Thanksgiving came and went, with most of my Friday night group having to work through the retail blitz.   Not knowing how everyone would feel after that, or after the normal rigmarole of holiday traveling we decided not to play the main campaign in case one or more people couldn’t make it.  I have been following the D&D Playtestmaterials for some time, but reading over the rules can only gives you so much insight into how the game will play.  It has been a popular topic of conversation as of late around the table, and since the bestiary has been released, I decided it was time to whip up a short adventure.

Set in Dark Sun campaign a year into the future from our 4e campaign, following is the background for the adventure:

The city of Tyr is full of change. It has been over 2 years since the death of Kalak, and anarchy is still running rampant, despite the new king’s attempts to restore order. The citizens do not live in fear of a sorcerer-king, and the town has been divided into several groups each vying for power. The Templars still believe they control most of the city, but in reality there are agents from all the powerful houses each with their own slice. A relatively new guild, the Spry Shifters Society, has been gaining dominance and power through political assassinations and other shady dealings. They are unique among the players because they do not wish to rule, they want a stable government that allows for free and fair trade among all the city-states and regions of Athas. Their idealistic intentions attract all manner of people from lowly common folk to merchants and their noble beneficiaries to former templars fed up with the tyrannical order.

Even though we had postponed the normal campaign, it seemed as though everyone would be able to make it. The party would consist of First Sergeant Marstan “The Implacable” (Sarge) the Fighter, Obie the Monk, Thoril Gladomain the Wizard, and Daug the Cleric.  However, the cleric cancelled at the last minute and the party was forced to face the dangers of the Tyr streets without a healer.

The player characters, having met some time before and already enjoyed moderate adventuring success, have to join up with the Society and their growing movement. After a little inquiring, they learned of a low level recruiter operating out of the Spider Gut Inn in the warrens of Tyr.  To call the warrens slums is an insult to slums and ghettos.  It is not safe to travel alone through these streets in the daytime, and those venturing out after dark are usually found as corpses the following morning.  The “King’s”  justice no longer reaches here, although its reach was short even when Sorcerer-King Kalak reigned.  Malcontents, murderers, anarchists and small time gangs infest this sector, along with countless former slaves and commoners too poor to afford a stay in the caravan or merchant districts.

The adventurers enter the Spider Gut Inn and step forward to meet Vicnah Milner, their contact who is seated at a back table.  Four patrons are eating at the common table, a grease stained mess in the middle of the room. As the group approaches Vicnah, two of the patrons step in to block their paths, demanding a gold fee so that they might sit, eat or talk. Sarge would have none of it, and a battle breaks out. The other two patrons join the battle, and although Sarge is not trying to kill these men, Thoril’s shocking grasp is too much for the patron that attacked him, and his eyes fry within their sockets, leaving a smoldering corpse at his feet.  A cleaving blow from Sarge’s longsword near takes the man’s arm off, and he lies bleeding on the floor. He knocks the other out, and the last man flees for his life.  Afterwards, Obie helps bind the near-armless man’s wound as Sarge steps up to the table and sits next to Vicnah. The bar wench doesn’t seem affected by either the violence or the corpse as she brings a mop to clean the mess off the floor.

Vicnah the Sheath is a member of the SSS, and he is looking to gain rank himself by recruiting quality members into the society.  He has a few things that need done, but based on the performance of the group’s entry, he suggests one over the other.  Members of the Phantom Blades, a former rival guild that has fallen out of favor and for all intents and purposes disbanded, is reportedly to blame for the harrying several guild couriers and even the death of a street kid who was under the Society’s protection. Vicnah charges the group with eliminating this threat by any means necessary, but he warns that if something foul should come from this course of action that the Society would deny any involvement. The party accepts the quest and heads off to prepare.

The come up with a plan to fool the harriers into thinking that Obie is a messenger and revealing themselves.  At which point the others will ambush the ambushers and dispatch them. The plan works perfectly as Obie, dressed in commoners clothes and carrying an empty parcel, is passing down the street, two elves leap down from the second floor of a nearby building and draw their longswords.  Obie is not surprised and he chucks the parcel at the one in front of him and follows it with a punch in the face.  Sarge charges down the alley toward them, but the elf dodges his shield bash.  Thoril follows and lets loose a thunderwave which shatters the remnant glass windows within the alley and the force of the blast causes the harriers to be blown down the alley.  The same one that Obie punched was blown into a building at the end of the wall and killed when his neck snapped, the other attempts to flee by climbing up the side of the building, but Thoril’s burning hands cause him to lose his balance and catch fire.  He falls down and before Thoril can get out of the way, crashes into him and they both land on the ground.  The harrier’s greasy clothes are feeding the flames as both Obie and Sarge pull Thoril away and snuff out the small smoldering bits of his robe.  Before Sarge can relieve himself on the harrier, Obie stops him, causing the life-saving stream to be wasted all over the alley and the wall.  Sarge, slightly annoyed, does not press the issue and Obie empties his waterskin onto the charred elf and quenches the fire.  Attempts to gain information from this fellow fail, and after dodging the mans last ditch effort, Sarge puts him out of his misery.  Investigating the building the harriers appeared from, Sarge finds a wooden box with a rusty dagger wrapped carefully with a cloth inside.  The rust flakes that seems as though they should crumble off do not, until the weapon is wielded, upon such a time that a few small flakes crack and wither off.  No one can determine anything about it, so Sarge puts it in his belt and they return to Vicnah.

The patrons give the party nods and keep their distance this time, but when asked about a rusty dagger, one of the patrons recalls a shop in the market by that name, but nothing more is known about it.  They walk right up to Vicnah and deliver the good news.  Thanking them, he reluctantly offers them a chance for further service to the Society in the form of recovering a stolen ledger.  Normally he does not wish to overextend any group’s usefulness so soon, but as the others he sent have failed, he is left with no choice. Hollysys’ upscale clothing store, which is a front for some guild activity, has been robbed.  The ledger containing the “real” names and numbers of the shops dealings has been stolen and must be recovered before the names of those within are exposed.  The party accepts, and decides to start on this task in the morning.   They decide to seek out better accommodations in the form of the Journey’s End Tavern in the Caravan District.  When they arrive the place is relatively busy, and some of the barflies are talking about the Bard’s performance about a year ago that changed the popularity and tone of this place considerably.  In fact one of the walls is an extravagant mural depicting the minstrel and his exploits.  Enjoying a meal and taking a room for the night, the party rests well and is ready to go in the morning.

Leaving the Caravan District the party heads for Hollysys’ shop in the Merchant District.  While snaking through a back alley, they notice they are being followed by several armed men.  When they stop to confront them, the leader says they have taken something that didn’t belong to them, and demand they explain themselves.  Sarge decides to explain himself with his sword and the men defend themselves.  Placed into a corner of an alley, there is not much room for maneuvering, so its Sarge and the leader toe to toe.  One of the other men climbs the building and begins raining down arrows toward Sarge.   Sarge mercilessly kills the leader and tries to talk some sense into the other who stepped up into his place, screaming “You killed my father!!” and promptly taking his own beating.  A well placed strike from Sarge caught his shoulder, breaking his collar bone and shattering his shoulder.  Not wanting him to be slain like his father, Obie steps in and wrestles him to the ground as Sarge readies a javelin for the archer.  The next time he leans over, the one eyed war veteran launches his javelin right into his stomach, doubling over from the blow, the man falls from the rooftop and Thoril narrowly avoids being crushed again.  The man is not quite dead, so Thoril uses his Shocking Grasp.. and shocked they were.  An electrical effect the likes of which no one had ever seen before streaked through the mans body.  His bones were liquefied  his skin melted off, and he melted to little more than a puddle on the floor.  The stench caused Sarge and the other man to throw up, and upon being vomited on, Obie lost his lunch too.    Sadly the other man choked on his own vomit, and combining that with the massive shoulder injury, and died…

##########

Check back next time for the thrilling conclusion to our D&D Next adventure!

-Suix

Anyway, in my opinion, the PA guys would have done better to retire the AI characters and roll up new ones.  It would probably have been interesting for each person to take a different role than previously–Mike becomes the fighter, say; Jerry the wizard, and Scott the cleric. The Acquisitions, inc. belongs to the 4th edition era, and will not translate well to the new (which are actually old) rules, I think.  The team members are all 10th level adventurers, but Mearls did not have a finished set of rules for characters that high, so he had to jerry-rig some of the elements of character creation to switch the 4e characters to DDN.  Binwin becomes a “slayer”, who can do extra heaping amounts of damage, and sometimes accidentally hits his friends in the process.  I don’t remember exactly the changes made to Oman Dran, and they didn’t really get much into the changes to Jim Darkmagic beyond the “have to prepare/memorize spells”.  Oman’s background or theme or whatever it’s called includes the “commerce” skill (or the “negotiation” skill; Mearls begins with the first, but changes it to the second).  Binwin has a background trait that makes his character intimidating in taverns, or something like that.  There was some discussion about how to transform Will Wheaton’s character (Al, an Eladrin Avenger) into a DDN character. The best Mearls could come up with was to turn Al into a rogue of some sort. Blasphemy.There is some speculation on the wizards.com forum that they backed the characters down to 5th level, based on character sheets available from the podcasts.    The original Penny Arcade podcasts are some of the most entertaining media one can find on the Internet; these latest four podcasts are not the guys playing the game, so they are much more dull.  Perhaps the D&DNext version of their adventures will be just as entertaining.  I’m afraid, however, that what will end up happening is that Jim Darkmagic will own every encounter, while Oman and Binwin stand to the side, performing the duty of audience along with the rest of us.

I’m quite excited about the next edition of D&D; the rules are quite simple and rough, but so far I’m enjoying the spontaneous and fast-paced storytelling which this basic toolkit has been encouraging. It reminds me of the free-form games of 2nd Edition AD&D I enjoyed back in the 90s, 1993, and I’m happy to revisit Oerth again, which is a campaign setting I enjoy quite a bit.

I really like the history, personalities, and overall ‘feel’ of Greyhawk; I guess it’s just the vastness of the world, and I feel more like there’s lots of stuff in Oerth to do and lots of undiscovered, less established corners of the world to explore. The backdrop of planar wars, feuding mages, rich ethnographic lore, and bloody-minded geopolitics also make me a happy camper here in Oerth!

So, anyway. Onto the description of the game setting proper!

The adventure begins in the town of Rimegallows, a small settlement along the Frozen River, near the northern coast of the Flannaess.  (Map courtesy of  the fine folks over at http://www.greyhawk.net)

Rimegallows isn’t on the map; the closest landmark for reference is Purmill. The region has a predominantly sub-arctic climate; it’s winter for 9 to 10 months out of the year. In many areas, the soil tends to be cold and stony, with a thick layer of permafrost that never quite thaws. There are taiga forests of coniferous trees such as firs and pines, and areas of tundra are also common; animals such as bears, elk, and wolves make their homes in these lands.

Rimegallows is a town which enjoys mixed fortunes; its location along the bending Frozen River and relative proximity to the trade town of Purmill makes it an ideal base of operations for merchants and settlers.

Thus, Rimegallows has a pretty decent population and adequate infrastructure. On the other hand, the soil isn’t terribly fertile, and so the town cannot grow beyond its current size.

Also, its location has made it a target of the wrong kind of attention. Outlaw raiders, petty princes, and tribal warlords alike seek to gain control of the town as a source of wealth, whether in the form of  pillage, taxation, or tribute.

The mayor of Rimegallows, a retired warrior by the name of Heinrich, keeps the town independent and safe through a combination of political savvy, military force, and entrepreneurial vision. He has a good working relationship with Captain Symeon, the commander of the merchant marine fleet which sails through Rimegallows regularly on the Frozen River.

A decade ago, Heinrich managed to initiate and broker diplomatic accords between Rimegallows, the nearby towns, and the city of Purmill. Under this agreement, Rimegallows serves as a collecting station for the tributes of fur, honey, and grain gathered by the towns along the central stretch of the Frozen River. These goods are then offered to the Crown Prince of Purmill, Prince Vladimir, in exchange for his political support and military protection.

This pact has proven to be mutually beneficial for all the parties involved, and has led to the increased wealth and stability of many settlements in these frigid lands.

But this good turn of events may be coming to a premature end. Amidst the harsh winter – one of the bleakest and coldest winters that anyone can remember – a band of daring outlaws and highwaymen have hijacked and stolen away this year’s tributes.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the treaty with Prince Vladimir, and it would be a massive loss of face if the tributes are not recovered in time for the Lord of Purmill’s winter visits…

There are also whispers that Prince Vladimir has been acting somewhat more aggressively and erratically of late, and that the warriors of Purmill are looking to deepen their coffers in preparation for some bloody-minded business on the horizon…

And so, Heinrich has secured the assistance of a group of brave and cunning adventurers to investigate into the bandits’ raids, and return the missing tribute as soon as possible. Thus begins the tales of our enterprising heroes, driven forth by duty, desire, love, and the distant promise of silver…

All this talk of Pathfinder has made me rather remiss on my 5th Edition duties. Here’s an overview of the second D&D Next playtest session. The third one is tomorrow! I’ve created an Index Page for D&D Next over on the right-hand side of the blog, if you need to refer to any previous posts.

Picking themselves up from their lunchtime ambush the party continues on the northern road to the Last Keep. As the day wears on, the temperate drops and by late afternoon there are flurries of snow in the air.

As light starts to fade, Arannis notices a strange shape lying next to the road several hundred yards away. He thinks that it looks like the body of a humanoid, although no-one else in the party can see the shape at all. Ignoring any lesson that may have seemed obvious from the recent bandit attack, Arannis decides to sneak up alone and see what the shape is.

The elf heads off the path into the low and withered trees that surround the road. He soon reaches the shape, and quickly ascertains that he was right and it was a body. A quick examination reveals that it is both human and not dead. The man moans something about a wagon and his companions and a large number of heavily armed orcs. He grabs Arannis by the collar and asks him to “keep it safe”. Then he passes out again.

The man is a bit peculiar: despite advanced years he has very pale tender skin that looks almost new (either that or he washes with a wire-wool brush). Realising that he will get no further answers, the elf carries the man back to the rest of the party, where he is revived by the rest of the group.

Once in possession of his senses the man is less talkative, and seems to regret telling Arannis anything. He admits that his name is Jord, and that he and his companions are merchants travelling south from the Last Keep with Selencian wares for Penhaligon. Most of the party believe him. Renko does not and punches the man out.

Adric quickly strips the man of his belongings and his clothes. Beneath his gloved hands they discover that Jord’s hands are misshapen and almost paw-like. His finger-nails have grown into long black talons. There is also the mark of Tharizdun carved into his shoulder.

The group reasons that this Jord is working for the baroness’s evil brother, and could be part of the group that has been sent to stop their quest. However, the story he told them about the wagon is probably true. They mannacle the unconscious cultist and leave him with Cryton’s servants before heading up the road.

Miraculously, all four of them manage to sneak up upon the wagon. It stands in the middle of the road. Two orcs are visible, one on guard duty and another feeding bodies (orc and human) into a large fire on the side of the road. Renko gees up his dragon-side and gets ready to lay the smack-down on the orc before him, while Adric sneaks around to the orc by the fire. Arannis readies his bow.

This time the party are the ambushers rather than the ambushees. Cryton lets an eldritch blast fly at the guarding orc. He is staggered by the blow and then compeltely unprepared for the charging Renko who cuts him in two. Adric springs out of the shadows and stabs the orc by the fire with his rapier, and kills him in one blow. The orc totters into the flames.

Adric and Cryton then converge on the wagon. Adric gets there first and looks pops a look in through the front flats. He sees a large silver bird cage and a much larger orc who is making his way out of the back flaps to where Adric knows Cryton is standing. Adric throws a dagger at the orc, but misses spectacularly.

The orc chieftain bursts out of the back of the wagon and attackes Cryton and ducks spectacularly and then retreats a fair distance. Arranis fires an arrow at the orc, which is surprising effective. The orc is riled and has nowhere to rent his ire except the unfortunate Renko. The dwarf is swiftly unconscious again. The orc turns to Cryton, but by this time Adric has crawled on his belly under the wagon and stabs the orc in the ankle, opening an artery. The party is victorious and with surprisingly less fuss than before.

Go to the Pathfinder: The New Deal index

While surfing the blogosphere tonight, I came across a post that caught my interest on The Alexandrian about D&D Next. (I had previously blogged about the Advantage / Disadvantage mechanic, and ended up incorporating the concept into Dwarven Glory.)

The bit that got my attention relates to the “Hazard” mechanic and reads as follows:

Essentially, if you fail a roll by 10 or more you suffer the hazard. This immediately gives you a consistent mechanical framework for all kinds of stuff: Fail a climbing check and you don’t make any progress; but if suffer a climbing hazard you fall. Fail a check to disarm a trap and you didn’t disarm it; but if you suffer a hazard on the check you’ve actually triggered the trap. And so forth.

This seems good; consider it swiped.

In practice, whenever a player wants to try something “cool” (and the referee agrees) they can attempt a relevant skill check (Athletics, Subterfuge, or Lore). Succeed a check against “Target 20″ and your awesomeness is assured. Fail against “Target 10″ (or roll a natural 1), though, and you could be in for a world of hurt.

I wouldn’t want to punish characters by inflicting automatic suckiness – a saving throw should be allowed to avoid an embarrassing outcome – but there is always a risk when trying to think “outside the box”, and I think the Hazard mechanic models this reasonably well.

Once again, I must give an unexpected thanks to D&D Next for supplying a useful rules mechanic…

There’s very few of these that I’d actually use for anything, and for the longest time I just ignored the “lists of things products.” Lately though, I’ve been finding some gems, and all of them come from a single publisher, Lee’s Lists. Lee’s Lists is a recent appearance in DriveThruRPG, but its List products are for the most part the best I’ve seen around lately, and it’s always a joy to get a notification on my inbox that something new has dropped (and they drop every day).

Full disclosure, I’ve written stuff for these guys, so if you want to check it out:

•50 Character Trade Secrets

•1000 Style Quirks

•1000 Fearsome Monsters

•100 Eerie Landmarks

But there’s an overwhelming majority of stuff I haven’t written but that I’ve acquired and reviewed on DriveThruRPG and would definitely use in my games, because it’s completely awesome.

Lee’s Lists has some incredible people behind some of this stuff, it’s pretty amazing. They fulfill my personal requirements for list products: funny, imaginative and full of content, where the items aren’t always cliche stuff I would get from cultural osmosis in fantasy games. You’ve got gonzo old school stuff like 100 Polearms. You have 1000 Norse Weapons which was my first exposure to Lee’s Lists, and then 100 Adventuring Motivations which is inspiring and hilarious. You have things like 100 Fantasy Plants and Fungi, which are legitimately useful and interesting around a table. A lot of it is witty, funny, charming, but ultimately also functional if you’re in a bind, or if you’re playing a sandbox game and don’t want to plan anything.

Check out their catalog, everything is either a dollar or fifty cents. You really can’t go wrong with dropping some change on this. You could buy a newspaper or you could buy 100 Strange Old Proverbs. Choice is clear, for me. I encourage you to check it out and keep checking them out in the future, if you’ve got a need to roll a d100 for things.

Download the Mp3

Many apologies for the intermittent and off schedule posts. As I’ve mentioned a few times, I’m rather involved in Cleveland theatre, and am currently part of a cast devising an original play. That involves acting, rehearsing, writing lines, memorizing those lines, revising those lines…you get the idea. Thus the brunt of my writing time has gone to that, and poor Save vs. Weekend has become second banana. But fear not! I have neither lost interest nor resolve to keep this blog afloat. That said for the next few weeks posts will be at zany times, and likely only once a week.

Due to my time constraints and in the interest of contributing to the D&D community, I thought I’d sidestep the expected weekly encounter write-up (insert obligatory chiding of my breaking from the Blog’s intention) to instead discuss a bit about how things have been going with the sporadic D&D 5th/Next playtest games I’ve been running.

The last game was run with 5 total players, using a self written adventure (2 combats, a puzzle, a potential hazard, and lots of random tables) all while the old school Dungeons and Dragons cartoon played in the background and DMDJ set the mood.

So, my bullet-point observations about 5th Edition / D&D Next:

Easy to Pick Up - My last session included three (THREE!) players who were completely alien to the tabletop roleplaying experience. So new to it, that I had to remind myself to explain the “little things” to them – like what 2d8 means in terms of those little plastic dice. Even then, among the two experienced players at the table, only one had played using the 5th Edition rules and not at all extensively. Given that lack of knowledge base, I found that character creation went very smoothly. Focusing the game more on the attributes gave new players a very easy, understandable touchstone to work from. They knew what things their characters were best at, and what things they should leave to other party members if possible.

Backgrounds and Specialties were extremely helpful for this process. I didn’t need to explain an exhaustive list of abilities and skills – the names were all the players need to know what they wanted to be. “Artisan? Oh yeah, that sounds cool. Can I be a painter?” “Archer is an option? Yeah, I definitely want to use a bow since my strength is, like, nothing.” Quick, simple, and easy to understand and roleplay.

That all said: I’d ultimately like to see a list of feat for those who feel a little too confined by the Specialties and want a little more flexibility in describing their character.

Less Stringent Spells = More Fun - I think the new spell formatting really got to shine in this session. You all know I love 4th Edition with a grandmotherly warmth, but power descriptions are very precise and focused – which isn’t a bad thing. The problem is that it tends to force your mind to think solely in terms of what the spell can do statistically, and ignore its implications and interactions with the world.

To new players, having a paragraph that described the spell, and a paragraph that explained the nitty gritty was invaluable. Combat spells were easy for them to learn “Oh, so this text at the bottom says, I roll these dice and that’s fire damage and I get everyone in a 15 foot cone, cool.” The descriptive paragraphs got them thinking of their spells in precisely the right way – trying to come up with clever, out-of-the-box applications. I admit that I hand-waved some rules to make their ideas work*, but isn’t that the point?

I think an inherent and hard to pin down problem in 4th Edition is the accidental psychological paralysis it puts on DMs and players. Seeing all those neat, clean, precise rules makes you think they need to be followed to the letter or else you are “doing it wrong.” Of course that’s false, but our brains work in funny ways. I’ve run into that problem less and less while running 5th ed games.

*[I suppose using Command and saying "Reveal" was not intended to force Orc Warlords to admit useful or embarrassing secrets, but the players loved it. I also maybe give Mage Hand to much credit; but when a players uses it to pour out flammable liquid onto burning opponents or shove its spectral fingers into the mouth of an arguing party member to end a discussion - only a monster would let rules nay-say!]

Solving Not Just Rolling - A thought related to that aside: The new mechanics seem to encourage a “problem solving” route just as much as they encourage a “gameplay” route. And yes, that narration oriented approach is a thing very subject to the DM’s handling of the game (Ahem! DMG pg. 42!!), and it can certainly exist in 4th ed (I try to steer my games in that direction as much as possible.) But the emphasis on skills/skill challenges and feats can sometimes get in the way of that free-form problem solving approach to complications – making mechanical choices more appealing than a clever or logical idea.

Monsters and Low Hit Points: Feast or Famine – Maybe it was my fault for throwing orcs in as the primary combat antagonist. To be fair, the PCs were 2nd level (due to my concerns about PC fragility), so it wasn’t an unreasonable monster choice, but the orcs sit in a strange place of high damage, and not quite high enough Hit Points. Nearly all the orcs went down with a single blow. Having the “Relentless” trait kept them hanging around a bit longer, so they fit their role better in this iteration of the playtest than the previous, but they still seemed oddly fragile. On the other hand, the inclusion of the great axe as their main weapon made them incredibly potent – especially against weaker PCs. I think this is meant well; a single d# of damage should be threatening, but not overwhelming if the DM lands a single lucky roll. At this point in the game’s life I think there’s an imbalance somewhere. Mind you, I haven’t played with that wide a range of the monsters to choose from.

Still it seemed I was either dropping players or they were dropping monsters all at once, with rarely anything in between. While my goal wasn’t to replicate the feel of 4th ed combat, I think 5th ed’s battle and gameplay in general is speedy enough due to action-economy that having a lot super-low HP monsters isn’t always necessary.

I agree with the logic in lowering Hit Points across the board (to improve the significance of magical healing), but I think this move made 1st level PCs too fragile. One thing I loved about our current edition of D&D is that 1st level wasn’t a terrified rush to earn experience points enough that you could snag that extra Hit Die and survive the lucky crit you would occasionally absorb. Of course, you want plenty of room to grow, but starting between 10-25 Hit Points gives some good breathing room for characters and encourages them to take risks right off the bat, without anticipating total and utter failure.

The Fighter is Awesome - I had two players each playing very different Fighters: a “Dwarven Defender” type, and a staff wielding, light armor clad amazon huntress. Both were effective and unique and made good use of combat maneuvers to both set their characters apart and contribute to the “game” aspects of play. I was very happy with how the Fighter is shaping up.

Follow My Lead – I saw fit to give the PCs a couple followers during an appropriate moment of the game. I think the way monster stat blocks are laid out, and the system itself, less dependent on the troublesome effects of level creep, makes integrating a handful of followers and easy and not too unbalancing prospect.

Magic Items are Special and Interesting - The document covering magic items was still pretty hot off the PDF presses when we played, and I hadn’t had too much time to look it over before tossing some of its contents in. I’m pleased to see that many items have peculiar quirks (the demands of the “Oathbow” made sure our archer held off on its devastating power until she was sure she could take down her target) and value outside of their obvious applications in combat. I know it’s early yet, but this is the way to go. I enjoyed that 4th edition offered a wide range of magic items, but so few of them had any real appeal – I think giving items a lot of character and “extracurricular” capabilities can make even statistically sub-par treasures worth having.

3D Terrain Fosters Creative Thinking - This isn’t strictly a 5th edition related note, but it’s worth mentioning since I’m giving an after action report. This was one of the first times I busted out my 3D terrain pieces provided in the Harrowing Halls map tile pack. I found my players using the tables and stairs in thoughtful ways, and I think having those pieces there – rather than just an image of a table on a tile or the mention of one in a description – really fostered that kind of thinking. Sure, you might think of using a table as cover even if there wasn’t a table miniature, but it’s easier to overlook that possibility if the environment isn’t emphasized. 3D terrain is just one way to do this, of course. A very descriptive and thorough DM can do just as well, but I’ll make the case for my silly props enhancing play and inspiring characters (Ha! Take that you graph-paper loving grognards!)

In general my comments are positive but bear in mind this is just the results of a single session, and it went well, meaning we had fun, and that my impression of any flaws in the system are probably negated by that. Also, our pizza was late, and thus free…who can be in a bad mood when THAT happens!

Combat is the easiest place most of the time to quantify “challenge.” There’s usually numbers there that are going up and down and make it easy to spot where difficulty is being had. When things start to grind, you notice it. However, in “story scenes,” challenge can be harder to gauge. Yesterday I thought out loud about some of this stuff to a friend, today I’m posting my thoughts. I will definitely have missed something here, so you can add your own thoughts in the comments section.

(I don’t mean to imply combat is inherently devoid of story or that story is always the province of a different kind of scene, but I need a way to quickly differentiate scenes where you interact with the world and NPCs from scenes where you want to hurt them – because a lot of times these two have different game design priorities in RPGs.)

O Fortuna

Let’s be real here – unless you have some kind of resource that is expended to boost rolls, and you need to use it strategically (in which case it fits in another category and not really in this one) then “rolling a high number” is kind of a bad challenge. You don’t have any control over this.

A pit that’s got a Target Number of 20 is way more difficult for you if you’re rolling d20+2 or something, but there’s not much of a challenge to it, because everything about the situation as described is out of your control. You don’t magically will the dice to roll high by trying harder or using your player skills. They just roll. But we’ll start off with this one because it helps set the tone. Sometimes putting in an obstacle you can only circumvent 20% of the time is treated as a challenge. There’s arguments to be made in favor of this but I’ve segregated them out of this category. I really think we need to start looking elsewhere for challenges than “whoa that’s a steep probability, I guess I am screwed.”

However it’s important to note that sometimes, this kind of challenge results because either an earlier decision point was reached, or as a trade-off for some kind of reward. For example, in a game where you get free tokens when your GM cranks up the probability to “near impossible,” or where you can give the GM non-refundable resources that he or she spends to do so, then it’s more legitimate to present that as a challenge, because there are elements within your control leading up to it. It’s also important to note than in fail forward games like 13th Age, this sort of thing is less tedious but it isn’t, in my opinion, challenging.

Player Inputs

In a Player Input challenge there’s a set of decisions to be made that are most optimal and finding your way to that correct decision is the challenge. This is stuff like logic puzzles. It’s hard to do a puzzle in an RPG that isn’t basically this. Figuring out that you need to flood the Chamber of the Water Gods by using the Decanter of Endless Water so that you can swim into the mouth of the Dagon Statue is arguably obtuse, but the challenge lies there. I also categorize a lot of the old school player skill arguments (which I don’t favor) into this category. There are optimal decisions to make that are essentially outside the rules, such as knowing not to enter a room that’s weird or knowing to bang every surface with a 10 foot pole so you don’t die, and if you don’t make those decisions then the game is a lot harder (and ultimately your character wipes).

A lot of times GMs use Player Inputs to make O Fortuna stuff less impossible. For example if you come up with a cheeky plan to get around an obstacle your GM might crank down the probability on the obstacle from “impossible” to “manageable.” A lot of old school D&D play as spoken of by blogs seems to revolve around this transaction. The player gives the correct input to, in spirit, defeat the GM’s challenge, so it is allowed.

Resources

You have tokens, chips, points or other sources of aid that are either non-refundable or which refund at a small, predictable rate, and which can possibly run out over the course of several significant events, such that choosing when and where to spend these resources optimally is the challenge.

Let’s say there’s a theoretical RPG where every single Event or Scene is composed of 5 steps of resolution. Each step is resolved similarly, but has an individual and separate outcome, and in each step you can spend a resource to reach that outcome more easily. However you only have 2 points of Resource in each Event or Scene, so you can only nudge two of those five steps. The challenge lies in which step you nudge – if the outcome of those particular steps is more favorable to you, you nudge that one to make the Event as a whole easier, but if the outcome of a victory at that step is only minimal compared to the optimal nudge, then nudging it will only make future steps harder for you, because you’ve lost a nudge for a poor gain.

If the Resources never come back for the next Scene, then you expand the decisions such that picking which Scene and in which Steps in that scene you spend your points on becomes key. There’s some pitfalls to both of these and all in between. If your Resources return every Scene and you have enough to “nudge” every step of the way then they’re kind of meaningless to me – the decision there is just how much to stack on any given step. So you have to tweak that really carefully so there’s a balance there. If the Resources come back too slowly it might create a hoarding mentality where players are afraid to ever nudge, and are always on such a wearying lookout for key nudging events that they hardly ever spend.

Resource management exists in a lot of forms in RPGs. There’s a playstyle often wound around older D&Ds where keeping track of your hardtack and whiskey and lantern oil is of crucial importance. Games that have Health of some kind also have an element of resource management. How do you proceed in a way that minimizes injury? When you have all this stuff bound together, you get more interesting decisions. For example, do you nudge the resolution steps where losing will hurt you, or can you afford to ignore those and instead nudge steps that give you greater rewards than mere survival? If you’re keenly aware that not nudging will hurt you, but need to save your nudges to get treasure, you have a challenging decision.

Story-Making

Narrative games propose a different sort of challenge. When you’re really invested in your character and the story of the game, getting the story to go the way you precisely wish to architect it, is part of the challenge. Say, if you want to start an in-character romance, then your challenge is in the story events related here, and rules might not apply. You have to find a compatible NPC, have to be enough of a non-douche that everyone doesn’t immediately want to veto your romance subplot, and there’s all kinds of things that can go wrong (such as the typical “the GM kidnapped my character’s family” event) where you have to finagle to get your story. I separate this from player inputs because it’s not often thought of as a challenge.

You think of a puzzle or a mystery as a challenge even though in some classic games you might not be interacting with the rules to solve either of them. Everyone has a D&D story where the GM read too many mystery books and then expected them to solve a murder case without rolling any dice, because humans have deduction, it says so in Sherlock Holmes! However there’s also a kind of challenge in instigating a tavern brawl, or keeping a pet, or adopting the orphan you found in the cultist’s hideout. All this stuff can stay firmly out of the rules, and in a lot of games it often does (note to self: write orphan adopting rules), but getting it done is also a process that can be difficult and require some finesse and skill from you.

Those are the four categories I can think of off the top of my head when I think about what I find challenging in RPGs. It also nicely encapsulates some of the stuff I’m thinking of for my Uttarakuru game. I do want the game to have a conflict, but I also need to evaluate exactly what I feel constitutes a challenge, and how my game does that. I can’t simply and blindly accept traditional modes, because there’s a couple I don’t necessarily find myself comfortable agreeing with.

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According to Wizard’s:

This playtest packet includes magic items, some updated monsters, and a revised version of Caves of Chaos.

You can download the newest packet here.

Wizard of the Coast (WoTC) had a dice set to collect at GenCon. We started our dice hunt on Thursday by visiting the WoTC booth and then went to fold a cute red dragon paper sculpture:

They are cute, right?

We were registered for the D&D Next playtest event which gave 2 dice. There were 2 dice left so we signed up to play those 2 events. First was Dungeon Command demo. It is a fun and quick miniature game. I played it before in Ottawa during the Dungeon Command game day. As I played it before and knew Brenda wasn’t a fan of miniature games, I played against her and provided a fun experience for her. The other event to get the dice was a D&D 4th edition adventure prequel to the season of D&D Encounters “Council of Spiders”. We almost didn’t get to play this fun adventure. We used generic tickets and thus we had to wait until all the registered players got assigned a GM. We waited in line and saw the number of GMs available dwindle. One player right behind us in the line mentioned that he’d willingly GM the encounter if they have enough copies and some other players later in line made the same offer. When the organizer came back and mentioned there are no more available GMs, I asked if there were extra copies of the adventure for volunteer GMs currently in line. There were 2 copies of the adventure. The player right behind us GMed for Brenda and I. He took about 5-10 minutes to review the adventure which gave us time to review our characters. For a two-hour adventure, they have full-page backgrounds, personalities and relationships with other PCs for each of the available characters. This was a rich adventure in story and a decently challenging encounter. We were all playing drow from various factions. Our GM was great even though he had little preparation.

The D&D Next playtest used the iteration of the rules released around GenCon. There was a 30 minute character creation session then an hour session of actual play. As I had read most of the playtest documents on the plane trip to GenCon, I had a decent idea for my character. I made a halfling wizard who ran a mystical circus. In D&D Next technical terms, he is a stout halfling wizard with the charlatan background and magic-user specialty. It took me 15 minutes to transcribe my choices onto a character sheet. For some folks who hadn’t read the rules before, they were not quite done after 30 minutes. I think they need to streamline character creation for convention play and one-shots. Most of the elements provided permit several story opportunities at character creation. I enjoy that. At the actual play, we had several scenario options. The group agreed to a scenario that had around 60% combat and 40% social interaction. We went hunting some kobolds in tunnels. It was hilarious seeing the cleric necromancer, or as he called himself “the giver and taker of life”, hunt down souls to power some of his spells. I memorized a few non-damage spells since I enjoy those. They were fun to play with. We ended the session with the necromancer chasing after a purple worm to capture its soul.

In the early evening, I attended a live recording of the show “Gamer to Gamer” hosted by Tracy Barnett. He interviewed Chris Perkins, the DM to the stars at WoTC. It was a fascinating interview about his gaming experiences. I enjoy “Gamer to Gamer” because its talks about the passion folks have for games. To me, a geek has passion over a subject and shows it. I recommend you listen to the podcast when it shows up but in the meantime, listen to the other episodes of “Gamer to Gamer”.

Later in the evening, Brenda and I attended the d20 Burlesque show. Even though I took a few pictures, their quality were not great due to my distance from the stage. My favourite act was the first one which is the Great Old One Cthulhu. The dance and performance were comical and fun. It was a surreal experience seeing Cthulhu dance enticingly on stage. Other performances included: zombie, pedo-bear, a Mortal Kombat character, an ode to Risk, and Sniper Wolf from Metal Gear video game series. There was an act based on those text-based choose your own adventure computer games. Due to our seat, we couldn’t see what was happening on stage. The line of people wishing to enter a command blocked our line of sight to the stage. Overall, the show was great entertainment and I’m happy that I saw it at least once.

On Sunday, we had an afternoon flight home but we had enough time for one last game. We finally went to the Games on Demand section. We left ourselves open to any game. We played School Daze by Tracy Barnett. It is a role-playing game set in a high school. Our GM was Tracy Barnett. Our table of 6 had five Canadians (Brenda, Chelsea, Lyndsay, Adam and myself) and one American (https://twitter.com/loganbonner). Our high school was a Canadian high school and all our characters were Canadian stereotypes while Logan played an American stereotype as an exchange student. Being the only French-Canadian at the table, I made a French-Canadian student who loves drama and is party of the improv league. The game was in preparation for a pep rally which is strange because they are rare in Canada. I don’t remember in high school ever having a pep rally & it looked like none of the other Canadians at the table ever had one either. We understood the concept and went along with it. The game was a blast. We laughed. It was crazy funny. I highly recommend you try out School Daze.

I had a great time at GenCon. It was a great experience. There is so much to see. You can’t see everything on your first try. I plan to attend future GenCons when my budget allow. I want to try different things. Brenda mentioned that she wants to try True Dungeon and it does intrigue me.

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• James: “Renko Silverbeard” – hill dwarf sorcerer, bounty hunter background, survivor speciality
• Malcolm: “Adric Hummerstone” – hill dwarf rogue, charlatan and thug backgrounds, jack-of-all trades speciality
• Marc: “Lord Wilhelm Cryton” – human warlock, noble background, necromancer speciality
• Neil: “Erannis” – high elf fighter (slayer), bounty hunter background, survivor speciality

Without further ado, here is the synopsis of the session from 29 August 2012:

The barony of Penhaligon is on the verge of much strife. Since his rescue from the Caves of Chaos five years ago, the Honorable Percival Penhaligon has made no secret of his desire to be baron and wrest control of the land from his elder sister, Arteris. Recently he has gained some political support, and there are also rumours of Percival courting darker allies. There are those who link a growth in the cult of Tharizdum with Percival’s aggrandisement. Civil war seems all but inevitable.

The party are summoned to a clandestine meeting at the Red Raven tavern in the river district of Penhaligon. Upon arriving they discover the mark of Tharizdum has been scratched into the door of the tavern, although Erannis points out that an effort has been made to sand it away. They enter to discover the tavern deserted save for an out-of-work bard, her dwarven minder and the innkeeper Tom. Between them the bard and the innkeeper tell tales of the foul events that have become commonplace in the town over the last few weeks. A flower-girl was recovered from the river only yesterday with the mark of Tharizdum scrawled on her back, and Tom is very suspicious that all cats and dogs have disappeared from the town.

Upon hearing a noise downstairs, Adric fears betrayal and punches Tom in the face. Renko is quick to calm things down (using a charm person spell) and the party are soon in the cellar meeting with their mysterious patron: Baroness Arteris Penhaligon. She tells the party that years ago her father, Pevarry, defeated a dragon that was terrorising the northlands. Rather than kill the dragon, Pevarry extracted a promise from it. In return for its life, the dragon promised to help Penhaligon in its time of need. The baroness wants the party to take a token and find this dragon (named Red Shemeska) and convince it to make good on its oath. The only problem is that her brother has also sent agents to court the dragon. It’s essential the party get there first and deny Percival this terrible prize.

Despite being a rainy Autumn night, the PCs leave immediately. They ride all night and come to rest at a waystation around dawn. Here they meet other travellers just starting their day’s journey. They are fleeing Penhaligon before war breaks out.

The party settles down to rest, and all is uneventful until the Renko’s watch around midday. He sees a figure climbing over the back wall of the waystation, undoubtedly with larceny in mind. He shoots him with a ray of frost. The would-be thief is flash-frozen and totters back down the far side of the wall. Renko hears him shatter. The noise awakes Erannis. Renko tells him to stay in camp while he goes and checks out the body. However, Renko is ambushed by a club-wielding maniac and rendered unconscious. Erannis awakens Adric and Cryton and runs to help his friend.

Before Erannis can engage the club wielder he is attacked by two trained dire rats. Fortunately, his martial training keeps the monters at bay. Cryton become ethereal and steps through the wall of the waystation, quickly ripping the souls from the bodies of those who fall to Erannis’s longsword. Adric creeps up behind the leader with the club, but is seen and therefore does not land a telling blow. Reinforcements arrive from the woods and the battle looks all but lost when Adric falls.

Fortunately, Cryton’s spectral appearance unnerves the assailants and they do not attack him directly. This enables him to bring down the leader with his eldritch blast. With two of their number, their leader and both rats dead the remaining brigands flee into the woods. Erannis then unfastens his healing kit and does what he can to revive the two dwarves.

General Thoughts

As the first session of an extended adventure, we devoted a fair amount of time to character generation and exposition. The result of this is that we only had time for one combat encounter. That would be absolutely fine in a regular campaign, but it’s a shame that we got to so little of the business-end of the system in this playtest session. The next session should have a lot more sword-swinging and spell-tossing. Promise.

I’ll write more in a separate post about encounter building and design. Suffice to say that for the purposes of this adventure, I’ve planned out all the encounters in advance and balanced them against the number of PCs in the party, and the level I think they’ll be when they reach that point in the story. This worked against me in the first session, as I had four PCs and not five as I’d originally thought. The encounter was therefore a little harder than it probably should have been – and not helped by the tactics the PCs employed.

However, what I will say is that this felt like D&D. This really felt like D&D. It took me back to running the second edition game. I’m not sure I can put my finger on quite what is, but D&D Next seems to have that indefinable something that 4e lacked. At least for me!

Skills and Checks

I’m going to keep mentioning this. The skills system that exists in the game is inadequate. PCs don’t have enough skills, and there isn’t sufficient differentiation between low-skilled characters and highly skilled characters. Also for my money, the ability score plays too large a role when making checks. This is the one thing in D&D Next I really hate.

Now it’s not all bad news. The skill list has been extended. There are 25 listed skills in the playtest packet compared to only 17 in fourth edition. It’s a step in the right direction, but the skills still need more breadth. After all there currently aren’t any skills in Acrobatics, Athletics, Climb, Ride or Swim. I’d like to see those added to the list.

I am very pleased to see all the Lore skills listed there. During the course of the first session we used Societal Lore and Heraldic Lore. A nice strong skill list is required. The game suffers from not having one, yet.

Also: what’s wrong with “Perception” as the name of a skill? Calling it “Spot” is terribly misleading. In real life (and in most roleplaying games) you do not expect to spot something with your ears. If you’re having one skill to encompass all senses – which is probably a good idea – then a more general term such as Perception is far better. Certainly, I was calling the skill Perception all the way through the playtest, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone there.

The last thing I’ll say regarding checks is about the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic. It’s one of those things you think should work well in principle, but doesn’t seem to live up to its promise in practice. The way that it seems to working at present is that Advantage is pretty much a guaranteed success. The very term “Advantage” tells me that it should give players an edge – it should be comparable to the floating +2 bonus that GMs could award in 3rd edition and 4th edition. However, guaranteeing success goes far beyond an ‘edge’. Does more work need to be done on this?

Healing

There are two rest durations in D&D Next. The short rest lasts 10 minutes, and the long rest lasts for 8 hours. You can’t do anything strenuous during these periods to take advantage of the benefits conferred by resting. As far as healing concerned, the base rules state this:

Certain abilities and items, such as a healer’s kit, allow you to spend one or more of your Hit Dice during a short rest, up to your maximum number of Hit Dice. For each Hit Die you spend in this way, roll the die and add to it your Constitution modifier. You regain hit points equal to the total. You can decide to spend additional Hit Dice after each roll. Once you have spent all your Hit Dice, you must take a long rest to regain them. You must have at least 1 hit point to take a long rest. At the end of the rest, you regain all your hit points and Hit Dice. You cannot take more than one long rest in a 24- hour period.

For us as a group that smacked a little too much like fourth edition. The characters were a little too superhuman for our liking. The rules recognise that this form of healing may not be everyone’s cup of tea and gives the GM three options that further limits or rations the supply of healing. As a group we felt that regaining all hit points with a long rest was our largest bone of contention, so we opted for the “Slower Hit Point Recovery” option. That’s defined in the rules thusly:

At the end of a long rest, you regain no hit points, but you do regain all your Hit Dice and can spend any number of them without using a healer’s kit.

In hindsight, we didn’t quite use this variant. We ruled that you still needed to use a healer’s kit in order to use your hit dice. This was a genuine mistake on my part when I read the variant rule, but it’s a mistake I’m glad I made. I really like the concept of the healer’s kit. It actually gives a justifiable in-game reason for the excessive healing. A character pops open his healer’s kit and takes out a few alchemical poultices, and some foul-smelling medicinal concoction…. It also makes sense that a character can only benefit from such healing so much in the space of one day.

On the whole, I’m very happy with that. I think I could run a campaign with those rules for healing.

Of course, on top of all the healer’s kit/hit dice healing is magical healing. Or it would be if this party had any access to it. There is no cleric in the party, and none of the PCs bothered to obtain any healing potions before commencing the adventure. An oversight perhaps, but a welcome one as it enables us to see how the game functions with no healing magic at all.

In the one combat (which I’ll get to in a moment) two PCs were taken down by the bad guys. Renko before he could do anything at all. With only healer’s kits to hand, Renko had no choice but to stay out of the fight. If there was a cleric in the party, or if one of the other PCs could have got to him and administered a healing potion, then Renko could have been on his feet again.

As a GM, I think I’m happy with that level of healing but we’ll have to see how it goes. At the end of the session, after the PCs were victorious, both Renko and Adric were revived and they spent all their hit dice to restore their hit points. They are both close to maximum hit points now… but it’s only just the beginning of the adventuring day. More encounters are to come and neither can benefit from any more non-magical healing until after their next long rest.

This will make the rest of the day very interesting for the two dwarves.

The Encounter

It’s probably fair to say that this wasn’t the party’s finest hour. Assaulting the enemy one at a time is a tactic usually reserved for henchmen in a Bond movie, not a savvy group of adventurers. If we allow metagaming to enter our minds, I sure that Renko would have thought that his 20 hit points would have made him fairly resilient to any level-appropriate threat. At least for a round or two. Seems like a fair assumption. I was pretty surprised when the villain who burst out of the bushes downed him in one blow.

The problem was that this villain (whose name was Sarn) was not a monster from Bestiary. He was a second level human rogue, built with exactly the same rules as the PCs. A second level villain is within the bounds of acceptability for a 1st level party, and in fact this was only an Average encounter for a party of five – which made it somewhere between Average and Hard for a party of four.

The ease in which Sarn took Renko down started alarm bells ringing for me. Not because Sarn could kill off the entire party (although he probably could), but because it highlighted a discrepancy in the rules: PCs and Monsters are not equal. It’s not as blatant as in fourth edition: on paper they look equal. The Bestiary-built opponents (the dire rates and the human commoners who were acting as brigands for this encounter) have an armour class and a hit point total that is comparable to the PCs. The difference comes in how often the PCs hit, and how much damage they do.

PCs tend to have higher ability scores than Monsters of the same level. They also deal more damage. Looking at the opponents the party faced: the commoners had +0 to hit, and did 1d4 damage; the dire rats had +2 to hit and did 1d6+2 damage; Sarn had +6 to hit and did 1d8+4 damage (with an extra 3d6 if he had advantage). 1d8 + 3d6 + 4 is a lot of damage, and far too much for a 1st level character of any class to absorb. When you take into account that attack is delivered with Advantage, then such an attack is unlikely to ever miss.

And it’s not just sneak attack that seems overpowered in this way. The warlock’s eldritch blast inflicts 3d6 damage flat at 1st level. An average of 11 points of damage. Also enough to bring down most 1st level player characters. Now, I guess this might be a low-level problem. 1st level PCs are always a bit binary in D&D. It might be something that evens out by level 3 or 4. If it doesn’t…

A lack of verisimilitude would kill D&D Next for me. For me to able to invent a campaign setting, and write adventures using this rules-set I need to have a consistant world. I need my PCs and my NPCs (and my Monsters) to use the same rules and the same conventions. NPCs don’t need to be as complex as PCs - their abilities, feats and skills could be thinned out for sake of brevity – but they need to work the same way. This is the tremendous strength of third edition and Pathfinder. If D&D Next doesn’t have it, then I can’t see myself using it as a system of choice.

So, Renko is taken down by Sarn. Poor Renko. Let’s move on.

The elven fighter Erannis then runs around the side of the waystation and is attacked by two dire rats. I feared that Erannis would have been completely torn apart (and so did Neil, I think)… but this is where the fighter’s Combat Superiority came into play. And it worked wonderfully.

Never before in D&D have fighters really seemed like the masters of melee to me. They were all about damage. You couldn’t have a complex duel between two master swordsmen because the D&D rules didn’t work that way. Whoever won initiative would probably win the battle, it was all about number of attacks and how much damage you can do. Combat Superiority changes that. As Erannis desperately spent his expertise die to reduce the damage inflicted by the dire rats, I could really imagine him parrying the little bleeders. This simple mechanic gives the fighter so much versatility… and it reflects the core theme of the character class.

As Erannis was dealing with the rats, Adric tried to get the drop on Sarn and give him a taste of his own medicine.  Now as it happened I rolled very high for Sarn’s Perception check (sorry, ‘Spot’ check) and so Adric’s successful hit wasn’t a sneak attack. If it had been Sarn would probably have been killed. As it was he was still on his feet and his return attack was enough to take Adric down. Now as a large bunch of thugs and Sarn headed over to attack Erannis, things were looking pretty bleak. And as a GM, I was worried that I was on the verge of killing the entire party.

Enter the warlock. Now, Cryton is the least physically adept of the party. I think he has about 6 hit points max. A butterfly’s sneeze is probably strong enough to fracture his tibia. However, he has some incredibly potent magical powers that let him punch far above his weight.

The warlock invocation Ethereal Stride allowed Cryton to walk through the solid wall and appear on the other side as an indistinct ghostly figure. As he’s also a necromancer, Cryton has the Aura of Souls ability that lets him snatch the soul of a recently dead creature and turn it into a spirit that floats next to him. He can then destroy that spirit to give him advantage on an attack roll with a necromancy spell.

Now, I have to confess to being a little kind here. Because of Cryton’s spectral appearance and the fact that he had apparently ripped the soul from a dead body, I ruled that the remaining brigands would prefer to gang up on Erannis than attack him. If I hadn’t ruled in that way, both Erannis and Cryton would surely have died. I also allowed Cryton to use his Aura of Souls power to fuel eldritch blast. That shouldn’t have worked as eldritch blast is not a necromancy spell.

I’ll have to decide how I rule on that in the future. It certainly seems (from the way it is written) that Aura of Souls only provides a benefit to wizards, clerics and sorcerers who can cast necromancy spells, and not to warlocks. The third level ability of the necromancer Speciality, Animate Servant definitely does work for warlocks so being a necromancer isn’t entirely useless.

In any case it was a bit of touch and go. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Sarn missed Erannis when he engaged him in combat (a highly unlikely turn of events) then the elf would have been killed in that round. As it was he was still standing when Cryton killed Sarn, and it seemed appropriate to have the remainder of the rabble flee. The PCs really only won the day through the skin of their teeth.

So what lessons am I to learn from this combat?

As the rules stand, I should be wary about using foes generated with the PC rules. I have to say that Sarn is not the last such adversary I have planned in this adventure, so it will be interesting in seeing how future encounters pan out.

Secondly, I should read the ‘death and dying’ rules again as I completely forgot all about death saving throws for Renko and Adric.

Thirdly, I need to decide what happens with Aura of Souls as it seems quite useless for a warlock as it’s written. I also need to properly get my head around how it works. Technically it’s an action to use use this ability, which means you can’t wrench a soul from a body and cast a spell to take advantage of it in the same round. The upshot of this was is that Cryton was more impressive in the combat than he probably should have been – but that’s my fault. It’s a learning curve for all of us.

The Bottom Line

I really enjoyed running the session. There was roleplaying, there was combats, there were laughs… and unlike fourth edition the rules weren’t getting in the way of me telling a story. I like D&D Next a lot. I’d certainly use it over 4e, but I don’t think I’d use it over Pathfinder. I would like a clean break from third edition for my next campaign though, so I’m hoping that that problems are addressed.

I am really looking forward to running this again. And I’m determined to keep Renko standing for at least one round so I can see what the sorcerer is capable of.