More Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition ranting.
I ran yet another game of Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition today. It's just so addicting! I find it both a blessing and a curse to be so intrigued by so many modules both new and old, and by the amount of fantastic characters you can build mechanically. Of course the interesting combinations you can create narratively are limited only by your imagination, but over and over again Isaac, and various other players show me hilarious/awesome/hilariously awesome builds for classes I previously thought were single facetted and dull. The new mechanics I saw today were as follows:
Isaac's character was a Shadar-kai fighter, which was deliciously full of lore. Essentially the Shadar-kai are a race who serve the Raven queen, and have ties with the Shadowfell, and their point in life are to be, or pretend to be amazingly badass so that the Raven Queen will accept them, and make them immortal. Excellent premise for kicking ass. The next piece of awesome that Isaac brought out was he's playing a brawler style of fighter, who drags, grabs, and punches things with his spare hand. It's pretty awesome to be able to describe what he's doing, because it's just so delicious to narrate.
Casey's character was a Drow Assassin, which was the first time I'd seen the mechanics of the class, save Mike Mearls talking about it on the Wizards of the Coast podcast. This character is super mobile, and has some cool striker abilites. The Shadow Shroud or whatever, the thing that stacks, until you hit with it, that's a cool ability. Isn't more powerful then the Barbarian, or the Rogue, but definately feels badass when you manage to hit, and pull out the quad shroud 4d6+12 bonus damage to whatever you're stabbing.
Playing through the Assassin's Knot, which was the module we began today, they had a run in with some hooded men, who wielded daggers, but they were awesome because they had lots of shift abilities, and they had this cool attack where they would make an attack, could shift 2 squares, and attack the same, or another enemy, and then shift two squares again. This meant that there was a lot of mobility, and they had a lot of DPR going down (ranging between 1d6+6 to 3d6+6, with a bonus +6 damage on a crit, happening on 19-20). It was an incredibly tough encounter, and I wish I'd have given my two players warning that killing people wasn't going to be something happening in abundance. All they managed to do was bloody one of the figures before they dashed off into the night. I think it's a slightly bold move, considering I run brutally hard encounters as is. I don't think every encounter will be that hard, but tactical positioning will be a huge part of the encounters, in that bad positioning can get them killed quick. (6 3d6+6 attacks a turn, whittles down the HP quick).
I also enjoyed the sheer number of Named NPCs in AK. In hindsight I really should have made an abbreviated list of all the names, so I didn't have to keep checking, but I only had one hour to prepare, so I did alright I guess. My proudest moment was when they went to see Balmorrow the theater owner in Garotten, who I enthusiastically described him rehearsing the final scene for "Dick Rattleshank". The scene included a large busted woman who was playing the character of Octo-wench, sitting there helplessly, as Dick Rattleshank did battle with a goat headed individual, stabbing him with a fake sword between his arm and chest, all the while spouting sexist one liners. I then managed to pull out the stereotypical overdramatic, yet slightly air headed actor, who talked about how he found it easy to get into the character of Dick Rattleshank because he shared many qualities with the character. My players managed to get a lot of entertainment out of it all, which I was proud of. Kudos to Isaac for coming up with the play name in the first place :P.
I look forward to finishing the module, but for now, /rant.
Isaac's character was a Shadar-kai fighter, which was deliciously full of lore. Essentially the Shadar-kai are a race who serve the Raven queen, and have ties with the Shadowfell, and their point in life are to be, or pretend to be amazingly badass so that the Raven Queen will accept them, and make them immortal. Excellent premise for kicking ass. The next piece of awesome that Isaac brought out was he's playing a brawler style of fighter, who drags, grabs, and punches things with his spare hand. It's pretty awesome to be able to describe what he's doing, because it's just so delicious to narrate.
Casey's character was a Drow Assassin, which was the first time I'd seen the mechanics of the class, save Mike Mearls talking about it on the Wizards of the Coast podcast. This character is super mobile, and has some cool striker abilites. The Shadow Shroud or whatever, the thing that stacks, until you hit with it, that's a cool ability. Isn't more powerful then the Barbarian, or the Rogue, but definately feels badass when you manage to hit, and pull out the quad shroud 4d6+12 bonus damage to whatever you're stabbing.
Playing through the Assassin's Knot, which was the module we began today, they had a run in with some hooded men, who wielded daggers, but they were awesome because they had lots of shift abilities, and they had this cool attack where they would make an attack, could shift 2 squares, and attack the same, or another enemy, and then shift two squares again. This meant that there was a lot of mobility, and they had a lot of DPR going down (ranging between 1d6+6 to 3d6+6, with a bonus +6 damage on a crit, happening on 19-20). It was an incredibly tough encounter, and I wish I'd have given my two players warning that killing people wasn't going to be something happening in abundance. All they managed to do was bloody one of the figures before they dashed off into the night. I think it's a slightly bold move, considering I run brutally hard encounters as is. I don't think every encounter will be that hard, but tactical positioning will be a huge part of the encounters, in that bad positioning can get them killed quick. (6 3d6+6 attacks a turn, whittles down the HP quick).
I also enjoyed the sheer number of Named NPCs in AK. In hindsight I really should have made an abbreviated list of all the names, so I didn't have to keep checking, but I only had one hour to prepare, so I did alright I guess. My proudest moment was when they went to see Balmorrow the theater owner in Garotten, who I enthusiastically described him rehearsing the final scene for "Dick Rattleshank". The scene included a large busted woman who was playing the character of Octo-wench, sitting there helplessly, as Dick Rattleshank did battle with a goat headed individual, stabbing him with a fake sword between his arm and chest, all the while spouting sexist one liners. I then managed to pull out the stereotypical overdramatic, yet slightly air headed actor, who talked about how he found it easy to get into the character of Dick Rattleshank because he shared many qualities with the character. My players managed to get a lot of entertainment out of it all, which I was proud of. Kudos to Isaac for coming up with the play name in the first place :P.
I look forward to finishing the module, but for now, /rant.