My group gets together infrequently, but when we do it is a day long event. We played ½ day in The Shackled City where I was a player. Then we gamed the 2nd half in Hook Mountain Massacre where I was the DM. Since we started at 9am and didn’t quit until 3am, I’d say everyone enjoyed the game.
For the players, we range from 30 to 42. While most have gamed since high school, only a few keep up with rules and the industry. It was news to two people that a 4th edition was even coming out.
First, I’ll comment on the Shackled City game and make another post later for the Hook Mnt chapter. No changes were made to the original adventures.
The group consisted of
1. Fighter Level 4
2. Wizard 2 / Fighter 2
3. Fighter 2/ Rogue 2
4. Cleric 4 with Healing and Sun Domains.
What I noticed as a player.
Total Adventuring Time: Overall, it seemed the group was able to survive much longer and did not have to rest as often in the past. I thought this made for a much better game. Past games in this campaign have been brutal.
Channel Energy: The cleric’s player liked this quite a bit, though he depended on it too much to heal the group. He had been trying to conserve spells, but when we finally ran into undead, he only had a few uses left. That happened to be the BBEG fight and we did end up fleeing and returning later.
Grapple: This was much easier. We encountered some darkmantles which of course grappled. The grappling resolutions were very easy to resolve.
School and Domain Powers: These were well received too. I played the Wizard / Fighter and I noticed that I never ran out of spells. Telekinetic Fist came in handy a couple times. The cleric’s player also liked the new system.
Skills: It took a bit of getting used to with the new combined skills at first. Lot’s of “Where is my bonus to Spot?” However, that was about it. Skill powers seemed appropriate for challenges.
I've got more notes to add from the Shackled City session that pertain to specific encounters, but it is hard sifting through a whole days worth of notes.
Early Encounters
The BBEG
Then the cleric used his last channel energy in an attempt to heal up the group. The bugbear screams in pain and the chair cowered in the corner. Our collective lightbulbs turned on, but then the fighter mage, who was doing the most damage to the bugbear fell to it's domination. The gish was sent off to roam the dark tunnels. The group tried to fight a few more rounds and was forced to flee.
Here is where unlimited use of "Light" saved our bacons. The DM rolled randomly where the fighter mage may have wandered too. The group split up while running toward the exit in hopes that they would find him. The DM had determined when the light spells would run out, and luckily the rogue fighter found the dominated PC as his light source extinguished. He allowed a bluff check to convince the PC to come with him, the vampire comanded an attack which triggered another save. Thankfully, the PC (my character) made it and we escaped (with the use of another "Light".
Coming back one day later, the bugbear was a still a tough encounter, but much more manageable.
Interesting post Gray...
I'm in a similar position myself, where our group meet pretty infrequently too: we're in the midst of a d20 conversion of old school Night's Dark Terror and Keep on the Borderlands [again!], but I want to run some of the excellent aforementioned Hook Mountain... {and other Pathfinder Modules]
Never thought of spiltting the sessions and running seperate mini-campaigns as such. Cheers for that inspiration! Were the sessions purely for playtesting purposes or were these characters that had been built up over previous games?
Morbidly looking forward to the Hook Mountain posts too...
I like the points that you made about the channel energy ability. I've seen some people post that they were worried about the excessive healing and what this ability can do, and you bring up a very good point. If you use this to heal while saving your spells, you are still using up a resource, and one that might have been more useful in the adventure if undead or whatever you can turn do show up.
I also like that the channel energy can backfire, if you aren't careful when and where you use it.
I have also noticed that my players can adventure longer, but its not a matter of having unlimited resources, but just a few more options to allow for a slightly longer "work day." I've noticed that its not so much that they burn through their limited resources, and fall back on their less limited resources, so much as they tend to think, "do I really need to unleash a 2nd level spell for this, or should I tough it out and use a cantrip or orison first."
I personally kind of like that.
Character Builds
I should also mention we used a 32pt buy for all the character builds. We maximized 1st level hp, and never accepted a roll under 50% of maximal for each level.
The Hook Mountain Massacre Playtest
For this game, I had been running only 3 PCs, so they were going in at 8th level. Then we had an extra player show up, so the PC power level was a little high. I just used this as an excuse to be more aggressive.
The Group
1. Human Fighter, Level 8
2. Human Ranger 7, Suel Arcanamach 1
3. Elf Wizard 4, Rogue 4
4. Human Cleric 8
With the higher level characters, the level of options, additional feats, and powers was much more noticeable. The fighter was a greataxe wielder with focus on power attack and similar feats. He greatly benefited from Armor Training and the weapon groups. The cleric worships Desna and took the Travel and Luck domains.
For the ranger, I proposed what I thought might be a good advancement of abilities based on some of the ideas I’ve read on these boards. Of special note, the ranger’s bonus vs giants was +4 to hit and damage. He also had +3 in Favored Terrain (forest). Surprisingly, I did not find this too overpowered. The ranger seemed to be right on par with the fighter. In fact, both of them dealt out some massive damage.
Overall Observations
Skill Use : This came into play less, but I may attribute it to the adventure. This session was much more combat intensive. The final battle itself took a few hours to resolve.
Channel Energy: There was a minimal amount of undead. A few zombies were easily dispatched before the cleric even entered the room. However, it did back fire slightly again. In the final battle of the evening, the ranger and fighter were really taking a beating. She used Channel Energy to heal both at once, even though it gave some healing to the front line enemies. She was also about to get killed herself so it was a rather sacrificial act to dump all her spells before she had to go hand to hand with enemy forces closing from behind. All in all, I’m really liking this ability. It is easier to use against undead, and added more functionality. When I write my own games, I also don’t use a lot of undead, so in the past, the Turn Undead ability was rarely used.
The BattlesHere are a few more details of the battles
The best quote of this area from a player was something like; “What sicko wrote this stuff? Each room is worse than the last. I’m gonna have nightmares.” And when everything was cleared, they would not leave until the house and barn were completely burned down.
Then came Ft. Rannick
With the help of the surviving Black arrows, the PCs entered through the secret entrance and surfaced from the basement. I rolled to see if Lucrecia was there and she was not. They barely encountered some of the atrocities that the ogres had done, and the ranger and fighter went on a righteous slaughter against the first set of ogres encountered. So much in fact, that they raised the alarm. When a small group of ogres investigated the noise, the group set themselves in a defensive position in one of the halls where the ranger and the fighter could take on ogres as they approached. The cleric and wizard /rogue stationed behind them to offer support magic. Shalelu and the Black Arrows watched the basement steps. As the warriors fought the oncoming ogres, they also shouted challenges and taunts. Soon most of the fortress was in action.
The fighter and ranger were doing pretty good and with the cleric healing from behind, they seemed pretty unstoppable. I had some of the Kreeg son’s enter the fray, as well as the sorcerer. Here I brought it all out. The big Kreeg showed up, infuriated that the puny humans were slaughtering his soldiers. But what really brought him to the battle was the presence of Xanesha, who had not been killed in the last book. Ogres backed away as their war chief charged the fighter and ranger. For her part, Xanesha dimension doored behind the group. As the ogre chieftain took on the warriors, Xanesha mowed down the surviving Black Arrows and Shalelu. The wizard /mage was able to get a good dispel magic off on the lamia, so quite a few protective spells went away. The cleric could see that she was going to be forced into hand-to-hand combat, so she dumped the last of her healing abilities into the fighter and then confronted Xanesha. The cleric fell to negative numbers the next round, and the ranger changed positions to help the wizard /rogue fight off the lamia.
The fighter was able to kill the ogre chieftain which broke the moral of the remaining ogres. Many of them fled before they could see that Xanesha also dropped the ranger to negative numbers. The gish was also wounded to very low hit points before the fighter could intervene. He did some massive damage bringing Xanesha to under 20 hp. She was able to drop him the next round. This left the rapier wielding wizard / rogue standing against a very injured Xanesha. He stood his ground, made a bluff check to look less injured than he really was, and since he rolled high, I stuck to Xanesha’s morale as written in the module. She fled, and the elf was able to stabilize his allies before permanent death.
Sorry if that was long. I found it was harder to take notes while DMing, so I only have some of the initiative rounds as they played out. It was also 3am when we quit, so we were all really tired.
Never thought of spiltting the sessions and running seperate mini-campaigns as such. Cheers for that inspiration! Were the sessions purely for playtesting purposes or were these characters that had been built up over previous games?
Morbidly looking forward to the Hook Mountain posts too...
These were characters that we had started at the beginning of the adventure path. We just recently converted them to try out the new rules. All of them were built up from previous games except for the fighter in Hook Mountain.
I'm typically the DM. In fact this is the first time I've been a player in many years. Basically one guy and I can make games once a month. I convinced him to DM Shackled City, and we split the day, so neither of us has to be prepared for 8+ hours of gaming. We then try to schedule aday so at least a 3rd person can join in. Some times we get more like this past weekend.
And I was surprised by the reactions to Hook Mnt. Some of the players are fans of horror movies, but this was the strongest reaction I've had in a long time to villains. They really wanted to take the enemy out in this one.
I have also noticed that my players can adventure longer, but its not a matter of having unlimited resources, but just a few more options to allow for a slightly longer "work day." I've noticed that its not so much that they burn through their limited resources, and fall back on their less limited resources, so much as they tend to think, "do I really need to unleash a 2nd level spell for this, or should I tough it out and use a cantrip or orison first."
I personally kind of like that.
I did too. I had some reservations that the wizard and cleric would be even more powerful and overshadow the other party members. In fact, it turned out to be the opposite. With more resources, the clerics (which were different players in each game) seemed to enjoy falling into the support role more and trying to figure out the best ways to boost the party. No one really seemed to be out of the spot light except for the rogue types, but only when the fighting areas were tight and they could not be up front with the tanks. Once the areas opened up more they were able to participate much more.