Author: Bryant

Hella belated, I know.

I played 7 games and DMed 4 games in April, which continues to be a pretty happy ratio for me. In a stunning upset, Xalcairn and I played together more than anyone else, thanks to a bunch of H2 games online for Collin. Both he and Susan played with me three times, but I DMed for him twice. Go figure. Meanwhile, Matt J. ran 3 games for me.

I just didn’t get as much play with the locals, sadly. Legends play was on the downswing. Of the 11 total games, three were face to face and eight were online. On the other hand, I’m not counting D&D Encounters here, so overall there was still plenty of local play – it’s just the LFR which tipped sideways. I think I’ll have more face to face games in May, though, when it’s all counted up.

I’m gonna change the target to 100 games at this point, since I’ve hit 50 already. 75 would be a pretty trivial goal. Go for the gusto!

Susan and I went down to Games and Stuff last night to get some more Ensa/Collin play in. Peter kindly bailed on his drow game to run Dancing Shadows for us. Along with Susan and I, we had Tom B., Chris, David L., and Doug L. Lotta drow, huh? House Rilyntel represent!

We may remember Chris from The Night I Called The Undead Out. I’m pretty sure he was choosing his encounter and daily powers on the fly in this game. Mild sigh.

Peter, however, is an awesome DM and fighting dragons is always cool. Every time Collin fights a dragon, I wind up trying to get on the dragon’s far side so that he can’t breathe on me and other people at the same time. It’s just like fighting Onyxia! So good times.

We finished up with Dave Guerrieri’s Finding Harmony. Geoff ran; me, Susan, Jeff, Emily, and Meaghan played. I bet you could see that list coming. I dug the plot, I didn’t mind the somewhat disjointed encounters, but I gotta say, that last fight, boy howdy.

I think the thing is that Fell Taints sound cool. It’s a new, unusual low level monster. They do some neat stuff. They’re not overused. Except at this point having DMed fights with them twice and played a fight with them once, all in the space of a month? I can do without ‘em.

The fight was OK, I didn’t feel like we were being stomped, but it did drag. I gotta point out one issue – the method for bringing the Fell Taints to the ground requires them to be within 5 squares, but they can fly at 6 squares of height easily. Easy DM fix, but confusing. I almost wonder if the intent wasn’t that they should be within 5 squares of horizontal distance? Dunno.

On the other hand, I really did like the plot. I was playing Collin and he settled down to hang out with the new settlement for a few months post-adventure. So that was a cool bit of roleplay enabling.

The second module of the day was The Missing and the Missed, which I ran. Emily, Susan, Meaghan, Geoff, and Jeff played. It’s a solid Waterdeep module with a pretty challenging pair of combats. The first one has the best use of minions I’ve seen to date: four minions who provide combat advantage against anyone they’re next to, and a bunch of normal monsters who get bonus damage with combat advantage. So I demonstrated the joy of focus fire by burning down Jeff’s Thick Eddie. I ran two leaders out of healing. Booyah.

I let up a bit on the second fight, with lots of monsters going in many directions, but it was still fun. Weird to see a combat-oriented Waterdeep module, though! I like the way the authors (Jeanette Martin and Sara Green) build combats; I hope to see more of their work in the future.

Oh, I am so far behind. Bad blogger. Last Saturday (5/8) we trucked up to Wilmington to play LFR with Jeff and Emily and people as a housewarming thing. They have an awesome house! And it’s good for gaming. So we played three games. The first one was Silver Lining, with Jeff running. Emily, Susan, Meaghan, Geoff, and I played.

Fun little H1 module. I played Cine, my eladrin noble psion who hasn’t been allowed out of the ancestral manse for 45 years. He’s a bit naive but very bright. I discovered the awesomeness of the telekinetic psion encounter power; being able to slide someone as a free action is superb. I’m definitely upgrading to twice per encounter.

And, as they say, “save the goblin, save the world.”

Some would say that my players (Matt J., spayne, Darklord, Eltherian, dakhran, and Zalarian) were mad for playing High Infidelity on high with no leader. I say they had two paladins who didn’t stint on the healing, plus a pair of really good wizards, plus two excellent strikers. Yes, warlocks can do significant damage. I wouldn’t characterize the adventure as a romp, but they did a really good job of handling everything I threw at them.

I really like Dave Kay adventures. He’s got this trick to making monsters challenging; he layers PC templates on top of his monsters, which gives him the scope to pick a wide range of powers. That means he can tailor the terrain to the powers, and his synergies are really good. It makes for a more involving fight.

I want to run this sucker face to face sometime and see how the differences in format shake out. Definitely worth running again; a good way to finish up April.

I am not sure why Drawing a Blank is a Core adventure, rather than a Dragon Coast adventure – it’s set in Westgate, after all, and it ties into a bunch of Dragon Coast story awards. Susan and I wanted to play it because we like Westgate, in fact. Matt J. was kind enough to DM on request, and we were joined by Newpaintbrush and choroidplx.

This was another one of those bard/sorcerer/paladin/warlock ridiculously attractive groups. As a result, the module provided absolutely no opportunities to use social skills. I snickered. I also got more satisfactory use out of Reed’s bard multiclass, both with nick of time heals and skillful acrobatics. Fear the half-pint.

The intro to this module is really atmospheric. The module itself is short and challenging. I know the second fight has gotten a lot of flak for being overly dependent on status conditions, and I think that’s a valid criticism, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it a lot. Then again, I used a lot of Snap Out of Its.

And Westgate owes us yet another favor.

Crystal Clear is the sequel to Sense of Wonder, and Collin and Ensa played that, so we wanted to do the followup. Happy day: Matt J. was willing to run it online! Our illustrious fellow players were Eltherian, Xalcairn, Kazordan, and Ryven. Good crowd, well-balanced party.

Matt brings the tactical challenge in a way I find really enjoyable. Tough but fair! And he doesn’t slack off roleplay-wise either. The first fight was a tad dull only because Collin can’t pull out all his tricks against single opponents. The second fight was brutal – we lost initiative and people didn’t spread out very well. But thanks to Collin’s Heal training and Ensa’s quick heals, we survived. The last fight was less challenging and still fun.

Also, it was cool to play a module set in Amn. Nice flavor. I’m looking forward to the last module in the series.