Age of Worms - Deadly

[scourger]

Scourger,

Well I'm more in favor of the first idea than the second one. I only offer that other option because perhaps not every DM would be that willing to do so.

I'm not sure what you mean, Nightfall. But, for me, another D&D setting or variant rules system would not be the ideal way to run Age of Worms. If I don't do it with Omega World for the PCs (perhaps with non-spellcasters as above and possibly with [winged?] aasimar paladins [without technology?] as "angels"), I would be more inclined to use the generic classes from Unearthed Arcana for the PCs with rare magic items. It would be easy to do that UA option for the PCs and then just strip out some/most of the powers/magic of the bad guys to make it work. What I'm really after is trimming the game so that I can make the job of DMing less time & effort intensive. Oddly, I think using Omega World would do exactly that for me; although it does seem counterintuitive that a conversion is actually simpler. There's just got to be an easier way to run D&D without tracking the hit points, spells, magic items, etc. of every bad guy in the entire adventure. Bosses, yes. Mooks, no. And, I would like to try it with Age of Worms. My Shackled City experiment needs more refining, but it may just be easier to start over with Age of Worms.

 

[iLoVeKobolds]

Funny thing really...

My poor PCs choose to go down the blue lantern tunnel first. *tisk tisk*
They suspected something amiss, so they tied themselves together. They failed to find the pressure plate before they set off the wind tunnel. Then my Paladin had the bright idea to hook his crowbar onto the lip of the screaming face. Which was a good idea for a few rounds... hurricane force winds for 10 min, they weren't expecting that.

They survived the fall (barely) by grasping onto the chain and sliding a few feet before slipping. Didn't take them long to tuck their tails between their legs and head back to town for some more supplies and healing.

Mwahahah...this is more fun than I thought.

 

[Squire James]

I have the severe misfortune of having only 2 players, so I had them create level 3 characters. That sounded about right for a level 1 adventure, so we started it up.

The swarms were trouble, so I played them up more for dramatic effect than killing the party. Good thing, too. They had nothing that could hurt them. At all.

The eyeball encounter went something like this (roleplaying and general cursing omitted for sake of brevity):

Me: OK, a tiny monster that looks like two floating eyeballs connected by a muscular cord is attacking you. It's hiding, so roll Spot checks to avoid surprise.

Player 1: 24
Player 2: 12

Me: OK (player 1), you get to roll initiative on the surprise round. (player 2) can roll next round).

Player 1: 13
Me: 18

Me: Let me look at this monster a little. OK, save vs. sleep.

Player 1: 7

Me: You fall asleep. Hm. (player 2) roll initiative.

Player 2: 10

Me: I don't see any way around this. It wants to kill you. Save vs sleep.

Player 2: natural 1.

I couldn't think of any reason in the world why the thing wouldn't strangle them in their sleep. It was all rather sad, and their next characters lacked the emotional investment for a long-lasting campaign (deliberately insulting Balabar Smenk wasn't terribly good for the second group's survival either).

Adventures 2-4 in the Age of Worms taunt me. A reason for low-investment characters not to leave Diamond Lake forever after the first adventure would have saved the campaign. I'm gonna have to work them into another campaign somehow.

 

[Squire James]

It also didn't help when I explained that, if it had used its Fear effect instead, it would have chased the character, alone, straight into the brown mold!

 

[ruleslawyer]

Well, I'm in an Iron Heroes Age of Worms campaign right now, now about halfway into module 2 (we're in the Shrine of Vecna).

It's been going pretty well, although some encounters are a little rougher without any kind of magic, against creatures that it is clearly meant that you have magic to encounter.

Iron Heroes is meant to be balanced without magic items and spellcasting against the same threats D&D characters are, and from what I've seen so far that is generally true, but things like swarms and incorporeal undead, which D&D characters could overcome with one spell (or turning attempt) are much more serious threats to IH parties, since at best it's hard for them to hurt them with melee attacks.

Hmm. Do you guys have a Story Hour going? I've been teetering on the edge of starting AoW with my new IH/AE/D&D hybrid group (to wit, we allow the magister class from AE, and some D&D "classic" spells, plus some rules for "clerics") and I'd be curious to see how it can be adjusted to deal with some of the power-down issues raised by IH.