Virtual Table: Twisted Hall

This is the adventure out of Starter Set. I plan on putting the ddav file up when I’m done mapping and statting.

Starter Set Play Report

I’ve been wanting to run the adventures from Starter Set, Dungeon Master’s Kit, and Monster Vault, and I finally had a chance to start down that road last night. I let the players do whatever, not wanting to limit them to Essentials-only classes, and ended up with a triumvirate consisting of a longtooth shifter paladin of Kord, wise-cracking gnome bard, and dragonborn revenant dark pact warlock. At least it’s not as bad as the all drow party that I dragged through Keep on the Shadowfell.

It was going to be a bumpy ride…

I skipped the intro battle entirely, not wanting to waste time, and got them directly to the dungeon’s entrance after a bit of exposition about what was going on: they’re looking for a merchants “black box”, because it’s worth more cash and XP. I laid out the map, allowing them to pick from a door, and got a very strange reaction. Two of the players are new, and I guess had some…bad experiences, let’s say, going through a lengthy routine consisting of Perception (with two Aid Anothers), Arcana, tying a rope around a ring in the door, and trying to force it from as far away as possible. Apparently having every single door trapped was a popular trend?

They got one door open, a goblin peeked out, yelped in surprise, and then beat their collective Strength rolls to close it again. So they went to the other door, and after a few more Perceptions and Arcanas got that one open, and started fighting when I promised them that the goblins inside wouldn’t polymorph into wraith dragons and drain their levels, and were in fact incapably weak. Again, two were new, and there were only three, so I parsed the encounters down for them (or delayed the arrival of additional enemies). They got through every room without much hassle, since it was mostly goblins with the occasional dire rat thrown in, until they got to the dragon.

More checks were rolled, and they learned that it was–drumroll–white and cold-based. One player tried to goad it, while another tried to bribe it. Eventually I just said fuck it and started combat, feeling that I’d been more than fair with the dragon’s patience. Now, new solos are a bitch, so I did pull punches at the start. I used dragon breath, then stuck to bite since I was rolling poorly and didn’t want to kill of the paladin immediately. It didn’t help that the other players missed with all their dailies and encounters. The bard quickly ran out of majestic words and the paladin had to Action Point her second wind.

Then, for some reason, they started rolling crits. Like, a lot. As the dragon’s hit points rapidly dwindled, I started using his Action Points and double-clawing. As fortune had it, I’d basically end up hitting the paladin when her hit points regenerated to where I wouldn’t instantly kill her (fuck you vicious mockery). Anyway, in a surprising turn of events–in that I didn’t have to fudge dice rolls for the rest of combat–they slew the dragon, looted his tiny lair, made Arcana checks to determine that the teleportation circle lead to a temple full of more loot, and pressed on. The session was called at 2am when they plucked a lifedrinking greataxe from a goblin.

To their credit, they no longer have an irrational fear of doors, so I don’t think I’ll be using mimics anytime soon…I’ll wait til level 6.

Essential Impressions

Having fiddled around with the Starter Set–which isn’t hard because there isn’t much to fiddle with–I’ve come to some realizations.

This is not a new edition by any stretch. By itself this product could barely be considered introductory since you can only elevate yourself to level two and the character options are virtually nonexistent: there are no class features listed for any of the classes, and I don’t even know if all the powers for the available levels are entirely present. Character creation is based on the choices you make throughout the course of the Lone Wolf choose-your-own-adventure-esque procedure until you have an assembly of words and numbers scribbled on a sheet of paper. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Starter Set is an excellent testing ground for people that are considering getting into the hobby. It’s cheap and a nice chunk of the product will still see use going forward, but “replacing” the game?

Shyeah, right.

As has been said, the rules and class builds are completely backwards compatible. None of the mechanics differed in execution from other D&D content, and you could plow through the adventure in the back of the Dungeon Master’s Book with any class that rattles your dice. Frankly, the only thing that it’s replacing is some of the oh-so-obviously slightly reworded monster clones, which is completely fucking fine by me. Out with the goblin hexer, in with the goblin hex hurler I say. Whatever is more fun. I’m sure many DMs have said fuck-all to plenty of “official” monsters for self-made iterations that they find so much more enjoyable. This is not to say that you spent your hard-earned dollars during the initial 4E launch in vain. If nothing else, it provided a stable foundation from which to build your own particular brand of fun upon.

I think to prove my point I’m going to encourage a player to try out the knight or slayer for a romp through Athas along side a fighter, wizard, or whatever. Hell, I might do something really rash and run Marauders of the Dune Sea with only classes out of Heroes of the Fallen Lands.

Oooooooooooooh.

D&D Starter Set Review

“Red Box”, “Essentials”, whatever. The point is that thanks to Shazbot’s tip I was able to get ahold of this $20 gateway drug well ahead of time. The Starter Set (as it’s officially labeled) comes with a book for players, a book for DMs, several sheets of power/magic item cards that you have to punch out yourself, a sheet of tokens for monsters and characters that’s easy to punch out, some dice you won’t use, and three one-sided character sheets.

Getting the negatives out of the way (because I’d prefer to end reviews on a high note), the art is recycled and the paper quality of the books and cards is suspect; it’s too damned light and none of them will last through repeated use. I would not be surprised if they fell apart from getting slightly moist. I intend to use the tokens in typical play and write down the effects of any powers on other cards if a player or myself want to use them until they’re in Character Builder.

The Player’s Book does not list classes in the traditional manner, instead having you go through a choose your own adventure story based around a goblin attack in order to determine your ability scores, class, and powers. The first question determines your class from fighter, wizard, rogue, or cleric, and from there it will grill you on how you want to dispose of your enemies until you either succeed or get your ass handed to you. Shazbot thumbed through the entire thing and is of the opinion that it would be really cool for new players to get a handle on things.

Strangely, the Dungeon Master’s Book features the actual game rules in addition to a seven-encounter-long dungeon mapped entirely out of Dungeon Tiles. The encounters use a mixture of new and old monsters, though to be fair some of the “new” monsters look very *ahem* familiar. For example this book features a goblin hex hurler, who is identical in every way to a goblin hexer except that he lacks incite bravery. Some monsters gain new abilities instead of losing them; zombie hulks, er, I mean “hulking zombies” have a trait called zombie rejuvenation that allows it to stand up at the end of its turn with 1 hit point unless it was either killed by a crit or took damage while down. Of course, some monsters get more than others, as evidenced by the fledgling white dragon who crits on a 17+ when bloodied.

The tokens are numbered and have stock images of monsters for easy identification on the field, and the characters have bloodied sides, allowing you to dismiss with counters for that sort of thing. Even though I have a massive minis collection, I’d really like having token packs because they would be great for highlighting minions or for incredibly rare/expensive minis. They’re also pretty durable.

Speaking of durability, the cards were a bit…difficult to remove. Initially I tried scissors but settled on simply folding the cards on the corrugated lines both ways, which made them much easier to remove them. I’d prefer it if WotC simply provided a more durable, pre-punched deck similar to those power decks that I don’t think anyone gives a shit about.

Finally, the character sheets. These are one-sided with some layout changes like moving skills directly beneath their derived ability score and omitting some sections entirely. Is it comprehensive? I’m going to say no because the space alloted to powers and feats is not nearly enough, even if you only use it for racial powers and feats. There is a very large blank section for “character notes”, which is where I suspect conditional information from feats, resistances, immunities, etc to go.

Despite the shoddy materials, I think that at $20 this is a very good bargain for those that are utterly new to D&D. As a veteran player I still consider it a good purchase, as I can get some mileage out of the tokens, new powers, and even a lot of the monsters from the DM’s Book.