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3 years ago ::
Feb 03, 2010 - 3:26PM
#31
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Date Joined:
Jan 17, 2009
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I loved the BI, my congratulations to the event staff- we all had a great time!
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3 years ago ::
Feb 03, 2010 - 5:04PM
#32
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Date Joined:
Apr 22, 2009
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Our group of six traveled to DnDXP for the sole purpose of playing in the BI - without it I do not think any of us would have been there. So in that regards, the BI is definitely something I would recommend continuing in the future.
As far as I know, we all had a very good time, and managed to score commendations in Six of the Seven Encounters playing at P1 with level 12 characters on high.
My thoughts:>
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Overall encounter design was very good - the encounters provided a variety of different challenges and each character type was given opportunities to shine in at least one situation.
Encounter one was easily the most tactically challenging encounter I have ever played in an LFR event - more encounters of this type would be appreciated. Killing bad guys is easy. Keeping bad guys from killing good guys is entirely different cup of tea. It was awesome, really enjoyed it, and even with all of our efforts we only saved 11 of the 12.
The skill challenge was also very intersting - there was a constant sense of tension and strategies had to evolve every round as the challenge kept increasing.
Encounter two was tactically interesting, but most of the terrain was too unpredictable to 'risk' interfering with - this certainly limited the encounter to some degree.
I found Encounter 3 to be somewhat anti-climatic, a time element or somethign similar would have probably helped. We were able to defeat two of them, but were not really ever threatened by the situation.
The final encounter seemed to be mostly dessert - the primary badguy lasted less then two rounds, and it was mostly friendly mop-up after that. The judge then introduced a second bad guy several levels higher then the first one - that proved to be quite a bit more challenging.
Table interaction I found to be limiting, and overall my only true disappointment with the event. We were able to pull bady guys off of other tables on two occasions to help out some other groups, but other then that there was very little actual 'interaction' for an event named Battle Interactive. I was hoping there would be more observation and interaction with neighboring tables - as they failed or succeeded the situation at the current table would change - and that was not at all the case.
My suggestion would be to remove reinforcements at the beginning, and instead at the 20 minute mark, every table gets +1 monster (or whatever the encounter calls for). With permission of the neighboring table commander, this monster can instead be shifted to any adjacent table. At the 50 minute mark, do it again. In this fashion, the table commander's truly care about the situation at their neighboring tables, and as a group tables can attempt to manage the oncoming monsters to shift them away from the weaker tables towards teh stronger tables.
Final point - monsters at P1 do too little damage. As a party we had 6 daily heals - none of them were ever used for the entire day. We did have one character reduced to onconsciousness who promptly failed his first death saving throw, but a potion of healing restored him and that was the closest that anyone came to being truly threatened with death.
I think the encounter desing was fantastic - I just beleive monsters need to generate a higher level of basic damage at those levels to actually push the resources of a party.
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3 years ago ::
Feb 04, 2010 - 4:54PM
#33
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Date Joined:
Aug 21, 2007
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I think part of the consideration for the design of this BI reflected the uncertainty of WotC towards BIs. We wanted to be somewhat conservative, i.e., lean towards a style we knew they were comfortable with. LFR needed a success in their eyes with a BI right off the bat.
Keith
Keith Hoffman
LFR Writing Director for Waterdeep
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3 years ago ::
Feb 04, 2010 - 4:56PM
#34
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Date Joined:
Apr 11, 2008
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I loved the BI, my congratulations to the event staff- we all had a great time!
I was at the same table as Matt James, and I can only echo his comments. We were adequately challenged at P2, and we didn't end up stunned or dazed or blinded through half the encounters. Paragon tier can work without removing all of the heroes' actions.
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3 years ago ::
Feb 04, 2010 - 5:41PM
#35
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Date Joined:
Dec 18, 2008
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I'll say this about the BI and also the other P1 and P2 material I played at DDXP: well done! There was a good range of fight difficulty, even a few fights that downed (but didn't kill) members of my party. However, there was very little of the action denial that was present in earlier paragon modules. The damage seemed much more appropriate (higher) than before. I had a great time, and I'm glad to see that the BI was a success so the campaign leadership can move forward and be more adventurous with the next one.
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3 years ago ::
Feb 05, 2010 - 7:08AM
#36
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Date Joined:
Jan 17, 2009
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I was amazed at the amount of people, including WotC employees, that had never heard of a battle interactive before. Anyways, they seemed to be just as impressed and I am sure we will see more of them in the future.
I will get with Chris Youngs to see if I can write a Dungeon (or Dragon) article piece that is a Realms short-story based on the actions of the participants. It would be great to see adventuring companies and even individual characters featured and forever added to the canon-world of the Forgotten Realms.
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