Excellent Ideas
So this weekend karaksindru, megalomanicamie, Todd, and I picked up 4th Edition D&D and spent Saturday and Sunday gaming at my place.
I began running them through Keep on the Shadowfell. I've seen some comments online about the adventure, and for the most part I agree with them. In general, it's a touch on the rough side, some of the encounters are rather difficult if run as described. Even more so, given that with 3 players and me NPC'ing another character, they're effectively down one character from the intended party. Still, it's not too bad, and with some modifications it went fairly well.
I do think I am going to toy with the action point rules, though. I don't feel 1 per milestone and a limit of spending 1/encounter is enough to make up for the loss of powers/surges. (Which, arguably, it's not SUPPOSED to completely make up for it, but I'm not convinced it's enough as is).
So I'm thinking of something along the following lines:
- No limit of how many Action Points can be used per encounter, but no more than one per round.
- You lose ALL accumulated Action Points when taking an extended rest, and have ZERO afterwards.
- After EVERY encounter*, you earn action points. The number of action points you earn scales up as the day goes on, with a basic formula as such: 1 + the number of milestones you've reached. (Where a milestone is still defined as 2 standard encounters since the last milestone/extended rest).
This means, after encounter #1, you earn 1 action point, after encounter #2, you earn one more, two after encounter #3, 2 after #4, 3 after #5, etc. This may be too far to the other side, granting too much power to the PCs as the day goes on, but I'll toy with it next time and see.
* Note: Encounter, in this case, generally means combat encounter. A DM should obviously have some discretion here. If the "encounter" is just a trap/skill challenge or a trivial combat in which no daily powers or healing surges are used, it's probably not appropriate to grant Action Points afterwards, although it may still count towards milestones (and thus the number of Action Points earned after subsequent encounters.. again, dm's discretion here I suppose).
On the other hand, if it's a rough trap, and the PC's use a daily or two, and a few healing surges, it may be just as "strenuous" as a combat encounter, and warrant granting some Action points. Likewise, a very difficult combat may warrant extra action points aftewards.
Finally, I think I may start using easel pads for mapping during gaming. Fairly large easel pads arn't that expensive (27"x34" easel pad, w/1" grid lines). And your old maps can stick around after your done, unlike a wet erase battle map that you have to keep erasing.
I began running them through Keep on the Shadowfell. I've seen some comments online about the adventure, and for the most part I agree with them. In general, it's a touch on the rough side, some of the encounters are rather difficult if run as described. Even more so, given that with 3 players and me NPC'ing another character, they're effectively down one character from the intended party. Still, it's not too bad, and with some modifications it went fairly well.
I do think I am going to toy with the action point rules, though. I don't feel 1 per milestone and a limit of spending 1/encounter is enough to make up for the loss of powers/surges. (Which, arguably, it's not SUPPOSED to completely make up for it, but I'm not convinced it's enough as is).
So I'm thinking of something along the following lines:
- No limit of how many Action Points can be used per encounter, but no more than one per round.
- You lose ALL accumulated Action Points when taking an extended rest, and have ZERO afterwards.
- After EVERY encounter*, you earn action points. The number of action points you earn scales up as the day goes on, with a basic formula as such: 1 + the number of milestones you've reached. (Where a milestone is still defined as 2 standard encounters since the last milestone/extended rest).
This means, after encounter #1, you earn 1 action point, after encounter #2, you earn one more, two after encounter #3, 2 after #4, 3 after #5, etc. This may be too far to the other side, granting too much power to the PCs as the day goes on, but I'll toy with it next time and see.
* Note: Encounter, in this case, generally means combat encounter. A DM should obviously have some discretion here. If the "encounter" is just a trap/skill challenge or a trivial combat in which no daily powers or healing surges are used, it's probably not appropriate to grant Action Points afterwards, although it may still count towards milestones (and thus the number of Action Points earned after subsequent encounters.. again, dm's discretion here I suppose).
On the other hand, if it's a rough trap, and the PC's use a daily or two, and a few healing surges, it may be just as "strenuous" as a combat encounter, and warrant granting some Action points. Likewise, a very difficult combat may warrant extra action points aftewards.
Finally, I think I may start using easel pads for mapping during gaming. Fairly large easel pads arn't that expensive (27"x34" easel pad, w/1" grid lines). And your old maps can stick around after your done, unlike a wet erase battle map that you have to keep erasing.