Trial of the Echoed Souls - Meditation

Primitive Screwhead · Aug 26, 2010

I have a session coming up this Friday and one part of the adventure I forgot to convert to 4e is the benefits from the meditation rooms.

Here is my stab in the dark, please help me make these cool and useful!

Each chamber acts as a ritual that provides the user with a minor ongoing benefit, a special move action, and a capstone 'release' power.

The Capstone power is a stunt flavored by the element in question.. based on the Players description. As a daily, it deals the 'high' damage expression from page 42.

four corporeal elements
- air > +2 to AC and REF, Move action 'Flit' = fly your speed but must end your turn on solid footing
- earth > +2 to AC and FORT, Move action 'Mountain Stance' = reduce push/pull/slides by your CON modifier and gain resist All 5 per tier until ENT or you move
- fire > +2 to AC and FORT, Move Action 'Blazing Stance' = gain threatening reach and +1D6 (per tier) fire damage to your basic attack, until ENT or you move.
- water > +2 to AC and REF, Move action 'Flow' = shift half your speed

four ethereal elements
- death > +2 to Fort and Will, Move action 'Steal Soul' = Until NT, your basic attack gains the following follow-up attack: Chr vs Will: Hit deal page
42 low expression and gain 5 hitpoints (per tier)
- life > +2 to saves, Move action 'Inner Strength' = lose a healing surge and gain hit points equal to your healing surge value. This action ends your turn.
- space > +2 to REF and Will, Move action 'Fold Space' = teleport up to half your INT score
- time > +2 to REF and Will, Move action 'Hyper Stance' = move up to 1.5 times your speed and you gain WIS mod to defenses from opportunity attacks during the move. If you charge this turn, the attack gains the same benefits and deals an additional +1D6 (per tier)

Thoughts?

Primitive Screwhead · Sep 20, 2010

Update:
One session down, and no-one has uses the capstone powers, altho the benefits to defenses have played a large part in the fights. I think if I were to do this again, I would drop the adds to defenses.

I would also write these up as power cards... as none of the Move powers have been used yet either!

Next session I may see some of this come into play, or I may see players completely forget about the powers....

Zinovia · Sep 23, 2010

Thanks for the post. I have read the 3E version of this with an eye to converting it. I wasn't at all sure of how to deal with some aspects of this module, although I might have a better idea now than when I first read it over a year ago. I am curious to see what the official conversion does.

My game has already diverged significantly from the official conversion, so I have no qualms about changing anything in the modules. Sometimes I disagree with the way NPC's have been converted, other times I am stripping out unnecessary encounters, or changing things to fit my own version of the story. As such, it is always useful to see a different take on things.

Defense buffs are really strong in 4e. Just try hitting a swordmage's AC sometime! I think the buffs mattered less in 3e because AC didn't really scale at the same rate that attack bonuses did. Our paladin in 3.5 was hitting on a 2 pretty often by the higher levels. If he didn't, then the rogue had to roll high to hit at all. So a couple points to AC didn't really make a lot of difference. My group whined tremendously when I had them fighting an Avenger template Inquisitor last session due to his very high AC. Not that they were really in any danger that fight, but they hate missing. He missed with his best encounter power, so it was all fair enough.

Blackbrrd · Sep 28, 2010

In the 3E campaign I played we had a Dwarf paladin with insanely high AC if properly buffed.

The biggest difference between 3E and 4E AC-wise is that the gap is usually a lot smaller in 4e than in 3E so more characters get a benefit from +2AC. For instance my 3E cleric/fighter in the above campaign could be hit on a 2 most of the time.

Primitive Screwhead · Oct 30, 2010

Finished the Trial last night, and the final battle went extremely well. The entire party was bloodied about half-way through and one PC was on deaths door.

The group had run out of dailies and encounters when the Master of the Temple got ahold of the fully repaired Torch {by KO'ing the PC who had just repaired it}

Despair was in the air.. until I reminded them of the Boon's capstone ability.

Seth was first, he had meditated in the room of Death, he called upon the spirits within the temple to rise up an incapicate the Master, stunning him into inaction. The souls swirled and screamed, but the Master's will was too strong.
Pepper was second, he had meditated in the room of Life. He called upon the spirits to bring a font of holy power into the room that flowed over everyone, healing those not tied to the evil darkness of the Master's crippled soul.
Galen was third, using the power of the winds, he called up a miniature tornado to distract the monk and snatch the Torch from his grasp, but all he was able to accomplish was to knock the monk prone.
Devon then called upon the element of fire, bringing fingers of lava up from the ground to engage the Master and restrain him. This made it easy for the Torch to be wrenched from the Master's hand.

All in all, I think the boons made the battle that much more entertaining!