Keep on Shadowfell pre gen PC's

[Nymrohd]

I swear I thought it had an H!
*mumbles

 

[ZappoHisbane]

Or you could save the adventure until after the core books come out and let everyone make their own PC.

What?! That's what I plan to do.

That's my plan too. I'll use the extra month or so to gear up for DMing, something I have done infrequently at best. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all the hype about 4e making it easier on us rookie DMs actually has basis in fact.

 

[Eridanis]

It's only two and a half weeks between H1 coming out, and the core books. How many groups will even complete the adventure before the core comes out? Not many, I would imagine.

 

[Reynard]

Theory: just prior to D&DE, we'll get one of the pre-gens as a Des&Dev article. Those will be the D&DE "playtest" pregens and the intro fight(s) of H1 will be the D&DE "playtest". After D&DE, since there'll be hundreds of screaming fanboys/girls doing their own playtest reports here and elsewhere, the rest of the pregens will appear via wizards.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I had thought they were releasing this in April, I'm very sad they've moved it up closer to the release of the main books.

 

[Lanefan]

I will take a stab at the reasoning for 5 in the party. When they put the call out for playtesters they said they were looking for groups of 6, 1 DM & 5 players. Not up to, or around that many, but that many exactly.

Yes, the "ideal" party size in 4e is 5. (in 3e, it was 4)

However, since we know the design philosophy on encounter design revolves around 1 monster per PC

Not quite. The design they're going for, according to what's been leaked out so far, is 4 opponents for 5 PCs...which makes it easy if you've got 10 (or 15, or 20) PCs and slightly mechanically imperfect (if you care) for scaling to any other number.

Me, I'll be looking long and hard at KotS with an eye to ret-conning it to 1e and chucking it into my campaign that starts (I hope) this summer...

Lanefan

 

[Sitara]

Yeah, i'm seriously considering not purchasing it because its littl euse to me as a previoew: by the time its ships to where I live the rulebooks will already be out, and there will be enough info on the web for me to forumlate my own opinion.

 

[Danzauker]

I don't get it.

why don't people playing in groups with more than 5 players just wait a bit before buying the adventure, so that they have the PHB in hands and can make all che characters they like?

 

[Sitara]

I would like to add they really messed up with this adventure's release date: had they released it around 2-3 months in advance, they would have gotten far more sales, since ppl would have gobbled it up to get a preview of 4e.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't get it.

why don't people playing in groups with more than 5 players just wait a bit before buying the adventure, so that they have the PHB in hands and can make all che characters they like?

For some groups, the adventure might serve as a "test bed". Check out if the new rules suck as they say on the internet, or if they are the best thing since sliced bread as they say on the internet.

But I think people that want to use this for this purpose shouldn't worry to much about reusing the same character - it's your first shot at it 4E, and you will see the general direction (like or not like) even with an imperfect first adventure.

For my group, the default assumption "5 players + 1 DM" might already be wrong. We currently have only 5 core members, and even I can't get to every session any more.