Actual Play – Dungeons and Dragons – 4th Edtion update

System: Dungeons & Dragons

Following up on buffaloraven’s last post, so far 4th Edition has been really good to me. Good enough that I’m considering how I can get more of it. The two game’s we’ve played have been simple and completely absent of interparty conflict and relatively minor player disputes. The fact of the matter was we all came there to throw some dice and check out our new powers, and that we got to do.

The first game buffaloraven ran was the first part of the Keep from Shadowfell, a fun game but one that many people who picked up the quick start a few weeks back are probably familiar with.

The second, set in his own campaign setting (one that I am going to butt into soon, more on this later) is set in the city of Ostrava and has a fairly nice balance of power (two strong merchant orders, a powerful bank, nobility who own the lands and a strong navy). As fitting for the setting this is a bright point of light in an otherwise dark world. The story started with a simple hook. Baron Morgant had assembled a team of adventurers to go find his son Edmund Morgant (or Morgund the Incredible) who set out to find his own fortune as an adventurer.

Without wasting much time we set out of the city on the same path that Alex had taken and were soon beset my kobolds, let by a particularly vicious warrior named Gel. Despite his savagery Gel and his compatriots were easily defeated by our heroic adventures. The Warlock was very impressive with the amount of damage she could dish out from a distance. The Wizard felt a bit handicapped (I think) during that first fight because he couldn’t use his area of effect spells without hurting party members. This will probably work better when the team learns how each other’s moves work. Our cleric completely saved my ass (twice actually, once in each fight) and for my part I was REALLY happy with the “Commanding Shout” ability that allowed me to give up my attack to give another character a basic attack of their own, adding my Intelligence modifier (+4) to the damage. Not only did that rock, but with the Warlord class abilities and feats, when my companions spent action points they got +2 on their attack and +4 on damage. KICK but. Now there is a support class/leader. This is what the Bard always wished he could be. Steve pointed out that this could had two drawbacks. 1) The Warlord is encouraged to metagame. His abilities are all about making tactical decisions, so he’s going to look at the map and look for flanks, Opportunity Actions, etc. 2) Since the Warlord shouts out commands, it might feel to other players like I am taking control of their character. I think this mitigated by the fact that the Warlord offers an extra attack instead of controlling their normal one. I think my Wizard was pretty happy being able to fire off extra Magic Missiles and have them do more damage.

Argg… didn’t even get to the point of this post which was to talk about the game I’m going to run on Thursday, which will be a follow up of buffaloraven’s game. Gotta get back to work.