CO Diary - Eladrin Wizard in small scale game

[Todd]

Our group is running a few short sessions of 4e mostly as playtesting for ourselves while our normal DM is too busy to run.  We have 6 players when we are at full strength though it’s pretty common for us to only have 4-5 at a session.  Our tentative plan is to start at 1st level but to level up far more quickly than normal so that we can see the game from a few different levels.  I don’t expect the tests to get about 6th level or so but it’s still a bit up in the air.

Session 1

We were two members short today ... and most folks hadn’t had time to read the 4e rules yet (Amazon troubles for some, just business for others).  Two of us had characters ready and the other two spent about 3 hours reading the PHB for the first time and creating their characters.  We were going to have a short game session anyway so that didn’t leave much time for actual gaming.

When all was said and done we had:

Dragonborn Paladin (pre-gen)
Dragonborn Fighter with Warlord Multiclass feat
Elf Ranger (archer) with Rogue Multiclass feat
Eladrin Wizard (mine)

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Mindartis
Eladrin Wizard 1
STR 10 CON 13 DEX 16 INT 18 WIS 14 CHA 8
AC 16 FORT 11 REF 14 WILL 14
Hit Points: 23  Bloodied: 11
Healing Surges: 7 (5)
Initiative: +3
Skills: Arcane +11; Dungeoneering +7; Nature +7; Perception +7; Religion +9
Combat Options:
+ Longsword +3/1d8
* Ray of Frost +4/1d6+4
Spells: Ray of Frost, Scorching Burst, Icy Terrain, Flaming Sphere/Sleep
Rituals: Comprehend Languages, Make Whole, Tenser’s Floating Disk
Feats: Armor Proficiency (Leather)
Class Features: Arcane Implement Mastery (Wand), Cantrips, Ritual Casting, Spellbook
Race Features: Skill Bonus (+2 Arcane & History), Eladrin Education, Eladrin Weapon Proficiency, Eladrin Will, Fey Origin, Trance
Gear: Leather Armor, Longsword, Wand, Adventurer’s Kit

My thought was that we were unlikely to see leves 11+ in our short playtest, meaning no Spell Focus, so I dumped Cha this time.  Then I debated Wand vs Orb.  Again, taking the lower levels into consideration, I decided that Wand driven accuracy would probably be better than Orb save nuking at these levels (based on lots of reading here and elsewhere) so I prioritized Dex over Wis.

This wasn’t all driven by mechanical considerations.  I must admit that I really like a lot of the Eladrin art and love the idea of being able to teleport frequently.  Further I’ve long liked elven type characters over many others from past editions all the way back to 1st.  So I was biased towards the idea of an Eladrin Wizard from the first.  I tried statting out a human but just didn’t like the way it looked or felt with this slightly more than a “one-shot” looming.
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So on to the game.

Our group had been hired as caravan guards by a merchant.  So, of course, the game started out with him trying to double cross us and get out of our contract by sending us off early while he intended on slipping out under cover of night.  Naturally this backfired on him and he was eaten by wolves.

Our group actually heard the wolf attack and ran back in time to engage them.  Our first combat.

The Wolves won initiative, Ranger was second, I was third, and the defenders brought up the bottom of the standing.  We started things off with us some 25-30 squares away from the wolves in fairly open ground.  This was not a 1st level Wizard’s dream as far as being able to control the battlefield.

Wolves used the first round to continue eating our former employer.  Poetic justice.

Ranger goes next, advances and fires his longbow hitting one wolf.

Going next I really wished that I had taken Magic Missile, since all of my other spells were range 10 ... just out of my reach with a move action.  In retrospect I should have advanced and cast Sleep ... but I didn’t want to blow my 1 daily on a pack of wolves if we had more than 1 encounter that day.  So I just used a move action to advance and minors to draw my sword and wand.

The defenders advanced slight ahead of both the Ranger and I.

Round 2 the wolves charge the defenders, now aware of a new threat thanks to the Ranger’s hit.  They do minor damage to the Fighter, but none to the Paladin wearing plate armor.

The elf fires and hits again.

I fire a Ray of cold and miss rolling an 8.

That pretty much defined the rest of the combat.  I missed on 3 Ray of Frost rolls, before blowing my wand mastery and finally hitting at a time when it meant little.  The swarming of the wolves was a real problem for the defenders and they nearly took out the Fighter (he was down to 2 HP at one point and nearly got taken out the next round even after two surges, his own and the Paladin’s Lay Hands).  The Striker hit frequently and did good damage just like he was supposed to.  My Wizard was a big sack of nothing during this first encounter, thought I did like being able to cast spells every round at 1st level.

My lingering thought is that Magic Missile may be a bit underrated at 1st level.  20 range would have made a huge difference.  Also 10 range puts one within easy charge distance of most foes.  I like the idea of being able to attack without worrying about being charged quite so much.  Yes the Defender *should* be able to lock up a threat and the wolves obliged us this time around but I keep thinking that another type of foe would have taken advantage of me being so close in open space.  Similarly Force Orb would have been really nice in a situation like that where our two defenders were swarmed and didn't have the HP to take an offensive blast.

My secondary thought is that I really hope that one of the other players makes a Warlord or Cleric.  We could use the healing.  It was a big problem near the end of the fight.  I intend to get the Multiclass Cleric feat next which will help a tiny bit, but a group as large as ours needs someone in the leader role.

After this it was mostly story interaction.  We found the merchant’s log where he pretty much admitted to trying to double cross us posthumously and the name of the fellow in town that he had a contract with to sell his goods to.  So we honored his last contract, being good sorts, and in spite of the fact that he would not have done the same to us.  That we profited a tiny bit beyond what we would have on our initial contract with the merchant bothered no one in particular.

Additionally both the Ranger and I had noticed that the wolves were behaving oddly while in combat.  Post mortem investigation showed excessive foaming around the mouth and a much poorer condition than normal healthy animals (poor coat condition, leanness, etc.).  Follow up investigation indicated that several farms had been attacked along with a handful of travelers recently.

Soon we found our way from dealing with the caravan to the Lord Mayer’s office.

After putting up with a lot of Lawful Silly from the Paladin (too much 3.5 in the player's head I suspect) the Mayor hired us to find and dispose of the source of these attacks.  His version of the story was that some 14 years ago a local orphan had developed some very odd powers over animals and that snakes, horses, and more had all attacked various people while he was nearby.  Further, when confronted by the town priest about the possibility of controlling his powers, the boy had insisted that they were divine in nature and that he had no need to control them.  Consequently the town had banished him.  Now 14 years later it appeared that the lad had returned for revenge of some sort.  The mayor related several stories of recent events, including one where a town guard looking for mushrooms was attacked on sight by this fellow.  He advised us to attack first and bring us the head of this fugitive.

Naturally I didn’t trust that the mayor’s story was nearly complete, but we were unable to learn too much more.  The boy had been brought to a local orphanage at a young age from a nearby farm where both his mother and father had died of some plague like symptom.

The Lord Mayor had asked us to be discreet and our party Ranger cleverly seized upon the idea of the soldier who had been looking for mushrooms as a lead.  As it turned out these were a local delicacy and highly valued locally.  However the local attacks had kept many from gathering them this year.  Publicly he declared our intent to gather some for profit and we had our excuse to go looking for signs of the Mayor’s quarry.

And that’s where we left it.

[Todd]

Session 2

Not much happened today.  We had two folks who had to leave early ... so our DM helped by showing up 2 hours late.  With -3 hours of game time we didn’t get much done except to finish up our last mission & have one small combat.

Same characters & players as last time.

So we start out in the woods “looking for mushrooms” and promptly run into trouble.  After collecting just a few a group of Stormclaw Scorpions go after our little band.  The Elf Ranger and my Eladrin Wizard spot the things trying to sneak up on us, but the two Dragonborn bruisers are clueless and surprised.

The Ranger goes first and hits one scorpion with an arrow.  Then the Wizard gets to do battlefield control for the first time ever!  Since they were bunched rather tightly together I used Icy Terrain along with my Wand’s accuracy power.  Of course I roll a THREE on that first attack & miss even with the wand boost, but hit on the other two.  Knocking two of them prone actually prevented 2 surprise rounds attacks against the Dragonborn.

After that I used Scorching Burst three or four times.  The things had terrible reflex saves and I was usually able to target two at a time to spread the damage around.

The rest of the party did well with the defenders doing their thing, taking the attacks, while the Ranger did tons of damage with Twin Strike.

That was our one and only combat of the day. 

Once the critters were disposed I assisted the Ranger in tracking down their lair.  Inside we found the body of what looked to be a Human Rogue.  Thanks to some great Arcana rolls we found 4 magic items on his body.  Inside the enchanted boots we also found some dried herbs.  The Ranger blew his Nature roll but I made some very nice rolls for Nature and Arcana to ID the herbs as having been magically treated to cause the kind of symptoms that we had observed in the wolves in our first encounter in session 1.

However since the dead Rogue didn’t match the description of our description of the orphan we found ourselves questioning the mayor’s story even more.

Even though the spoor was quite old, since there had been no rain for days we were able to track where the Rogue had come from and found ourselves in a small depression with a pool of water at the bottom ... a quick investigation showed that the water had been “treated” with the herbs that we had found.

I immediately started trying to evaporate the water with prestidigitation.  We didn’t need any more animals drinking this stuff.

At that point we found ourselves surrounded by wolves ... much bigger and healthier ones than we had seen previously.  They were at the top of the depression that we were in, one wolf at each of the 4 cardinal points.  I guessed that we were about to find our quarry.  The wolves threatened but didn’t attack.  The Ranger tried to “make nice” with them to no apparent effect.  The dragonborn and their wolves growled at each other each trying to out intimidate the other.  Worried that they might attack and wanting freedom to be able to cast Sleep when we saw the “animal orphan guy” I used Ghost sound and my Nature skill to create a “howl” behind the wolf nearest my guy.  I got the space I wanted as the critter turned and moved to investigate the sound.

Sure enough our target showed up next and I got ready for fight #2 of the day ... but a negotiation broke out instead.  Sigh.

Turns out that Orphan guy’s parents had been murdered and that he had spent years tracking down their killers.  As it turned out they were hired killers and, once they were taken care of, he had been able to find evidence that they Mayor had hired those men to kill his folks.  Orphan guy had evidence of the hire and his parent’s old ledgers showing how they were slowly edging out the mayor back when he had them killed, providing the motive.  Solid stuff.

Our group had a big debate about what to do next.

Our “Lawful Good” Paladin wanted to just challenge the Mayor and kill him.  Never mind that the guards might then kill us next.  He thought we could just throw our evidence at their feet and make it all good while they looked at the blood on our hands.  His theory was that even if we died that we would have 100% for sure taken out the “bad guy” first so it would all be OK.  I couldn’t help but think, “Not!”

Our Fighter wanted us to tell the Mayor that we had Orphan guy’s body outside of town and convince him to come see it.  Never mind that we had been hired to bring back the head.  “Let’s just tell him that we didn’t want to get hassled by the guards for carrying a human head into town.”  Needless to say his “plan” had more holes than some types of cheese.

Our Ranger thought that blackmailing the guy might work.  That we could tell him that we had killed Orphan guy but had found the incriminating evidence on him.  Then we could offer to let him buy it from us.  Ideally he would want to do so alone and we could dispose of him without getting killed by the guards in the process.  This plan involved some wizard guy who could teleport being the messenger just in case it all went bad.  Hmm.  Somehow that just didn’t sound like a good career move.

My thought was that the rich merchant guy we had met back in the first session seemed pretty honorable, at least as far as human merchants went, and well connected to boot.  The logical thing to do would be to show him the evidence we had.  He would understand it’s importance better than most anyway.  Then one of three things would happen.  A) He would aid us in getting the mayor arrested.  B) He wouldn’t help directly but could point us to the proper authority that could help.  C) He would betray us to the Mayor.  Honestly C didn’t seem like much of a problem to me.  If he was on the Mayor’s side then taking care of him up front would just leave us with one less problem later on.

In the interest of making this all work while we lived to tell the tale I compromised.  We would go talk to the merchant guy and then wing it after that if he didn’t help doing either the Paladin’s “plan” or the Ranger’s as deemed appropriate.

Orphan guy didn’t really care what we did, he just wanted the Mayor to die at the end of it all.  He and his wolves were going to wait for us, and possibly the Mayor in a clearing just outside of town.

As it turned out the merchant was furious once he heard what we knew and had a chance to go over our evidence.  He offered to take us to the local lord, an honorable man, and help us to get an audience with him.  The Ranger suggested that we leave town separately and meet up outside & I made sure that we bought some stuff from the merchant so that we would have an excuse for our visit.  One of the things I got was a Scroll of Animal Messenger to let Orphan guy know what was happening.

A hard ride later and we were at the Lord’s castle.  It took some time but the merchant got us an audience.  He was outraged when he learned what the Mayor had done and was grateful to us for letting him know instead of taking the law into our own hands.  At this point I boldly asked the Lord for a favor.  It seemed unjust that Orphan guy was an outlaw.  I asked that he be pardoned if the Mayor was found guilty at trial.  Something that seemed inevitable at this point as the lord was gathering his men to ride on the town.  He agreed that this seemed just.

Our Ranger had a request of his own, even more bold than mine.  He mentioned that the Mayor had offered to pay us in return for killing an “outlaw” and asked that we get the same reward for having found the real culprit.  The lord agreed to that as well.

So we rode hard back to town, this time with 100 men with us.  I left the clean up duty to my companions as I made my way to the clearing where we were supposed to meet our friend with the wolves.  He was a bit disappointed to learn that the Mayor would be tried instead of just killed out of hand, but I pointed our the subtle irony of the man being caught by the same laws that he had misused.  Then I let him know that he would be pardoned.  If anything that was a bigger surprise and made the whole thing easier to accept.  He thanked me and told me that if we ever needed help that he would do what he could.

And that was that.  Our contact with the Lordling would lead to our next adventure but a shortage of time didn’t really let us get into it.
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Mechanically I really enjoyed this session.  In general being able to use Prestidigitation, Ghost Sound, Light, and Mage Hand at will is great, especially role play wise.  I really felt like I was able to do Wizardly stuff at pretty much all times.

In our one combat it was neat to be able to use area attacks every single round.  Having an AOE at-will is a really nice wizard perk.  I liked Icy Terrian too.  It’s a very reasonable low level encounter power.

I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t get to use sleep this time, but there is always next session.

Once again Perception was HUGE at the table.  It's almost a must have skill for a Wizard IMHO.

For our next game we are leveling up to 5th and will be facing a good number of undead.  Group wise both the Paladin and I will be taking the Initiate of Faith feat so that should help a bit with the healing.  I really wish that one of us was playing a leader type though.  I’ve been running a different 4e game with my kids and the leader really makes a difference there.