is that character creation flexibility has been largely taken away, though this does make balance less of an issue.
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Perhaps another point worth pointing out is this. 4e doesn't really use the EL system for calculating xp - instead, each monster is worth a certain amount of xp as a flat amount, and each encounter level has an "xp budget" which you need to make up (for example, a level 1 encounter for five characters has an xp budget of 500, and a bog standard goblin warrior has an xp value of 100xp, so a lvl 1 encounter is five goblins) with an expectation of facing ten encounters of their own level before they go up. However, this isn't the doubling-the number-every-two levels approach anymore for EL that is in 3e. A tough encounter is maybe 600xp for a 1st level encounter, not an EL that is two above the norm as it is in 3e. In other words, you have to be careful when setting up the mosters because it seems that, due to monster toughness now, stacking up more monsters to increase the difficulty but also increase the xp handed out (a technique which I use a lot) is now much more problematical.
Also, there are different categories of monster. Minion I have mentioned (worth 1/4 the xp of a normal monster of its level), elite monsters (who are that bit tougher, and worth 2x the xp of a normal creature of its level) and solo monsters (worth 5x the normal xp of a monster that level, and therefore an encounter all by itself). Oddly, it is therefore possible to have a solo monster of a certain level (which can be handled by a party of that level) have the same xp value of a normal monster of a much higher level (which probably can't). Again, the xp values don't automatically translate across as equal across the different monster categories.
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Crete was amazing. Best in-Greece holiday so far. We spent the first half of our trip at a cove on the southern coast recommended by a friend. It was kind of in the middle of nowhere but that was also one of its sweet things. We had a room overlooking the cove's beach so we could just walk down the hill and be on there in a minute. The only thing there was this open air taverna, an open air bar, a few rooms, a yoga retreat up the hill- and the beach. Not crowded at all. I did a little snorkeling for the first time (we don't do that so much in Arkansas ;) ) and the water was so clear you could see down about 30 feet in the water. Loved it. (This cove is a pretty cheap holiday too if you ever want recommendations. The rooms weren't anything special, but only 30 euros a night.)
We also went to Knossos to see the Minoan palace where Daedalus is supposed to have built the maze for the minotaur. That was truly impressive. That palace would be insane even today if it were still intact. Something like 5 stories built on a hill side, with staircases and salons dug down into it. 5000 years old and they had terra cotta sewer pipes to carry waste away.
Then we went to the west tip for a while. Stayed in some traditional Cretan village house converted for vacationers. Great food. The wind didn't favor us while we were there for beaches but they were still great. One where you could walk out maybe 150 yards all the way to another island and the water doesn't come above your knees. Aquamarine, pink sands mixed in. Very commercial, but very beautiful. Perfect for taking the babies to swim. (You can easily get to water deep enough to swim as well).
The island of Crete itself was great too. Silvery olive trees swaying in every valley. Figs, rosemary, thyme, oregano, & dill all growing wild. For my Americans here... it seemed kinda like the South for Greece. Very friendly, good food, they love guns and knives, they grow the weed, in backwoods areas they have feuds running for ages, everyone is making their own moonshine. (Raki is supposed to be like brandy, but it tastes like moonshine to me).
Anyways- I loved it and I bet we'll go back next year. :)
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Crete was amazing. Best in-Greece holiday so far. We spent the first half of our trip at a cove on the southern coast recommended by a friend. It was kind of in the middle of nowhere but that was also one of its sweet things. We had a room overlooking the cove's beach so we could just walk down the hill and be on there in a minute. The only thing there was this open air taverna, an open air bar, a few rooms, a yoga retreat up the hill- and the beach. Not crowded at all. I did a little snorkeling for the first time (we don't do that so much in Arkansas ;) ) and the water was so clear you could see down about 30 feet in the water. Loved it. (This cove is a pretty cheap holiday too if you ever want recommendations. The rooms weren't anything special, but only 30 euros a night.)
We also went to Knossos to see the Minoan palace where Daedalus is supposed to have built the maze for the minotaur. That was truly impressive. That palace would be insane even today if it were still intact. Something like 5 stories built on a hill side, with staircases and salons dug down into it. 5000 years old and they had terra cotta sewer pipes to carry waste away.
Then we went to the west tip for a while. Stayed in some traditional Cretan village house converted for vacationers. Great food. The wind didn't favor us while we were there for beaches but they were still great. One where you could walk out maybe 150 yards all the way to another island and the water doesn't come above your knees. Aquamarine, pink sands mixed in. Very commercial, but very beautiful. Perfect for taking the babies to swim. (You can easily get to water deep enough to swim as well).
The island of Crete itself was great too. Silvery olive trees swaying in every valley. Figs, rosemary, thyme, oregano, & dill all growing wild. For my Americans here... it seemed kinda like the South for Greece. Very friendly, good food, they love guns and knives, they grow the weed, in backwoods areas they have feuds running for ages, everyone is...
You paint a pretty picture! Did you take many? I would love to see a few as I always wanted to go to Greece and if I ever get the chance it'll be a decade away at least.
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4e rambling to follow:
“Fluff” was probably a misleading term. The fluff changes (like changing the planes, the mixed-god list, changing succubi from demons to devils, the origins of outsiders etc) don’t bother me that much, although I find them a bit bizarre in some cases. But there’s nothing really saying that if I choose to play FR or Greyhawk or my homebrew using 4E I need to utilise those changes.
And I’m not so fussed about changes to the established campaign worlds, probably mostly because I’m not that invested in them. I can sort of see why Realms fans are upset at all the changes, but also sort of not – I mean, just don’t use those changes in your home game if you don’t like them (I know, it’s not quite that simple – from now on any official support for those campaign settings will use the new stuff, so you either don’t get it or are continually changing stuff).
It does bother me a little that they feel the need to (drastically?) alter the campaign settings so that they work with the new rules (and new fluff), rather than having rules and fluff that support the campaign setting. Well, it doesn’t really bother me I suppose, but makes me wonder if that is the right way to be doing things.
What I was actually getting at was changes to the way things work at a gaming / metagaming level, rather than so much the mechanical level (as opposed to how those things changed from 2nd to 3rd).
Third edition introduced several new classes and race(s?) in the core rules, but kept all the old ones from second edition. Even most of the new ones had existed in one form or another at earlier editions – monks, barbarians and half-orcs were all around in 1st edition and to some degree in 2nd edition. Even the idea of spontaneous casters (sorcerers) was not new to D&D, although the class was new. Class and racial abilities and characteristics were similar enough that if a character class/race combination could do something in 2nd edition, you could be fairly sure that it could do something much the same, and in much the same way, in 3rd edition.
I think that gave people a level of comfort. They could make the same sort of characters and play the same sort of game (in general) that they had been playing for 5 or 10 or 20 years if they wanted to. Or they could take advantage of new options to play in a different style, or use race/class combos or abilities that they never had access to before. I would say that in general the game (and its options) were added to rather than removed and rebuilt.
From what I’ve seen, 4E doesn’t seem to do this … much. Races and classes are missing (yes, they will probably be introduced in the future, but it sort of makes the 3 core rule books seem less complete than they were in earlier editions). Some classes seem to have more limited flexibility, or at least very different options to what they did before.
I think whilst that may attract new gamers to the hobby (which is a good thing) it turns off a lot of the established gamers. Some of them anyway. The guy who wants to play his elven archer fighter and finds that it doesn’t really work now. The person who associates wizards with stacks of spellbooks who finds that wizards no longer work in the same way. Stuff like that.
Like I said, I don’t think I am qualified to say whether or not 4E is still ‘D&D’, but I think that’s where people are coming from when they posit that. Either rightly or wrongly, they feel that they can no longer play the type of games or the type of characters they used to play.
Back to mega-goblins and minions and stuff … seems a bit weird to give the standard goblins so many hit points, but nothing really wrong with that (though I suppose it will throw people used to earlier editions). I quite like the minion idea actually. It certainly gives you a powerful feeling as a player when your character is able to chop through dozens of mooks to get to the big guy, and giving minions 1 hp certainly lends itself to that. And as a player (and a DM) I sometimes find it really annoying when you roll that 3 on your damage and leave the goblin standing with still 1 or 2hp. The 1 hp mook is a good way to avoid this.
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I agree that the character classes are the main caveat for me. They come out a bit cookie-cutter - basically two builds per class. You don't have to go with those builds, of course, but there actually isn't a terrific amount of choice for what powers you go for (and many are not very exciting - sure, useful, but not exciting). And, of course, multiclassing as it is known in 3e is totally gone. That feels very different. So I agree that that has been a very big change.
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Just an FYI guys.
I'm in the middle of moving. We're out of our house today, and not into our new one until the 8th. My posting may be spotty for a week or so. I'll probably be able to check every day, but if I'm holding things up, please feel free to NPC Larken.
God! I'm a fat old man. I hate moving.
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All the stuff is now in the new house, so all that's left is to scrub down the old one (which I'll do tonight) and organise the new one (which will be an, um, ongoing process for a while). I'm totally beat, though - me and a friend running two full 24' truckloads in the hot, hot, hot Arizona sun. Between the two of us, we drank almost 20 litres of Gatorade on Tuesday...
congrads on the last battle lads, it was really cool ... all things considering you fought a big bowl of jello.. ok evil jello with teeth
but all and all good ending to great frist chapter
I thought somebody was gonna get wasted for sure.
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Me too. All of us except Elisile (?) were down to 5 or less hp... The damage reduction of some of the monsters were brutal - I looked up the Yeth hound, and it has DR 10/silver, which is easy to get by, but we had no silver weapons. Similarly, I suspect the blob-thing had DR something/good - again, no particularly big deal, except that we had no good-aligned weaponry. Alwyn's memorising Align weapon from now on!
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Yeah, Elisile kind of hung back and did spells and support, so she was at full hit points – but she wouldn’t have lasted long if everyone else went down!
Whatever DR it had, I don’t think we were overcoming it, and I think it was in the realm of 10. Ouch.
So what was it Aubrey? A Handmaiden of Lolth? (Ythocl or whatever they’re called?)
Youse guys wanna try to put the whack on the sandpoint devil?
Youse guys wanna try to put the whack on the sandpoint devil?
"Bring it Sandy."