Paradigm Shift
May. 25th, 2008 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothToday we played some D+D. We finished up Tom's adventure with a horrible anticlimax, then started in on the intro 4th edition game.
Oh yes, there will be arguments.
Basically, by resting the night just because we were low on hit poiny, entirely out of spells, and seemed to have stopped the immediate danger was a horrible mistake -- when the party finally fought their way past the golems (which were much weaker than they'd looked, and mostly ended up getting distracted by Ignaceous' apes) to the inner sanctum... it was empty. The enemy had fled by teleport, which is why the guards they'd left while they rested hadn't seen anything.
The party agreed unanimously to tell the city guard nothing, collect their money, and skip town before the 'people' who'd been taken into custody dissolved into paint or something. Maybe to that X left on the map...
But we didn't actually do that, we started playing 4e instead.
From the pregens, we selected:
Traxis the paladin
Bore the fighter
Samuel the wizard
Renfield the rogue
Kachuck the warlord
(we had to come up with the names)
These slightly intrepid technically-heroes were travelling overland to a small town where their trainer, Duval, had disappeared while searching for a dragon's tomb. On the way, they were ambushed by kobolds!
Most of the kobolds were easily dispatched, but a few were more dangerous... still, not a threat, even though the party's tactics were a bit... lacking. Samuel ended up tanking, the rogue ended up out on his own and exposed, and the fighter was stuck menacing the minions while the rest ran around free.
At any rate, they survived, acquiring no treasure whatsoever, and made it to the town, where the inn was full of people who helpfully told them everything they needed to know and more -- Duval had vanished while investigating an old tomb that he thought might have a dragon in it, and there was also this mysterious keep nearby. Oh, and the Lord gave them a map to the suspected location of the kobold lair, since they agreed to take them out for a fee. After all, they'd been so easy...
Still, finding their master alive was the first priority... but on the way to the tomb, they were ambushed by more kobolds. Not a huge swarm, but none of them were easily dispatched this time. They'd learned that it was dangerous to ignore the fighter, so three of their fighters rushed in and hacked him to unconsciousness before he could react, while the kobold rogue circled around to backstab Samuel again.
Once again, Bore was stuck facing off against the kobold linebackers, while Renfield ran off on his own for some reason (none of his powers did much unless he could flank)... at least this time Sam managed to hide behind a rock and toss in spells from relative safety. But the party couldn't hit to save their lives, and it was a very very close thing. To add insult to many grievous injuries, the kobold leader, with all the encounter's treasure, ran off, leaving them with nothing to show for this fight either.
Yay.
last session | next session
So far, 4th edition looks like it's going to cause a lot of arguments. Eric's GMing because he's the one who bought the module, and... he's just... *perverse* in his rulings. I can deal with them, but I'd rather play the actual 4th edition rules to get to know what they're like and not his insanely a priori house-ruled version of it. Which he insists is just using 'common sense' and not 'adding rules', where 'adding rules' means 'using the rules as written in a situation that isn't specifically spelled out in detail'.
For example, power A says that when an enemy shifts next to the fighter, the fighter gets a basic attack (which is apparently not an attack of opportunity, making the pregen fighter's choice of feats (bonus on AoOs) questionable). Power B says that when the enemy a warlord designates shifts, anyone next to it gets an attack of opportunity. Eric's ruling -- 'obviously you don't get *both*. Since it doesn't say that you get both, you have to pick one, otherwise you're adding rules'. WTF? Like it's going to specifically point out which powers work together? No, Eric, you're house-ruling it because you think it's too powerful to get multiple attacks like that, even though the effect is only additive (extra damage from source A and extra damage from source B, both of which were paid for during character creation) so it's not the sort of multiplicative nightmare that would really cause problems.
It might be better if there were any fucking rules in the rules handout -- it's so vague that things like 'what sort of action does it take to stand up from prone?' weren't answered, despite both PCs and NPCs having knockdown powers.
Not to mention the kobold dragonshield power that, if played as written, means that it's literally impossible to engage one of them in melee. It says they get to shift 1 square whenever an enemy closes with them. Making the enemy close with them again. Triggering another shift. Woo. I guess that's one where it did make sense to house-rule that it didn't work that way...
And we *really* need to get a better handle on how to play our characters. Especially Josh with the rogue, who keeps running off on his own against stray enemies on the periphery just because he can, and utterly failing to really do any damage as a result (and since kobolds can shift for free, it wasn't even harassing them well). Ed was actually doing an okay job with the wizard, at least.
Oh yes, there will be arguments.
Basically, by resting the night just because we were low on hit poiny, entirely out of spells, and seemed to have stopped the immediate danger was a horrible mistake -- when the party finally fought their way past the golems (which were much weaker than they'd looked, and mostly ended up getting distracted by Ignaceous' apes) to the inner sanctum... it was empty. The enemy had fled by teleport, which is why the guards they'd left while they rested hadn't seen anything.
The party agreed unanimously to tell the city guard nothing, collect their money, and skip town before the 'people' who'd been taken into custody dissolved into paint or something. Maybe to that X left on the map...
But we didn't actually do that, we started playing 4e instead.
From the pregens, we selected:
Traxis the paladin
Bore the fighter
Samuel the wizard
Renfield the rogue
Kachuck the warlord
(we had to come up with the names)
These slightly intrepid technically-heroes were travelling overland to a small town where their trainer, Duval, had disappeared while searching for a dragon's tomb. On the way, they were ambushed by kobolds!
Most of the kobolds were easily dispatched, but a few were more dangerous... still, not a threat, even though the party's tactics were a bit... lacking. Samuel ended up tanking, the rogue ended up out on his own and exposed, and the fighter was stuck menacing the minions while the rest ran around free.
At any rate, they survived, acquiring no treasure whatsoever, and made it to the town, where the inn was full of people who helpfully told them everything they needed to know and more -- Duval had vanished while investigating an old tomb that he thought might have a dragon in it, and there was also this mysterious keep nearby. Oh, and the Lord gave them a map to the suspected location of the kobold lair, since they agreed to take them out for a fee. After all, they'd been so easy...
Still, finding their master alive was the first priority... but on the way to the tomb, they were ambushed by more kobolds. Not a huge swarm, but none of them were easily dispatched this time. They'd learned that it was dangerous to ignore the fighter, so three of their fighters rushed in and hacked him to unconsciousness before he could react, while the kobold rogue circled around to backstab Samuel again.
Once again, Bore was stuck facing off against the kobold linebackers, while Renfield ran off on his own for some reason (none of his powers did much unless he could flank)... at least this time Sam managed to hide behind a rock and toss in spells from relative safety. But the party couldn't hit to save their lives, and it was a very very close thing. To add insult to many grievous injuries, the kobold leader, with all the encounter's treasure, ran off, leaving them with nothing to show for this fight either.
Yay.
last session | next session
So far, 4th edition looks like it's going to cause a lot of arguments. Eric's GMing because he's the one who bought the module, and... he's just... *perverse* in his rulings. I can deal with them, but I'd rather play the actual 4th edition rules to get to know what they're like and not his insanely a priori house-ruled version of it. Which he insists is just using 'common sense' and not 'adding rules', where 'adding rules' means 'using the rules as written in a situation that isn't specifically spelled out in detail'.
For example, power A says that when an enemy shifts next to the fighter, the fighter gets a basic attack (which is apparently not an attack of opportunity, making the pregen fighter's choice of feats (bonus on AoOs) questionable). Power B says that when the enemy a warlord designates shifts, anyone next to it gets an attack of opportunity. Eric's ruling -- 'obviously you don't get *both*. Since it doesn't say that you get both, you have to pick one, otherwise you're adding rules'. WTF? Like it's going to specifically point out which powers work together? No, Eric, you're house-ruling it because you think it's too powerful to get multiple attacks like that, even though the effect is only additive (extra damage from source A and extra damage from source B, both of which were paid for during character creation) so it's not the sort of multiplicative nightmare that would really cause problems.
It might be better if there were any fucking rules in the rules handout -- it's so vague that things like 'what sort of action does it take to stand up from prone?' weren't answered, despite both PCs and NPCs having knockdown powers.
Not to mention the kobold dragonshield power that, if played as written, means that it's literally impossible to engage one of them in melee. It says they get to shift 1 square whenever an enemy closes with them. Making the enemy close with them again. Triggering another shift. Woo. I guess that's one where it did make sense to house-rule that it didn't work that way...
And we *really* need to get a better handle on how to play our characters. Especially Josh with the rogue, who keeps running off on his own against stray enemies on the periphery just because he can, and utterly failing to really do any damage as a result (and since kobolds can shift for free, it wasn't even harassing them well). Ed was actually doing an okay job with the wizard, at least.
