Agonizing over the Apprenitce Campaign

Some of you may remember that the Apprentices started playing 4E last year and ultimately came to an end in an ugly TPK. We then went for something different as I offered them a chance to play in a Greek Mythology campaign but they decided that wasn't their thing after all - they wanted to go back to the Realms. That's probably because they've been reading the Drizzt books over the last year but it was the Percy Jackson books and Clash of the Titans that got them interested in the Greek thing so fair is fair.

Anyway, I took my time on coming up with a new plan for their game because I want to pick something we're going to stick with this time. I find a campaign gathers momentum once it gets going for a little while and I wanted to be sure we had room to grow without having to change settings all over again. I looked through different books, adventures old and new, and eventually decided that the Temple of Elemental Evil converted to 4E was the way to go - it's a classic that I've never gotten to run and it  maps out nicely with the Heroic Tier. Plus if it goes well I can convert the G and D series modules over and have a New Old campaign arc - best of both worlds! The challenge of doing a decent conversion while staying true to the spirit of the originals sparks my imagination as well. So everything looked good for a week or two. Then I saw the info on Neverwinter.

Let's see, a brand new campaign setting for the Heroic Tier set in a classic area of the Forgotten Realms - it's like they were reading my mind! It's exactly what I needed! So I put the TOEE on hold and waited for this to come out, picked it up and ... it's not what I thought it would be. It's not bad, it's just not full of ready-to-go adventuring material. What it does have is a lot of potential as a regional sandbox campaign. Looking at the maps and things it would be pretty easy to go through and "zone"  the map like an MMO, keying each section around a given level, planting some rumors, mapping out some of the dungeons and lairs and graveyards and stocking them with nasties, and ending up with a big sprawling area full of adventure. I'm just not sure that's the way I want to go.

The Apprentices are still somewhat new to D&D and RPG's, and I wonder if a completely open conuntryside might be a little too free-form for them. I think the focus of the TOEE might work better at this stage of their experience. It's not a railroaded storyline kind of focus like Dragonlance but it is pretty straightforward - you're in the village and the big bad dungeon is that way -   so that they can concentrate on the fun part instead of arguing over what to do next (and they will argue, sheesh, sometimes at the worst possible moment - since Heroes of Shadow added vampires as an option I may see if I can talk Apprentice Twilight into playing but that's a longshot at best).

So I'm right back where I started, after leaving it alone for half of the summer. I'm going to go back to my original plan and run the converted Temple campaign, set in Impiltur. I'm probably also going to post about the process here since the players don't know about the blog, unlike my other campaign, so I can be a little more open about it.

I'm still tempted to start sandboxing Neverwinter just for the fun of it and to have another low-level campaign ready to go in the same world I've been using for almost all of my 4E games. I might also set up an open table kind of thing with it and see if the Apprentices and my regular group (and maybe some other friends) have any interest in working in an occasional mixed group outside of the other campaigns. It's not extremely likely to take off but you never know.

September: Messing with games that you shouldn't

During a discussion with my friend Barking Alien it became apparent that we had some vaguely similar thoughts on a theme for September and so we are going to tread a similar path and call it "messing with games you shouldn't" month.

For my part, there are two main topics:

1) I've been playing around with d6 Star Wars tweaks ever since our campaign was called due to rules frustration. I'm convinced that it's still a good system but I'm also convinced that it's in dire need of a serious revamp to clear out the clutter that has accuumulated around it over the last two decades. I will be putting up a series of posts where I do just that and hopefully end up with a game I could actuly hope to run again.

2) I've also decided to go ahead with my Temple of Elemental Evil conversion to 4th edition D&D. Not only is it possible, it's good and very faithful to the original. If it goes well the the Giants and Drow series will be following along next year.


Now there will still be the usual session summaries and I'm going to post some more ICONS as well, but these other things will play a big part this month. I may work in some one-off posts on some other game change-ups as well - I've also decided to do some work on converting Neverwinter to a full-on sandbox for 4E. I'm not sure When I'm going to get to run it so this is a lower priority. I'm pretty sure I've got at least one Rifts post in me, and maybe some others as well.

Musings on Neverwinter

I have a case of incorrect expectations.

 I was thinking of this as a sort of super-adventure, similar to Revenge of the Giants or Tomb of Horrors 4E, with some additional setting material. It is not that, and to be fair to WOTC they didn't really say that it was going to be that. Bad on me.

What it is is a regional campaign setting centered around the half-ruined city of Neverwinter. There are maps of the city, the region, and some potential adventuring sites in the area. There are descriptions of various power groups in the area (there are a lot of them) including their leaders and agendas. There's is a lot of crunchy player stuff like Character Traits, deity-specific domains for the Essentials cleric, and mechanical bits for the various Forgotten Realms sub-races that were not a mechanical part of 4E before now. There are quite a few new monsters in the book, usually tied to certain groups or areas where they might be found, and that's cool.

There are no ready-to-run adventures, though. Not one. No gridded maps, no "Encounter 1-A The Dig Site" type pages in the whole book. That's what I was thinking would be included and is not. My linking of this to the earlier Pool of Radiance adventure settings was flawed as those included a ton of small adventures and this book includes none, which is where it falls down for me.

I don't really need a hyper-detailed area to run in - I like to do that kind of thing myself. I thought the 4E FR Campaign Guide handled this kind of thing pretty well, as it gave a write-up of a small town, gave short overviews of a region and the features therein, and then gave a starter adventure and some individual encounters tied to the area and the NPC's in that area. It took up one chapter in the book and was pretty handy IMO. I was expecting something more like that approach. Instead, if you took that chapter and expanded it to fill an entire book, while simultaneously deleting the actual encounters, that's the Neverwinter Campaign Guide. It is very nicely done, and if someone is looking for a detailed region to start up a Realms campaign in then this one will certainly fill that need. It's just not the fit for my needs that I thought it would be.

My problem is that I can write up what lives in the local haunted forest in an hour or so at night or maybe even on a slow day at work. Until my players investigate it I can revise and refine as I choose to make it fit them and the current state of my campaign as needed. What I can't do in between other things is write up the numbers - I have to make time to sit down with monster books to do that. That's where the time or lack of it really comes in. That's why I like having a few pre-made adventures or encounters available and why things like those big adventures and the Dungeon Delve book are so useful. I can easily find a place to put them and a way to connect them to the overal campaign, and in a pinch they save me the time it takes to draw up maps, pick out the right enemies, and choose treasure and magic items. Background and connections are much easier to determine during the course of a grown-up working day, yet that's the majority of the stuff that Neverwinter gives me.

I am also not a huge fan of the "let's work in everything" approach to the setting. It has scheming nobles from Waterdeep. It has old dwarf kingdoms and old elf kingdoms. It has a band of Drow mercenaries (yeah, that same one if you've read any of the mid to later Drizzt books). It has Red Wizards. It has Harpers. It has a bunch of undead.It has aboleths (organized aboleths!). It has Netheril (which I don't really care for in a low-level setting as I think they represent a higher-powered threat that's better addressed in the teen-to-twenty levels). Some might call it "rich" while I might call it "overloaded". It feels like it's straining to work in as many FR groups/threats as possible. It's a matter of taste and I tend to run my Realms games with a lighter sprinkling of that kind of stuff than others do, I suppose. For me it starts with the gods, the races, and the geography at the core and then the rest can be used as lighter or heavier flavor. As I've mentioned, not neccessarily wrong, just not completely to my taste.

I'm also a bit down on the lack of adventures due to the lack of  shared experiences it generates. What I'm talking about is the post-game story part of the playing experience. Pretty much anyone who played Basic D&D at some point played through The Keep on the Borderlands. I would guess a big percentage, if not a flat-out majority, of players of AD&D played through Against the Giants. A bunch probably played through White Plume Mountain and Tomb of Horrors too. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was legendary. Other games had this too - Many d6 Star Wars campaigns I have heard of started off with "Tatooine Manhunt". A lot of Runequest games started with "Apple Lane" then died in "Snake Pipe Hollow" or "Griffin Island/Mountain". Shadowrun had "Harlequin" among others. What is the legendary adventure for 4E? Is it "Keep on the Shadowfell"? Revenge of the Giants? I'm not sure, but if Neverwinter had included a set of adventures to use in a regional Heroic campaign it might have been the one. The type of thing where meeting another gamer ofr the first time and the talk turns to AD&D and Tomb of Horros and the four-armed gargoyle  - "oh we killed him in one round!" - "Wow our M-U used Charm monster and we took him around as a trap detector the rest of the way"  - that kind of thing where you get a little bonding from having played through something that someone else did too, even if you never played it together. It's a part of the RPG scene that I really like and I probably see it as more important than a lot of others do.

The factional stuff is a big chunk of the book and is pretty heavily tied in to the regional discussions so that you really have to read the whole thing through to get a good picture of what;s going on. It's...goood... but I think it's where the book goes particularly overboard. There are 10-15 factions in play, depending on how you want to count them, and some are under another's control, some are unaware of others, some are opposed to each other, and some have their own sub-factions. The core of it is the noble from Waterdeep who has come to the city with his mercenaries and an agenda and the local citizens who oppose his rule and have formed a resistance movement. That movement has been split into two factions, both groups  have been infiltrated by devil-worshippers, some of them have been mind-controlled by aboleths, all are watched by the red wizards and the shades from Netheril, and there are other groups outside of the city proper who have ties to and opinions about many of the others. They are all webbed together to the point that I wonder if any of them could be easily removed from play without revamping a bunch of the connections. The two human factions are pretty critical to the setting as written, as are the aboleths beneath it, and some of the others keep each other in check so that if you have one you need several to maintain the balance The full spread of groups though is pretty wide, and in my experience wider than most groups are likely to need. In fact, trying to work in all of the potential plotlines and connections is likely to render players confused to the point of frustration as they try to puzzle out which group of evil magical types is infiltrating the guard AND kidnaping citizens AND ambushing patrols AND running the graveyard AND smuggling things in through the old docks etc. Shadowrun is good for that sort of thing but I'm not sure a DnD game really needs so much of it. A DM could ignore it, but considering how much of the book it makes up that seems like a waste. I expect that I would throw a few things out to a new party. see what catches their interest, and then focus on those, leaving the rest to another campaign or another party.

One thing I do see as poitentially rewarding with this book is sandboxing: There is a great deal of stuff here that could serve as the bedrock for a classic pure sandbox campaign, similar to the West Marches campaign (the sandbox part, not neccesarily the open table part). There is a "safe" part of the city, then a whole lot of "unsafe" parts like the chasm, the graveyards, and the ruined areas. Then there are the areas outside the city, various forests, mountains, ruins, and of course the dungeons. If a DM could sit down, put a hexgrid over the regional map (if you like the old school approach) and then stock and populate the areas of interest, one could have a very nice heroic tier sandbox with a strong grounding in the Realms. A lot of the factional stuff would have to be handled outside of the safe area rather than in the city itself (remember, the city is NOT where the adventure happens in a classic sandbox) but a lot of it is there already anyway. The Waterdeep noble would have to be repositioned as having his hands full just maintaining the city walls and needing help from adventurers to push outwards. The local resistance would probably have to be scaled back as well, but all of those other factions could be a lot of fun. There could even be some Fistful of Dollars type scenarios that come into play if the players handle things the right way.

My last bit of concern comes from the timing: This version of the game has been out for over 3 years now, yet one of 2011's big supplements* for DM's is another product designed to support low-level play. What about Paragon? What about Epic? Between the early adventures, three campaign settings, campaign adventures, and some of the other supplements like Vor Rukoth, we have a lot of Heroic tier material. Did we really need another book of that type rather than dedicated support of hgher levels of play? I'm not so sure. I think what this points to is that the 2010 Essentials releases effectively reset the clock just as if a new edition had been released. It was not a new edition mechanically, as characters were not made obsolete, but it was a new edition marketing-wise and so rolled things back to zero and shifted the product emphasis to lower-level starting play. I'm seeing that now and while it makes some sense I'm hoping that 2012 takes the focus to Paragon, not least because by the end of the year that's where my main game will be going.

All of that jabbering above could be taken as me being down on WOTC's shiny new book and I feel a little bad about that. It's a good thing for new players especially and there really hasn't been a book like it for 4E, although it was a fairly common type for 1E and 2E. I think there's a place for this kind of thing in the game - it can't all be powers and monster stats. It's a lot like the old Gazeteers for the D&D Known World - maps, NPC's plots, and creatures for a set region. Those were a lot of fun (I have 4 or 5 of them) and I imagine there will be some people, especially new DM's, who get all kinds of excited over this book and I expect it will be a lot of fun for them.

I'm just not really sure how to fit it into my plans just yet but I'm working on it. It's not what I expected, but working through my sandboxing idea above has caused me to re-think my plans for the Apprentices campaign at least, so I may end up liking this book more than I thought - more on that later. For now, it's a very good book if you want a regional sourcebook with a fair amount of player crunch and limited DM crunch but tons of DM fluff. It is very strongly tied to the Forgotten Realms, so for good or ill that should factor into your decision. I think it's mainly aimed at newer DM's, but it's not without value for anyone running a game in the Realms. If it fits with what you need than it's very good. If not, then it still may be good enough but that's something each DM would have to decide for themselves.

*Yeah there's Gloomwrought, the city in the Shadowfell, which  I haven't read yet but it does appear to be more inline with my expectations - Paragon emphasis and actual encounters. I'm just not super-excited about an extended focus on the Shadowfell. Visits, sure, but it's not where we're going to live for the campaign. It also makes me wonder if Neverwinter would not have fared better as a boxed set - more maps, including encounter maps, some tokens, and an adventure book would have added a lot to it. Some of the Netheril stuff ties in to the Shadowfell making the Gloomwrought set a feasible next step for Paragon usage.

Return to the Ruins of Adventure - Session 27: Temple of the Reptile God

After camping for the night our heroes proceed to the ancient temple of the reptile god. With the skilled barbarian leading the way they soon discover a pile of collapsed stone atop a hill that rises out of the swamp. Observing from a distance reveals no activity so they close in and discover amid the ruins a clearly maintained stone stairway  leading down into darkness. Intent on their goal the group descends, Kordan in front, then Uthal, then Mikal, then Althea, with Jovanni bringing up the rear.

Emergining into a torchlit room at the bottom of the stairs the group sees lizardman guards doing exercises or possibly rituals. Due to the complete lack of stealth on the way down some of the temple guardians are already alerted to them and rush to engage. Caught on the stairs the party does not have a lot of room to fight until Kordan shield bashes some of them away from the landing, allowing Uthal to charge into the room. As soon as Jovanni gets a head around the corner he unleashes his usual storm of vicious mockery and cutting words as the wizard and warlock light up the room with various flaming magical bursts of death. These guards fight a little differently from the lizardmen of the swamp, swinging greatswords and following that up with a vicious poisonous bite - clearly they are the chosen ones. Unfortunately this does not save them as they are rapidly hacked and blasted down, the final two protecting the only other passage leading out of the room.

Barely pausing for breath the companions rip down the tapestry hanging in the doorway and see a large, oddly shaped rooom beyond, Notable features of the room include two glowing columns, two glowing snakes, and two even larger snakes, non-glowing. As ther serpents stir, the party readies for action.

Leery of the wet, magically glowing room, Kordan decides to try a new tactic called "stand in the doorway". With Uthal able to strike from behind him with his longspear, this seems like a viable plan, and sure enough the two larger snakes move up to engage. Unfortunately the two glowing snakes begin to spit fiery blasts from across the room, negating the effectiveness of this manuver to a degree.

Things are gong fairly well until one of the large serpents grabs the Fighter and wraps around him. Uthal, Jovanni, and Mikal redouble their efforts and slay the two big constrictors while Althea (who hates snakes) concentrates on blasting the flame serpents from afar. After the two big ones drop and one of the flamers has been blasted apart, Uthal rushes in and slays the last fiery snake up close.

As they recover, Kordan notices that while there is standing water in the room one there is one section that looks different, where the water seems to flow strangely. Testing the floor with spears they determine that it is a much deeper pool or well, difficult to see as there is water everywhere. Giving it a wide berth they move towards the opposite end of the chamber where there is another damp tapestry hanging in a doorway.

DM Notes:
This was another good session where progress was made and the encounters were fun. The travel and recon at the beginning felt much like some of our older games from 2E AD&D where we seemed to spend a lot of time in swamps. I think they are one of the creepier environments to play in and I was glad I had a chance to work this in.

The first encounter, even beefed up to a level 8, was not terribly challenging for the party as I had a terrible time hitting anything, even with double-digit bonuses to hit. It lasted all of four rounds. Hey, minions die quick.

The second encounter was a little more interesting as the Kordan;s player, reasoning that snakes were primarily melee opponents and not liking the water-covered floor (traps, hidden monsters - he's been playing since 1E so he's seen a lot) decided that it was better to stand in the doorway and fight and it did work but the fire-breathing snakes were an unexpected wrinkle. Giant constrictor snakes are fun too with 4E's grab rules (much less hassle than 3E). In the end the fight only lasted 5 rounds but it was a good little scrap.

The atmosphere I was going for in the temple itself was wet, ruined, ancient stonework corrupted to use by an evil, poisonous cult, old and dangerous. I tried to emphasize certain aspects of it as tt's all building up to the final encounter which I thought would be a lot of fun (and it was - next post) and while this little setup was very linear, hey, that's how a small underground temple would be IMO.

This whole setup is one of the things I like about prebuilt enocunters such as Dungeon Delve - the original delve caught my eye as being cool so I put it on the list of things to use if possible. The leveling and the chosen adventure worked out very nicely, so all I did was enhance the descriptions a llittle bit, reskin some of the monsters, and swap out the main attraction to something I liked better. I think it will end up being one of the more memorable little pieces of the campaign and I'm pretty happy with it.

Motivational Monday

Return to the Ruins of Adventure - Session 26: Attack of the Lizard People

Returning to Phlan after the adventure in the SIlver Pyramid, our heroes discover that they have been gone for a month and that much has happened:

- Increasing lizardman attacksfrom the swamp have cut off much of the landbound trade to the east

- More ships have been destroyed on the Moonsea close to Phlan

- Rumors are flying that the Fire Knives have assassinated the leaders of several rival organizations, consolidating their power in the ruins

- The Temple of Bane, according to the ancient charter of the city of Phlan,  has asked for a place on the council, stating that they wish to play a recognized, legitimate role in the city's growth and promising to help pacify the ruins

The party contemplates these news items for a bit and decides to kill two birds with one stone: At one point in the past the city council, by way of Barnabus,  offered them titles of nobility and a seat on the council if they would reclaim an old keep out near the swamp. The lizardman uprising appears to have taken control of this same keep, so dealing with the lizardmen and claiming the keep will both solve a problem and seal their deal with the city. The city also promises to help supply a garrison and to provide some of the supplies neccessary to rebuild the keep. With their future seemingly secures, the group rests and re-equips (mainly healing potions from the temple of Torm) then heads out to deal with the scaled folk.

Before they depart,Barnabus tells the team that an old woman lives on the edge of the swamp and is a good source of information on the goings-on therin. She may not be completely trustworthy, but when dealt with from a position of strength she can be civil. This becomes the party's first goal. However the journey is not that simple.

While traveling along the elevated roadway the party encounters a group of lizardman blocking the road, and when the team approaches one of the lizardfolk turns out to be a spellcaster and the magic starts to fly along with a rather impressive volley of blowgun darts. Kordan is hit, slowed, and poisoned in the first burst, but the rest of the heroes come through in decent shape although the mystic's spell turns the road into swampy ground, interfering with their advance. This does not slow the lizardmen down at all as two stand fast to protect the castrer while the rest flank the party, spreading out and puffing darts as rapidly as they can.

Mikal, dodging darts as best he can, sets up his infernal curse on several of the creatues. Uthal fnally gets into hitting range and rams his spear through one of the scaly ambushers, killing it and causing the warlock's curses to go off, killing two more! Kordan, battered and angry, engages the bodyguards with the help of Althea and Jovanni as Uthal and Mikal take down the rest of the skirmishers, ending the fight. The heroes win out, but poison darts and swampy terrain go on the list of "things the party does not like."

Soon enough the group spots the small house where the mysterious woman lives. Uncertain of what they are dealing with they show a sensible amount of caution, knocking politely on the door and engaging the rather attractive half-elven looking woman who answers it in conversation. Showing a remarkable degree of restraint they learn quite a bit about the lizardmen and the reasons for their agitation. Jovanni shines, words flowing from his lips like honey, until he commits a terrible faux-pas. Fortunately Kordan decides this nis a good time to strip off his armor and his shirt and offer to start chopping firewood, which he does, and which seems to perk her interest to the point she ignores the Bard's mistake. The strange woman eventually mentions that a party of lizardmen even now carries a powerful magic item to a nearby temple, another indication of their growing power.

Eventually the conversation winds down and all the wood has been chopped. Final pleasantries are exchanged, Kordan puts his shirt back on, and the party departs with the intention of intercepting the magic item and then paying a visit to the temple, one of the rallying points of the unrest in the swamp.

Uthal leads the way through the swamp, using his skill in the wild to guide his friends to their target. They choose speed over stealth though, and they emerge onto the ancient roadway leading to the temple to find four huge black-scaled lizardmen blocking their way. As the party moves to engage they hear a loud slurping sound - something lurches through the swamp on their flank and Uthal identifies it as a Shambling Mound, a terrible plant-monster! The party also spots another lizardman nearby, who begins casting as the shambler closes in and the guards move to engage - the party is in for a tough fight!

Uthal and Kordan end up taking on the shambler as Jovanni and Mikal take on the blackscales and Althea starts a magical duel with the mystic. The potent wizard blows the rival caster away in short order, then ties up the plant-thing with her signature "grasp of the grave" spell, as skeletal arms burst from the swampy ground and grab on to the creature. Even with this, the fighter and barbarian bot hget tangled up with the monster and end up hacking at it at close range while it tangels and squeezes them in return. Mikal can't let himself be shown up by the wizard and blasts 3 of the blackscales apart himself, though Althea does finish off the 4th as Kordan and Uthal finally hack down the shambling mound. Jovannis strips some gold necklaces from the big lizardmen and discovers a chest near the road as well.

Breaking open the chest carried by the lizardfolk party the heroes discover a powerful magical rod inside, one useful for defending against magical attacks. Mikal claims it for the moment and then the party decides to rest for the night before "delivering" it to the  temple of the reptile god.


DM Notes:

This was a really good session after a longer break than usual. My players know their characters now, they know the environment now,  and know what they want to do in the medium to long term. This makes things easier on the DM. Some of this is in contrast to past campaigns where they did a lot of wandering and so never got particularly invested in any one area. It also helps that a five person party can be a lot more cohesive than an eight or nine person party which is almost guaranteed to have some conflicting goals, or at the very least someone in an "I don't want to do that" contrarian mood in my experience. This has been a real eye-pener as to the potential with the right mix of players and it's been a lot of fun. Plus it's likely to be the first time in a very long time that I've had PC's running a keep and I'm looking forward to that.

The first ambush lasted all of four rounds. I think the learning curve is starting to pass me by as at 7th level the players have been using the same set of powers with occasional upgrades for along time now while the DM gets to learn a whole new set of powers and tactics with every encounter. Variety is cool, but I'm wondeirng if more uniform opposition would pay off with a greater threat level.

 The encounter at the hut was set up as both a straight combat encounter - a tough one in my opinion - and a skill challenge, and I figured a hint from Barnabus would be enough to let them know it was an option. They took to it wonderfully with the bard's awesome diplomacy skill leading the way initially. They worked in some creative use of history, nature, and bluff as well from different party members. Kordan's player was at a bit of a loss as to how to contribute at first as it was more of a talky challenge and fighters do not typically have a lot of that, but then the bard fumbled a diplomacy roll so he decided to do something different to use his very impressive athletics skill that had us all cracking up around the table. "I see you managed to get your shirt off again." I suspect that is not the only time we will see that move, especially if the opposition is female, and I'm all for it - if it was good enough for everyone from Captain Kirk to the werewolf kid in the Twilight movies, it's good enough for my game.

The second fight was against a slightly different set of lizardmen plus my first use of a Shambling Mound in 4E. Shamblers were a fairly common opponenet in our 2E games  - lord knows I got engulfed by them more than once - and were still somewhat common in our 3E games. I was glad to see that they work similarly in 4E, merrily slapping and engulfing people just like the old days. Despite this different mix the fight still lasted only 4 rounds. Sigh.

One notably effective thing that's going on is that the Warlock took "Daughter's Promise" which is an enhancement to his curse ability. The curse is a minor action and targets the nearest enemy at the time it is done, and it can affect more than one target. Normally it just grants the 'Lock some temporary hit points when a cursed target dies - nice, but not a game-changer. This DP ability though turns them into little grenades waiting to go off, especially minions. Now when a cursed target dies they explode and do damage to every enemy adjacent to them - not a to nof damage but enough to kill minions and badly bloodied creatures. I've seen this thing take out 3 creatures in one turn, robbing the DM of another round of mayhem from those beasties in a seriously annoying way. I'm thinking that maybe it should be "adjacent creatures" rather than "adjacent enemies" - that sounds like more fun - to me, anyway.

 

The Awesomeness of the Fighter/Magic-User

Neverwinter includes a new class for 4E: The Bladesinger. Bladesingers were one of the legendary "kits" for AD&D 2E as they were rather overpowered and were exhibit A whenever someone wanted to point out that the splatbooks were beyond "power creep". I saw more of them than any other Elf kit during the 2E days and there was a good reasona as to why: Bladesingers were specialist fighter-mages who were just better in almost every way. However, fighter-mages were already awesome and popular...

Basic D&D: Elves. Most people liked elves. Sure, you advanced slower than the stupid thief but you were a better fighter, had more hit points, and could throw spells - who cared if you needed 4000XP to make 2nd level? A bigger bonus, and one not instantly apparent to new players, was that you had full use of all fighter magic items AND full use of all magic-user items. Attacked by flying creatures? Out comes the wand of lightning bolts! Ambushed by orcs? Shocking grasp followed up by a smack from the +2 sword while protected by your +3 chainmail and +2 shield! Sure, advancement was slower but being able to use all those magic items upped your power exponentially over other classes. Plus, the M-U was likely to get croaked more than once at low levels and if you collected his magic items when that inevitably happened, well, you were even more powerful afterwards...

AD&D Fighter/Magic-User - this was just awesome. Slower advancement yeah yeah, but it had all of the benefits of both classes and none of the drawbacks! Plus the magic item synergy described under Basic still applied! Now there was the potential level cap issue but considering the duration of most campaigns that was less of a problem than it might appear and capping at 6th level spells was not that much of a disadvantage most of the time. Making it to Ftr 7/ M-U 11 was still going to take a while but you were still quite formidable into the teen levels at least, and in any case you weren't item-capped...

2E Fighter / Mage - Still awesome but TSR started messing with them in this edition by putting in rules like "you can't cast spells in armor even if you're an elf" and other nonsense. The loophole to this rule was Elven Chain, which unlike in 1E could be magically enhanced, and so despite all kinds of non-mechanical roleplaying type reasons for it to be rare, pretty soon every Ftr/M-U was running around in elven chain, usually of the +1 variety at least*.  You still had the limited advancement speed but you also still had the wide-open item flexibility, less some of the armor. When you added in certain kits (Bladesinger!) It was a very strong character type and the level limits were even higher, especially if you had decent stats - and c'mon, most of us had darn good stats back then...

3E Fighter 1 / Wizard 1 - OK this is where it started to really go downhill. The fighter/mage was perhaps the most-gimped type of character in making the 2E to 3E transition. No longer could you advance simultaneously in two classes at a reduced rate. Now I view unlimited multiclassing as one of the cooler innovations of 3E as it allowed an impressive degree of customization, but the way the rules were set up it severely damaged spellcasters. Conventional attack bonuses continued to increase across classes but wizards and clerics lost both spell power advancement (saving throw targets did not increase) and spell knowledge advancement (as they got no new spell levels if they didn't level up in an existing class), effectively losing out in two aspects of character advancement. I've always wondered if allowing the spell power to advance with overall level instead of specific class level would have smoothed this out but I never had a chance to try it out in play. Whereas in earlier editions a 9th level party might include a Ftr 7/M-U 8 character** who could still contribute in a big way, in 3E that would probably translate into a Ftr 4 / Wizard 5 in 3E terms and alongside a 9th lvl Fighter and a 9th level Wizard that is just pathetic when it comes to combat effectiveness. On top of the power issues the armor loophole was closed meaning that wearing almost any decent type of armor inflicted a chance for spell failure, even if you were an elf. With the leveling ules killing the offensive potential and the armor rules killing the defensive potential, the fighter-mage became a rare bird indeed. Sure there were prestige classes like the Spellsword but anyone going for one of those tended to be mostly fighter with a few wizard levels sprinkled in, rather than a full-on split power type.

4E - now this is where things turn around. The initial PHB had the traditional classes and very limited multiclassing but dropped the armor issues - you could make a fully armored wizard if you wanted to spend the feats on it! Not a bad start, but then the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide came out and included the Swordmage...oh yeah! Not only was he a fighter type that threw magic he was a full-on defender, the toughest of fighter types - a new wrinkle for the fighter-mage fan because they had never been the most durable of characters. Teleporting around the battlefield smacking enemies with a sword, dumping spell effects out through the sword, and even hitting things at range on occasion, the Swordmage was a lot of fun. It definitely leaned more towards the "Fighter" side of the spectrum but it was unlike a conventional fighter in many ways. Other classes came out in other books and some of them leaned in the fighter-mage direction with various elemental or magical effects like the Warden or the Hexblade Warlock, and multiclassing plus the right paragon path could add some pizzazz as well. Now though, the Neverwinter book is out and it gives us the Bladesinger...

The Bladesinger class is the return of the fighter/magic-user in all of its glory. Not since 2E have you been able to fight up close with a decent weapon and armor class then turn and blast someone across the room with a lightning bolt! Their utility powers are almost all magic-user flavored too, consisting of wonderful things like Mirror Image, Shield, Expeditious Retreat, etc. They also have some of the teleport abilities of the swordmage but it's not as pronounced as with that class. The key mechanical limitation on them is that they choose wizard encounter powers at most levels, but they are treated as dailies, meaning they do give up some power for flexibility - just like the old days - but with dailies like lighning bolt and charm monster and with magic missile as an at-will power they are not giving up a lot. In short, they will play very much like an old school elven fighter-mage (and they no longer have to be an elf although that is the typical background) and I like that very much.

So there we go - after my trashing of Traits here's something that the 4E Neverwinter book got right. Note that it's not just because it's an old-school type of character, it's because they did it right! Now, I'm off to roll one up and see if I can talk my player who occasionally DM's into letting me take it on his next run...



*Another good choice was Drow armor if you were going through those adventures. "Oh but it loses it's power in sunlight!" - hey, you know what? Once I get back up into the sunlight then I'm not going to care because I won't have a bunch of Drow shooting at me! "Oh but if they see you wearing Drow armor they will hate you!" - I'm a surface elf, they already hate me. Besides it might make them realize that I'm both practical and ruthless - like them.


** Figure a fighter needed 250,001 XP's to hit 9th. Give hime 251,000 split evenly and you have a level 8 fighter and a level 8 M-U, but Elves could only advance to 7th as a fighter anyway.

The Joy of Lost Cities

After looking over Neverwinter, thinking about my own 4E Phlan, and remembering some others from older editions and other games I realized that I am a huge fan of the rpg adventure set in the ruined city. For me the sense of mystery and wonder peaks with the exploration of the city in ruins, even more so than the typical dungeon or even megadungeon. Some of that probably ties into my affinity for post-apocalyptic settings where the lost ancient city looms large (like in Gamma World) and the prospect of a ruined city in a fantasy game pulls some of that PA element into it - I mean, SOMEBODY used to live there and if it's ruined now then they would probably describe it as post-apocalyptic from their viewpoint!

You don't get a ton of ruined cities in some of the classic sources - LOTR has Osgiliath, I suppose, and maybe Minas Ithil, and fairly tales and mythology don't usually get into things like that but pulp and sword and sorcery... now we have some material. The search for the lost city is a common theme in these works, from about every third Conan story to IMO the best Cthulu story - At the Mountains of Madness which is set in an ancient ruined city. Movies and TV shows tap into this sometimes too, from Sinbad to Escape from New York to Indiana Jones. It's a rich trove to mine with lost secrets of magic or technology, ancient knowledge, and terrible guardians aplenty.

I might also argue that a ruined city makes more sense than the huge underground complex, at least I would think there would be many more ruined cities than complex excavations rivaling the NYC subway system. in a typical fantasy world. YMMV of course but it's easier to explain in many ways and a little more familiar to the modern player.

Ruined cities have been well-represented in fantasy RPG's but maybe not as much as big dungeons. Some high points for me:

• The first one I would nominate is I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City, which while not extnesively detailing all of the ruins, did at least include a map of the whole ruined city. For being crammed into a small page count it does a pretty good job of setting things up.

• B4 The Lost City is an odd one as it is a city but it is also buried underground in a kind of arcology. I like it, so let's count it.

• Ruins of Adventure is in here of course as Phlan was covered in a pretty big softbound module.

So Basic and 1E were represented but 2E is a little dry. I suppose ROA was considered 2E as well so maybe it's one per edition of the game.

•  3E had The Lost City of Gaxmoor and The Lost City of Barakus from third party publishers, both of which were interesting

• Alongside 3E Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved had a really nice big adventure called Ruins of Intrigue which I really liked and would probably used if I started up a game of that - the only flavor of 3E I am interested in running at this point. There are various things living in the ruins and factions competing with each other as well in a real sandbox setting, not a linear story arc waiting to be acted out.   

• Monte Cook also gave us Ptolus, the mega-supplement, and while not technically ruined it does sit atop a huge dungeon, next to a huge graveyard, and near an evil mage's fortress, so it's not in the best shape. 

 4E has had Vor Rukoth which I understand is sort of a ruined city in a small package and it now also has Neverwinter, the inspiration for this whole discussion.

 Beyond D&D there was RQ's Big Rubble which I know little about but I do know it was a pretty popular setting for adventuring and was a ruined city.Warhammer had Mordheim which was a city flattened by a comet which left behind deposits of warpstone, a valuable magical resource that drew in adventurers from all over the world. I'm sure there were others too but I'm not remembering them as I write this.

There are several advantages to the ruined city as an adventuring environment. There is usually a small settlement of some kind or base area, and the areas near that tend to be the least dangerous, growing more and more dangerous as one ventures deeper into the ruins. This makes it easy to "zone" things so that players do not get in over their heads, but it also keeps the other areas "visible" to the players. You don't have to find the stairway down to dungeon level 9's Burial Pits -  you can see the Haunted Graveyard from the window of your room at the inn! If you think you're tough enough you can go there right now! It sets things up for a true sandbox, where the players can go where they please and into as much danger as they can stand, without neccessarily having to pass through all of the prior material, unlike a conventional layered dungeon. You can have variety comparable to a wilderness area packed into ruined city, cutting down on travel times and ration checks and letting you get to he good parts thsat much faster.

So what can I say? I like the ruined city, probably more than I like even the megadungeon, though they are really not that far apart and each can take on aspects of the other. Both are usually landmarks in the world, both tend to have factions within and without, giving the PC's something to hook in to. Both tend to cover a fairly large area physically. Both tend to cover a range of adventuring difficulty as well, from starter to veteran. Also, if you do either of them right, they will become legends among your players, not just your campaign world.

Character Themes in 4E D&D

I know these got a lot of pub from the Dark Sun book, but I haven't read any of them. My first exposure to them comes via Neverwinter and I am underwhelmed.

For those of you who don't know these are an extra thing that can be chosen at character creation in addition to race and class (and build and alignment and background feats if using them). It's kind of like a template in that it overlays your other choices and adds some small bonuses. Most of them seem to be tied to a cultural background or a profession like "Neverwinter Noble" or "Uthgardt Barbarian" or "Harper Agent". After reading through them I am wondering what all of the fuss was about - maybe the Dark Sun ones are cooler? Because I just don't think all that much of these.

 One, they don't do all that much mechanically so on some level I feel like "why bother"? Harpers get a magic item that gives them a once a day bonus on a save or something similar and can pick up 2 additional similar powers at 5th and 10th. Whee. It's a pretty small benefit in exchange for tying your character down with pre-set baggage at 1st level. Most of them get a small power or two at low to medium levels and some extra choices among Utility Powers at higher Heroic levels. It's not all that much to get excited about. Mechanics aren't everything but these just don't do much for me.

Two, I feel like Paragon Paths already do this and do it better - at low levels your character is not extremely well defined as a Heroic individual just yet and I think Race, Class, and Build, along with a possible background feat, cover plenty. By the time a character hits 11th level the player has a pretty good idea of what their character is about and can choose a path that fits the character the way they play it. Plus a character at that level is powerful enough to be worthy of some of those titles or being a part of some of those famous groups. It makes sense at that point to add another layer of detail and perhaps tie them in to the world a little more. To me a first-level character has no need for this kind of thing as the character is new to adventuring and the player is going to need some time to nail down exactly how they want to play this one.

Third, it's unnecessary baggage. When starting a new group in a new campaign area I like to have them come from outside the area. This puts them all on an even footing as far as lack of knowledge of the region, both in-game between characters and in a metagame sense for the players. They can't just rely on skill rolls backed up by "well my character is from here so he should know" type justifications. They can gain some general knowledge but the specifics come from actually playing through things, exploring and talking to NPC's - as it should be. The Neverwinter book heavily recommends that every new character should choose one of the themes in the book. There are only 13 however, so options are a bit limited. Some of them are restricted to certain races, further curtailing the choices. Here they are:

• Neverwinter noble - you're a lost heir  - humans only
• Oghma's faithful - you are tied to the god of knowledge - any race
• Harper agent - you're part of the Harpers - any race
• Dead Rat deserter - you're an ex-member of the Dead Rats thieves' guild from Luskan and a wererat - human, half-elves, or halflings only
• Illiyanbruen guardian - you're from an Eladrin hidden city - eladrin only
• Uthgardt barbarian - you're part of a particular barbarian tribe - humans only
• Pack outcast - you're a barbarian outcast and a werewolf - humans or shifters only
• Heir of Delzoun - you're a dwarf descended from a lost kingdom - dwarves only
• Renegade Red Wizard - you're an ex-Red Wizard of Thay - any race
• Scion of Shadow - you're a spy for Netheril - human, shadar-kai, or shade only
• Devil's Pawn - you've been marked by Asmodeus and a former Waterdhavian noble - any race, sort of
• Spellscared harbinger - you are touched by the spellplague - any race
• Bregan D'aerthe spy - you're a drow spy - Drow only

So if I have someone all fired up to play a gnome, or a goliath, or a minotaur, or a plain old elf, there is not a lot to choose from. See the level of baggage involved here? What if I want to be a graduate of a magic school in Waterdeep? Nothing! There's one tied to the divine - what if I want to play a Paladin? There's really only one choice for dwarves or eladrin. What about dragonborn?

In my games, if someone decides to play a rogue at 1st level and expresses an interest in joining the thieves' guild I would rather play that out than say "OK choose that theme" and have them in it from the start. Same thing with an Uthgardt Barbarian - OK, take a barbarian and we will work out the details! No longer is it enough to be a "Wizard", no now you have to play a "Renegade Red Wizard". You can't just be a human Thief you have to be a "Scion of Shadow" or a "Dead Rat Deserter" but what if I don't want to be a wererat or have ties to Netheril?

The low levels of the game are the time when things like this are explored the most and the idea that a 1st level character comes into the game with a web of relationships and obligations already in place because of a mechanical feature just annoys me. I don't know that it's wrong, but it feels wrong to me, for my games.   In other games where you start off as experienced characters (like Shadowrun) or where a player can choose exactly how they want those relationships to be defined (Hero System) then it can work but traditionally a 1st level D&D character is a neophyte looking for their place in the world and I like to keep it that way. If a campaign demands more detailed and developed characters then start at 11th level and use the ton of material we already have!

So there it is, my trashing of Character Themes in 4E. I'm not proud of it but it's how I feel as I read through these things - it feels more like chrome for chrome's sake than something addressing a real need.  If I end up playing in Neverwinter I probably won't use them - I won't forbid them or anything but they hardly strike me as anything neccessary to the game. Like many sub-systems they will strike people in different ways and I am perfectly happy living without them.

Motivational Monday