Return to the Chaos Scar: Adventure Recap and Lessons Learned

4Oct/100

Return to the Chaos Scar: Adventure Recap and Lessons Learned

Finally, the second Chaos Scar adventure! Last time, we helped free a ruined temple of Erathis from a small horde of undead, which proved to be a very tough fight for my Avenger, with his only saving grace being his ridiculous AC.

This time, we found ourselves facing a truly bizarre menace; a shadowy cult of an unknown God, in league with creepy crawly arachnids and Ettercaps! Our foes would strike from the shadows, hiding in darkness and firing crossbows at us, only to vanish an instant later.

If you guess that our opponents were Drow…you’d be wrong! In an interesting twist, we were up against the new Duergar, a race of evil Dwarves who had defiled an old temple of Moradin (the major Dwarf deity) and filled it with eight-legged horrors.

4th Edition has totally redesigned the classic Duergar, giving them porcupine-like quills that they can hurl as ranged weapons. Whoever decided to band them together with giant spiders and scorpions was a genius; this adventure was tough, but for entirely different reasons than our last outing.

Ettercaps are pretty vicious; the spider-like humanoids have gotten a revision as well. They keep their classic ability to fling webs, and their venomous bite has gotten more dangerous than ever before; stun and ongoing damage, save ends. Poor Chuck’s Monk spent several turns stunned due to bad luck on saves.

Actually, there were status effects flying around like you wouldn’t believe; in the last battle, our Defender was simultaneously poisoned, slowed, grabbed, and weakened. I was immobilized by webs, and someone was even ‘restrained’; there’s a lot of bad things that can happen to you in this game.

-Actually, I was a bit confused about WTH ‘restrained‘ meant; after I got home, I looked it up:

Restrained: you grant combat advantage. You are immobilized. You can’t be force to move by a pull, a push, or a slide. You take a -2 penalty to attack rolls.

In a word, one of the more lethal status effects in the new game. Yuck!

There were a few rules questions at the table, some of which I had to look up later. One of the utilities I’d chosen for Tony is ‘Distracting Flare’, an Encounter ability that lets me move my speed while being invisible. As you may recall, I made Tony when I had less of a firm grasp on the game rules: I’d consulted an Avenger guide, which promised me that he’d easily avoid opportunity attacks with this power.

So imagine my surprise when I went to use it, and got attacked anyways! Now you’d think this wouldn’t be so bad, since the enemies were at -5 to hit, but sadly, the first attack was a critical hit that came just shy of my Bloody value!

Sure enough, once I looked up the rules later, on page 281 of the PHB, I found this:

Invisibility – You can’t be seen by normal forms of vision. You have combat advantage against any enemy that can’t see you. You don’t provoke opportunity attacks from enemies that can’t see you.

Oh well, you can’t win them all. I’ll just know better for next time!

My high AC served me well in this; our enemies were pretty vicious. My armor itself, the Sanguine Vestments, also came in handy. The Avenger-special armor quality grants a +1 to all defenses to the Avenger when their Oath target is bloodied, kicking my AC up to 24 and my Reflex to 19, and believe me, it came down to the wire more than once!

On the other side of the screen there was some complaining about low die rolls from our enemies, but, from my perspective, that was a good thing. None of these fights were easy, and Action Points were being spent like water just to make headway!

To my surprise, unlike the undead from last time, these enemies actually reacted to the Defender’s marks, and more than once, an enemy I was fighting made the mistake of moving away from me! I was so surprised that I actually forgot to apply my Censure bonus damage several times! I also couldn’t remember if my Censure damage only applied to my next attack or not, since the character sheet doesn’t say, and I didn’t bring my books.

But you know, I’ve long believed if you forget something, that’s your fault; the fight against the last enemy would have gone a lot faster if I’d had my head on straight, but oh well. And yes, it turns out that yes, my Censure bonus lasts until the end of my next turn.

Despite all of that, and being weakened, Tony harried the main enemy all the way to the end, until we finally cornered him as a group. I was sitting at 7 hit points, our Leader was out of healing, and the enemy started moving away. I should have used a potion or my Second Wind, but I thought about what Tony would do.

“Kord favors the bold!” And I charged right on in (I forgot about my Shifter bonus to speed, but luckily, I didn’t need it to keep up with a Speed 5 Duergar). They can change the game as much as they want, but roleplayers will still roleplay!

Still having some problems with my various choices in combat, however. There was one turn in particular where I wasn’t sure what my enemies would do, and when they moved, I was momentarily confused. You’d think with only having 2 at-wills, 2 encounter powers, a daily and a utility, that this wouldn’t be a problem, but..yeah. I do apologize to everyone for slow play!

Sequestering Strike proved to be very useful overall, even though I did misuse it once, dropping an enemy into a pit. This is risky, since apparently, if you teleport an enemy into a hazard, they get a save, and if they make it, the power doesn’t happen!

The big feature of Sequestering Strike is that it teleports both the enemy and myself; and in the last battle, I showed off it’s proper use. There was a big, burly Duergar in a defensive position in front of the main enemy. I got the highest initiative, so I charged in, spent my action point, and used Sequestering Strike to teleport both the enemy and myself six spaces, away from his allies, and into range of the party’s attacks before he could blink!

I was pretty smug about it, but I think I’m justified.

Now that I think about it, I also forgot to apply the bonuses from my Daily for the final battle as well. I need to buy some note cards or something!

At any rate, I made out like a bandit, winning the level 7 (!?) weapon from the adventure, a +2 Devil Blind Warhammer. It’s not the weapon I really wanted (I’ve been looking to change out my Heavy Pick for a Heavy Flail), but the extra +1 to hit and higher minimum damage (it’s versatile, so I used it two-handed for +1 damage) really came in handy. Even with my Oath of Emnity, I missed several times, and I can see why most people believe you should start with an 18 in your main stat; the extra +1 to hit really does matter!

Divine Guidance was an MVP as well; it didn’t always help, but when it does, it’s golden; I really like having a Leader-type ability to use.

Final Thoughts: Chaos Scar lives up to the legacy of the original Caves of Chaos quite well; the encounters are very challenging, and simply walking in and smacking things for damage isn’t going to save you. You really need to think tactically!

Level 3 is a real difference in game play from level 2; the extra Encounter Powers are where your characters really start showing off their potential and actually doing what they’re intended to do. I noticed that Tim’s Wizard became much more of a controller, and my Avenger became a lot better at peeling enemies away with Sequestering Strike.

We got beat on pretty hard, but in tough encounters, the new system really shines, as each character can do a lot to help their allies out.

I need to tighten up my own play, however. You can tell I’ve spent too much time on the other side of the screen; I was easily able to keep track of conditions affecting my teammates, reminding enemy and ally alike of saving throws, and such, but I couldn’t keep my own bonuses straight! Bad player!

I’m still pretty underwhelmed by at-Wills in general. On paper, mine sound good, but in practice, their benefits are pretty specialized, and so there’s not much difference between them and a Melee Basic. Especially in my case! One of the changes Essentials makes is giving every character a useable Melee Basic Attack; I can tell you this, at least, is a very good thing. If I hadn’t taken Melee Training for Tony, my performance would have been pretty lackluster, as enemies provoked opportunity attacks more than once!

I really have to call the designers out on this: not every Melee character is Strength-based. A Charisma-based Rogue can scamper around the battlefield like nobody’s business, and deliver very good damage, but his enemies can just walk away from him, and he can be left rather impotent to do much about it!

Ultimately, though this was a solid learning experience for me, and I had a blast as well. Join me next time, as I get to work on Bonesnap 2.0!