Weekend Warriors Wrap-Up

On Thursday, I was overcome with a passion to combine to of my favorites things on the weekend.  I decided I was going to combine Tabletop/videogaming during the day with UFC/MMA fighting in the evening.

Realizing it was short notice, I moved quickly from thought to action.  I sent out an e-mail to several people I know:

So this weekend I was thinking about hosting a gaming
shindig at mi casa.  I was hoping you would be able to or desire to slide over. We have multiple  options for gaming, though my first choice would be to run some sort of one-off dungeon delve in the latest edition of D&D.  We could play anything though, from Streetfighter IV to Starcraft the Boardgame to
the WoW TCG (which is unexpectedly good, btw).
The prime goal here, of course, is to have cool, fun people
, booze, and dice-rolling.  It sounds like a night in Vegas but it’s
really something aimed at being an experience you can share with others later as opposed to it “staying” in Vegas. As fits me, it’s a pretty easy-going, “come when you can, stay as long as you’d like” type affair.  I figured we’d start at noonish.
Plus, later in the evening there is violence! Yes, a live
UFC will be broadcast on my projector screen for those who wish to
partake.

I’m bringing it up spur of the moment so I’ll understand if you’re busy this weekend.  If you want to come though, lemme know!

Adios,
-Q.

Expecting several people to show, on Friday I prepared a short “Dungeon Delve” series of encounters.  Named “Legends”, players would fight in the ruins of some ancient eladrin civilization looking for treasure.  There wasn’t much roleplaying going on, though I would narrate the action.  The main goal was to make some tactical encounters, and engage in some light-hearted play.

Since it was a few days notice, I wasn’t about to insist that everyone bring a character, so I decided Friday Night that I would set up a group of pre-generated characters.  Without the Character Builder, this would have been impossible.  With the Character Builder, it took several hours, but it was pretty enjoyable and easy.  I built the following six characters:

• Bo Ur’dan, Drow Tempest Fighter/Shock Trooper
• James the Quick, Halfling Artful Dodger/Daggermaster
• Kor Farmountain Dwarf Crossbow Ranger/Sharpshooter
• Eskyl Brightflame, Dragonborn Paladin/Astral Weapon
• Graja the Seer, Human Cleric/Divine Oracle
• Illmet the Flame, Tiefling Fire Wizard/Blood Mage

Building the encounters was actually less time consuming than building all these level 11 PCs!  I love you 4th edition, for making my life as a DM so much easier.  The plan was to have a series of three encounters.  The first was 9th level, the second was 11th level, and the last was 13 –the real grinder of the bunch.  Not knowing how many people I was going to have, I made 3-man, 4-man, and 5-man versions of each encounter.

For maps, I just picked two of my poster maps.  I didn’t have time to build and print the map-boards in Dundjinni. for the third I used the Ruins of the Wild Dungeon Tiles set and built it on foam board.

You know how many people I got? Two. Oh well, not much more I could really expect on such short notice.  Matt, who plays in my weekly Blacktree Chronicles game, and Hakim, one of my closest buds who hasn’t played 4e yet, were able to make the trip.  Matt was willing to play two characters, and after a spot of lunch, we started up.

Matt took the halfling rogue and the cleric, while we started Hakim out with the drow fighter.

The encounters took a bit longer than I expected, mostly because Hakim was so new to the game (but he does pick up fast), and Matt hasn’t ever used a rogue or a cleric before.  It was a lot of fun though.  The rogue abused his heightened OA defense and shredded the enemy to bits, while the drow fighter was remarkably sticky, and used cloud of darkness for a few setups that brutalized the enemy.

The cleric was mostly under-whelming until some combos came to light.  Once we discovered the potential of the combos in play though, Graja quickly became the MVP.  Cause Fear on an opponent that the halfling has tagged with Walking Wound is just funny.  The NPC runs away at top speed, falls over, and the rogue walks up to it and takes its Sneak Attack damage handed up on a platter.  Command and Cause Fear were also crucial crow control for the last battle, which saw the three man group face off against two elites.  Graja made the Shadow Demon yo-yo back and forth for a few critical turns while the rest of the party hacked at his oni mage companion. The cleric was also critical to keeping the party up and running.  The first turn of the last encounter saw the Halfling charge in and slice up the Oni Mage only to get ripped into by his shadow demon ally. Graja was able to quickly put him back in the fight, and it became clear that, while the cleric was standing, attempting to double team a PC was going to be difficult.  Graja could bring a player from zero to bloodied or bloodied to full in a turn easily.  Even attempting to take out the seer proved difficult since he could erase most of the damage to himself almost as fast as they could deal it.  Graja also set up some devastating turns with James, such as (with flanking provided by Bo the fighter) the Lance of Faith > Action Point > Prophecy of Doom > (James) Rogue’s Luck > Critical Opportunity > Low Slash.  Breaking it down, the cleric hits with lance of faith, giving the halfling a +2 to hit on a power that gives two chance to hit.  That power hits and is an automatic critical, triggering the Critical Opportunity for additional damage.  Lastly, Low Slash is anoter minor action attack that the halfling uses for more damage, and a chance to slow the target.

Again, the cleric was clutch.

Matt and myself enjoyed the chance to see a rogue in action.  We had a rogue earlier in our games, but she wasn’t seeing the need to get combat advantage. This lead to sever underperformance of the rogue, especially compared to our party ranger, who routinely rolls 20s and generally breaks things with his hammers.

In this game, the halfling was part of some of the most savage turns of damaging dealing I had yet to witness in the game.  In designing the character, I had given him a wraithblade for his dagger.  If you’re not familiar with that magic item, here’s the lowdown.  On a critical hit (which a daggermaster gets on 18-20), add 2d6 + sneak attack, even if you’ve already dealt it this round. Combine that with Backstabber so you roll d8 instead of d6, and you are dealing with explosions of damage that are pretty immense.  Even better is to combine it with multiple minor attack actions.  More attacks means more chances to critical which equals more chances to critical.  You can potentially (though we didn’t) see 15d8 worth of sneak attack see the board with, though more realistically you’ll see 6d8 to 9d8.

Savage.

Lastly, the fighter.  Have only seen a little bit of the fighter in the games I’ve been playing, so looked at this with particular interest.  Again, I was impressed with the design of the class.  The fighter can be so sticky and hard to get away from, and the clever positioning and tactical use of Cloud of Darkness made the drow tempest fighter an agile, harrying foe.  Almost as mobile as the halfling, they made a good stike force as the halfing threw dice in the face of NPCs and the fighter pulled them away from the lilliputan death-dealer.

We played for about six hours and had quite a bit of fun.  Hakim like the tactical bits of the system, and Matt enjoyed taking a rogue for a test spin.  I’m cleaning up the encounters I made, then I will post them as a PDF for you later.

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