D&D 4E Dragon Mountain (4e conversion - complete!)

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] Heh. You can see why the concept is giving me so much trouble
[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] Yes, "penalties now, kobod buffs later" seems to be the simplest way to handle the idea. Fear/psychic damage makes sense for a supernatural hazard.

I'm really liking giving "The Mountain" more of a malign presence and leaving it a bit ambiguous just what the "power source" of these eyes is. It's this once great dwarven stronghold fallen to a red dragon long ago and kobolds swarming the ruins. It is a bit like other iconic D&D semi-demi-planes (eg. Baba Yaga's Hut) in that it can appear on various worlds, has its own magic rules, and can be hard to escape.

I'll do some more thinking about it...


What is left to design?
1. Planeshift ritual foci encounter
2. Temple encounter & puzzle
3. Level Three
4. Weight of hundred eyes
5. Player handouts

I also have a legal question about reproducing maps. What would fall under Fair Use? Can I include copies of the original maps? That seems sketchy. What about creating my own simplified versions of those maps?

 

[pemerton]

I'm not a practising lawyer, but am an academic lawyer. Though IP is not my field, my gut feel would be that you ought not to reproduce the maps in a document you are distributing publicly.

Your whole document, plus your "vertical" maps, are arguably derivative works that you ought not to be distributing either!, but at least the gap there between the original work and your own contribution is more evident.

Anyway, were it me I'd probably avoid reproducing the original maps because they're such an obvious lightning rod for possible headaches down the road.

 

[pemerton]

Away from legalities and back to content and 4e issues: is "fear" as a keyword only applicable to supernatural effects? "Rattling" is a non-supernatural keyword, and it creates an effect that you're immune to if you're immune to fear (doesn't it?); which implies that there might be other non-supernatural things you can resist if you're immune to fear; which implies that "fear" might not be limited to being a supernatural keyword.

What do you think?

 

[Manbearcat]

I think that is clearly the case. As with Powers laden with the "Rattling" keyword, the even more mundane use of Intimidate would fall under the auspices of a "fear" effect.

 

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[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] Yes, you've definitely got that right about rattling being used for martial *PC* powers. I haven't seen rattling used on any monster powers, however, and I think that's a significant distinction. In this case, what's good for the goose may not be good for the gander.

I'm of the school of thought that "intimidate can never be used on a PC" - instead you should roleplay it with full metagame knowledge/manipulation as DM to do your best job of making a foe intimidating. Things like "take -2 attack because you're afraid of the lurking kobolds" don't work at my table because someone is bound to say: "Hey, I'm a paragon of bravery, no way do I feel afraid!" Or to put it simply, I want to "show, not tell."

Perhaps our tables are different in this respect?

 

[Quickleaf]

Just having a little fun with using out some of the random tables in the converted adventure...

While exploring Dragon Mountain (a skill challenge), we encounter...

(12) Kobolds, Trap, Special

(9) A group of 15 kobolds, 8 kobold archers, and 2 kobold wyrmpriests. It would appear they are (3) lurking in an ambush.

(6) The chamber"s floor is lodestone, weighing down arrows and pulling metal-armored opponents to it. Maybe the wyrmpriests need lodestone as a component for rituals?

(4) The kobolds have a weighted net trap to spring with their ambush. It makes sense that the metal weights on the net are magnified by the lodestone.

(2) Their preferred strategy is to have several kobolds swoop in to aid the attack of another kobold before shifting away.

If caught unawares, the kobolds are probably (6) practicing disarming traps and having trouble remembering which woe to cut. Maybe there are knots in their nets they're trying to work out?

If there is treasure to be found it consists of (4) a kobold corpse holding a magic item of level 11+1d4 that seems to attract catastrophe.

 

[pemerton]

On the martial fear issue, I found an example in MM2, prompted by another current thread:

Fang Titan Drake

Furious Roar (standard; encounter) • Fear
Close burst 10; targets enemies; +22 vs. Will; the target is stunned until the end of the fang titan drake's next turn.
Aftereffect: The target takes a -2 penalty to attack rolls (save ends).​

That's a martial fear effect on a monster!

Whether it's a good model to extend to the Dragon Mountain conversion is of course a further issue!

My group is happy to suffer that sort of effect if I hit their Will - they accept that their paragon-ness of bravery is a function of their Will scores, their feats/powers that let them overcome fear effects, etc. But I can see that other tables would have different preferences. Maybe give the kobolds a +2 bonus to defences instead - they're more cautious and buoyed by having received advance intelligence about the PCs.

 

[Manbearcat]

My group is happy to suffer that sort of effect if I hit their Will - they accept that their paragon-ness of bravery is a function of their Will scores, their feats/powers that let them overcome fear effects, etc.

This is precisely what I was getting at in post 77 but enhanced by brevity which equals greater clarity!

As an aside, there are many creatures with "Fear" keyword, martial effects (auras and attack powers) that are effectively analogs to Rattling or more (dazed, pushed, stunned, weakened).

 

[Quickleaf]

Ah really? The only creatures I've run with fear have been dragons, spellcasters, and some undead...and in those cases a fear mechanic makes sense. The Fan Titan Drake might be pushing it for me...but thats supposed to represent a T-Rex, right? I guess that a fear effect on a T-Rex is ok.

But kobolds?

I guess I need to make a design decision about this.

From your guys' observations and feedback, it sounds like some kind of "weight of eyes" mechanic would be thematically appropriate and add another layer of conflict for players to interact with. I agree.

The question is how to do it.

I am noticing three separate parts to this concept: (1) Fear mechanic, (2) Surveillance/Divination mechanic, (3) Kobold Adaptation mechanic. It is possible that I'll end up separating some of these, for example have #1 be its own thing, and #2/3 their own thing.

My gut instinct is to go with some kind of adventure-wide tracking effect (similar to the "horizon" concept I linked to). However, there is already an exploration skill challenge to keep track of...maybe further tracking is too much?

Btw, I really appreciate both of your critiques and great ideas, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] ! Designing something this big without a sounding board is quite a challenge, so your insights are very welcome. If you have any design stuff you are working on and would like any help with, I'd be happy to lend an eye or a hand (not a Vecna joke!).

 

[Manbearcat]

I'll post something later this evening or tomorrow. With respect to your above comments though, I do think you need to contract your overhead in running this as much as possible. You have done a fantastic job here and I'm sure you'll pull it off swimmingly, but you've got a lot going on and if you want a piece of "running color" that induces anxiety and provokes mood, permeates the entirety of the lair excursion, and is underwritten by mechanics which the PCs can interface with, you're going to want its handling time and overhead requirements to be very user-friendly (especially given the depth, mechanically and otherwise, that you've conjured here).