Awesomologist
2008-06-22, 01:24 PM
Hi all! Loooong time lurker of GitP, I've finally decided to jump in and give my 2 cents on 4th Edition.
I haven't played a table top RPG since AD&D and that was back in college. My friends and I heard about the new 4e from a piece on NPR. So we got to talking and decided to relive our childhood a little bit. It's not like we ever left "gaming" we just moved towards video games and other activities. So basically everyone around is being reintroduced.
So we got a PHB and Keep on the Shadowfell. Still waiting on the DMG and MM, but between Keep and the PHB we've got most of the ground covered. We played the first encounter a couple of times with the pregens, only our Wizard changed out one of his spells (we're actually going to go through the spellbook stuff soon and see if he should have any more powers). Most of the guys kept their characters and our final party ended up as:
Dwarf Fighter
Half-elf Cleric (Originally our Paladin)
Human Mage
Halfling Rogue
and a Tiefling Warlock (Originally our Warlord, more on that later)
To cut to the chase, we like it.
Combat got flowing pretty easily, we're still catching up on getting the timing down. We like the team mentality. If you go out too far ahead, decide to make a move in combat that the team isn't ready or prepared for then you're in trouble. I keep reading about people unhappy with the game and it just sounds to me like they're either not playing together well in combat or they have an unbalanced party.
It's a little bit of a flaw with the design of KotS that it forces party roles but i think further adventures and a good DM can balance an encounter well once they get used to the system.
We've also started exploring the other classes and powers. Our group has found the Warlord to be pretty useless, in both the pre-gen and player created. Maybe we're not playing the class right. The cleric and fighter just outshine him. For KotS, the way it's designed, you're better off with just an extra cleric or fighter. We have not examined the possibility of a warlord multi-class just yet, but we'll look into it. We got one guy who wants to make him work though, so he'll keep trying at it.
The warlock and the rogue are just ridiculous damage dealers and have potential to each do some single target controlling. Coupled with a Wizard, which you absolutely need, battles flow pretty easily once you get those teams working in tandem. We're loving the new Wizard! We do wish we had another option for a controller. I do wonder why they didn't have the bard in as an arcane Leader/Controller in stead of the weak Warlord Leader/Defender.
The Dragonborn paladin was also a lot of fun. Still not as effective as the fighter, but out shined our warlord (sorry to hate on the warlord so much). In the second run we switch out for the cleric since we had dropped our warlord. We'll revisit the paladin though, he's got a lot of promise and better than any paladin we remember playing. Haven't tried the ranger yet, i think our rogue and warlock are just having too much fun playing those striker types. Cleric and fighter as previously mentioned are just standards. we also found the battle oriented Cleric was, say it with me now, better than the warlord (okay thats the last warlord rip).
As for the module, it lays out some really fun scenarios. I'm not going to spoil anything so i won't discuss specific battles. We have not had any TPK's! although the party has come close many times. As DM i've found that the monster setup, being also "team" oriented works as a great way to make interesting encounters. Especially if you love using traps and hazards! It's so great having a skill system that matters in an encounter. Having the rogue trying to disable one trap and our warlock another (some of you can guess as to which encounter that is) was a wow moment with our party. I'm looking forward to designing more trap and monster encounters.
However we did find the module was sorely light on the role-playing end. As a returning DM i found the adventure guide lacking in, well, guidance. The have a couple of pages of fluff but none of it was very applicable without pushing the players towards one end or the other making it feel a bit linear at time. Granted that could just be me and my rusty DMing. I just recall old modules with more flavor. We're making due, and on the second start to the campaign once we dumped the Warlord... (I'm sorry i couldn't resist one more dig) and added my own hook and changing a few things. We didn't finish all the way the first time, but the second time was just a solid good time.
Whether or not 4e is for everyone, i don't know. In all we found the combat to be enjoyable, and the role-playing end to be expanded (just because you add mini's and maps to the game, it doesn't make it more real without some good storytelling substance). We agree the game does "feel" more slick, like a computer game, but less World of Warcraft, and more like a table top version of Final Fantasy Tactics.
But thats just our take.
I haven't played a table top RPG since AD&D and that was back in college. My friends and I heard about the new 4e from a piece on NPR. So we got to talking and decided to relive our childhood a little bit. It's not like we ever left "gaming" we just moved towards video games and other activities. So basically everyone around is being reintroduced.
So we got a PHB and Keep on the Shadowfell. Still waiting on the DMG and MM, but between Keep and the PHB we've got most of the ground covered. We played the first encounter a couple of times with the pregens, only our Wizard changed out one of his spells (we're actually going to go through the spellbook stuff soon and see if he should have any more powers). Most of the guys kept their characters and our final party ended up as:
Dwarf Fighter
Half-elf Cleric (Originally our Paladin)
Human Mage
Halfling Rogue
and a Tiefling Warlock (Originally our Warlord, more on that later)
To cut to the chase, we like it.
Combat got flowing pretty easily, we're still catching up on getting the timing down. We like the team mentality. If you go out too far ahead, decide to make a move in combat that the team isn't ready or prepared for then you're in trouble. I keep reading about people unhappy with the game and it just sounds to me like they're either not playing together well in combat or they have an unbalanced party.
It's a little bit of a flaw with the design of KotS that it forces party roles but i think further adventures and a good DM can balance an encounter well once they get used to the system.
We've also started exploring the other classes and powers. Our group has found the Warlord to be pretty useless, in both the pre-gen and player created. Maybe we're not playing the class right. The cleric and fighter just outshine him. For KotS, the way it's designed, you're better off with just an extra cleric or fighter. We have not examined the possibility of a warlord multi-class just yet, but we'll look into it. We got one guy who wants to make him work though, so he'll keep trying at it.
The warlock and the rogue are just ridiculous damage dealers and have potential to each do some single target controlling. Coupled with a Wizard, which you absolutely need, battles flow pretty easily once you get those teams working in tandem. We're loving the new Wizard! We do wish we had another option for a controller. I do wonder why they didn't have the bard in as an arcane Leader/Controller in stead of the weak Warlord Leader/Defender.
The Dragonborn paladin was also a lot of fun. Still not as effective as the fighter, but out shined our warlord (sorry to hate on the warlord so much). In the second run we switch out for the cleric since we had dropped our warlord. We'll revisit the paladin though, he's got a lot of promise and better than any paladin we remember playing. Haven't tried the ranger yet, i think our rogue and warlock are just having too much fun playing those striker types. Cleric and fighter as previously mentioned are just standards. we also found the battle oriented Cleric was, say it with me now, better than the warlord (okay thats the last warlord rip).
As for the module, it lays out some really fun scenarios. I'm not going to spoil anything so i won't discuss specific battles. We have not had any TPK's! although the party has come close many times. As DM i've found that the monster setup, being also "team" oriented works as a great way to make interesting encounters. Especially if you love using traps and hazards! It's so great having a skill system that matters in an encounter. Having the rogue trying to disable one trap and our warlock another (some of you can guess as to which encounter that is) was a wow moment with our party. I'm looking forward to designing more trap and monster encounters.
However we did find the module was sorely light on the role-playing end. As a returning DM i found the adventure guide lacking in, well, guidance. The have a couple of pages of fluff but none of it was very applicable without pushing the players towards one end or the other making it feel a bit linear at time. Granted that could just be me and my rusty DMing. I just recall old modules with more flavor. We're making due, and on the second start to the campaign once we dumped the Warlord... (I'm sorry i couldn't resist one more dig) and added my own hook and changing a few things. We didn't finish all the way the first time, but the second time was just a solid good time.
Whether or not 4e is for everyone, i don't know. In all we found the combat to be enjoyable, and the role-playing end to be expanded (just because you add mini's and maps to the game, it doesn't make it more real without some good storytelling substance). We agree the game does "feel" more slick, like a computer game, but less World of Warcraft, and more like a table top version of Final Fantasy Tactics.
But thats just our take.