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4 years ago ::
Aug 11, 2009 - 8:38PM
#21
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Date Joined:
Aug 22, 2007
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Agreed. It's tough to make any claim about the balance of this adventure outside of how it has played out. As far as I am aware, this is the first 4E adventure ever to have the PCs play without their equipment. There is nothing in the 4E DMG giving advise on this and no 4E articles that cover this subject. So the only thing I had to go on was my pre-4E experience on this sort of thing and the 4E designers' statement that 4E was less about equipment, i.e. it was nothing but educated guesswork and playtest feedback. So I am not going to claim any sort of perfect balance here. I am just glad it seems to have turned out as well as it has.
Ummm. Wasn't their claim that it was less about the MAGICAL equipment?
And, even then, there is at least one class available for whom it may make no difference, except for maybe 2-3 points of AC, to give up all their equipment. A Monk with magical hands....
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4 years ago ::
Aug 11, 2009 - 9:34PM
#22
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Date Joined:
Mar 26, 2008
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These spoiler tags have become ridiculous.
Unfortunately I've been told in the past that they're mandatory. Having spoilers in the thread title simply isn't enough. So until that policy is changed, we're stuck with them.
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4 years ago ::
Aug 11, 2009 - 10:02PM
#23
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Date Joined:
Jul 14, 2008
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I didn't enjoy it the one time I played it.
We kept our items and found the first 2 fights trivial (although they were much harder then they looked and we spend unnecessary resources mitigating damage by killing the monsters faster.
We only had 4 players and the last fight TPKed us. Since the # of monsters is incredibly high (The equivalent of 8 monsters for 5 players or 7 monsters for 4 players) the scaling was poor making the encounter especially easy for large parties and especially hard for small parties.
There was also weird things going along with hustling combined with a pointless hermit to trick you into talking to him to lose time on the pursuers.
I felt the mod was trying to do some interesting stuff, and while the multiple paths were kinda neat you really just encountered the same unrelated wilderness encounters in a different arbitrary order based on fairly arbitrary decisions.
Then again I've come to the conclusion that 90% of LFR adventures is the Judge running the table with the module accounting for only the other 10%.
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4 years ago ::
Aug 12, 2009 - 1:40AM
#24
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Date Joined:
Nov 10, 2003
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The scaling was a little off, true. That's pretty much inevitable if the number of monsters doesn't equal the number of players, unless you end up with some very complex shenanigans. With regard to 'playing along', our DM had us make insight and religion checks and we were confident that the Malarites would keep their word. The general 'ease' of combat should mean that the PCs can manage without gear, (although it becomes harder and harder as they go up levels e.g.a 30th level PC could be -12 to hit without his +6 magic sword). However, I have observed that many combats, even ones that the players considered hard, are not actually that bad in terms of how likely it was for the party to be killed. Spoiler for Moon1-4 Spoiler:
Show
I ran this the other night, and as suggested in the module, ran encounter 4 into encounter 3 without a short rest. That's a level 11 followed by a level 12 fight with no short rest. The 'wave' nature means that it's not quite level 15 challenge, but it's not far off. The PCs cruised the first part, partly because although there's a lot of monsters, several of them are pretty low level (level 6 wererats had +11 to hit vs AC; a level 10 defender can easily achieve AC30 and be virtually unhittable, and even then they only do 2d6+6 damage with CA - they really presented very little threat) then when the second came around started blowing dailies, since they were out of encounter powers. I floored a couple of PCs, but they were healed immediately, and no-one was even bloodied by the end.
The players agreed it made for a good challenge. I just put this in by way of example that well-prepared PCs, especially at level 7+, are actually capable of dealing with more than you might think.
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4 years ago ::
Aug 15, 2009 - 11:16PM
#25
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I throughly enjoyed this mod if the party takes any other path than the one the mod suggests it may indeed be easier. But it just proves either the party has no honor and is no different than the Lycanthropes they seek to kill or the party reinforces the Lycan belief that humans deserve to be hunted and killed. As a Paladin my charactor chooses death before dishonor any day. Spoiler:
Show
Going along with the mod not only presents a more interesting challenge but being considered honored amongst The Black Blood IS FREAKIN SWEET who the hell wouldn't want Lycanthropes coming to back up the party in a fight. Just listen to how awesome it is to proclaim your charactor has THE MARK OF THE BEAST seriously it just doesn't get any cooler than that
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4 years ago ::
Aug 16, 2009 - 9:19AM
#26
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Date Joined:
Jan 30, 2009
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I throughly enjoyed this mod if the party takes any other path than the one the mod suggests it may indeed be easier. But it just proves either the party has no honor and is no different than the Lycanthropes they seek to kill or the party reinforces the Lycan belief that humans deserve to be hunted and killed. As a Paladin my charactor chooses death before dishonor any day.
Spoiler:
Show
Going along with the mod not only presents a more interesting challenge but being considered honored amongst The Black Blood IS FREAKIN SWEET who the hell wouldn't want Lycanthropes coming to back up the party in a fight. Just listen to how awesome it is to proclaim your charactor has THE MARK OF THE BEAST seriously it just doesn't get any cooler than that
I agree that the way that we did it was probably the more difficult path, but the only one that my character could even consider. Honor is vital.
Spoiler:
Show
I chose the opposite story award because I felt that honor was satisfied by playing by their rules, i have no desire to associate myself with them in any way.
Having meaningful options during the mod makes the whole experience better. This was one of the more enjoyable mods I have played. P.S. Vamroc, i am glad that you enjoyed the mod after driving that far to play it.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 23, 2012 - 6:36AM
#27
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Date Joined:
Mar 28, 2001
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I played this mod this weekend and loved it! Great fun was had by all.
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http://twitter.com/#!/combatadvantage
http://www.combatadvantage.com
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1 year ago ::
Apr 23, 2012 - 10:56AM
#28
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Just to note, since this is a three-year-old thread which has been "resurrected"... This forum is a "legacy forum", a leftover from the days before WotC restructured their message boards (about two years ago), and created a dedicated group (and message board) for LFR. This legacy forum is still open for new posts (as you can see), but gets extremely little traffic. The official, dedicated message board for LFR can be found elsewhere here on the WotC boards: community.wizards.com/lfr/go/forum/viewb...Note that you may need to apply for membership in the LFR group in order to post on those boards. The new boards are administered by the LFR staff, and many of the Global Admins and regional admins post there regularly (and, of course, it gets much more traffic, in general, than these boards do). As the VCL for the RPGA, I come back to this board every few days, to see if there's a new post here, and direct interested parties to the new boards. 
"Of course [Richard] has a knife. He always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183, and we're barbarians!" - Eleanor of Aquitaine, "The Lion in Winter"
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1 year ago ::
Jun 01, 2012 - 11:24AM
#29
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Date Joined:
Mar 28, 2001
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I googled and replied without noticing. Opps! My bad kenobi65! thanks!
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http://twitter.com/#!/combatadvantage
http://www.combatadvantage.com
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1 year ago ::
Jun 04, 2012 - 7:59PM
#30
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You're very welcome!
"Of course [Richard] has a knife. He always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183, and we're barbarians!" - Eleanor of Aquitaine, "The Lion in Winter"
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