Well we had our first little playtest of 4th Edition. Temple and I went through the process of building a couple of characters using the standard method of stats of 16,14,13,12,11,10. The first character he built was a Dwarvish Fighter that followed the path of the Great Weapon, in this case a Maul. He carried a Heavy Crossbow as backup. I’m giving it the stats of +2, 2d6, 20/40, and reload is a move equivalent action. This is a first run and I might end up making it a Superior weapon but right now it’s just a Simple. We’ll see how that plays out, if it ends up abused it’ll get its string cut in some fashion. But realistically it’s big, it’s heavy, and the damage feels right compared to the others. Perhaps after playing we’ll figure out why Wizards decided to not put such a thing in but added a Hand Crossbow which has zero benefit over the simple sling for the majority of classes and in fact is better in several ways.
The second character was a Halfling Warlock with a Fey Pact given that Fey really fit the Halfling side. There’s still some question we have on power choices at first level that I’ll have to post on the 4E forums. Assuming they’re up and working. The Halfing went with a Spear of all things and is foregoing any ranged implements other than her own powers.
The initial encounter was the duo was outside the city, well town, okay large village these days and found one of the old watchkeeps which is essentially a single tower about 30′ a side. There is a ramp up to the
door at the second story and the tower is approximately 35′ high including the crenelations. It’s seen better days by far, it’s been over a decade since military cutbacks have seen most of the watchkeeps abandoned. The outer wall, a wooden pallisade is almost complete gone and the tower itself is showing signs of neglect.
I’ll do a more indepth write up later but to sum up the warlock and the warrior found several goblins inside and were able to defeat them, in no small part due to the ineptitude of the leader inside. The minions were pretty sweet but then I’ve played True20 and have experience with minions aka Mooks.
The combat was more interesting for me as a DM with the goblin’s abilities and the same goes for Temple. Laura was also cutting labels (long story, don’t ask) and just Eldritch Blast’ed for the encounter.
Anyway, our initial bit of playtest shows some pretty fun potential. Again for all the haters out there, while you might have reason to hate, if you don’t at least get a the quick start thing that’s floating around and give the system a try you’re doing yourself a disservice. It’s like driving past one water park to go to the same one you’ve been going to because the new one has a different colored slide.
