D&D Ramblings

 Last night finished out the main campaign in one D&D game. The Storm King is returned to his throne, the manipulating dragon attempting to unseat him is slain, and the heroes reached 11th level, I believe.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience as a social game thing, even if online. The game itself I may be a little more critical of (woo, pessimism!).

Technically, we had some issues here and there, bouncing between Discord and Roll20 before settling on the latter. Two of the players are in the same place, which complicates the "cleanness" of headset use and led to some poor audio and feedback at times. And the DM frequently complained about wrangling things in Roll20's interface, especially lighting.

Coupled with a DM who didn't quite have the improvisational confidence to spin off from the published campaign much, I had the feeling the game wasn't all it could have been. I think characters were a bit more than their combat capabilities, but only a bit. I would have preferred more in the personality/story development, but for all those reasons it didn't work out that way. That's not to say it was bad, mind you, just shadowed by "could have been better."

The end fight is a fair example, actually. Taking on a manipulative ancient blue dragon is an epic start. Going to assault her lair with the support of a handful of storm giants against her minions and traps sounds even more epic. In a practical sense, however, we spent three full sessions chasing her around some caves trying to get to the point of being able to do something effective. And at that, I think the DM might have been cutting back on her cunning use of terrain and traps toward the end to avoid drawing things out more. I think the giant I was controlling may have gotten a hit or two in, but Kadoc? Umm... I think my contributions to the encounter were barely surviving two lightning breath attacks and healing small amounts while running around trying to get into melee range. I don't recall ever actually being able to attack. I'm not sure if it was encounter design or implementation, but the climactic, epic battle was just kind of a slog. Of course, it would have been a let-down if the dragon just stood there and slugged it out, so... eh... not sure how that should have been punched up, exactly.

There's discussion now whether to continue on to do some more optional things with those characters or to start new ones. I'm kind of split on that. I'm a little intrigued by the idea of playing a kenku (perhaps because my Godbound raven-shifter hasn't seen play yet), but I think this voice-based setup would probably be a very bad forum for it.

I have enjoyed Kadoc. Noble protector is fun enough to play. The functionality felt good too with only one real exception. Though a "basic" paladin, he ended up being the primarily healer, secondary tank, and one of the top damage dealers (go, smite!). In a different party mix, that would change, but the only real mechanical weakness I felt while playing him was a lack of ranged combat ability.

In contrast, I find Harrick (a level 16 Battle Master Fighter in our long-running Sunday game) kind of boring. Maneuvers offer some choices in combat beyond "I hit him," but I find them pretty lackluster as levels increase and they don't measure up to the flexibility of spells. In a pretty low-magic campaign, he has one of the longest-running magic items, but without any opportunity to unlock other abilities, it amounts to an extra d6 of fire damage and that's all. No special armor, or even actual plate mail means his AC remains 19. He can take some hits and he taught me how useful Heavy Armor Mastery can be over the long haul, but still... pretty boring. I've thought about mixing classes, they just don't fit the character and situation - no holy cause to pledge into paladinhood, barbarian conflicts with heavy armor, magic doesn't really fit him. I like him being the self-appointed guardian of the captain and straight-man, but mechanically there's not really much interesting there to shine.