ZEITGEIST Suggestions for things to improve, fix, or add for the ZEITGEIST Act One compilation?

[gideonpepys]

I've mentioned this before, but because other DMs haven't I'm beginning to wonder if it's just me: I think that damage values for some of the monsters need to be higher, and combats in general just a wee bit tougher. In particular, combats that are likely to be the PC's only encounter that day (or which, if they do take a pounding, they can easily make their only encounter). The Sly & the Family Stone fight springs to mind as an example, but it isn't the only one. Macbannin needs to be an elite IMHO, otherwise his wonderful hexes won't make an appearance. Or perhaps some magical resistance could be added, instead of making him a bag of hit points. Also, using foes that are much lower level than the PCs to round out an encounter doesn't work mathematically in 4E because they will miss, miss, miss. (I forget which encounter(s) this happens in, but I'm pretty sure it does.) Occasionally, monsters appear to be doing damage commensurate with a PC of their level (using the appropriate dice for their longsword/rifle, or whatever) and again that doesn't work mathematically, however realistic it might be.

 

[Tukka]

Tougher fights would be good. I run a game for 4 PCs right now and I usually run the fights as-is or tweaked to be more difficult. I didn't modify the MacBannin fight though, and it went alright. He got all of his hexes off and that was with none of the sinkholes hitting any of the combatants.

The copious minions plus the two thugs and terrain features were enough to keep the party from focusing fire too much on MacBannin. MacBannin hexed the Sentinel druid's wolf companion first with the wailing spirits one, which made the wolf treat the PCs as enemies... which meant that they granted combat advantage whenever the wolf was adjacent to them, so that was some nice synergy that confounded them some. Then the blackguard was hexed with the doppelganger one for the duration of the encounter which really hurt, except during one round where the swordmage was able to pray it away. The blackguard and swordmage both ended up bloodied, the druid was KO'd (the Yerasol veteran blackguard got him back up), and the swordmage got hit with the nasty centipedes hex, which limited his actions. Only the mage went relatively unscathed, though she took some damage from minion attacks too. And that was with me forgetting about the abjuration aura for the first couple rounds of the fight.

Still, I could see that fight going a lot easier for many parties. For my group, it was the most dynamic and fun of that campaign (although the Coaltongue fight was even better, IMO, when I ran it for my PBP group).

One of the issues, I gather, with 4e is that the parties grow much more survivable as they level up. Enemy damage doesn't scale as quickly as PC health and healing. I anticipate scaling up damage quite by the time I get to adventure 4+.

 

[RangerWickett]

We're getting our KS backer surveys. So far I've seen pledges by people from:

USA
Australia
Belgium
Canada
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Italy
Malaysia
Netherlands
New Zealand
Switzerland
United Kingdom

It's split 23/18 so far with Pathfinder vs. 4e. Still about 300 for me to work through. I really wish KS provided better functionality for pledging for a la carte rewards.

 

[Shilubi]

I'm only in the first module.

This being said, going back through the modules to polish things that aren't accurate anymore is good. (I remember reading things about to happen in another module, and nothing when i read the said module.)

Then, if you add some things, RHC would be nice.
The map from module 3 would be great in module 1.
More names, facts from the RHC.
The RHC is part of what makes Zeitgeist special: it's not about adventurers, it's about legal enforcers in a fantasy/steampunk setting. It could use more text...

Things to present the players with would be nice too. We have already lot of pictures, and i understand you are commissionning more of them. This leaves "goodies"! A beautiful example is the police report about the dead woman in module 2.

 

[Erudite Frog]

i agree with this

I've mentioned this before, but because other DMs haven't I'm beginning to wonder if it's just me: I think that damage values for some of the monsters need to be higher, and combats in general just a wee bit tougher. In particular, combats that are likely to be the PC's only encounter that day (or which, if they do take a pounding, they can easily make their only encounter). The Sly & the Family Stone fight springs to mind as an example, but it isn't the only one. Macbannin needs to be an elite IMHO, otherwise his wonderful hexes won't make an appearance. Or perhaps some magical resistance could be added, instead of making him a bag of hit points. Also, using foes that are much lower level than the PCs to round out an encounter doesn't work mathematically in 4E because they will miss, miss, miss. (I forget which encounter(s) this happens in, but I'm pretty sure it does.) Occasionally, monsters appear to be doing damage commensurate with a PC of their level (using the appropriate dice for their longsword/rifle, or whatever) and again that doesn't work mathematically, however realistic it might be.

 

[Morrus]

My 4E games improved immeasurably once I implemented the half HP, double DMG modification.


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[Shilubi]

I'm only in the first module.

This being said, going back through the modules to polish things that aren't accurate anymore is good. (I remember reading things about to happen in another module, and nothing when i read the said module.)

Have begun reading, in details, adventure 2 and 3.
Here are those things, relating to another adventure, that aren't accurate (page numbers are from the Pathfinder adventures):

Adventure 2:
P48
The specifics of this event and its tragic
aftermath are explored in more detail in Adventure
Five, Cauldron-Born, but suffice it to say that six
months ago Wolfgang fled his estate and made for
Risur.


P51
Leone makes another brief appearance at the end of Adventure Four,
Always on Time, (then plays a larger role in Adventure Five, Cauldron-Born,
before finally meeting his end in Adventure Seven, Schism)

Adventure 3:
P21
The PCs might, however, have kept the wand of Egal the Shimmering from the smugglers
in Adventure Two, which happens to be made of solid gold.
P46
Captain Smith only appears in this adventure if the
party recruits the Impossible in Act Two, instead of
taking their own ship.
P66
Future Vekeshi Plots.
In Adventure Four, Always on Time, the Vekeshi Mystics ask the PC
to uncover a secret about the fall of Srasama, hidden in a prison island
along the Avery Coast railroad. If the PC has not yet revealed his affiliation
with the Vekeshi to the rest of the party by then, the discovery will
spill the secret and force the group to question the goals of the mystics.

 

[Tukka]

Adventure 3:

* Initiative value missing for mutated centipede.

* The descriptive text given for the encounter suggests centipedes have Thoughtform, but this is not in their statblock.

I have decided to run the centipedes without thoughtform because the insubstantial monsters with relatively high health values plus weakening attacks in the Incident fight made the fight drag on for a really long time (even with the temporary loss of the insubstantial trait from the monsters using certain attacks). I note that the centipedes here have thoughtform weakening attacks as well, and they are supposed to be merely mutated creatures rather than natives of Gidim so it makes sense to me that they wouldn't have thoughtform.

I am also roughly halving the HP of most thoughtform monsters prior to the party learning the "think at" trick, because I don't want these fights to be too much of a grind. I realize that making these monsters a pain to kill prior to learning the "think at" trick makes getting the trick more gratifying, but I think the adventure as-is takes it a bit too far.

 

[RangerWickett]

Thanks for the input. I'll probably start actually going through and making all these changes in October, after 7 comes out.

 

[Elfshire]

(4e versions)
Explanation of grenades in adventure 4. Are they heavy thrown? Light thrown?
Addition of a crit die for the paired immovable rods in chapter 6.