Migrating to 5th Edition

I'm still sticking with Chanbara play tests for the games I run, of course, but Dean has decided to let his subscription to the WotC online 4E whatever run out, and is going to switch over from 4E to 5E for his G+ games. The next session of the campaign (still his weird, fairy-tale Eberron game) will be this Saturday night, Korean time.

So we had a chance to convert our characters to the new rules. I decided to make a change, actually. I rolled up a brand spanking new 6th level Paladin with the Oath of the Ancients, making him a pagan/Celtic style "Green Knight" named Jack Summerisle. Race-wise I chose half-elf, but going with the more fairy tale themes of the game, he's a changeling in the traditional sense of the word (Eberron has a race of doppelganger descended people also called changelings), swapped for a human baby by some fey from the Feywild and reared by the human family. He later learns of his heritage and becomes a paladin of nature.

I think he'll be fun to play. I'm looking forward to the new game with 5E rules. 4E has some cool things, but it's a bit too mechanical for me. Everything runs like a fine-tuned engine, which makes the game run smoothly, but it's the rougher, more organic feel of older edition games that I crave. Hopefully, 5E will deliver.

I did also update my old 4E character, Ryuden Kenjumon. He's a githzerai 6th level swordmage in 4E. Using a D&D Wiki (unofficial as far as I can tell), I made him a 6th level Fighter Eldritch Knight. I thought about a Monk with the elemental specialty (forget the name off the top of my head), but decided the Eldritch Knight was a closer fit.

11 herbs and spices

Dean's been running an occasional 4E game set in Eberron over G+ Hangouts for when we can't play in Vaults of Ur (Justin's been on vacation, so no Ur for a while now, we're getting back to it next week).

Anyway, we just finished up a game of Dean's.  Jeremy currently plays a Human Barbarian with some draconic/reptilian blood named Harkinn.  Big giant anime sword weilding bruiser. [He started out with a Minotaur Invoker? Warlock?  Something with a dark pact magic.]  I play a Githzerai Swordmage named Ryuden Kenjumon.  Extraplanar Jedi with elemental sword strikes.  When they play, Rob plays Cog the Warforged Cleric and Brian plays Ferramunga Blackboots, a Half Elf Swashbuckler (reskinning the Barbarian class actually).

We've been on the trail of some extraplanar prophecy, explored magical towers (I missed that), fought cultists, fought a traveling pack of clown/acrobat/jester Elves, been on the run from opposition noblemen, and other fun stuff.

Tonight, it was just myself and Jeremy.  And after leaving the clown Elven corpses behind (Kenjumon finding a nice new magic sword), we came across a small knight's castle.  Inside, the lord of the castle, Sir Jeuse, asked us to go hunting with him.  His peasants had been telling tales of a large bird monster in the woods.

We accepted, tracked it down, and spent a large share of the game battling a turducken.  It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I made the session because Dean got the idea from me.  He implemented it in a nice way, too.  Whenever the bird became bloodied, it had extra bird claws (and other random bits) appearing out of the wounds, and then it got more attacks.  It only had one hit point total, though, so once we'd vanquished the 12' tall turkey, we didn't then have to face the 9' tall duck followed by the 6' tall chicken.  Good thing, too, because for the second (or is it third) time, Ryuden has been dropped to negative hit points.  Guess that's what I get for being a Tank...um, excuse me, "Defender" but wearing leather armor and having a schtick of flying around the battlefield hitting people with an icy or electrically charged sword, instead of being a dude in heavy armor.

Anyway, Dean has given me a new appreciation for 4E.  It's still not a favorite system of mine, but I'm having more fun playing in Dean's game than in any of the other times I've tried 4E.

Humor for a Monday Morning

Didn't get much sleep last night, and not looking forward to this Monday.  So here's a funny pick I snagged off a friend's Facebook account yesterday.

I didn't get to do any gaming this weekend.  Enzo, who was DMing 4E, suddenly found a job in Seoul, where his girlfriend lives, and moved there.  So that game's finished.  And we're not sure what do do next. 

I'm just too damn busy to be full time DM, even for something like Classic D&D. 

Jeremy is thinking about running something with the Microlite20 system, and having looked over the player's book last night, it looks interesting.  No one else has shown any interest in that yet, though.

Then there's the guy in Gimhae who wants to play Pathfinder.  I'm not against playing PF, but the dude lives fairly far away from all of us, and wants us to go to his place to play.  So that's not likely to happen unless he gives and agrees to run the games at some location here in Busan.

So who knows what's going on there?  We've got this fairly large group of potential gamers that we can now contact online, but it looks like I'm going to have to be the one to take the initiative and form the new group.

Throwing Down the Gauntlet

While I'm always happy to talk about how much I like the 80's arcade games Gauntlet and Gauntlet II, this post unfortunately is not about them.

On Facebook, we've got a group now for D&D in Busan. I told everyone that since we can't play our 4E game this weekend due to the holiday, I'd be happy to run a Classic D&D one-shot in my Megaduneon. Another guy wants to start a Pathfinder game, and is looking for players interested in a campaign.

Now, I could be talked into a game of PF, if I weren't already committed to the 4E game. I just don't have the time to play in two campaigns right now. And so far, there's been more interest shown in my game than in the PF game for this weekend. So maybe it's a bit of frustration that he can't get the game he wants to play going. But he posted this in response to one of my comments about scheduling:

What is classic D&D? That garbage system with negative AC?

I responded to him this way:

Robbie, yeah, it's got negative AC in the book, but one of my house rules is to use attack bonus and ascending AC. It's still the version where Elf is a Class, not a race option. ;)

So, trying to defuse the situation with a bit of humor.  I haven't met the guy in person, but I'm wondering if our little group of RPGers are about to enter into a bit of a civil war? 

[Jeremy, Brian and anyone else in the group who reads the blog, this is a bit tongue in cheek.  But if Robbie wants to discuss the merits of Pathfinder vs. Mentzer D&D, I'll be happy to engage him!]

Something Simple

Looks like the 4E game won't happen this weekend -- it's the big Korean Thanksgiving festival of Chuseok.  Instead, we may do a one shot in my Megadungeon.  Maybe.  It's still not decided yet.

Anyway, if we do, I made up this simple little time tracker.  Each hour has six Turn boxes, and every second one is shaded to remind me to roll for random encounters.  Feel free to use it as you like, modify it, whatever.

Dungeon Delve Time Chart

Mopping Up

We had our second session of the 4E game today.  It went fairly well.  We had a time limit, as Alex had to go somewhere this evening, so we only had 4 hours to play.  Still, within that 4 hours we managed to finish off the first section of the module.

In the last session, we'd fought some pugwhampees, small jackal-headed humanoids.  They give off a bad-mojo aura, so everyone needs to roll to hit twice, take the lower roll, if you're near them.  That made me fairly valuable fighting them, as I'm ranged so I was usually out of their aura, and when I was in it I had auto hitting magic missiles.  Adam, playing a Warlock, is similarly ranged, and was doing good as well.  Our Fighter (Jeremy) and Warlord (Alex) were doing well when they could hit, but that aura is nasty.

At first, we spent some time investigating the alter the pugwhampees had desecrated, and I found a gem in a gnoll skull decoration.  Then a pugwhampee started sniping at us from behind, so we bashed it pretty good and made it run away.  Of course we followed.

Well, we finished off the last of the little beasts, then fought some stirges and found a bit of treasure.  There was also a statue of the monastery's patron saint, with hands upraised in offering, and scratch marks on the floor showing that something's underneath, but we couldn't find the key to open it. 

We went to the next section of the monastery.  The first door was to a library, where there were swarms and swarms of rats.  We thought about trying to just shut the door and run away, but I used my daily power, Phantom Chasm, which made a zone that made any rats moving into it fall prone.  How can a swarm fall prone?  Who cares.  Say they're stunned, or temporarily disoriented, or whatever.  My Icy Blast that lets me slide targets hit was handy after that, as I could slide them out of the zone and when they re-entered they fell prone again.  So with bashes from the fighter-types and zaps from the Warlock, we finished them off.  The only book that was intact was a book about elemental creatures.  We saved it for later.

Time was running a bit short, so Enzo decided to just narrate the rest of the search of the first floor.  No more monsters, no more treasure.  The caravan arrived, we were congratulated, the prodigal NPC Cleric returned, and we took an 'extended rest' to recharge.  During the rest I read the book, which was about powerful djinn warriors of wind who fought evil with four legendary weapons (one of them being the patron saint of this monastery). 

Our boss then showed us how to open a sealed door with stairs leading down behind it, and asked us to clear out these crypts.  We were expecting undead, but instead encountered a weird SCIENCE!!! type lair with all of these strange vats and devices with greenish goo inside.  Alex's Warlord Minotaur found a big cleaver with a syringe attached, and we thought it would be fun to fill it with some of the goo.  Turns out (likely you saw this coming, I sort of did) the stuff was Green Slime, which attacked.  It was a long fight, but we managed to put it down without serious injury (the slime's attack is toned down over Old School versions for sure, but man did it have lots of hit points!).

We then got rewards from the boss lady (I got a Staff of Wind +1, not sure what the others all got yet), and we advanced to Level 2.  And we managed to finish right at 5:00 when Alex had to leave.

Enzo, Jeremy, Alex and I are all now getting the hang of our characters and how best to use their abilities and powers.  That made the combats go faster.  Fighting things besides pugwhampees was nice, because those re-roll auras were annoying!  The stirges went down fast.  We're coordinating out attacks better, and remembering to use those encounters and dailies.  That helps move things along faster. 

It was fun today.  Enzo is a pretty good DM.  He's still not completely familiar with the rules, but he did a good job of making rulings and moving on if we couldn't find a relevant rule quickly in the books.  He was really encouraging us to describe our attacks more, and that makes a difference.  The first combat against the remaining pugwhampees was long, as was the green slime battle, but the stirge fight and rat fight were both fairly quick affairs, and we had some good chances to roleplay our characters during combat.  I'm still not quite sold on 4E, though.  I'm seeing the system and the play-style it's designed for better, and while it's not bad, it's really not what I'd prefer.  But the group is good, and it is fun, so I'm definitely not going to quit.  

Dull Reading

Finished the next chapter of the 4E Essentials Rules Compendium, the one on Skills. 

BORING!!!!!

But anyway, it's out of the way.  4E, like most successors to 3E, has pared down the number of skills, combining similar ones into one bigger skill.  So "Athletics" covers running, jumping, swimming, climbing, and the like.  "Thievery" covers most of your typical Thieves' Tools operations (find and remove traps, open locks) with Pick Pockets.  3E's Knowledge skills are for the most part now subskills of other areas.  "Nature" covers survival and Knowledge: Nature, and IIRC Handle Animal. 

So they've made improvements on the skill set, and the system.  Automatic level bonus (1/2 level, round down) to all skills, and training gets you a +5 bonus to that skill.  Much easier than trying to assign skill points.  I'm sure this is a big benefit when designing NPCs.  Skills were one of the worst things about NPC/monster design in 3E.

Still, it was pretty dry reading.  Glad it's over with.  And if we have another skill challenge in Enzo's game tomorrow, I'll have a much better idea of what that entails.

Homework Complete

Next Sunday we'll be playing Enzo's 4E game again.  He let us know that we'll probably level up in the middle of the session, at the end of the module's chapter.  Knowing it takes some time to choose powers and feats, he asked us all to decide in advance what we'll take to make the process go smoother and allow us to continue the game.

So I've decided on my Level 2 Utility powers and my next feat. 

Feels like doing homework. 

Very superstitious, writing's on the wall

I'm not actually a very superstitious person, but I do have a few.  My one dice superstition is that the old dice I collected from my TSR box sets are now MY dice.  No one else gets to touch them. 

Back in the day, we just didn't have that many dice.  KillingMachine, my cousin Ben, and I each had two sets from our Basic and Expert sets, an extra pair of d10s each from Star Frontiers (which usually stayed in the SF box), and whatever extra d6s we scrounged from old board games.  And if one of us was at another's house and didn't bring our own, of course we shared our dice.

Now, though, I've got more than enough other dice that the old ones stay safely far from others in their own little gray dice bag.  And I mostly use them when rolling up my Megadungeon encounters or monster hit dice or number appearing and all that, not much for actual gaming.

Anyway, last Saturday, for some reason I brought that set of old dice to the 4E game.  And they were rolling quite poorly.

I wonder if my dice were trying to tell me something.

Just in case, I'll be bringing a different dice bag to the next game.

A Winner is Me!

Just got home from the new 4E game.  It was fun, but not super fun.  We had a few interesting challenges, one short battle and one long one.  As a Wizard, I ended up using Magic Missile more often than any of my other powers.  It's guaranteed damage, and the bad guys we were up against had a 'bad mojo' aura that made you roll two attack rolls and take the lower, so it was safer just to blast with auto hit MM.  Not exactly varied tactics, but it was effective, and I guess that's the name of the game.

The module, one of the Pathfinder modules that Enzo is converting to 4E, is decent.  A bit railroady at the beginning, but it looks to open up some more as we progress.

In more exciting news, I just checked the lotto numbers, and we matched three of them!  I just won 5000 won!  (about $5).  I'm sure we'll spend it on next week's lotto.  :D