Four Against Darkness: Metalhoods Adventures Part 1

Four Against Darkness in all its splendor.

Four Against Darkness (4AD) is a fantasy dungeon crawler that probably doesn't need an introduction. I'm a little late to the party but hey, better than never. In 4AD you map out a dungeon as you adventure through it with a team of four characters chosen from eight different classes. There are a ton of other classes in other supplements, probably about a million of them. Ok, not that many but the game is well supported with many expansions both in the form of adventures and expanding on the base game.

 If you'd like to read more, hit read more!

 

With 4AD all you need is a paper to map out the dungeon, a character sheet, some dice (3d6 seems about right), and a pencil. You're going to be doing a lot of erasing and jotting down notes for your characters and enemies so an eraser is handy. You don't need to draw lightly when drawing the dungeon unless you want one of those fancy-pants 3D ones...For now mine is not!

Let's have a look at a game that I played in about an hour. I had a time limit so didn't get to the end as I had to pick up my son from his aunt's. I did, however, do as the rules suggested for a time limit and made my way back out of the dungeon as you can still encounter wandering monsters.

A look at my non-fancy-pants drawn dungeon!

I've already played one adventure with this party before about a week ago but none of them leveled up and they hardly got any treasure so I thought why not, I already have four characters ready. I like to think of it as an adventurers guild as I plan on replacing characters that die with other classes...Pulled up a "random guild name generator" and Metalhoods immediately caught my eye!

Drogar the Rogue

Shanar the Warrior

Dedra the Cleric

Wizardo the Wizard (go figure)

They're listed in marching order.

So down into the dungeon they delved!

Here's a brief recap of what they encountered in each room:

1. Empty. I decided not to search as it's -1 on the search table for corridors.

2. Special Event: Wandering Monsters. Vermin, 2 vampire frogs. Easily killed them! Wandering monsters never have loot so no treasure.

3. Special Event: Wandering Monster. Boss, Chaos Lord! Thankfully, he had no special powers. Wizardo electrocuted him with a lightening bolt scroll from the last adventure and Drogar put the last hit on him dropping him to more than half his life. Go team Metalhoods! Drogar leveled up to level 2.

4. Empty.

5. Young Dragon! Wizardo failed to cast lightening bolt twice. We eventually did kill him at the cost of some hits from his flame attacks. Three rolls on the treasure table! The loot included 8 gold, a protection scroll, and a bobby dazzler (a jewel) worth 150 gold. Not bad, if we ever make it out of this dungeon! Wizardo also increased to level 2.

6. 11 goblin swarmlings. Drogar's initial attack exploded twice (rolled a six twice) and he took out five of them. Next, Shanar managed to kill one sending the rest fleeing. 

 

NOTE: If you roll a natural six, you get an explosive die. Roll another six and it explodes even further until you finally roll something other than a six. After that you add it all together and compare it to the level of the creature(s) fought. Every time you reach that number, it's a hit doing one wound. Say you have the above goblin swarmlings at level 3. I rolled a total of 17 ( two 6's and a 5) so you divide that by their level, which equals 5. So that's five dead monsters. Plus, every time you kill more than half the minions, you roll one dice to see if they flee. 1-3 they run, 4-6 they stay. You only do this once in a single fight.

7. Dungeon Feature: Puzzle Room. Wizardo decided to have a go at it and beat the level 2 puzzle easily. Treasure was a magic healing potion.

8. Dungeon Feature: Healing Fountain. Drogar and Dedra both drank from the fountain, restoring their wounds from the dragon.

9. 13 rats. We managed to kill enough on the first round of attacks and sent them running.

10. 3 Trolls! Drogar and Dedra killed two. The remaining troll fled. Neither of the trolls regenerated at their next turn so I think they just stayed dead? Treasure: Fireball scroll.

11. Special Event: Vermin, 5 vampire frogs. Drogar, again, had 2 explosive dice and then a 5 for a total of 17. Managed to kill four of the five vampire frogs and the last fled.

12. 2 Trolls! Wizardo made short work of them with his last fireball and roasted the trolls. If you cast a spell on them and it kills them, they can't regenerate. Still, sifting through the pile of stinkin' troll goo to fetch a 90 gold piece jewel was worth it.

And that was the entire dungeon. Like I said, I did a timed dungeon so never completed it, sadly.

Final thoughts: After about six or seven dungeons, I believe it plays a lot like Deathmaze but without the chit drawing, which I like. It's a bit of a hassle to get things out and set up just to play for an hour so this is right up my alley. While limited on monsters and treasures in the core book, the support this game has is immense. I do own a lot of the expansion material so I think it will see a lot more play, even some group play in the near future with non-RPG people. All in all, great fun!