More playtesting of dndnext

Last night, we returned to the Caves of Chaos. We had decided to make the players level 2 this time around, but otherwise continued the story as if nothing had happened.

After rescuing the merchants and the guards, the four heroes with odd names spent a couple of days at the keep, before they returned to the caves in search for gold and glory. They had bought a donkey, so that they could carry more treasure.

As they arrived to the caves without encountering any resistance, they decided to check out the same cave as last time, to see if something had happened while they were gone.

Once again, Cupid (aptly named Stupid by now) took point, and went in, heading towards the first goblin guardroom. This time however, there was no surprising the goblins. Cupid noticed a simple alarm-system made of wires and bells had been set up at the entrance. After disarming it, he still went in alone. The goblins had restocked the room and were waiting, ready as ever. They had turned over a table on the side, and as soon as Cupid peaked around the corner, all six of them fired arrows at his face. Luckily for him, most struck the wall. Anyway, the fight was on, and the other 3 heroes quickly rushed up to join the fight. Meanwhile, the goblins called for reinforcements and were joined by an Ogre with a treetrunk for a club.

Thinking quickly, Tyrone the elven wizard cast grease on the club, making the ogre drop it to the ground(*). It could still hit fairly hard(*2), but it definitely helped. The fight was kinda nasty, this was definitely the toughest foe the heroes had been up against(*3).

After killing the Ogre, the heroes moved up the stairs to the hobgoblin room from last time. It was empty, except for some hay and some excrements, which, if size was anything to go by, meant that the Ogre had lived here for a couple of days. In the hay, they spotted a corpse with a plate armor. Kit the dwarf fighter was ecstatic, but unfortunately, it turned out not to fit him(*4).

After putting the plate armor in a sack and on the mule, which had been hidden near the entrance, they once again set out to explore. Moving past the torture chamber, they found an eating area which seemed to hold a lot of hobgoblins, and for once, they made the wise decision: to retreat and explore elsewhere. From there, they went back a while, until they ran into another guard room, manned by hobgoblins. Unfortunately, they had been making a lot of noise, so the hobgoblins were expecting them.

As soon as they entered the room, they were jumped by the hobgoblins. Bubba panicked and channeled the light of Pelor on the hobgoblins, but unfortunately, he also hit all of his friends(*5). So when Cupid was hit by two heavy X-bow bolts right after, he went straight down. Tyrone soon went down as well, so when one of the hobgoblin put his sword to Cupid's neck and said "yield" in very poor common, Kit and Bubba did not hesitate.

They were promptly tied up down in the torture chamber, with Kit and Bubba hanging in the chains on the wall and the unconscious Tyrone and Cupid in a steel cage.

After an hour or so, what seemed to be the hobgoblin boss arrived, and tortured Kit a bit with a hot poker. Satisfied with the answers the dwarf provided as to why they were in the caves, the hobgoblin in charge told them they were to be given to the bosses, to be sacrificed.

With the hobgoblin boss gone, they found themselves alone, although they could hear guards outside the room (there is no door). Kit tried a few times to break the chains holding him, but could not find the strength(*6). After 5 hours or so, Cupid and Tyrone woke up. Cupid quickly found that the hobgoblins had missed a thieves pick in one of his secret pockets when they stripped him of weapons, and he quickly got him and Tyrone out of the cage and the two others out of their chains.

With no weapons and only a little magic left (not to mention two members very wounded), they had to strike swiftly and effectively(*7). Kit picked up a bench made of hard wood and was ready to go. Bubba ran out, channeled the power of Pelor, killing one guard, at which point Kit followed suit, crushing the skull of the other guard with his improvised weapon(*8).

Kit grabbed the halberd of one of the guards, and the heroes headed out to find their stuff. They quickly found traces of blood, indicating that those they had fought had gone up into the area that the heroes had previously avoided.

With Cupid on point, they sneaked after them, and found a big area, sort of a combination of kitchen area and dining hall. There Cupid found their stuff, but it was close to the hobgoblins. Kit managed to sneak in, and get the items, but as he was sneaking back to the others, he was spotted. Luckily he had somewhat a head start, so he managed to get back to the others who were hiding a bit back, and together they were hunted out of the caves and into the woods, where the hobgoblins seemingly lost the trail....

*1: We weren't quite sure about grease. Does the ogre save immediately when the spell is cast? Or when it wants to use the club? If it drops the club, can it just pick it up again? Since picking up an item is not an action. I mean, by the rules this could happen. Wizard casts grease, ogre fails save and drops club. On it's turn, the ogre picks up the club, fails another save, then picks it up again, fails save, etc, etc, until it makes the save and can attack. Or did we miss something? Obviously I know it's not the intent, and I would have ruled one attempt only, however, I wasn't sure if it should still get an attack, say with it's fist or another weapon, if it had already tried to pick up the greased club and failed the save. Which is why I just decided that it would punch the hell out of the players.

*2: Changed damage from 2d4+6 to 1d6+4 (improvised weapon)

*3: Even though the ogre had 88 HPs, the fight didn't seem to drag out. It was noticeably tougher than other monsters, but it never felt artificial, like solos sometimes do.

*4: I decided to give the fighter a decent armor, but then at the last moment, incorporated that there was only 80% chance that he could fit it, at least only he could visit a blacksmith. He rolled 91.

*5: Bubba's player hadn't quite read the channel radiance ability his character had acquired. Since it was the first time the character had used the power, I didn't allow him to change his action and he hit all of the party. The rest of the night, he was counted as an enemy "Sure, there are only 6 hobgoblins and Bubba against the 3 of us..." when they were debating whether to engage a group of enemies or not. Fun.

*6: I only allowed him a couple of times. DC was very high, but he could arguably had tried as many times as he wanted. Just seems silly to allow it, though.

*7: The hobgoblins had taken the wizard's spellbook, and the cleric's holy symbol, but there was not really any components to take in order to stop them casting spells. I would have had to break their fingers or something. Not sure what to make of that.

*8: Kit's player rolled a critical hit with the bench and the hobgoblin took 14 points of damage from the hit, so the first use of an improvised weapon was fun.

After playing, we took the time to talk some more. In a completely random order.
- This game so needs at least a little bit of attack of opportunity. Maybe just something about moving within the reach of an enemy.
- The at-will spells are cool, the wizard and cleric are both very happy with those, "that way I don't have to run around for 3 hours throwing daggers or shooting x-bows". The cleric's player thinks it would be nice if there was another at-will, for variety.
- The cleric's player feels there is too little healing, he would like if there was something akin to Healing Word, once per encounter would do. Others thought it was fine, and we talked about there coming more spell-slots as people level up.
- A few of my players miss Healing Surges. I told them that I was not editing anything, so the fights were as they are in the playtest module, made for 5 players, which is turns means fewer combats.
- Aside from those points, they seem pretty happy with the game as it is. The rogue player, who can be a notorious whiner, didn't complain that he couldn't sneak attack every round anymore.

We will be playtesting next Tuesday again, then I am going on holiday, and we hope there is a new playtest document when we resume play towards the end of July, but we haven't decided what we are going to do with our 15th level 4e campaign. I must admit I am dreading going back to hour-long combats and such. We'll see.