Hey Old One: After Action Report?

[Fenris]

Hey Old One,
Could you elaborate on the character design? I see you covered most of the bases, except a principlely Fast hero. How did they all work? What combination struck you as very interesting? Why did you select those heroes? I saw you had quite a bit of Tough levels out there, any particular reason?

Edit: So what I am looking for is what did you design the characaters to do (especially talents) and how well did they do it (execution in play). Sorry for so many questions, but I want to learn from everyones experiances.

 

[Old One]

Thanks for the clarification...

Hey Old One,
Could you elaborate on the character design? I see you covered most of the bases, except a principlely Fast hero. How did they all work? What combination struck you as very interesting? Why did you select those heroes? I saw you had quite a bit of Tough levels out there, any particular reason?

Edit: So what I am looking for is what did you design the characaters to do (especially talents) and how well did they do it (execution in play). Sorry for so many questions, but I want to learn from everyones experiances.

Fenris,

The setting was Dark Ages Britain (c. 501 AD), so I figured most people need to be pretty tough to survive ! Although I initially statted out a primarily Fast hero, it just didn't seem to "fit", so I canned him. I don't have the PC sheets or GT book in front of me, but I will try to give you a quick synopsis off the top of my head:

Artorius (Strong 1/Charismatic 5/Fast 1): Developed on a "historical" Arthur model, essentially a Romano-British war leader and head of the Britons numerically small, but powerful, mounted force. His talents were focused on leadership areas, such as Inspiration and Coordinate, plus Aura of Grace. He also had most of the mounted combat feat chain, along with Frightful Presence. I gave him a fairly high reputation bonus and he also possessed Renown, which increased that by 5. I believe the DC to avoid his frightful presence was 21...pretty hefty for lowly Saxon footsoldiers. He was fairly mediocre in combat, except when mounted.

Leudonus (Strong 7): Loosely patterned on Lancelot, he was a combat machine. The only PC with iterative attacks (BAB +7/+2), he was also loaded up with weapon focus (spatha/lance), power attack, cleave, greater cleave, melee smash +2 and weapon specialization (spatha/lance). Unfortunately, we had to "handwave" much of the combat where he would have been most effective, the final battle against the Saxons.

Cai (Tough 5/Fast 2): Artorius's huntsman and Master of Hounds. Basically a ranger-type, with tracking, dodge, mobility, point blank shot, precise shot and shot on the run. Talents included Energy Resistance (Cold), Remain Conscious and Increased Speed 1. He didn't really have a chance to shine in the 2 mini-quests completed, although he did come close to drowning in the Pool of Doom!

Bronwyn (Smart 5/Fast 2): She was designed as a "James Bondette" type and was loaded with skills...except I forgot to give her tumble...which came back to haunt her big time during the Firbolg battle ! Her feats included improved initiative, armor proficiency (light), martial weapon proficiency (I used regional weapon groups of three weapons for each martial proficiency), weapon focus (gladius) and agile riposte. Talents included improved reaction 1, exploit weakness, sneak attack 1 and savant (disable device). Her disable device check was something like +18. She was played with dash and flair, but got pummled by the Firbolg, giving us our first failed MDT check.

Brother Temerius (Smart 1/Dedicated 6): Our only spell-caster, he was kind of an "Indiana Jones meets Brother Cadwell" type. Also had hordes of skill points, many of which were deployed in knowledge type areas. Feats included armor proficiency (light) and several others that completely escape me at the moment ! Talents included Savant (either Spellcraft or Knowledge: Religion), Magical Adept (Divine), Healing Knack and Healing Touch. He was probably one of the most "involved" characters, since several problems required knowledge checks and he was busy healing people. He wisely stayed out of combat for the most part. He also had the Wind Walk spell, which became critical in getting the PCs to the besieged British forces atop Mt. Badonius in the nick of time (even though using it basically incapacitated him for the last 30 minutes of game time).

Othic (Strong 1/Tough 6): Designed to be a tough, almost unkillable PC, effective warrior and protector of Artorius. His feats included things like Endurance, Die Hard, Power Attack, Cleave and Weapon Focus. Talents included Melee Smash 1, Remain Conscious, Harm's Way and Rage. Highest MDT of the group and he needed it! He got pounded by the Firbolg, used his Harm's Way talent to take one for Artorius and was generally nearly impossible to put down. He did fail his horror check and got beat on (ineffectually) by a pack of zombies. He ended up using his Remain Conscious and Die Hard abilities to strike the final blow against Cedric, the Saxon warchief.

Some thoughts on PC design. First, the combination of skills, feats and talents allows you to build extremely diverse and flexible PCs, even at relatively low levels. All of these where 7th level PCs - but they all possessed 6-7 feats and 4-5 talents, in addition to a variety of skills. The ability to "design your own class skill list" is a huge improvement over the PHB static class skill list. I have usually allowed players to swap out 1-2 skills anyway, but the GT approach is much more elegant...with background skills, profession skills and player choice skills creating a unique PC skill list.

Second, unless you focus on "Strong", most GT PCs will be slightly less effective in combat than a "typical" D&D counterpart. I think the average BAB (excluding Leudonus) was +3 or +4. However, this can be partially overcome by using the Weapon Focus feat and picking up a level or two of Strong and picking up the Melee Smash talent. Also, if you want to be able to wear heavy armor...you really have to take Strong as your first level to pick up the bonus armor proficiency starting feats.

Third, the saving throw progression also seemed a bit slower than regular D&D, although I didn't do an exhaustive comparison. The highest base save for most PCs was around +3 or +4. Baring high skill scores, feats to boost a particular save or talents such as Aura of Grace, saves could be a bit tough.

It is tough to say who my favorite PC is, since I didn't get a chance to see all of them in a situation where their particular skill/feat/talent tree would shine - since we only made it through 2 of the 4 mini-quests. I will say that I would gladly play any of these PCs in a campaign, so I guess I will take the easy way out and say I liked them all !

~ Old One

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Wow. Wish I could have played in this-- seems like you captured a great flavor in a fantastic world that was yet real enough for the players to "connect."

Awesome job-- exactly the right use for Grim Tales, I think.

Some thoughts on PC design. First, the combination of skills, feats and talents allows you to build extremely diverse and flexible PCs, even at relatively low levels. All of these where 7th level PCs - but they all possessed 6-7 feats and 4-5 talents, in addition to a variety of skills. The ability to "design your own class skill list" is a huge improvement over the PHB static class skill list. I have usually allowed players to swap out 1-2 skills anyway, but the GT approach is much more elegant...with background skills, profession skills and player choice skills creating a unique PC skill list.

And I think the jury is still out on which system has "better" PCs. If combat (and your corresponding CR) is your only focus, I think probably D&D creates "better" PCs.

But in terms of overall flexibility and the ability to-- well, really be heroic-- I think GT characters have the edge. They are... competent is the word I would use.

I do feel that, based on their flexibility, whenever I sit down to make PCs for a one-off game, I have a hard time making each character have a distinctive skill "niche." Everyone seems so broadly competent.

Second, unless you focus on "Strong", most GT PCs will be slightly less effective in combat than a "typical" D&D counterpart. I think the average BAB (excluding Leudonus) was +3 or +4. However, this can be partially overcome by using the Weapon Focus feat and picking up a level or two of Strong and picking up the Melee Smash talent. Also, if you want to be able to wear heavy armor...you really have to take Strong as your first level to pick up the bonus armor proficiency starting feats.

Right-- if combat is your "thing" (a mindset encouraged by D&D) this is an important observation.

Third, the saving throw progression also seemed a bit slower than regular D&D, although I didn't do an exhaustive comparison. The highest base save for most PCs was around +3 or +4. Baring high skill scores, feats to boost a particular save or talents such as Aura of Grace, saves could be a bit tough.

It is definitely slower. PCs start with only +1 in their Good save, and max out, I think, at +9 (as opposed to +2 and +12 in D&D).

Wulf

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Hey Old One,

One thing I'd like to see (and which, of course, I hope helps pimp Grim Tales a little more) is some insight into your prep.

How hard was it to create characters, design the adventure, create statblocks for monsters, where'd you get spells from, how extensive were your adventure notes, CR/EL design and balance, that sort of thing.

Since this was your first major run with GT, how hard was it to adapt as a GM?

Basically, a bit more exposition from behind the GMs screen...?


Wulf

 

[Old One]

Hey Old One,

One thing I'd like to see (and which, of course, I hope helps pimp Grim Tales a little more) is some insight into your prep.

How hard was it to create characters, design the adventure, create statblocks for monsters, where'd you get spells from, how extensive were your adventure notes, CR/EL design and balance, that sort of thing.

Since this was your first major run with GT, how hard was it to adapt as a GM?

Basically, a bit more exposition from behind the GMs screen...?


Wulf

Hmmm...

This is a total SWAG, but I would say I put about 5-6 hours of work into prepping the scenario, creating PCs, answering player questions before the game and other misc. actions. The Game Slot was 5 hours long and we probably actually played about 5.25 hours (after a brief intro and last minute Q&A). If that doesn't sound like a lot of prep time (about 1 hour per expected game hour), it is actually about double what I normally spend (usually about 30 minutes per expected game hour).

The time was broken down thusly:

• PC Creation: 3+ hours...this is where the bulk of my time was spent. It took me about an hour+ to make the first GT PC...the others flowed much more quickly. I already had concepts for 8 PCs, statted 7 of them, turned 1 into a mainly offstage NPC and completed 6 full PCs. The GT Talent Checklist from an earlier GT thread (Here) helped a lot and I was already pretty familiar with most feats/talents based on reading through the book pretty well.
• CR/EL/Encounters: About 1.5 hours...One of the reasons I love GT is the ease with which you can design encounters. Once I had the EL of the party, I bounced that against my idea notes for the Scenario, decided how I wanted to structure each mini-quest (type and # of critters), used the charts to work backwards to the proper CR and went shopping using that. I made 4" x 6" cards with a couple of notes for each encounter and then had the SRD up and running on my computer (I use a bookmarked webfile SRD). I did have a couple of maps, but most of the areas just had a rough sketch and mental notes.
• Spells: 15 minutes...I wanted Brother Temerius to have a couple of healing spells, a couple of utility spells and a "big bang" game altering spell (non-damage). I queried Wulf on recommendations for the total number of spells to a pseudo-historical setting and decided on a total of 6 or 7.
• Other Stuff: About 1 hour...A few more notes, "visualizing" encounters, double-checking/re-reading talent and feat descriptions, prepping and e-mailing PC stats and a GT summary sheet (about 2 pages).

My DMing style is to use minimal notes, but to spend some time "visualizing" encounters and scenes to provide more vivid description during game play. In the 23 years I have been behind the screen...I have found that I end up not refering to 50-75% of pre-written material, so I stopped prepping it! It does cause me to miss things from time to time (like the "Fight or Flight" option) but it seems to work for me (as an aside, I would be interested in impressions from Rodrigo, AIM-54 and anyone else from the table that cares to comment on how this style worked for them).

The Bottom Line: Once I had my arms around the PCs and their abilities, designing the mini-quests and final encounter was fairly easy. The CR/EL system is a thing of beauty...I can honestly say this is one of the few times I have formally used it...I just find the DMG method flawed and irritating.

~ Old One

 

[Fenris]

Old One,
Thanks so much for your reply. To see where you went with these characters was great. Sounds like a heck of a setting, I will echo Wulf in saying I wish I could have played in it as well.
I am also hearte by the quick prep times as that is always hard to find time for.

Fenris

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

....(as an aside, I would be interested in impressions from Rodrigo, AIM-54 and anyone else from the table that cares to comment on how this style worked for them).

It worked well for me, since that's pretty much how I do things. I generally find that a lot of prep work for text gets wasted. Invariably, after I spend 5 minutes detailing a prepared description, someone asks what color the drapes are, and I end up winging it anyway. Either that, or they seize on some insignificant detail and become convinced that the shape of the large rock is important, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned it. Plus, it's always instructive to see how another DM works and pick up some new tricks and techniques.

I thought your setup was excellent, especially the setting specific stuff (eg changing the weapon names). A 'holy fire' spell would have been nice, especially if it was the make-or-break type like the Wind Walk (but that's just my pyromania coming through). My only regret is that I don't see how we could have made it through all 4 portals, plus a big battle at the end, in the time alotted. I don't think we dawdled unnecessarily, although it took a lot longer to take out the skells than it probably should have, and the Pond of Doom delayed us a bit.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

My only regret is that I don't see how we could have made it through all 4 portals, plus a big battle at the end, in the time alotted. I don't think we dawdled unnecessarily, although it took a lot longer to take out the skells than it probably should have, and the Pond of Doom delayed us a bit.

In the half-dozen times I've run Game Day type events, I have found that players will get to about half of everything you have written down, because they obsess twice as long on the details you don't have written down.


Wulf

 

[Old One]

Thoughts on Feedback?

Wulf,

Gratuitous bump, plus...

Any additional thoughts on our observations/feedback? I agree with your tack above that GT is not for "tanking" and combat-heavy dungeon crawls. It does, however, make for much more flexible, 3-D PCs...since you aren't limited to a big BAB and no skills !

~ Oldie

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Shhh...don't bother Wulf. He's supposed to be finishing 'Slavelords of Cydonia'.

BTW, I don't necessarily agree that it wouldn't work for a dungeon crawl (at least at low levels). My group way back in high school used to play a ton of Dragonquest, which basically used VP/WP (they called it Fatigue and Endurance), Armor as DR, etc. Its magic system was even harsher than GT's (some spells had a base %1 chance of success), so we never even had a single spellcaster, and thus no magical healing. (This could really suck, as critical hits could lop off arms, poke out eyes, etc) We used to do lots of dungeon romps. You just have to plan encounters accordingly.

With the 'Fewer Dead Heroes' option, a lot of the damage is going to be non-lethal, which heals pretty quick.

Hmmm....back to work. Or back to working on a potential Barsoom campaign, maybe....