User:Bill/Thunderspire Mountain Enhanced

Pregame

The local Encounters group tapped me to run the Season 5 module, Dark Secret of Evard. I agreed without hesitation, mostly because my efforts to put together a consistent play group have failed for the last two years, but also because I wanted to see how D&D 4 really handles. I've owned a copy of the game for several years, but I've done very little with it due to my general bias against D20 and all things D&D. Honestly, there's nothing wrong with the game; I'm just the sort of person that prefers to avoid popular things.

Anyway, one of the regulars expressed an interest in playing the season at a higher level, Encounters starts at level 1. So I determined to run the game starting at level 5. That presented two immediate challenges. First, I had to generate a set of appropriate characters. One of the strengths of the Encounters program is that anyone, regardless of his or her familiarity with the game can show up totally unprepared and join the game. To preserve that, every element of every character needs to be available for quick and easy reference. Bearing in mind that this season coincided with the release of Heroes of Shadow and the Shadowfell campaign setting, I elected to use HoS characters exclusively for my pregens. Drastically underestimating the time commitment involved in fully detailing each of them, I decided to make one of each class and race option. And, just for my own amusement, I used all of the fey PC races. Ultimately, I completed nine characters with notes for each power, feat, and magic item relevant to them; at approximately five hours per character to complete.

The second challenge would be upgrading the adventure to be suitable for level five characters. Encounters resets to level one every season, so I was anticipating needing to revise the adventure significantly. However, due to an oversight, our Encounters group never ordered the season 5 materials. Undaunted, and because we were two-weeks behind on season 4, I had time to find a substitute. I selected Thunderspire Mountain, an adventure for characters from levels 3-5. I probably could have saved myself some work by choosing a level 5 adventure, but I liked the tone of the book. The process of revising the adventure has been very informative too.

The Characters

Below are some notes on my pregenerated characters, including my decisionmaking process. I'm probably not going to include fully detailed character sheets for them though. I'm too lazy. One overarching observation that I made during the character generation process was how similar in power level these characters were to starting Solar Exalted, from White Wolf's Exalted series. That may be nothing more than me projecting my own desire for these characters to be something greater than casual dungeon delving sociopaths, but I'm far from the first to draw these parallels. My years of experience with Exalted probably shows in the names too.

Auden Grimson

Heroes of Shadow introduces a new Assassin variant, the Executioner. The class is designed around using debilitating poisons to set up the target for a killing strike. In fact it includes a class feature that literally says the character may choose to automatically reduce a creature with ten or fewer hit points to zero without a save. It's a little over the top, but I'm fine with it.

In effort to use every fey race in the game, I elected to make the character a gnome. It turned out to be disgustingly effective. The character is capable of using stealth reflexively and can create a variety of illusions to further mask his presence. Combined with the poison making gimicks, it looks like an enormously fun character for folks that like details and playing a character who is never quite part of the group.

Cleitemnestra the Widow

Heroes of Shadow fills in a couple blank areas including dark paladins. The Blackguard aren't necessarily evil, but rather than manifesting the benevolent and heroic side of a gods presence they express their god's wrath. On the surface, the class seems a little broken. It includes very nice at-will attacks that grant the character combat advantage. That by itself wouldn't be an issue except it also includes triggered powers that key off combat advantage and a class feature that stacks the character's Charisma bonus with it's Strength bonus for damage against targets that the character has advantage on. Rather than worry about whether it was balanced, I embraced the idea wholly. I gave the character feats granting it advantage on all enemies the first round and proficiency with a fullblade for maximum damage. I also gave it a feat that eliminates the mobility penalty for wearing heavy armor.

To add insult to injury, I made her drow. While a suboptimal choice as far as the stat bonuses, having the ability to toss around darkness and stun targets, basically means she can grant herself and others advantage in any situation that she might otherwise not have it. I think the character has a lot of opportunity for creative backstory, though I haven't filled any of it in.

Croesus Blacktongue

Up to this point D&D 4 clerics have been all about healing and buffing the party. Heroes of Shadow introduces the death cleric to fill in the gap of harming and debuffing clerics. Death clerics can provide some healing to a party, but not much. And the have a few quirks that really make them more effective controllers than leaders in my opinion.

I knew that one of the regulars, the fellow who had asked about playing at a higher level in fact, had generated a death cleric, so creating this character was more of an exercise in completion than anything else. To be completely honest, I didn't put as much effort into this character as the rest because of that and it shows. Even so, in the event that he is unable to attend or his character gets killed, I have another cleric waiting in the wings.

For Croesus, I went with a revenant. For the most part, I wanted to avoid combining races and classes from the same book. In this case it made sense to do so. However, in keeping with my fey theme, Croesus was an elf in his previous life.

Dyzan Histruk - Windtouched

I've got these in alphabetical order, not the order that I made them or the order that the information appears in the book. For Dyzan, a name I lifted from Flash Gordon, I was looking for a class that would fill a leader spot, I was trying two of each role and Heroes of Shadow includes three strikers. Perhaps because they're more difficult to play, it seems like there are fewer leaders than any other role.

Anyway, I built a Sentinel Druid from the Essentials books to create a druid with an animal companion. I was really disappointed that the book only included spring and summer variants, but by dipping into powers from Player's Handbook 2, I was able to create a wind themed character better suited to the shadow themed Vryloka.

Vryloka are sort of a watered down version of vampires for players that want to do a vampire character but not the vampire class. Unless you're running a story that actually dips into the vryloka background, they're really just another boring sort of not-human. I really wish they had used the space for a more complex race, or even that they had reprinted the Shadar-kai.

Helfyn Darkstalker

Speaking of Shadar-kai, I happen to have the Dragon Annual that features them and couldn't leave them out of a shadow themed group. To even better tie the character in with the theme, I gave Helfyn the vampiric heritage feat. I ended up with three vampires and four fey all together, one character is actually both.

I'd already made a chain fighter by the time I got to Helfyn and I wanted to steer away from that stereotype anyway, so I ended up making the character a glaive weilding Harrier Battlemind from Psionic Power. This class is absurdly mobile due to its emphasis on teleportation powers and that may lead to some folks thinking its more of a striker than a defender. However, looking over the rest of it's powers will make it apparent that the character is intended to control a section of the board. He can effectively manage two combatants while soaking up lots of damage and shaking off effects. The teleportation gimicks add a fun bit of control and mobility, but it would be a mistake to focus on them too much.

Luthor Frostwarden

For my other defender, I went with a Warden from Player's Handbook 2. This character and the Shadar-kai above are the only two characters built completely outside of Heroes of Shadow, which features no defenders at all. I think that is a substantial oversight by the publishers. Really, if a company is going to ascribe all characters to a tightly defined set of roles, I think it behooves them to cover all of those roles in a themed product like this. I mean really, it's four classes and possible four races designed to compliment those classes.

I used the Frozen Soul feat to give it a little Shadowfell connection, but otherwise, it's a stock half-elf. The warden does include some nice options for this kind of game though. The Form of Winter's Herald and Winter's Grip powers are particularly well suited to the flavor of the Shadowfell in my opinion.

Sarsariel Bloodthorn

Several people I've talked with have disliked the idea of vampire being a class. And at first blush, it is counter intuitive. However, after thinking it through, I see the logic. Due to the broad array of powers ascribed to a vampire and the wide range of races that feature vampiric members, it's too complex an idea to be handled as a feat chain. I actually see a lot of potential for using this kind of monster class in conjunction with the hybrid class rules to create some very interesting characters.

The craziest combo I could come up with for this class was to combine it with the Wilden from Player's Handbook 3. The idea of a blood drinking plant fey seemed especially alien to me. As I was writing it, the character seemed particularly potent. It uses Dexterity instead of Strength for its at-will attacks and its d10 slam attack stacks the character's Charisma bonus plus a level based increase for damage. It seems over the top, but she also only has two healing surges and half the hit points of a typical striker. In my opinion at least, the vampire makes lots of trade offs to be an effective striker who runs on the edge of her own death.

I think Sarsariel will be best suited to players who are willing to take big risks and back off when her regeneration kicks in.

Seleme - Princess of Terror

Yes, the name is particularly melodramatic. As I was writing up this Shade Nethermancer the layers of creepiness jut got thicker and thicker. The Nethermancer wizard variant is one of two featured in the Heroes of Shadow; the other being the Necromancer. The nethermancer is a fun idea, maipulating shadows and creating zones. For her second school I went with enchantment to further enhance her mind control abilities. Like the Vryloka, the shade amounts to a funny looking almost human rather than a real race, and again they're best used for their background elements in my opinion.

This character is actually the one I put the most thought into. Among her powers are two cantrips that enable her to use Arcana in place of an Intimidate or Diplomacy check, which I like to think of as her manipulating the shadows to terrify her target into submission. The creepiness inspired me. In addition to the fun powers, I gave the character the Arcane Familiar feat from Arcane Power and selected the Arcane Eye from the Dragon magazine article on familiars. A skull mask completes her look.

I'd recommend this character for folks that are looking for non combat solutions and lots of roleplaying oportunities. For an added bit of irony, I made her lawful good.