Welcome to Your First Round of Combat in 4e You are Dazed

I was able to play 4e RPGA this last Friday and we had a new player to the 4e game show up. The guy had never played 4e before, but he had all the stuff. He was a subscriber to DDI, so he had a Bard and Psion ready to go. He even had those plastic card protectors for his daily powers and encounter and at will powers. He was way more prepared for play than I ever was. Matter of fact, I am still lacking in some areas. I have no card protectors and I still have not subscribed to DDI. I did have my character ready thanks to the character builder. Anyway, back to the new guy.

There he was at the table surrounded by six game hardened meta-gaming grognards. OK five game hardened meta-gaming grognards and me, just a grognard. And he started to role-play… I don’t think he noticed the stares and faces of the other players at the table. This guy was good. I never role played that well even a billion brain cells ago in my twenties, I only used one liners back then “He’s dead Jim.” or “I need your clothes, your boots, and your horse.” Simple stuff. I don’t think I even changed my voice much. I was a little concerned, but later in the game he was apparently useful when table talk somehow drifted around to Klingon prehistory… He knew who the first two male and female klingons were which had become a matter of debate around the table. Gamers…

The group that meets on Fridays are not role-players they are meta-gamers with extreme backgrounds in game mechanic history and by laws. These guys know it all. When it comes to playing the game it is all business. OK encounter one, now encounter two… their jobs at the table appears to be to find a way to build characters to break the game, and they are quite good at it. For instance the new tough monster build in 4e RPGA is the soldier, elite soldier or solo soldier, with the basic stats (DMG 184); AC 16+level, other defenses 12+level and high hit points 8+con+(levelx8) just cheese that up for elite and solo. To beat the soldier build you need to attack the other defenses until it is bloodied then intimidate the soldier to get him to surrender. 75% of the monsters in our battles on Friday were defeated this way, even the solo soldier. We had one player with super high charisma trained in Intimidate that was able to move about the combat field intimidating bloodied foes. The calls around the table once the DM said we were fighting a soldier were OK you three aid the player X so he can use his ability to attack Fort, Will or Reflex, Once he is bloodied Player Y will move in and intimidate. You, the bard, will be the healer for this encounter. This was a our second combat encounter in the game, and the new guy was told to be the healer by the grognards. Considering the poor guy spent the majority of his very first encounter in 4e Dazed, being the healer was a step up; though, I don’t think it was how the guy imagined he would spend his time in his very first 4e RPGA game.

I hope he realized this style of play is not exactly the norm, especially with this group. Our combat interlude was spent drawing the battle mat for the next battle while the players around the table did their short rest to heal up. Once every one was ready the DM asked for initiative followed by the a summary of all the “role-playing” we “had done” between encounters to get us to this final encounter.

This is the state of the game now. Little if any role-playing and us vs them (RPGA module authors) on who can cheese the encounter the most. I was no better off than the new guy, since I still like to role play. My PC was built with the basic adventurer in mind not for cheese so I ended up being asked to aid player X, so player Y could do his intimidate thing during the second encounter.

I told the guy not all tables are like this, and that I have DM’d whole groups of players at cons that were extremely skilled at working together and role-playing through the modules. He said he had fun, and even being dazed for half a combat was still a learning experience.