Linky. Anyone running/playing the mod?
Yep, I'm running it this Saturday. I'm still not sure how many people are going to show up though given the timing, so I'm not sure if they are going to need others to DM at the store.
I am liking this adventure more than the previous. Certainly it will be easier to teach a group of new players with this, if it happens again that is.
Edit: I'm considering printing out the power cards myself to give to players. I think that the colors would make it even easier to deal with any new players that show up.
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Linky. Anyone running/playing the mod?
I am. I ran a round zero for the other people who are DMing it with me and I will warn you, the first battle and the last battle took about 2 hours each. The rest went rather smoothly.
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Linky. Anyone running/playing the mod?
Yes indeed. I already got the module and miniatures, and am looking forward to running this.
EDIT: I like your idea of printing out the powers, Blazej. I may do that myself.
EDIT: I like your idea of printing out the powers, Blazej. I may do that myself.
And now I'm seeing how viable it is to cut them all out and put them in plastic sleeves with Magic cards backing them. They are on the edge of being to big for card sleeves.
I'll be running it at Rising Phoenix Games in Cherry Valley, MA this Saturday.
I am. I ran a round zero for the other people who are DMing it with me and I will warn you, the first battle and the last battle took about 2 hours each. The rest went rather smoothly.
Any obvious reasons why? What slowed those battles down? We'd like to squeeze in more sessions Saturday and knowing what might need to be cut back to fit everything in, so any insights you might have would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
I'm running 2 tables this Saturday and participated in a Slot 0 game two weeks ago. I think it's a much improved mod from the last game day, although I believe the introduction and story surrounding the game is a bit weak. This is easy to expand on though, if you have any creativity you should be able to elaborate in the beginning a bit more.
This mod also has one of the better skill challenges I've ever seen, and is divided up into 3 parts that require the use of a wide range of skills so all players can participate.
We went about 15 minutes over time and that was without any great teamwork. I'm very surprised that some people had 2 hour long combats. But that is the way of RPG's, different groups play very differently. I would imagine this has a lot to do with...
To speed things up I've reduced all monster HP by 25% and I've set up initiative for all the monsters in advance by making an excel spreadsheet that I can use for both my sessions. I put the party in a separate sheet that I can cut and paste from as necessary and enter in their initiatives. A simple sort later and I'm ready to go. I'm hoping these two things help with the pacing a lot. I only have an hour between sessions to grab a bite to eat and get ready for the next table, so I need to make sure I end on time. :)
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I am. I ran a round zero for the other people who are DMing it with me and I will warn you, the first battle and the last battle took about 2 hours each. The rest went rather smoothly.Any obvious reasons why? What slowed those battles down? We'd like to squeeze in more sessions Saturday and knowing what might need to be cut back to fit everything in, so any insights you might have would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
I'd say the biggest reason was inexperience. Players who have had a lot of experience playing 4E should have a smoother time of it. However, the orc terrorblades and the blood drakes are tough customers. The orc terrorblades are just about a dozen hit points shy of 100 hp. That makes them tough to beat, particularly when your two biggest bruisers are immobilized and keep failing their saves.
Note that casting Web in party that is mostly melee fighters is not the best choice for a wizard to make.
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I'm running 2 tables this Saturday and participated in a Slot 0 game two weeks ago. I think it's a much improved mod from the last game day, although I believe the introduction and story surrounding the game is a bit weak. This is easy to expand on though, if you have any creativity you should be able to elaborate in the beginning a bit more.
I agree. The adventure doesn't give you much in the way of introduction. It takes some creativity to provide the players with a good hook for the adventure. Ultimately I just went with the idea that they were a bunch of treasure hunters who had stumbled onto the group while searching for the dragon's horde.
I'm going to be playing in it. Nearly my entire gaming group is going. The players will finally realize that I run skill challenges in an odd way. I'll have to give them a heads up on that beforehand, so they don't expect it to be like how I run them and think about it that way.
Oh! I like that.
To speed things up I've reduced all monster HP by 25% and I've set up initiative for all the monsters in advance...
I've found that this works out pretty well for timed events such as these. I wouldn't do it for an LFR mod or a home game, where you're likely dealing with more experienced players or have more time, but for a 4 hour game day it works well.
It makes things easier, and people are usually at a Game Day to hang out and maybe try something new, so TPK's and 2 hour combats aren't really a good way to introduce them to the game.
Reducing monster HP's this way shortens each combat by about 10 minutes or more, and eliminates the at-will spamming that a lot of new 4E players tend to gripe about in long combats.
Alternately, I've heard of people reducing monster HP by as much as 50% and then increasing the damage they deal by 1 or 2 dice values, so they still end up depleting about the same amount party resources (potions, healing surges, dailies) in half the time. Haven't tried it myself, but I've been tempted in the past. I've worried that that much raw damage coming from monsters each round may be a little too intimidating for players.
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Alternately, I've heard of people reducing monster HP by as much as 50% and then increasing the damage they deal by 1 or 2 dice values, so they still end up depleting about the same amount party resources (potions, healing surges, dailies) in half the time. Haven't tried it myself, but I've been tempted in the past. I've worried that that much raw damage coming from monsters each round may be a little too intimidating for players.
The only thing I don't like about this is that as a player my defenses are not built for this faster damage-taking. While the numbers aren't significantly higher, imagine the DM's horrid capability of rolling really well and you'll find characters going down faster. Not so bad when you're doing 1d8+4 on an attack, but consider a Halfling Slinger with Stone Rain attack. That additional 6 points damage could be devastating!
I rather prefer your simple 25% off system.
I rather prefer your simple 25% off system.
It seemed to work pretty well Saturday. Didn't get as early a start as I would have liked (~noon) since people didn't show up. Went just over 4 hours. Much better module, much better storyline ("Hey, we're not rescuing kids this time!"), they seemed to enjoy the whitewater rafting skill challenge and watching everyone in the party flee in mortal terror from the rust monsters was a hoot. Until the Barbarian realized that the dynamic weapon could make something out of wood and he didn't have much to fear.
The other table did take 6 hours, but that's because of 1) lack of experience and 2) timid players.
I tried getting another group together, but the couple of people that wandered by wandered off.
I went in to Game Day expecting to use the 25% off idea. That lasted until the barbarian rolled a crit for around 40 something points of damage. Then I decided to run them as is. With 4 players (no rogue) we finished in a little over 3 hours. The only adjustments I made were those suggested for a 4 person party. The longest encounter was the 2nd one, and only because the grognard playing the dwarf ran when he heard rust monster. And at the end there was only one PC standing (though no deaths) because they refused to take the kobold seriously.
All in all, a good Game Day.
My experience was disappointing.
I played the wizard and didn't like the build at all - the feat selections left me shaking my head. The GM said the paladin was also poorly built, though the rogue was well designed I think.
The group I was in was iffy too. There was me and a friend, and 2 small kids - the kids were pretty good, actually, though they only used basic attacks, they played well. We had three other adults, though, and they were, well, not good players which detracted from the overall experience.
The adventure itself seemed weaker than gameday 1. The premise wasn't nearly as good, I thought, and the fights were less interesting. And we didn't get the full experience of the skill challenge, since the GM kinda just fudged us through it.
I hope they make the scenario available for download, so I can at least read it and see how much of it was the GM and how much was the scenario.
Still, WotC needs to do a much better job of character design for these. They don't have to be optimized by any means, but the feats, gear, etc, need to both fit the adventure and be useful. IMO, the goal should be to make everything on the character sheet be helpful at some point during the adventure.
I'd give the PH2 one an A+ and this one a C-. And only a C cause there were rust monsters and the kobold was a cool baddie.
I hope they make the scenario available for download, so I can at least read it and see how much of it was the GM and how much was the scenario.
Amelia
I played in a game at my local gaming store. The players had all played D&D but were not that familiar with 4e, myself and my husband excepted. The DM I suspect was relatively new to DMing and made a couple mistakes, but the rules errors in question didn't favor the players or the monsters and were consistently enforced.
The scenario was a little basic, with little intro and not much of a hook, though that could have been the DM's lack of experience as easily as anything else.
I was playing the dwarven paladin and aside from needing to keep my distance from the rust monsters, I thought the game went pretty well. We ran out of healing quite spectacularly in the last combat, but still managed to get through without anyone even going unconscious, though several of us were very close toward the end.
It was fun, though now I'd sorta like to know what the adventure actually looked like now that I've played through it.
- Ashavan
I ended up running both of my tables back-to-back. Each one took about 4.5 hours because we had a lot of newbies and I was one of the few DM's who actually ran the skill challenge correctly. Most of them fudged through it, likely because they didn't bother reading the damned thing in advance.
It's a shame really, because without the skill challenge there really isn't any other chance for roleplaying. I had a couple players try to roleplay through combat and that helped, but it was mostly just fight after fight, which takes a lot of time with relatively new players playing with new 5th level characters. My head was spinning by the time we were done.
All in all, however, I had a really good time and many wonderful and memorable things happened. Like the wizard killing Sarna with an opportunity attack when she tried to run away with 2 hit points remaining...with her bare fist! This was a completely new player too, so I'm glad I was able to give her that chance to do something really, really cool.
Me: Okay Althaea, you get to make an opportunity attack as she flies past but with your to-hit bonus you'll need a 19 or a 20.
Her: Natural 20, 4 damage.
Me: B%++#~@s. You smash her nose in and she falls from the air and clatters lifelessly to the floor.
Good times. I feel sorry for those who got ripped off on the skill challenge, as this was also a lot of fun. Well, except for my first group who managed to fail it after only 4 checks due to some really bad rolls. So they tumbled through the rapids and got lost, losing one healing surge each.
I'm glad I reduced monster HP by 25% as each fight would likely have dragged on a bit longer, especially the final Sarna fight. If you have her use her hover flight and take advantage of the cold aura and everything else, that's a real challenge for anyone, newbies or not. I found this did seem to reduce the difficulty of the fights, but since it was a game day and not LFR or anything, I was going for fun and cinematic rather than really challenging. It worked out well.
I played the wizard and found her ok in some events but would have built her differently if I had made her (Staff of defense and a better 3rd encounter). I think her feats were fine, as jack of all trades is a good feat, and leather armor prof is good for a wizard. That being said the coolest thing I got to do was kill the crap out of the kobold in the first fight before the Harpy could arrive with burning hands and color spray back to back from an action point use that left the Dm looking at me like "it figures". Lucky for him the Harpy just grabbed the book thumbed its nose at us and flew off and we couldn't do jack about it. Was much fun.
Afterwards I got the adventure off my good buddy the Dm and ran it at home for some players who couldnt make game day and even though some of them were completely new to 4e, they made through the adventure without anyone dying, had loads of fun, and barely managed the skill challenge (wracked up 2 failures at the beggining then succeeded from there). I would qualify this as a good adventure for a "delve" product. :P
I really disagree with the feats of the wizard being good for this adventure. In my PoV, for an event like this, everything on the sheet should be relevant to the adventure. And the feats are not.
Improved Init is good. The other three are not.
Ritual Caster is useless, cause she has no rituals, nor any ritual materials, nor is there any way to use it in the adventure that I am aware of.
Leather Armor might be good in a table top game depending on how you play your character. In this case, however, it is also useless, for two reasons:
1. The wizard should never be in melee. She has no melee weapon (I was appalled she didn't have a normal longsword given her eladrin abilities), and the encounters don't have enough baddies so that the melee heavy party can't easily keep them off her.
2. If one does get close, well, she has three options to keep her safe: shield, fey step, and expeditous retreat. All are better options then leather armor.
Again, in a table top game if you play an in close wizzy, it's a good choice. Here, I think it's not.
Jack of all trades. IMO, it's less useless, but not great given that it doesn't help enough. It doesn't swing any off skills to the point where it's at all tempting to use them in the skill challenge section. It would be better here to use Skill Focus or Skill Training if you want to boost the wizard for that section.
I thought the rogue was built well. Every feat he had was useable in the adventure and clearly had a positive effect on it. His powers were good, his gear good. The wizard though was shafted, IMO, on feats, though I liked her powers. If someone chose the cold daily, though, they might have felt hosed.
I didn't study the other sheets, so I can't comment on them. But I really felt the 11s from Gameday 1 were much better designed then then 5s from Gameday 2.
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Ritual Caster is useless, cause she has no rituals, nor any ritual materials, nor is there any way to use it in the adventure that I am aware of.
Ritual Casting
You gain the Ritual Caster feat as a bonus feat ... (PHB, pg 158) In other words, it's a standard feature on this character model.As to the rest of your concerns, I may agree with the Jack... skill (while I think there may be better choices it's not one I think completely "nerfs" the character), but I think the Leather one is staight up, for these two reasons:
1) For experienced players this may or may not be a feat of choice. I know for myself that I may be looking into getting it, as my wizard seems to get up front just a little too often. For the very high opportunity of having a complete noob player at the helm, having a little more crunch on the Wizard doesn't seem like all that bad of a plan.
2) This one is going to come across as a little too heavy, so I warn in advance, however, my 'nerdrage' is a byproduct of too much MMO experience. Anyways, you're telling another player how to play their character. This is D&D. There is no "right way" to play! There may be more efficient or more effective ways, but just like when playing an MMO, my response will be "it's my $14.95 a month, I'll play however darned well I feel like, thank you."
stuff
Well I enjoyed having the high AC, due to not being as scared of cracking heads with the various blasts and turning into a pincushion for my efforts, not to mention the bugs from under that you can't predict gave me some issue that I was able to avoid. Also a newer player who's first experience with a wizard could easily make the mistake of getting into melee so the ac is helpful, but I agree it was abysmal to not have a melee weapon. But I assume it is because WOTC assumes players will just shift and spam at-wills so they never need a melee weapon (Let's face it Magic missile would do better and hit more thana sword anyway). YMMV.
Ritual Casting
You gain the Ritual Caster feat as a bonus feat ... (PHB, pg 158) In other words, it's a standard feature on this character model.
Yeah, getting that feat didn't take anything else away, so it wasn't a poor feat choice.
But I thought it was a mistake not to include any rituals for the wizard. Certainly an "Enchant Magic Item" would have been helpful, the wizard's reaction was to check his ritual list for just that.
Complaining about the characters is rather futile. I can almost guarantee they were generated randomly by some intern or whatever just to match the new minis that came out, and then no one ever bothered to review them. They selected "Eladrin" and then "Wizard" in the Character Builder and then just let it go randomly from there.
Most of the things you're complaining about are silly compared to the Healer's Brooch that they gave to the barbarian who has no healing powers. I guess the barbarian just thought it was shiny and no one wanted to argue with him. :)
The characters have never been optimized for any of the Game Days but that's not what the game day is really about. It's much more casual. Even without optimized characters I only had one player get taken to unconsciousness the whole game. But you know what, everyone had fun and no one cared that the wizard had leather armor instead of Implement Expertise. :)
At least it's not as bad as the last game day where the barbarian had a paladin power he shouldn't have and no racial power anywhere on the sheet despite having the feat that improved it.