DnD Campaign

[Robocopter87]

I'm a god.

[Kcdaspot]

HAMMAH TIME

[inte]

fun

[Robocopter87]

Indeed.

[GreyICE]

First, I want to thank everyone who showed up. Hito, Inte, KCDA, Robo, Nexus, you were all excellent. There was a lot of a learning curve, on both the software and the system (after 15 minutes of flailing we finally gave up on Roll20 and switched to Skype, and Nexus' computer crashed several times). We also took quite some time to learn the basics of how a lot of it worked. And system knowledge came at different rates. Despite the fact that 3 of you were brand new to 4E, and one of you had minimal experience, the system went, for a first time, reasonably smoothly. It's only getting faster from here on out, guys!

Our cast:

Harbek Rockhammer, Dwarf Fighter - Played by Robocopter
Leshanna, Eldarin Wizard - Played by inte
Abraxas, Fist of Bahamut - Played by kcdaspot
Heian, the Unseen - Played by Nexus
Logan - Played by Hitogoroshi

The scale of the combat was also epic. I'll be honest and draw the curtains back a little, I wanted players to get a real feel for the meat and gristle of what I like doing in campaigns: Epic, meaningful combats, with a real chance of success and failure. Thus, the first zombie dogs were mostly a warmup - and a feel for how abilities worked in combat. I'll be honest, I didn't need to end the encounter after them and let everyone refresh their powers and heal, but it felt right, especially for a learning encounter. Then they went to the open door, prepared for another 3 wolves...

And discovered a dozen shambling undead corpses, led by two warchiefs, with a necromancer summoning more in the background. And then things got hairy.

The PCs realized pretty quickly the warchiefs were a huge threat. They dragged the PCs around into packs of zombies using shadow claws, and they enabled other zombies to attack in frightening hordes. However, they had to get through the pack that had surrounded the entrance. This is also where they discovered an interesting feature. The zombies were minions, but if they were killed by a non-critical hit they got to roll a die. On a 15+, they survived the hit, even though it should have destroyed it. Zombies were set on fire, burned with electricity, one even had a leg chopped off and kept coming (actually flaming zombies were kind of a thing this combat, fire damage proved remarkably ineffective for whatever reason).

Anyway, back to the entrance. Abraxas found a nice use of Turn Undead to annihilate 3 of them, and the rest of the party managed to make short work of another 4. Then they managed to trickle over to the warchiefs, held back by the fact there were still several zombies hampering their progress. And they could see further waves coming in from the necromancer. Desperate to get to those warchiefs, Heian and Logan had managed to do some serious damage, but the killing blow was done by Harbek. Logan had been shadow clawed and surrounded, and was near death (Logan spent a lot of time near death this fight) and Harbek wanted to help. He Bull Rushed a Zombie, pushing it aside, and used an action point to make a Sweeping Strike, targeting 4 of my zombies and the warchief. Two of the zombies managed to live (one through missing outright (natural 1), 1 through making its save), but the attack on the warchief crit. And with a thud, it fell, its spine cleaved clean through by the dwarf's waraxe . At that point though, everyone was starting to get winded, and more waves of zombies were threatening to overwhelm them, but Abraxas did an admirable job of keeping the party up. At this point, Leshanna realized it was time to use one of her strongest attacks - Flaming Sphere. Appearing in the midst of a group of zombies, it managed to burn down 3 of the 4, with only one surviving. It also handled 2 of the 4 from the next wave, and at one point there were 5 zombies adjacent to it (2 survived). Finally Logan, Harbek, Heian, and Abraxas managed to take down the second Warchief. With him down, and the necromancer's corpses exhausted, the party turned their attention to the necromancer. And despite his healing crown and powerful lightning claws, which threw the party back, they managed to swiftly and furiously cut him down. Abraxas finally managed to land an attack, and what an attack! His hammer smashed the necromancer's head into somewhere around mid-torso. Hammer time indeed (and he stopped!).


Interesting facts:

1) Zombie Rotters don't come stock with that DC15 save versus non-crits. That's a feature from a different minion, and I generally liked it enough to graft it over. Expect non-standard minion (and monster design in general) from me! They ended up being remarkably effective, with one notable zombie surviving dragon breath and arc lightning, showing resilience to the point where the party wanted to keep him as a pet after the battle. Sadly another cast of arc lightning cut down the burning, electricity-scarred zombie, but he was amazingly epic and lasted far longer than I expected him to. Go little guy, go!

2) The players figured out pretty quick the warchiefs weren't that impressive in Melee combat. Their top-tier abilities came mostly from doing what Warlords do, and giving up their attacks to enable attacks from other zombies (up to 4 other ones!). After a few early hits, the party figured out that standing in the middle of zombies was a terrible idea, and were actually quite careful. I liked how the mechanic worked a lot!

3) It's hard to tell because 2 of the 3 monsters involved in combat were modified somewhat from stock, but this encounter was probably around 1-2 levels higher than the party, meaning that it would have been a basic encounter for a party of level 5 or so. It also involved a LOT more tokens than ordinary combats. The length (I believe it went 6-7 rounds), the sheer number of monsters, the newness of the players, and the fact it was a very difficult encounter all contributed to make it a LOT longer than I anticipated. It was an ambitious encounter, to be sure, and I honestly believe there was a chance that a few bad decisions and a few terrible rolls (or more terrible rolls, in general the zombies rolled quite well, while the party, especially Abraxus, didn't - Abraxus isn't joking about hitting 1 attack in 7 made) and all five players would have been dead or forced to flee the scene and leave the people of the inn to be consumed and join the undead menace. It was certainly no cakewalk!

If I had to do it differently:

- Names: They were pretty terrible, not gonna lie. Abraxas, Fist of Bahamut, was the only one I actually liked. I made these characters up in a hurry, gave them short backstories, and ran with it.
- Powers: I generally love Tide of Iron, but this encounter didn't get to show off the things it can do (mostly because I avoided dangerous/difficult terrain, I was simplifying things). It came off as rather mediocre, when it's actually a power I adore. On a lesser note, the bow ranger relied on twin strike to do virtually everything. Twin Strike... le sigh. So good.
- Everyone generally played their classes really well, and I was especially impressed with our first-time players. Everyone seemed to get a handle on things quickly, and no one really dragged too much. KCDASpot had some trouble, but I burdened him with a complicated class who had a mix of minor actions and important decisions to make with standard actions, as well as several limited resources, quite a few encounter powers (thanks to how channel divinity works) and a generally complex sheet, and even with that he was able to make up his mind reasonably quickly. As experience with battlefields progress, it should become easier and easier.

I hope everyone enjoyed the experience! I'll have up our setting sometime this week, and we can start worldbuilding and character building in earnest.

[Robocopter87]

I dunno what you are talking about, I love the name Harbek.

I'll probably continue to use it. Maybe not the Rockhammer part.

[GreyICE]

The rockhammer part was a tad cheesy.

Harbek was solid.

But you have to admit some of the others... the flaws of making 5 characters in 30 minutes.

[Xalxe]

Sounds great; can't wait to play with you guys!

[inte]

i legally changed my name to Lefaunda

[Nexus]

You were a sassy black chick.

[GreyICE]

Setting document is about 70% done, I just want to read it over and edit some stuff. In the meantime, here are character creation rules:

Standard, 5th level characters. All races and classes allowed.

Setting is low on magical items. Imbuing an item with magic is a long, arduous process. Magic is a spontanious and usually temporary affair, so while spellcasters are not uncommon, many can go their entire life without seeing a magical artifact. Artifacts are often ancient, and have their own histories and stories within the setting.

Because of this, you can consider all gold numbers completely wrong. I'll nail down how much gold and stuff you guys have, but right now, it will be not much by the standards of a fifth level character. The cost of all ritual components for all rituals is reduced by a factor of 10, unless they're under 100G. Under 100G they're reduced by a factor of 5.

All players should describe one magical item or supernatural power they have. You don't have to worry if it matches an existing item in any way, just describe the artifact/power and what it does. I will stat it.

For backgrounds, you can write up your background pretty much as you please, and I will incorporate aspects from your history into the setting.

[GreyICE]

Oh yeah, and everyone gets one expertise feat free. Hito knows what that means, for the rest of you I'll walk you through it. Just send me a good time to roll up your character if you want some help.

[hitogoroshi]

It's looking like I'm gonna be doing the Leader role.

Do we have a charismatic "face" type? One of my characters I've rolled up is Tessenbar, a Changeling Bard. He has +14 bluff, with loads of situational modifiers (including a high INT so he can do the "I'll knowledge the parts I can and make up the rest" trick) and the changeling ability to disguise himself. As party leader out of combat, he can probably trick his way through a lot of stuff and help the party out. He's not so good in combat, though. He's a backliner who will harrass and heal a bit but nothing spectacular.

If we have a face, and you guys just want a good combat leader, I have Ban Tyrr. He's a Mul Shaman. He's got a lot of abilities that give damage reduction or temp HP, and will mitigate the damage on our front line a TON (and from what I understand of the party, it's pretty much all front line. :p) He also has three daily abilities (well, two dailies and one daily utility) that will either give encounter long DR, regen, or bonus healing to multiple people.

Oh, there's also Breddik the Genasi Warlord - an earth elemental (basically) spirit of war who's specced as a mobility and + to hit/damage warlord. I don't think I'll be running him since that's shoving you guys in to the game headfirst (his method of preventing damage is just zerging dangerous enemies down through their formations, and it requires a lot of coordination and precision) but I'll put it out there.

So yeah, let me know what you guys would prefer, though I might drop one of these characters if their stories aren't compatible with the setting. (Well, Tessenbar doesn't really have a story yet, but I've got one for the other two and it'd feel wrong to switch!)

[Glork]

This looks like a fantastic idea. I think I'll actually try to keep up / follow along with the entertainment.

[Xalxe]

Will read hito's post later but: would a psion be compatible with campaign settings y/n? If so, I have one already made. If not, I'll need a bit of setup time.

[GreyICE]

Psion is just fine! We do have a Wizard already I believe, unless Inte changed his mind, but the overlap between the two is not huge.

[Xalxe]

Okay then. Do I need to roll new stats or can I send you a scan of the sheet or testimonial or something to prove I'm not like LOL HAVE ALL THE 18S?

[hitogoroshi]

I can only assume we're doing point buy because rolling for stats is absolutely moronic?

PS: is CHA a psion stat? I don't even know. Basically I would love if someone else was face because I think Ban Tyrr is who I wanna play the most.

[Xalxe]

CHA is not, I'm INT/WIS. Except I think in the other order.

[GreyICE]

Okay then. Do I need to roll new stats or can I send you a scan of the sheet or testimonial or something to prove I'm not like LOL HAVE ALL THE 18S?

Point buy, per usual 4E.

I have charbuilder so I'll drop the sheet into charbuilder and get everything up to date.

I'm sure that there's an Int/Cha Psion build (the telepath) and if you don't mind it would be AWESOME to have a party face. Unless you're heavily tied to the Int/Wis build (Telekenetic?)

[Xalxe]

(I'll say okay, I was using a kinda modified v4 over the summer)

[inte]

mah nigga Grey, would you mind helping me later today or are you busy? i should be free after 3pm

ill send a pm later in case you don't see this

(looking over d&d character class article in wikipedia) i don't think i would mind rolling as a warlock or monk (at least the RP aspect of it) if xalxe wants to be the psion guy

[Nexus]

...which would totally fuck over my plans, but whatever.

I'll just fit in whereever.

[Xalxe]

After reading my sourcebooks again, I'll take face duties from you hito and roll up a telepathic psion. Grey, if you wanna hit me up on Skype anytime (awspeidel), I can do things.

PS: I get to fuck shit up with my MIND!

[inte]

...which would totally fuck over my plans, but whatever.

I'll just fit in whereever.

i'm not here to fit in, i'm here to stand out

you were planning to be the warlord or something right?