DDN Blog: Goblins Only Care About Your Axe

As I said in a previous blog post, sometimes a fight is just not worth the effort of stopping the game to draw out a tactical map. I cannot imagine the amount of time I have spend drawing maps and juggling Dungeon Tiles, whether it was for a hunting party of kobolds in the forest south of Winterhaven, a handful of undead lurking within the catacombs under Shadowfell Keep, or for the final confrontation against Kalarel, his undead guardians, and a life-sapping portal.

Out of those, the only time a map really made things cooler was the showdown with Kalarel, and given my experiences running A Sundered World—fighting clockwork horrors in Shom, fleeing from a gith-mounted red dragon and bladeling raiding party, and taking on a possessed Autocthon while riding an ancient blue dragon—I am fairly certain it would have still been really awesome without it.

I am not sure how I buy into the player mentality of “its on the map, kill it”. When running Age of Worms in 3rd Edition, this was not a problem, even though I would draw the map as they explored the dungeon. Really if there was a map, I used it, and they never complained. Maybe it is because there were not a lot of things to interact with, and the fights were over a lot quicker? Most of what I recall from the first was just walls and maybe some furniture. Occasionally there was difficult terrain or something that they did not want to step in, like brown mold.

The point is that drawing maps “back in the day” seemed to have been a lot easier than it is now, and given that they never really went off the map it probably did not feel like an investment that they were passing up. I keep mentioning to them that I would like to run the through Age of Worms using 3rd Edition, just to see what they like and do not like. I would be curious to see how they handle exploration-based mapping.

Anyway I have hundreds of minis and a lot of Dungeon Tiles, and given that my issues were more centered around the expenditure of time (how much have I wasted drawing maps and pondering terrain features and effects for trivial things?), I am glad that they are considering methods to reduce the time shifting between both “modes”, as well as defining abilities to work with either.

D&D Skirmish Playtest

In case you were not aware of it, not only is Wizards of the Coast going to start producing minis again, but they also opened up a public playtest for a new minis skirmish game (well, public insofar as you need to have a D&D account and join the D&D Playtest group).

In case you did not play the original skirmish game, it somewhat followed Warhammer rules: you set a points value for warbands, bought creatures as close to the points cap as you could, and then had at it using a rule-lite version of D&D combat. I vaguely recall there being a limit on creatures, whether it was a maximum points value, number or something, but that was a long time ago. Despite normally playing it purely out of boredom, I did find it interesting because I could create themed parties of simplified monsters. My main complaints from things I can actually remember was that many cheap creatures ended up being completely useless, unable to hit things higher than their level–and doing dick even if they could–and/or dying as a side effect from a higher level creature doing something only tangentially related to fighting.

Hit points, a stick, and nudity are no match for Swallow Whole.

While the game follows the same concept of two opposing factions fighting each other, it mixes things up with a gold vault and action card deck. The gold vault allows you to reinforce your faction at the end of your turn, allowing you to deploy creatures of a higher level than 3, while at the same time giving you a chance to react to threats and situations. While some creatures have abilities built into their own cards, the action deck provides you with a bunch of attacks and abilities that can be used by a variety of creatures, which can give you an expected edge and make your creatures more flexible. Using an action card requires a specific ability score and level, though creatures can assist each other, combining their level to meet the requirement. To me both of these additions make the game more dynamic and exciting.

Kind of like Magic: The Gathering, but you keep your arms and legs.

Currently there are only two decks, drow and hero. The drow deck emphasizes well, drow and spiders, though there is also an umber hulk and shadow mastiff for variety. The hero deck is much more racially diverse, including humans, elves, halflings, dwarves, a half-orc, a gold dragon, and even an earth elemental.

Though the drow are pretty diverse even without the spiders.

So far the game has gone through a few rules revisions to specify which creatures are Large, as well as to add terrain features such as difficult terrain, damaging terrain, and treasure spaces. I am curious if Wizards of the Coast plans to make an official version of the game to go with their new minis line. It would make sense given from what I have heard they are going to print thematic sets. Mostly I would like to get actual cards so I can avoid hitting up Kinkos to get them printed on card stock so that they are more durable.

Legends & Lore: Minis

Not pictured: the other sandwich bags, plastic tubs, and assorted clutter  on the bookshelves.

I have a lot of minis.

I’m pretty sure a looong time ago, I made a post talking about how much I like using minis in my D&D games. I’ve been using minis since I started out with Basic, which consisted of some solid-red plastic heroes and a bunch of cardstock stands for NPCs and monsters. As time and money allowed, I would gradually buy metal figures from Ral-Partha, up until Wizards launched their pre-painted minis, which were a godsend because now I didn’t have to spend all my time painting a bunch of stuff that would invariably chip and break.

Why do I like minis?

The first reason is that they look cool as hell. Yeah, I can describe how big or freaky a monster is, but being able to let the player plainly see just how small they are can really put things in perspective. Plus, it’s also nice when players get a better image of the monster and proclaim “what the fuck is that?” The other reason is tactical positioning, which falls into the second camp that Mike identifies, which are players that tend to use them to provide “hard and fast” rules, as opposed to relying on the DM’s arbitration.

To elaborate, as a DM I like this because it answers many of the questions that I used to get, such as if the monster is close enough to hit with a ranged attack, is there an attack penalty, will allies be caught in an area effect spell, how close is the monster to a/an [insert hazard], will I get attacked if I do [insert action], and so on and so forth. Most of these answers were based on what I assumed the characters were doing, which often did no match up with what the players thought they were doing.

Basically, players can readily make their own informed decisions, which also ties in with why I like them as a player: I can look at the map and make my move without having to ask the DM, refer back to my abilities, ask more questions, and spend god-knows-how long trying to determine a satisfactory course of action. Remember how long it would take spellcasters to come to a conclusion? Now have most of the party doing a similar song-and-dance as they peruse their options.

I don’t think that minis intrinsically detract from the imagination or description of the scene (I still use dice and tokens, even with my extensive collection). Some DM’s might be lazy and just let the minis and effects of actions do the talking, but then that’s really the DM’s fault. When I move a monster, I don’t sit there in stony silence like a chess-player, I let them know that the orc unleashes a bellowing roar as it rushes towards them, or that the ooze makes sick, slurping noises as it tries to envelope them. An axe doesn’t deal 9 damage, it cuts a vicious gash in your arm, and the oozes slime causes your armor to hiss and smoke as it slowly dissolves. To me they’re game aids, not the foundation of the game.

Beholder Collector’s Set

I got this a quite awhile ago, but kept neglecting to post about it. It’s a non-randomized quartet of beholders that not only comes in a badass box, but only runs $35. Oddly, at RPG.net people are actually complaining about this price. If they think that’s steep, perhaps they should scope out singles at eBay, where they only run $15-20 per individual mini. Strangely, some people are offering the entire box for only $20. Personally, I think the tag price is a bargain; it’s cheap, you know what you’re getting, and it comes with a staple beholder as well as a few new additions (though the sculpts are copied).

You get an eye of frost, ghost beholder, eye of shadow, and eye tyrant, and stat block cards for each.

I wish they offered a print for this…

The lamp I used for lighting makes it look like their eyes are glowing…I need a new camera. >_>

Gargantuan Orcus

I got one in today. Its Gargantuan, and its Orcus, and its fucking awesome.

In the box…

…and in mah hand.

Is it worth the price tag? Some would compare it to the Colossal Red Dragon that came out years ago, and I’d say that I suppose pound-for-pound that it might not be. I dunno. Depends on inflation or what-the-fuck-ever. If nothing else, its a $70-incentive to get my group up to level 30 to kick his ass.

Second Opinion on Dangerous Delves

As a disclaimer, this isnt me changing my opinion about Dangerous Delves so much as its me continuing my last review, since a case of eight packs got delivered about 20 minutes ago. I’m curious to see if my expectations hold up from yesterday. I guess if you order the 8-pack, they make sure to pitch you one booster with a different visible, meaning that I’m now the proud owner of like, three fucking slime magi. I’ll have to keep that in mind for future reference…

Anyway, here’s what I got:

• 1 Skalmad, the troll king
• 1 cyclops crusher
• 2 grimlock minions
• 1 yaun-ti fangblade
• 1 aboleth slime mage
• 1 clay golem
• 1 unicorn
• 1 rust monster
• 1 feygrove choker
• 1 war devil
• 1 hippogriff
• 1 hellstinger scorpion
• 1 bonechill chimera
• 1 frost giant
• 1 foulspawn grue
• 1 orc eye of Gruumsh
• 1 Xen’drik drow stingblade
• 2 blood scarabs
• 1 berbalang
• 1 goblin delver
• 1 kobold wyrmpriest
• 2 goblin sharpshooter
• 2 kruthik young
• 2 snake swarms
• 1 harpy
• 2 bloodseeker drakes
• 1 aspect of Vecna
• 1 bladerager troll
• 2 orc terrorblades
• 1 arbalest
• 1 gnoll huntmaster
• 1 githzerai zerth

Which combined with the 16 I got yesterday, means that I am six short of the entire set. I’m still pleased with the price-to-quality ratio. I shelled out about $3 per mini, and considering that I would fully expect to pay ten or more for the Large ones, I think its a steal. Didnt have to do shit except pay far less than I would have to just get the minis unpainted and unassembled, and they are way more durable than the do-it-yourself fare. If I drop my clay golem, no harm done. If I drop my soul grinder? Well…fuck.

The best part is that I dont have to get minis from Reaper or wherever that look “close enough’, get them all setup, an then remind the players what they are. I mean, I already have to do that in some cases, but I didnt pay way more just to get a proxy. I can count on the fact that in most cases, what I need has a mini that is at least of the same monster type. I might not have a cyclops that matches perfectly, but I do have a few on hand.

Nothing being perfect, I have a few more nitpicks to add to the list from yesterday.

• War devil looks a bit…cartoony and flat. More colors or an ink wash would help out, but overall I think its a below-average sculpt. It is a visible, however, so its easy to just not buy it.
• The bladerager troll could have used some drybrushed metal on the armor plating. Not a full layer, which would look to clean. Drybrushing it would give it a metallic-yet-dirty look, which I think would great.
• I can see more detail on the yaun-ti fangblade that I got this time. Since I only have two, I cant be sure which is the accident.
• I dont particularly care for the beetles humping rocks, but at least there is a common medium beetle that I can use.
• There are some slight paint splashes on the commons (again, grimlock minion). This is what I’d expect from anyone trying to hurredly paint a shitload of mooks, however.

Other than that, looks good. They’re very cheap to buy, and very functional.

Review: Player’s Handbook Heroes, Set 1

Got a case of each set in the mail today and just cracked them out. Most of them look really good, with the exception of the male human fighter and male human barbarian: fighter’s sword looks to tiny and flimsy (plus the color scheme just sucks), and the colors on the barbarian look too solid and flat.
A simple ink wash would have done a lot to bring out some details without adding too much work to the paint job, in my opinion. Its easy enough to do that I’m just going to do it myself, but frankly the other stuff in the pack makes up for it.
The only other figure that gets any complaints from me is the male human wizard since I think that the yellow scheme likewise looks really bad.

I havent gone through the power cards yet. They’re a nice addition but I dont think for a second that you “need” them at all. The ones I could see through the packaging looked interesting, a few tempting, but I dont feel like that my character would be gimped without them: chilling cloud is a wizard at-will that imposes an attack penalty to creatures caught in the area, knockdown assault is a fighter at-will that lets you prone a creature you hit, and cutting words is a bard at-will that deals psychic damage and pulls a creature.
As you know, each set gets three, and while a lot of them seem to be new level 1 at-wills, there’s supposed to other types and frequencies as well.

Otherwise, its a solid deal. I’m happy with my purchase, and even some of the ones that I thought looked bad came out a lot better (male dwarf paladin, for one). Hopefully we see a tiefling with a polearm in the next set so I have something remotely similar to Kobal. For now, I got a good one for my tiefling fire-based wizard, and the half-elf warlock fighter might make a good swordmage.

Divine Heroes

Like, right after they threw up Martial Heroes they decided to reveal one of the Divine sets. I’ll be honest that the only divine class I’ve played thus far is the cleric, which I liked a lot over past Editions since I’m able to do stuff on my own while keeping my allies alive (who are also not solely dependent on my actions to survive: double-win).

I like the female halfling cleric and male human cleric, but the male dwarf paladin looks a bit…off? Maybe its all the gold. Maybe its the fact that the only dwarf I’ve played is a dwarf shaman last delve night. Eh, I’ll still be buying a pack.

Martial Heroes

A long, long time ago Wizards of the Coast decided to produce their own line of prepainted D&D minis for use in your Dungeons & Dragons game. The upside was that they were dirt cheap initially, especially once you factored in the money it would take to buy the painting supplies and the time it would take to paint them yourself. On the downside they looked like (to put it nicely) rubbish.

They were also randomized, which is one of the main ways that Wizards was able to keep the production costs down. You bought a box and got a random assortment of creatures with a rarity determined by how many of the buggers you’d need. Goblins and kobolds were commons, while minotaurs and mind flayers were logically uncommon or rare. Seemed reasonable to me, but provided plenty of nerd-rage-fuel for those that wanted to get the exact mini they wanted at a paltry sum.

Whelp a few months ago Wizards announced that they were mostly stopping this practice, producing hero packs for players and monster packs for DMs. We’ve been able to see more than a few sneak peaks mostly thanks to Hordlings, but Wizards has upped the ante by giving us the full frontal on Martial Heroes 1, which contains a male elf ranger, male human fighter, and female dragonborn rogue. They talk a bit about the power card that will come with the pack, but elaborate a bit further by revealing that not all powers will be at-wills: powers of all types, frequencies, and levels will be getting some love.

As for the actual quality of the sculpts…well, the ranger and rogue dont look too bad, but I just cant stand the green on the fighter armor. However, I’m going to withhold final judgement until I can see them in person: sometimes the screenshots dont do the final product justice.