Princes of the Apocalypse First session

On reading through the intro 1st level encounters and side quests in chapter 6 I decided to have my established 3rd level party start right from that point and not from the 3rd level point.

I purchased and printed out the players copies of red larch and the valley region. Being PDF's I printed them using the poster method at 150% and 160% so after a bit of cutting and taping some decent mini poster maps provided excellent reference.

Traveling to Red Larch while trying to follow the trail of some brigands the party explored and learned a bit about the town and ran through most of the 1st level encounters which I found VERY well setup and actually drove the party to needed extended rests a few times. Good intro the troubles of the reason and a good amount of coin in their purses for the first time made them quite interested in exploring the troubles of the region. Lot of play time with lower XP and higher gold was different from our normal sessions but actually quite fun.

The offerings of Red Larch as a town were quite an interesting balance. Party was thrown off by needing to deal in used weapons mainly as there is no real weapon / armor smithy in town and the provided npc who deals in used merchandise was very fun to play out.

I am avoiding talking about encounter specifics for now so there is no spoilers out there too early.

in the end a 7 hour play session had them go through 3 of the 1st level areas plus explore town and meet a lot of npc plus start some investigations into the nature of the area and the first few hexes out from red larch.

Look what was in a shipping package on my door too early :D

Firstly the formatting, fonts and graphics are AMAZING. the new materials I am reading for the first time keep putting me into a jaw drooped amazed and excited to play state of mind. 

One of the things I have been most curious about has been the new feats. getting to choose your stat gains or a feat is a pretty major decision in my mind so the feats better be pretty good. Well my goodness are they ever.

Feat: Skilled - Proficiency in any combination of three skills or tools of your choice. 

WHOW that's awesome. three not one? yes please :o

Feat: Spell Sniper - When you cast spells that require an attack roll the range is doubled. Your ranged spells ignore cover. You learn an extra attack cantrip.

Geezus yes please once more my goodness thats awesome. Or you could have had +2 to the prime stat and a +1/+1 hit and damage? hmmm these feats are actually tough choices now and really define a character. 

Polearm master for example you get to use a bonus action to smack someone with the butt of your weapon after each attack AND get an AOO whenever someone ENTERS your reach.

ok enough about feats as exciting as they are.

Multiclass COMBINES your various spell casting classes and gives you a POOL of spell slots you can cast spells from all your spell casting classes using those. so you may have 4 first level spells from 2 classes prepared and 4 spell slots of 1st level and 2 of second level for example. so you can cast your first level spells 6 times with 2 of them being over cast as 2nd level spells.

Nice balance I must say.

Background provide you with some skill and tool proficiencies as well as some starting equipment AND some nice suggestions for roll play traits. Reading over a background can give you so many ideas for a character. I was unsure about the whole background thing before but after helping 4 people roll up characters I have to say I am convinced now.

And the classes. My goodness the classes.

Bards that dont suck? Monks that are cool? Sorcerers with WILD magic surges? Totemic barbarians? Drow elves that feel like second edition? my gawd I think we need to start playing longer games each week for a bit.

Then I found the gods section in the back. Not huge it has the forgoten realm gods on a list and greyhawk? whow cool wait its also got eberron? AND dragonlance? holy cow wait whats this? more? nonhuman gods? historical pantheons? OMG its got Celtic, Greek, Egyptian and Norse gods listed?

the great wheel PLUS a feywild and shadowfella nd the positive and negative plains back?

... and finaly 8 pages of monsters? ogm wizards of the coast we love you guys.

next I will be reading the hoard of the dragon queen and totally looking forward to it

Work on my campaign setting shifted focus for a while and has now basically rebooted with 5th edition. I have even decided to post a module I worked up for my game groups. If anyone wants a copy you can grab setting info and downloads from the website.

http://brianmichaluk.wix.com/dargoth#!danadon/c15h0