We (GamersCircle Comics) just started with the Encounters today and the response was more than we expected. We got 10 players and we only have 1 DM.
I was curious if anyone has any suggestions on how to accommodate a situation like this. Since they are all new to D&D , the father and sons paired up and shared a character. (which helped)
Is there by chance an IRC channel that one can hop into for advise on other situational things too.
However a couple things were present that will definitely NOT be in my campaign, that was shown to be in this adventure:
1.) Tiefling - Yeah no! Not in the original, not in my game thank you very much.
2.) Goblins - Umm...they're extinct last I saw, but the DM said "Goblins." That can't be right. Not on my Athas.
I started play with Yuka, the Mul Fighter, but nobody wanted to play the Ardent, so we had no healing. I did well for awhile, but then a crit from one of the ragers took me down to -13 HP, which was one shy of his negative bloodied value. At the beginning of my next turn, the 2 damage from the shardstorm finished him off. Since the rest of the party was still at the wagon, I gave Yuka's card back to the DM and took Phye and that was probably the only thing that saved the party.
After rolling a new initiative, my first acts were to Ardent Surge one dying character, jump out of the wagon to attack the Inciter who had just dropped a couple party members with his Psionic Detonation. An augmented Energizing Strike brought the other character in the negatives back to the land of the living, then we thought it was a good time to hightail it out.
Unfortunately, losing Yuka and having Phye basically use all her actions for healing and moving the first two turns she was in meant I grabbed NO survival days with her.
Those Dune Runner Darters man... freaking vicious. The Elf Gladiator got 1 shotted with a critical hit. What the hell?
Very vicious. Also poison that immobilized (save ends). After you save that, slowed (save ends).
Brutal.
I'm curious what the encounter level was. With every enemy hitting like trucks and the environmental hazzard, it must of been pretty high.
We were pretty lucky to not get hit by the brutes as we focused them down and they both missed. I'm playing the cosmic sorc and I got crit by the inciter in the 2nd round and spent the next 2 rounds making death saves until the ardent was able to use aug 2 energizing strike. Although I was knocked out for half the fight I killed a brute and a darter, so not so bad, though I'm worried that I only have 3 surges left for the next 4 encounters.
Funnily enough the ardent got knocked out twice by the sandstorm.
Encounter ended in epic fashion as we all ran away before the enemy reinforcements came on the board with the battlemind dragging the unconscious ardent to the escape point. Reinforced darter shot the battlemind in the back knocking him unconscious. The psion earned his act of heroism by opting to go back on the board to drag both of them (although the GM played this part fast and loose).
We did pretty well for the GM prefacing the encounter with “I’ve never run an encounter this brutal, you’re all going to die.”
A very memorable and intense encounter.
My FLGS ran sixish tables last night, and I'm reasonably certain mine wasn't the only one to end in a TPK.
We went in understrength and felt every second of it. No ardent, no sorcerer. Battlemind went down on turn 1, ranger on turn 2, psion on 4, fighter on 5. GM ruled that we all woke up a while later, but we got NO supplies out of the caravan.
I'll have to take a look at the adventure book -that had to have been a level 3 or 4 fight. Combine that with poorly-built characters (ranger with axe and dagger? battlemind built for MBAs? lolwut.) and I knew we were headed for a TPK right away.
A rather inauspicious way to begin season 2, if you ask me.
EDIT: Does anyone know if there's an official feedback thread anywhere? I looked but didn't spot one.
We went in understrength and felt every second of it. No ardent, no sorcerer. Battlemind went down on turn 1, ranger on turn 2, psion on 4, fighter on 5. GM ruled that we all woke up a while later, but we got NO supplies out of the caravan.
I'll have to take a look at the adventure book -that had to have been a level 3 or 4 fight. Combine that with poorly-built characters (ranger with axe and dagger? battlemind built for MBAs? lolwut.) and I knew we were headed for a TPK right away.
A rather inauspicious way to begin season 2, if you ask me.
EDIT: Does anyone know if there's an official feedback thread anywhere? I looked but didn't spot one.
Even without that, the enemies did manage to knock the Battlemind unconscious.
Edit: No reinforcements for the enemies arrived either. After we killed the first bunch, that was it.
I have to make do by just looking at the pregens and daydreaming. And to think I'm willing to DM...Anyway,
2.) Goblins - Umm...they're extinct last I saw, but the DM said "Goblins." That can't be right. Not on my Athas.
Goblins...??? Either they forgot to rename a reskin, or I sense an alternate timeline from the Cleansing Wars. Going on a slippery slope here, but if that is the case I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand I never really liked Rajaat. On the other hand I like the "Sorcerer-kings once being part of the same 'party' that killed off a bunch of races" stick.
Back on topic, a shardstorm (sandstorm) you say? Tell me if I got it wrong, but if you stayed in the caravan you were safe from 2 damage/round but would suffer from having foes at concealment/total concealment, but if you went out there was a consistent stream of damage? And were the opponents affected by the damage as well?
I'm quite interested in copying the game effects to an upcoming Dark Sun game I'm currently running. :-)
Everyone ended up with 12 survival days (3 each) and ran when they saw reinforcements arriving.
DnD 4e is built around monsters, practically, always hitting the PC; since the PC can surge to heal where the monster can't. To not have the monsters taking the environmental damage on top of that seems a little broken; at least for a 1st level encounter.
I am going to play the Dark Sun encounter tonight... hopefully I don't need to have backup plans if I die within the first 10 minutes of showing up. Oh! The A-Team is out though... Mr. T has something of a DnD flavor to him I guess.
There is literally no game shop hosting the event in my country and there interest about it is sufficient for me to want to run the even unofficially. Is there any plans for WoTC to release the even as a downloadable content once the event is over?
Despite being largely lucky, one of the Fighters went down, though the Battlemind's 16 Wis came in handy and I got him up before a final death save.
Overall it was a lot of fun, and very enjoyable to see Dark Sun rookies in shock at all manner of aspects of the world.
but I had a great time! While I rad Dark Sun for YEARS back in the day I've only played it a few time, but this was great! Thanks Josiah/Firesnake Aries!
So...I died, but apparently I come back to life next session with a death penalty. So my question...how can that be explained in game? Maybe in the box (where we found ritual components and the magic fruit there was an item that can bring people back)...yeah I know it's not too Dark Sunnish, but hey...Castri is going to come back so we might as well explain it.
I was DMing the group who had an easy time of it, chiefly through a combination of good judgement, clever tactics and a moderate dose of good luck re early monster dice rolls..
As to how my party tackled things - after quickly realising the importance of food, two people stayed in the caravan to collect supplies. They caught me a bit by surprise when they argued that they could pick up multiple supplies by expending 3 minor actions each per round (which I permitted after some consideration - the text said picking up food was a minor action and PHB p268 allows substituting 3 minors per round). By the time the party fled the scene they had acquired 30 days worth (6/round, five rounds).
However the real stroke of genius was the Mul running over and taking on the darters in hand-to-hand combat, eliminating their deadly darts and reducing them to the fairly trivial wooden daggers. With the darters drastically weakened, the battle became much less threatening. One PC went down unconscious but the Ardent fixed that.
So my players have 30 survival days of food and are relatively unscathed. After checking that I didn't miss anything important and talking it over with the more experienced DM at the other table I'm quite satisfied with how I DM'd. I didn't play it too easy, the happy outcome was the result of intelligent tactics and good game-play by the players. (Which is ultimately the point).
In hindsight I probably should have added another monster as per the suggestion at the front, but after the brutality of Halaster's Lost Apprentice (aka "TPK land") I was a bit hesitant.
The other table did not coordinate anywhere nearly so effectively, got beaten senseless and only collected 6 days food (total).
Although I *intensely* dislike the non-linear layout of the encounters (which I also hated for Halaster's Lost Apprentice) I am otherwise extremely impressed so far (and with the pre-gens also.)
In short - very nice.
Beware of spoilers!
However the real stroke of genius was the Mul running over and taking on the darters in hand-to-hand combat, eliminating their deadly darts and reducing them to the fairly trivial wooden daggers. With the darters drastically weakened, the battle became much less threatening. One PC went down unconscious but the Ardent fixed that.
Though not intentional, I think this is why my group had an easier time of it as well. We also (slightly more intentionally) went after the leader (with the nasty, nasty "make everyone else attack a lot" ability) once the others were grappled or otherwise in melee.