Well I'd call that first foray into Theria a success.

Initial thoughts:

I need to brush up a tiny bit on my mechanics for 4e stuff.

I really need to just take a moment and look over a monster fully at the start of a combat, really remind myself of what they can do, and THEN really get into the thick of combat.

I'm not sure where would be the best - so I'll put it here and in the yahoo group..

Guys, I just don't think it's going to happen this week. I might be over the cold that has vexed me since my kids gave it to me. More importantly, I'm worried that even if I am over it enough, I might pass it on. And while this might not be Strep or Swine, it's certainly a nasty little flu - fever, cough, runny nose, sneezing, aches, etc.

I'm thinking it might be better for all involved if we push off this week and then we can all have a good time at game day and pick up the investigation in Fallcrest next week.

Oh yeah - Somebody raised Trev right (in the D&D sense)...

Trevalon,

I'm just curious as to how you want to go about buying/selling in Fallcrest. As part of the level-up, I'm eying the Plate Armor Proficiency feat. I'm curious what kind of percentage we're looking at for selling items (in general). Given our experience in Fallcrest, how difficult does it appear to get plate and for how much?

Thanks,
Jim

You're pretty sure you've seen the dwarf smith working on both armor and weapons in his shop, and it sure looked like there was a nice bit of plate hanging from his display.

Selling mundane stuff will typically get you a fraction of its PHB listed worth. 1/5th is what the book says, but if you haggle some, I'm sure you can cut some sort of deal. (And they say RP is dead in 4e.)

Ooooooh...and IIRC, we did him a solid when we returned some of that stolen stuff...

You did indeed....

Trevalon I really liked the way you worked in the skill challenge in to the combat last night.

I'm glad it worked well for you. I've now run several skill challenges, and am generally happy with the rules framework for them. I'm not 100% sure I know the best way to narrate them, but I'm working on it.

For those not in the game...

At the recent Chicago gameday, I ran an entirely explicit skill challenge for the high level group. It was an escape from a melting temple, a la Aladdin, and done via a skill challenge. I gave out a sheet (stolen from Piratecat on ENWorld) that described the skill challenge in its entirity to the players on the sheet: what skills were needed to accrue successes, the DCs they needed to roll, and anything else related to it. I liked it because it was quick, encouraged perhaps a bit of roleplaying (I asked each player to describe what they were doing with each skill check), and there were real consequences for failure, both in general terms of the skill challenge as well as for extra skills (they could stop to scoop up treasure along the way as an extra action--getting all of the treasure made it easier for the rest of the party still escaping to get out because they no longer slipped on it.

This challenge, however, was part of combat, and not explicit at all. I didn't even mention the challenge until the PCs tried to do something about it. Here's the text of the challenge (mostly lifted from a challenge published in the DMG 2 and in the Dungeon Delve.


The PCs stumble on a bunch of cultists and their priest leader trying to open a portal to the Far Realm. They dispatched of the cult and their leader insanely fast (much to my chagrin) but the combat lasted a very long time because as the portal remained open, Fell Taints (I'm struggling to ocme up with a better name for these sky jellyfish from the Far Realm that are fantastic little buggers to throw at a low level group) continued to come through it at a rate of one or two a round. It was only after noticing that, and the death of everything else, that anyone tried to see if they could determine how to close the portal, and even then, I made anyone that asked, to fish around for what skills to use. "I'd like to use X to attempt to do Y" is more or less what I was looking for.

So yeah. I think I officially dig skill challenges. They're something that I'd probably use in almost any d20 game, just to have a good framework for a group skill encounter.

This past wednesday, I saw the most concentrated use of Bull Rush i've ever seen in my ten years of DMing. I think we had four people (baddies and good guys) get pushed off the edge of a crumbling tower. Good fun!