D&D4 play -- RPGA
May. 6th, 2009 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I've never been into "organized play" of a roleplaying game -- but by my lights, D&D is only -somewhat- a roleplaying game, (the other part being a character construction wargame), and I've been hankering for putting the 4e books I've been buying to some use, so I showed up to the RPGA meetup yesterday, packing a female 1st level Deva (eg, multiply reincarnated angel) Avenger named Isa Sunrise.
And you know what? It was fun!
Apparently, you can choose "easy" or "hard", so we picked "hard" as, Living Forgotten Realms tends to be (supposedly) a bit easy. Three encounters, two fights.
The first one was a big mess against a large, well-balanced enemy party, where the party's two clerics and the swordmage took the brunt of the damage and someone made two death checks before I took a break from knocking enemy rogues and made a heal check.
The second was glorious. A boss (elite, probably) that felt like 9th level or so and a giant pile of minions. I got targetted early (and before I got a chance to "oath" the boss so I could get a benefit from all the attacks--avengers do extra damage if they're attacked by other than their target), going from a really hefty 34 hp to low teens, and was the bunny throughout the fight, once only avoiding unconciousness because of 3 temporary hp I'd been granted. The minions were nicely handled by various bursts, blasts, etc from the multi-attacking ranger, the swordmage, and the wizard, the clerics mostly kept me upright and hit the boss with a few attacks (I used a reroll to let one hit the boss with an encounter power), and I? In three attacks, I managed to crit with my daily and my encounter for a total of 50 and 42 damage, respectively (avengers, if properly positioned, get to roll twice on every melee attack, so this is only slightly less likely than 1/100), then, with me back in "one hit from unconciousness" territory, I managed to hit once more (a 25 didn't do it, so I used the Deva encounter ability to add a d6 to the roll and hit with a 31) and finish the bastard off.
And you know what? It was fun!
Apparently, you can choose "easy" or "hard", so we picked "hard" as, Living Forgotten Realms tends to be (supposedly) a bit easy. Three encounters, two fights.
The first one was a big mess against a large, well-balanced enemy party, where the party's two clerics and the swordmage took the brunt of the damage and someone made two death checks before I took a break from knocking enemy rogues and made a heal check.
The second was glorious. A boss (elite, probably) that felt like 9th level or so and a giant pile of minions. I got targetted early (and before I got a chance to "oath" the boss so I could get a benefit from all the attacks--avengers do extra damage if they're attacked by other than their target), going from a really hefty 34 hp to low teens, and was the bunny throughout the fight, once only avoiding unconciousness because of 3 temporary hp I'd been granted. The minions were nicely handled by various bursts, blasts, etc from the multi-attacking ranger, the swordmage, and the wizard, the clerics mostly kept me upright and hit the boss with a few attacks (I used a reroll to let one hit the boss with an encounter power), and I? In three attacks, I managed to crit with my daily and my encounter for a total of 50 and 42 damage, respectively (avengers, if properly positioned, get to roll twice on every melee attack, so this is only slightly less likely than 1/100), then, with me back in "one hit from unconciousness" territory, I managed to hit once more (a 25 didn't do it, so I used the Deva encounter ability to add a d6 to the roll and hit with a 31) and finish the bastard off.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 03:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 03:24 pm (UTC)Criticals, though, maximize normal weapon damage (a really nice way, btw, of doubling the average damage, making crits much more reliable damage, and avoiding having too many extra rolls or the silliness of adding all your bonuses to damage twice from 3e; no all-1-crits!). So if I'd had a non high-crit weapon, I would have done an automatic 41 damage, no rolling needed. But the "Execution Axe" (which I picked specifically because Avengers roll crits in nearly 1 in 10 attacks, not one in 20, due to the automatic reroll) is "high crit" -- meaning it does an extra (rolled) W damage on a crit, so I had to roll for that damage and add it to 41.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 03:38 pm (UTC)I'm so not ever going to get my local group to play 4e, I can tell. It's these sorts of mechanical tricks that have to be tracked that would drive half my table away.
Pity.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-08 09:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-08 05:30 pm (UTC)But play (or rather, combat--other play is pretty straightforward/normal)? It's fun, but its fun in a cinematic figures wargame way. You can certainly do crazy things with improvised abilities, but a lot of the combat game involves manipulation of the space -- optimizing your movement, pushing bad guys into clusters so they can get zapped as a group, or pulling an enemy soldier out from the thick of things so your friends can move around more freely. I could see playing the game without a battlemap (where you're using the -conceptual- forced movement abilities rather than the physical ones), but if the concept of everyone playing a bit like a 6th level ranger doesn't appeal to you, what's the point?