As mentioned this morning, I was able to read a copy of D&D's 1st 4e adventure, Keep on the Shadowfell, thanks to ZeStuff.
Now it's time for the review! Hurrah!
I'll take the spoiler-free approach (though I may slip a bit in places) as I guess that a lot of readers will want to play it in the upcomming weeks.
Let's dive in shall we?
Physical Characteristics
The product is made of 2 non-glossy magazine-paper booklets: A 16 page 4th Edition quick-start rules booklet with pre-generated characters and an 80-page one containing DM-rules and the adventure itself.
The adventure also comes with 3 large size, double-sided full-color battlemaps.
Except for two of them, the Battlemaps are actual reprints of some of D&D Fantastic Adventure Locations:
The King's Road
The Dragon Graveyard
The Dungeon of Blood
The Forest Cliff Lair
All without the D&D miniature-specific info like Start and Victory Areas. The remaining two are a Graveyard and another Dungeon/Temple map.
I don't really mind getting duplicate maps, but it would have been nice to have all different ones portraying the encounter areas so that a DM could increase his collection.
The booklets have nice covers and the interior is black type on white paper, separated by decorated section titles.
One word of warning, and my main beef with the product, the booklets are very fragile (paper is easily damaged) and the ink smudges very very easily. I've been handling this one for a few hours and pages are already covered with enough fingerprints to incriminate me without actually having to call the local CSI.
Since the booklets do not have a back cover, the smudges on the white background are becoming bad enough to make it harder to read. I heartily suggest that find a way to protect this product.
All of this is packaged in a sleek, light cardboard portfolio. The booklets and maps slip neatly in each side of the folded package.
Quick Start rules booklet
The booklet starts with a 1/2 page intro to D&D and roleplaying in general, marking this product as an entry level product. However, I don't actually think a complete neophyte DM could run this without the 4e core books.
Then there are 4 1/2 pages of the basic rules of the game.
This covers:
The d20 roll mechanic
Skill checks
Attack rolls
Encounters (Combat vs Non-combat)
Combat
Actions (Standard, Move, Minor, Opportunity, Immediate)
Turn sequence (Very much like Magic the Gathering, I'll post on this soon)
Attacks and Damage
Critical Hits (Full damage)
Flanking
Other Actions: Charge, Second Wind (i.e. use healing Surges to regain 1/4 HP), Powers
Movement
Move actions & Forced Movements (Pull, Push, Slide)
Occupied Squares
Difficult Terrain &Obstacles
Action Points
Hit Points, Healing and Dying
Right up front, the authors tell us that D&D 4e rules are exception-based. This means we have a few Core rules and a ton of exceptions built into powers, options, magic and so on (very much like the game rules of Magic the Gathering).
From these very summarized rules, the biggest changes that jump out at me from 3.x are Healing and Dying.
Healing:
All characters have a certain number of healing surges that they can spend in a day. The most basic way of spending a surge is by spending a standard action, that gives you 1/4 of your max HP back (once per encounter I believe).
Some examples of exceptions to this basic rule:
The cleric's Healing Word ability allows an ally (or the cleric) to spend a surge without using an action.
The Paladin's Lay on Hands ability allows a character to be healed while using one of the Pally's Surges.
Bloodied and Death:
At 1/2 HP, a character becomes bloodied. This has no effect in itself but a lot of powers are triggered when a character or a target is bloodied.
At 0 or less (up to -1/2 HP) a character is dying and falls unconscious. The player must make a saving throw (i.e. roll 10 or more) every turn. Success has no effect. However, should a third save fail before the character is stabilized, he/she dies.
At -1/2 HP you're dead, regardless of saves.
I really like this because death is somewhat predictable, takes long enough to give the party tactical flexibility while still creating a dramatic '3 strikes you're out' tension.
The rest of the booklet presents five characters sheets that you can photocopy and play with. Just add a name and a gender and you're good to go. The characters even have leveling up instructions until level 3.
The characters are:
Dwarf Fighter
Halfing Rogue
Human Wizard
1/2 Elf Cleric of Bahamut
Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut
All are loaded with a lot of powers, most of them cool for level 1 characters. Each have numerous options for combat and a list of skills that are explained very succinctly in this booklet (and in more details in the other booklet).
I won't go into the details as I leave this to your discovery… but a lot of the 4e promises are there. Wizards and Cleric have a lot more to do than the per-day allotment of spells. The paladin reeks of helping others and the Rogue will give control freak DMs a heart attack as they slide monsters all over the place (confirming once and for all that miniatures and maps are essential).
No background or stories are presented or suggested. Each character comes with a short descriptive text that can act as a primer to a personality. This is mostly a 'learn the game' set of characters as such a product is won't to be.
Adventure Booklet
This 80 page booklet starts with the introduction to the adventure.
The adventure centers around a walled-village surrounded by farms (an archetypal point of light) sitting 5 days away from the nearest city.
As the title suggests, there's a ruined keep nearby and all kinds of stuff happens around the village and the keep. It's a totally classic adventure plot with limited (but not absent) backstory and roleplaying-driven storylines.
It's well suited for an introductory adventure (it reminds me of the Village of Hommlett) and I found the story to be more interesting than 3E's The Sunless Citadel.
The booklet then presents three optional adventure hooks (including quests with gold and XP rewards) that the DM can choose to start the adventure.
Then there is a 2 page explanation of the adventure's structure like how the tactical encounters are to be read and how to read Monster stat blocks (each taking about 1/8 of a 2 columns page, weeee no 1 pager stats!).
The Quick-Start rules are re-printed as is, with a few more DM-focused rules such as leveling up, Conditions (Blinded, Dazed, etc.) and Skill descriptions.
Then the adventure starts on page 16 with the 1st combat encounter (a roadside ambush).
WotC kept their Encounter Format developed in later 3.5 adventures. These remain very useful as you have all the necessary information to conduct the in a two page spread (3 pages for the Grand Finale). Each encounter features different monsters, each presented in an all-inclusive stat block that covers all special powers with full descriptions.
Let me tell you that many of these monster powers are cool. Players will absolutely HATE some of the iconics low-level humanoids featured in this adventure. The term "slinger" may very-well end up instilling fear and respect in low-level characters.
The 1st 'Boss' level fight features an Elite Brute boss that has more than 100 HP (while players are still 1st level).
This confirms that there's some more HP inflation from the last version of the game. While minion monsters have only 1 hp, various level 1 soldier-type monsters have HPs in the 30's (and PCs have between 25-31 HPs).
The adventure assumes that 5 players would be around the DM and has no instructions/tips for lowering the number of monsters if the party is made of less than 5 characters. I would suggest to reduce the number of minions and soldier monsters in each encounter.
It's not necessarily a big deal but it will make the adventure particularly lethal in the hands of an inexperienced DM with less than a full set of players.
(On a side note, I really liked having 4 players, things went fast and everybody had adequate time in the spotlight)
Also, a new feature I had never seen in D&D adventures are 'DM's Advice' and 'Interludes' pages between chapters. In these, roleplaying and descriptive tips are suggested to give life to the adventure. Instead of telling you that X NPC is surly or Y location is gloomy, the DM is encouraged to make them up as they see fit and to pick up on mundane interaction to build up a side-story.
For example, you are told you can build on the discussions between a PC and a Store owner if and when they try to pawn a piece of jewelry looted from the monsters.
That's a promising change.
Investigative parts of the adventure are presented in FAQ form. Questions PCs would ask are printed out, followed by in-character responses that this or that NPC would answer (you can read, paraphrase or adapt as you see fit). I really like this approach as it gives material to build upon for creative DMs while still lending sufficient fluff for less experienced/confortable DMs.
Some combat encounters are set up on the included battlemaps. The others can all be created easily with the D&D tiles or drawn on graph paper in a few minutes. I really like that (I'm a big D&D tiles fan!)
In the dungeon encounters, there is a break in tradition with previous adventure. Encounter area now encompass between 3 and 4 dungeon rooms, allowing larger space to move around (no more fights in 5′ wide corridors and 10X10 rooms! Hurrah!)
This means that dungeons don't have boxed text for each room, only encounter (combat or otherwise) get them. If PCs decide to take a room by room search approach, you'll have to make it up as you go, fortunately, the dungeon maps feature furniture and such, making description easier.
Finally, the one +1 magic Item I saw so far combines the classic bonus with an additional static power (bonuses to saves) as well as a daily power. That's nice and makes a mundane item more interesting.
The adventure does have a few editing issues which seems to indicate that it was somewhat rushed out. It's small things like saying that a monster throws a spear when it's equipped with javelins, I've seen a few other ones.
Bottom line
This is a well made adventure that showcases what low-level heroic-tiered characters and foes can do. It's a simple, straightforward story that puts into play some of the core 4e fluff (The Shadowfell, Orcus, points of lights and so on).
The preview of the combat ruleset really reminds me of Magic the Gathering where you have well defined turn sequences and where each players use powers they chose (during Char Gen) and see how they interact on the battlefield. Combo fans like my friend Yan will fall for this system really fast.
Corollary to that, such exception-based rules design will lead to the creation of broken (post publication edit: not broken maybe but really effective) combos with the creation of additional powers and options in future sourcebook. DM discretion, as always, will rule.
In fact, I predict that a group of well designed characters handled by a group of players used to teamwork and cooperation will be extremely efficient during combat encounters…
Luckily (or unluckily) DMs with good deck encounter building skills will be able to create fiendish encounters whose synergistic powers will be quite a match to brilliant players.
So does reading this pull me in or out of 4e?
In definitively… I need to try it now and see how my gut reacts while players slay baddies and interact with the adventure's NPCs.
However, I remain somewhat concerned with the 'gimmicky' set of PC and monster powers that abound in there (and the game in general), but I'll reserve judgement on this when I actually play it out… chances are the gimmicks are going to make for some awesome action gaming.
We'll pay this in early June, I'm looking forward to it.
Misty Mountain Games is one of those “gold level” stores with Wizards of the Coast – at least I think that is the distinction given to it. I am not sure all of what that means, but it did mean that we got a store demo copy of Keep on the Shadowfell a few weeks before it came out. For those of you confused as to what I am talking about, that is a sample module with pre-generated characters and some quick start 4th Edition rules. It is a sample of 4th Edition for the role player to get a taste for the system.
So our Sunday D&D group took a hiatus from our Savage Tides campaign and gave this system a whirl. Even better for me, Dave – the owner of the store – wanted to run the event. I was crushed at having an opportunity to play a character. So the week of the next game, I stopped in and got photocopies of the five pregenerated characters and the quick start rules to read them over. The more people going over the rules, the smoother things go. Also, once he ran it for us, I was going to schedule sessions for customers to get a shot at trying it out.
For those of you worrying about spoilers here, don’t. I highly doubt the statements of “we were attacked by a small group of kobolds” will spoil anything for you. This is more a discussion on the rules, the powers, and how the game flows as a system. So read on with little fear – well maybe a little – our one-shots tend to become exercises in the most outlandish character personalities.
The first thing I noticed was the amount of hit points that each character had. The warrior was still the “meat shield” of the group, but the human wizard did have a stunning 23 hit points to start at first level. This feels like it is part of an effort to increase the balance of the characters at all levels – basically making it so that the wizard can still have an effect on the game without risking being “one-shotted” by a goblin, a kobold, or a simple irate squirrel passing by.
The next thing that I noticed was the powers and spells that the characters had. As has been reported in multiple blogs and reviews, there are “at will” powers, “encounter powers” and “daily powers.” If you were thinking this pertained to the wizards and clerics only, you would be mistaken. Even the dwarven fighter had combat maneuvers that were treated the same way as spells. So everyone had something they could do, and never ran out of spells.
There was also your actions allotted to your character each round. Every round you could take a minor action – such as a “shift”, formerly known as a 5 foot step – a move action, and a standard action. Additionally, all of the powers and spells would state on them if they were a minor action, free action, or standard action. It did help to solidify what you could do and when you could do it. It is like clarifying the turn sequence in a card game.
Speaking of card games there was an aspect of card games that we found represented in the types of actions available. There is another, newer type of action available that is a throwback to the collectible card game – the triggered interrupt action. As a specific example is the celric’s Bahamut’s Armor ability. If at any point a critical hit is scored against the paladin or an ally within five squares of the paladin, his power invokes and changes it to a standard hit instead of a critical. In case you were wondering about that as it is a powerful ability, it is also an encounter ability – once per encounter.
This seems to open up quite a bit for counterspells and the like. It makes it so that your outcome for an event can be controlled a bit more than it was in the previous edition. Unfortunately for the players, this means that the DM has the same ability to use on them as well. It is a double-edged sword, but I liked the way it played out.
Also the change to action points involves the use of actions. Basically your character starts with one action point, but you generate one more for every two encounters that day. Once per encounter – if you have them – you can spend one action point to get an additional action that turn. As an example, in a battle against the kobolds mentioned above, my wizard took a standard action to do a healing surge and gain back seven hit points, took a move action to move 5 spaces closer to the fight to gain line of sight on a monster, and then spent an action point to be able to have another standard action to cast magic missile at the kobold. Of course even getting +3 to hit due to an ability called Action Surge (bonus attack on any action gained from the use of an action point), I still missed – but it was still pretty cool.
Healing is also opened up more. Your character has a number of healing surges each day they can use. They can use one per encounter by doing a standard action called Second Wind. The cleric has powers that allow for the use of addition surges as a free action, and you can also use multiples between encounters. In short, the options for the cleric have opened up a whole lot, not to mention that much of the onus for healing is placed on the wounded person – at least as much so as on the healer.
Now if you want an apples to apples comparison, in our normal 3 to 4 hour gaming session, we usually have a little bit of role-playing encounters (non-combat), and one combat encounter that takes up the better part of our time. In comparison to that, during the first session of our 4th Edition trial, we had two encounters – with the second one being much tougher than the first – and enough time in the village where we were getting our information/quests from to visit several of the more important structures in town. On the whole, it sped up the encounters a lot, leading to more effective use of game time.
In short: more time spent gaming; everyone always had something to do; less rolling to resolve actions (explanation to come later); and I’m a monster, RAR!
Thanks for this post!
Overall sounds like a pair of positive previews, which is good since I'm running this asap for my group. Since we have plenty of information on the races, I'm also going to allow them to change races if they really want to.
I'm not sure when my group will get to play this (we're on session 8 of AoW and are not sure if we want to dip into 4E then return to 3E or just go whole hog and drop 3E or stick with 3E until AoW is over or ...) but so far it looks pretty cool. No matter what, I expect it will be after all the books come out, of course, so we'll probably just make our own characters by that point.
Thanks for the reviews! :)
Depending on WHEN I can get a copy of it, I might have to wait until the full set of rules come out. In that case, I'll let the players roll up whatever they want.
The upside is that the few weeks of waiting would give me a LOT of time to mull over the adventure, and will be more flexible for the group. The downside is that I dont WANT TO WAIT!
Okay, haven't played it, but I skimmed through it and my very quick review is that it's a solid intro module. It's a little heavy in one particular type of monster at the beginning for my tastes, but I'll grant that it probably does so for newbie DMs. My other big objection is that they cut a couple things for space reasons that they could have done slightly differently (chosen a different monster for the monster example, not been a half-elf cleric who took the feat for a bonus power)
But, after the first 3 encounters I think it's got a ton of cool stuff in it.
I'm mixed on the packaging. It's beautiful, I like owning it, but I'm worried about breaking/ripping it a lot more than I usually am about such products. Very glossy/light.
The book does appear to be pretty flimsy. Overall, I'm much, MUCH happier with the layout: the encounters and maps appear on the same page, so you dont have to get to an encounter and flip to the arse-end of the book to find it.
I have it and love the look of it. I also worried about the flimsiness of of the paper for the adventure, so I cut up the pages and put them in plastic sheet protectors. No worries now. I can't wait to run this for a group.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Depending on WHEN I can get a copy of it, I might have to wait until the full set of rules come out. In that case, I'll let the players roll up whatever they want.
The upside is that the few weeks of waiting would give me a LOT of time to mull over the adventure, and will be more flexible for the group. The downside is that I dont WANT TO WAIT!
Let us know how is and plays, please Antioch.
Post monster consumed my post earlier, so lets have at it again!
First of all: I'm running it tomorrow. I'll let you know how smooth/fun it was. :-)
From reading the book over the course of the past three days, I have to say that its much, MUCH better than the old delve layout that was prevalent in 3rd Edition modules. That being said, its also much better than the layout found in Dungeon adventures, GameMastery modules, and Pathfinder.
Basically, the old method was to have the entire map of the dungeon on one page. Each room had (hopefully) its own description, but required you to flip back and forth to map out the rooms and ensure that they were accurate.
I think that the delve format is better, with the primary issue that you have the descriptions in one spot, but had to flip to the BACK of the book to find the actual room layout.
The new method has the overall dungeon map with each room listed in order WITH a blown up mini-map of the specific area, including the locations of monsters, terrain, and features. The best part is that EVERYTHING is self-contained. Fighting an evil cleric? You wont need to whip out the Player's Handbook, Complete Divine, or Spell Compendium: its all in ONE spot.
Moving on to other things. The adventure is more or less basic. It provides three adventure hooks to rope the party into the game, as you would expect with a former Dungeon adventure. The difference is that each quest provides both a XP and gp award: XP awards are no longer optional or surrendered to "ad-hoc", they are officially part of the rules, and kept in mind as part of the character's progression.
Trying to avoid spoilers, the adventure also provides information on key NPCs as well as knowledge that they might provide. It does have several note blocks that give some pretty good advice for a DM. It may not be for everyone, but I think that most DMs might get something out of it.
The adventure is open-ended in the way that there are basically two separate dungeons that the characters can tackle however they want (one of them they can pretty much avoid).
The thing is, this adventure is designed in such a way that I think even someone who has never run it before could do it pretty well. Everything set up in an orderly fashion, flows smoothly, and there are little bits of advice on how to run this NPC, that encounter, and how to prompt or urge the characters into action.
All in all, it'll probably be one of the funnest D&D sessions that I've played in.
Keep in mind to check the wizards website for some errata that have posted for the module. You will find it on the module page.
I would have linked but I don't have the know-how.
Keep in mind to check the wizards website for some errata that have posted for the module. You will find it on the module page.
I would have linked but I don't have the know-how.
Weird, couldn't find it at the main site. If someone does spot it, please just post the url string, we can always link it in a follow-up post. :)
Thanks!
Currently, the only errata is a FAQ found in the help section here.
On Tues. they will have web enhancements and info about playing in FR and Eberron, corrected char sheets, and possibly more char sheets for larger playing groups. Or so the rumor goes on EN World. We'll have to wait until tomorrow to see.
Bah, I'm not waiting. :-P
Edit: Thanks for the errata! Thats good to know, and I'm sure that whoever ends up playing the half-elf cleric is going to be happier: more is (often) better.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Currently, the only errata is a FAQ found in the help section here.
On Tues. they will have web enhancements and info about playing in FR and Eberron, corrected char sheets, and possibly more char sheets for larger playing groups. Or so the rumor goes on EN World. We'll have to wait until tomorrow to see.
That's an impressive TAT. Now if only we could have had that kind of errata and support for 3.x *sigh*
The link doesn't seem to be working...can someone post the info here in a spoiler?
Hrms. It was working when I clicked it this morning.
Off the top of my head ...
Potions take a minor action to drink, generally. Standard to give to an unconscious friendly.
Bull Rush is spelled out in PHB.
Some NPC or another doesn't have a "Shadow Something" ability that is refereced in his AC line.
The Half-Elf pregen gets another Encounter Power for being a Half-Elf ... apparently Half-Elves take an At-Will power from another class and get it as an Encounter. They recommended the temp HP gaining power from the DDXP Paladin.
There were a few more, but not having KotS I just skimmed it mostly.
Cheers! :)
BTW, I did pick up a copy of KotS - a local bookstore released it early (don't want to get them in trouble by giving names).
Since I'll be a player for this one, I'm not able to really read it in depth (which is painful). However, I did digest the quick start rules and looked over the module just to see what a 4e module looks like.
The quick start rules give a nice overview of the system, but I'm concerned that they may not be hefty enough to really allow much deviation from the module - IOW, you pretty much will need to stick to the senarios given unless you have the PHB. It would have been nice if they had listed several sample actions to differentiate between standard, move, and minor actions.
The Delve Format actually looks pretty good in 4e (as opposed to its mostly annoying counterpart in 3.5). It will be interesting to see how it plays.
Overall, I'm excited about the adventure to see how it plays. The proof is, as always, is in the pudding (literally or figuratively).
A lot of useful info
Link is working now. Thanks for the info, though.
Not that my opinion matters on these boards since they always get attacked or flamed on, but me and my friends played through "Keep on the Shadowfell". And, no, none of us purchased it either, of course. We borrowed it, since we all refuse to give WotC any of our money for 4E. That's our only voice.
So we play through the entire thing, and, my thoughts are simply this:
We still hate 4th Edition D&D.
From the beginning of the quest, all the way until we defeated Kalarel and the Thing in the Portal and what not, we bumped into so many issues that just made us quirk brows, sigh in shame, agape our mouths in surprise, growl in anger, and so on.
The issues were mainly how it felt so UNLIKE Dungeons&Dragons. It really felt like a completely new RPG system with just the name attached to it. It felt horribly like an MMORPG on paper, the video game quality is just nauseating. I mean, a level 4 solo brute with 356 hit points!? The entire thing felt pure hack&slash.
The whole magic item recharges and powers and such, it felt so disconnected from what D&D is. The milestones crap and the healing surges...it made no sense. It evoked no feelings of psuedo-realism or anything D&D related. The characters played didn't feel right. My best friend, who loves paladins, played the paladin and it didn't evoke the "paladin" feel for him at all. And the wizard player, wow. Was he pissed. The fact that magic schools were gone and a wizard doesn't have the ability to write more spells down in his spellbook and choose those spells depending on what he thinks he'll need made him agitated the entire time. The fact Wizards were limited to as many spells as their powers was more like playing a Sorcerer than a Wizard.
It really felt like one very long, very complex game of D&D Miniatures, really. It was so bad, we had to immediately whip out our 3rd Edition stuff and get a REAL Dungeons&Dragons game going. Because we honestly did not feel like we were playing anything D&D related at all with it.
Good luck and enjoy to those who are excited about 4E. I am sorry to firmly settle my opinion that 4E is still NOT D&D. I hope you don't delude yourselves and others into thinking it really is the same. The French guy was wrong--- "Ze game, is NOT ze same!"
Ciao!
Not that my opinion matters on these boards since they always get attacked or flamed on, but me and my friends played through "Keep on the Shadowfell". And, no, none of us purchased it either, of course. We borrowed it, since we all refuse to give WotC any of our money for 4E. That's our only voice.
Thanks for the heads up.
So we play through the entire thing, and, my thoughts are simply this:
We still hate 4th Edition D&D.
Shock. Shock AND awe.
From the beginning of the quest, all the way until we defeated Kalarel and the Thing in the Portal and what not, we bumped into so many issues that just made us quirk brows, sigh in shame, agape our mouths in surprise, growl in anger, and so on.
So...more melodrama?
The issues were mainly how it felt so UNLIKE Dungeons&Dragons. It really felt like a completely new RPG system with just the name attached to it. It felt horribly like an MMORPG on paper, the video game quality is just nauseating. I mean, a level 4 solo brute with 356 hit points!? The entire thing felt pure hack&slash.
280 by my count, but you're halfway there...or something. It felt like how D&D should feel like: there was action, adventure, and everyone got to do something useful and thematic to the class.
Nothing that they did/do in 3rd Edition was absent.
The whole magic item recharges and powers and such, it felt so disconnected from what D&D is. The milestones crap and the healing surges...it made no sense. It evoked no feelings of psuedo-realism or anything D&D related. The characters played didn't feel right. My best friend, who loves paladins, played the paladin and it didn't evoke the "paladin" feel for him at all. And the wizard player, wow. Was he pissed. The fact that magic schools were gone and a wizard doesn't have the ability to write more spells down in his spellbook and choose those spells depending on what he thinks he'll need made him agitated the entire time. The fact Wizards were limited to as many spells as their powers was more like playing a Sorcerer than a Wizard.
Thats because you havent played a sorcerer in 4th Edition. Milestones and healing surges make sense in a cinematic context, which has been explained before. Since D&D is an action game, the cinematic feel meshes perfectly.
The player playing the paladin was having MORE fun because he was different from the fighter, both of which are identical in combat applications until 4th-level.
It really felt like one very long, very complex game of D&D Miniatures, really. It was so bad, we had to immediately whip out our 3rd Edition stuff and get a REAL Dungeons&Dragons game going. Because we honestly did not feel like we were playing anything D&D related at all with it.
Yay, MORE melodrama! See Razz, this is why people flame you. You are not content to say that you dont like the game for whatever reasons work for you. No, you HAVE to go into 4th Edition threads to not only say that you think it sucks, but that it DOES suck, and people are "deluding" themselves if they think otherwise.
Have to say all Razz said that time was what he thought of the new rules. He said nothing out of they way and nothing worse then others have said giving it glowing reviews.
Now I will say that I will never buy this product or 4e. However I would give it a fair run if someone I knew ran it. Having looked over much of the 4e stuff as well as the pregens that come with this, I can say that it has the wrong feel for me . Thats all Razz said was that he tried it thinking he wouldn't like it and then he gave points and resones why he did not.
We didnt get to play long, as one player didnt show up and a few were late. All in all we clocked in about three hours total. Two adventure hooks were used: the wizard (Ren) was sent to map out the region, while the Jason and Narlexus were investigating demonic/undead cults. Jayne showed up late, and we figured that he was originally traveling with Ren as a kind of scout.
The players browsed over the sheets to get a handle on where things were listed as well as what they could be expected to do when combat broke out, which they expected since I had the King's Road map rolled out along with their minis in tow.
To try and keep things clear, here are the names, race/class, and player of the characters.
Jason (dragonborn paladin; ...Jason)
Narlexus (half-elf cleric; Dion)
Ren (human wizard; Amanda)
Jayne (halfling rogue; Springstead)
Mystery Dwarf (dwarf fighter; Bat Jew if he shows up next time)
At some point, Jason had to go home, forcing Dion to run both characters (so they ended up sticking together a lot).
Now, one good was that I was able to make a Stealth roll against their Perception "Defense". This made it so that I didnt have to ask for their Perception modifiers, or tell them to make checks themselves, which would alert them to the fact that something was hiding from them.
Nope.
While they were busy discussing plots hooks, character backgrounds, and pop culture jokes I informed Jason that he had been struck by a javelin for 4 damage, but managed to avoid/block the other four. This revealed the location of five kobold minions, and thus, combat officially began.
The first round was the worst, as each player asked expected questions. "Can I use at-will powers every turn?" "Is it better than just attacking?" "What does a healing surge do?"
As the rounds progressed, more kobolds appeared, and more kobolds died, things began to flow faster. Dion was really happy with the fact that he wasnt running around just healing: he could trigger the paladin's surge with a minor action, allowing him to rush a kobold minion and dispatch it with a furious vengeance.
The major downside was that the players were rolling really bad, and it was at this point that I reminded them that they had action points to burn, and also about flanking. Jayne was especially happy about this, as he could dart up, make an attack with sneak attack rolled on, and use a move action to dive back behind the paladin.
I also had a lot of fun, and was able to take them on, no holds barred. I charged them with my minions, moved the dragonshields into flanking positions, and pegged Ren and Narlexus with sling stones since my slinger was safe behind a wall of pint-sized scaled critters.
I've said it before: 4th Edition makes monsters way more fun. Its like my own little party that doesnt take way too long to figure out what to do with.
Once the kobolds were taken out, they wrapped up their trip to Winterhaven. The inn was the first building they saw, and both Jason and Narlexus felt that they could get some info on the whole cult-issue. The interacted with the bartender, the crazy old dude, and a minstrel that I put in there to liven up the place. They found out a few key points of information:
*Kobolds were becoming a bigger issue and threatening trade to and from the town.
*There was a ruined fortress to the north.
*There is a dragon burial site to the south.
Ren didnt much care where she went: she just wanted to make sure she could note important locations and roads. Narlexus and Jason were more interested in helping the place out, hoping to at the same time destroy any sites of eeeeevil. The first stop was the burial site, which the local sage was able to point out amongst some sarcastic commentary about Ren's vocabulary (since Amanda was having a hard time thinking of certain words, I figured the guy would be kind of a jerk).
Heading south, that triggered the encounter at the site with a really annoying gnome, a pair of ridiculously dangerous guard drakes, and a quartet of human rabble (Farmer from Deserts of Desolation). This fight proved that it is possible to get taken out, and likely die if you are too careless. Jayne got taken out by the halfling slinger's rapid sling attack and the gnome's crossbow. Jason and Narlexus were occupied with the guard drake's 1d10+6 bite attacks as the human rabble beat at them furiously with shovels.
This fight was a lot harder since they lacked the dwarf fighter, but Narlexus laid down "suppressive fire" as Jason rememebered to USE divine challenge, backing away towards the fallen halfling to hit him with healing word. They had to use all their dailies, but came out on top. Had I really wanted to, the gnome could have probably "finished off" Jayne with a quick crossbow bolt to the head.
They eventually managed to locate and take out the gnome, and commenced with the obligatory looting. The key item was an amulet of health that grants a +1 bonus to all Defenses and Resist poison 5. Well, that and an unconscious prisoner.
We'll pick up from there next session.
My thoughts are that the gameplay flows a LOT smoother. Everyone had something interesting to do when the fight broke out. No one ran out of thematic abilities and had to relegate themselves to one unsuccessful action after another.
Also, I was able to go all out on my players and not really concern myself with accidentally killing them. The closest I got was when the gnome dropped Jayne. Yeah, I could have probably pegged him in the head to finish the job, but it was largely a test session.
We did some fairly minor social-RP and used a few skills. Nothing terribly complicated. Anywho, nothing felt out of place, and nothing was lacking.
Have to say all Razz said that time was what he thought of the new rules. He said nothing out of they way and nothing worse then others have said giving it glowing reviews.
Now I will say that I will never buy this product or 4e. However I would give it a fair run if someone I knew ran it. Having looked over much of the 4e stuff as well as the pregens that come with this, I can say that it has the wrong feel for me . Thats all Razz said was that he tried it thinking he wouldn't like it and then he gave points and resones why he did not.
Except for the melodrama that his friends ho-hummed the whole time, but managed to drag themselves through the terrible ordeal to its gruesome conclusion, only to wash the "taste" out with a rousing game of 3rd Edition.
That, and the fact that I suppose I am deluding myself into thinking that 4th Edition is D&D. Oh wait: it IS.Perhaps instead of adding all the crap, he could explain WHY he doesnt think milestones work, or what his issue IS with healing surges instead of just stating the mechanic and following it with "ugh" or "its stupid" or whatever.
He could also stand to cut out how people who are favorably inclined towards 4th Edition apparently dont know whats up.
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Not that my opinion matters on these boards since they always get attacked or flamed on, but me and my friends played through "Keep on the Shadowfell".
<and then a whole bunch of stuff that I snipped>
I hope you don't delude yourselves and others into thinking it really is the same.
Maybe you would not get attacked and flamed if you refrained from calling some of us deluded because we like playing 4e and consider it to be a part of the D&D family just as much as 2e and 3e.
So, to me your opinion does not matter because you clearly have no intention of participating in a civil dialogue. You seek to belittle those of that dare disagree with you and in my view that invalidates anything you could possibly say that would be worth listening to.
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The new method has the overall dungeon map with each room listed in order WITH a blown up mini-map of the specific area, including the locations of monsters, terrain, and features. The best part is that EVERYTHING is self-contained. Fighting an evil cleric? You wont need to whip out the Player's Handbook, Complete Divine, or Spell Compendium: its all in ONE spot.
Does the adventure assume a certain route through the rooms?
That's not a gripe; I can see that this would be advisable for an intro scenario.
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CrossWiredMind, you've said that you're running folks through H1?
How's that going?
It's going very well. We have had to "unlearn" a few 3.5 habits and the players have been adjusting to a different method of resource management. The rules are most definitely streamlined and the combats have moved at a much faster pace. One of my players is accustomed to taking his turn and then popping outside to smoke thus getting back just in time for his next turn. Not anymore. He missed two rounds of combat with each smoke break.
The role playing aspects of the game have not changed at all. The story and NPCs could have been from any D&D 3.5 mod.
The general roles of the party have not changed either - the fighter gets into the thick of melee, the wizards blasts from range and tries not to get hit, the paladin can fight but is better at support, the rogue darts around looking for a good opening, and the cleric needs to be ready to heal at a moments notice. But here is the best change - the cleric (and all of the other PCs) get more choices in combat. You still need different classes to do what they do best but the rouge is not limited to finding the flanking opportunity, the cleric can do things other than heal the tank, etc.
I think H1 is a bit combat heavy but only if you do not take every opportunity to role play. I have heard a lot of folks that have blown through the mod in a couple of sessions. My group is only a few sessions into the mod and we have barely finished the first third. We have taken a whole lot of time to roleplay and banter - heck we spent over an hour with the cleric and paladin of Bahamut trying to convince the town priest that a shrine needed to be added to their community temple.
The major problem with H1 is the quickstart rules. There are some big gaps that take away from the mod. In the town of Winterhaven there are shops to buy supplies, arms, armor, and possibly a magic item or two but the mod offers no price guide. That is in the PHB which we won't have for a couple of weeks. Similarly there are a couple of NPCs that have ritual magic that could help the party but the quickstart rules do not cover that either.
So if you play H1 before the core books come out then you should be prepared to stumble into some gaps.
One thing I have experienced after GMing 4e - I may not be able to go back to 3.5 or even play Pathfinder. Its like giving up your bike when you learn to drive a car. I loved my bike but I never used it to go to the mall once I could hop in my car and get there in a fraction of the time and with incredibly less effort.
And that is what 4e is - faster and lower effort. Everything I need to run an encounter is in the mod. The new stat blocks give you all you need to know. No more flipping through books to find out what a feat or spell actually does. The same goes for the players - all they need is right on the sheet. The only time we needed to look at the rules was to make sure we were doing things the right way.
Thanks for the update Crosswiredmind. My H1 arrives today, and I thought about running it on June the 2nd. We're alternating Pathfinder RPG with H1 on Tuedays. Tonight is a "no play night".
Sounds like waiting till the 16th might be a better idea. That'll give me a week to mess around with the Core Books.
The new method has the overall dungeon map with each room listed in order WITH a blown up mini-map of the specific area, including the locations of monsters, terrain, and features. The best part is that EVERYTHING is self-contained. Fighting an evil cleric? You wont need to whip out the Player's Handbook, Complete Divine, or Spell Compendium: its all in ONE spot.Does the adventure assume a certain route through the rooms?
That's not a gripe; I can see that this would be advisable for an intro scenario.
It does not. There is an encounter with a major goblin NPC that explains what will happen depending on which direction the characters are coming from.
The game doesnt even assume that you go through the various dungeon sites in a specific order. Whatever the players want to do, just roll with it.
One of my players didnt know that the paladin was a dragonborn until the player (Jason) had to leave and he took over. He only figured it out when I reminded him to use Divine Challenge at every chance, and that his breath weapon could be used against multiple opponents at a time.
To be fair, he didnt know a thing about 4th Edition, and hadnt played in a long time. Still, his exclamation was funny.
We have had to "unlearn" a few 3.5 habits...
Any specific habits you can recall that we should watch out for? Or any specific rules issues that stumped you?
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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One thing I have experienced after GMing 4e - I may not be able to go back to 3.5 or even play Pathfinder. Its like giving up your bike when you learn to drive a car. I loved my bike but I never used it to go to the mall once I could hop in my car and get there in a fraction of the time and with incredibly less effort.And that is what 4e is - faster and lower effort. Everything I need to run an encounter is in the mod. The new stat blocks give you all you need to know. No more flipping through books to find out what a feat or spell actually does. The same goes for the players - all they need is right on the sheet. The only time we needed to look at the rules was to make sure we were doing things the right way.
Thanks for the report. I'm glad you guys are having fun.
What you're describing, the ease and speed, I would guess come from H1 being a well-written introductory module. How do you imagine it will go if you're designing your own homebrew adventures?
In my group's 4E playtests the fact that a shift (5' Step equivalent) is now a move action instead of free came as something of a surprise.
Cheers! :)
Hi all,
Seems that everything gets released a day later in the UK.
Can I ask those of you that have the module: is there a link and/or code printed in the book to get an electronic copy of the adventure? There was some talk of this a while back as a feature that would be distinct from the D&D Insider. Has anything like that materialised?
Thanks,
Neil.
I think in general they removed the whole code idea and just went with the database plan.
Hi all,
Seems that everything gets released a day later in the UK.
Can I ask those of you that have the module: is there a link and/or code printed in the book to get an electronic copy of the adventure? There was some talk of this a while back as a feature that would be distinct from the D&D Insider. Has anything like that materialised?
Thanks,
Neil.
I think in general they removed the whole code idea and just went with the database plan.
I believe that is correct. The whole rights / permission part of the database became really buggy, and they were afraid no one was going to be ahppy with the end product.
I think in general they removed the whole code idea and just went with the database plan.I believe that is correct. The whole rights / permission part of the database became really buggy, and they were afraid no one was going to be ahppy with the end product.
When I first heard about the book code/individual rules set/divided database idea when the DDI first came out, it sent shivers u my spine as a software programmer.
That kind of thing is VERY difficult to maintain, especially when you have a built in maintence problem, as each book that comes out would mean another major update to the system. That kind of thing would require a dedicated development team, and that costs a lot of money especially ifyou have to outsource it. WotC isn't a software company after all.
Then there's all the real world problems of books being resold after the code is used, people leaking codes to the net, people stealing code from bookstores... I mean it's a huge nightmare, and WotC wisely decided that the best course is to just let everybody access everything when they subscribe to the DDI.
Way less work, which allows them to focus more development time on things like the website and the virtual tabletop. A seriously good virtual tabletop woudl draw in a lot of subscribers, and that leads to better margins on the DDI.
Can anyone post a link to the errata for .
Can anyone post a link to the errata for .
I dont have the link, but the basics are that to make sure that you use the full spread of the King's Road map (not just the half shown on page 16), boots the half-elf's Diplomacy and Insight checks to +5, and give the cleric an encounter melee attack that grants him +3 temporary hit points (should be Bolstering Strike from the paladin class).
Oh, and the bad guy at the end doesnt have a shadow-power thing on his AC, which is cited in his stat block but doesnt appear anywhere else.|
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Thank you for the reports gentlemen,
Crosswired, Antioch, I'll ask both of you; do you feel that the 4.x demo module has more of a MMORPG feel than previous editions? The Resource management does seem to be different than 3.x (not better or worse, just different).
Also, Antioch, you have said the harder to kill characters seem to be a better thing. Do you feel this is a continuation of the removal of wound/vitality points from Starwars in moving it to Saga?
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I hate teh 4e.
Didn't see that one coming. In other news, Rush Limbaugh didn't find anything to like in Barrack Obama's latest speach, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thinks the latest version of Beverly Hills 90210 is full of sin and evil, and members of PETA don't care much for Wendy's baconator.
Truly shocking.
Crosswired, Antioch, I'll ask both of you; do you feel that the 4.x demo module has more of a MMORPG feel than previous editions? The Resource management does seem to be different than 3.x (not better or worse, just different).
In general the game feels like D&D does. There's action, there's interaction between PCs and NPCs, and all the other stuff you are used to or would assume to find.
When it comes squarely to combat, it likewise feels like D&D does with the exception that characters seem to be much more thematic than they were before. Wizards blast monsters with magic, paladins hold the front line, and the rogue darts in and out, making fast attacks against monsters before retreating out of harm's way.
Now, I suppose that if you narrowed it entirely down to resource management, that it is somewhat similar. Your encounter and daily powers dont have a "cooldown" time in the middle of battle, while in FFXI and WoW everything has a cooldown time no matter where you are (and you could entirely rest up all your stats by standing around for a bit).
You can rest up by burning healing surges, but you can only do that so many times in a day before your character has to rest.
Between fights, your encounter powers would refresh, but your daily powers only come back if you actually rest. So, like a MMO in the sense that some of your stuff does have refresh points, but in 3E its the same way when you look at per-day stuff in early material, and every-5-round stuff in the last books.
To address the second part of your question, it does feel very much different. The wizard wasnt concerned that she was going to completely run out of arcane power and be forced to stand around the rest of the fight until the party stopped for the night, and everyone wasnt surrounding the cleric in case they got hit and needed a heal spell (on the same tangent, the cleric was doing his own thing and not enabling everyone else).
Primarily, they would try to use their encounter powers at some point, especially if things were going bad, but reserved their daily powers when they realized that they didnt need to rest after every few battles so that the spellcasters could refresh their class features.
Its definitely different, but it still feels like D&D.
Also, Antioch, you have said the harder to kill characters seem to be a better thing. Do you feel this is a continuation of the removal of wound/vitality points from Starwars in moving it to Saga?
To make sure that I'm clear, I was glad that the characters were tougher because I was able to safely go all out on them, pull no punches, and not destroy them utterly. I got a few crits in, and didnt have to just not tell them or fudge the results. Yeah, the characters got tougher (more hit points), but I was mainly happy with the fact that I didnt have to cheat to keep them alive, and my game going.
My problem wit VP in Star Wars was that it was tied to using force powers. I cant remember if it had another application or not, thats all I remember. From what I gathered, Saga Edition gave everyone more hit points from the get-go. This was a good move since blasters did so much damage. They ALSO did a good thing by taking a mechanic from D20 Modern and making it applicable to everyone: Second Wind.
Some people call Saga Edition a testing ground for 4E, and they might be right. All I care about is that it was widely tested and found to be a lot of fun and add a more cinematic feel to D&D that was, in my opinion, sorely needed.
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Thank you for the reports gentlemen,
Crosswired, Antioch, I'll ask both of you; do you feel that the 4.x demo module has more of a MMORPG feel than previous editions? The Resource management does seem to be different than 3.x (not better or worse, just different).
Also, Antioch, you have said the harder to kill characters seem to be a better thing. Do you feel this is a continuation of the removal of wound/vitality points from Starwars in moving it to Saga?
MMORPG = 4e is a dead issue as far as I am concerned. It played like D&D rounds, HP, AC, sleep spells, flanking, etc. I play WoW and 4e does not feel like WoW at all.
As for characters being harder to kill - though I have not killed a PC I have come darn close on several occasions. In fact I did not know that the PC's second wind can only be used once per encounter. If I had known that then there would have been deaths for sure. The combat is definitely not as deadly as 1st level 3e then again I always thought that 3e PCs were far to fragile until they hit 3rd or even 4th.
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We have had to "unlearn" a few 3.5 habits...Any specific habits you can recall that we should watch out for? Or any specific rules issues that stumped you?
As David mentioned the free five foot step is now a move action.
In general I was looking for complexity where 4e has created simple elegant solutions. Actions are simplified. Spell effect area no longer require wire templates to figure out.
Counting diagonals as single squares actually makes range calculation simple.
Remembering that you can take 3 actions per turn: standard, move, or minor where a standard can be replaced with either a move or a minor.
We also caught ourselves automatically picking up a nat 20 to make a confirm roll.
I's really a bunch of little things.
I don't have the book yet so I can't answer your question, but to clarify what you'd like, could you give an example of a monster you couldn't defeat by simply hacking away in 3E? (Serious, no snark, honest!)
Cheers! :)
Edit: Not from KotS but in the 4E playtests my group ran, we TPK'd once, had another fight where only one character survived (while playing dead ever after all of her stuff was taken) and another where only two characters lived (out of five!)
This was the Escape from Sembia module that was run atthe DDXP, and there were only four combats that I remember (all but the first one was a considerable rout on the PCs part).