WotBS Fixing WotBS Encounter / Monster Math

[Arcaneshield]

I've been reading the War of the Burning Sky, and think it is an excellent campaign, really excited to run it. However I have noticed that the monsters have higher hp and defenses, and lower damage output than they probably should. I am pretty sure this is because they where created before the 4e Monster Math update in MM3, and expounded upon in the essentials line.

Has anyone already worked on updating the monster math? Given that this campaign spans 30 levels, the higher you get I'd imagine the more problematic the math would get... as it did in 4e's early days. Long, drawn out fights with hit point sink monsters that don't deal out enough damage either.

 

[Morrus]

That change was one of the more frustrating things that happened while the campaign was being released. I'm sure I recall some threads in this forum where folks took a crack at it, but I may be misremembering.

 

[Arcaneshield]

To be fair, as DM who has run encounters before and after the math update, I have to say its damn well worth the change.

 

[Morrus]

Oh, absolutely.

When I ran it for my group, I applied a change on the fly - generally half hit points and an increase in damage, though I don't recall what that increase was now. It worked great.

 

[Arcaneshield]

The problem is sharing the update once I complete it... probably would break copyright.

 

[Morrus]

The problem is sharing the update once I complete it... probably would break copyright.

If only the publisher were around to talk to about it!

 

[Arcaneshield]

Yeah, if only there was I was posting on the forum hosted by the publisher for this exact adventure...

But joking aside, I plan on converting the monsters in masterplan. If I had permission I could then share the library file with all the converted monsters per adventure... anyone can freely download the masterplan software and export the monsters to html or print them or do whatever.

If I had permission

 

[Morrus]

Yeah, if only there was I was posting on the forum hosted by the publisher for this exact adventure...

But joking aside, I plan on converting the monsters in masterplan. If I had permission I could then share the library file with all the converted monsters per adventure... anyone can freely download the masterplan software and export the monsters to html or print them or do whatever.

If I had permission

I'm perfectly happy with that. Generally speaking, as long as folks aren't just reproducing the adventures, anything which helps people run them is always going to be cool with us.

 

[Arcaneshield]

Excellent. I shall have the first adventure converted within the week!

 

[luide]

I have majority of the monsters up to adventure 5 updated to MM3 math, but only on the D&D 4e Combat manager statblock library. I can give that to you if you wish.

For my group I've also found out that many encounters use multiple low-level (low as in 2-4 levels below PC's) and those seemed to be more of a speedbumbs than real threats against my group of 4 Paragon PCs, as the enemies were hitting on 15-17 and PCs on 3-6. Changing them to equal level changed the dynamics of the encounters to be more "dangerous" for PCs.


BTW, Masterplan library files are not actually trivial to share. Post version 8.8 they added a copy protection feature that makes library files only work with the computer/user account that you created the Library file on.

It can be circumvented, but I'm not willing to go public on how to do it. Suffice to say that it is not hard if you know what you're doing.