Adventuring at our own pace

Our group has been playing 4e since it was released, which has been for, what, fourteen months? Our party is level four.

At this rate, if I don't kill the party outright, we'll have explored the field to thirtieth level by 2018. We'll have missed Fifth edition by then, but might be willing to try 5.5.

Instead, I've proposed to our group that I start doubling the XP per encounter; this means reducing the number of encounters by half, of course, so the party doesn't advance beyond the challenges. This is actually quite tricky when it comes to the Wizards pre-made modules, because the "dungeons" are laid out in a way that all of the encounters matter -- they aren't there just to give the party something to do from point A to point B. And it's not as simple as just cutting each encounter in half, because the challenge is no longer there.

But why are we doing it? Again, to see the higher levels of 4e in our lifetime; whether that's to determine whether we'll stick with 4e at all (after having given it a fair shake) or just to finish a campaign and start up a new, homemade one, depends on who you ask in our group.


Not that I'm in a hurry to abandon the Wizards pre-made modules. As Griff just mentioned, the treasure is much more balanced -- according to their own rules! -- than the 3.5 modules. I started to feel really bad for sticking to the 3.5 modules as written. I will be adding an item or two, and a little treasure, to this current adventure, just to pad it up to the "parcel" level described in the DM's Guide, but it's not a huge addition -- if we had a party of five characters, I might very well not do it, but since we're six, it's a little more noticeable.

One of the things I'm enjoying, as we advance through these modules, is getting to play new monsters. Griff and I have both mentioned how we like the new monster design, where many of them have that signature power or ability, like the kobold's shiftiness, or the hobgoblin's phalanx. It's one thing to read it in a book, but it's another to put it to practice (if you remember, that is).

In fact, I was actually disappointed last session when one of the new monsters, a dire wolf (oops -- forgot to mention it was dire, did I, guys?) never got to use its signature ability. Griff even posited that the creature should have been able to knock the characters prone, and to watch for it, but the triggering environment for that ability, which the dire wolf does indeed have, never occurred. Good for you, young party of adventurers!


Also from our last session, there was one of those moments that sticks in the minds of the players for years to come (such as my cleric getting attacked by every animated object we encountered, a party member using a rod of lightning through the whole party "for the greater good", the aforementioned cleric, heavily clad in armor, crossing a rickety bridge safely, while his lightly-armoured companions behind collapse into the fast-flowing waters, one losing their prized magical rapier...)

A hobgoblin ran up a flight of stairs and leaped upon the back of said dire wolf in a flourish, landing and firing an arrow in one fluid motion -- only to be hit by Griff's wizard/fighter hybrid with a thunderwave spell, unceremoniously dumping the hobgoblin from the back of the wolf, tumbling down the stairs, landing flat on his ass. Perhaps the rest of the group won't remember it as I do, but the visualization of that sure stuck in my mind. And this is why I play this game.

Treasure Island

At our last gaming session the topic of treasure came up as we picked up a few trinkets our fallen enemies had left behind.

Of particular interest was a rather spiffy scimitar and some swanky armor, both with interesting powers. While the rest of the magic items in 4E are pretty weak, I have to say that the armor and weapons are generally very well done.

Besides the expected "+whatever#" they all seem to have a fairly cool little power attached. Nothing really jaw dropping. Five temporary hit points or a free healing surge or things of that ilk. Yet they're still quite useful (even if only a Daily use) and more importantly, they're easy to remember. Mainly because your character's armor and weapons are going to be the center of attention. Weapons moreso, but even armor isn't as likely to be forgotten as some necklace or ring. For me at least, those trinkets tend to get buried and forgotten on my character sheet.

I would be curious to see if changing the magic item powers from Daily to Encounter would make a noticable difference. Maybe I can talk Crwth into trying that out for a couple of sessions. Or maybe someone out there on the interweb has tried this. If so, please let us know how it worked out for you.

The other thing that this brief topic brought to mind was the sheer amount of loot we've gained. It's no secret that the official line of modules released with 3rd edition was incredibly skimpy on the loot. The writers must have had access to the various tables and guidelines for giving out treasure, yet they either ignored them for some reason. Probably because they're jerks. I mean, a Roper against a party of 4th levels? Only a real asshole would write up something like that.

Anyways, the 4E modules have actually been right in line with the suggested treasure guidelines. Far from Mony Haul-ish but we certainly can't complain. We're just a smidge shy of 5th level and everyone in the party now has magic armor or a magic weapon, and in some cases, both.

Even better, for those of us who don't have a magic weapon (myself and our ranger Hune) have enough coin to enchant our weapons to our preference, thanks to the ritual.

Enchant Magic Item (PHB, p 304). This ritual is the cat's ass. Okay, it's a little too MMO-like for my tastes. The jaded skeptic/curmudgeon in me sees this as an obvious way to sell the edition to computer game producers who will then tout that all the kids can easily have flaming swords and armor that spits out lightning. But, putting that aside it really is a nice and useful little effect. Find some generic components and voila, you have a sword or armor that suits you to a tee.

There's some inherent suspension of belief there, but no less than in the 3.5 days when our DM had to conveniently stock the local merchant with whatever magic item we'd been pining/whining for.

While there aren't a lot of magic items worth questing for, at least we have an easy way of turning gold and gems into the item we really want.

Skill Challenges

One of the new features of Dungeon is the Ruling Skill Challenges column, of which this latest article is a part.

I've given my views of skill challenges before. I think they're a great idea, and I'm disappointed that the first Wizards module didn't have more challenges (yes yes, I'm the DM -- I can add them wherever I like).

The Dungeon Master's Guide does have some good examples, of course, on what skill challenges can be used for. And I've thought of some of the more obvious cases where you might use them -- events and actions that are directly (and obviously) based on one or more skills just jump out at you; Diplomacy, Acrobatics, History.

But I've always thought of these things as smaller, "immediate" skill challenges, even though we've been told that that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. So a challenge might be convincing an NPC to do something, convincing an NPC that you know something (which you may or may not), or some physical, immediate challenge, such as skirting a hazardous area or scaling a tricky slope.

But a skill challenge could go on for hours, for days, for weeks. And it can be lots of these smaller things tied together as one big challenge. And this is what I never really grasped. That's why the "travel through an enemy city" example in this post was such a good one; it took a large-scale task -- "travel within a warzone", in a sense, and turned it into a variety of abstract skill checks, allowing for a stealthy approach, a physical approach or a brains approach (and of course, a mixture of them all), to succeed.


What I also liked about this article was the list of Effects of Failures, boosting the DCs here and there as you fail. Not only does it provide the numbers, but also the flavour for why the DCs have increased.

And, the Random Events table also provides that extra bit to the whole encounter, ways to spice up the encounter, even if the party is completely ready for such a skill challenge, having the appropriate skills maxed out.


I look forward to finishing reading module H2, to see if-and-how-many skill encounters there are, hoping there are a few more than H1, and I definitely look forward to more examples from these articles.

Shouldn't combat be fun?

Crwth’s last post got me to thinking. Namely his allusion to the onset of tedium in the official WotC module we’re going through.

I’m not privy to the details of the module, and as much as I’d love to, I can’t go and read through to see if we’re just in a combat heavy section, or if it opens up into more roleplay heavy section soon. I dunno.

I would like to give the benefit of the doubt to the module though. The storyline so far has been intriguing (although I’ve had to suspend reality a lot when it comes to the design of the keep. Just the physical layout as we’ve seen it strikes me as really stoopid for a defensive fort.) The recent plot twist of another group in the nearby mountains definitely grabbed my attention. The encounters have also been very interesting with terrain and monster powers being put to great use.

That aside, I’ve been feeling the slogging tedium of late. It's so bad that I almost dread combat now and find myself pushing for the group to ignore obvious XP and loot farming for avenues that I hope will lead to furthering the story.

I love XP and loot!

So what the hell is going on here!?

My current theory lays the blame on the powers. Especially the “At Will” ones. For me, they have just about sucked every ounce of fun from the game. There’s no more resource management or planning involved. It’s just a matter of looking at the grid, picking out a cluster of bad guys, and dropping a Scorching Burst. Next round? Same thing. Or maybe I’ll toss out an Encounter Power just for shits’n’giggles.

As much as I love the glut of feats our characters get, and the ritual system, I’m really missing the old 3.5 feats and spellcasting system. It was just, more fun. Fourth edition, for all it’s simplicity, and for all the huge improvements, isn’t as much fun for me.

I want to hold out and give 4e longer than the three months it’s had. I want to see the next round of books (and my glimpse at the Player’s Guide to FR was encouraging) but I don’t know if I’m gonna make it. Right now I’m almost to the point where I’m ready to push for a d20 Modern campaign. Or a return to 3.5.

Or, I guess I could blame the DM. ;-)