The Temple Between - Grand Cathedal Combat

[tomlib]

I'm playing in a Scales of War campaign and we just finished a two session 5+ hour battle and I'm going to rant a little.

I'm sure Ari Marmell is an excellent guy and a fine writer but this was beyond horrendous.

Has anyone else done this battle?

Basically you are tricked into using all your Daily and Encounter Powers against what you think is the big fight. Then more bad guys arrive and you ally with the group you were fighting originally.

With few Powers and high AC enemies you do little damage and the GM is doing 90% of all dice rolling for enemies and new allies (including, but not limited to, 5 Quickling Runners who run all over the place and attack up to five times a round, that's five movements and 25 attacks and potential damages for the GM to roll every round while players sit on their hands).

Holy crap? Seriously?

My fellow GM friends, I beg of you, never do this to your players.

Rant over.

Happy Gaming,

Tom

 

[Filcher]

I don't have the Scales of War, but would it be possible to hand off the allied "monsters" to the players?

 

[vagabundo]

With few Powers and high AC enemies you do little damage and the GM is doing 90% of all dice rolling for enemies and new allies (including, but not limited to, 5 Quickling Runners who run all over the place and attack up to five times a round, that's five movements and 25 attacks and potential damages for the GM to roll every round while players sit on their hands).

Sounds like a missed opportunely for you guys to run the Quicklings - and other allies - for the DM. It could have been awesome.

EDIt: Opps, I should read the responses first..

 

[Mouseferatu]

Hey, Tom. I'm really sorry you had such a poor experience in that encounter, and I'll definitely keep this in mind in the future.

However, in my own defense, I'm not certain your DM was running the encounter as written.

Basically you are tricked into using all your Daily and Encounter Powers against what you think is the big fight.

The second faction shows up at the start of round three. Did your DM make it take longer? That shouldn't be enough time to blow through so many powers.

5 Quickling Runners who run all over the place and attack up to five times a round

Quickling runners can only attack twice per turn, not five times, and they'll often want to attack only once, since they have a penalty to attack when making their running attack.

the GM to roll every round while players sit on their hands).

The encounter suggests that, when monsters are attacking monsters, the DM use average damages, rather than take the time to make damage rolls.

Again, I'm not trying to put this all on your DM; the encounter may not be to everyone's taste, and I accept full responsibility for that. I just want to make sure that the encounter you're judging was run as the encounter I wrote.

 

[benjamin]

EDIT: Wow cool to see the actual writer respond! Looks like valid points... my comments below still apply as a general rule for me though...


There is a certain load limit where I start to drop all the lovely 'role playing' descriptive combat stuff and just start doing numbers... At this point I think it's important to handwave everything that doesn't directly effect the players. I turn the room into a big blurry mass of chaotic battle, and play out the guts of a couple of encounters that directly effect the players... Otherwise it's not only my players who get bored, but I get a headache too.

Ben

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[tomlib]

Writer Replies!

Hey, Tom. I'm really sorry you had such a poor experience in that encounter, and I'll definitely keep this in mind in the future.

However, in my own defense, I'm not certain your DM was running the encounter as written.



The second faction shows up at the start of round three. Did your DM make it take longer? That shouldn't be enough time to blow through so many powers.


Quickling runners can only attack twice per turn, not five times, and they'll often want to attack only once, since they have a penalty to attack when making their running attack.



The encounter suggests that, when monsters are attacking monsters, the DM use average damages, rather than take the time to make damage rolls.

Again, I'm not trying to put this all on your DM; the encounter may not be to everyone's taste, and I accept full responsibility for that. I just want to make sure that the encounter you're judging was run as the encounter I wrote.

Thank you for the reply. Sorry about full Rant mode there. Dialing back toward calm, breathing steady, heart rate slowing ...

The second group did show up in the third round but our GM gave us a Surprise Round so we had four actions (we all used our Action Points). At 8th level we have 2 Daily/2 Utility/3 Encounter so we all used four of the seven max plus any Daily's we had blown in previous encounters. That's a healthy percentage.

I suspect our GM was helping us out because of our low amount of powers and bad Healing Surge and HP situation (the trap room with the fire blasts was a killer) by making the Quicklings more of a force and giving them more attacks.

He did use average damage (7 points) which speeded things up but it was a lot of calculations and movement with which to deal.

I completely understand how the encounter looks super-cool on paper: group thinks its the big fight, trolls burst in, allies with enemies, but 4th Edition and the timing of the encounter conspired against us.

Some suggested enemies turned allies be given over to the PCs but I didn't mention that the Quicklings tended to lash out at whomever was closest and attacked party members who strayed too close several times during the battle so I'm not sure that was an option.

I think it was a combination of things but the battle has made me rethink some of the fights I'm writing for my newest campaign.

The Girl in Glass

The big killer was the high ACs and Hit Points of the trolls which I think is an overall problem in 4th Edition but was exacerbated by the battle.

In any case, thank you for replying and please don't take anything I've said personally.

Happy Gaming!

Tom

 

[Mouseferatu]

The big killer was the high ACs and Hit Points of the trolls which I think is an overall problem in 4th Edition but was exacerbated by the battle.

Yep. Since writing that adventure, I've learned the dangers of using too many soldier-types. (And of course, the elites in that fight were created under the old rules, with the defensive bumps.) So I'll fully claim a mea culpa on that one.

In any case, thank you for replying and please don't take anything I've said personally.

I'm not; no worries.

 

[Mouseferatu]

And I do hope you won't let what happened to your group in that encounter sour you on the whole adventure. I'm really pretty pleased with how the bulk of it came out, and I'd hate to think it was ruined for you.

 

[tomlib]

And I do hope you won't let what happened to your group in that encounter sour you on the whole adventure. I'm really pretty pleased with how the bulk of it came out, and I'd hate to think it was ruined for you.

No, no, not at all.

I'm so far enjoying The Temple Between the most of the Scales Modules so far. The role-playing with the Aspect of Moradin was awesome. You can check out how we handled it at my SoW Wiki. The investigation leading up to the Mountainroot Temple was logical and fun as well.

You are so right about those Soldiers! I'm using an alternate AC & HP system created by a fan which lowers ACs and HPs and I'm also using a ton of Minions which makes combat fun but faster (in my opinion).

I think SoW is sort of testing ground for 4th Edition and playing as a Player rather than a GM is really giving me a lot of insight.

Happy Gaming!

Tom

** Edit **

Great article, thank you for linking it Piratecat!

 

[Piratecat]

For any DMs out there, I strongly recommend http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/254630-stalker0s-guide-anti-grind.html; it opened my eyes to when I should and shouldn't be using soldiers.