GM Commentary: Session 1 Wrap-up

I don't think we've quite seen the best 4th edition has to offer yet. The players had some difficulty with the module and I have some theories on this.

First of all it's designed for 5 players and we only had 4 on the first session. The module gave some hints on how to reduce the difficulty for a smaller group, but I didn't think they'd be taking on all of the enemies at once. I didn't foresee the party heading straight into the flea-market area without first scoping out the end of the alley-way or dealing with the sentries. Once they started the encounter with the street-toughs and Arthuro the fence I couldn't just leave the sentries standing dumbly around. It may have been better to have made the sentries come running and engage the party out in the street when they loudly broke the gates down. That would have spaced the encounter out a bit.

In addition, the difficulty classes for skill tests seemed a bit high and under further inspection it looks like the writers designed the module before the first set of errata and updates came out for the PHB. All the DCs should have been about 5 less than they were. I think the players were getting a little frustrated with failing their skill-checks at the very beginning of the game.

The full-color battle-map that came with the module first struck me as a neat aspect of the module, especially with the removable roof tiles to hide the unexplored areas. While playing the map proved to be small and cramped. There wasn't even enough room on the map to put all five sentries in the sentry post so I had to put two of them at the far end of the alley-way. The alley was only one miniature wide, which felt way too narrow given the grand depiction of the entry gate and the description of the fountain. The battle in the flea-market was packed tight. The toughs were supposed to try to bull-rush PCs into the trash pit, but there was no room to maneuver. The stairs are the only reasonable sized things on the map. I think next time I will resort to drawing the map myself and in the process I'll double the size of everything.

In the confusion of character generation I failed to inform Kat of a couple of additional features of the warlock. She managed to deal with her adversaries easily enough without these aspects, but it would have been nice for her to have access to them. First of all I didn't quite understand that the warlock's curse could be active on multiple enemies at the same time during the course of the encounter. I mistook it for having the same mechanic as the fighter's mark, the paladin's challenge, and the ranger's prey abilities which can only effect one enemy at a time. In addition warlocks are granted an ability called "prime shot" which gives them a +1 bonus to attack rolls when they are alone with an enemy, which would have given her an advantage in her situation. Oh well, next time I will try to make sure those features don't get overlooked.

There were a couple of problems with new 4th edition rules. Action points were a little confusing I think. I handed out poker chips to represent action points, but I still had to remind the players what it was and when they could use it. To complicate things, many warlord abilities only accessible when action points are spent. On the other hand, all action points were spent and granted the PCs a slight advantage in the fight. Things could have gone much worse without those extra attacks and second winds. I did forget to give the players a +2 bonus to all their defenses when they used their second winds, which may have made the difference on a few hits.

Halfway through the combat I realized that tumbling is completely different in 4th edition. Heidi wanted to tumble past one of the street-toughs and I made the ruling that she could use the acrobatics skill to do this. She ended up missing the roll and getting swatted for it, but what I didn't realize was that Tumble is now a rogue-only 2nd level utility encounter power. Acrobatics doesn't have any rules regarding tumbling past enemies. Tumbling used to be a stand-by in 3.5, almost all characters wanted to train in it to basically move freely around the battlefield without fear of opportunity attacks. I get the feeling that tumble will be sorely missed by the PCs, but as a GM it means I can threaten the PCs more with enemy formation tactics and they won't be able to just move past the front line of soldiers to target the squishy back-fielders.

Related to that, I thought shifting 1 square was a minor action, but I reread the rules and discovered that shifting 1 square is a movement action. This means catching fleeing enemies will be a bit easier next time.

Another staple of our 3.5 game was the use of the intimidate skill. My players would use it relentlessly to put fear into their opponents hearts and weaken their resolve (-2 penalty on rolls). Now it seems this skill has been "nerfed" and only grants advantage outside of combat or only if the opponent is bloodied. The way I read the skill description it has no use on an unbloodied hostile opponent. This caused me some consternation when the players had killed all but the last sentry who was relatively safe in his hiding place. I eventually let the players coax him down, but this seemed improbable to me. I should have had him attempt to flee by climbing onto the roof and running away yet be graphically slain by the "black fog" to serve as an additional warning to the PCs. As it played out I used the last sentry to divulge a few more useful rumors that the PCs hadn't picked up back at the tavern.

Austin promises to join the party next time, so the game balance should be better. I hope the next session goes well and we get more accomplished.