My first few encounters

I decided to get this started for those people who are thinking about 4e, and to note the parts I like and don't like about 4e.

I wasn't able to get my game going just yet (one guy got called into work, and another guy's girlfriend called, so we put it on hold). I did get a chance to run them through a couple battles before all that happened. Here's roughly how it went down.

As I mentioned in my previous thread, we have (all lvl1) a Human Fighter, a Human Wizard (focusing in cold and necrotic damage), and a Halfling Rogue.

I ended up starting it off simple. 8 Goblin Minions and a Goblin Blackblade. Worth about 300xp, and it appeared this combination was made to be used as such, so I just went with it.

The party stomped all over this encounter. Everyone knew their roles immediately rather than in previous editions where I would have a wizard run up with his staff because it did more damage than a magic missile, or a fighter calling for a full retreat because he took 5 damage out of 15 and figured he was nearly dead.

We played on the frostfell rift map for simplicity's sake. The rogue spotted the goblins as they were all about to round a corner, and called the shots. He snuck past the goblins, and signaled the fighter to get into position in front of them, while he came around with his dinky short sword and started gutting. The wizard was around the other corner and across a pit picking off goblins with magic missiles and rays of frost. The fighter came in cleaving goblin minions left and right.

The thing I like most, though, would have to be the blackblade's flavor. It's so much easier to RP his power than "and then he swings at you, and he misses". If you don't know, he has an ability to shift one square to get away. However, if there's another goblin around, he can trade places with them. I thought it was the perfect tactic for a goblin to shove one of his minions in the way and try to escape, which wasn't as possible to do before without a major rules tweak.

The party did manage to avoid getting combat advantage the entire encounter though, so I didn't manage to get the sneak off from the blackblade.

The rogue was overall the PC that shined the most. Sure, the fighter had Reaping Strike, and was using a greatsword (1d10+strength modifier on the RS, which was +4), but the rogue got an amazing sneak attack off with his puny short sword after flanking the Blackblade. He also took Backstab, so his total damage on a sneak was 1d6+2d8 damage. It was absolutely brutal considering the total HP of the Blackblade was 25. I mean, that and a magic missile could have ended it if he rolled high enough.

So the minions got a couple hits in (+5 vs. high AC of 17, it's going to hit), but the 4 damage they do isn't even that bad at 1st level, especially with the *wizard* having 22hp, and the healing surges. The blackblade took a nice couple of chunks out of the fighter and rogue, but they didn't even get bloodied during the encounter.

So, after that encounter, I have to tweak my adventure a little bit (3.5 monsters don't translate well) so I may have to wait until the weekend to get my game in, but I will write up as much of a detailed (and more orderly) report on our first actual game. It will come up though, and I'll try to relate it to 3.5 as well as I can. Thus far, I can say one thing. I prefer 4.0 to 3.5 hands-down. There was a bit of doubt before, but after seeing how much smoother the encounters run, how much easier it is to get new players going, and how little they sacrificed in the way of mechanics to do so, I'm done with 3.5.

Thanks for the right up. I think I may have to get the books as being the admin here I think I should be informed.

definitely worth it getting the books. They're interesting to read, and you may want to pull some of the material into your 3.x game. I've seen a lot I like in the new versions.

Auggie has the DMG for like 20.00

That's an awesome deal, I wish it was available before I bought my DMG

Oh, and we added a warlock to the party today, I'm pretty stoked about getting to see how that adds to the party dynamic (and I get to send tougher baddies at them

I'll have a write up of some other encounters when I run him through some "familiarizing scenarios/encounters" this evening (best case) or when the game happens tomorrow night or the night after.

cool keep us informed