Thursday, October 30, 2008

Another D&D Game, Another D&D Post

This week's Tuesday game was D&D. In this game I'm playing a dwarven cleric and I am less than enthralled with the character.

In this week's game we had to deal with a giant tree-thing that used to be an Orcus cultist, but gave herself over to Orcus so she could "live forever." A side-effect of her little ceremony was to animate a bunch of the undead in the graveyard.

The DM (John) came up with a cool random-effect generator -- a stack of cards that he flipped over each round -- so that more zombies would spew out at random or a flaming pit would appear or treasure would erupt out of graves, etc. It was very cool.

The wizard Taeryn (played by Kristian) and the ranger Balasaar (Mike) had good success targetting the zombies from range and taking out scads of them, although Balasaar ran into some trouble when he ran into the mausoleum to deal with the tree-thing and had to flee.

The rest of us (my cleric, Seth's warlord, and Wil's fighter) dealth with things as they burst out of the ground nearby and tried to make our way to the mausoleum. This is where my problems started.

The cleric isn't meant to run around solo. Sure, he can deal damage like anyone, but he doesn't have any good area attacks that help him to power through a handful of lame-o zombie minions. So when a crew of four zombies pop up nearby Rufus (my cleric) has to spend 4+ rounds killing them before he can move on unless someone else lends a hand, which happened a bit. And the whole time I was examining the character trying to figure out why he wasn't fun for me and I came up with two things:

1) he needs to be part of a group for his powers to have their desired effect and we were very spread out in this game, and

2) the cleric's buffing effects don't seem either extreme or interesting enough to really carry the class. Or maybe it's that I don't find the powers to be extreme or interesting enough.

Thankfully at the end of the night we'd gained enough experience to gain a level so I gained a 3rd level attack power and swapped out a lower level power for one I hope will be a bit more interesting.

The DM has offered to let me swap out my character, but I think I want to experiment with what's available to me before I give up on him.

As I said in my last post; magic is really what I groove on in fantasy games and I guess I was hoping the cleric's effects might be cool enough to keep my interest. So far they're not, but maybe I'll find a combination of powers that work for me.

4 comments:

Artillery MKV said...

Hey Jon,
I'm playing a Cleric in my regular game and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I originally created him as a dedicated healer, but quickly found out that it's almost impossible to create a heal-bot. I do find myslef using a LOT of healing powers, but I use attacks and AoE powers like Flame Strike, Consecrated Ground (which is a LOT tougher than it seems at first blush!), Beacon of Hope, etc.

All the characters get a lot better post 5th level. I have a few things that might help:
Look for zone and burst powers that add a little damage and heal just a little bit for their whole duration. This can swing entire battles.
Try to get a Symbol of Life or Exalted Armor (I prefer the armor btw) that can aid your healing powers for a round.
Cure Light Wounds seems like a 'waste' of a power, but it heals a LOT of damage, and especially more if you use the magic item power before casting it.

A nice thing about zones is that they keep the other players near you.

Stay close to the fighter, they need your healing as they call aggro onto themselves. You should have the second highest armor class in the group (after the fighter) and can act as a secondary shield for the party.

Wow, you guys have a Cleric AND a Warlord? AND a Fighter? You should completely control the battlefield!

Jon said...

Hey Kev:

Well I'm glad to hear you're having a good time with the cleric. Hopefully that means my experience will improve.

It just so happens that the item I got last game was the Exalted Armor, so that should help.

I'm sure in the next couple of levels I'll swap out some more powers and choose some of the ones you mention.

As for owning the battlefield, we haven't had much success with that yet. Our battles have almost all been completely overwhelming (like 3-4 levels above our pay grade) so our "heroic" battles have been more like desparate fights to survive.

Again, I hope it improves. And I don't want that to sound like the game hasn't been fun, it has been. I'm just not jazzed about my character's contribution to it.

Unknown said...

yo Jon--

Thanks for the kind words about the event cards. They were actually carefully ordered, rather than random. I scripted the whole encounter on those cards, and they allowed me to put way more detail into the encounter than I usually can.

I definitely think that encounter really didn't play to your guy's strengths, since you're not nearly as good at killing weenies as the fighter, the ranger, or (especially) the wizard. Your dwarven speed of 5 made it tough for you to get where you wanted to go and it took you awhile to deal with the Padraig situation. Plus, you had the tough luck of being directly in the path of like three consecutive zombie spawns.

How did you feel about the encounter immediately beforehand, the second Irontooth fight? You and the warlord and the fighter got into a good formation and traded hitpoints back and forth like baseball cards while you ground Irontooth down. (our fighter has multiclassed into Warlord and thus has an inspiring word power, plus he has a regeneration power now, so the three frontline guys are like hit point factories.) You guys rocked that encounter and still had enough in the tank to take on 90 zombie minions and a level 4 boss encounter simultaneously...

I think the next encounter will have few or no weenies. I wanted to see if I could put 100+ figures on the table in a single night of gaming, and now I know I can. I think it's time to do something with creatures that actually have hit points. And the battlefield will be much more constrained, but hopefully no less interesting.

Jon said...

Hey Johnzo:

I think you're right; the encounter just didn't play to the cleric's strengths. I suppose as a learning experience that was very valuable for everyone.

The second fight with Irontooth I thought went very well, but it seemed like you'd depowered him to make the encounter a bit more manageable. Or am I reading into things too much? Regardless, yes, the fight was good and felt much more manageable with the three of us shoulder-to-shoulder and I had a good time with it.

It's definitely nice to hear some "director's commentary" about what you've been trying to acheive with the different enounters. It's informative and helps me to look beyond just my character.