The Solo Adventure and Character Creation

Stupid Ranger took them through the solo adventure, to help with character creation.  She reports that the character creation was very well done for beginners, but there were aspects of it that she was missing as a more advanced character.  I did notice that a few times that one of our new players (Paul) was asking a lot of questions about things that were physically next to each other on the character sheet and the solo adventure did a fair amount of “jumping around” that was somewhat confusing.

I liked that the solo adventure helped to set up the rest of the adventure, and the way it presented the decisions that controlled class and alignment were exciting for brand-new players.  Paul was already fairly “in-character” by the time the solo adventure was complete, embracing his elven rogue on a deeper level than I would have expected from more standard character generation.

The Adventure Begins

While Stupid Ranger was helping with character creation, I was busy reading the Dungeon Master’s Book in preparation for the adventure.  It was very easy to pick up, the layout of the book made a lot of sense.  In my best attempt to follow the rules, I started the group with the first encounter at the crossroads.  Combat mechanics were explained very clearly, and before the end of the first encounter Paul was already using “flanking” and “that combat thingie” (advantage) as part of his lexicon.  It was interesting to see positive reinforcement at work… the first time he got to roll extra Sneak Attack damage he was trying to invent ways to use it all the time.

Paul was quick to ask about whether or not he could use any of his skills to help out in the early part of the dungeon and aside from an active perception check and the discovery of a trap there really wasn’t much to use the skills on.  The group unfortunately traversed the dungeon in such a fashion to avoid the major skill challenge (the one thing I wanted them to do, rats!) but they had a lot of fun.  Since we only had one night, we stopped short of completing the entire adventure but it was enough to give the two new players a sense of what D&D is all about.

Running the game was very easy.  Some convenience things that I enjoyed: the Dungeon Master’s Book had nice full pages dedicated to each of the creatures in the adventure.  This made it very easy to show new players what a goblin or a drake looked like, by simply folding the page back and letting them see the artwork.  As previously predicted, the tokens were great in lieu of miniatures and I still hope they figure prominently in future D&D modules.

My criticisms: the adventure is combat heavy and a small group of three first level player characters got exhausted quickly.  The baddies do a considerable amount of damage for a group of that size and it was difficult progress.  The power cards, while attractive, are a little more flimsy than I expected them to be at first and I almost tore a few of them while punching them out.  Also, our new players wanted power cards for all of their skills, and certain class skills (like Sneak Attack) didn’t have an associated card.

As I mentioned before, running the game was pretty easy.  I was tripped up at one point by the Dire Rats, which had “Hit: 1d10 +5 damage, and the target is exposed to filth fever.”  Some quick looking around did not yield any information on what Filth Fever was or how to progress it, so I skipped it.  I accidentally found the information I needed later while leafing through the monsters section looking for a photo of another bad guy, separated 27 pages from where I needed it with no annotation to indicate that it was even there.  Frustrating.

Final Thoughts

The Red Box provides a solid starter set that is attainable to new players.  Character creation is straightforward, dare I say even interesting when presented via the Solo Adventure.  The DM’s Book does a decent job of presenting the tools that a new DM needs, providing a great primer on how to run a game.  The included adventure is easy to run for a veteran Dungeon Master and provides a significant challenge, even though more could have been done with skills.  A bit of additional roleplaying would’ve been nice as well, but that might have been more prevalent in the skill challenge that our group skipped.

Paul did a great job on his first adventure, playing a skillful and witty elven rogue.  His wife, Kara, wasn’t as “into” the D&D game and opted to bow out after a few encounters but it wasn’t from a lack of understanding how the game was played.  Stupid Ranger and I had a good time introducing the game to new players, and I had a good time finally exploring the contents of a D&D Box Set.

Now you may be wondering why I am excited about such a thing as this, being a starter set and I am clearly not a D&D beginner.  You see, when I was growing up the box sets were available but I lacked friends that were interested in such things so I never got one.  When I saw that they were using the same box art by Larry Elmore as they did Way Back In The Day, they critted me.  Right in the face.

Let me say it again: the box is beautiful.  As I write this, I am shaking it in my hands hearing the contents rattle happily within.  My inner 8-year-old wants to adventure badly.

The Contents

Of course, there’s a Dungeon Master’s Book that contains the basic rule set for first and second level characters.  Along with that you get maps, character sheets, player and monster tokens, power cards, and yes, you get a set of dice.  They’re very pedestrian black dice with white numbers, which immediately made me wonder why they didn’t just partner with Chessex and get some decent dice for these sets.  Anyway, we’ll save that particular rant for later.

There’s also a Player’s Book that contains player generation rules.  You can pick from Fighter, Wizard, Rogue, or Cleric, and the races include Human, Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling.  The most interesting part for me is that they include a solo adventure, which is something I’ve not experienced from D&D in the past.  Having never owned any of the other D&D box sets, I am going to now pretend that there were not any solo adventures in them for fear of a wasted youth.

Power Cards and Tokens

I’m not sure who designed the new power cards for this box set, but they deserve some sort of an award for concise, cool presentation compared to the other official power cards.  They still maintain the same information as the standard issue power cards, but the layout of the card itself is less overwhelming.  Clearly, they were striving for easy attainability with this box set and at first glance it appears they have succeeded.

This doesn’t stop with the tokens, either.  Stupid Ranger exclaimed “Wow, look at all those bad guys!” upon first laying her eyes on the token cards.  She is correct, without perusing the books I can easily detect orcs, goblins, kobolds, and even a few dragons (naturally!)  And what D&D adventure would be complete without a gelatinous cube?  These tokens appear to be very well executed and I’d love to see them included in additional D&D modules.  It sure beats using dice or unmatched, inaccurate miniatures to indicate the baddies.

The Adventure Continues This Week

Stupid Ranger and I are going to further review the Red Box this week.  I intend on taking the solo adventure for a whirl in the next couple of days, and schedule permitting we are going to attempt the 1st – 2nd level adventure that they include in the Dungeon Master’s Book, so expect to see more soon!

If you can’t wait that long, be sure to check out The New D&D Starter Red Box review that was put together by our good friend The Chatty DM and his son Nico over at Critical Hits.

Face it, the world of Athas does not seem fun.

Metal is scarce, the landscape resembles Tatooine in July, all that fun magic that you’re used to using actually makes the landscape WORSE and they’ll kill you if they catch you using it, and there are terrible monsters behind every sand dune.  That nice elf that you met actually just stole the 10 meager ceramic coins you were able to collect and to make matters worse the Gods all got overcome by primordials so even they won’t be able to help you out much.

D&D Encounters focuses primarily on… well… encounters, so you only get a sense of the brutal landscape when it constantly degrades your ability to fight by throwing a sandstorm in your face, baking you in the sun, and then making you fight terrible sand creatures at a frantic pace until you all drop over from exhaustion.  For this reason, I think the gaming group gets treated to what is essentially the worst that this setting has to offer.

Character Themes make all the difference

After reading through the books, I must say that I didn’t give Athas enough of a fair shake.  The plot and setting is made FAR more interesting by details surrounding the races, character themes, and backgrounds presented.  The more I read, the more I saw Athas portrayed as a place of inequitable castes full of interesting political and geographic intrigue.  The races, while considerably more savage than other incarnations of D&D, are very interesting and provide a discordant counterpoint to their equivalents in other fantasy realms.  Most races are painted as slaves, nomads, or outcast magic users.  There are traders, gladiators, and nobles as character themes and paragon paths.

As an aside, I am a sucker for gladiatorial combat.  I love that it is such an intrinsic part of the world of Athas and the classes presented around this theme are fleshed out very well.  These classes and the notion of gladiatorial combat contrasted with some political intrigue would likely be one of my first stops if I were running a Dark Sun game.  I also found the prominence of psions and psionic power to be an interesting avenue for adventure-creation.  I am currently playing Jarvix (a psion) in D&D Encounters and I am enjoying him greatly.

Give Athas a chance

If you’re at all like me, you may come away from the initial preview chapters of the Dark Sun Campaign Setting a bit discouraged.  I strongly encourage spending some time reading through the character themes and some of the plot hook ideas presented a bit further in the book, they are truly what took me from thinking “wow, how could this possibly be fun” to “wow, this could really be fun”!

To me, I would plan to treat the unforgiving world of Athas like you were creating a scenario akin to “Planet of the Apes” or a Conan the Barbarian movie.  Instead of focusing on the bleak, brutal environment you should use this as a savage canvas and use character interactions to make a three-dimensional story supported by (and not defined by) the landscape.

The authors do a great job of giving you the resources necessary to paint a truly enthralling picture with the characters and themes provided.  If you choose to make a game where your players all starve to death and die of Sun Sickness before the end of session one, you’re focusing on the wrong things!

For New Players

If you haven’t had much — or any — roleplaying experience, the guide is a great reference for getting your feet wet. There is a lot of great advice on roleplaying topics, from deciding what character to play to getting into character to deciding when to heal. What I like about this from the new player perspective is that things are explained simply, without a lot of the jargon that can be a little intimidating to new players.

For Experienced Players

The guide may feel as if it’s geared toward new players, but there are still valuable tips for experienced players who may be switching to 4E. Because 4E has so many different elements from previous editions, some of the character development techniques can be useful for those who are switching editions. What I really like from the experienced player perspective are the character quizzes. There are quizzes to help you pin-point which class and which race you might like to play. This would have been immensely helpful for our paladin, who switched classes after 10 levels because the warlord just wasn’t suiting her style of play.

Creating my Avengevoker

I did a little bit of research on the Hybrid class before I made a decision on what to play.  I opted for an Avenger/Invoker Hybrid; the divine nature of the two halves and the similar stat-requirements seemed like a good start.  I also wanted to combine the controller and striker roles; I like my Wizard controller, but I wanted a striker option too.  The pieces all fell into place.

In addition to selecting a PHB3 class for the renown points, I also opted to use Character Builder & a PHB3 feat.  I don’t usually use Character Builder; I roll up characters with pencil & paper.  But hey, for renown points, I’d give it a go, and I’m very glad I did.  I found the rules and options for rolling up a hybrid a bit complicated, mostly when sorting out which, and how many, options were available.

For my feat, I opted for Battle Caster Defense (PHB3, p.177) to give me a bonus to defense against attacks of opportunity; with the spell-casting Invoker features and melée Avenger attacks, the possibility of provoking opportunity attacks seemed pretty high and a little extra protection seemed like a good idea.

In keeping with the nature of the Hybrid, I selected a mix of Avenger & Invoker powers.  One each of At-Will powers: a melée power for the Avenger part of me, a ranged power for the Invoker part.  Then I selected a melée Avenger power for my Encounter power and a ranged Invoker power for my Daily.

If I Had It to Do Again…

There are a few things I would have done differently.  Having selected my Encounter power as a melée power, I would have selected a different feat; I would have selected the Hybrid Talent Feat to take the Avenger’s Armor of Faith feature for the bonus to my AC.  As it is, I’m a little too squishy to really use my Encounter power without tempting death.

So why would I make these changes?  In the D&D Encounters environment, where there is little chance for an extended rest, the Encounter power becomes very, very important.  Being too squishy to stay in melée combat, I either need to have a better AC or stay out of combat.

Final Thoughts on the Hybrid

I really like the idea of combining two different classes.  The min-max-er in me sees the fun in trying out new combinations.  But I truly feel as if the Hybrid is a class that really needs to be a few levels older before it becomes effective.  From the vantage point of Level 1, my Hybrid is pretty ineffective, but I know she’s got great potential for the future!

The Basics

Each Hybrid listing gives you half of what you need.  You pick the two halves you want, then combine the stats for each half.  At first level, you gain one At-Will power from each class, one Encounter & one Daily power from either class.  Then, as you gain levels, you can select powers from either class as long as you build each half equally.

The Combinations

Now, as you can imagine, not every combinations is going to work perfectly.  Can you picture a wizard/barbarian?  Not the most auspicious combination.  Not to worry, with each hybrid listing, you’ll find recommendations on which other hybrids will make a good match.

I have to say, I can never really decide what class I want to play.  Even now, preparing for D&D Encounters this week, I can’t decide.  Hybrids may just be one of the best options for me.  Now, I just have to narrow it down to two classes…

Finally, the Monk Returns

The Monk returns as a Striker with a Psionic keyword.  Monks spend years training and studying, and they have learned how to use their psionic powers and their fists to defeat their foes.  As you mind expect, many of their powers have monk-like names, such as Whirling Mantis Step and Fist of Indomitable Iron.

I have to say, at first glance, my favorite aspect of the monk is the Initiate of the Dragon Paragon path.  Here, you’ve learned the ancient skills that were once taught by dragons to particularly gifted humans and have pass through the ages.  Once you’ve mastered this Paragon Path at 20th level, you have fully developed the ability to polymorph into a dragon.

What About the Rest?

Each of the other psionic classes has its interesting features, as well as the more mundane powers related to keeping oneself alive.  But here’s what I thought was neat about the Ardent, Battlemind & Psion.

They don’t have Encounter powers.  Instead, they gain At-Will powers when everyone else gets Encounter Powers.  These At-Will Powers are fairly useful in their own right, but there’s an extra little kick to make them truly unique for the psionics.

These three classes gain Power Points at Encounter-Power Levels.  Power Points can be used with “Augmentable” At-Will Psion powers.  Based on the number of Power Points expended to augment a power, the At-Will gains extra strength.  It’s an interesting concept of psionics’ control over their mental abilities; by training and focusing their mental powers, they can alter their attacks as needed.  Power Points reset after a short or extended rest, giving them the same basic utility as Encounter powers.

Now, I am personally more of a “give me a sword or a fireball, I want to see the damage I’m about to inflict” class preference.  But after reviewing these new psionic classes, I’m impressed with the width and breadth of their abilities.  I think they would be fun to play!

Tasty, tasty inspiration

As if someone was monitoring my blog watching for me to desperately cry out, we got a review copy of both Martial Power 2 and the Underdark supplement.  Without even a breath, Stupid Ranger ripped right in to the Martial Power 2 book looking for new goodies for our Warlord and Ranger to use.  I was on my way out to karate practice at the time, but I did grab the Underdark book and look inside quickly.  A scan of the Table of Contents provided the required keywords I was looking for “Denizens of…” and “New Monsters”.

And that’s only the start.  Since my campaign has just entered the Underdark, this book was tailormade for me to drop all sorts of terrible stuff on my players the next time we get together.  I started reading the “Geography of the Underdark” section to decide how much retrofitting I would need to do to make this campaign guide sing in my current game (not much, hooray!) and I was happy to see that there are several new Terrain Features, including a section on the emotional effects of adventuring in the Underdark.

I am excited about this book.  Expect to see much more from this supplement as I unleash it upon my unwitting players.  Mwhahaha!

The Details

It’s a 2-4 player game, where you and your friends, as you’re wandering around the Ren Faire, start to feel out of place in your T-shirts and cut-offs, so you decide to buy costumes, one piece at a time.  In order to earn money for your costume purchases, you engage in performances with or against your friends.

The Performance cards are fun and entertaining.  There are physical challenges, such as arm wrestling or staring contests.  There are creative challenges, such as drawing something renaissance-y or whistling a tune.  It’s a fun combination of entertaining performances, and successful performances win you one or more coins.

With your new-found wealth, you can purchase costume cards that have one or more costume elements on them.  These cards are really the reason I wanted the game; the costume cards are clear plastic (see the promo pic here) so you can stack your cards and see your costume as it all comes together.

Dante vs Stupid Ranger

Dante & I gave Ren Faire a try.  We modified the rules a bit; instead of attempting to fill all six icons on our player cards, we decided to go for four.  Game play went pretty quick for us, and we finished in about a half an hour.  The Performances were fun, even with only two of us, but we both felt that the game as a whole would have been more fun with more players.

General Comments

There is definitely a high level of absurd and quirky fun; this is not a serious game!  The recommended age is 13 years or older, and I would agree with this; between the Performance challenges and the strategies involved in building your costume, this age frame seems appropriate.  And I recommend playing with more than two players; it’s playable with two, but it would be more entertaining with more.  If you’re looking for a fun, light-hearted game, I would recommend Ren Faire.

My Thoughts

I shared some preliminary thoughts on my game experience after my first weekend of game play, and most of those impressions were accurate through to the end.  My Dalish Rogue Elf was a lot of fun to play; I specialized as a Duelist, which gave me some great, front-line melee attack options.  The graphics throughout the entire game were beautiful, especially the ending sequence.  The story line did have some predictable moments, but there were still some crazy, unpredictable moments.

Advice Without Spoilers

For those of you embarking on your own DOA adventure, I offer this advice, free of spoilers.  Talk to your companions, especially while at camp.  They will periodically give you quests to complete.  If you earn a high enough influence score with a companion, s/he will gain stat bonuses.  If you’re so inclined, you can work your way up to a romantic relationship with some of them; there are even achievements for romantic relationships for the achievement-seekers out there.

Stock up on health potions, lyrium potions, and healing kits.  I recommend maxing out your (or one of your companion’s) Herbalism skill, which allows you to make your own potions.  I found that on occasion, I had bought up all available health potions in a region and couldn’t find any more; being able to craft your own will make things much easier.  Buy recipes when you can find them, even if you don’t have your skill high enough yet; you may not be able to find that recipe again.  Stock up on basic potion-crafting supplies when you can buy them.

Later this week, I’ll share thoughts on my specific game play, which will include some spoilers, but for now, here’s what I think: If you haven’t played Dragon Age: Origins, go now.  Play.  Play through to the end.  And then, play it all over again!