Our second session of the Greyhawk game on Friday night, and I think it went pretty well. At least, Martin was surprised to discover that it was almost 11:30 pm when I decided to call it a night… that’s either a sign that he was enjoying it, or his time sense is really, really bad… 
We got in 3-1/2 combats. The big fight was against a bunch of goblins, after the PCs chased a couple of goblins (the 1/2 combat) down the hallways. Lots of lesser goblins died, but the Goblin Underboss proved rather hard for everyone to kill. Rich’s fighter still quite hasn’t got the hang of Fighter’s Challenge – I really need to write that article – and so the Underboss shifted around a lot more than he should have, mostly chasing Peggy’s wizard.
I’ve decided to make the gods a lot more important in this campaign, and Peggy destroying an altar to the gods of Chaos (probably evil) meant she got cursed, and with no cleric in the group… What was the curse? She lost all her healing surges and couldn’t heal!
The good thing about that was it forced to her go to a church. With all the information I’d been setting up on the churches in Greyhawk, she chose Rao for the remove curse. That has also led into a quest, which has brought the PCs into the Gary Gygax “Mouths of Madness” section. Oh, and the thieves’ guild is pressuring Martin’s dwarf rogue as well to do jobs for them.
I’m enjoying this campaign. More Keep on the Shadowfell tomorrow!
Yeah, markings of any sort (and including the striker bonus damages like curse and quarry here) seem to take a little extra to get. I chalk it up to learning experience and figure it will stick soon enough.
Goblins- at first, I thought their shifting was a lot weaker than the kobold ability. Then I actually used some, and it worked pretty well. Having a hexer to back them up really made a difference.
I have Keep tomorrow as well. Should probably check to make sure I have everything in order.
We got into an extended discussion in the middle of combat tonight about the fighter challenge, marks and so on.
It’s a bit confusing, to say the least.
Our fighter is played by my 13-year-old stepdaughter, and the Fighter’s Challenge is the item she’s struggling with the most. There are certainly other adjustments in thinking required for playing a 4E fighter, but that’s the only one I keep having to illustrate and she keeps forgetting how to implement.
I was drawing up some ‘PCs as Monsters’ rules for running PC classes much more easily with less decisions, etc… and for the fighter I changed his entire mark/challenge/superiority mechanic to
Immediate Interrupt, when an enemy shifts, moves, or attacks someone else, make a basic melee attack against them.
Yeah, it’s different in a couple key ways, yeah it “stacks” with another defender, but it mostly gets the job done and it’s much easier to understand.
Funny, my group faced a goblin underboss as well (see my blog..plug plug). Yeah, they’re pretty tough. They have a ton of hp and when bloodied get even nastier. They’re really nasty if they have some minions to boss around too…