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Well, now that the semi-controversy has died down (:P), what do you all think? I've only skimmed the book, but pretty pleased with what I've read. I'm a bit surprised it's so focused on heroic tier, and that's my only concern so far. I enjoy the (sometimes passing) appearance of Realms iconics and Realms organizations, old and new. I think the new character themes are really well done, and I like the options for variant races. And the new gish looks like it could be quite fun. ^_^ Lots of good stuff for DMs as well.
I haven't had a chance to get the product yet but when it hits stores on the 16th i'll be there to get it. As for the adventures being heroic, I believe it's a campaign guide designed for heroic tier only. That's not to mean that you cannot use it with Paragon or Epic tier characters and so forth but the adventures and plots invlove mostly heroic tier encounters and monsters.
One of the designers says that it's not too hard a thing to level up some of them to be useful for other tiers of play.
How's the Paragon/Epic levels of the Bladesinger look? I'm really interested in the class and hope it pans out well over all tiers of play.
I haven't had a chance to get the product yet but when it hits stores on the 16th i'll be there to get it.
If your local game store is a Wizards premiere store (as most game stores are), you don't have to wait that long -- those stores have had that book since Friday. You only have to wait until the 16th if you are buying it at a book store or other non-game store.
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How's the Paragon/Epic levels of the Bladesinger look? I'm really interested in the class and hope it pans out well over all tiers of play.
It's an odd little class. I like it, but I'm not quite sure how it's going to be at higher tiers. Instead of getting multiple uses of an ability (say, the thief's backstab), their main ability (bladesong) gets better as the progress. So for a couple of rounds in an encounter, they're quite powerful. I'll have to see how it plays out. ^^ Nice thing- it and the new themes are in the character builder already.
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I played the World Wide Game Day Neverwinter Intro at my FLGS because unemployment and attending Gen Con are incompatible. First time I played 4e in 18 months and first time ever for Essentials.
First fight, the bad guy escapes despite anything the players can do to stop him. A trivial skill challenge. Second fight, TPK. It did nothing to encourage me to try the NW Encounters and 18 months between 4e games is looking like a reasonable approach.
Nice maps, but how does WotC expect to attract players with such a weak introduction? Nothing encourages me to play a game more than dying horribly with no chance of success in a ridiculous encounter.
Nice maps, but how does WotC expect to attract players with such a weak introduction? Nothing encourages me to play a game more than dying horribly with no chance of success in a ridiculous encounter.Encounter: A level 4 controller (necromancer with damage 5 aura with two square range - he also had a range 3 attack to slide people to him), two thayvian hounds and three zombies that prevented using healing surges when they were bloodied. Seems a fair fight for four 1st level characters.
That does seem a bit too much, espically for a 1st level party. I do wonder what your party's make-up was, but that shouldn't honestly matter (unless you didn't have a leader or defender). But I would say that was not really the problem with the Encounter session but the DM who ran it. With smaller parties, you have to lower the amount they're going to fight. I'll bet the Zombies where the most difficult part and he should've reducted it to 2 zombies and possibly 1 thayvian hound. I don't, however, have any knowledge of what a Thayvian Hound does, so I can't help out more. But that does suck that you didn't have a good time and it resulted in a TPK.
I do have another Bladesinger question for you xellos; Were there any rules for Hybrid Bladesingers or a Bladesinger Multi-Class feat in the book?
I've also only skimmed it and like the look of it. I enjoy the shift away from a series of sample encounters to a more approach "here's a region to explore" approach. I think wotc's flavor material has really improved over the last few months.
I find myself getting irritated at the obvious cross-marketing of the computer game, but that's hardly a rational response and it doesn't intrude in any substantial way. Nonetheless, it's annoying.
I played the World Wide Game Day Neverwinter Intro at my FLGS because unemployment and attending Gen Con are incompatible. First time I played 4e in 18 months and first time ever for Essentials.
First fight, the bad guy escapes despite anything the players can do to stop him. A trivial skill challenge. Second fight, TPK. It did nothing to encourage me to try the NW Encounters and 18 months between 4e games is looking like a reasonable approach.
Nice maps, but how does WotC expect to attract players with such a weak introduction? Nothing encourages me to play a game more than dying horribly with no chance of success in a ridiculous encounter.
** spoiler omitted **
Possibly either the DM or WotC messed up with the encounter. I mean on the face of it the encounter sounds like a pretty interesting challenge - facing an enemy with a nasty aura and the ability to pull you into it should be good times but maybe it was a little hard.
Tricky element to handle though - I mean you do want the session to be challenging, especially in encounters where there is no strong way to emphasize great role playing and ongoing story the way one can do with a home game. So I suspect that there needs to be some chance that the party can fail. Rigged so most groups make it certianly but there needs to be some groups that don't or it won't be very exciting.
I find myself getting irritated at the obvious cross-marketing of the computer game, but that's hardly a rational response and it doesn't intrude in any substantial way. Nonetheless, it's annoying.Haven't read it myself, so don't know how egregious it is, but my view on such things is generally.... "This content isn't really of any use to me. But... it is probably a good way to try and draw in new players and get them invested in the game, and that will just about always be a worthwhile goal. So I guess I can live with it."
Yeah, my reaction is quite unreasonable (The marketting I'm refering to is pretty much confined to just one sidebar advertising the tie-in with other WotC products). Nonetheless, it bugs me.
I've read a little more now and really quite like it overall. Interestingly, the problem WoTC created for 3PP with the closed nature of their character builder is beginning to rear it's head (at least with our group) in that the rest of our group only use the offline character builder. As such, the various character options available in Neverwinter arent likely to get used in our game and it's something of a disincentive for me to use this and similar products.
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That does seem a bit too much, espically for a 1st level party. I do wonder what your party's make-up was, but that shouldn't honestly matter (unless you didn't have a leader or defender).
The party make-up was part of the problem. Several people had multiple characters and after the GM told us repeatedly that we didn't need a cleric, we went with my Paladin, a wizard and two rogues. So we were melee heavy, which was a poor fit for the damage aura. A cleric might have helped, but we died with several unused healing potions because of the foes limiting healing surge usage. And I was using the pre-gen paladin who apparently gave up lay on hands.
The scenario limited where the PCs could start, so three of four were stunned, immobilized, in rough terrain and heavily damaged once the necromancer went, because we were forced to group for his spell (he missed the wizard). Then the other creatures attacked (none were minions) and everyone but the wizard was bloodied before most of us had even gone. Everyone did their second wind, but auto damage and overpowered opponents led to the TPK. The paladin dropped after 3 actions (including second wind) and bled out in the aura.
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I'll be starting up or adding to a different thread to elaborate on this further, but do ALL the D&D Encounter style games require you to use Essential style characters? Cause after all the cool options of the more "advanced"(?) classes, I don't really care for having all my cool powers taken away from me.
Plus, there's no essentials Avenger is there?
The paladin dropped after 3 actions (including second wind) and bled out in the aura.
This strikes me as the really unfortunate turn of events in your experience. Being down and not recovering very early in an encounter is really just not fun - you can't do anything and you never really got to play. I can see why you found the final encounter very underwhelming.
If you had all died after a hard fought battle that was interesting, even if a bit frustrating, the encounter would have had some interesting elements but there is not much that can be done to make this fun.
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I played the World Wide Game Day Neverwinter Intro at my FLGS because unemployment and attending Gen Con are incompatible. First time I played 4e in 18 months and first time ever for Essentials.
First fight, the bad guy escapes despite anything the players can do to stop him. A trivial skill challenge. Second fight, TPK. It did nothing to encourage me to try the NW Encounters and 18 months between 4e games is looking like a reasonable approach.
Nice maps, but how does WotC expect to attract players with such a weak introduction? Nothing encourages me to play a game more than dying horribly with no chance of success in a ridiculous encounter.
** spoiler omitted **
None of what you describe is in the book. It doesn't really contain encounters, but campaign ideas. And it was quite explicitly focused on Herioc tier in the blurb, so that shouldn't be a big surprise. I also can't really comment on the bladesinger as I didn't look at it in detail and, not playing Essentials, couldn't really relate it to anything much.
My main reaction was, "Whoa, there's a lot going on in that town!" It seems a bit much -
I have to say...I think is a very good book. There I say it :). I have read thru it at my store(not going to run it of course) and talk to a few friends who still play 4th ed sometimes and they say they generally like the book.
Will it get me to play 4th ed again? Maybe with the right GM and players I might want to play thru it. But it is the first book in a very long time that WotC has came up with that I am half considering buying.
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I'll be starting up or adding to a different thread to elaborate on this further, but do ALL the D&D Encounter style games require you to use Essential style characters? Cause after all the cool options of the more "advanced"(?) classes, I don't really care for having all my cool powers taken away from me.
Plus, there's no essentials Avenger is there?
I'm not certain what the rules are. I don't have any of the Essentials books, so I was stuck with a pre-gen. The other players had created their characters and I'm not sure what rules they used.
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I'm not certain what the rules are. I don't have any of the Essentials books, so I was stuck with a pre-gen. The other players had created their characters and I'm not sure what rules they used.I'll be starting up or adding to a different thread to elaborate on this further, but do ALL the D&D Encounter style games require you to use Essential style characters? Cause after all the cool options of the more "advanced"(?) classes, I don't really care for having all my cool powers taken away from me.
Plus, there's no essentials Avenger is there?
I looked it up on the DDI today and apparently you HAVE to play Essentials ... which kind of sucks.
I looked it up on the DDI today and apparently you HAVE to play Essentials ... which kind of sucks.I'm not certain what the rules are. I don't have any of the Essentials books, so I was stuck with a pre-gen. The other players had created their characters and I'm not sure what rules they used.I'll be starting up or adding to a different thread to elaborate on this further, but do ALL the D&D Encounter style games require you to use Essential style characters? Cause after all the cool options of the more "advanced"(?) classes, I don't really care for having all my cool powers taken away from me.
Plus, there's no essentials Avenger is there?
On ramp for newbs. Got to keep it simple.
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On ramp for newbs. Got to keep it simple.I looked it up on the DDI today and apparently you HAVE to play Essentials ... which kind of sucks.I'm not certain what the rules are. I don't have any of the Essentials books, so I was stuck with a pre-gen. The other players had created their characters and I'm not sure what rules they used.I'll be starting up or adding to a different thread to elaborate on this further, but do ALL the D&D Encounter style games require you to use Essential style characters? Cause after all the cool options of the more "advanced"(?) classes, I don't really care for having all my cool powers taken away from me.
Plus, there's no essentials Avenger is there?
Fair enough.