Finally, we converted our existing Eberron campaign to (LV 5) 4E and played this Sunday. No big talk here, let’s go to the report!
Party composition:
Orc fighter 5 (former half-orc barbarian)
Human cleric 5
Human wizard 5 (former human warmage)
Human warlock 5 (former human beguiler)
Dragonborn paladin 5
Time of session:
6 hours, distributed among:
3.50 hours of “regular” roleplaying
0.25 hours of skill challenge
2.25 hours of combat
“Regular” role-playing:
As expected, roleplaying is exactly as on previous editions. Same feel.
Some 4E changes were positive to the plot of this session. The fact that resurrection (for most NPCs) is far more difficult (and sometimes considered to be impossible) was the main hook for this adventure. The PCs needed to revive someone who died 6 months ago. Raise dead is impossible (1 month cap) and the fact that nobody has level enough to cast it doesn’t help. The PCs then had to enter Dolluhr (Eberron’s Shadowfell) using an artifact and rescue the soul from there.
The fact that diseases are more difficult to cure than on 3.5E gave an interesting plot hook about a diseased boy that needed an expensive amount to hire someone to cure him. As the PC who met the boy refused to pay to cure him, the boy died and the PCs found his soul on Dolluhr (see skill challenge). That was possible to do on 3.5E – but with a lot of excuses from the DM, since the PC is from Thrane, Thrane is full of clerics and paladins, and every 3.5E paladin or level 5 cleric can cure any nonmagical disease in the world.
The lack of charm spells made social interactions more interesting. The PCs couldn’t simply charm every NPC to do whatever they want – something that the beguiler could easily do on 3.5E unless the DM provided an excuse for that not being possible.
I used a lot of information from Worlds & Monsters to depict Dolluhr/Shadowfell. It was very cool. Everything is a shadowy, melancholic mirror of the Material Plane. Since there are no present gods in Eberron, I used the expression “Death” instead of the Raven Queen. The background of Shadarkai is superb cool, also. As they serve Death itself, the Shadarkai try to kill anyone who attempts to rescue a soul from Dolluhr. One of them, however, betrayed Death and rides a phantom train, attempting to save souls from being consumed by Dolluhr’s shadows. As a punishment for betraying Death, however, his body is slowly being consumed by shadows too – thus, he survives by absorbing some life force from the few living beings that cross Dolluhr.
Combats
There were two combats, both technically “balanced” to the level of the party
PCs vs. two level 5 shadarkai chainfighters, two level 5 shadarkai gloomstrikers, one level 5 shadarkai witch
PCs + one level 4 human wizard vs. two level 5 vine horrors, two level 5 wraiths, one level 7 vine horror spellfiend
Comments:
- Both combats featured ambushes. The party doesn’t have anyone trained in Perception. As a result, the PCs were completely surprised on both times (with the exception of the warlock), and, add to the fact that enemies use all their encounter powers at the beginning of the combat, the beginning of both battles was a nightmare for the PCs
- Combat is deadly. Period. On two theorically “balanced encounters”, the party spend 80% of their healing surges and 30% of their daily powers. Forget everything you heard about “4E being easy”, “almost impossible to die”, “4E is for those who doesn’t like to think”, “4E has overabundant healing”, etc. On 3.5E, when I put a “balanced encounter” (EL = party level), the PCs typically take 2 or 3 rounds to win and use less than “20% of the resources”. The 4E “balanced encounter” was more like a 3.5E “hard encounter” (EL = party level +2).
- Combat is really thrilling. There is no “static” combat: PCs and monsters move all the time. PC always have more than one choice in their combat round. It’s very fun for the DM to control monsters – they have cool abilities, and they get to “recharge” abilities make them usable again. You can see the terror in your players when monsters use abilities like the Shadarkai Chainfighter’s Dance of Death, or the Vinehorror Spellfiend’s Caustic Cloud.
- Conditions, ongoing effect, and saving throws are terrible to track for the DM. In a certain moment of the 2nd combat, half of the party was weakened, blinded, restrained and taking 25 ongoing damage. In a certain moment, I gave up tracking PCs conditions and trusted the honesty of my players on tracking their own conditions.
- Combat takes a lot of time. Maybe because it’s the first time we play and were referring to the rules all the time. But combat speed it doesn’t seem to improve much when compared to 3.5E. There are no more iterative attacks, but many actions are either minor and move, allowing characters to sometimes perform 3 actions ina round. In the end, we took more than 1 hour for each combat.
- Teamwork is everything. I heard comments that on 4E everyone is super-powerful and thus the importance of teamwork is diminished. Bullshit. Characters have clear strengths and weaknesses, and strongly rely on each other. Despite PCs having “self-healing” capabilities, it seems that clerics are as important as on 3.5E; without the cleric casting Beacon of Hope on the second combat, the party would probably be TPKed with the 25 ongoing damage/round. Paladins prevent enemies from using attacks of opportunity with their Divine Challenge ability, allowing the weaker allies to stay away from melee combat. And yes, wizards and warlocks should stay away from melee without thinking twice. The party wizard refused to do that and was knocked to his negatives in 1 round.
- I hadn’t many problems with verossimiltude. Nobody cared about the 1-1-1-1 diagonal movement or the “firecubes”. The ease of never having to count squares, or never having to think if an enemy is within the area of a spell or not seem to compensate any small lack of verossimultude. The only thing that I found really weird is that your allies don’t grant cover to your enemies anymore. For a single ally between you and enemy is okay (the ally just moves a bit and you hit the enemy), but things get strange when the warlock throws an eldricht blasts past 3 allies at no penalty.
Skill challenge
Level 5, Complexity 4
Primary skills: Insight, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Arcana, Heal
Skill challenges are fun! It’s not much different from regular roleplaying, but it encourages everyone to be creative and to participate.
The goal of the skill challenge was to put a boy’s soul to rest. The boy was burning himself on a magical fire, hoping to join the Silver Flame (a religion from Eberron). The PC’s goal was make the boy understand that he can’t join the Flame that way, and instead he must accept his own fate with peace on his heart.
Following a suggestion from Mike Mearls, I elected to use both the talk and the result of the dice to decide if the check was successful or not. I decided that some arguments would be automatically successful and other would automatically fail. For other arguments, the result of the dice would decide the outcome. The Insight check would reveal that the boy doesn’t really want to join the Flame – he instead was worried about his father who was still alive, and that he was pissed off with the Church of Silver Flame for letting him die. Making this check helped the PCs to find the "good" arguments.
The skill challenge end up being very difficult. On past sessions, two of the players were used to do most of social interactions, and the others have clear difficulty on doing that. Another problem is that the PCs made conflicting arguments, and I had to penalize them for that.
But everyone tried their best. In the end, the PCs failed the skill challenge – but they were close to winning. As a result, some bad things happened and they were drained 1 healing surge each.
One of them, however, betrayed Death and rides a phantom train, attempting to save souls from being consumed by Dolluhr’s shadows. As a punishment for betraying Death, however, his body is slowly being consumed by shadows too – thus, he survives by absorbing some life force from the few living beings that cross Dolluhr.
Very cool. Thanks for the informative playtest report.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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Conditions, ongoing effect, and saving throws are terrible to track for the DM. In a certain moment of the 2nd combat, half of the party was weakened, blinded, restrained and taking 25 ongoing damage. In a certain moment, I gave up tracking PCs conditions and trusted the honesty of my players on tracking their own conditions.
Seeing the high damage made me look up the stat blocks in question for the second fight (vine fiends), and I see only ongoing damage 10 (vines) and 5 (acid). Is it possible you were stacking damages from the same type? It is buried a bit, but if you're hit by two ongoing effects that do the same type of damage (untyped is effectively just another type here), only the highest damage applies. PH, page 278.
Conditions, ongoing effect, and saving throws are terrible to track for the DM. In a certain moment of the 2nd combat, half of the party was weakened, blinded, restrained and taking 25 ongoing damage. In a certain moment, I gave up tracking PCs conditions and trusted the honesty of my players on tracking their own conditions.Seeing the high damage made me look up the stat blocks in question for the second fight (vine fiends), and I see only ongoing damage 10 (vines) and 5 (acid). Is it possible you were stacking damages from the same type? It is buried a bit, but if you're hit by two ongoing effects that do the same type of damage (untyped is effectively just another type here), only the highest damage applies. PH, page 278.
Hmm, you are right! Thanks for the insight!
Question: if a target is weakened "twice" (i.e. subject to a weakened condition by two different attacks, possibly by two different kinds of monsters), does he need to make 1 save or 2 saves to get rid of the condition?
Hmm, you are right! Thanks for the insight!
Question: if a target is weakened "twice" (i.e. subject to a weakened condition by two different attacks, possibly by two different kinds of monsters), does he need to make 1 save or 2 saves to get rid of the condition?
Hmmm. I don't have my books on me but I'd say that the same weakening attack shouldn't stack with itself, but two weakening attacks would have to be saved individually. That's just a gut ruling though, I don't know what the books really say.
Good question though!
Krauser:
I believe that a number of companies such as *Alea Tools* sell 'condition markers' which you can stack under miniatures (if you are using minis) as reminders of which characters/monsters are under the effects of what conditions.
Hmm, we used some kind of condition marker. The problem is that some characters got up to 4 conditions (bloodied, weakened, restrained and blinded) and everything got messed up. But I will check those Alea Tools, for sure!
Hmm, you are right! Thanks for the insight!Question: if a target is weakened "twice" (i.e. subject to a weakened condition by two different attacks, possibly by two different kinds of monsters), does he need to make 1 save or 2 saves to get rid of the condition?
At the end of your round you make a save against each effect on you. Two different effects that both have Weakened as the condition would have to be saved against individually. If the effect has two conditions then you only have to make one save to get rid of both of them.
Krauser:
I believe that a number of companies such as *Alea Tools* sell 'condition markers' which you can stack under miniatures (if you are using minis) as reminders of which characters/monsters are under the effects of what conditions.
I improvised markers for the pally and fighter 'mark' by using some colored paper clips stuck on the minis. I also thought of those colored transparent tape markers for marking up documents stuck on the minis heads.
And that's just want I found for free at work ;)
Krauser:
I believe that a number of companies such as *Alea Tools* sell 'condition markers' which you can stack under miniatures (if you are using minis) as reminders of which characters/monsters are under the effects of what conditions.
I use 7/8 inch miniature plastic poker chips. They are about the size of a nickle and are DIRT CHEAP - about $2 for a bag of 50. They come in a dazzling array of colors.
Google "7/8 inch poker chips" and you'll find plenty of vendors.
My group has been ripping off the plastic rings left behind by bottle caps for a few weeks now. We have a wide assortment of colors and use them for all different types of affects. Whether we'll have a wide enough grouping though is yet to be seen, as our full time 4E campaign doesn't start until the 18th!
Thanks, OP
This is the kind of thing I like to see.
For Marking we got a pack of multicolored pipecleaners from the craft store. The longer ones are able to be cut into thirds and then folded into circles, which then drape over the minis.
Different colors for different conditions seem to have made it pretty easy to determine who's got what.
Although, having several do make the mini look like it just stepped off the plane in Hawai'i.
And it's satisfying to make a saving throw and take off the black "ongoing necromantic damage" ring to hand back to the DM
Alex
Thanks for the report!
I've been considering converting my Eberron campaign over, but there are just too many issues with that.
I have an Artificer, Sorcerer, AND a Druid all in the same party... Sigh...
Thanks for the report!
I've been considering converting my Eberron campaign over, but there are just too many issues with that.
I have an Artificer, Sorcerer, AND a Druid all in the same party... Sigh...
A Sorcerer could likely convert to Wizard and be pretty dang close. Maybe offer some kind of trade for giving up the Wizard spellbook, but I wouldn't really recommend extra use of powers. Maybe just a bit more HP?
Druid, you are out of luck. Maybe a Fey-pact Warlock or something.
Dragon is supposedly putting up a new class for playtesting next month though ... my money is on Artificer currently (although it could be a legacy class, or Swordmage ...)
Keith Baker has said it will almost certainly be Artificer.
Keith Baker has said it will almost certainly be Artificer.
Really? Sweet!
Keith Baker has said it will almost certainly be Artificer.
Which still leaves me with trying to convert a druid - feypact warlock? Eh... And a Sorcerer who focuses on spells like - Enlarge Person, Haste, Cloud of Bewilderment, and Alter Self. I don't know if the 4E Wizard would do well for that.
Keith Baker has said it will almost certainly be Artificer.Which still leaves me with trying to convert a druid - feypact warlock? Eh... And a Sorcerer who focuses on spells like - Enlarge Person, Haste, Cloud of Bewilderment, and Alter Self. I don't know if the 4E Wizard would do well for that.
Enlarge Person and Haste, not so much. I don't think the 4E wizard is much in buffing. But Cloud of Bewilderment and Alter Self should still work pretty well, in my mind. 'Course, stupid work and all, no books available. Curses!
Enlarge Person and Haste, not so much. I don't think the 4E wizard is much in buffing. But Cloud of Bewilderment and Alter Self should still work pretty well, in my mind. 'Course, stupid work and all, no books available. Curses!
What's your email? I wanna ask you something in private.
Enlarge Person and Haste, not so much. I don't think the 4E wizard is much in buffing. But Cloud of Bewilderment and Alter Self should still work pretty well, in my mind. 'Course, stupid work and all, no books available. Curses!What's your email? I wanna ask you something in private.
dbmarks at uno dot edu
Thanks for the great playtest report. The link to alea tools was also helpful.
I'm glad to see this report. It puts to rest a lot of what people keep saying about the new system. It's also interesting to see how your players are progressing with the new system from the old.
As for the Alea Tools link, thanks for reminding me of that. I see they finally brought their prices down. The GM set used to be around $150.
I am about to speak heresy, but Perception and Stealth should be a trained skill for any adventurer.
I am about to speak heresy, but Perception and Stealth should be a trained skill for any adventurer.
Why is that heresy? Did I miss that at the most recent converts meeting? *shuffles papers and pages*
It tramples the Ranger’s and Rogue’s role.