How Did Your Lair Assault 2 Go? (spoilers)

[Plane Sailing]

It is looking as though this conversation has about run its course, with expressions of dissatisfaction and satisfaction variously given and defended.

I wonder whether it is worth closing the thread now, before anyone makes the mistake of getting heated.

What do you think, [MENTION=2011]KarinsDad[/MENTION] ?

 

[talok55]

LOL, sorry but I almost spit Dr. Pepper on the keyboard of my computer.

Really??? There's a friggin' kraken in the water and you're actually saying that it's not appropriate to get mauled to death, do not pass go, do not collect $100?

Were you not one of the people that was advocating for "more realism" in the rules? More consistency? More "not stupid"? I don't know, this might be just my opinion, but knowing that there's a kraken in the water, and then not trying to stay out of the water seems like a really bad idea. Getting autokilled seems entirely realistic and quite appropriate to me.

I'm not saying you should have a good chance of surviving going in the water, but just saying "You're dead." is lame. At least have the thing roll to hit and do massive damage or something. Anything's better than. "You're just dead."

 

[KarinsDad]

I wonder whether it is worth closing the thread now, before anyone makes the mistake of getting heated.

Up to you. Personally, I prefer to let threads run their course and if it gets heated, tell the person who heats it up to knock it off. Who knows if someone will still post their LA2 experience which might change the direction of the discussion.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Up to you. Personally, I prefer to let threads run their course and if it gets heated, tell the person who heats it up to knock it off. Who knows if someone will still post their LA2 experience which might change the direction of the discussion.

OK. Hopefully everyone will resist any temptation to get heated.

Cheers

 

[Zuche]

Your definition of plausible is different than mine.

The rules already allow a blinded wizard to distinguish between friend and foe without the need for Perception checks when throwing around such spells as fountain of flame. Should magic really be that special, or can we accept that a malevolent intelligence from the depths on a Mission from God might just know a few tricks for determining who's who? Why complicate things further with an extra die roll every time a kraken takes a turn? The rules let passive Perception instantly locate everything within its DC range, unlikely as that is, because the extra dice rolling does not improve the game enough to justify the more elaborate mechanic. Once we've accepted that as a given, tentacles with blindsight are plausible within the same system.

Now if someone at my table asked if it was possible to "blend in" among the kraken's allies for the purpose of avoiding the tentacles attacks, great! I'd assign that a hard difficulty Bluff check, but I'd allow it as a minor action.

There's occasionally some handwaving thrown in because the implementation is not as well thought out as the original concept.

That over-complicates matters to no good purpose. It's enough that the tentacles have lower attack modifiers and defenses than you'd expect from a kraken. We're discussing a game that gives giants and dragons a pass on all of the impossible things about them. In that light, objecting to tentacles that sense by blindsight is arbitrary.

I didn't say that there was anything wrong with that. I said that the adventure wasn't interesting enough for me to do that.

And I'm saying that you get out of it what you put into it. For example, all you saw in the first season were runes that always did the same thing. What I saw were players working out a number of different ways to make those runes mean something different. Some just looked for ways to travel above them, since they only affect people entering a square containing runes on the floor (and not the square above that, something you'd find in 10 foot tall corridors). Others looked into ways to make the runes work to their advantage. One even put together a plan for using the room and a telekinetic psion against Mordai Vell, but couldn't assemble a team willing to try it.

I'm not interested in playing Groundhog's Day over and over again unless the scenario has some cool new stuff in it each time...

This reminds me of people who don't vote because none of the candidates ever support the causes of interest to them. How can you possibly know everything that's available to you if you only play once? I'm not talking about point tweaking. Here, let's try this: name three items you could find in the pirate base, and suggest two different ways to use each of them. I'm not asking you to come up with ways to use them better than one of your at-will powers, but it would be nice to see something more than the, "Been there, done that," school of thought.

You invaded a pirate lair, then fought sea monsters on a ship. You did not find the experience remotely interesting. The problem with this picture is not mechanical failure. If you find spamming the B button boring; other options are available, and you're not going to get punished by some professional gamer for trying them. You might even be able to have some fun and look good doing it.

Consider Bloodbath's horn. One contributor here mentioned having stolen the horn, preventing the arrival of reinforcements. That's a good move. A great move would have been to steal the horn and immediately blow it. Stupid? Maybe, but it's also the stuff of legends if you pull it off. Even if you fail afterward, that's a moment worthy of Blackbeard's legend, or Roland's. If you succeed, I'd be awfully disappointed if you refrained from roaring insults at the pirate fleets as you pulled away from the pirate base.

You know how many people dismissed 4th Edition (and 3rd before it) as video games? That only applies when we play them as video games, where any sense of style is surrendered to technical mastery. Great, you won, but did you actually attempt anything worthy of a tavern tale, let alone a legend? Don't think in terms of skills or powers or die rolls. No one's going to buy you a round for those, no matter how much damage you do.

This from the DM who decided he should destroy the ship instead of having the tentacles break through the sides of it because his players played smart? You cannot have it both ways.

"Use the resources available to you," is only one way, even if all sides of a conflict make use of it. As I've noted before, when I'm expected to do everything I can within the rules to defeat you, I will do exactly what I know (by experience) that players in the same circumstances would do. Up to a point, you had a sound plan, until you opted for too much of a good thing. So when I point out the problem it creates when everyone clears the deck, you tell me that even though it's allowed by the rules and still gives you at least two rounds to adapt your tactics, because, "That's not fair!"

It is unfortunate that people often repeat the same mistakes without knowing it, but that's why it's worth replaying a scenario. It's easier to identify an opportunity when it's the exact same opportunity rather than a similar one in new circumstances. Once they've figured it out on their own, they tend to be more likely to spot a variation on the same theme in a new scenario.

It also helps if the DM provides examples through play...even when quarter is not to be expected.

But, WotC's idea of wiping out parties is just throwing a lot of damage at them. This can be countered by healing, temp hit points, resistance, etc.

Yet a supposedly save-or-die hazard is a violation of the game's spirit? We're talking about something you could counter without having access to flight or a spell.

Everything in the game can be countered. If one thing is more readily countered than others, it's probably because this is what should be countered most frequently. There are reasons few monsters have this privilege, and why revisions of those monsters (such as orcs) tend to replace such powers. There are a lot of effects that are not as much fun outside of player hands.

The next Lair Assault should be focused more on other things: splitting up the party, interesting traps, zones, effects, terrain that takes skills to negotiate, etc.

In other words: time-consuming activities that encourage players to compete against each other for the DM's time, ambiguously defined obstacles, and three things that were already present within this scenario. Really, those last three were all there, both times. Maybe they weren't the right kind of zones (the flammable pools in the first room), effects (the idol), and terrain (lava walking, platform jumping, and wall crawling). Maybe Acrobatics does need more love, though if anyone had suggested it as a means of crossing the rune-covered floor safely, I'd have given consideration to their arguments. (If it would be good enough to get through a laser net, why not?) I'd love to see what someone could come up with for Streetwise checks, but a player would have to make a very convincing argument before being allowed to make one that could accomplish anything.

Earlier, you asked Tony Vargas whether a pixie could get out of reach by moving to the crow's nest. Is there some reason no other race could reach the crow's nest? They weren't designed to be completely inaccessible to non-fantastic humans. Flight makes that easier, but it also makes it easier to avoid many of the zones and terrain types you'd like to see utilized. If a player wants to skip such opportunities, that's not my problem here. Maybe next season we'll read complaints about how Lair Assault completely screwed over flying characters. (Or pretty much everyone but the strikers if the scenario splits the party.)

 

[KarinsDad]

The rules already allow a blinded wizard to distinguish between friend and foe without the need for Perception checks when throwing around such spells as fountain of flame. Should magic really be that special, or can we accept that a malevolent intelligence from the depths on a Mission from God might just know a few tricks for determining who's who?

The reason a blind Wizard can distinguish friend from foe is that he knows where everyone was before he got blinded. The moment anyone hides, the Wizard no longer knows where that friend or foe is located. The rules are that way for a reason.

But for your specific example of fountain of flame, I think it is stupid to have area effect powers that can distinguish friend from foe in the first place if you aren't going to have logical rules that govern that. I think it's stupid to have elemental damage in certain squares that affects enemies, but not allies. This concept that magic, especially first level elemental magic, is intelligent is lame. IMO.

But that doesn't mean that game designers should expand on that lack of design thought and create creatures that are hiding under a ship, but still able to distinguish friend from foe where the creature cannot itself see.

If the Kraken is below the ship, it should have no idea where anyone is with the one exception of the foes that he placed on deck. But from then on, there is blocking terrain in front of the Kraken. No line of sight. No line of effect from the Kraken itself, only from its tentacles.

So, it's reasonable that the Kraken can flail its tentacles along the edges of the ship. It's unreasonable to have intelligent tentacles that can see just fine because the creature using those tentacles cannot see or hear the foes above. If those tentacles have eyes and can see friend from foe, fine. Then, the PCs should be able to blind the tentacles. It's a real stretch that the tentacles have "sonar" that works in the air.

The implementation of the creature is a bit lame. It's the mechanics driving the scenario, not the other way around. The designers created the creature to get the tactical and mechanical effects they wanted, they didn't start with the creature and decide which effects made sense for that type of creature. Granted, in a world of magic, strange stuff can happen. But, things like this should be Epic level, not Heroic level. And, putting an Epic level creature into a Heroic level adventure and then gimping it a bit shows a lack of imagination and lazy design. IMO.


Both Fountains of Flame and the Kraken are examples of lazy game design. I have no problem with a Wizard targeting different foes with magical bolts of fire. But, it should not be an area effect using those AoE rules if the Wizard gets to target foes and not friends. That's a higher level feat and even then, the allies can still get hit. If it is an area effect, it should target all creatures in the area, not just enemies. If it creates a zone, then the zone should effect all targets.

There are a lot of zones that affect enemies and not allies and that's just plain bad game design. Having an occasional one where there is reasonable justification is fine. The Cleric's god giving a buff to allies. But, a zone of fire shouldn't typically be one of those. Fire should be fire and it should damage everyone the same, especially at heroic levels. High level fire? Yeah, maybe. At that point, maybe the Wizard is conjuring little intelligent elementals to snuggle up to enemies and avoid his allies.

One of the design flaws with 4E is that there is no metarules about how to combine Keywords, Power Sources, Conditions, Targets, and Effects. Every designer takes whatever he wants that sounds cool, throws them together, and doesn't worry about the fact that because of this, one gets same level powers where some are uber and others are lame. Ditto for items. 4E had an awesome concept behind it, but it doesn't have a good design model behind it. There is a bit of a design model about defenses, attacks, hit points, and damage of monsters (the design model for PCs though was flawed, hence, the math fixes), but the designers missed the boat on a lot of design meta-rule elements that should have been part of the overall design.


So I find it interesting that as justification for why the Kraken should be designed the way it was, you pick one of the powers that is itself poorly designed.

This reminds me of people who don't vote because none of the candidates ever support the causes of interest to them. How can you possibly know everything that's available to you if you only play once?

I don't understand why you cannot comprehend that not everyone thinks like you.

I don't need to find out everything that's available to me. Instead of playing the same boring repetitive adventure over and over and over again that I've already beaten, I can go play a normal game that is different every time I sit at the table, I have a PC that I start to care about, I don't change him around for each session, and I have an actual storyline. I can inspire tavern tales because I have a campaign where events flow from one session to the next and I can work towards goals.

Lair Assaults would be great encounters to run multiple times if they were a lot more interesting with a lot more options for changes each time to surprise the players. They aren't. So far, they are only moderately interesting and not that well designed, and there are no reasons to go back and rehash them. I won't learn enough new stuff to make it worth my while.

Like I said, I'm glad it works for you.

It doesn't work for me and I don't know why you feel the need to harp on why you think your way is better and mine is worse in your mind.

You know how many people dismissed 4th Edition (and 3rd before it) as video games? That only applies when we play them as video games, where any sense of style is surrendered to technical mastery. Great, you won, but did you actually attempt anything worthy of a tavern tale, let alone a legend? Don't think in terms of skills or powers or die rolls. No one's going to buy you a round for those, no matter how much damage you do.

You sure seem to not get it.

There are no tavern tales about LA. It's a single adventure. If one has to play it 4 times before coming up with something to reminisce at the table for years to come, then the play of the players and the design of the adventure probably wasn't that awe inspiring in the first place.

In other words: time-consuming activities that encourage players to compete against each other for the DM's time, ambiguously defined obstacles, and three things that were already present within this scenario. Really, those last three were all there, both times. Maybe they weren't the right kind of zones (the flammable pools in the first room), effects (the idol), and terrain (lava walking, platform jumping, and wall crawling).

There were no zones or effects in LA2. What are you talking about?

Sorry, but you're just arguing to argue now. "time-consuming activities that encourage players to compete against each other for the DM's time"?

It seems that you are arguing that the adventures the way they were designed is great and anything else is lousy.

Damage and only damage is boring (which is what the vast majority of both LAs was).

Splitting up the party is a cool way to really show evil DM skills. Dropping detrimental effects that hinder the party and force the players to make difficult decisions is a cool way to really show evil DM skills. Putting in specific terrain that helps the enemies and hinders the PCs is a cool way to really show evil DM skillls.

Doing a lot of damage and creating creatures that just do a lot of damage. That's sad dude. It's totally uninspired.

Sorry, but you sound like a broken record when you preach going back again and again and again to adventures that are just damage fests as if this is some great and wonderful adventure that creates tavern tale if the players could just manage to get every bonus point that WotC thought of, and that the players are going to learn all these cool tips and tricks to overcome these challenges.


Lair Assaults are supposed to be adventures where the DM can strut his stuff and overwhelm the best tactics of the players with the best cool DM curve balls and evil DM tactics. Instead, they are damage fests where the game designers thought that going outside the normal games rules was the only way to accomplish the goal. Definitely a lack of encounter design imagination.

There's not a single thing in either Lair Assault where as a DM I thought: "Wow! What a cool way to do that. That's awesome.". The one I ran I thought: "Wow! There's no way my players aren't going to get through this." (and they easily did), and as a player in the second one I thought "Wow! That first encounter was really weak. And Wow! The DM killed the Cleric with 5 hits out of 6 attacks a third of the way through round one and the tentacles will kill us, we got to change the action economy here.".

If the DM hadn't explicitly set the enemies up so that the Cleric was practically surrounded at the very beginning of the encounter to ensure that he could focus fire on her, LA2 would have been a cake walk for us.

I'm glad that you find these to be awesome adventures dude. I find them to be meh at best. The DM had to try to force kill one specific PC (the one designed to keep the party going no matter what) before the majority of the PCs could act to even challenge us. Sorry, but that's just totally lame. A smart strategic move by our DM, but one where he used metagame knowledge to attack and kill our most valuable PC because he recognized (as I did before DMing the first LA) that well designed PCs (not even a well designed team which we did not do for either adventure, just well designed individual PCs) will easily wipe these adventures.

Earlier, you asked Tony Vargas whether a pixie could get out of reach by moving to the crow's nest. Is there some reason no other race could reach the crow's nest? They weren't designed to be completely inaccessible to non-fantastic humans. Flight makes that easier, but it also makes it easier to avoid many of the zones and terrain types you'd like to see utilized. If a player wants to skip such opportunities, that's not my problem here. Maybe next season we'll read complaints about how Lair Assault completely screwed over flying characters. (Or pretty much everyone but the strikers if the scenario splits the party.)

I had heard that the tentacles could reach the crows nest. If that is true, then it is irrelevant for other races.

The point of the comment was whether a pixie could get to that location and be out of range of the tentacles by being one more square up.

So, your comment here doesn't make any sense if the tentacles can reach the crows nest.

 

[Zuche]

Both Fountains of Flame and the Kraken are examples of lazy game design.

....

So I find it interesting that as justification for why the Kraken should be designed the way it was, you pick one of the powers that is itself poorly designed.

By way of reply, I refer you to your next point:

I don't understand why you cannot comprehend that not everyone thinks like you.

This, right after you insist that design choices you dislike a bad choices. You dislike options that strike you as arbitrary, I dislike complications that I see as arbitrary. Is that clear now?

I don't need to find out everything that's available to me.

Of course not. But you could settle for saying, "It wasn't for me," instead of:

Instead of playing the same boring repetitive adventure over and over and over again that I've already beaten...

...you could admit that repetition and boredom are choices, and that there is more to this than "winning." Or not.

Lair Assaults would be great encounters to run multiple times if they were a lot more interesting with a lot more options for changes each time to surprise the players.

Why bother giving more options to ignore?

I won't learn enough new stuff to make it worth my while.

That is certainly a choice, yes.

There are no tavern tales about LA.

From the look of things, a number of visitors to this thread were hoping to read a few.

If one has to play it 4 times before coming up with something to reminisce at the table for years to come, then the play of the players and the design of the adventure probably wasn't that awe inspiring in the first place.

And if one plays it four times and brings back four tales that can amuse people who don't play the game? Let's see, in four attempts from first season, there was the horse run, death by roadrunner, one of the two times a lone character kept fighting on for six rounds after everyone else fell, and the suicide dive into lava that fell just inches short of killing Vell.

And those are just the ones that didn't work out for the team.

There were no zones or effects in LA2. What are you talking about?

Let's not nitpick about the difference between zones, effects, and hazardous terrain.

Sorry, but you're just arguing to argue now. "time-consuming activities that encourage players to compete against each other for the DM's time"?

Splitting the party is time-consuming. Players can't work together in circumstances with a very uneven effect. Defenders and leaders also fare worst against dazing effects, but at least they and their allies can still find ways to look out for one another. Removed from play at least protects your character in exchange for denying your contributions to the field, but it's still used sparingly.

"Evil DM skills" as you describe them are just as boring as damage, a bunch of switches that don't involve players more than combat advantage or difficult terrain does. They do no more to involve the PCs in the scenario than damage does. Effect does not define interaction.

Lair Assaults are supposed to be adventures where the DM can strut his stuff and overwhelm the best tactics of the players with the best cool DM curve balls and evil DM tactics.

I don't know whether that view is best described as entitled or limited, seeing as you think that's how a DM best "struts" stuff. You may as well design The Cube for all the personality that involves on anyone's behalf. It's like throwing a holiday dinner into a blender and eating the results through a straw.

If it's all the same to you, I'd rather participate in a pirate-themed adventure with sea monsters where winning is just another goal. Flashy gimmicks by some self-lauding soul behind a curtain aren't impressive.

I had heard that the tentacles could reach the crows nest. If that is true, then it is irrelevant for other races.

Flying no more than one square "off the ground" is the same as standing on that ground for the purpose of what can hit you. Drow can do better with a Neverwinter theme. At least staying in sight makes attacks on the mast more likely than attacks on the ship, assuming you're the only target in sight. Hey, if it's good enough for a Bugs Bunny villain, it's fair game.

I'm happy to replay this adventure, so it's no surprise I'm willing to keep discussing it, but I thought you were done with it. Congratulations on winning.

 

[KarinsDad]

Splitting the party is time-consuming. Players can't work together in circumstances with a very uneven effect. Defenders and leaders also fare worst against dazing effects, but at least they and their allies can still find ways to look out for one another. Removed from play at least protects your character in exchange for denying your contributions to the field, but it's still used sparingly.

Precisely. This is why it's a challenge. Duh!

Doing it the damage fest ways says that the surprises are mostly limited to damage and that's something every player can account for with ease. It's why our team blew through the first adventure and would have blown threw the second if our primary leader hadn't been taken out in round one. Damage is super simple for players to plan for, hence, it's not a challenge. And challenging the players and eventually killing the PCs is the entire point of Lair Assault, at least the first time out.

In our LA1 adventure, the PCs still had access to over 160 hit points of healing and 240 actual hit points remaining at the end of the encounter (in a 6 party team). Only one PC was bloodied at the end. It wasn't even close. It's because in addition to temp hit points and surgeless healing, they walked into the encounter with 9 heals, a few party healing powers, and a boatload of healing potions.

Damage fests don't work from one group to the next because in order to throw enough damage at a group that walked in with that much healing, the monsters have to do crazy one shot kills (which gets some players rarely coming back for more, that's a level of threat that some people aren't willing to taste multiple times). Alternatively, if the monster damage of most monsters is too high (but not in the one shot kill category), then there are a lot of groups out there that will not optimize their groups for healing as much as ours did. Those groups will get slaughtered without necessarily knowing how to overcome the deficit, even in future sessions, just to challenge a group like ours.

"Evil DM skills" as you describe them are just as boring as damage, a bunch of switches that don't involve players more than combat advantage or difficult terrain does. They do no more to involve the PCs in the scenario than damage does. Effect does not define interaction.

The point of the adventures is to challenge the players and strut the DM's stuff. Not to allow the players to interact and often be able to use their best stuff.

By using subpar DM tactics, heavy damage scenarios, and allowing the PCs to cooperate to their fullest, you are neither challenging the PCs, nor are you allowing the DM to strut his stuff. It's the lazy man's way to threaten the PCs. It's easy to run a tentacle that just swings every round.

Damage only is boring because it is so easy to overcome for a well optimized group. Real challenges are not boring because no matter how the group is designed, it will throw unusual and surprising monkey wrenches at all groups.

You are putting restrictions on the contest to make it fair for the players.

Why in heck would you want to do that? That's not the purpose (and hype) of Lair Assault.

Not only that, but you questioned why I wouldn't want to come back and learn more. I question why you don't want to see cool DM challenges that you have never seen in your life, so that you can learn more. Puzzles and riddles (that change from session to session) and a wide variety of other cool Evil DM tips and tricks.

The floor falling out from under the PCs into a hazard? Yeah, been there done that a lot more than once. An effect pushing the PCs into a hazard (in LA2 case, instant death), seen that too. Sneaking in to get the MacGuffin without getting caught. That's practically a cliche. I'd like to see something new and interesting. I don't understand why you don't want to see something new and interesting.


I honestly hope that LA3 has a ton of interesting stuff that allows the evil DMs in the world to really shine and isn't just all about damaging the PCs. Stuff that DMs can learn from and expand upon in their own games (not necessarily at the same lethality level) to make them interesting in the future. To me, that's a lot better than a player learning not to shift too close to the tentacle via the GroundHog's day technique or getting a WotC point for diving into the water.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Can a pixie get out of reach of a tentacle by flying above a crows nest?

The crow's next is 4 high, and the tentacles are '4 high' (which is seriously unique, for a monster, to have a 'hight' different from it's space), so a pixie at it's altitude limit over the 'nest would be 6 above the deck, 7 above the water, and still in the blast 3 of a 4-square-tall tentacle rising out of the water (asuming 4-square-tall works the obvious way). He'd definitely be out of any blast that could catch non-pixies on the deck, and impossible to pull into the water, though (I'm not sure the one pull available to the DM would even work on a flying character).

Their flight helps them avoid being dropped in the water, though. The only mechanic that puts you in the water is a pull 3, that gets a regular character over the side from anywhere but the middle of the ship. For the pixie, that just gets him hovering above the water, another square is required to get him in - if the railing is a hard corner (and it logically would be), another two squares. And, the pixie just zips away after being nearly pulled into the instadeath water.

As for pixies, yeah, WotC did not learn that teleport was a potent ability at low level and have now not learned that flight is a potent ability at low level.

Teleport was crazy-broken in the old days, but 4e teleport is just great at getting you out of grabs and across hazards. The LoS rule, for instance, really minimizes abuse - even legitimate use, at times.

It's clear that flying was considered more a paragon level power in 4e. Giving it to pixies was a bad call, and not the only one - not that any 'good call' was possible, since anything that was right for balance and playability would have seriously de-pixie-afied the race. It was just a bad idea for a PC race. Fortunately, everything else in HotFw is pretty good, and the pixie is easy enough to ban - or use in an all-pixie party.

The first module had a fairly decent story, but the implementation and the ability to change it up for future use was totally inadequate.

I ran FotDT, and I felt it gave me plenty of options to change things up on each re-play. Different monsters, different monster and trap placement, plenty of room for different tactics, and extra monsters on 'nightmare mode.'

The second module had a slightly better and interesting story, but again, the implementation was very subpar.

Nod, the story was good, the encounter concepts of raiding a pirate lair and excaping a seamonster were fantastics - but the implementation just fell flat.

I didn't run it, this time, but the DM who did complained that it gave him no lattitude with the monsters - numbers, types, tactics - or anything else, and that 'nightmare mode' just gave everything a damage bonus. So there was nothing to change up on a re-play, and, as both encounters could be avoided or trivialized once you hit upon the right 'trick' ToU was much less re-playable than FotDT.

After all of the hype, they are just slugfests. No splitting up of the party. No cool traps. No terrain that hasn't been seen a lot before. Just damage.

FotDT: I don't recall seeing lava or pools of flaming oil inhabbitted by fire-damage-negating goldfish 'a lot' before. And, sure, the fire-spitting statues weren't exactly cool - though the dying-PC-controlling statue was pretty cool, it litterally /never/ worked all the times ran it. Splitting the party a little was just barely possible on the 4th round, when some of the floors collapsed rather dramatically. It did happen, once, at my table.

ToU:So, um... there was a magical trap (alarm) on one of the chests, there was terrain that instantly killed you, the party could end up split between different rooms (because splitting up to steal more than one chest at a time could seem like a really good idea) or above and below decks.

More to the point, ToU was nothing like a slugfest - really, that was part of the problem. Once you tuned your party for stealth & arcan, the 1st encounter was cake - you might murder a few minions if you felt like it, but you could avoid the actual combat entirely. Similarly, the second fight could be ended early by focusing fire on the Barron - an alpha strike, but not exactly a slugfest. Not only that, but the use of rituals opened all kinds of hinky possibilities. For an extreme instance, if you could talk your DM into allowing a Circle of Protection (natural) to be inscribed on the ship, a party of Fey-origin PCs (like, oh, pixies) could render themselves (and the talon) virtually immune to the attackers in the 2nd encounter, who were all 'natural' origin.

Both Fountains of Flame and the Kraken are examples of lazy game design. I have no problem with a Wizard targeting different foes with magical bolts of fire. But, it should not be an area effect using those AoE rules if the Wizard gets to target foes and not friends.

I can sorta agree with that. I think the idea behind Fountain of Flame was to make the Essentials Mage more forgiving in the hands of new players than the 4e Wizard. I don't think that was a great idea, since creature-targetting AEs were something of a 4e wizard hallmark, and, in a sense, gave them some added 'soft control,' tending to encourage enemies to engage the party's melee types closely. Even if it seems a good idea to make an AE enemy-targetting, making it 'each enemy you can see' (like the martial close bursts) would make some tell-friend-from-foe sense.

Similarly, monsters almost always get enemy-targetting rather than creature-targetting AEs. Presumably, that's to make the DM's life a little easier. But, I think it misses out on a lot of tactical and even RP potential. Evil elites that casually catch thier 'allies' in AEs for instance, are fun both tactically and in their sheer uncaring evilness.

In this case, the Kraken - an epic monster helping an heroic-level 'ally' - getting selective with it's flailing tentacles was both less sensical, and less fun, than having it flailing away 'blindly.'

Also, a time limit - because the Kraken might just get bored, crush the ship, and take the Talon for itself, eventually - would've made some sense.

 

[KarinsDad]

Teleport was crazy-broken in the old days, but 4e teleport is just great at getting you out of grabs and across hazards. The LoS rule, for instance, really minimizes abuse - even legitimate use, at times.

We'll just have to agree to disagree.

Moving is less powerful than shifting: shifting does not provoke.

Shifting is less powerful than single move flight: flight can get to inaccessible locations and over hazardous terrain, and it can be used to go around a corner (i.e. no LOS limit), but it does still provoke.

Single move flight is less powerful than single action teleport: teleport can get to inaccessible locations and over hazardous terrain, and it can bypass zones completely, and it can get out of grabs, and it can overcome immobilized in some cases (sometimes getting rid of it completely, sometimes still having it, but still being able to move), and it does not provoke.

I cannot see how anyone could think that teleport is not only more potent and useful, but more useful more often than most other forms of combat movement. The one downside to teleport is that it requires LOS, but except for around a corner, most encounters are in semi-lit to brightly lit areas, so it's rarely a serious detriment. And there are situations where the user of teleport can use it to get to a location that s/he can see, but the foes cannot and then do a stealth. Instant vanishing.

The advantage of not having to move every single square from point a to point b is huge. As a player, I have often turned the tides of battle with teleport that I could have never achieved without it. It's like having a Queen on your side of the chessboard instead of the Bishop on the opponent's side.

Sorry, I think you are mistaken on this one.

I ran FotDT, and I felt it gave me plenty of options to change things up on each re-play. Different monsters, different monster and trap placement, plenty of room for different tactics, and extra monsters on 'nightmare mode.'

The monsters were pretty similar and most would have been experienced by the players by the second time running it. I did hear about your explosion trick which I found interesting. That's something that the modules should have suggested.

The only reason to go through the collapsing floor room was to try to get the award for 5 rounds. Otherwise, meh. People really wouldn't try the ruins room (except possibly once or except to get the 5 round award). The traps were always the same and easy to overcome. The fish were cute, but they should poison PCs on a second go around (which would surprise the heck out of the players).

All in all, I didn't see (except in your explosion trick) the evil DM-ness of the module.