It occurs to me that I haven’t been posting lately, so I guess I’ll go ahead and update you all on some things.

Games I’ve been playing
Sadly, I haven’t really done much board/card/role-playing gaming lately since the big TPK. I did play a game of Three-Dragon Ante with my friend Dean; it was quite good. In the realm of video gaming, I’ve been playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney on my DS. It’s an interesting and somewhat goofy game, and it’s suitable for casual play, which is what I’ve been using it for. It’s a good game for playing in short bursts, but in extended sessions I usually find myself wanting to play something with a little more meat on its bones.

On my computer (my semi-new computer), I’ve been replaying Crysis and BioShock, mainly so I can ogle the improved visuals and performance. That’s not all, though. I also recently purchased Indigo Prophecy from Steam (a service which is rapidly finding a place in my heart). Indigo Prophecy is an adventure game of sorts, though it’s unlike any adventure game I’ve ever played. It’s got a lot of timing-based mini-games, a lot of investigation, and the dialog is less forgiving than that of other adventure games in that the game gives you limited time to make your responses, and you’re not sure exactly what your character is going to say when you make a dialog choice. At any rate, I highly recommend the game, particularly since it’ll run on older rigs (being an older game, itself), and you can pick it up for $10 on Steam.

4th Edition
So much has been released on 4th Ed right now that I feel it would be folly to try to cover it all. Suffice it to say, Wizards’ marketing people are earning their money right now. They released some interesting teaser information initially, then gave us a drought of information for a while to increase anticipation. Now that release is only a month and change away, they’re hitting us with a torrent of crunchy goodness that, in my case at least, is amplifying my excitement to a fever pitch. We’ve learned how many powers you get throughout your career, and at what levels; we’ve learned about paragon paths; we’ve learned about modifying monsters (and seen a few examples of monsters, as well); and we’ve seen the building blocks that make up a power. Oh, and the warlord class, too. All good stuff, and lots of information, but they’re always very careful to hold something back, so that we stay excited and continue to want more. Good stuff.

At any rate, I’ll try to post more frequently, though I can make no promises. Later.

Here’s what I know about powers in 4E as they relate to skills:

1. Some powers require training in skills. The rogue’s Tumble power requires that you be trained in Acrobatics.
2. The rogue has been described as being able to do more with skills than other classes.
3. Mike Mearls is working on 4E mechanics. He worked on Iron Heroes, too, which allowed you to do a whole lot with skills (albeit in a way that required you to constantly reference the book lest you forget something).

Add a healthy dose of extrapolation and speculation, and my theory is born. I suspect that many classes, the rogue more so than the others no doubt, will have powers that allow you to attack, defend, and perform utility actions with your skills. It makes a lot of sense to me, and would make a characters choice of skills incredibly important. It would also give you an incentive to drop a feat on Skill Training, because that extra skill might open up a whole bunch of cool new powers for you. I would imagine that skill-based powers would be mostly the purview of the martial classes, but the other classes might benefit from these things, as well. At any rate, to continue the speculation, here are three skill-based powers that I’ve speculated right into existence. Enjoy.

Feint
Rogue Utility 1
With a quick thrust and a bit of misdirection, you cause your opponent to drop his guard momentarily.
At-Will * Martial, Weapon
Standard Action
Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Bluff vs. Reflex
Hit: The target grants you Combat Advantage until the end of your next turn.

Taunt
Fighter Utility 1
With a mocking threat and a derisive laugh, you goad an enemy into an ill-advised advance.
Encounter * Martial
Minor Action
Close burst 5
Target: One creature within the burst
Attack: Intimidate vs. Will
Hit: Pull the target up to 5 squares. The target is marked until the end of your next turn.

Assassin’s Rush
Rogue Attack 1
You flourish your blade and dive headlong toward your foe, nimbly bypassing his defenses to deliver a killing blow.
Daily * Martial, Weapon
Standard Action
Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Acrobatics vs. Reflex
Hit: Your opponent grants you Combat Advantage until the end of your next turn, and you may shift up to 2 squares. Make a secondary attack against the same target.
Secondary Attack: Dexterity vs. Reflex
Hit: 3[W] + Dexterity modifier damage.
Miss: Your opponent grants you Combat Advantage until the end of your next turn, and you may shift 1 square. No secondary attack.

[Edit: Martial, not Martail]

I ran another proto-4E game yesterday. The adventure was something simple and (I thought) relatively short at only three encounters. It was based loosely on the Rose Quarry section of Shadows of the Last War, with some straight-up monsters, some re-purposed monsters, and one heavily modified and scaled down monster with its description and type completely changed. Unfortunately, my players didn’t even get through the first encounter.

There were four PCs: a fighter, a paladin, a ranger, and a warlock. They were approaching an enemy encampment at night time, from the cover of the shadows, effectively attacking from ambush. However, they were outnumbered in a fairly significant way. On the enemy side were two soldiers with halberds and crossbows, four skirmishers with maces, a pair of skeleton warriors, and Keltis Doran, an evil cleric of sorts (statistically, he was a hybrid of the hobgoblin warcaster and the kobold wyrmpriest, a controller-leader).

At first, the PCs seemed to be doing really well. The two defenders were drawing most of the attacks and weathering them pretty well, while the two strikers were attacking from range and dealing decent damage. However, things started to go against the players when the paladin fell, after being flanked and cornered by a pair of skirmishers and a skeleton (lots of sneak attack damage, and those skeletons have ridiculous attack bonuses; I actually wonder if those bonuses are correct). Shortly after the paladin fell, the warlock was taken down by a soldier and a skirmisher, even though the warlock had brought a lot of abilities to bear on them in an attempt to survive. That soldier simply did too much damage, and the warlock also got dazed for a round by the skirmisher, which didn’t help.

While all this had been happening, the ranger had been engaging in a ranged duel-cum-game of cat-and-mouse with Keltis Doran, while the fighter was soaking up attacks from a pair of skirmishers, a soldier, and a skeleton. The fighter actually managed to kill all of his opponents eventually, and the ranger bloodied Doran after a few rounds. The fighter ran to assist the ranger, but unfortunately all the bad guys who had taken out the paladin and warlock were new rounding on the remaining heroes. They took a few more out in the process (including Doran), but eventually the fighter fell, leaving the poor ranger to contend with a halberd-wielding soldier and his skirmisher ally–the only two enemies remaining. If the ranger hadn’t used Split the Tree earlier in the fight, he might have actually been able to take them out (assuming he stayed relatively mobile) and rescue his companions. As it was, though, a single strike of the halberd was all that was needed to sap his remaining hit points, and the party perished.

I learned some things from this game. One is that you have to be very careful when designing an encounter. There’s a fine line between “exciting and deadly” and “too damn deadly”, and as the DM you have to be careful not to cross it. I suspect that having experience point values for all of the monsters and experience point budgets for your encounters will help this considerably, though.

Another thing I learned is that, if the party leaves out a single role, it’s not a huge deal. If they leave out two, though, things can get hairy. Every character used his or her second wind, and the paladin burned through all of his Lay on Hands uses just trying to keep himself alive. If a cleric had been present, he might have survived longer, which would have helped everyone. Similarly, a well-placed Turn Undead, Force Orb, Acid Arrow, or Sleep would have done wonders for the heroes. When all you have is defenders and strikers, you have to be extra careful.

My last thought was that I maybe started the PCs a little too far away from where I wanted the fight to happen. The battlefield was pretty big, and I had included a lot of usable terrain. There was a field of crumbling columns that could be used for cover at the cost of movement. There were crumbling walls everywhere that could have been pushed over onto enemies. There was even a big fire that enemies could have been pushed into by the fighter, or by the warlock’s Curse of the Dark Dream, or even the paladin or ranger using a bull rush. Most of this stuff didn’t get used, though, because the players let the bad guys come to them, and most of this terrain was in their camp rather than where the players were.

So, in the end, I think this TPK–my first TPK, incidentally–came about as a result of some mistakes on my part in designing the encounter and some party design mistakes as well. Most of these things could probably have been avoided if a.) I knew the rules for designing a good encounter; and b.) I had known which of the six PCs were going to be in the party, and could have designed it with them in mind.