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InaVegt
2008-06-03, 10:00 AM
So, yesterday evening/tomorrow morning, I played 4E (KotS) over IRC.

Th party consisted of a dragonborn cleric (me), a dragonborn paladin, an elven archery ranger, an eladrin warlock, and a human wizard.

The battle went quite well, we were able to kill them all without deaths. I did have to use all my encounter healing though (2 healing words and a healing strike)

A few things I noticed:

1. You better not ignore minions, they know how to hurt, and many small hits add up. Assuming a 50% chance to hit, 4 kobold minions deal an average of 4 damage a turn, and they can do so both in melee and ranged.

2. You won't like it when you have to save, we were lucky to save quickly, but "effect until you save" is really annoying, as the effects are annoying.

3. No role is superfluous, if it wasn't for the paladin, the enemies would most likely have killed a party member. If it wasn't for me, the enemies would've killed the paladin. One of the strikers helped a lot in getting rid of the enemies, the other would've done the same if it weren't for bad luck. The controller was effective as well.

4. Enemies aren't cakewalks, yes they are inferior to PCs, but even this lowly kobold encounter continuously kept us on our toes. They were a very real threat. I hadn't expected to have to blow all my encounter healing in the first encounter.

5. There are real tactics for everybody now, not just the casters. As everybody has at least 2 at-wills, you always have a choice on what to do.

6. Some abilities are just plain awesome. The warlock could teleport everytime some who was cursed was dropped, making the warlock very mobile.

7. Most important, I had a helluva lot of fun.

SamTheCleric
2008-06-03, 10:05 AM
This follows my idea of... "TRY 4e. Once you play it, you'll understand that it's a lot of fun. Just reading it doesnt do it justice" (Jax is also in this same boat)

I'm glad you had fun... Your game ran parallel with ours on the same IRC server... I should've peaked in to see how you guys were doing.

Morandir Nailo
2008-06-03, 04:02 PM
I ran this encounter by myself the other day, trying to get a feel for combat before running it. My players are going to hate Kobolds. I mean, those Dragonshields are just plain nasty. And their Shifty ability meant that the Slinger was constantly getting a cover bonus so he was the last opponent to go down.

I have to say that the Wizard makes an excellent controller, and giving the Pregen Improved Initiative was genius. He acted first and was responsible for taking down 4 of the minions himself, first with his Sleep spell, then with a well-placed Burning Hands. Without that, things would have gotten nasty. Even so, both the Cleric and the Wizard were in the single-digit HPs by the end of the encounter, and pretty much everyone had blown their Daily and Encounter powers. It was a tough fight, but even doing it all by myself, I was drawn in, on my toes the entire time, cheering (yes, by myself) whenever someone landed an important hit.

In other words: I love it. I love this system. My players are going to have to learn group tactics fast because if they don't the monsters are going to chew them up. My black little DM heart is giddy with delight!

Mor