D&D 5e: Continued Thoughts on High Level Adventuring

What a weird ride! My players have now conquered the first half of their post-15 campaign (i.e. they've completed one of the two modules I updated). (For my initial thoughts, check out the first post in this series.)

There are some very sharp contrasts between running adventures below 15th, and running adventures after 15th. Here are a few of the things I've noticed:

1. Travel is completely different. When PCs have daily or routine access to teleportation items, plane shift, and eventually gate, travel is no longer an issue. (For example, even if you don't have access to a teleport spell, two plane shifts or two gates can serve the same function! Yes, it takes two higher level spell slots, but these PCs have those slots!) This changes how PCs conceive of an adventure--and certainly how the DM needs to. No longer is distance in any way related to the number of encounters or the time it takes to journey; characters looking at going from their mountain stronghold into a nearby city and characters looking to travel from that same stronghold to a city on a different continent are likely to consider exactly the same magical--and instant--forms of travel to get there. Even if the characters don't know where they want to go, they have access to a whole bevy of new spells (and/or items and/or NPC contacts) who do know: legend lore, scrying, commune, contact other plane, divination, find the path--each offers another window into the unknown, and having access to a combination of them solves a lot of riddles and mysteries without ever leaving home! The end result is that even if they didn't know where they needed a to go, one hint or clue can lead them to the right place to begin their investigations in earnest within perhaps an hour of game-world time. Gone are the early adventuring days where a single clue would form the basis of a month's adventure to a distant hermit to find an answer to a long-forgotten problem.
2. Rests are completely different. This is somewhat a corollary to the ideas on travel: because PCs are so incredibly mobile, there are very few times when the right move is not to simply retreat to their magically fortified (and possibly well-staffed) home base whenever they need to rest and recharge. Even if going all the way home is not an option, the PCs may have access to spells or items which are even better than going home. Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion (level 8) presents an opulent version of a home away from home, but even a Leomund's Tiny Hut (level 3) can get the job done, offering PCs time to rest and recharge for either a short or a long rest. In addition to the travel changes removing a lot of the "random encounters" on the road, the rest protection options remove many of the dangers of "taking a rest." Only time remains to consistently work against these high level PCs!
   
3. Fights are extremely swingy. High level monsters hit often and they hit hard. High level PCs
   
   do the same. Similar to the first few levels of adventuring, it becomes really important that the party tanks (or those with high hp) are taking the hits, while the squishier members of the party are free to control the field or deal damage. Spells that cause an opponent to lose an action or which limit the kind of actions they can take become useful (in my opinion) for the first time. Causing a goblin boss in a low level fight to sacrifice an action is no big deal; an action may have done some damage, but realistically he probably has surrounded himself with a horde of lower level goblins who can deal almost as much damage in a round! On the other hand, causing a dragon, an eight-armed sword-fighter, a high level warlord, or a wizard with 9th level spells to lose an action is tremendous. Each one can do a tremendous amount of damage (or exert a lot of control) in a single round, and forcing a delay tilts the action economy into the hands of the PCs rather nicely. PCs at this level are even more resilient than I had first believed they would be; even when fighting a variety of opponents--each of whom, on their own, would be a worthy challenge for the PCs--the wide range of abilities and synergies the party has access to made them incredibly powerful. The big boss fight at the end of the adventure was spectacular, but when the dust settled, the PCs could probably have done another fight of equal caliber and survived. Then again, it's possible that the PCs could have made one poor choice and the whole fight would have become a rout.
   
4. Even experienced players (and DMs) feel uncertainty. A D&D player from any edition knows what to do when they encounter magic missile, cure light wounds, a locked door, or a new +1 longsword. They've seen all of this before in a dozen, even a hundred iterations. But how many times have players had access to wish? When you're dealing with entirely virgin territory, it's natural for all people involved to feel a bit uncertain. This is both the fun and the terror of the high level campaign. All of my players made some amazing choices and did some epic, heroic feats over the course of the adventure. One that sticks in my mind is when our cleric prayed to his god (Moradin) for intercession to resist the heat of the unholy furnace the party was headed into. Because his character is such a high level, the odds were significantly better than they would have been normally, and a good roll meant that Moradin granted the prayer! The fire resistance the party picked up was (in my opinion) the difference between an easy boss fight and a potentially deadly one. Without a wizard, this party managed to magically solve a problem they didn't legitimately have a spell or a magic item for. That is high level adventuring at its finest.

As this party of characters moves into what will likely be their final adventure together, they're all
level 18. Those high level abilities most players only dream about their characters having are a reality--or just one or two short levels away. For me, it's going to be a challenge to challenge them. High level encounters each have to be set pieces; no more random bandits or wandering monsters, no more minor problems or careless issues. For these characters to be involved, the threat to the world has to be real, imminent, and disastrous!

And it is.

Stay tuned for more thoughts on high level adventuring as my players take their characters to the brink and maybe a bit beyond!

D&D 5e: Out of the Abyss (Part 1 of 2)

It's taken a long time for my group to play through the first half of Out of the Abyss: it's been almost a year!

Unfortunately, I don't have much more to add (that isn't already out there), but here are my thoughts.

Pros:

1. New and Different: The entirely alien feel of the Underdark allowed most of my players (who usually play largely conventional races) to try out being traditional outcasts. Instead of a mostly "traditional" race group with a single outlier, it's the opposite: one surface dwarf amongst two drow and a deep gnome!
2. Fear and the Bizarre: Not knowing how things work in the Underdark made for some very cool interactions between PCs and locales. They were constantly asking who they could trust and where they should go next!
3. More Common Magic Items: I don't know how it compares to Curse of Strahd or Storm King's Thunder in terms of the commonality or abundance of magic items, but in terms of Tyranny of Dragons and (to a beginner's view) Princes of the Apocalypse, magic items are much more plentiful and much less likely to "break" the game.
4. Fun NPCs: The always-different and always-curious stories of the jail-break NPCs (and the wacky characters the PCs met along the way) are exciting, fresh, and engaging. While it was a pain to control a whole extra party worth of characters, there were ways to keep combat from dragging. Glabagool stole the show.

Cons:

1. Repetitive: For how wild and crazy the Underdark can get, the issue of travel from one place to another quickly becomes tedious if following the rules as written. Once the characters were strong enough to muster their own resources, we had to drop keeping track of supplies before that consumed the vast majority of our sessions.
2. Asymmetry: Because of the sandboxy nature of the module, threats were not evenly spaced or scaled. On the one hand, I want to applaud this! The fact that the PCs are having to worry about the potentially deadly encounters they might face is excellent. The problem was with the lower end encounters. As the party made its way into each new city, they were blowing through many of the encounters. This meant I had a choice: narrate the fights or let my party spend a half an hour cautiously figuring out how to beat them. As a result, I feel like they're getting too comfortable--that only "big" fights are actually going to play out. As a result, they feel like they can expend all their abilities on the fights that "actually happen." I'm still trying to figure out how to tweak this for the second half.
3. Tedious NPCs: The jailbreak NPCs were clever and fresh--but also cumbersome. Even though I handed off combat control of most of the NPCs to the players, it was a problem to have to consistently roleplay them while still giving PCs pride of place. Often, I felt as though their traveling companions were either helpless or overbearing--as their personalities dictated--and so it became a game of "is there a reason these NPCs can stay behind?" 
4. Underdark Parties Not Welcome: Though this was billed as a chance for characters to "try something different" and be from an Underdark race, most of the adventure is written from the perspective of a party of surface races. As a result, a lot of the really fun read-aloud text was just plain boring. Similarly, many characters had entirely unscripted reactions to the party (i.e. the "script" calls for them to hate a party with elves in it--or humans, or gnomes, or whatever--but there aren't any in the party.)

Overall:

 The cities shine brightest. Being able to bring my friends to the depths and show them Blingdenstone, Neverlight Grove, and Gracklstugh was awesome. The characters they encountered there were interesting, even fascinating. As usual, the interactions faded fastest into the background, but never faded entirely. As they explored the depths, the slow accumulation of stories (madness! destruction!) had a wonderful slow fuse that allowed us all to savor it.

Bottom line? It's good, but it's not great. We'll see how the second half goes.

D&D 5e: Experience and Character Advancement

I touched on this briefly before, in my first entry on how the rules affect the players in fifth edition, but I think this topic bears a brief follow up. This is especially true as more and more DMs consider how best to hand out experience or advance their players' characters in level.

Skyflourish recently considered a very interesting method for Adventure League or casual play where some players may not be able to make each session. This proposal (adjusted or partial milestoning) smooths out some of the bumps in public play and allows perfect attendance to still be suitably rewarding without unduly punishing players who can't always make it.

Even so, this proposal seems to indicate that in the end a DM needs to ultimately fall on one side or the other: either give out experience points for each monster kill or quest completed, or else dole out experience when PCs hit milestones. Conventional wisdom seems to suggest that if you do any actual combination of both that PCs will be hard for the DM to manage and may result in rewards being, frankly, less individually rewarding.

I'd like to offer an alternative. While I'm still running my friends through our first campaign in the 5e ruleset, I'm confident this solution will be useful to the DM and encourage the players to see individual rewards as beneficial, useful, and special.

Let's say, hypothetically, that players are fourth level. Their current quest involves investigating the disappearance of a missing elven noble from her woodland court, and the next milestone will occur when they discover (through whatever means) that she was abducted by her illegitimate half-brother, the half-elf who has hitherto been patron to the PCs. The standard path to discover the secret will result in an award of enough experience to take the PCs to fifth level. Alternatively, a DM could award the fifth level as a milestone.

• If the PCs follow the path of least resistance, they might discover the half-brother's involvement in three or fewer encounters (i.e. a hunch from a character, a few great skill checks, and an investigation of the half-brother's mansion). In this scenario, ordinarily milestone experience is a boon to the players because they'd advance in level without a lot of traditional experience gain.
• If they follow the most likely path prepared by the DM, it might take six or even ten encounters (the half-brother could realize he's in danger and send them on a wild goose chase to a neighboring town, kingdom, or dungeon. Random encounters in the forest combined with an assassination attempt would spur the PCs to see that someone they know is in on the plot). In this case, either milestone or traditional experience gain would see PCs suitably rewarded for their efforts.
• If the PCs "go off the rails" entirely and ignore the missing elf noble in favor of whatever errand the half-brother has sent them on, they might explore an entire dungeon complex and recover a magic item for their patron--one that has nothing to do with the milestone originally set out that would advance the campaign. In this method, players would be desperate to have their characters hit the milestone (and a good DM would likely award the magic item's recovery as a milestone in this instance) but the dungeon exploration might include upwards of fifteen encounters before all is said and done--a real windfall for traditional experience groups, but not necessarily for the milestone camp.
• If the PCs just have a rough session--terrible dice rolls, some bad leads/hunches, or just a combat that goes poorly and sets them back--the players may similarly end up slogging through several more encounters than they might otherwise have normally encountered before realizing that it's there is a connection between the elf's kidnapping and her half-brother's patronage of the party. In this scenario, it could go either way (a few rough encounters might take all night, but the characters may still discover what they needed to; alternatively, a night of fighting their way out of an awful situation might have included a dozen encounters).

So how do we allow the party to advance in all four possible ways at a pace that seems appropriate?

Here's how I'd run each option:

• In the first case, the PCs have--through pluck, luck, skill, or all of the above--done an amazing feat. As they adventured, they were awarded encounter experience, but upon hitting the milestone, I'd award the difference to fifth level.
• In the second case, the PCs have followed a relatively predictable track. If they hit fifth level before hitting the milestone, so much the better; they keep whatever "overage" they've collected, and the milestone is acknowledged, but ignored for reward purposes. The PCs start toward the sixth-level milestone with some experience toward sixth level.
• In the third case, the trials and tribulations of the PCs hopefully result in reaching fifth level--and possibly a significant amount toward sixth. No mention is made of the milestone because it wasn't achieved. As the PCs wend their way back toward their supposed mission, they will eventually hit the milestone (where it will be acknowledged, but ignored for reward purposes). Alternatively, the milestone may pass the PCs by--maybe the noble was murdered while the PCs went spelunking in the dungeon, and the half-brother has committed to a coup to overthrow his elven family's court and take his "rightful place." Now the milestone involves discovering a way to stop the madness of their former patron; this new milestone represents a significant change in the campaign's direction based on the PCs actions. It's up to the DM to determine whether this new milestone should be the fifth or sixth level milestone.
• The final case could also go any way. Either it will end up like the first case (milestone awarded) or like the second-or-third case (so much combat/exploration/interaction experience awarded that the milestone is surpassed), or like the alternative third case (the campaign moves in a new direction; milestones are reassessed).

The bottom line is this:
If the PCs will level first from accruing traditional experience, they level up. If they would level up first from hitting a milestone, they level up. Generally, if the PCs level up from the traditional  experience, finishing the encounters that were "balanced" or "prepared" for their previous level will be a tad easier, but not a pushover. Similarly, if the PCs are awarded a milestone sooner than they otherwise would have, they're in appropriate shape for the harder encounters planned in the next stage of the adventure.

For those of you running Hoard of the Dragon Queen with a party that just finished The Lost Mine of Phandelver, you may see this method as particularly helpful. The players enter Hoard a lot more powerful than first level characters, but their experience gains from the encounters are not so vast that the level gap remains; by the time the characters hit the fifth or sixth episode, they're likely to be only fifth level--but they did make it all the way to fifth on the traditional experience gains (since the milestones only activated if they were levels one-through-three).

This also solves the problem of lower-level party members. If a level 3 character is adventuring with level 6 characters, when the level 6 characters hit a milestone that was budgeted as a level 4 milestone, the level three character levels up. The others don't.

I don't necessarily think this "catch-all" will work for everyone, but I think it's a useful model, and more importantly I think it enhances the fun involved for everyone.

Happy leveling!

D&D 5e: Making a Character

For the first time in a long time (almost a decade!), I'm going to be playing as a character in a D&D campaign. For the first time ever, I'll get to play as a character in a 5e campaign.

As one might expect, this definitely gives me a new perspective on the player's side of the table. I thought perhaps sharing the thoughts of a DM-turned-player on the character creation process might be useful to some.

Backgrounds Matter

As a DM, I try to ensure that players' backgrounds fulfill their primary functions: that is, that they are fun to roleplay and that they help build the character into the campaign that I'm running by giving the character some essential, useful connection to the adventure.

As a player, backgrounds seem both overwhelming and weighty. I started by looking into playing a Bard, and thought (perhaps in error!) that the Sage background would be an easy fit. That is, until I started looking at the mechanical benefits awarded based on backgrounds.

All of a sudden, choosing a Sage seemed less useful! If I play a Bard with the Criminal background, I would be proficient with thieves' tools. A Noble's background would give me access to high society. A Hermit's "secret" is supremely tantalizing! And who could pass up being an Entertainer or Charlatan?

Still, I figured I'd press ahead with the Sage and be a Researcher. Now, I'm reconsidering; the Entertainer, while not as useful in terms of game mechanics, sounds a lot more fun to play!

Party Balance

Looking at party balance from a player's perspective, I was happy to see that I didn't feel like I had to play a particular role just because the group didn't have it covered. Part of that might just be because I'm looking to play a Bard who is (at level two, literally) a jack of all trades, but more than that is just that 5e seems to be somewhat forgiving in the realm of "you need X to do Y, and if you don't have X you're done for."

Backgrounds cover a multitude of skill and story deficiencies, allowing even the most combat-oriented fighter to be the party spokesman, or the most uninvolved Rogue to feel connected to the game world. Race attributes and class archetypes contribute their own brand of variety, allowing players to cover a variety of traditional "roles." Even the most straight-forward of classes in our budding party (the Cleric) is going to be played in a less-than-conventional way, taking domains and backgrounds that will individuate the character right from the get go in ways that would simply not have been possible in previous editions.

In the end, my Bard is (loosely) filling the role of party "Wizard," but that doesn't really do it justice. My role in combat will be (primarily) control: I have the best (and maybe only) AoE spells available to our party. However, that doesn't take away from my role as secondary healer. If the Cleric goes down, I'm it! In exploration situations, I plan to take on the role of investigator and trap disarmer, but I am leaving the sneaking and perceiving to our Monk. In social interactions, I hope my character will really shine: a high charisma and loads of proficiencies in various knowledge skills should make my Bard a worthy negotiator, spokesman, and diplomat.

Spells

As expected, choosing spells was the most time consuming aspect of character creation. Clerics (and classes that cast spells like Clerics) can re-choose spells each morning. Wizards, if they choose poorly, can always hope to find spell scrolls with more useful spells. Bards (and those that learn spells like Bards) are bound by their choices. Needing to eke out the greatest possible variety from my few spells-per-day means being very selective about which spells my Bard learns. In the end, as a first level Bard, I chose Sleep (to fulfill my role of "Controller" on the battlefield), Cure Wounds (because I can't justify passing up the strongest healing spell available at first level) Dissonant Whispers (a single target damage spell that is almost exclusive to Bards), and Detect Magic (one utility spell to round out the bunch). Almost as difficult to choose were my two cantrips: Vicious Mockery (again, a Bard-only spell which has the potential to impose disadvantage on an enemy attack roll) and Light (though I'm playing a class with Darkvision, our party has at least one human member).

Race

In days gone by, choosing a race imposed a serious set of benefits and penalties, and you chose a race almost before you chose a class, since the race would determine what classes you'd be suited for. The Player's Handbook still seems to think in these terms: race is chosen before class. I'm not sure that's how most players think; it's certainly not how I think. When I'm thinking of a character, I think about what kind of things I want to be able to do, and then I impose the "who-is-doing-those-things" onto that.

The big difference for me, this time around, was that sub-races seemed to make a much larger difference than I expected they would. I made the decision to play a Dwarf Bard, but choosing between Hill Dwarf and Mountain Dwarf was more difficult than I expected. The benefits offered by both, and the story implications of each, were exciting to consider. I thoroughly enjoy that the new edition uses races to impose benefits rather than penalties. You may miss out on something by choosing one thing over another, but the choice itself is never penalizing. In the end, I chose a Hill Dwarf for my character's race, but I imagine I'll always wonder if I'd have more fun playing a Mountain Dwarf.

D&D 5e: Players Rule (or: Players' Rules), Part 2

In my last post, I started by articulating my thoughts on experience gain and leveling up. Before I continue the discussion on how the rules affect players, I thought I'd formally address something that came up in the discussion about my post in the comments:


The dual leveling systems in 5e (loosely called "experience gain" and "milestone") work in tandem. Below are my thoughts on this from the comments:

"The experience points tell players how significant their characters' encounter was or how epic their solution was. It also allows players (particularly at higher levels) to feel like they're 'getting somewhere' and to have a gauge as to how soon they'll get to use that fancy new ability they get when their character levels up!

That's why I like the current edition's focus on both styles: it's good for the players. If they just fight a whole bunch of random monsters because they're exploring, they may level before they ordinarily would based on the campaign/story being told. If they think of clever, interesting ways to circumvent some of the [expected/story] encounters and get to the next part of the story, they're rewarded with a level rather than punished by being required to grind."

Combat:

In 3e, combat was an arithmetical nightmare. The DMG advised DMs to make use of a simple rule: if a condition is advantageous, grant a +2 bonus. If a condition is disadvantageous, grant a -2 penalty. Bard songs, cleric spells, armor bonuses, feat bonuses, ability bonuses, and conditional modifiers all played a role in what the end modifier would be. Most of these modifiers changed on a round-to-round basis. Worst of all, these bonuses sometimes mattered an awful lot (when an encounter was perfectly matched) and sometimes mattered not at all (ever see a band of mid-level adventurers tearing through a bunch of low-level monsters?). I loved 3e and 3.5e, don't get me wrong, but that list of stats was obnoxious to keep track of--both for players and Dungeon Masters.

In 4e, combat became a video game with hot-keys. Most of the stats were static, and the ones that were dynamic were usually linked to a named condition--something that could be flagged or indicated in a visual way (presumably to help players remember that the lich was flying, the zombies were slowed, and their Paladin was blessed).  The modifiers were less omnipresent, but the combat itself as a bit more flat (for a different reason). When every player essentially "cast a spell" every turn, and most of those "spells" or abilities were just stand-ins for what used to be called a "basic attack," it slowed combat down. In retrospect, I think I know why: no matter how often we played, when presented with a bunch of similar options, players were constantly trying to decide which option would be best among the similar choices. The only place I see this come up in 5e is with wizards and cantrips. (Do I cast ray of frost or fire bolt?)

In 5e, combat most closely resembles 3e. It no longer feels like players and monsters are hitting their hot-keys. It also doesn't feel like I need a white-board for each player tracking constantly shifting modifiers. Where once the DM was asked to consider +2 or -2 (which, let's be honest, quickly became a moot modifier because of "unbounded accuracy"), now players can seek out conditions that negate disadvantage or which grant advantage. We have returned to an era of "basic attacks," but the mechanics are much more forgiving on non-spellcasting classes as far as giving them options in combat.

I'd like to start by considering the spellcasters (Clerics and Wizards) and move to the more martial classes. Unfortunately, since my party has a Paladin instead of a Fighter, I can't necessarily say how "the big four" have changed, though you can certainly extrapolate.

Wizards function almost identically to their 3e counterparts with a couple of very interesting "borrows" from 4e:

1. Cantrips: being able to cast basic--but useful and scaling--spells at-will is a wonderful boost to all spellcasters being magical all the time (not just while they have spell slots available).
2. Short Rest Restoration: Arcane Recovery is a fascinating way to counter the "whelp, Wizard's out of spells, time to camp for the night" issue. This criticism is a common--and accurate--issue with the way D&D has worked in the past. 4e made everyone a spellcaster (in a sense) to overcome the problem. I think I like this solution somewhat better; Wizards get fewer spell slots than their 3e counterparts, but can get some of them back.
3. Concentration: In 3e (and to a certain extent in 4e), concentration was a reactionary effect that came into play when players took damage or when they were trying to "cast defensively." By removing the defensive casting mechanic, and only allowing Wizards (or any caster) to maintain concentration on one spell at a time, it not only limited some of the spellcasting abuses (I'm looking at you party-buff mules), but it also eliminated a step from Wizards casting spells in combat, streamlining every round of combat.

Clerics similarly have a high correlation to their 3e counterparts:

1. Not all Clerics get heavy armor.
2.  Domains matter for gameplay styling right from the get go. 
3.  Removing the "minor" or "swift" actions, Clerics having spells that can only be cast as a reaction changes how/when they heal.
4. The concentration rules (see above) affect Cleric spellcasting too.

Rogues have the biggest change from prior editions in my opinion:

1. Removing the rules for "flanking" has ironically made it 10x easier for Rogues to activate their Sneak Attack ability. Basically, if the party tank is in combat, the Rogue can drop whoever the tank is fighting--even at a distance.
2. Bonus Actions have added a whole new lair of dastardly to Rogues. By letting rogues (essentially) move, Sneak Attack, and ignore opportunity attacks while remain out of range of the majority of bad guys, Rogues can maintain a very high damage output while staying safe in combat.
3. What makes the above two so wicked is that characters can now move, act, and then finish their movement--something that was not available before.

Paladins, like Clerics, have a lot of overlap with their 3e counterparts:

1.  Heavy armor, shields, and spells, and Lay on Hands make Paladins just as durable as they used to be.
2. Opening up Divine Sense (formerly Detect Evil) and Divine Smite (formerly Smite Evil) makes Paladins a little bit less of a one-trick pony. Fighting beasts in the forest instead of a cadre of demons? No problem! 
3. Fighting Style lets Paladins (like Fighters) specialize a bit into a particular role. In our campaign, the Paladin is a tank who wants to deal damage, but knows he has to take it before he can dish it out; he took the flat +1 bonus to AC (and rightfully so, I think).

 Some other general notes:

1. Hit points have been more boosted at the low end (d6 for Wizards!) making everyone a tiny bit less fragile by default.
2. Monsters--even at low levels--have surprisingly high numbers of hit points. There are no more "minions" as there were in 4e. If you're fighting a horde, be prepared to slog through it; a fireball won't insta-kill them all anymore (though a sufficiently powerful one might).
3. Ignoring the "diagonal movement on a grid is different" reality (as was done in 4e) remains in 5e. 95% of the time, it doesn't matter that much. The 5% of the times it does matter, it usually benefits the players, so I'm okay with it.
4. So far, advantage works. It works really well. (So does disadvantage.)
5. Bounded accuracy is already showing up in combat at low levels--for the better. The Paladin (used to being the only one in previous editions that could hit monsters routinely) is becoming frustrated that he isn't auto-hitting. The Rogue is dishing out damage on fleshy/robust but unarmored enemies. The Wizard can land ray of frost without worrying about a saving throw from the enemy. The Cleric knows exactly how much that buff spell is going to be worth because he can look at one set of numbers (remember, all those ugly modifiers from 3e are gone). Every monster is a potential threat, but tactics still help defeat monsters more quickly and more safely.

Finally, and perhaps no less importantly, monsters themselves seem to have the right mix of familiarity and wonder for the players. For example, zombies act as zombies should; they're slow to act, low in armor class, and dumb as rocks. But, they also have tons of hit points and a devious special ability that can make them very difficult to kill if you're not paying attention. Players who have seen zombies in other games/editions know roughly what to do to these zombies--but they're caught just enough by surprise by the one special ability that keeps them alive through the occasional lethal damage.

Next time, I'll look at non-combat options.