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Tonight's game had a truly remarkable combat. While Strontium faced down a swarm of crawling claws all by himself (technically, the shredded corpse of Clavius the sage, dismembered and reanimated by Alene), the rest of the group fought a group of nobles who were angry that they'd stolen their carriage in the previous game. It was amazing; with half the 4th lvl group low on hit points and completely out of healing surges, they used sneaky tactics to eke out a victory against three 6th lvl skirmishers (a ranger-type and two fighter-types) and a 7th lvl half-elven controller. The fight involved party members dropping and getting healed no fewer than three times, a battle atop a ruined carriage being dragged across cobblestones by maddened horses, good use of stunts, and a terrifying use of druidic shapeshifting.
Toiva (doppelganger paladin) took the druid multiclass feat. Now she can turn into any person or animal -- which comes in handy when you're trying to grab a sniveling noble on the back of a stampeding horse...
The group has Bracken, a Quith (our name for the wilden) shaman. She used her at-wills to repeatedly give people tiny bursts of 4 hp at a time every time her spirit companion got an opportunity attack.. which was lots. One of the remarkable things about this fight was how much it moved around.
Really, I rated to kick the party's ass. I'm impressed I didn't.
Looks like Piratecat has already covered the basics. Here are some observations and additional detail regarding the main fight:
For this fight, we had four PC's: 2 Brawny Rogues (Logan and Cobalt), a Protecting Paladin (Toiva), and a Protector Shaman (Bramble). Of the four of us, only Bramble had any healing surges remaining. And while three of us were near full health going in, Logan started the fight with EIGHT hit points. All of us had used up our dailies in the previous two fights of the day.
As Piratecat has said, we were up against 3 6th-level skirmishers and a 7th-level controller. For a four-person party of 4th-level PC's, that's about a level+2.5 encounter, which falls into the “hard fight” range even before taking into account our heavily-depleted state. Did I mention that the defender and both strikers had NO healing surges left for this combat?
Piratecat has given me the stat-sheets for the baddies to help me write up this tactical report. I note that their defenses are slightly better than ours overall, and their to-hit bonuses are also comparable, again maybe a little better. Their hit point totals were about 50% higher, as expected.
Holy cow, was our rolling atrocious. Conversely, it seemed like Piratecat couldn't miss. I realize that human psychology made it seem worse than it actually was, but I don't think I'm off by much to say that we hit with about 40% of our rolls, and Piratecat hit with about 75% of his rolls.
And yet, for all that, we won the battle. It's hard to explain. At about the 2/3 point in the battle, I turned to Piratecat and said: “I don't understand why we didn't lose this fight about an hour ago.” But looking back, there were two main contributing factors:
1)Toiva pulled a great stunt early in the battle, bull-rushing the controller and bodily carrying him away from the fight. Although the foe weaseled out, it resulted in Toiva chasing him around the battlefield, effectively keeping him from influencing the remaining 3-on-3 fight the rest of us were having.
2)Bramble, the Shaman, was a huge, huge, huge difference-maker. Played beautifully by my beautiful wife (Kodiak on the boards here), Bramble managed to keep the surge-less rogues going for most of the battle through deft use of her powers and clever placement of her Spirit Companion. Some examples:
At one point, when BOTH of the rogues had been knocked unconscious, Bramble managed to get us both back on our feet in a single round. She used Thunderwave (from her Arcane Initiate feat) to knock one of the enemies past her Spirit Companion, triggering* its Spirit's Shield power, which gave Cobalt 4 hit points, restoring him to consciousness. Then she used Healing Spirit as a minor action, targeting herself for the surge (since only she had surges left), and giving Logan (who was next to the Spirit) the extra die of healing, also restoring him to consciousness.
Over and over again, she'd move her Spirit to a spot adjacent to one of the bodyguards. The nobleman, being hounded by Toiva, was yelling at him to assist. So the bodyguard would move, triggering Spirit's Shield. Up would pop one of the unconscious rogues, with 4 hit points. She did this several times in a row; each time the bodyguard would smack down one rogue back to unconsciousness, and then Bramble would restore one of us to single-digits again. It was like playing whack-a-rogue; the two just wouldn't stay down! And though we kept getting knocked out again, we were chipping away at the bodyguards' healths all the while.
A single use of the level-1 at will “Haunting Spirits” allowed Logan to do about 40 hit points of damage to the enemy, as it afforded him two sneak-attacks: one on an opportunity attack, and another on his actual turn.
* - yeah, against the rules, as I noted while writing this up. Ah well.
As for Toiva's amazing chase: there was a wrecked carriage near to where the fight was going on, with horses still attached. Toiva bull-rushed the noble controller (Nils Riverlimb) into the wreckage of the cart, simultaneously shape-shifting into a leopard to spook the horses into bolting. That's what caused the last bodyguard to give chase, thus giving the Shaman so many uses of Spirit's Shield. It was pretty frikkin' sweet.
The fight ended with Cobalt unconscious, Logan settled at his original 8 hit points, and Toiva and Bramble still unbloodied. (I think... Toiva may have been bloodied by the end.) We had knocked out the controller and two of his three bodyguards; the third surrendered when his boss was taken out.
Neither side was fighting to kill, though Toiva was this close to dealing a fatal blow when she finished off Nils Riverlimb. Boy, was she pissed – particularly because Nils had used a Domination power on her to make her kneel and surrender her main weapon right before Bramble pummeled him with a critical hit on her Spring Renewal Strike.
AND... while that was going in, Strontium was having her own fight against a swarm of body parts, from the dismembered and piecemeal-animated librarian she had gone to visit. Yuck! Her rolls were predictably terrible, and the swarm had her immobilized and down to six hit points while the ghost-librarian controlling them stood nearby, watching. She escaped through sheer guile, convincing the ghost to call off the swarm by threatening to burn his precious books, with an intimidate check aided by a Prestidigitation to produce a small flame. The ghost called off his swarm of parts, and Strontium turned and fled the library.
I'll note that Nils Riverlimb the controller (a "half-elf con man," for those of you following at home with DDI) could do very little damage. The Grey Guard were seldom close enough to inspire them to basic attack one another (I think it happened twice) and he had some trouble hitting Toiva's will defense. At the last minute, Bramble critted (21 points of damage! Enough to knock Nils down to 1 hp) and her totem caused him to be restrained as a thorn tree erupted from the cobblestones beneath him. Considering that he'd just dominated Toiva and forced her to kneel before him, he's awfully lucky to be alive and unconscious.
The other reason the group is still alive is that they focused fire and dropped one of the bodyguards within two rounds. Lucky, that.
Incidentally, Nils is related to Sir Anders Riverlimb, the noble in Cobalt's backstory who Cobalt accidentally killed in a bar fight. He was a diplomat from Croghan, the country to the east.
Toiva (doppelganger paladin) took the druid multiclass feat. Now she can turn into any person or animal -- which comes in handy when you're trying to grab a sniveling noble on the back of a stampeding horse...
I should note that in terms of flavor text, we are playing this as a gift from Toiva's god (Aika, the Goddess of Change), rather than Toiva training to be a Druid.
-Aravis
__________________ -- In every adversity lies the seed of equivalent benefit.
1)Toiva pulled a great stunt early in the battle, bull-rushing the controller and bodily carrying him away from the fight. Although the foe weaseled out, it resulted in Toiva chasing him around the battlefield, effectively keeping him from influencing the remaining 3-on-3 fight the rest of us were having.
Toiva's original plan was to dump him in the river and then say to his bodygaurds, "Hey, there goes your Lord and Master towards the waterfall. Go get him." At this point our characters thought there was a good chance that Strontium was in serious trouble and needed rescuing. (Who knew it was us who could really use that rescuing.)
The rules don't really allow for what I needed to do, but PC was happy to just roll with it.
In the end, through some bad rolls on my part and some good rolls on Nils' part, I just had to keep him running. Worked out nearly as well.
Toiva has a bit of a history in her backstory of dealing with nobles who think of everyone else as things to be controlled and so was very unhappy with Nils. She also was a slave at one point (something she does not talk about, but that Doc Caldwell suspects) and so the domination was almost too much for her to bear. She is currently an unhappy camper who is conflicted over her decision not to kill him.
-Aravis
__________________ -- In every adversity lies the seed of equivalent benefit.
I really appreciate your detailed skill challenge write-ups and am curious about the "just handing them out" part. Now I know your group is a great group of role-players who are highly invested in the game, but how do you think this approach would work at a Con or other - more limited - engagement?
Also, how long do you give them to plot and plan before tossing them into the action?
Finally, are you using any visuals or tokens to track progress?
Thanks in advance!
~ OO
PS - Any further ideas you can share on running successful skill challenges is most welcome.
...how do you think this approach would work at a Con or other - more limited - engagement?
Also, how long do you give them to plot and plan before tossing them into the action?
Finally, are you using any visuals or tokens to track progress?
Glad you found them, Phil! It's a big thread to sort through.
I think this approach would be extremely successful for a con or one-shot; in fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that it would be more successful than an approach that was integrated seamlessly into the storyline with no hint to the players of behind-the-scenes game mechanics.
I'm having a little trouble elucidating why that is, but I'm going to give it a shot. It's for the same reason that the player tracks their hit points instead of the DM.
Imagine if your DM tracked your HP and didn't really give you much feedback on how close to life or death your character was. You'd have to make crucial combat decisions - do I charge in? do I withdraw and shoot missiles? do I flee? - with insufficient information to make an informed choice. More importantly, if you don't realize you're down to three hp as the monster is charging you, you lose all of the nervous anticipation and drama that you'd otherwise feel with your hero's life on the line.
I submit that a skill challenge is the same way. If you aren't informed of the odds, your successes, and your failures, than there's absolutely no drama or excitement. You win or lose without ever being nervous or confident of your status, and that's simply less fun because you're not emotionally engaged. If you have the opportunity to strategically select your skills and actions, I'm finding these suckers to be as exciting and rewarding as a good combat. If you don't, I'm finding them to be frustrating black boxes I have to guess at, and that sucks.
I throw the players into the action immediately, with no more time to plan that I would allow for combat. Less boring that way. You just need to make sure that every character has at least one decent choice, even if that's "aid another in some cinematic way."
Physical tracking tokens are essential. I use small red glass beads (the kind used for M:tG hit points) for failures, and larger green glass beads (originally aquarium rocks from a pet store) for successes. The tangible symbols of success and failure help keep people focused, since they can just glance at the table to see how they're doing.
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Currently editing the 4e War of the Burning Sky adventure path. Support EN Publishing, get excellent modules!
Thanks for the quick response and I really like the reasoning around the process. I am really just getting into understanding the hows and whys of skill challenges and found your examples (and the players comments) very, very helpful...
Also, check the RBDM thread and let me know if those comments help you out at all...
We played again tonight – run #20 of the campaign, I think. (Piratecat, can you confirm?) I'll skip the plot-related stuff, and comment on everything else. Other players should feel free to chime in with additions and corrections, as always.
This was our first game at 5th level, which meant we all had new shiny new Level 5 dailies:
- Logan and Cobalt (rogues) both selected Downward Spiral from Martial Power
- Toiva (paladin) selected Unyielding Faith from Divine Power
- Bramble (shaman) selected Earthrage Spirit
- Strontium (wizard) got to pick 3 dailies for his spellbook. One was Web, and the other two were from Arcane Power, which I don't own. One of them, used tonight, does psychic damage and grants combat advantage to allies. I don't recall anything about the 3rd.
- Doc Caldwell (ranger) selected Adaptive Assault from Martial Power
There was also a fair amount of swapping choices out from previous levels. Logan swapped out Adaptive Flanker, in favor of Fast Hands – the new Skill Utility that lets you draw, sheathe, pick-up item, etc. as a free action 1/round. He also swapped out a feat (forget which one) in order to take Slaying Action. Bramble swapped out Blessing of the Seven Winds to take Spirit of the Healing Flood. Caldwell swapped out something as well (his Utility? Not sure) to get the ability to allow a dying ally to spend a Healing Surge.
With some in-game downtime at the start of the run, we bought some new Alchemical recipes (Blastpatch and Bloodstinger Poison), and made some Healing Potions using the Brew Potion ritual (a perk of being 5th level!).
And, of course, there was a good battle in this game. A Kenku hit squad had been sent to take out Bramble, and they lured us into an ambush on the streets of Floodford. The enemies were:
Skrax, a Kenku Assassin (Level 5 Elite Skirmisher)
Grink, a Kenku Wing Mage (Level 5 Artillery)
Punnuk, a Kenku Ringleader (Level 4 Solider – Leader)
Fekkel and Kelg, Kenku Sneaks (Level 4 Lurkers)
In theory, that's somewhere between a Level -1 and a Level +0 encounter, but it was pretty hairy at the beginning, as all the attackers targeted Bramble exclusively. Also, the Kenku got a surprise round, and rolled extremely well on their initiative rolls. As it happens, Bramble herself (with her mighty Perception Skill) was the only one of us not surprised – a good thing, since had all the enemies gotten to go twice before her, she certainly would have died. As it was, they had done 33 our of her 50 HP before she got to go, and even with some self-healing on her turn, they had her down to the single-digits before anyone else in the party could act!
Once we recovered a bit, the battle went pretty well. It was “healer, heal thyself” for Bramble, who managed to keep herself up while the rest of us did the damage. Some other tactical notes:
- Even knowing that it's best to gang up on one enemy at a time, it turns out to be extremely tricky in practice. It seems like every battle with multiple foes, circumstances of terrain and initial placement of actors make ganging up a logistically unattractive choice.
- Strontium's Fire Shroud was particularly effective – there were lots of burning birds taking ongoing fire 5
- The Kenku Assassin had a brutal power: Feather Burst. This is a Close Burst 2, enemies-only power that auto-blinds for a turn. No attack roll necessary! This was particularly unpopular with the party rogues, as blind = no combat advantage.
- Logan got three of the five enemies with a Blinding Barrage – there was a round or two in there where it seemed pretty much every combatant was blind.
- Bramble's new Earthrage Spirit power hit 3 of the 5 enemies, but its use was late enough in the combat that the auto-knock-prone effect didn't end up mattering – subsequent hits to the victims were all death-blows! Note for future battles: use that one in the earliest possible round.
- Logan made good use of his new feat (Slaying Action), scoring a round of double-sneak attack damage which piled 40+ points of damage onto Skrax.
- On the other hand, Cobalt was pretty much a non-factor in this one. Of his 4 or 5 attack rolls, 2 of them were “1's”, including an attack on which he was getting a +18 to hit. (Action Point + Action Surge Feat + Combat Advantage). Argh!
- This was the first battle of the campaign in which both Doc Caldwell and Strontium hit with a Daily. In Stron's case, he hit with the power that grants all of his allies Combat Advantage against the target, and this was key in preventing the Assassin (the last bird standing) from escaping.
- This was the most rules-intensive and condition-heavy battle of the campaign so far. We spent a fair amount of time in the early rounds looking up rules on Concealment, Climbing, Forced Movement and some other stuff. There are still a couple of rules questions we're not sure of:
- If a creature is Slowed, does the speed reduction affect the following power: “Shift 4 squares and make an attack during that move”?
- Can you Slide an enemy through squares occupied by that enemy's allies? What about a power that lets you Slide multiple enemies simultaneously – can you Slide them past each other?
- As for the Conditions, I kept track of them on a white-board as we went. It would have been a nightmare without it, but with a constant record of who was affected by what, things went pretty smoothly. There was a LOT to keep track of in this one – blindness, slowed-ness, characters granting CA to specific other characters, ongoing damage, dazing effects, regeneration – the works.
I made sure to change the enemy status to DEAD as we knocked them off. :-)
- Even knowing that it's best to gang up on one enemy at a time, it turns out to be extremely tricky in practice. It seems like every battle with multiple foes, circumstances of terrain and initial placement of actors make ganging up a logistically unattractive choice.
That's also been my observations. You know that statistically that it makes sense to gang up, but for some reason it always seems difficult to achieve.
I guess that there is always the arms-race aspect to it as well in that if the players consistently do it, then the DM might just do so as well! But it seems your RBDM is already employing the tactic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sagiro
There are still a couple of rules questions we're not sure of:
- If a creature is Slowed, does the speed reduction affect the following power: “Shift 4 squares and make an attack during that move”?
- Can you Slide an enemy through squares occupied by that enemy's allies? What about a power that lets you Slide multiple enemies simultaneously – can you Slide them past each other?
I can't quote rules right now, but there is another thread on the Rules forum about being slowed. I believe that forced movement doesn't overcome the limitation, but happy to be proved wrong.
For the second question, I believe that it is a yes as forced movement can only be made to somewhere you can walk (and you can walk through allies). Hazardous terrain grants a saving throw to fall prone in last safe square (DMG somewhere).
Caldwell swapped out something as well (his Utility? Not sure) to get the ability to allow a dying ally to spend a Healing Surge
Correct -- I swapped out my ranger utility for the Heal Utility. Yay skill powers!
For me, this was also the first time I'd used 4e's Climb rules. In mid-combat, when one of our foes flew up 20 feet to hit us at range, I realized my Athletics skill is high, and I should take advantage of that -- so I climbed up the windowsills to the second story balcony, and then hit the guy with a melee attack. Unfortunately, my second Climb attempt (to climb onto the roof, in order to run across the building and attack from the other side) failed when I rolled a 2, but thankfully this was within the "you just fail to climb" range and not the "you fall" range.
Memo to self: use Athletics whenever possible; it's one of your best skills. Climbing is great for terrain tactics when the DC isn't too bad.
- This was the most rules-intensive and condition-heavy battle of the campaign so far. We spent a fair amount of time in the early rounds looking up rules on Concealment, Climbing, Forced Movement and some other stuff. There are still a couple of rules questions we're not sure of:
- If a creature is Slowed, does the speed reduction affect the following power: “Shift 4 squares and make an attack during that move”?
- Can you Slide an enemy through squares occupied by that enemy's allies? What about a power that lets you Slide multiple enemies simultaneously – can you Slide them past each other?
Also, when you slide someone is it one space or two to slide around a corner. The rules for normal movement say that it is, but there are special rules for forced movement and in the PH they are somewhat ambiguous on this.
And, when you are under an effect that lasts until the end of the enemy who imposed it's next turn, can you hold until after they go next. The rules specifically cover the case where the effect lasts until the end of your next turn, but not this case.
-Aravis
__________________ -- In every adversity lies the seed of equivalent benefit.
edit: This seemed off topic so I started a new thread...
Hey, Kenku are one of my favorite monsters... they've pretty much replaced kobolds and goblins in my campaign. I'd love to hear P-cat or anyone talk about any ideas and themes they use with Kenku.
Personally, I went through the monster builder and gave them all Acrobatics because I think of them as feathery ninjas. I've also got a tree house lair ready to go for whenever my players decide to track them down.
And, when you are under an effect that lasts until the end of the enemy who imposed it's next turn, can you hold until after they go next. The rules specifically cover the case where the effect lasts until the end of your next turn, but not this case.
-Aravis
On reflection, I think it has to be legal to delay past an effect that ends on an enemy's turn.
The Delay rule in the PH is there to (rightfully) prevent:
1. Postpone negative effects that will happen to you on your turn, and
2. Prolonging negative effects on your enemies, that will end on your turn.
But in the case of a negative effect on YOU, but that ends on an ENEMY'S turn, those don't apply. Worse, disallowing Delays results in some nonsensical results. Let's take the example that occurred last night: a PC is blinded until the end of the enemy attacker's next turn. Imagine also that the PC wants to delay his next turn for some reason other than the Blindness. Finally, let's say we're ruling that you can't "avoid" the effect of the blindness by Delaying.
1. Bad guy goes, causes PC blindness until end of bad guy's next turn
2. PC's turn... he Delays until the after the bad guy goes again. He's still blind.
3. Bad guy goes. PC is still blind on bad guy's turn, naturally. Ordinarily the blindness would be over at the end of the turn, but we've ruled that it's not.
4. Now PC goes. Is he still blind? But if so, when does the state now end? Is he blind for a whole additional turn, until the bad guy goes a second time? Or does the state end at the end of the PC's delayed turn, despite the fact that the original duration had nothing to do with the PC's original turn order?
Note: edited to add, I've posted this question on the rules forums here
Last edited by Sagiro; 4th September 2009 at 07:52 PM..
4. Now PC goes. Is he still blind? But if so, when does the state now end? Is he blind for a whole additional turn, until the bad guy goes a second time? Or does the state end at the end of the PC's delayed turn, despite the fact that the original duration had nothing to do with the PC's original turn order?
Well, you could rule that it ends at the end of your turn once you delay. in other words, as soon as you delay past the enemy on whose turn it should end, it reverts to an ends at the end of your turn effect.
However, I agree with you that you should be able to delay past the enemy and still have the effect end at the end of his turn.
While this lets you nullify some of the impact of the effect, it is at the cost of letting the enemy act again before you do.
-Aravis
__________________ -- In every adversity lies the seed of equivalent benefit.
- If a creature is Slowed, does the speed reduction affect the following power: “Shift 4 squares and make an attack during that move”?
Technically, RAW, no. Slowed reduced your speed to a max of 2. Powers that let you shift a specific number of squares don't reference speed. If it let you shift your speed in squares, then I would say it would, since your speed is 2.
Slowed (p. 277) says it doesn't apply to teleportation, pull, push, or slide. Obviously, this is basically forced movement (and teleportation). Therefore, in practice, I would say it would apply to unforced shifting (ie Expeditious Retreat). However, forced shifting would be able to move you more than two squares. I would define the difference between the two as the former being caused by you or allies, and the latter by enemies or terrain. See also "Not a Move" under "Forced Movement" on p. 285 under "Pull, Push, and Slide".
Quote:
- Can you Slide an enemy through squares occupied by that enemy's allies? What about a power that lets you Slide multiple enemies simultaneously – can you Slide them past each other?
I would say yes, by "Clear Path" on p. 286 under "Push, Pull, and Slide" and "Occupied Squares" on p. 283. An enemy can move through allied enemies' squares, so it qualifies as a clear path. Similarly, you should be able to slide enemies past each other, especially since you can always slide someone less than the maximum.
Quote:
- As for the Conditions, I kept track of them on a white-board as we went. It would have been a nightmare without it, but with a constant record of who was affected by what, things went pretty smoothly. There was a LOT to keep track of in this one – blindness, slowed-ness, characters granting CA to specific other characters, ongoing damage, dazing effects, regeneration – the works.
My DM has M:tG-size cards in plastic holders, which he would track initiative with and write effects on. It's less cumbersome than a whiteboard and easier to manipulate. For example, if someone changes in the initiate order, or more enemies/allies show up, you just add their cards to the stack. He would also keep track of recharges on the cards as well, so he didn't forget. The whiteboard was okay for simpler battles, but quickly became overwhelmed in complex ones, especially with lots of effects.
Tonight was Run #21, and something of an oddity. We had only four players – the players of Toiva, Logan and Strontium were all out, and we had a guest player as Temigent the Goliath Barbarian. With Bramble, Caldwell and Cobalt, we therefore had three strikers (barbarian, rogue, ranger) and one leader (shaman).
Super-brief plot overview: we started with an interrogation of the captured Kenku assassin from the previous run. He turned out to be a member of an officially sanctioned assassins' group called “The Enlightened” that only agrees to target evil or unsavory types. Our prisoner didn't know anything about why Bramble was chosen as a target, so the interrogation didn't get us much more info. Bramble certainly doesn't seem evil or unsavory.
Anyhow, a couple days later our new Commander, Brogh, decided we should make the Grey Guard tower more defensible. Our job was to inventory and clean out one of the tower's sub-basements, filled with long-abandoned junk. We were clearing out space and sorting through oddments when a stuffed elk's head opened its eyes and spoke. It was being possessed by some intelligence that was incensed to discover that we were not spell-casters. It launched a crazy attack.
To jump back for a second: when we first started going through the sub-basement, Piratecat asked each of us to describe two things we saw in the room. We described a bunch of stuff, including a large statue, a pile of old papers recently used as a mattress by Temigent, a hat-rack, a book-case missing a shelf – random stuff. Little did we know that Piratecat was about to attack us with our own creations!
The malign being animating the elk-head started animating all sorts of junk in the large basement, and impelling said junk to attack us! Most of the stuff was small and treated as minions – a set of fireplace tools, a barrel of warped arrows, some costumes from an old trunk, a painted-over mirror, the elk's head – but a few things, including a stuffed owl-bear, the aforementioned stone statue, and a huge pile of ropes and chains, were tougher to fight.
What made the fight so tough was that the minions (fictionally, random stuff that our one enemy was animating) were endless. At first it looked like we were making headway, and figured that we could whittle down the smaller fry until only the actual enemy would be remaining. But that's not how it worked. In fact, we didn't realize until about the 2/3 point of the fight that there was a skill challenge embedded in the combat itself. We could take standard actions to try to figure out where the guiding intelligence was coming from, and this eventually allowed us to discover the source of our pain – an evil book beneath an overturned shelf. With the room filling up with hostile odds and ends, Bramble annihilated the book with thunder damage and the threat vanished.
Some notes on the battle:
- Piratecat re-purposed some monsters for this fight; we ended up fighting an “Arbalester” (The stuffed owl-bear, which hurled projectiles at us), a “Chain Guardian” (the pile of ropes and chains) and an Animated Statue (the stone statue, naturally). These were a Level 4 Artillery, a Level 5 Elite Controller, and a Level 5 Brute, respectively. Additionally there was a never-ending stream of “Possessed Odds and Ends” which were Level 5 Minions. Conservatively estimating there were 10 of these in total, that makes 1275 XP worth of enemies, which is somewhere between Level+2 and Level+3 for a party of four 5th level PC's. (And Temigent is only 4th level). So, a hard encounter, and it felt like one. No one went unconscious, but Temigent was down to 7 HP at one point, and the other three of us spent a large portion of the fight bloodied.
- Once again, Bramble spent most of her healing on herself; the enemies had the best luck hitting her.
- Temigent, despite being 4th level, way outclasses the rogue and ranger for damage, for which he's incredibly optimized.
- 20 STR
- Wields a heavy flail, which does 2d6 damage
- Feats give him +2 damage, and an additional +1 while raging
- His daily is Bloodhunt Rage, which gives him an addition +4 to damage if he or his foe is bloodied. So, with Avalanche strike while bloodied, he did 6d6 + 18. Even with his at-wills he was doing 2d6+1d8+15. By comparison, the best Cobalt can do with an at-will is 1d4+2d8+8, which assumes combat advantage. To put it another way, the rogues, even with sneak attack, can get their damage up into the low 20s about half the time. Temigent did 45 in one swing with his Avalanche Stirke, and his at-wills rate to do about 25.
- Doc Caldwell has taken the “Student of Artifice” Feat, which gets him the use of the Healing Infusion power from the Eberron Player's Guide. He made good use of it, lobbing a ball of healing goop at a heavily-injured Temigent.
- With the Chain Guardian nearly dead, Bramble used an attack that did a base 2d6 damage. Anything other than snake-eyes would kill it. “Just don't roll two ones,” said Caldwell's player. We all groaned. “Why did you say that?”
Sure enough: snake eyes. Sigh.
- We blew through a LOT of Dailies in this fight, which makes sense given its difficulty.
Or was that one of the villains?
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