JollyDoc's Age of Worms (Updated 11/30, Epilogue!)

[Neverwinter Knight]

In my opinion, the use of disjunction is up to the DM to limit access to for the PCs and make appropriate use off with his NPCs. E.g. we discussed how easy the Thessalar fight would have been without adding Moreto and Filge. Disjunction might be the edge to give a lone spellcaster the chance to put up a good fight.
And if you use it at a point where the party still has time to regroup and recapture their gear, I think it's OK.

I'm thinking of creating a new BBEG for Savage Tide...a four-headed horror with two demogorgon heads, one Adimarchus head, and one Kyuss head. I think I'll call him Demoadimarchakyussgorgon. Catchy, don't you think?

If they find a way around the abbarition/aasimar problem, this would be a case for the Hawk/Faust fusion. ( CR: Care to guess? )

 

[Joachim]

I'm actually a great fan of Disjunction. It's great for getting rid of old stuff and for keeping PCs on their toes. They shouldn't be reliant on buffs.

Incidentally, when handling spells like Disjunction, I don't do rolls on the spot. I have a sheet of pre-rolled numbers and start a random way in, determined at the start of the session by the players. Players and characters shouldn't necessarily know which effects are still in place and which aren't and which items are no longer working and which ones still are.

You really must HATE your players.

 

[dungeon blaster]

I absolutely loathe how 3ed is so reliant on "buff" spells. I don't recall it being such an issue in 2ed, possibly because many spells didn't stack. For example, let's say barkskin gave you an AC of 7 in 2ed. That didn't stack with your full plate armor.

 

[Neverwinter Knight]

How was your first ST session? Any chance someone is playing a drunken swashbuckling pirate in the spirit of captain Jack Sparrow?

 

[Joachim]

How was your first ST session? Any chance someone is playing a drunken swashbuckling pirate in the spirit of captain Jack Sparrow?

Nah...no pirates, but still some interesting PC's:

Ricky (Mak) - Goliath Crusader of Savras [what is it with this guy and goliaths?]

Fred (Hawk) - Chaos Gnome Cleric of Oghma

Courtney (Grubber) - Lesser Tiefling Abjurer

Thomas (Storm) - Human Dragon Shaman

Gautam (Faust) - Dwarven Fighter

Me - Lesser Deep Gnome Beguiler

The module, thus far, has started out interesting, but our first combat session was kind of a doozy...never leap before you look.

 

[Elemental]

What kind of ability was the Wormy Wone's Time Stop? Something that couldn't be counterspelled or interrupted? Same with the Disjunction? It seemed like Faust interrupted his spells once or twice - if someone could've nixxed a Time Stop, that might have done it.

If it's a spell-like ability, it can't be counterspelled.

As an intellectual exercise, assuming knowledge of the tactic through Commune, Legend Lore etc, how can you defeat someone with the Harm / Timestop / Disjunction trilogy of spells? The best I can think of is using Arcane Sight to discern when a SLA is being used, then constantly readying extremely powerful attacks to break concentration.

 

[Quartz]

You really must HATE your players.

I don't have any at the moment.

But I look for a decent churn of items. This means giving out plenty of of them. It also means that tactics don't get stale and dependent upon a particular item or set of buffs. It's also a good siphon of XP and money as it gives the excuse for the party spellcasters to enchant new items every so often. The materials for which items are, of course, possible adventure hooks.

IMHO PCs should face Disjunctions from quite an early level. A Ring of Spell Storing with Disjunction in it or some other one-shot item isn't expensive. A 10th level or so BBEG might reasonably have such an item. Equally, a mage-killing sword would quite reasonably have Disjunction as a special purpose power.

 

[sithramir]

Disjunction Solution

Just wanted to state that my group typically makes disjunction destroy all spells but only affects items for 1d4 rounds. If that's not enough maybe it's 1d4 minutes, hours, days. Basically, it doesn't totally destroy items. If you need to destroy items multiple disjunctions still give that permanent affect.

We also make this similar for permanency spell so it's not useless at higher levels.

Another option is that the spell shouldn't take 1 standard action. Perhaps a full round? Perhaps even 1 minute casting. This makes it usefull but not a combat spell. Perhaps using this an another dispelling spell that removes all active sell but doesn't affect items is more balanced?

Since you can't affect targets while in Time Stop it hasn't been overly powerful in my mind except when you have infinite healing capabilities...*cough*. However, i've ruled that overuse of certain magics helps build a resistance to it IE you might not be able to heal yourself 30 times in a row. Of course, god's shouldn't suffer that so I guess, um, don't mess with gods cause well they're gods?

 

[Tearlach]

Regardless on the outcome, it has sure been a wonderous ride (and read). Thanks very much for sharing the tale with us.

Please ensure you link us to the Savage Tide one as soon as it is started! =)

 

[Graywolf-ELM]

This is the point where I say many thanks again for writing this up, and letting us share in the successes and failures of the group and the campaign. Three cheers and more for you guys.

And Gfunk, heading out for residency already? Are you a prodigy or something? Or is my sense of time all skewed from all these time stops.

GW