General Notes
I think that the feats went pretty well. It makes fighters much more interesting. Got ot see "Little Bastard" in action, that was fun. Still, the guys really needed a wizard when taking on the orc horde.
What's with the inability to hit with a stupid javelin three times?
I was kind of disappointed that we didn't finish the dungeon this week. I extremely enjoyed myself the session before when they were exploring level 2. A giant set piece is fun now and again, but I like getting a whole bunch of encounters and pokings and proddings in. Although, the guys missed two big treasure hauls that week in the dungeon level.
Below 0
The orc battle was a really narrow victory for the PCs. There was a serious beat down of PC's-1 mortal wound and 1 killed. Luckily they had the resources to reverse both results. I must say that I'm really satisfied with the rules for falling below 0 hit points we've been using. I want that delicate balance between instant-death and never-dead.
The base rules for D&D was 0 hit points equals dead, but that's just a bit too rough, and doesn't model life or literature very well, there's no chance of having a wounded dude who needs to be carried or rescued. It comes from miniature war games where you just want to know if a figure is on the field or not.
The alternative that evolved in the main rules was the slow bleed to -10 hit points, but I've found that most of the time this made it nearly impossible for anyone to get killed in combat.
I like how since there's about a 1 in 3 chance of dying once you hit 0, it is very scary to do so, but it allows most to survive it. It especially helps mercenaries and henchmen survive, while keeping everyone on their toes. I think 50/50 would be too much, maybe 1 in 4 would be okay.
Yeah, our lack of spell power is really holding us back, between that big orc fight, and that one fight with the old ones basically locking us up with that stinking cloud spell. What stinks is that we're finally getting to 'fireball' level with the characters, and we don't have anybody to toss one. A great deal of that orc fight could've been taken care of with one or two spells.
ReplyDeleteI like the way we're handling death in this campaign. All of the D&D campaigns I had been in before, it was at zero you lose 1hp a round until you reach negative your con, then death. And the bleeding could be stopped with what amounted to you spending that round's action giving first aid or something. So deaths were ultimately very rare, until we got into super high level stuff.
Dave was right when we finished up the last battle there Sunday: We were seriously lacking tactics in that battle. We have spent so long freely spending 'beef' to win fights, because our guys weren't fighter types, that we haven't really had dealt with serious battles (what? two dozen mercenaries wounded or killed in that fight? eh, we paid em, let's dump them off on the way back to town). I think when we started to get down to the end, though, our tacticals really started to come together a bit (but still, it was super close).
I think if we had met the animal charge with all the fighters, had used the cavalry to help screen the crossbow guys while they drew the orc infantry away, and used maybe the dogs, giant junior, and bosco/peaches to engage either the chief or watch the fighters flanks, we could've gotten through that fight better. But hindsight is 20/20 as they say.
I would also recommend (and I'm putting it here in case I forget it next time), that we take a look at the weapons/armor our henchmen are using, and maybe upgrade their stuff. With the new rules regarding feats, a great deal of different, more damaging, weapons are now able to be used.