D&D 4E Bloodstone, an epic 4e campaign (rules and story)

[James McMurray]

James, create to see someone taking on an epic challenge!

I'd like to here your thoughts on how the combats are running right now. I think the biggest worry has been with the players ability to regain health so easily at those levels, and the huge amount of hp that monsters have, that combats will simply take forever.

Has has the length felt to you so far?

They've taken a little longer, but not much. In about 6 hours we got through a very fast skill challenge and three fights. Part of that is probably because each fight had at least 4 minions (one had 8). No matter who they were the minions fell even faster than they do at lower levels. Fighter stances and Come and Get It turn them into dog chow. Only one minion survived longer than 2 rounds, and only because people rolled poorly.

There are no minions in the possible encounters for the next session, so we'll see how that goes.

 

[James McMurray]

We played the first two modules in 3.5e -- right now I'm running a 4e 'playtest' with the group and my intent is to convert it to 4e. I'd love to trade conversion notes. } The game's been on hiatus for about a year and a half (there was another campaign that was going to take my game's slot for a while which died) so I'm starting to play with the third module to try and wrangle something fun for it (the Battlesystem stuff didn't work out well for us in the first module).

Non standard storylines are great, they give me things I can yoink from. }

Kannik

The battlesystem stuff worked out ok for us, but we've got a bunch of Warhammer players in the group. It still wasn't as fun as it could have been, and I'd probably drop it if I run those parts again.

For 4E I made a few mass combat templates you might be interested in. You still need higher level opponents to challenge epic characters, but instead of fighting 100 Abyssal Ghoul Hungerers they can fight an angry mob of hungeres, which would be a solo creature.

Check it out. The link is in my last post in that thread. I haven't used it yet, so if you have any input, don't hold back. I'm waiting until I've got a few sessions under my belt before I start creating new stuff willy-nilly.

 

[Kannik]

For 4E I made a few mass combat templates you might be interested in. You still need higher level opponents to challenge epic characters, but instead of fighting 100 Abyssal Ghoul Hungerers they can fight an angry mob of hungeres, which would be a solo creature.

Check it out. The link is in my last post in that thread. I haven't used it yet, so if you have any input, don't hold back. I'm waiting until I've got a few sessions under my belt before I start creating new stuff willy-nilly.

IIIIInnnteresting. I'll definitively check it out. I am re-working the third module extensively, and it could be fun to put in one episode where the PCs wade into mass combat...

Plus, you know, swarms of hungry, ankle-biting demons that flow out of fissures on the ground that is the abyss... I think as an image that works great. }

Kannik

 

[James McMurray]

After actually playing some and sitting down to make a squad of dread wraiths I made a couple of changes to the templates:

Size increases by two steps for squad/rabble and four steps for a company or mob. Doing otherwise means the creatures won't actually have room to fight, especially if they start off bigger than medium. If their size would go over gargantuan, I increase their space by 1 instead.

I changed the extended reach ability to an immediate reaction so they could surprise someone that got near them. I intend to play it as the squad surging to that side when someone enters its reach. That way they'll move into the threatening reach before they realize what's happening, but can stop before getting nailed if they choose to. Making it immediate also means that it's possible to maneuver and get someone up next to them by having the squad waste their one "facing change" on someone else. It also means they can't pop in and out of tightened ranks and threatening reaches.

I've added a squad to an encounter, but the party may not go that route. If they do, it'll definitely show up in the play report, along with my thoughts on how the template worked and what changes (if any) it needs.

 

[Neil Bishop]

Thanks for posting your campaign notes. They made interesting and inspiring reading. I hope you will post more.

 

[James McMurray]

Ask and ye shall receive.

There's a new item (a book the party found).

One new house rule.

A new character in the introduction. We're up to five players (our usual group), but this time the artificer's player didn't make it, so we still only had 4 characters this week.

 

[James McMurray]

Added another house rule to make minions more useful. Without some sort of change they're too likely to die before they get to do anything, and thereby be free XP. Instead, they can now take one hit per tier (more info in the link).

 

[James McMurray]

Last Friday's session is up. They visit a couple of pools, have a multi-planar skill challenge, and have their first encounter with other Pool Seekers.

There's also a new ritual for creating teleportation circles, and a new house rule.

It'll be a couple of weeks at least before we play again. The GM of our paragon campaign he the rest of Castle Ravenloft converted, so we'll be playing that. When we come back, some PCs will be pretty different. FRPG and AV will be used, and some want to trade gear and/or classes. The wizard will probably become a swordmage. The warlock's player doesn't want the group to be without a wizard, so he'll probably convert to a wizard / warlock. He'll keep the same Far Realms flavor, repurposing a paragon path and picking a better fitting destiny. The fighter's player will definitely pour through the books to find the biggest damage and highest survivability he can.

The other two players will make changes as well, but they're not usually the type to min-max to the extreme like the fighter and warlock players do.

I'm curious to see what the new wish lists look like now that AV is here and overflowing with tasty goodness.

 

[James McMurray]

I forgot to mention that there's also three new monsters in the update.

James, create to see someone taking on an epic challenge!

I'd like to here your thoughts on how the combats are running right now. I think the biggest worry has been with the players ability to regain health so easily at those levels, and the huge amount of hp that monsters have, that combats will simply take forever.

Has has the length felt to you so far?

With a couple more sessions under our belts since I last answered this question, it's definitely not been a problem. PCs rarely drop because we've got two leaders and a fighter that can heal himself (and others). but monster HP hasn't been a big issue. They're got a lot more hit points, but the PCs also do a lot more damage, including several sources of continuous damage from the fighter. Also, it's usually just one or two monsters being concentrated on at a time because the Wizard and Warlock have been keeping the rest of them locked down with Evard's Black Tentacles, Tendrils of Thuban, and various stun/daze/immobilization effects.

 

[James McMurray]

This stuff was done over email. Another GM was running this week, and it was my son's birthday, so we didn't have a session at the table. Three of the PCs are held captive and interrogated, while the other two are trying to find what happened and regroup.