Clubhouse: The Shearing Pen

[Infiniti2000]

I'm staying for the ToC for sure, and I'll keeping running CN. Chances are reasonable that I'll pick up some of the FFA action after a short break.

I just needed to vent, and you guys need to know how irritating and frustrating it can be. I know you don't intend it or even want it that way, but that's the way it is. It's fine in concept to want to step back emotionally from the monster you are running, but it's not so easy when you invest time into it, or plan to invest time into it. You have to take an interest in winning in order to play the monsters to their full potential. Without the interest, we might as well not do it. With the interest comes involvement and some (albeit perhaps little) emotional investment. But, if winning is impossible then a whole lot of effort is futile and it's like banging your head against a brick wall. Knowing that the monster has no or very few options and yet forcing me to put him through the motions is frustrating.

Honestly, I didn't like putting up a wall of fire against NG, but I can't see not taking an advantageous action that's allowed. I'd like to see a rule maybe that allows you to come into the arena at any height (or even below ground) and also allow teleport/dim door to enter. Falling 20ft and starting at prone is surely better than 60d6 force damage, save for half.

 

[ugulu]

After all the beatings LE has taken, Meineke was GREAT.
For the first 600 or so victories. Now it's getting pretty stale. The only thing working against him is that he's used up all his healing at least, so the hp's are decreasing.

The flying thing is so hard to adjust for, but here's my random thought: what if part of the arena was covered? Like a gazebo, or three walled hut with a 40' ceiling. If you were, say, the most useless combatant since the last "Aspect", you could get cover from the flyer. Maybe have stairs to the roof so you can come out, try something, and get back under cover. You could still be nailed by ready actions, but if you go inside and the flyer doesn't come down to chase, then it's the flyer that's drawing.

Figuring out the specifics of the cover would be another hassle - but it's the best I've got at this point.

 

[Gansk]

Here are two rules that I wanted to introduce into the next Battle, but if they need to go into this one, so be it.

1) Have a 20 foot wide strip of dirt on the southern edge of the arena. The rest of the arena is solid stone. All monsters with the burrowing/earthglide movement modes are genetically breeded to have tremorsense as an extraordinary ability. That way there are more submarine battles, and a burrower doesn't necessarily draw against another burrower.

2) Instead of moving into the arena, all monsters teleport into the arena as a move action. They must teleport to an empty space at zero elevation where they are not squeezing.

Along the lines of 1), ugulu gave me an idea. We could have the northern 20 foot wide strip have a ceiling of 20 feet. Tall creatures may be able to hide under there to force a flyer to come down (I'm not sure what elevation they would need to get an angle at this point).

 

[Evilhalfling]

Hmm, not sure I really like the roof idea, after all a lot of flyers are built to take advantage of better manuverability, and would suffer heavily.

For a wierder fix how about allowing an allied mage to cast fly on any champion who needs it, or better yet a potion of flight, so the champ has to burn an action to start it. This would give the champion the similar options to a the melee fighter in a party of adventures.
there could be a choice between a potion of fly or a potion of CSW so so there would be a balance.

Of course this would produce more arieal combats, and those are ever so much more fun.
If we do a ceiling why 40' and not 20' ?

as for starting - we could use a starting zone like say within 20' of the entry wall, like is used in some warhammer games.

Im up for throwing monsters under a bus for a while - but I can see how you could burn out on it, its great that you lasted this long.

 

[PJSlavner]

One thing we could do with fliers is to disallow them to fly above 5Z (or disallow them to attack from above 5Z), but lower their challenge ratings to reflect their loss in mobility.

 

[Gansk]

If we do a ceiling why 40' and not 20' ?

That's what I'm saying, a narrow strip with a 20' ceiling that landlubbers can hide under. It doesn't affect the maneuverability of the flyers at all, they still have the rest of the arena to fly around in. But if they want to avoid a draw, they need to come down to 10Z or so.

Hmmm...that's still vulnerable to a flyby attack and breath weapon combo. Better go with a fly spell cast on them instead, but they should have to give up something... maybe they can teleport in as a full round action instead of a move action if they want a fly spell cast on them by a 20th level caster.

 

[ugulu]

I was thinking 40' because I think we had a couple of 30' contenders haven't we?

The other reason I was thinking of something mid-arena was that with ready actions a creature could keep a support/pillar in between them an opponent with flight+ranged attacks - not perfect, but coming down to melee range might be the only way to settle something like that.

I'm less a fan of the "flight for all" concept. One, flyers should have an advantage - otherwise just don't allow flight. But more important is speed - we've had contents where both could fly, but (usually dragons) the creature with the big movement rate could approach/depart at will, while the lower movement rate could never close (i.e. if they need to close to attack, then it's no different than if they couldn't fly in the first place - if they had a good ranged attack they'd be using it).
I suppose the maneuverability of the Fly spell might help though.

 

[Greybar]

I think I mentioned this before, but i think the idea of a victory point zone can solve these problems. Sketch out a space on the ground that's 25x25 and let's say it's covered by an adamatine roof that's 20ft off the ground and has an admantine floor too. If you stand in this place for 5 rounds, and your opponent doesn't lay a foot in there, then you win and the other guy is dismissed and you fight on.

So if you run away (to the sky or the ground), and aren't willing to come face your enemy, you lose. But you also don't get your benefit (flying or burrowing) taken away. If you have wings or burrowing, you're probably (dragons aside) weaker than a landbound equivalent - so you need to get some value for that.

Also, I'd love to see the additional tactical impact of some terrain.

I'll make a second post about the wall/bladebarrier problem.

 

[Greybar]

Re: the current state of NG vs. NE

I sympathize for I2K's point of view, but here's it from my side. I need St. George to kill 17 opponents to get to equal footing with NE's greater numbers. I'm guessing that NG only has maybe 4-5 combatants before our general has to come in. Each of them probably has to take down 4-5 opponents to get to the possibility of a straight up general v. general fight.

So yeah, I'm tempted to h***... I mean Heaven... to start layering blade barriers and summoning as many allies as I can, and buffing them all to the limit, 'cause I figure I'll need them. And I expect that NE will do everything it can to force St. George and later combatants to be thrown out by draws. That's why I knew that pulling something big and heavy to shield the torn-up ground was going to be necessary. My brain has been turning over what's fair, and in my mind I had figured that I shouldn't be allowed to put a blade barrier on top of another one, and maybe I should give a 5 ft separation to allow dodging the later onces by heading straight up. I don't want to give up the spell-casting flexibility of celestials to deny myself the blade barrier option. If I had a Wiz16 combatant, I hope no one would argue that I should be required to draw dagger and go hand-to-hand.

Tha said, If we want to get rid of walls, I'll trade out another 6th level spell like Harm to replace the blade barriers. Maybe that'd be a possibility - force-swap all wall/barrier type spells with a direct combat equivalent. I'd be up for that. I've been expecting a demon-spellcasting type NE creature to come through and blast it with a dispel any time now, but maybe there isn't such a beast in the NE lineup for some time to come.

 

[Greybar]

Everybody together now: "Greybar stop rambling!"

Here's another option, while I'm rambling with no end, that might be even simpler.

Let the General (i.e. player) choose which monster of a given CR comes out next. That means that I2K can look at my planetar and say "right, I'm going to skip my infantry tanks and send in a flyer with spellcasting prowess."

I think that'd be a lot more fun for the player, adding a strategic element on top of the tactical element. It could be combined with other ideas to limit draws, of course.