Our last gaming session ended up entirely different than I had envisioned. This in itself is not a bad thing by any means, as I enjoy having my players throw me the occasional curve ball, but it certainly had the potential to have played out much differently than it did.
I generally create either battle maps or geomorphs of individual rooms for each adventure, depending upon that adventure's particular needs. For larger battle maps, I generally use the back side of a used desk calendar page; this provides me a 22" by 28" map once I draw in the inch lines with a pencil and yardstick.
This last adventure took place on a swampy layer of the Abyss; the PCs have been more or less blackmailed by a nalfeshnee demon to go check out a rumored "superweapon" being developed by one of his demonic rivals. The PCs, rowing through the swamplands in their Abyssal canoe made of human flesh and bone, hear trees being overturned just ahead, and from between the trees pops the superweapon, a fiendish zaratan (Colossal snapping turtle, basically), upon whose shell has been constructed a stone fort complete with an enormous ballista and two catapults. For this battle, I've done something I've never done before: I put two calendar pages side by side along a long edge, so my fiendish zaratan covers 28" by 44" (and that's without its tail, which didn't fit on the map!). There's a hezrou demon in charge of the 20 manes demons running the ballista and catapults; 8 arrow demons manning the 8 archer stations along the zaratan's fort structure; 4 teleporting bar-lgura in charge of ammunition retrieval; and up on the command deck sits the succubus controlling the zaratan and her personal vrock bodyguard. The whole point of this adventure is that I thought it would be cool to have the PCs spend an entire gaming session involved in one enormous combat with a wide variety of different foes.
Let's focus back in on the command deck for a moment, shall we? It's a 20-foot structure rising up from the center of the zaratan's back, allowing the succubus and vrock a good view in all directions. As both the succubus and the vrock can fly, there are no built-in means of scaling this structure, which is octagonal in shape, being basically a 20-foot square whose four corner squares have been cut off along the diagonal, balanced upon a square central shaft 10 feet in diameter. I actually built this structure out of cardboard and placed it in the appropriate section on the zaratan's back.
So I have no fewer than 35 demons on the back of a fiendish zaratan, whose enormous shell covers probably a good 800 individual 5-foot squares. I'm anticipating a sprawling combat as the PCs teleport up onto the zaratan's back and spread out as they fight the demons.
What I failed to anticipate was that the arcane spellcaster had not prepared a teleport spell that day, but rather a greater teleport. Oddly enough, the more powerful spell is likely to fail completely if she tries to use it to teleport the PCs to the back of the zaratan's shell, where they anticipate a lower concentration of demons, because she hasn't personally viewed that section. (Nor can she from her Abyssal canoe, as the Colossal fiendish zaratan is several stories tall.) Rather than risking spell failure, she uses her greater teleport spell to shunt the PCs to the one area she absolutely can see, mainly the command platform.
The command platform, which consists of a mere 12 squares and four half-squares, 1 of which is already taken up by the succubus and another 4 of which are taken up by the Large vrock.
It's a tight fit, but everybody makes it up there. The succubus, no combat machine, abandons the platform almost immediately. The PCs manage to do some heavy damage to the vrock, and it eventually flees as well - at least, it flies down to the main "floor" of the zaratan's structure, by the succubus. Naturally, all of this extra room up on the command platform is rapidly taken up by teleporting bar-lguras and the hezrou, whose stench caused half of the PCs to become nauseated. As a result:
In any case, the nalfeshnee got his superweapon from his enemy (he gated in a succubus crew of his own to "pilot" the zaratan to his own stronghold), and even agreed to let the PCs depart the Abyssal plane and return to their own prime material plane. However, the four PCs who went on this adventure have discovered that they no longer cast reflections in mirrors or other similar surfaces, which has got them all worried.
So, anybody else have a similar story about their battlespace expectations vs. the realities of the actual combat?
Johnathan
I generally create either battle maps or geomorphs of individual rooms for each adventure, depending upon that adventure's particular needs. For larger battle maps, I generally use the back side of a used desk calendar page; this provides me a 22" by 28" map once I draw in the inch lines with a pencil and yardstick.
This last adventure took place on a swampy layer of the Abyss; the PCs have been more or less blackmailed by a nalfeshnee demon to go check out a rumored "superweapon" being developed by one of his demonic rivals. The PCs, rowing through the swamplands in their Abyssal canoe made of human flesh and bone, hear trees being overturned just ahead, and from between the trees pops the superweapon, a fiendish zaratan (Colossal snapping turtle, basically), upon whose shell has been constructed a stone fort complete with an enormous ballista and two catapults. For this battle, I've done something I've never done before: I put two calendar pages side by side along a long edge, so my fiendish zaratan covers 28" by 44" (and that's without its tail, which didn't fit on the map!). There's a hezrou demon in charge of the 20 manes demons running the ballista and catapults; 8 arrow demons manning the 8 archer stations along the zaratan's fort structure; 4 teleporting bar-lgura in charge of ammunition retrieval; and up on the command deck sits the succubus controlling the zaratan and her personal vrock bodyguard. The whole point of this adventure is that I thought it would be cool to have the PCs spend an entire gaming session involved in one enormous combat with a wide variety of different foes.
Let's focus back in on the command deck for a moment, shall we? It's a 20-foot structure rising up from the center of the zaratan's back, allowing the succubus and vrock a good view in all directions. As both the succubus and the vrock can fly, there are no built-in means of scaling this structure, which is octagonal in shape, being basically a 20-foot square whose four corner squares have been cut off along the diagonal, balanced upon a square central shaft 10 feet in diameter. I actually built this structure out of cardboard and placed it in the appropriate section on the zaratan's back.
So I have no fewer than 35 demons on the back of a fiendish zaratan, whose enormous shell covers probably a good 800 individual 5-foot squares. I'm anticipating a sprawling combat as the PCs teleport up onto the zaratan's back and spread out as they fight the demons.
What I failed to anticipate was that the arcane spellcaster had not prepared a teleport spell that day, but rather a greater teleport. Oddly enough, the more powerful spell is likely to fail completely if she tries to use it to teleport the PCs to the back of the zaratan's shell, where they anticipate a lower concentration of demons, because she hasn't personally viewed that section. (Nor can she from her Abyssal canoe, as the Colossal fiendish zaratan is several stories tall.) Rather than risking spell failure, she uses her greater teleport spell to shunt the PCs to the one area she absolutely can see, mainly the command platform.
The command platform, which consists of a mere 12 squares and four half-squares, 1 of which is already taken up by the succubus and another 4 of which are taken up by the Large vrock.
It's a tight fit, but everybody makes it up there. The succubus, no combat machine, abandons the platform almost immediately. The PCs manage to do some heavy damage to the vrock, and it eventually flees as well - at least, it flies down to the main "floor" of the zaratan's structure, by the succubus. Naturally, all of this extra room up on the command platform is rapidly taken up by teleporting bar-lguras and the hezrou, whose stench caused half of the PCs to become nauseated. As a result:
- Delphyne, the arcane spellcaster whose greater teleport got the PCs up there in the first place, spends the entire battle doing nothing but vomiting and trying to evade being groped by bar-lguras. (They try grappling the PCs so they can teleport them into special cages at the back of the zaratan's structure, but I couldn't get them to roll high enough to actually get this ploy to work.)
- The archer demons were able to fire up at the PCs along the edges of the command platform, so those got to be unpopular squares (and half-squares) to stand on.
- The vrock realized that it could still use its telekinesis ability to shove a PC off the edge of the command platform from range, but again couldn't actually get this to happen due to some good saves by the PCs.
- The manes demons, gathered around the command platform in eager anticipation of swarming onto any fallen (or pushed) PCs were out of luck, and had to content themselves with fighting over the waves of hezrou-induced nausea vomit that cascaded down from above.
- The entire battle on the fiendish zaratan was essentially fought on the top of the 12 squares of the command platform. The hezrou finally managed to grapple a dwarven NPC and jump down to the structure's floor below (but this was only because he was wounded enough to want to flee; up until then it was much more advantageous to keep his nausea-inducing self right there in the midst of the PCs), and the half-orc barbarian finally plummeted down himself due to the succubus commanding the zaratan to wiggle its shell from side to side (the half-orc was standing too close to the edge of the command platform when he failed his Balance check). However, by this time the demons had been practically routed, and when the nalfeshnee teleported in to help mop up after the PCs had done most of his work for him, the rest of the remaining crew jumped ship.
In any case, the nalfeshnee got his superweapon from his enemy (he gated in a succubus crew of his own to "pilot" the zaratan to his own stronghold), and even agreed to let the PCs depart the Abyssal plane and return to their own prime material plane. However, the four PCs who went on this adventure have discovered that they no longer cast reflections in mirrors or other similar surfaces, which has got them all worried.
So, anybody else have a similar story about their battlespace expectations vs. the realities of the actual combat?
Johnathan
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