If the adventures do not lead to a cliffhanger (like, for example, HP 2), than that takes up my one BIG issue with not releasing them.

As stated, however, I understand why they aren't being released and for the most part agree.

Personally, I'd love to see 8 mission BIs with slightly longer per mission (or else stat blocks split by rank).

Our table had three 1.7 and three higher (1.9, 2.2, and 2.5 iirc). Our biggest frustration was the time constraints for the heavier battle ones. We even tried being reckless and going straight for the objectives but we simply could not hit regularly enough and deal enough damage to take them down in the time given. Our only other frustration was the Giant King who did massive damage wounds pretty much every time he hit.

Generally speaking, I really enjoyed the BI. Scott Reid did a great job of running it to make us feel there was significant danger without actually killing anyone (1 or 2 dropped from wounds and various people dropped from Stamina relatively often).

The large number of minions in a number of the rounds also slowed the combats significantly. We had a couple combats where it took almost twenty minutes to go through twelve ticks of actions, which is problematic when you only have ~30 minutes to complete your objective.

Suffice it to say, we failed a lot of missions at the BI. Had a good time though.

Fail is a relative term. Guaranteed the PCs came out ahead of the Queens forces.

We also "failed" a number of missions. We didn't realize what the objective was in the first mission so never made it off the map or release prisoners (but we did save all of them). I also remember failing the bridges, temple steps, giants, and final scene (we just couldn't do enough damage fast enough). I'm pretty sure we also failed one or two earlier missions but I don't remember which. The one mission we rocked without question was the harpy cliffs (two casters with skyward made that pretty trivial).

I also want to say think you to all the PCI folks and other volunteers who made our experience this year a lot of fun. Again. Matt F, Tony N and Josh all did fantastic jobs running the new events for our crew so thanks a lot for that!

I liked the plot of the BI, enjoyed the various encounters/missions, and thought the pacing was good even if things did run longer than planned (but I am a bit of a masochist so I was good with it, aside from the early morning flight home the next morn).

Special recognition to Josh during the BI, who took evil advantage of a well-time Enemy of My Enemy cast on one of his NPCs (a nasty Malfellan elorrii Deathwarden) who decided her best attack on her ally would be a Shared Sacrifice that covered 5 of 6 PCs, which then set of a chain reaction of Eye For An Eye responses. We figured that a minimum of 430 points of stamina damage was dealt to both sides over the course of that one tick. Awesome. Looked like Kill Bill vol.1 (the Crazy 88s scene).

hehe Rick, that was a beautiful execution of shared sacrifice

Origins was a lot of fun, props out to James Vacca who was an excellent judge, sorry you got stuck with me so often.

I've found that I enjoy judging the BIs quite a bit, and keeping players on their toes is always fun. brutalizing players (Sorry Joe!) is one of my favorite pasttimes. I think the new rule about massive damage might get a bit sticky at normal tables, but if the new book has some additional ways for players to deal with wounds it should be fine.

Thanks to James Z for organizing , the various judges that make the tables happen, and all the players that make up my wonderful dysfunctional family. Hopefully I'll see some of you at gencon this year.

--Josh

Thanks to the staff for an overall great Origins - look forward to what's coming up next.

PS - Shared Sacrifice indeed - that was one hell of a tick of punishment...

I agree with this to a large degree. We had a ball, and I really enjoyed the BI, but we rarely succeeded. In most cases I think we would have succeeded with more time, but generally there were just too many NPCs. Our table had several new 1.5 PCs at it, and I think the highest level PC was 1.9. Because of this we had problematic ranged area of effect spell support (elemental bolt rather than the tier two elemental tempest) and thus the ability to just blast away dwarven crossbowmen minions didn't exist in our party.

It was my understanding that the BI was written assuming a 2.0 party, which didn't really seem appropriate. Is the PCI team considering a different tier bump (to 2.0, rather than 1.5) to keep people up with their modules, or was the lack of support for lower tiers just a fluke of the rush to get the BI completed?

All that said, I think our judge did a great job adjusting the threats. I think the table did some great tactics (usually), and I had a great time. Like I said, I think we would have won almost every encounter....eventually.

Our table experienced the same thing, we had some encounters where we just barely succeeded or just missed by about 6 ticks and some we were just not able to do. I expect some variation amongst the different battles, maps, and party makeups and I don't expect every table will succeed every fight.

Looking back our group, while not 'optimized' for combat, had sound tactics and didn't have a lot of 'wasted ticks'. However, the last 4-5 maps we weren't able to complete the objective.

Some rundowns (and I have to thank Tony for a great GMing job!)

1) Scouting Mission: This one went well. We rescued the sacrifices and were getting everyone off the board when time was called. This one was odd in that the objectives were not clear at the beginning, but this was quickly remedied.
2) Wall Climbing: We did this alright. We had no 'skyward' but we had some skilled climbers, 2 demons, and lots of rope. We had some AE'ers to keep the Harpies busy and Dome of Shadows helped
3) Tunnels: There were just too many shield wall legionnaire dwarves with pikes and it was a slog fest. We could temporarily break their ranks for 1 attack but they quickly moved to reinforce. This one felt the most 'tedious'
4) Defend the Pass: We were built for this, as we were able to set up 2 summoned demons, a 20' deeper shadows dome and just pick things off as they appeared/approached. we got hit with the exploding dwarves a few times but managed to kill most of them far away.
5) Bridges: We were doing well on this but just seemed to run out of time. We used Galeforce Winds to knock some giants off the ramps and knew to take out crossbowmen soon! We just didn't make it quite all the way across (Another 6-10 ticks and we would have)
6) Spirit Gem Fight: Incorporeal monsters that healed was tough. We just didn't have the output to deal with all of them without them healing. We didn't come close to completing this one.
7) Malfelan Fight: We had sound tactics, but enemies just had a lot of HPs and we spent a lot of time trying to protect our one main divine caster from getting pounded on. We killed about half the enemies I think.
8) Giant/Devil Hounds: This one wasn't bad and we were set up for it. We killed almost everything and would have finished given another 10 Ticks or so.
9) Mind's Eye: We had sound tactics (focus fire, deal wounds to vanquished enemies) but just couldn't deal with all the bad guys in the time allotted. We probably could have finished with another 10 minutes or so or a real heavy hitting single target character.

John