blargney the second
blargney the minute's son
That's a really clever idea! It certainly falls in the realm of 'plausible'. I wonder if that's actually verifiable?
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Keeping track of combat length (for posterity)
- Thread starter blargney the second
- Start date
the Jester
Legend
I FINALLY got to run the climactic session of the game I ran in Davis up until I moved last year- we've played a session since that set up the final encounter, so here it is. Again, this is a long long encounter, but- lemme splain a bit.
The session before, the pcs finally fought the BBEG that is their archnemesis, a death knight. They slew him- but he immediately began to reform and rise again. They realized that they had to lay his long-lost love to rest before he would be able to rest, so at the end of the session, three of the pcs were down to 1 healing surge and low on daily and encounter powers and, without a rest, the party was charging back to the lost love's suite of rooms to try to figure out how to lay her to rest while being harassed by minions that wouldn't stay dead that kept coming in more and more waves. A couple rounds in, Arawn (the death knight) returned to the fight. So we had:
BAD GUYS/CHALLENGES
Skill Challenge (level 18; complexity 5- 12 successes required; without succeeding, Arawn cannot be slain)
Arawn (level 21 elite soldier)
24 Strahd's dread zombies (level 16 minions)
NOTE: When the minions are slain, unless they are killed with fire or radiant damage, they pop up at the start of their next turn. Whoops!
GOOD GUYS
2 strikers (1 rogue 17, 1 barbarian 13)
2 leaders (1 warlord 18, 1 cleric 18)
2 controllers (1 wizard 16, 1 wizard 18)
1 defender (fighter 18)
TOTAL TIME: 3 hours, 38 minutes
ROUNDS: 11
It was fantastic, with a lot of in-combat roleplaying, the pcs having to puzzle out how to approach the skill challenges, etc. I think everyone was very satisfied with the way it played out- I adjusted Arawn per the MM3 guidelines, just doubling his static damage bonus, and wow! He was deadly!
The session before, the pcs finally fought the BBEG that is their archnemesis, a death knight. They slew him- but he immediately began to reform and rise again. They realized that they had to lay his long-lost love to rest before he would be able to rest, so at the end of the session, three of the pcs were down to 1 healing surge and low on daily and encounter powers and, without a rest, the party was charging back to the lost love's suite of rooms to try to figure out how to lay her to rest while being harassed by minions that wouldn't stay dead that kept coming in more and more waves. A couple rounds in, Arawn (the death knight) returned to the fight. So we had:
BAD GUYS/CHALLENGES
Skill Challenge (level 18; complexity 5- 12 successes required; without succeeding, Arawn cannot be slain)
Arawn (level 21 elite soldier)
24 Strahd's dread zombies (level 16 minions)
NOTE: When the minions are slain, unless they are killed with fire or radiant damage, they pop up at the start of their next turn. Whoops!
GOOD GUYS
2 strikers (1 rogue 17, 1 barbarian 13)
2 leaders (1 warlord 18, 1 cleric 18)
2 controllers (1 wizard 16, 1 wizard 18)
1 defender (fighter 18)
TOTAL TIME: 3 hours, 38 minutes
ROUNDS: 11
It was fantastic, with a lot of in-combat roleplaying, the pcs having to puzzle out how to approach the skill challenges, etc. I think everyone was very satisfied with the way it played out- I adjusted Arawn per the MM3 guidelines, just doubling his static damage bonus, and wow! He was deadly!
RangerWickett
Legend
Gargoyles are D****s
Level 9 party vs. level 10 encounter
Time: 2 hours-ish
Rounds: 9
Surges Used: 3 in combat, but my warlord went down first and stayed down; after combat it took at least 14 to get the party back up to full
Action Points Used: 4
Dailies Used: 5 or 6
Our 9th level party (battlemind, dragonpower sorcerer, greatbow seeker, telekinetic psion, and cowardly warlord [I never make my own attack rolls if I can avoid it]) entered a chamber in the Underdark that was part of the titanic petrified brain of a dead god.
The room basically was a 150-wide pit, with an entrance 35 ft. up, an exit 40 ft. higher than that, and a pair of 'bridges' (neurons) that crossed it like an X. One stretched from the SE entrance (35 ft. up) to a ledge on the NW. Then you had to run along the ascending ledge to a SW plateau (now 75 ft. up). From there you could cross the second bridge/neuron to the NE exit. There was no direct path from the entrance to the exit.
Our presence caused a flicker of consciousness to awaken, which set up the 'trap.' Every round two things would happen: one of the corner platforms would burst with psychic energy, and then the neuron bridge that did not connect to that platform would crackle with lightning. To get across you had to time your movement just, though there were some safe spots where stalagmites rose up to support the neuron.
We fought 5 minion obsidian gargoyles, a runespiral gargoyle, a . . . horned gargoyle (? it charged and grabbed people), and a pair of Fist of Ogremochs who guarded the bridges. Plus their leader, a shardmind dominator.
The gargoyle minions swarmed us, and we tried to take them down with artillery. Then the dominator started moving folks off ledges, or trapping us so we'd get zapped. And we started doing the same thing to him. A hiding gargoyle caught me off guard, grabbed me, and dropped me out of reach of the rest of the party. The impact knocked me out.
There was a lot of falling damage this fight, which made the psion very happy. And the wide open spaces gave the seeker a chance to shine -- until he got dominated and started shooting us. The battlemind ended up jumping off the bridge to hit a gargoyle who'd been knocked down, and he stayed down at the bottom of the huge pit, alone, fighting a fist of ogremoch for 5 rounds. And the sorcerer kept killing everything that dared hit him.
I lay on the bridge and made death saving throws for 5 rounds.
Still, it was a great combat.
Level 9 party vs. level 10 encounter
Time: 2 hours-ish
Rounds: 9
Surges Used: 3 in combat, but my warlord went down first and stayed down; after combat it took at least 14 to get the party back up to full
Action Points Used: 4
Dailies Used: 5 or 6
Our 9th level party (battlemind, dragonpower sorcerer, greatbow seeker, telekinetic psion, and cowardly warlord [I never make my own attack rolls if I can avoid it]) entered a chamber in the Underdark that was part of the titanic petrified brain of a dead god.
The room basically was a 150-wide pit, with an entrance 35 ft. up, an exit 40 ft. higher than that, and a pair of 'bridges' (neurons) that crossed it like an X. One stretched from the SE entrance (35 ft. up) to a ledge on the NW. Then you had to run along the ascending ledge to a SW plateau (now 75 ft. up). From there you could cross the second bridge/neuron to the NE exit. There was no direct path from the entrance to the exit.
Our presence caused a flicker of consciousness to awaken, which set up the 'trap.' Every round two things would happen: one of the corner platforms would burst with psychic energy, and then the neuron bridge that did not connect to that platform would crackle with lightning. To get across you had to time your movement just, though there were some safe spots where stalagmites rose up to support the neuron.
We fought 5 minion obsidian gargoyles, a runespiral gargoyle, a . . . horned gargoyle (? it charged and grabbed people), and a pair of Fist of Ogremochs who guarded the bridges. Plus their leader, a shardmind dominator.
The gargoyle minions swarmed us, and we tried to take them down with artillery. Then the dominator started moving folks off ledges, or trapping us so we'd get zapped. And we started doing the same thing to him. A hiding gargoyle caught me off guard, grabbed me, and dropped me out of reach of the rest of the party. The impact knocked me out.
There was a lot of falling damage this fight, which made the psion very happy. And the wide open spaces gave the seeker a chance to shine -- until he got dominated and started shooting us. The battlemind ended up jumping off the bridge to hit a gargoyle who'd been knocked down, and he stayed down at the bottom of the huge pit, alone, fighting a fist of ogremoch for 5 rounds. And the sorcerer kept killing everything that dared hit him.
I lay on the bridge and made death saving throws for 5 rounds.
Still, it was a great combat.
Wik
First Post
I haven't really noticed much of a correlation yet, but I've only used a few MM3 monsters so far, and always in larger monster groups. They definitely are nastier in the paragon range.
Today's session, which Blarg will probably post within a couple of hours, was a bit odd in that the lurkers the group fought were more like controllers. the fight took a little over an hour, and was entirely within the group's range. If I had used it a bit more tactically, at least one character would have gone down - unfortunately, I wasn't able to time the attack right, and I only bloodied the poor wizard.
Also, we used your Obsidian challenge system today, sort of, inside one of the combats ("make an acrobatics check to get off your horse as a free action, if you fail, you fall" sort of thing).
RangerWickett
Legend
I almost never have more than one combat per session, at least not in 4e. I've long since cut out 'incidental fights,' like when you stumble across a few bad guys who harass you but don't take you down. Maybe I should shuffle stuff up more, just to see how fast a combat goes when I through 2 easy enemies against the whole party.
Fights just seem to last forever. I haven't timed combats in my own games, just ones I play in -- but even an hour feels too long when I'm running. (Maybe I'd be less worried if my players could show up at 7:30 as scheduled instead of 9pm. *grumble grumble*)
So I ran my heroic tier 1st level game yesterday and it was quite a hoot.
1st Combat: On the narrow deck of their spelljammer in the elemental chaos, the PCs were assaulted by a group of elementals (MM3) that boarded the ship as an earthmote and a sea of fire slammed into one another above. The PCs spent I think a total of 4 rounds on this combat.
Party was:
Minotaur Barbarian
Goliath Wizard
Shifter Runepriest
Wilden Shaman
Human Paladin
The elementals started by thumping various PCs and the air elementals grabbed a couple of players to buffet them around. They almost forgot to steer the ship away from the flaming inferno before them and got a bit fried in the process! Overall though they easily held off the elementals with no great drama.
The second combat was in a derelict ship and again, lasted about the same amount of time, being an EL 1 encounter. This combat was odd because the PCs decided to spend all their daily powers in it. The dust devil here didn't really get a good go at the PCs, except knocking them prone and they handled it pretty easily. It did feel kind of odd having such a straight forward encounter, a dust devil, 2 earth elementals and an air elemental provoke such a strong response.
We shall see that was folly on their part however.
The next encounter had the following monsters (EL3):
2 Dretches
2 Air elementals
Chaos Shard
Earth Elemental
The battle started with the PCs entering into the room from both doors, then trying to surround one of the dretches to kill it. The dretch was bloodied and whacked the runepriest and barbarian, giving them quite a nasty scratch. On the monsters general turn, the dretch and air elementals nailed the barbarian, while the other elemental engaged the runepriest. The earth elemental whacked at the paladin and managed to put a good dent in his armour (15 damage!).
The chaos shard - most importantly - zapped the Barbarian with his power that if you don't move at least 4 squares away from where you started on your turn you take 3d6+6 damage. Remember this.
On the next turn, the Barbarian went down (ongoing damage) and the air elemental let go of him (becoming bored once its prey stops moving). He was healed back up and stood up. On 12 HP, he decided to just move away from the dretch, provoking an attack of opportunity from the vile beast. It rolled 4 on the damage dice, but that didn't matter when it rolled a natural 20 on the opportunity attack. He took 14 damage and went straight to negative 2 HP!
But the drama wasn't over, remember the chaos shard? Unconscious as he was the Barbarian could do nothing about the power of the chaos shard. It went off and sent him right over negative bloodied, a PC was actually killed! Now they were down to four and no dailies! What resulted was a desperate six round struggle against almost impossible odds to pull out an enormously narrow victory. It was a very satisfying fight overall, but really shows the dangers of having terrible defenses (Barbarian was AC 13, Fort 17, Reflex 10, Will 10).
I'm not sure what character he will remake once my computer is back up and ready, but I do hope for something that has more consistent defenses!
1st Combat: On the narrow deck of their spelljammer in the elemental chaos, the PCs were assaulted by a group of elementals (MM3) that boarded the ship as an earthmote and a sea of fire slammed into one another above. The PCs spent I think a total of 4 rounds on this combat.
Party was:
Minotaur Barbarian
Goliath Wizard
Shifter Runepriest
Wilden Shaman
Human Paladin
The elementals started by thumping various PCs and the air elementals grabbed a couple of players to buffet them around. They almost forgot to steer the ship away from the flaming inferno before them and got a bit fried in the process! Overall though they easily held off the elementals with no great drama.
The second combat was in a derelict ship and again, lasted about the same amount of time, being an EL 1 encounter. This combat was odd because the PCs decided to spend all their daily powers in it. The dust devil here didn't really get a good go at the PCs, except knocking them prone and they handled it pretty easily. It did feel kind of odd having such a straight forward encounter, a dust devil, 2 earth elementals and an air elemental provoke such a strong response.
We shall see that was folly on their part however.
The next encounter had the following monsters (EL3):
2 Dretches
2 Air elementals
Chaos Shard
Earth Elemental
The battle started with the PCs entering into the room from both doors, then trying to surround one of the dretches to kill it. The dretch was bloodied and whacked the runepriest and barbarian, giving them quite a nasty scratch. On the monsters general turn, the dretch and air elementals nailed the barbarian, while the other elemental engaged the runepriest. The earth elemental whacked at the paladin and managed to put a good dent in his armour (15 damage!).
The chaos shard - most importantly - zapped the Barbarian with his power that if you don't move at least 4 squares away from where you started on your turn you take 3d6+6 damage. Remember this.
On the next turn, the Barbarian went down (ongoing damage) and the air elemental let go of him (becoming bored once its prey stops moving). He was healed back up and stood up. On 12 HP, he decided to just move away from the dretch, provoking an attack of opportunity from the vile beast. It rolled 4 on the damage dice, but that didn't matter when it rolled a natural 20 on the opportunity attack. He took 14 damage and went straight to negative 2 HP!
But the drama wasn't over, remember the chaos shard? Unconscious as he was the Barbarian could do nothing about the power of the chaos shard. It went off and sent him right over negative bloodied, a PC was actually killed! Now they were down to four and no dailies! What resulted was a desperate six round struggle against almost impossible odds to pull out an enormously narrow victory. It was a very satisfying fight overall, but really shows the dangers of having terrible defenses (Barbarian was AC 13, Fort 17, Reflex 10, Will 10).
I'm not sure what character he will remake once my computer is back up and ready, but I do hope for something that has more consistent defenses!
blargney the second
blargney the minute's son
Sorry for the drop-off in the updates. I'm getting married in two weeks (yay!) and I have been consequently unusually busy lately. I'll be back on top of this soon!
-blarg
-blarg
Wik
First Post
Inexcusable. I happen to know for a FACT that you were off galivanting with a bunch of yahoos and yokels on friday night when that time could have been better spent updating an occasional thread on ENWorld.
But yes, your wedding reception needs to hurry up and get here. There are a lot of women who will be there who I have not yet had the opportunity to show just how much of an ass I can be, and I plan on remedying this.
I believe I may have said this to your fiancee friday night. Although she may have just heard "glargh mppfffff fuzzzzz......" or something to that effect. Damn 151!
In all seriousness, though, you do kind of have more pressing things on your mind, and I think this thread can wait a few weeks (at least).
the Jester
Legend
Hey, I just saw this- congratulations!
I had my first bit of gaming in months last weekend and it was a blast. The first encounter (which I didn't track the stats on at all) involved the pcs assaulting a ziggurat with yuan-ti snaketongue disciples and a pair of snaketongue warriors- but towards the end, the party attacked into the next room without resting, thus doubling down on their encounter.
The second encounter- the one I did track- they combined three encounters into one.
Start Time: Approx. 11 pm
End Time: Approx. 2 am
Combat Length: Approx. 3 hours
PC Roster:
1 Controller: Wizard (lvl 8)
1 Leader: Cleric (lvl 8)
1 Defender: Warden (lvl 7)
2 Strikers: Rogue (lvl 8) and Barbarian (lvl 7)
1 npc: Bradford, lvl 4 skirmisher (henchman; custom npc they picked up as a minion long ago who has survived through thick and thin and is continuing to kick ass and take names)
Monster Roster:
1 crushgrip constictor (lvl 9 soldier)
2 flame snakes (lvl 9 artillery)
3 water moccasins (lvl 8 minion controllers)
1 snaketongue warrior (lvl 8 brute)
4 snaketongue initiates (lvl 7 minions)
1 yuan-ti malison acolyte of Zehir (lvl 9 elite controller)
2 cockatrices (lvl 5 skirmishers)
Survik, yuan-ti archaeologist (lvl 9 elite skirmisher)
Survik is completely custom. I had given him a number of cool whip attacks; when the pcs encountered him, in a seizure of inspiration I totally played him up as an Indiana Jones type (even gave him a fedora!).
As usual, I did a piss-poor job of tracking stuff. Here's my closest guess as to- everything. Note that this time, at least for a while, I was the slow one this session since I had so many different groups of bad guys to track (they were all coming from different rooms and converging on the fight at different times). Also, there were a lot of desperate discussions as the barbarian ended up trapped in a room full of bad guys that the pcs couldn't really enter (the way in was blocked by cockatrices!), at single-digit hit points and taking ongoing 10 poison damage. It was a very, very tense fight, very close almost from the beginning, full of some tactical genius and amazingly good- and bad- rolls.
Approx. Number of Rounds: 11?
Total Monster HPs: 863 (includes 7 minions)
Action Points Used by PCs: 5
Action Points Used by Monsters: 2
Crits: Approx. 7
PC Dailies Used: Approx. 6
Healing Surges Used: 4*
*Note: In all fairness, there were a lot of non-surge based healing and temporary hit point effects going around too, though. So don't be fooled by this number!
