I've come to the realization that my current state of joblessness between the Winter and Fall semesters means my free time would be better spent pursuing a job that can earn me a steady income for the next two months than working on my blog and other creative pursuits. I do have a fallback position lined up, however it is not really suited to my skills and personality. I'll probably only be silent for a couple weeks at the worst, so you probably won't even miss me before then.
When I get back, you can expect to see another D&D 5e play test report, and I'll also begin posting some of my own creative work on here for people to see.
On a related note, does anyone know of any job openings that involve customer service?
Saturday 23 June 2012
Wednesday 20 June 2012
Board Game Review: Panic Station
The other day I took a trip up to Lost Atlantis Games, located at C3 - 32386 Fletcher Avenue in Mission (The website is fairly new, and not every game that he has in stock is represented yet). This is an awesome place to go for great Board Games. The owner, Darrell, is an awesome guy and possesses an almost contagious sense of enthusiasm and passion for board games, which, in my opinion, is the best reason for going into the business of selling board games. He has a vast knowledge of many different board games, and does a pretty good job of keeping a finger on the pulse of the board game industry. He even stocks a handful of very rare titles that are almost impossible to acquire in North American markets. In addition to his regular stock, Darrell also has an extra shelf full of different games from his personal collection which he is willing to open up and show off and demonstrate the mechanics in order to help give players a good idea of how the games play. His eventual goal is to grow the business to a point where he can relocate to a larger store that could provide a larger stock of games and have extra tables so people can try out games before and after they make their purchase. At the moment the store is rather small, occupying the space of a single office, and can at most fit up to six customers at a time. I really hope his business succeeds, as the Abbotsford/Mission area needs a good board game store like Lost Atlantis.
On this particular trip, Darrell showed me a handful of games that all looked quite intriguing, and would all likely be well received by those that I regularly play with. All the games I mention here were all games that Darrell had just gotten in recently, and are not on the website yet at the time of my writing this.
There was Quarriors: An interesting hybrid between a deck building game, and a dice game, with a monster battling game à la Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh. Another Game was Space Alert:, a real-time cooperative board game where the players assume the roles of the crew of an Spaceship exploring the final frontier, and having to react to events as they occur as they occur as narrated by soundtracks that feature shipwide alerts and blaring red-alert klaxons. There was also Lord of the Rings: Nazgul, an intriguing twist on the typical games that feature the epic struggle between good and evil from Tolkien's masterpiece novels. Instead of the playing Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn, or any of the other heroes from the story, the players get the play the black robed ringwraith servants of Sauron, working to bring about the defeat the free peoples of Middle Earth and cover the land in a second darkness before the ringbearer reaches Mount Doom. Dungeon Petz also looked pretty awesome, as it had the hilarious theme of raising and breeding monsters to sell to evil overlords of various tastes for them to put in their dungeons.
The game I eventually settled on was Panic Station. The reason that this game stood out to me was that it was a sci-fi thriller game, which was designed to evoke a feel similar to the movies from the Alien franchise, including the most recent addition, Prometheus, which the majority of our group had seen and thoroughly enjoyed. There are some differences of course, but these make for a more interesting game.
The players are playing a group of human troopers and their loyal android companions as they explore an abandoned military base, each player is gets 1 human and 1 android to control. Humans wield flamethrowers, androids wield guns. Of course, the base is not entirely abandoned as the players will quickly find out. It has fallen host to an infestation of alien parasites! The only way stop the aliens from overrunning the base is by reaching the alien hive, hidden in the bowels of the station and destroying it. With Fire! A player needs to have three tanks of fuel in their inventory to provide adequate juice to power their flamethrowers and destroy the hive, and each player already begins play with a tank of fuel and a random item.
Now with a team of 4-6 players, the most immediate thought is to trade all of the fuel to one player right away so that they can go and destroy the hive. Easy right? No. As you explore the station (rooms are cards that are randomly drawn, and then placed on the map as the players explore the station) in search of both the hive and new gear, one of the players will inevitably become host to the alien parasite, and will begin working against the humans, trying to infect their former teammates and keep them from obtaining their goal. The way that the infected go about infecting other humans is by trading infection cards in a secret trade that must occur when a player enters a room with 1 or more characters belonging to another player (each player starts with three infection cards, which they cannot trade until they become infected) the only way that the humans can defend themselves from infection is by trading their fuel to the infected at the same time that an infection card is being traded to them. The infected gets to keep the fuel, but the infection is nullified. So the only way to survive infection is by trading your means to win the game, and if the infected end up with all the fuel, and the humans have no way of getting more, the game is practically over.
The humans can try to destroy the infected using their androids' guns, however, the infected still have access to their inventory, as they did when they were on the human side, and so, are able to hold their own.
My group ended up playing through twice over, and each time that we played, the infected ended up winning by whittling the humans down to one or two people without enough fuel to be able to win.
While it is understandable that we took about three times longer than the 30-40 minutes posted on the box, as we were all just learning how to play for the first time, the second time around still took us well over an hour. I think that's more of a reflection of our group's playstyle, rather than an inaccuracy on the game's part., as my group seems to enjoy the amount of intrigue going on around the table. The infected players did a good job of operating under cover and throwing misdirection around being thrown around, so the other players were often unsure of which players were and were not infected until it was too late for them to save themselves.
When I bought the game, I also bought a survival mini-expansion which added a handful of new equipment cards to add a little extra content to the game. Included among these cards was the antidote, which was a very interesting card, as it could be used to cure a player from their infection. The only problem was that the antidote does not protect the trader from being infected themselves, so such a trade is likely to merely switch which players are infected. The only real use for the antidote is as a self-sacrifice gambit where the targeted infected happens to have a stockpile of gas from either before they became infected or from previous infection attempts, and having been cured of the infection, are then able to torch the hive and win the game.
In terms of difficulty, the game seems to be weighted in the favor of the infected players, so it is quite difficult for the uninfected humans to actually win. The game comes with some optional rules to adjust the difficulty, such as decreasing the infection cards each player has, allowing the host infected to use their host card as an infection card, or changing the amount of gas cans needed to burn the hive. Some other ideas that we proposed were to have killed players return their inventory to the equipment draw deck (the deck has a tendency to run out by the late game), or to allow the antidote to provide defense against infection to the person trading it.
As a whole, I'd say that this game succeeds at bringing across the feel of a science fiction thriller movie in the form of a board game. If you liked movies from the Alien series, or even Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I would definitely recommend this game.
Thursday 14 June 2012
D&D 5E playtest impressions: session 2 - Clerical Errors
Since we had another session of the D&D 5E playtest adventure, I'll be posting another recap of the session along with any additional discoveries or impressions that I got. This session was a bit shorter than the previous one, and there were fewer initial discoveries. However, there was one small detail about the rules that we discovered and had a major effect on how we were playing the game. I will go into detail on this discovery during the session recap, and yes, this post's subtitle is, in fact, a pun that relates to this discovery.
While we didn't retcon the entire fight, I did retcon the last round of goblin attacks, and resumed the combat from there with a better understanding of the game mechanics. Now that the goblins were reduced to 13, the fight was still manageable, but now the players were actually taking some hits. The Wizard and Rogue were actually forced to fall back a bit after having taken a few hits. In the end, the heroes emerged bloodied, yet victorious.
They opted to return to town to restock supplies and spend some of their hard-earned treasure. There was a small bit of rp, involving a surly innkeeper who gave them the stink-eye for paying their 1 gold each for room and board in 100 coppers each, as well as a drinking contest between the two Dwarves and the Elf (The fighter won, of course). The next morning they bought a healing kit, a handful of health potions, and some armor before setting out for day three of their adventure.
They returned to the goblin cave to find that the goblins inside had moved out in the party's absence, so they decided to try yet another cave.
Entering the fourth cave, they came across a row of severed heads, of various races, placed in little niches along the wall. The elf spotted that one of the heads was not, in fact, a severed head at all, but the head of an orc lookout that was watching the entrance through a tiny hole in the wall. The retreated back to just outside the entrance to the cave, and within a few moments, were charged by a band of eight orcs. The wizard did some serious damage to the entire group of them with his Burning Hands spell, and the group was able to handle them with minimal difficulty.
Summary Impressions
The fact that we did not understand the rules may have had an impact on our impressions of the first session. So on that note, remember that unless you have an ability that states otherwise, you can only make one reaction per turn.
We still hate how many different denominations in currency there are. Having to nickel and dime how much money the party is getting as loot is a real hassle, and wastes time that could be spent doing actual adventuring.
Also, due to the fact that we are playing with pregenerated characters and do not have access to any character creation rules yet, we don't have a clear idea yet of how the mechanics handle the "Ivory Tower" design philosophy (one of the major things that I dislike about D&D). However, given that starting combat feats are tied to themes that help show how the feats are intended to be used, it seems like they are trying to make the game easier for less combat mechanics oriented players to build decent characters from the get-go rather than having feats and skills that are pretty much newb traps.
Edit:
I forgot to restate my fascination with how fast the combat seems to be flowing compared to previous iterations of the system. I'm going to try running the next session with a battle map to see how fast things are when you are actually moving units around in a physical space.
Recap and In-game discoveries.
Having cleared out the Kobolds from their cave, the Adventurers set off at about midmorning to slaughter the residents of one of the other caves. They were intimidated by the general aura of death and decay emanating from the second cave they approached, and opted to try another one first. The Dwarf Cleric noticed that one of the other caves had seemed to be dug out by goblins fairly recently, so they decided to try see what was behind cave number three.
Rounding the first corner, they managed to get the jump on a goblin hallway patrol, killing most of them before they could react. The remaining one gave a shout of alarm, and ran around another corner. The Rogue and Wizard immediately gave chase, and found themselves in a room similarly that was, similarly to the kobold common room, filled to the brim with 22 goblins. The goblins had also managed to take advantage of the alarm to hire a mercenary Ogre from an adjacent cave. The wizard cast sleep on the goblins in the room. However, unlike the room with the Kobolds, a few more of them were able to resist, and the Ogre was merely slowed. The remaining goblins were also a lot more clever than the kobolds were in the first session, and while some of them charged into combat, others stood back and attacked with shortbows, while yet a few others, went about waking their enchanted buddies. Under normal circumstances, the situation would have been bad enough to have required the party to flee the cave, and develop an alternate strategy, however, we were following an improper understanding of the rules, which I will now go into detail on.
As is foreshadowed in the title of today's recap and impressions, we made a bit of a mistake with how we interpreted the Dwarf Cleric's Defender Feat. The way the feat is described in the text is as follows:
While you are using a shield, when a creature within 5 feet of you is attacked, as a reaction you can give the attacker disadvantage on the attack.
The way this we interpreted this for the first session-and-a-half was that as long as the other party members were adjacent to him, incoming attacks would be at a disadvantage (roll twice, take the lower result). We realized that there must be something wrong with either the rules or how we understood them when we were over halfway through the combat with the 22 goblins and their Ogre pal, and the party was able to hold their own. When I asked the Cleric to read out the exact wording of the feat, the word "reaction" rang a bell in my mind. In a previous 4th Edition campaign, we had a moment where we had to look up exactly what was meant by reactions and opportunity attacks, and I recall that before that there was some confusion in some of the players minds in terms of how exactly those worked. Sure enough, when I looked up "reactions" in the How to Play document, I found this little revelation:
When you take a reaction, you can't take another one until the start of your next turn.So unless stated otherwise, the cleric can only grant disadvantage on one incoming attack to an ally per turn. After that, the rest of the fight became a bit more dangerous for the players, as they were actually taking hits from time to time.
While we didn't retcon the entire fight, I did retcon the last round of goblin attacks, and resumed the combat from there with a better understanding of the game mechanics. Now that the goblins were reduced to 13, the fight was still manageable, but now the players were actually taking some hits. The Wizard and Rogue were actually forced to fall back a bit after having taken a few hits. In the end, the heroes emerged bloodied, yet victorious.
They opted to return to town to restock supplies and spend some of their hard-earned treasure. There was a small bit of rp, involving a surly innkeeper who gave them the stink-eye for paying their 1 gold each for room and board in 100 coppers each, as well as a drinking contest between the two Dwarves and the Elf (The fighter won, of course). The next morning they bought a healing kit, a handful of health potions, and some armor before setting out for day three of their adventure.
They returned to the goblin cave to find that the goblins inside had moved out in the party's absence, so they decided to try yet another cave.
Entering the fourth cave, they came across a row of severed heads, of various races, placed in little niches along the wall. The elf spotted that one of the heads was not, in fact, a severed head at all, but the head of an orc lookout that was watching the entrance through a tiny hole in the wall. The retreated back to just outside the entrance to the cave, and within a few moments, were charged by a band of eight orcs. The wizard did some serious damage to the entire group of them with his Burning Hands spell, and the group was able to handle them with minimal difficulty.
Summary Impressions
The fact that we did not understand the rules may have had an impact on our impressions of the first session. So on that note, remember that unless you have an ability that states otherwise, you can only make one reaction per turn.
We still hate how many different denominations in currency there are. Having to nickel and dime how much money the party is getting as loot is a real hassle, and wastes time that could be spent doing actual adventuring.
Also, due to the fact that we are playing with pregenerated characters and do not have access to any character creation rules yet, we don't have a clear idea yet of how the mechanics handle the "Ivory Tower" design philosophy (one of the major things that I dislike about D&D). However, given that starting combat feats are tied to themes that help show how the feats are intended to be used, it seems like they are trying to make the game easier for less combat mechanics oriented players to build decent characters from the get-go rather than having feats and skills that are pretty much newb traps.
Edit:
I forgot to restate my fascination with how fast the combat seems to be flowing compared to previous iterations of the system. I'm going to try running the next session with a battle map to see how fast things are when you are actually moving units around in a physical space.
Tuesday 12 June 2012
D&D 5e playtest impressions
This being the first post on this blog, I would normally tell you all about myself and what you would expect to find here, but for the time being, I'll just post whatever I want to post. I'll be adding some of my art and videos at some point in the near future, so people can take a gander. In the meantime, I'll dump this massive wall of text that I spent an entire morning on last week.
I also posted this massive wall of text on the Wizards of the Coast board for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition playtest experiences. This reflects my own thoughts as DM for the first session of playtesting, as well as the impressions that I received from the Players.
Pre-play impressions
Starting off, we noticed a few things that this game seemed to mix and match a number of elements of what previous editions of D&D were trying to do. The magic system for wizards and clerics were reverted back to the Vancian system, similarly to how they had been in pre-forth edition. An interesting development with this, however, was that most spells that would be considered 1st level spells (magic missile, etc.) were melded in with the level 0 or "at will" cantrips. This meant that the wizard could pretty much always have at least a basic magical attack, such as magic missile to resort to. There was initially some worry, as this sparked fears of a retern to "linear fighters, quadratic wizards" balance issue, and whether or not that will become an issue in the full game or with power creep from future game expansion remains to be seen. It did however, increase the approachability for beginners toward certain classes, such as the fighter and rogue were largely self contained on their character sheets as to what they were capable of, and were more
Additionally, a number of the stats that we were familiar with seemed to be character sheets of previous editions seemed to be absent. Reflexes, Fortitude, and Willpower seemed to be missing, along with specific places to put your skills, as they had become bonuses to certain attribute checks as defined by your background and occasionally your class. Overall, however, this surprisingly made the game easier to read and understand, as you weren't quite as swamped with numbers as with previous editions. It did make performing checks a little more work for the DM, as I had to declare both what attribute and skills were required for a particular check. However, my experience with a variety of previous iterations of D&D as well as other RPG systems meant that I could easily declare what should be added to a check off the top of my head. The character backgrounds were an interesting new addition to the core game, as it provided some extra personality and realism to the characters as their skillset was now a direct reflection of who they were before they joined the adventuring party. The fact that they turned some of the more mundane skills, such as trades, connections, and endurance into a simple feat that you get with your background was a good idea in my opinion, as those skills (with the possible exeption of endurance) are not going to come into play all that frequently in the middle of a dungeon crawl.
In play experience. (if you don't want a gaming story, skip to the next section)
We decided to try playing without a battle map, just to see if it could be done with the new system. I did, however, draw a simple dungeon map as they explored the caves, just to give them a rough idea of location and positioning, and that seemed to suit the party just fine.
When the party fist arrived in the canyon, they took a quick looked around at the large grassy area at the base of the canyon, searching for signs of monsters. With a high tracking roll, they discovered a wide variety of different humanoid monster tracks all over the place, going every which way between most of the caves. There was evidence of battles and bodies being dragged off the field of battle. Eventually, they decided to pick a cave and begin exploring it. Conveniently enough, they randomly picked the one with all the kobolds in it.
The party rogue managed to notice the kobolds lurking near the entrance, preventing a surprise ambush, and the party made short work of them. The fighter really exelled here in melee combat, as regardless of whether he hit or missed with his axe, he was guaranteed to kill a kobold. The rogue managed to remain hidden behind a bush and picked off one or two with some thrown daggers (sneak attack wasn't much of a bonus, as she could kill a kobold with a single hit regardless. The wizard picked off one of them with a magic missile, and the cleric, while not getting as much raw killing power as the fighter, managed to fare decently, and disadvantage that he gave to enemies attacking the adjacent fighter proved to enable rather than make the fighter redundant. The kobolds, as expected were a cake walk, as this encounter was likely put in just to familiarize the players with basic principles of combat in D&D.
The adventurers then proceeded into the kobold cave, the dwarven cleric taking point. He managed to notice the pit trap and stop before he could fall in, and the group all attempted to jump the pit. Everyone in the party, exept for the Elf Wizard had enough strength to jump the pit without a running start, however, the Wizard needed a running start, as well as a quick change of direction without losing momentum. I decided that that would be a dextarity check to change direction at the last second. He failed, and ended up slipping and falling into the pit trap, alerting the kobolds and rats. The three party members at the top of the pit were able to fight off the rest of the kobolds With the cleric providing defense for the fighter and rogue, and the rogue was able to hide behind the cleric for the majority of the fight, while being able to quickly reach around him to stab the odd kobold in the face. The fighter was still the major damage dealer, but ended up taking a hit despite the extra defense provided by the cleric's shield. Meanwhile, the Wizard disbled the closing mechanism for the trapdoor, thus discouraging the rats from trying to cross, and trigger the pit trap with their combined weight. He also attempted to carve out some handholds to climb out using his magic missile, but the .
With the kobolds defeated, the fighter and rogue tried dousing one of the kobolds in oil, lighting it on fire, and then throwing it at the rats on the other side of the pit. The fighter failed his throw check, throwing the flaming kobold into the pit, much to the irritation of the Elven wizard. There was some minor rp regarding the Wizard trying to shortchange the dwarves on the looted silver to reaffirm his elven superiority complex, only the cleric was entirely oblivious to this, but the fighter wasn't bothered enough to care, and the rogue was willing to let it slide for now, content in the knowledge that she could pretty much pick the wizard's pockets at any time.
Content to leave the rats hissing and squeaking on the other side of the pit, the party journeyed on until they approached the kobold living quarters. The rogue snuck in, to take a better look, doing a quick headcount of all 48 of the kobolds in room, and reported back. Their solution was to set up a trail of crumbs from the rats to the kobold quarters, hoping that the rats would attack the kobolds, and hopefully give them enough of a distracion to even the odds a bit. The rogue set up the trail, and set up one of the planks in the guard nook to fall over the pit when hit with a rock, and everything seemed to go well, as the party managed to stay hidden around a corner while the rats followed the trail of crumbs to the kobold communal room. Unfortunately, the kobolds were not particularly bothered with a surprise visit from their pets, and a pair of them just shooed the rats back down the hallway. The party did sucessfuly ambush the two returning kobolds, reducing the amount in the big room by a small amount.
It was then that the Wizard pulled out his level 1 sleep spell, and knocked all but 6 of the 48 kobolds that were in the room unconscious. The kobolds were too stupid to try shaking the others awake, and were once again, made short work of. The wizard did, however, take enough damage to knock him down to 3hp. The party then proceeded to coup-de-gras the remaining sleeping kobolds in the room, including the whelps. And decided to cook up some rations and call it a day. There was some irritation, when they found out that they were unable to use their hit dice for recovery, as the dwarven cleric was lacking a healing kit. They didn't set up a proper watch either, and were consequently ambushed by the kobold chieftan who returned to find the party resting among the slaughtered remains of his tribe. He nearly killed the Wizard, and the Cleric and Fighter took some damage from him and his armed guards as well, but they all managed to survive. The rogue was, once again, able to remain hidden behind a heap of junk and only lost her sneak attack bonus once during the fight. They did, however succeed in killing the chieftain, and went back to sleep without setting up a watch again. This wasn't a major problem, as the kobolds that showed up during their long rest fled the caves at the sight of the mass slaughter. Waking up, the party looted the rest of the now abandoned cave, and people got money.
Hooray!
Observations from play.
The game doesn't really need as many denominations of currency at the base level, as it just makes counting up and dividing the money a tedious process and runs counter to spirit of simplification as shown by the majority of the alterations made to the new edition.
While the game seems to be going back to traditional vancian magic, it seemed to be balanced for the most part, as the non-magic classes got really useful things that he can do even at first level, and with each level up, both the rogue and fighter get special abilities that only serve to make them more awesome.
The only major balance issue that slightly bothered me was that the Wizard's sleep spell turned the encounter with the room of kobolds into a cakewalk, rather than a legitimately threatening encounter, and burning hands not only finished off the Kobold chieftain (didn't bother me that much, as he only had 4/44 hp left), but also all of his remaining guards. This wasn't a huge problem for me, as the encounter in the kobold common area was intended to be handled using clever thinking, and kobolds are already incredibly weak to begin with. I'm hoping that this won't become a major issue, as the Wizard will probably end up not being able to insta-kill enemies with his magic missile in the other caves, and will probably need to start using his more powerfull spells more judiciously.
The fact that skills, attack power and defenses didn't automatically become more powerful with each level gained seemed like an interesting development, as it means that certain tasks and certain enemies can remain a potential challenge for the players for a greater amount of time.
I am curious regarding whether most class abilities gained will increase in overall damage potential, as the HP was still increasing by 1dx/level.
I also found it interesting that certain elements of d&d combat, such as opportunity attacks were left out of the core rules, but that makes sense, as it streamlines gameplay, and keeps the game rolling at a steady pace. We're probably still going to see opportunity attacks in some form, as they will probably be incorporated as an ability for at least one of the classes, so if you really love opportunity attacks, you probably won't be too disappointed. Additionally, if you really liked having 4e style powers as a martial class, I'm pretty sure there will be a way to swap out a class ability for powers. I also noticed that the 2/day bonus attack ability that the dwarf fighter got at level 2 looks suspiciously similar to an encounter power in terms of effect.
Overall, the party seems to be fairly balanced at low level, with each class being able to both feel unique as well as have their own time to shine, but I'm a little cautious about whether this will remain true in the full game when players will have access to higher levels and the ability to customize their characters
I also posted this massive wall of text on the Wizards of the Coast board for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition playtest experiences. This reflects my own thoughts as DM for the first session of playtesting, as well as the impressions that I received from the Players.
Pre-play impressions
Starting off, we noticed a few things that this game seemed to mix and match a number of elements of what previous editions of D&D were trying to do. The magic system for wizards and clerics were reverted back to the Vancian system, similarly to how they had been in pre-forth edition. An interesting development with this, however, was that most spells that would be considered 1st level spells (magic missile, etc.) were melded in with the level 0 or "at will" cantrips. This meant that the wizard could pretty much always have at least a basic magical attack, such as magic missile to resort to. There was initially some worry, as this sparked fears of a retern to "linear fighters, quadratic wizards" balance issue, and whether or not that will become an issue in the full game or with power creep from future game expansion remains to be seen. It did however, increase the approachability for beginners toward certain classes, such as the fighter and rogue were largely self contained on their character sheets as to what they were capable of, and were more
Additionally, a number of the stats that we were familiar with seemed to be character sheets of previous editions seemed to be absent. Reflexes, Fortitude, and Willpower seemed to be missing, along with specific places to put your skills, as they had become bonuses to certain attribute checks as defined by your background and occasionally your class. Overall, however, this surprisingly made the game easier to read and understand, as you weren't quite as swamped with numbers as with previous editions. It did make performing checks a little more work for the DM, as I had to declare both what attribute and skills were required for a particular check. However, my experience with a variety of previous iterations of D&D as well as other RPG systems meant that I could easily declare what should be added to a check off the top of my head. The character backgrounds were an interesting new addition to the core game, as it provided some extra personality and realism to the characters as their skillset was now a direct reflection of who they were before they joined the adventuring party. The fact that they turned some of the more mundane skills, such as trades, connections, and endurance into a simple feat that you get with your background was a good idea in my opinion, as those skills (with the possible exeption of endurance) are not going to come into play all that frequently in the middle of a dungeon crawl.
In play experience. (if you don't want a gaming story, skip to the next section)
We decided to try playing without a battle map, just to see if it could be done with the new system. I did, however, draw a simple dungeon map as they explored the caves, just to give them a rough idea of location and positioning, and that seemed to suit the party just fine.
When the party fist arrived in the canyon, they took a quick looked around at the large grassy area at the base of the canyon, searching for signs of monsters. With a high tracking roll, they discovered a wide variety of different humanoid monster tracks all over the place, going every which way between most of the caves. There was evidence of battles and bodies being dragged off the field of battle. Eventually, they decided to pick a cave and begin exploring it. Conveniently enough, they randomly picked the one with all the kobolds in it.
The party rogue managed to notice the kobolds lurking near the entrance, preventing a surprise ambush, and the party made short work of them. The fighter really exelled here in melee combat, as regardless of whether he hit or missed with his axe, he was guaranteed to kill a kobold. The rogue managed to remain hidden behind a bush and picked off one or two with some thrown daggers (sneak attack wasn't much of a bonus, as she could kill a kobold with a single hit regardless. The wizard picked off one of them with a magic missile, and the cleric, while not getting as much raw killing power as the fighter, managed to fare decently, and disadvantage that he gave to enemies attacking the adjacent fighter proved to enable rather than make the fighter redundant. The kobolds, as expected were a cake walk, as this encounter was likely put in just to familiarize the players with basic principles of combat in D&D.
The adventurers then proceeded into the kobold cave, the dwarven cleric taking point. He managed to notice the pit trap and stop before he could fall in, and the group all attempted to jump the pit. Everyone in the party, exept for the Elf Wizard had enough strength to jump the pit without a running start, however, the Wizard needed a running start, as well as a quick change of direction without losing momentum. I decided that that would be a dextarity check to change direction at the last second. He failed, and ended up slipping and falling into the pit trap, alerting the kobolds and rats. The three party members at the top of the pit were able to fight off the rest of the kobolds With the cleric providing defense for the fighter and rogue, and the rogue was able to hide behind the cleric for the majority of the fight, while being able to quickly reach around him to stab the odd kobold in the face. The fighter was still the major damage dealer, but ended up taking a hit despite the extra defense provided by the cleric's shield. Meanwhile, the Wizard disbled the closing mechanism for the trapdoor, thus discouraging the rats from trying to cross, and trigger the pit trap with their combined weight. He also attempted to carve out some handholds to climb out using his magic missile, but the .
With the kobolds defeated, the fighter and rogue tried dousing one of the kobolds in oil, lighting it on fire, and then throwing it at the rats on the other side of the pit. The fighter failed his throw check, throwing the flaming kobold into the pit, much to the irritation of the Elven wizard. There was some minor rp regarding the Wizard trying to shortchange the dwarves on the looted silver to reaffirm his elven superiority complex, only the cleric was entirely oblivious to this, but the fighter wasn't bothered enough to care, and the rogue was willing to let it slide for now, content in the knowledge that she could pretty much pick the wizard's pockets at any time.
Content to leave the rats hissing and squeaking on the other side of the pit, the party journeyed on until they approached the kobold living quarters. The rogue snuck in, to take a better look, doing a quick headcount of all 48 of the kobolds in room, and reported back. Their solution was to set up a trail of crumbs from the rats to the kobold quarters, hoping that the rats would attack the kobolds, and hopefully give them enough of a distracion to even the odds a bit. The rogue set up the trail, and set up one of the planks in the guard nook to fall over the pit when hit with a rock, and everything seemed to go well, as the party managed to stay hidden around a corner while the rats followed the trail of crumbs to the kobold communal room. Unfortunately, the kobolds were not particularly bothered with a surprise visit from their pets, and a pair of them just shooed the rats back down the hallway. The party did sucessfuly ambush the two returning kobolds, reducing the amount in the big room by a small amount.
It was then that the Wizard pulled out his level 1 sleep spell, and knocked all but 6 of the 48 kobolds that were in the room unconscious. The kobolds were too stupid to try shaking the others awake, and were once again, made short work of. The wizard did, however, take enough damage to knock him down to 3hp. The party then proceeded to coup-de-gras the remaining sleeping kobolds in the room, including the whelps. And decided to cook up some rations and call it a day. There was some irritation, when they found out that they were unable to use their hit dice for recovery, as the dwarven cleric was lacking a healing kit. They didn't set up a proper watch either, and were consequently ambushed by the kobold chieftan who returned to find the party resting among the slaughtered remains of his tribe. He nearly killed the Wizard, and the Cleric and Fighter took some damage from him and his armed guards as well, but they all managed to survive. The rogue was, once again, able to remain hidden behind a heap of junk and only lost her sneak attack bonus once during the fight. They did, however succeed in killing the chieftain, and went back to sleep without setting up a watch again. This wasn't a major problem, as the kobolds that showed up during their long rest fled the caves at the sight of the mass slaughter. Waking up, the party looted the rest of the now abandoned cave, and people got money.
Hooray!
Observations from play.
The game doesn't really need as many denominations of currency at the base level, as it just makes counting up and dividing the money a tedious process and runs counter to spirit of simplification as shown by the majority of the alterations made to the new edition.
While the game seems to be going back to traditional vancian magic, it seemed to be balanced for the most part, as the non-magic classes got really useful things that he can do even at first level, and with each level up, both the rogue and fighter get special abilities that only serve to make them more awesome.
The only major balance issue that slightly bothered me was that the Wizard's sleep spell turned the encounter with the room of kobolds into a cakewalk, rather than a legitimately threatening encounter, and burning hands not only finished off the Kobold chieftain (didn't bother me that much, as he only had 4/44 hp left), but also all of his remaining guards. This wasn't a huge problem for me, as the encounter in the kobold common area was intended to be handled using clever thinking, and kobolds are already incredibly weak to begin with. I'm hoping that this won't become a major issue, as the Wizard will probably end up not being able to insta-kill enemies with his magic missile in the other caves, and will probably need to start using his more powerfull spells more judiciously.
The fact that skills, attack power and defenses didn't automatically become more powerful with each level gained seemed like an interesting development, as it means that certain tasks and certain enemies can remain a potential challenge for the players for a greater amount of time.
I am curious regarding whether most class abilities gained will increase in overall damage potential, as the HP was still increasing by 1dx/level.
I also found it interesting that certain elements of d&d combat, such as opportunity attacks were left out of the core rules, but that makes sense, as it streamlines gameplay, and keeps the game rolling at a steady pace. We're probably still going to see opportunity attacks in some form, as they will probably be incorporated as an ability for at least one of the classes, so if you really love opportunity attacks, you probably won't be too disappointed. Additionally, if you really liked having 4e style powers as a martial class, I'm pretty sure there will be a way to swap out a class ability for powers. I also noticed that the 2/day bonus attack ability that the dwarf fighter got at level 2 looks suspiciously similar to an encounter power in terms of effect.
Overall, the party seems to be fairly balanced at low level, with each class being able to both feel unique as well as have their own time to shine, but I'm a little cautious about whether this will remain true in the full game when players will have access to higher levels and the ability to customize their characters
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