Mustrum_Ridcully
Hero
So, yesterday evening, we ended our Age of Worms campaign, and it was a very unsatisfying ending for all of us. It was a near TPK - the only survivor was the Bard cohort of our Rogue.
Normally, this wouldn't have stopped us from resourecting or rolling up new characters, but this was actually the final streak that broke the camels back for our group.
What follows is more or less a rant, also containing spoilers on the campaign. For anyone that wants not to be spoiled, but get a central message: Horribly Unbalanced Monster FTW.
We reached 17th level in the Age of Worms campaign. The group consisted of 4 player characters and two cohorts, a Duskblade (who started as human, reincarnated as Halfling), a Rogue/Fighter (who I think reincarnated as a Dwarf, but he might have been one from the start, I don't remember), a Bugbear Barbarian/Rogue (who started human, too, was also reincarnated), and a Human Cleric/Radiant Servant of Pelor, and the cohorts, a Human Bard and a Human Cleric/Radiant Servant of Pelor (after a few Raise Deads, down to level 12). As a one time guest we had a Human Sorceror, who replaced the Duskblade after his untimely and final death this session. At the beginning of the campaign, we also had a slightly different party composition, but I can't remember the details any more.
I played the primary Cleric, but unfortunately wasn't always with the group, missing half or even more of the AoW sessions we had. This also means I don't really know that much on the details of the plot.
The DM running Age of Worms isn't our best, sometimes falling into the trap of adversial pla, and his role-playing skills and his ability to explain the scenario isn't that great, either. But he managed pretty well, I think. (Why do we put up with an imperfect DM? Table Rule: Every long-term player has to DM. It would otherwise also be impossible to maintain the weekly sessions)
Right from the start, the campaign proved to be deadly. Somewhere in the beginning, we were fighting some Wind Lords, which proved nearly unbeatable. High AC, mutliple attacks with a good bonus, ability to fly, and the ability to deal extra damage on succesful hits.
Despite our group having been pretty well optimized and consisting of the essential group members in the beginning (later we changed around, since we had to compensate losing me as a regular player), we were constantly challenged to an unbearable amount, and way too often it seemed as if DM fiat was the only thing that gave us our chance to survive.
In the between, we had several PC death and near TPKs. I remember a big discussion on the aftermath around one battle (I wasn't part of it) where we had to face one of the "Worms" of the campaign. The first part of the encounter consisted of two waves of monsters that might have been easier to attack with a fireball slinging wizard, which the party lacked.
Anyway, after-math analysis still concluded that the monster seemed to follow neither normal "RAW", nor any other sensible guidelines. They were Undeads with a CR notably below their HD (not that unusual for Undead, mind you), but also enjoyed an arbitrary +4 competence bonus to their attacks as a special ability. I don't know if this was a "Paizo-Brew" or one of these overpowered monsters from the later MMs, but let's say our group could see no way that this was ever reasonably playtested or compared to benchmarks of similar monsters and PCs in their CR range. (Unless the PC had something like 40 point point-buy equivalent, which we were short 15 points.)
The Worm itself was also a lot of "fun" - if I remember correctly, he had an Instant Death Grab attack. If he grappled you for one round, you were dead (I don't think there was even a save, but I don't think it would have mattered, anyway).
So, fast forward a few sessions later - the last session.
We are in search of a Dracolich phylactery, and are reaching a Rift where a Giant city has fallen into a civil war and is also attacked by Dragons (presumably send by the Dracolich to retrieve or protect the phylactery.)
The session begins relatively easy - we try to approach one of the "air defense towers", and fight 2 dragons, 4 giants and are under attack by some of the air defense ballista/catapults. The Dragons are dispatched by the enemy firing Carrion Crawler heads/poison, as they are paralyzed. We don't quite get why the Giants use this weapon, since
a) Carrion Crawler paralysis ends with the death of the Carrion Crawler
b) Dragons are immune to paralysis, anyway.
but it's not like we need to know the details. (It's quite possible the DM made an error here, but I still don't understand the whole point here? Did the adventure designers made a mistake? Or was this supposed to explain a "stale mate" between Dragons and Giants - their favorite weapon didn't work?)
Anyway, with the Dragons out of the way, the Giants are fun to engage and quickly dispatched. We wander a bit helplessly around trying to find the phylactery, sending our Bard to ask for information. "Hello Mr. Giant, we are actually ordered to help you, but we don't know how where can we find the Dracolichs phylactery - presumably the reason for the Dragons assault - again?" "No idea what you're talking about, little lady, but I'd look into the other citadel. We're just a air defense tower - and a busy one at is!" "Thanks a lot, dear sir, and good luck with your air defense thingy".
So, off we go. We Wind-Walk towards the other citadel and see a Gargantuan Fang Dragon and a Huge Green or Blue (can't remember at the moment - I think we had 3 different energy resistances active at this point, to cover for the likely possiblities) Dragon trying to break through the admantite door. The scenario has a small court-yeard, a chasmn of unknown depth, and a small bridge.
So, we "land" on the bridge and attack them (Wind Walk doesn't really allow another approach - it takes 5 rounds to end the effect). Clerics and Bard are invisible (as long as we stay outside their Blindisight range, this is quite useful), the rest begins by engaging the smaller dragon. That one is dispatched rather quickly - Something getting between the two Rogues and suspectible to sneak attack can't really survive that long, though I think it took 2 or 3 rounds. Eventually, the Fang Dragon would turn toward us (before the other dragon was down, IIRC). The Duskblade is its first target, the Fang Dragon deals some damage, but doesn't get his special ability through as the Duskblade succeeds his Fortitutde Save (barely). The Duskblade is at full hit points, plus some temporary hit points from Vampiric Touch active earlier that day.
He strikes the dragon, and I move my Cleric in a reasonable range so that I can heal the Duskblade after the dragons next turn (readying actions wasn't feasible). Now it's the Dragons turn. He bites the Duskblade. And now we learn why he doesn'T get a breath weapon. He gets instead an ability that lets him deal 2d6 points of constitution drain (plus a lot of damage). Further damage is added by the remaining attacks (4-8? Well, the typical dragon attack routine, you know the drill), and bring down our Duskblade.
At this point, the Bugbear decided that it would be reasonable to run. The rest of the group tries to get the Duskblades corpse, but we lose the Duskblades Cohort in the process (intentional by the player, in the end). Anyway, the rest retreats succesfully, and we quickly get a replacement character, a Sorceror 17. We briefly considered to take a Fighter, but we didn't see anything a Fighter could have contributed - by our account, the save DC is next to unbeatable for anyone, and it's not like we wanted to number-crunch a perfectly suited PC just for this purpose, anyway.
We just made sure that there was no conceivable way to deal with the ability drain.
It's not poison, it's not a negative energy/death/necromancy effect, and restorative magic requires several rounds to be applied - rounds we evidently don't have.
So, we return. The first attack is directed at the Bard, who succeeds the save since she has a special magical item that allows her to make a perform check in place of heir save (useable once per day, and the damage ensures that she is going to retreat any way.)
The Sorceror tries to cast a spell, and rolls not too great on his caster level check. Spell fizzles. The Cleric tries the same, but she also fails (with a bad roll, all the Divine Spell Power in the world won't help. The Rogues are flanking and sneaking the Dragon, but he is pretty much unimpressed yet, probably thanks to the fact that the only reason the characters don't have to roll d30 instead of d20 are the buffs from the Bard.
The next spell from the Sorcerer also fails. My Cleric is the next target of the Dragon, and dies in one round. There goes any hope of managing the Dragons damage, and the remaining two die quickly (it doesn't help that we basically already decided that this is it and the campaign will end ungloriously with a TPK). The Bard retreated with a dimension door and greater invisiblity, so she can warn the people that there is no one around to stop the end of the world, and find a safe haven on another plane. There are rumors of a Halfling Bard/Rogue/Gatecrusher that might be able to help her out... (Okay, he might still be a 3.0 FR character and as such appear a little dated these days, but at least he lives in a castle, not among undead worms)
So, what I am really wondering? Who can I blame? Where we stupid? (off course, we could have decided to go another route - except there apparently wasn't one. And it's not like the following encounters would have become easier. The final part would have been us against a "advanced" Carrion Crawler with 8 paralyzing tentacle attacks, with a save DC against the paralysis that probably nobody could have beaten, unless he rolled a 21.)
Spells where next to useless here. It certainly was also the fault of louse rolls against the Fell Drakes SR, but the only thing that could have changed something where the following two things
- A spell to counter the Fangs ability to deal 2d6 Con Drain. And there wasn't one.
- A save or die spell to end the combat quicker. Unfortunately, Dragons have good saving throws and in ordinarily amounts of HD to boot.
Is it the adventure designers fault? They constantly seemed to have pulled out the most powerful monsters for their CR. In fact, I'lll say they chose constantly overpowered monsters and encounters, with seeemingly no respect to real playability.
Is it the monsters desginer fault? I mean, how did they come up with this stuff? Ability Damage - for crying out lout: CONSTITUTION DRAIN! That's the worst kind! Fortitude Save based? Not death, necromantic, poison, and incurably by magic over the course of a combat encounter? Off course, this is just one example of many monsters we have encountered that were simply broken.
Maybe all three are fault.
But actually, I put the blame on the adventure and the monster designers. The monster designers failed to really gauge the power of their monsters. There seemed to be no benchmarks they compared the monsters to, and as a result, the beasts became horribly overpowered. Our internal joke was always to say that a monsters actual CR is something like "CR + Monster Manual Number". In the meantime, I think you are free to add 1d6-2 to the CR, and add another +3 to Dragons.
Who with even a basic understanding of level progression thinks it is a good idea to give a monster ability damage or save or die/suck effects based on HD, if the HD are next to twice the amount of HD of its CR, and give them a good Constitution, too?
(By the way, did I mention that the DM said he dropped some of the monsters HP, and its AC?)
But the adventure designers totally failed at picking appropriate monsters. I mean, come on, did nobody playtest these adventures? What kind of groups did they use? 6 characters, everyoe with cohort, and 40 point buy, or 6d6 drop lowest, and whine to DM if you don't feel good enough, to get a reroll of all dice below 3? Double Max Hit points? Gestalt rules? Pathfinder Pre-Alpha Test? Iron Heroes with magical items? Divine Rank 0 for PCs?
Ah, heck, it might actually be a general system fault. Nobody has written down the mathematical guidelines for the game, so that you can hope that someone with a mix of experience and playtesting figures out "good numbers". If there are any. Because presumably, their are groups that managed the adventures, right? Apparently, we're not power-gaming and min-maxing well enough yet.
But really, what can I say at this point - my hat of d02 no limit?
3E gave us rules how to build monsters so that we can calculate all the relevant modifiers. 4E promises us to give us guidelines what these numbers should actually look like.
I really really really really really really hope that 4E monster design will work better.
But you know, there is one nagging worry: The Fell Dragon for example is a WotC monster fro mthe Dracomonicum, as far as I heard. If the designers didn't get it right then, what's stopping them from epic fail this time?
Normally, this wouldn't have stopped us from resourecting or rolling up new characters, but this was actually the final streak that broke the camels back for our group.
What follows is more or less a rant, also containing spoilers on the campaign. For anyone that wants not to be spoiled, but get a central message: Horribly Unbalanced Monster FTW.
We reached 17th level in the Age of Worms campaign. The group consisted of 4 player characters and two cohorts, a Duskblade (who started as human, reincarnated as Halfling), a Rogue/Fighter (who I think reincarnated as a Dwarf, but he might have been one from the start, I don't remember), a Bugbear Barbarian/Rogue (who started human, too, was also reincarnated), and a Human Cleric/Radiant Servant of Pelor, and the cohorts, a Human Bard and a Human Cleric/Radiant Servant of Pelor (after a few Raise Deads, down to level 12). As a one time guest we had a Human Sorceror, who replaced the Duskblade after his untimely and final death this session. At the beginning of the campaign, we also had a slightly different party composition, but I can't remember the details any more.
I played the primary Cleric, but unfortunately wasn't always with the group, missing half or even more of the AoW sessions we had. This also means I don't really know that much on the details of the plot.
The DM running Age of Worms isn't our best, sometimes falling into the trap of adversial pla, and his role-playing skills and his ability to explain the scenario isn't that great, either. But he managed pretty well, I think. (Why do we put up with an imperfect DM? Table Rule: Every long-term player has to DM. It would otherwise also be impossible to maintain the weekly sessions)
Right from the start, the campaign proved to be deadly. Somewhere in the beginning, we were fighting some Wind Lords, which proved nearly unbeatable. High AC, mutliple attacks with a good bonus, ability to fly, and the ability to deal extra damage on succesful hits.
Despite our group having been pretty well optimized and consisting of the essential group members in the beginning (later we changed around, since we had to compensate losing me as a regular player), we were constantly challenged to an unbearable amount, and way too often it seemed as if DM fiat was the only thing that gave us our chance to survive.
In the between, we had several PC death and near TPKs. I remember a big discussion on the aftermath around one battle (I wasn't part of it) where we had to face one of the "Worms" of the campaign. The first part of the encounter consisted of two waves of monsters that might have been easier to attack with a fireball slinging wizard, which the party lacked.
Anyway, after-math analysis still concluded that the monster seemed to follow neither normal "RAW", nor any other sensible guidelines. They were Undeads with a CR notably below their HD (not that unusual for Undead, mind you), but also enjoyed an arbitrary +4 competence bonus to their attacks as a special ability. I don't know if this was a "Paizo-Brew" or one of these overpowered monsters from the later MMs, but let's say our group could see no way that this was ever reasonably playtested or compared to benchmarks of similar monsters and PCs in their CR range. (Unless the PC had something like 40 point point-buy equivalent, which we were short 15 points.)
The Worm itself was also a lot of "fun" - if I remember correctly, he had an Instant Death Grab attack. If he grappled you for one round, you were dead (I don't think there was even a save, but I don't think it would have mattered, anyway).
So, fast forward a few sessions later - the last session.
We are in search of a Dracolich phylactery, and are reaching a Rift where a Giant city has fallen into a civil war and is also attacked by Dragons (presumably send by the Dracolich to retrieve or protect the phylactery.)
The session begins relatively easy - we try to approach one of the "air defense towers", and fight 2 dragons, 4 giants and are under attack by some of the air defense ballista/catapults. The Dragons are dispatched by the enemy firing Carrion Crawler heads/poison, as they are paralyzed. We don't quite get why the Giants use this weapon, since
a) Carrion Crawler paralysis ends with the death of the Carrion Crawler
b) Dragons are immune to paralysis, anyway.
but it's not like we need to know the details. (It's quite possible the DM made an error here, but I still don't understand the whole point here? Did the adventure designers made a mistake? Or was this supposed to explain a "stale mate" between Dragons and Giants - their favorite weapon didn't work?)
Anyway, with the Dragons out of the way, the Giants are fun to engage and quickly dispatched. We wander a bit helplessly around trying to find the phylactery, sending our Bard to ask for information. "Hello Mr. Giant, we are actually ordered to help you, but we don't know how where can we find the Dracolichs phylactery - presumably the reason for the Dragons assault - again?" "No idea what you're talking about, little lady, but I'd look into the other citadel. We're just a air defense tower - and a busy one at is!" "Thanks a lot, dear sir, and good luck with your air defense thingy".
So, off we go. We Wind-Walk towards the other citadel and see a Gargantuan Fang Dragon and a Huge Green or Blue (can't remember at the moment - I think we had 3 different energy resistances active at this point, to cover for the likely possiblities) Dragon trying to break through the admantite door. The scenario has a small court-yeard, a chasmn of unknown depth, and a small bridge.
So, we "land" on the bridge and attack them (Wind Walk doesn't really allow another approach - it takes 5 rounds to end the effect). Clerics and Bard are invisible (as long as we stay outside their Blindisight range, this is quite useful), the rest begins by engaging the smaller dragon. That one is dispatched rather quickly - Something getting between the two Rogues and suspectible to sneak attack can't really survive that long, though I think it took 2 or 3 rounds. Eventually, the Fang Dragon would turn toward us (before the other dragon was down, IIRC). The Duskblade is its first target, the Fang Dragon deals some damage, but doesn't get his special ability through as the Duskblade succeeds his Fortitutde Save (barely). The Duskblade is at full hit points, plus some temporary hit points from Vampiric Touch active earlier that day.
He strikes the dragon, and I move my Cleric in a reasonable range so that I can heal the Duskblade after the dragons next turn (readying actions wasn't feasible). Now it's the Dragons turn. He bites the Duskblade. And now we learn why he doesn'T get a breath weapon. He gets instead an ability that lets him deal 2d6 points of constitution drain (plus a lot of damage). Further damage is added by the remaining attacks (4-8? Well, the typical dragon attack routine, you know the drill), and bring down our Duskblade.
At this point, the Bugbear decided that it would be reasonable to run. The rest of the group tries to get the Duskblades corpse, but we lose the Duskblades Cohort in the process (intentional by the player, in the end). Anyway, the rest retreats succesfully, and we quickly get a replacement character, a Sorceror 17. We briefly considered to take a Fighter, but we didn't see anything a Fighter could have contributed - by our account, the save DC is next to unbeatable for anyone, and it's not like we wanted to number-crunch a perfectly suited PC just for this purpose, anyway.
We just made sure that there was no conceivable way to deal with the ability drain.
It's not poison, it's not a negative energy/death/necromancy effect, and restorative magic requires several rounds to be applied - rounds we evidently don't have.
So, we return. The first attack is directed at the Bard, who succeeds the save since she has a special magical item that allows her to make a perform check in place of heir save (useable once per day, and the damage ensures that she is going to retreat any way.)
The Sorceror tries to cast a spell, and rolls not too great on his caster level check. Spell fizzles. The Cleric tries the same, but she also fails (with a bad roll, all the Divine Spell Power in the world won't help. The Rogues are flanking and sneaking the Dragon, but he is pretty much unimpressed yet, probably thanks to the fact that the only reason the characters don't have to roll d30 instead of d20 are the buffs from the Bard.
The next spell from the Sorcerer also fails. My Cleric is the next target of the Dragon, and dies in one round. There goes any hope of managing the Dragons damage, and the remaining two die quickly (it doesn't help that we basically already decided that this is it and the campaign will end ungloriously with a TPK). The Bard retreated with a dimension door and greater invisiblity, so she can warn the people that there is no one around to stop the end of the world, and find a safe haven on another plane. There are rumors of a Halfling Bard/Rogue/Gatecrusher that might be able to help her out... (Okay, he might still be a 3.0 FR character and as such appear a little dated these days, but at least he lives in a castle, not among undead worms)
So, what I am really wondering? Who can I blame? Where we stupid? (off course, we could have decided to go another route - except there apparently wasn't one. And it's not like the following encounters would have become easier. The final part would have been us against a "advanced" Carrion Crawler with 8 paralyzing tentacle attacks, with a save DC against the paralysis that probably nobody could have beaten, unless he rolled a 21.)
Spells where next to useless here. It certainly was also the fault of louse rolls against the Fell Drakes SR, but the only thing that could have changed something where the following two things
- A spell to counter the Fangs ability to deal 2d6 Con Drain. And there wasn't one.
- A save or die spell to end the combat quicker. Unfortunately, Dragons have good saving throws and in ordinarily amounts of HD to boot.
Is it the adventure designers fault? They constantly seemed to have pulled out the most powerful monsters for their CR. In fact, I'lll say they chose constantly overpowered monsters and encounters, with seeemingly no respect to real playability.
Is it the monsters desginer fault? I mean, how did they come up with this stuff? Ability Damage - for crying out lout: CONSTITUTION DRAIN! That's the worst kind! Fortitude Save based? Not death, necromantic, poison, and incurably by magic over the course of a combat encounter? Off course, this is just one example of many monsters we have encountered that were simply broken.
Maybe all three are fault.
But actually, I put the blame on the adventure and the monster designers. The monster designers failed to really gauge the power of their monsters. There seemed to be no benchmarks they compared the monsters to, and as a result, the beasts became horribly overpowered. Our internal joke was always to say that a monsters actual CR is something like "CR + Monster Manual Number". In the meantime, I think you are free to add 1d6-2 to the CR, and add another +3 to Dragons.
Who with even a basic understanding of level progression thinks it is a good idea to give a monster ability damage or save or die/suck effects based on HD, if the HD are next to twice the amount of HD of its CR, and give them a good Constitution, too?
(By the way, did I mention that the DM said he dropped some of the monsters HP, and its AC?)
But the adventure designers totally failed at picking appropriate monsters. I mean, come on, did nobody playtest these adventures? What kind of groups did they use? 6 characters, everyoe with cohort, and 40 point buy, or 6d6 drop lowest, and whine to DM if you don't feel good enough, to get a reroll of all dice below 3? Double Max Hit points? Gestalt rules? Pathfinder Pre-Alpha Test? Iron Heroes with magical items? Divine Rank 0 for PCs?
Ah, heck, it might actually be a general system fault. Nobody has written down the mathematical guidelines for the game, so that you can hope that someone with a mix of experience and playtesting figures out "good numbers". If there are any. Because presumably, their are groups that managed the adventures, right? Apparently, we're not power-gaming and min-maxing well enough yet.
But really, what can I say at this point - my hat of d02 no limit?
3E gave us rules how to build monsters so that we can calculate all the relevant modifiers. 4E promises us to give us guidelines what these numbers should actually look like.
I really really really really really really hope that 4E monster design will work better.
But you know, there is one nagging worry: The Fell Dragon for example is a WotC monster fro mthe Dracomonicum, as far as I heard. If the designers didn't get it right then, what's stopping them from epic fail this time?
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