Things About 4e I Learned from the RPGA

As I touched on in an earlier post, I had the opportunity to play in three RPGA games at Gencon.  Three different groups of players, three different GMs, three sessions in a style completely different from my norm.

These are some of the observations I took away from those sessions.

Teamwork Matters. It’s been said before, but fourth edition really is about the party, not any individual character.  Good tactics and working together as a team tend to trump individual powergaming.  Creativity in skill challenges tends to get you further than rolling away with your biggest modifier.

Party Composition Doesn’t Matter (Much). My first session featured a paladin, two warlords (one of each type), a rogue, a warlock, and my wizard.  This is close to the suggested group.  We blazed through every combat encounter, downing a score of orcs without any serious injuries (barring a surprise round in which the paladin was piled upon by minions — but he never dropped, even then).

My second session featured a fighter, a warlock, a ranger, and three wizards (including mine) — yes, not a single leader.  We fought a bunch of constructs and undead.  We lacked radiant damage, and the undead took half-damage from non-radiant sources.  We lacked in-combat healing aside from our single second wind.  We crushed the first two encounters.  The last one downed half the party, due to the boss monster’s close burst 2 catching the entire party — and then recharging for use the next turn.  But we still beat the encounter, even though the fighter dropped early and the ranger and one wizard a round later.  The warlock and my wizard kited the heck out of them, while the other wizard sniped from afar.

My last session, the group consisted of a fighter, two warlords, a rogue, a ranger, and my wizard.  Almost identical, you’ll notice, to the first group.  This group, however, did not blaze through everything.  One of the warlords insisted on rushing in; the rogue was off doing things by himself, and having to be rescued by the fighter; the ranger’s grasp of tactics didn’t extend beyond Twin Striking and shifting out of melee.  We skipped a side part of the module’s dungeon and still barely finished on time, and we didn’t completely defeat one encounter (running past some traps rather than disabling them), which cost us some treasure.

The group with decent teamwork and no leaders proved vastly superior to the team with two leaders and no teamwork.

I didn’t get to try a group without a defender.  My gut feeling is that that would make things tricky but surmountable; right now, I consider a defender to be the biggest “need” in a group, followed by a leader.

Wizards Seriously Rock. Any time a wizard can hit more than one enemy, he spreads enough damage around to rival strikers’ output.  Control is underrated, too; I used Icy Terrain in every encounter, and it saved our bacon more than once; even the time where I missed every enemy in the burst, we were able to use the difficult terrain to advantage.  I cast Sleep only once, but even though everything made its saving throw on the first round (even the orbed enemy at -3), that one round of slow gave the party almost a free round of attacks — only the enemy the fighter was facing in melee managed to strike back.

Wizards Seriously Suck. On the other hand, if your group can’t or won’t bunch enemies, or moves into the midst of your area-effect spells and whines when your target area includes them, life as a wizard gets pretty tough.  Doing 1d6+Int mod damage to a single target is pretty pathetic, when you’re not offering buffs like the cleric or warlord does.

Warlords Are Awesome (When Used Well). I suspected as much from reading them and seeing the one in Skybreaker in play, but this confirms it.  I’m starting to love Wolf Pack Tactics, and the initiative boost and action point bonus stack up strongly against their rival, the cleric.  Course, it would’ve been nice to have a cleric when fighting those undead… but I think a warlord would’ve made things easier by a significant factor, too.

Not so helpful when the warlord refuses to plan and charges in, though.

Roleplaying Does Exist. This, I already knew.  But if a one-shot 4-hour session with complete strangers can draw the amount of roleplay it did, nobody has any cause for saying “4e discourages roleplaying” any more.  I doubt there’s a kind of game less conducive to roleplaying, so that tells me that you really have to try to avoid it.

Thanks to all the GMs, too.  One gentleman stayed through what should’ve been his lunch break, eating a sandwich at the table, just so he could run that extra table for us.  He also ran the most exciting convention D&D session I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing in.  He didn’t laugh at us for having no leaders, nor did he refrain from using the boss’s powers to full effect in a misguided effort to make things easier on us.  Really made my day.

Related posts:

1. Defining Roles
2. Fox Magic: Martial Feats
3. A Cogent Observation
4. Hanging in the Balance
5. More on Skill Challenges…