D&D4 play -- RPGA

[mneme]

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.

Comments

[mylescorcoran]

That does sound cool. 92 damage in two attacks at 1st level. Well hard!

[mneme]

Yep! Without flanking, special abilities, etc, I needed a 19 on the die to hit this guy, too, so those two 20s were -so- useful. Damage, btw was: 3w on the daily (3 * weapon damage)+5 (maxed out main stat), with a d10+2 weapon, the execution axe, which also does an extra W on a crit. I rolled a 7, thus 50 damage. On the second attack (a 2w encounter power), I rolled better -- an 11, and got an extra +2 because my daily gave me +2 damage for the rest of the fight. 4e characters get to do a lot of damage on their big attacks.

[mylescorcoran]

Does 4e really have you roll weapon damage once and multiply it 2w, 3w, etc, like that? Seems to introduce even greater fluctuation in the outcomes of those big dailies. I would tend to rule you roll 2 times, 3 times the dice, to soften the extremes.

[mneme]

That's what it does. To take the example we have, if I'd hit (but not critted) with my daily 3w attack, I'd have rolled 3d10+6 (weapon damage) and added 5 to it (wisdom).

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.

[mylescorcoran]

Ah, okay.

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.

[mneme]

Heh. That's part of my problem, too, thus going to play with strangers (plus, to be fair, playing a competitive rpg with strangers is kinda fun). Which mathematical tricks are you thinking of here? Stuff like optimizing an avenger (a striker by virtue of hitting more rather than doing extra damage) with a high-damage, high-crit weapon, or a rogue with a high to-hit weapon?

[mylescorcoran]

I'm thinking of the general optimisation problem(s) of character generation and then the effective use of powers at the table. It's more mechanical and process heavy than some of my players would ever willingly choose to play in our sessions.

[mneme]

Hmm. Yeah, good, point; I mean, character creation is actually fairly easy (only really annoying thing is buying equipment, and thats not a problem if you're starting at 1st level); you can optimize, but the directions are straightforward enough (defense, improve a feature, to hit, damage, weapon, skillstuff, mostly).

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?