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A fine game last night, most of which was taken up by a great big battle, the heroes against 27 myconids: one myconid sovereign, three myconid guards, three myconid rot-priests, and twenty myconid minions (effectively a 3rd lvl twig-blight with a slower movement and the roots of the colony power.) What I learned was that giving minions access to roots of the colony is potentially a bad design choice because it creates weirdness that screws the PCs. For reference, copied from the rotpriest stat block:
Roots of the Colony (free, when the myconid rotpriest is hit by an attack while a myconid ally is within 5 squares of it, at-will)
The rotpriest takes half damage from the attack, and the myconid ally takes the same amount of damage.
Include myconid minions, and what do you get? A PC smites the rotpriest for 20 points of damage... and the rotpriest takes 10, while a nearby myconid minion also takes 10 and dies. 9 points of damage is effectively wasted. It's as if all the myconids are incorporeal (taking half damage) as long as there's a minion within 5 spaces. That made for a challenging fight, which is what I wanted, but I became concerned about grind for the first time since starting the campaign.
To be fair, I had the minions using the power as well - they aren't very smart - usually popping two minions instead of one.
The fight (with six PCs and 27 foes) took 2 hours (7:30 - 9:30), with lots of PCs bloodied but no one dropping. I need to try harder. The minions barely hit except for one really successful round; the guards and (particularly) the rotpriests were highly effective. Three clustered rotpriests, all using decomposing spray all at once, is a thing of beauty. I liked that I got to target Fortitude for a change.
For the battlefield I assembled a large cavern out of foam-backed dungeon tiles that Wulf Ratbane has given me. They worked really well in my opinion; I liked the feel and the look of the battleground. Note that I specifically didn't make the cave floor difficult terrain in order to give the players a change of pace from fighting in swamps, and I stressed damaging attacks over disabling attacks on the part of the monsters.
One of the things I like about 4e is that I can have a battle that's 6 vs 27. I think I have an illicit love affair with minions.
Interesting note about the treasure: because this is/was the secret refuge of some sort of angel made flesh, the PCs were very reluctant to claim any treasure. I hadn't quite anticipated that.
Last edited by Piratecat; 7th July 2009 at 04:07 PM..
Interesting note about the treasure: because this is/was the secret refuge of some sort of angel made flesh, the PCs were very reluctant to claim any treasure. I hadn't quite anticipated that.
Oh. Really? I thought the dilemma was deliberate!
Yeah, I think we're all perfectly fine taking l00tz0r from the bad guys, but stealing from the heavenly protector who's on your side seemed unwise...
Include myconid minions, and what do you get? A PC smites the rotpriest for 20 points of damage... and the rotpriest takes 10, while a nearby myconid minion also takes 10 and dies. 9 points of damage is effectively wasted. It's as if all the myconids are incorporeal (taking half damage) as long as there's a minion within 5 spaces. That made for a challenging fight, which is what I wanted, but I became concerned about grind for the first time since starting the campaign.
To be fair, I had the minions using the power as well - they aren't very smart - usually popping two minions instead of one.
Did the PCs adjust and focus on eradicating the minions first? Or did all the strikers power through the rotpriests' pseudo-insubstantial protection?
I don't think the insubstantial trait is intrinsically bad, but I think it's much more fun when there's a way to disable it (as there was in this case)!
Did the PCs adjust and focus on eradicating the minions first? Or did all the strikers power through the rotpriests' pseudo-insubstantial protection?
Some of both, depending on what foes were near-enough targets. Burst effects, for instance, were usually placed to hit both the big guys and a bunch of minions at the same time. Individual strikes were typically aimed at the big guys.
My favourite thing with minions is to use higher level minions. Still suffers the minion failure clause whenever an auto-damaging power comes out, but until that point the level 8 minion troglodyte soldiers were nasty - the PCs had to work hard to hit them, and they hit the party easily, so although they went down on a hit, it gave the PCs some nerves in the mean time!
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"It makes as much sense as having Batman kill his parents and then go on to fight mutants from another dimension." - Rykion
I thought it was a well-balanced, exciting battle, and didn't feel any grind at all, personally. Some tactical notes:
- It took us a little while to really figure out how the damage-reassignment was working among the myconids. (Was it distance based? Could all of them do it, or only some? Did each myconid have a hit-point-battery buddy? Were they also regenerating?) As a result, we spent about half the battle failing to pick up on the most important tactic: kill the minions first! Once we (especially Strontium) started wiping out the minions, things turned around pretty fast.
- We started out the battle surrounded, and it stayed that way. Had we been on the ball, we could have all endured some OA's but dashed to a more defensible position. As it was the bad guys had us effectively ringed after the first round.
- The dice contributed to the down-then-up nature of the combat, as early on our rolls were terrible, while Piratecat rolled something like 3 crits out of 5 attacks. In the second half of the combat, Doc and Bramble went nuts with the 20's. It was a thing of beauty.
- Have I mentioned how much we love Temporary Hit Point? Both Toiva and Bramble were handing them out left and right, and it saved a lot of collective bacon. And they don't use up healing surges!
- The addition of Bramble (a shaman) as a 6th PC, along with her Spirit Companion, gave us many more things to keep track of than we had been used to. (A 5-person team with 3 strikers and no leader did the have the advantage of simplicity!) Starting next game we're going to try using a whiteboard to help reduce confusion.
- I appreciated that Piratecat didn't give the monsters too many state-inducing powers, given that there were 27 of them! Early on, one of them used a hypnotizing power on Logan that took away his standard action for the turn. At the time, I thought: this is going to one tedious battle if they can all do that, but fortunately that wasn't the case.
- Piratecat has instructed us all to have a power card that specifically says “Do something cool!” I'm living proof that that was a good call. One of the little minions had been spitting spores at my shins for a round or two, and I noticed the “cool action” card while flipping through the stack. With my daily and encounter powers all burned up, I decided I would pick up the minion and use it as a club against one of the non-minion myconids. Piratecat ruled (quickly) that it was Dex vs. Reflex to pick up the minion, and (I think) a basic melee attack with a medium-level damage rating when swinging it. The dice were with me and it worked like a charm. Very satisfying!
- Doc Caldwell, for the first time in the campaign, hit with his Level 1 Daily. Yeah, we're 4th level. Finally getting a good chance to wade into melee with two weapons, he was a damage-dealing machine – reminding us that the rogues aren't the only strikers in the group.
- The addition of Bramble (a shaman) as a 6th PC, along with her Spirit Companion, gave us many more things to keep track of than we had been used to. (A 5-person team with 3 strikers and no leader did the have the advantage of simplicity!) Starting next game we're going to try using a whiteboard to help reduce confusion.
I made a series of tokens for my cleric. When I use Righteous Brand, I hand the ally the Righteous Brand +4 token, which tells them when to hand it back. I have a couple of tent cards I can stand up for things that affect all allies. I find it helpful.
PS
__________________ You can clean up vomit, but data is always messy. - Storm's Law
I don't care if you light his face on fire and put it out with an anvil... - A. Taylor
Interesting note about the treasure: because this is/was the secret refuge of some sort of angel made flesh, the PCs were very reluctant to claim any treasure. I hadn't quite anticipated that.
I've had that go both ways.
"Save the temple - no stealing from it"
"Drive the cultists from the Lord's family tomb - no one's using This anymore."
btw - HI!
-VIC
__________________ "Depriving a village somewhere of an idiot"
Very neat thread. I almost can't believe I read all of it, but I also didn't want it to end... you guys should play more often!
Going back a page or so, I like the idea of giving out the Expertise type feats to players, but I generally make them earn it. I'm fond of giving people special feat-like training as a quest reward. In my last campaign (which was 3.5e, but I imagine I can continue the trend), several players wound up getting combat style training from an aging monk they rescued. It wound up meaning different things to different characters, but +1 to hit was one of the options.
Of course, the training doesn't automatically update itself when they hit the next tier, but that just means they get to find another trainer to school them in the advanced secrets of the Way of the Tiger.
Hey, Vic! So good to see you. It's been forever; give me a holler if you're headed to GenCon this year.
Blargney, as tempted as I am to answer with "no, and it's making them anxious. They're two tents," I'll refrain so as to not make an awful awesome pun. We'd probably just hand-write them, unless anyone has a better suggestion.
Chintznibble, I'm really flattered you made this your first post! Welcome, and thanks. I like the idea of tying expertise to events in the game world. It's a good idea that works well. I regret not doing that, I think, but it's lost flavor that I can bring in a different way. Knowing me, I'd worry about getting sidetracked.
See, I have.. err.. a sort of iffy ability to predict how long a plot thread will run. That's partially why my "I think we'll wrap up in about six years" Defenders of Daybreak campaign finished in sixteen instead. Since I'm planning on an actual six year campaign (five levels a year, one level every five game sessions or so), I'm restricting slightly my normally far-flung plot hooks. It's harder than I'd thought.
Last edited by Piratecat; 14th July 2009 at 06:00 AM..
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