Session 1 (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-near-party-kill-d-5e-tale.html)
A near party kill.
Pro
Gamewise 5e is pretty much like the other clones I ran. It has details in its mechanics but it is well within the OSR ruleset I played before. The skill of the referee is of paramount importance in running a successful 5e game as there is little to fall back on in terms of mechanical detail.
Once I dug into Phandelver, I found it to be a basic but well executed sandbox. Basic because the various plot threads running through the locales can be exhausted within a few weeks of play. But well done because what there make sense, follows from the premises, and makes for an interesting adventure.
Con
The only major con is the organization and layout of Phandelver. Too many words and it is not laid out well for play. I would give it a C-. The layout not terrible but not good either for a sandbox. Here to hoping for a decent third party license so I can put my money where my mouth is at.
Session 2 (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2014/08/they-only-made-it-to-goblin-cave.html)
The one where they (only) made it to the goblin cave.
Comments
Man goblins stealth is nasty. While I was lucky in my rolls the +6 they get really makes goblins deadly when they have time to prepare. The group had some great moments roleplaying. With the PHB coming out next week I might have to turn this into a full campaign and put it into the Monday Night rotation.
The only bummer is that we didn't get to experience Roll20's dynamic lighting. There also a technical hiccup where I tried to use the new Line of Sight feature. The problem turned out to be that you not only have to enable Line of Sight for the map. But tell Roll20 that the characters had sight as well. The screen was black because I left the character blind. But we got it sorted it out and next week looks to be a great game.
I also played 5e at Gold Star Anime with a much larger group. While it is too early to be conclusive, I think spotted a quirk of 5e. That the effectiveness of larger groups isn't a linear progression, it is geometric. The group had 10 players and despite adding four times the creatures they still had a far easier time of it then the Monday Night crew. We will see how it goes.
So far 5e is a very solid system and even tho the party remains stuck at 1st level. They are able to recover from disaster and continue to progress. Soon we should see how higher levels fare. I hope.
Session 3 (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-d-5e-story-continues-conquest-of.html)
Conquest of the Goblin Cave
Comments
The death save mechanism steadily grows on me. Now that I have experienced its use in several session I feel adds a great deal of fun to the otherwise unpleasant situation of character death. And the revive to 1 hp on a natural 20 is pure gold for generating unexpected turn of events.
This was the first session with my new Player's Handbook. The book makes for an excellent reference during play. Although the index text is incredibly small it is complete and I found everything I was looking for quickly with it.
One thing that saved party this adventure was the fact they killed several sentries and patrols over the last two sessions. The failed first run proved crucial in whittling down their numbers for the successful second run.
Roll20 dynamic lighting and line of sight was awesome. But the big down side was it really bogged down Roll 20. When I switched it off for the party to loot the complex everything was way faster. I am going to need to do some reading on how to efficiently setup dynamic lighting.
One thing I was able to do was setup elven vision as distinct from how the human see things. Squirrel had a much easier time of it then the rest of the party.
So next week is back to Phandalin
Sounds good. Sacrosanct mentioned something about a geometric increase and said it was intentional because it's like 1e iirc. You'd want to confirm that with him though.
Session 4 (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2014/08/where-is-glasstaff-5e-adventure.html)
Comments
Wow, this is was simply the most awesome DnD fight I refereed since a ADnD first adventure in my first year of college.
Now some specifics.
I am sorry but unless stealth is involved or a one round kill there is no way that the party isn't going to rouse the rest of the western half of the dungeon if they fight the Nothic. This happened for this group and the J Squad at Gold Star Anime. Now the awareness of everybody in the western half didn't happen all at once. I was rolling perception checks particularly for the Redbrands. Despite managing to blow a total of eight rolls while playing their card game they still managed to put together a credible defense and warn Glasstaff.
So far the dungeons are small. Really small which contribute to the effect I mention above
OK this part may not come off clear. It about initiative. I had everybody roll initiative and divided the groups into those that went before the monster and those went after. With four players most were in all one group. Then I resolved initiative in order of who is closest to combat. This cut down a lot of "I am waiting for X to do something before going.". Which happens a lot in dungeons with 5' corridors.
DnD 5e is really growing on me. Like Tim of Gothridge Manor, I think the healing mechanisms are too generous but... well I have to admit if you are going to have this type of mechanic this is the way to do it. Note that the party hasn't touched their hit dice healing. They simply have had time too.
I did get one thing wrong, attack of opportunity only occurs when you exit your opponent reach. So Sidwin could have run around without drawing opportunity attacks. A six second combat round is pretty abstract so I can buy this. In my Sword and Wizardry games I always allow a 5 foot step with out any type of opportunity attack. I just chalk it up as part of the dancing around that occur in real life combat. However you still need to be aware when two opponents are standing side by side.
Ranger having Cure Wounds is awesome. I know Dan thinks so. As a fan of the Dunedain Rangers I think it cool as well. Glad to see this in place over the concept of the Ranger as woodsy guy, two weapons fighter of other recent editions. Also the party doesn't quite suffer from the lack of a cleric. Yeah having a cleric would be very helpful but there is just enough surges, potions, and hit dices that a cleric-less group can keep going. For a little while at least.
The players were great. The only frustration is the lack of PHBs particularly for Dan. But as I understand they are winging their way from Amazon and other stores as we speak
There is only one bad point and that is the choice of skills. Perception seems to be the "tic" skills of DnD 5e. We fumbled around with Insight and Investigation as well. I will read them over again before I make my final impression.
Roll20's Dynamic lighting is awesome. Tim did really fumbled around and lost some movement tying to figure out where Glasstaff went. I never seen that in tabletop before. Also I was able to speed it up by checking Update only on Drop.
Magic Missile dice have a happy feel.
Magic Missile was Glasstaff "tic" spell. Blew two of them through his 2nd level spells slots and two through his first level. The spell slot system is outstanding. It not like the involved decisions of DnD 4e or GURPS, but there are tactics involved in deciding to use what spells where.
Damn I hope Wizards doesn't flake out about third party publishing I want to write for this.
That all for now the next adventure post will be in two weeks.
Quote from: estar;781464Session 4 (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2014/08/where-is-glasstaff-5e-adventure.html)
Comments
Wow, this is was simply the most awesome DnD fight I refereed since a ADnD first adventure in my first year of college.
Good to hear! :)
QuoteOK this part may not come off clear. It about initiative. I had everybody roll initiative and divided the groups into those that went before the monster and those went after. With four players most were in all one group. Then I resolved initiative in order of who is closest to combat. This cut down a lot of "I am waiting for X to do something before going.". Which happens a lot in dungeons with 5' corridors.
This is exactly how I do it. After initiative is rolled, I say, "OK, everyone above X can go (x=monster initiative)." It makes it fast and eliminates all of the "I wait for Bob's turn." stuff.
QuoteDnD 5e is really growing on me. Like Tim of Gothridge Manor, I think the healing mechanisms are too generous but... well I have to admit if you are going to have this type of mechanic this is the way to do it. Note that the party hasn't touched their hit dice healing. They simply have had time too.
This is my experience as well. With short rests being an hour, the party really needs to find a safe spot before they can even use HD.
QuoteDamn I hope Wizards doesn't flake out about third party publishing I want to write for this.
You and me both. You and me both.
The Great Escape of 5e
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-great-escape-of-5e.html
Rob Note: I have what I feel is a very effective technique to get the players to act naturally out of combat. It starts with me going round robin around the table asking each player individually what they are doing. Unless the group has a strong leadership, more often and not it results in the group milling around doing whatever catches the individual players eye. After a minute or two of interacting with a player there generally comes a pause point where I can move on to the next player. The general effect is to keep everybody involved but in this particular case it had some unpleasant consequences in-game.
Rob Note: What actually happened is that I was tracking time while the party was search and executing moves and actions for Glasstaff and the ruffians. I just rolls for the ruffians jump and placing the two in their final position when Josh announced he was moving to explore while simultaneously moving his token to the southern hallway. Because I was using the Line of Sight feature of Roll 20 he didn't see anything until he dropped his token. His next words were. Hey Rob, do I see those? I replied "Yup, roll initiative." Both sides were effectively surprised.
Comments
I need to stop refereeing 5e. Oh there is nothing wrong with the group, the game, or the campaign. But I am rolling hot, so hot that it is draining the luck out of the rest of my life. Namely due the fact that in the space of one week I went from two well operating cars to zero. The first lost on the way to the airport with a busted front axle gear. My wife and I decided to scrap it due it having over 200,000 miles on it. Then on the way way home, I rolled a natural 1 and the left rear tire shredded all over the highway. Like Kelly Anne, my wife, rolls a natural 20 and manages to get the van safely to the side of the highway. In fact she did so well that the rim remained undamaged and ultimately only needed a new tire put on. And kudos to +Daniel McEntee for going above the call of friendship to fetch us and take us home after the tow.
As for 5e, now that I am five session in already, I have to say this is an awesome edition. The way that characters and monsters are stated makes it very easy to master them both in terms of roleplaying and combat. More importantly they work the way I prefer them to work. You think of action as if you are there and rules seamlessly translate that into specific die rolls and details.
For example at first glance you still got the D&D funkiness with hit points. But they really emphasize that hit points represent fatigue and experience as well. And more I used he whole hit point/healing system, I can go "Yeah I see what they are getting at.".
So with Squirrel's death +Rhandom A is making up a new character. From our discussion it looks like one of the first pieces of a Majestic Wilderlands supplement for 5e will emerge. We see how it works out for next week and share some details.
Thanks for the report! I find that this is one of the easiest of the WotC editions to tinker with. The mechanics are still more integrated, but overall unintended consequences seem minimized compared to before.
Sorry to hear about your car trouble, though. Go sage your dice! It keeps away the haints! :P
The report on the last two 5e sessions.
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2014/09/it-is-mad-mad-5e-world.html
Comments
So far I refereed Phandalin like I do most of my campaigns. The players are in a sandbox free to choose to do whatever they like. The initial portion of the module worked out because the starting circumstances was that the group were hired as Gundren Rockseer's bodyguards. Most of the ensuing events resulted from the group natural responses to what was happening.
As it worked out, their victory over the Redbrands was done in a spectacular fashion. While the party may have suffered a lot of material loss, it was obvious to the villagers they gave it their all. And with the rescue of Mirna, the group have won the hearts and minds of the locals.
The only back effect of all this is that all the subsequent information came in a rush due to everybody wanting to talk to them a once. Between what the party was doing in the town and the subsequent party and feast, the hooks has a bit of World of Robquest feel. Everybody agreed it made sense but given today awarness of tropes and long experience with MMORPGs, the Robquest jokes went flying. I laughed just as hard with everyone and the game moved on.
The choice of going after the stuff around Coynberry was the party's decision. The whole Agatha's encounter was a blast to run and Tim really did an outstanding job of roleplaying. Especially at how he managed to parlay his one question into three with the final one the one he really wanted answer. It should be interesting to see how he handles the answer.
Now the zombie fight, at first I thought it was going to be a cakewalk. When I ran this encounter for the Gold Star Anime crew they had it down cold with clever use of fire and the party's cleric. That group, because of 10 PCs, faced a much larger group of 30 zombies. The Monday night crew got to face the book number of 12 zombie and 1 mage.
Well Dan's character, Keyar, took out the mage character easily enough. But OMG the zombies were killer. Their ability to return to 1 hp if they made a con save of DC 5 + damage suffered that round made this ordinary monster that we dealt since OD&D into something out of a horror film.
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wobr2xriOq8/VB-Jpug1VKI/AAAAAAAAKOc/q2zCJLqZOo4/s1600/zombie_attack.jpg)
The basic tactic I used was that if more than one zombie attacked, the first one would shove the target PC. If that didn't work I went down the line until half of the zombie tried to shove. Then the rest would just attack. But if a shove was successful this meant the remaining zombie's attacks were at an advantage. And this in combination with the damage save is what put terror in the hearts of the PCs.
It also dragged the combat out forever because with a +3 on their con save and the party doing 8 or 9 damage on average the zombies were not going down fast. I am not sure how I would handled this at a physical table as I had to keep expanding the map in Roll20. In the end the party was victorious and now zombie are not longer the 2 HD chumps they were in ADnD.
I love the zombie ability to shake off mortal wounds. Genius mechanics. I wish they spread it around a little so more of the corporeal undead have this ability. Though perhaps it is cool to have it be this special zombie thing - they are a common monster that are now uncommonly scary unless you have some big guns on board.
Reading back through your thread, the session I most relate to is the fight with the nothic in the basement of the old manor. The group I ran had almost exactly the same problem — they snuck in the tunnel (oops, spoiler...), thought they were having a standard issue weird monster blanket party, and ended up one or two die rolls away from a total party kill as the rest of the basement inhabitants stumbled in.
I was afraid you had stopped doing these. The AP reports have slowed down considerably. :(
Well, that's to be expected.
Quote from: estar;778807Too many words
Heh. Totally agree. Phandelver would be a better adventure if an editor parsed half the wording on each section. Adventure authors pretty much universally try to hard to write flowery language, when the actual adventures would run better with terse language.
All in all, I am finding 5e to be an amazing system. But with my party looking to finish the adventure tomorrow exploring the final cave, I cannot recommend Phandelver. Not a great adventure, doubt I will ever run it again.
Interesting your group fought the nothic. My gang negotiated with it and gained intel.
The latest session of my 5e Phandelver (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2014/09/showdown-at-orc-corral-this-weeks.html) Campaign.
Comments
After the previous two sessions which ended between 10pm and 11pm this one ended after 9. Everybody was tired and elected to stop right here at the beginning of the fight.
The session was a good example of when the party was well prepared and executed flawlessly their plan. They never lost control of the Orc battle and even the unexpected appearance of the far tougher Ogre didn't change things much.
I felt that as abstract combat is in 5e that it reflects real life considerations better than 3rd edition and 4th edition. The raw power of the Ogre and the bonus moves of the Orcs could not overcome the fact the party held a superior tactical position.
The Stirges and Goblin attack were the results of the random monster encounters found on page 27. I felt I was able to make the Strige encounter particularly evocative. One nice thing about 5e is that for now the mystery is back as to what the monster can do. It not like they been totally reworked from their classic counterparts but the addition of one or extras is enough to give them a different spin. This probably contributed to why the party elected to avoid the striges.
Finally I do have Roll20 tip for those you planning to use Phandelver. This will work with any other system with wandering monsters.
I have a wilderness map setup. I went through the wandering monster charted and added maximum number of monsters for each encounter on the hidden GM layer. That way when an encounter occurs I can just move the right number to the token area and everything is setup.
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZeS6-zAKPBY/VChlgi35aBI/AAAAAAAAK10/H0srt_9IVRY/s1600/wandering_monsters.jpg)