[PnP] D&D 4E: Wintergate Valley

[reefwood]

I will bring the 4E book from the library, and now, a brief background...

Jhur'vaal was raised in a secluded eladrin city. It was hidden deep within a great forest and bordered the Feywild. Growing up, he heard many wondrous tales of the Feywild, and when he became an adult, Jhur'vaal ventured into the Feywild. His journey was almost a brief one, nearly the victim of a foul beast on his first night, but he was saved by a wood nymph*. Eternally grateful for saving his life, Jhur'vaal pledged to serve her. Over time, she taught him how to tap into the wild energies of this realm, and a short-lived romance even sparked, but at its peak, she vanished without a trace. Jhur'vaal immediately set out to find her, but after months mixed between searching and waiting, he gave up. Did some terrible fate steal her away or had she simply grow tired of him? From what he knew of fey, their whimsical dispositions & ever-changing attitudes, he swayed toward the latter explanation as more time passed, and it left him bitter. Jhur'vaal left the Feywild and had no desire to return to the home that led him here, so he turned his back on both and entered the world of man. Having been away from others for some time has left Jhur'vaal a bit of a loner, and he is mostly concerned with bettering himself. Although, part of him still wonders if they nymph did not leave voluntarily, and as a result, he has a soft spot for helping others seek that which they have lost.

*I don't know what kind of creatures they have in 4E, but if a wood nymph doesn't work, some sort of fey or fey-like creature.

And since he has somewhat of nature/wild background, that kind of gave him his unaligned/neutral alignment... doesn't believe too much in good or evil.

May 4, 2009 15:33:29 GMT -5 reefwood said:

I like the I wound up thinking of a brief background that ties into his fey
connection and has left him somewhat jaded but still semi-eager to do
something for a genuine or noble cause if it were to come up... so in
terms of motivation, he could do something just for money or because it's
the right thing but still teetering the line somewhat in the other
direction. He grew up in an Eladrin city on the edge of the Feywild,
wound up in the Feywild for a while - where he developed his fey warlock
powers - but has now left all that behind and is in the common/human
world. His name is Jhur'vaal but more ordinary folks - like humans - who
know him just call him "Val" since that's more familiar sounding to them.

Jhur'vaal is unaligned.

As for how long we know each other, either way works... maybe we sorta knew of each other or saw each other around town before but didn't really meet until being hired?

[Enric]

May 12, 2009 19:37:08 GMT -5 michael said:

It ok if I show up a bit early so we aren't fighting over books while we finish up our characters?

Yeah, come by as early as you like. Elias and I will be home by seven.

And Mikey, here's your ability scores:

DEAD MEAT, Level 1 Dragonborn Fighter.

STR 16 +3
CON 13 +1
DEX 10 +0
INT 8 -1
WIS 10 +0
CHA 8 -1

[Enric]

Okay, debriefing. What worked, and what didn't?

I definitely enjoyed it, but there's also definitely things I'd like out of an RPG that this game isn't built for. The emphasis is clearly on combat, and I think the combat is really good, but I'm sorry that there isn't more of a framework for activities that don't revolve around stabbing something.

As for the adventure itself, it ran a bit longer than I'd planned. Still, I was pleased with the fact that we could play through four or five short combats, time in the village and at Frona's cabin, and the skill challenge in one night.

Anyway, that's just some quick initial impressions - I'll post more when I'm not trying to type on my phone. What did you guys think?

[Rabbit]

I agree that it is very combat heavy. I am not sure how much character development I could even really get into if playing a long term game. There would of course be things that develop from roleplay, but not much room to reflect that in the character numbers.

I like a few things like casual perception, but you don't really need a whole new system to implement that.

And for that particular game; I had lots of fun. It was a good contrast from the last one-shot game you ran where we woke up in a dungeon and pretty much had to fight our way out. That was also totally fun, but I like toying around with the parameters of a one-shot since we have been getting into them lately.

[reefwood]

I'm at work right now, so this message may get cut short if I have to do something...

Skill challenges - I think this is a neat way to handle certain challenges and worked great for the particular situation in which we played... following tracks through snowy mountains makes sense to mix Perception/Athletics/Nature. Although, I've also played in a game on Groovy where skill challenges were used in a social settings, and having to make multiple Diplomacy/Bluff checks when talking with one person dragged out the game (especially in a play-by-post game where it takes days to post) and seems kind of silly that you get so many chances. With things like convincing someone, it seems like you should just get one shot, or at least no more than one shot per person. Maybe it would make more sense socially for something like dealing with a crowd.

Spells - I haven't looked over all the spells, but it seems like most of the ones you can select as Powers are combat oriented, and that I don't like. Even stuff that gets played off in the descriptions as something else, like illusion-type spells that induce scary images which plague your enemy's mind and cause psychic damage... they're still just attack spells rather than illusions.

Passive Perception - I agree that this is a good idea and saves on rolling time.

Another thing that I've mentioned before which I don't like about 4E is that it seems very homogeneous, and playing on the table top seemed to show that even more to me for combat. It seems like all our powers were more or less the same with the potential to do the same amount of damage... the Ftr did the most straight up weapon damage and was boosted by strength, the Warlock powers did a bit less damage but the curse boosted it up (and were comprable to Ranger attacks that I use in a Groovy game), and the Rogue weapons did the least damage but sneak attack brought it back high... and it was all about damage with just the little tweaks that differentiated them, and those were neat, like being able to shove the orc off the bridge, but it doesn't seem anywhere as varied as being able to do things like inspire courage and cast non-combat spells. The system is very combat heavy, and while you can always set up an adventure however you like, by removing some of the tools that do things other than combat, it does make it a bit trickier to do non-combat stuff.

I like that the skills were cut down, especially the somewhat redundant ones, but I wish there were more skills, knowledge ones in particular like Local, Geography, Nobility.

I kind of like how you can always detect magic by making an Arcana check, if you're trained in this skill, but Pathfinder pretty much does that too by allowing you to cast 0-level spells (like detect magic) at-will.

Okay, I should go do some work now but may type more later if something else comes to mind.

[michael]

Might as well throw in my two cents, although it's mostly echoing what's already been said.

Passive perception and insight is great, not only because it keeps the game flowing better, but also because you're not annoyed when you miss something. It's a bit bothersome when you know there's something back there that you missed, but you can't go back because your character doesn't know about it.

I think the minions thing is great. Mikey was talking about "Oh No" moments in another thread, and being heavily outnumbered and prevailing is a really great way to provoke that feeling. At one point, I killed 3 guys in one round because 2 minions provoked attacks of opportunity, and that felt pretty cool.

I'm a bit torn on some of the other changes. Combining skills is nice for some things, like a lot of the skill challenges, but at the same time, it feels like you can do too much. I like being somewhat specialized, and having a character's background reflected more in the abilities they possess.

Combat is really fun, and it's great that everyone gets to feel like they're accomplishing something on every single turn, but giving everyone the same damage output makes it too homogeneous. It almost feels as though they're turning it into a video game.