It's the end of the tier as we know it . . .

[Robtheman]

Hi all. I realize this cuts against the grain of this thread, but I'm trying to imagine what would flip this encounter on it's head and really make the PCs stop and say "wtfmate."

What if capturing the Heart is only the half way point in the encounter? Perhaps you can create the fight in a way that incorporates a skill challenge (a'la the creature from the jar in the swamp that PirateCat created for us). Once they succeed (or fail) at the skill challenge (while simultaneously fighting the factions), a massive threat is released that all three factions have to fight together. Success or Failure could determine their position before the first round or whether they get a surprise round when the "threat" is released.

The threat might be the embodiment of the defiled temple or the guardian set by Pelor that has been driven mad by the centuries of proximity to the Heart.

The emergence of the "threat" is an opportunity to trash some of the faction members, thus rebalancing the odds in the fight. Also, the terrain would change a lot. You might have an entirely different battle map prepared, with sloping floors, fallen walls, pools of necrotic slop and radiant fonts. You might ensure that the room is secured against retreat through some act of Pelor or the threat it self.

This approach would mean the faction fighting could be a shorter prelude followed by a devestating fight with a boss that has multiple attacks and initiatives doled out to the various parties. You can use some of the really cinematic attacks against the factions to lend a feeling of dread and imminent doom.

Killing it might be achieved through a combination of skill challenge and combat. You could coach the party a little bit if they aren't seeing the possibilities by having a faction member try to engage in the skill challenge but fail, taking damage or being knocked out by the "threat."

Anyhow, way off in a different direction, but the thought of a beast bursting from the floor in the center of the temple sounds super fun and cinematic. I'd remember that one for years.

What happens after? Pelor may grant them their paragon path as a boon for removing the creature. Or Pelor might give them their first power (as mentioned above) to help bring the creature down then whisk them to safety with the Heart in their possession - sealing the temple until it can be rebuilt and consecrated by the clergy.

Anyhow, thanks for asking for insights. I enjoyed reading all the other ideas in this thread. Have fun. =)

 

[Pbartender]

Yoink! Thank you. Great stuff.

In case anyone didn't notice, there are four parts to that whole article.

And this post has sample solos that people have made, using the system. I'm afraid I lost the notes for my combat, otherwise, I'd post them here.

(By the way, it's OT, but a scientist friend told me that your particle accelerator was shutting down. I wanted to offer my sympathies.)

Pardon the digression, but...

He overstated it. Our big collider, the Tevatron, which was actually scheduled to shut down a few years back, will be shutting down this coming fall, because we couldn't get funding for another extension. CERN's LHC is going to be putting the Tevatron out of business in short order, anyway.

So long as we can manage to keep at least our current budget, it's not a big deal, since it makes room for a whole slew of other projects that are already in the works.

 

[Riastlin]

Hey all, thanks for all the great suggestions! I actually ended up running the encounter at the last session (the 20th) but thought I would share what I did and how it went.

The setup:

[sblock] The PCs got to the temple in time to see that the undead faction was in place and the leader of the faction (the BBEG they had been chasing since the first session) was tinkering with some sort of machine behind one of the altars). The BBEG is a vampire and started out talking with the PCs, telling them that the rest of their "friends" would be here soon.

There were six altars in the temple, one for each of the gods that fought the primordial during the Dawn War. Each altar had an aura 5 and undead in the altar received +1 to defenses and resist 5/all per aura they were in. The exception was the BBEG who received the benefit of all 6 altars regardless of where he was. This was denoted by rays of dark energy being visible flowing from the altars into the BBEG. The altars also spawned undead minions each round. The altars could be deactivated with a hard religion check, eliminating their benefits (including spawning) to the undead. A second check enabled them to become sanctified and thus give a bonus to hit and damage to living creatures.[/sblock]

The PCs immediately suspected that BBEG was stalling by talking to them and was simply trying to buy time and so they attacked. At the end of the first round, the portals from the Far Realm sprang to life and the aberrant faction ported in. As many suspected, the PCs initial reaction was to let the aberrants just fight the undead and ignore them, but the PCs were already engaged in the combat at this time, and so both factions split their attacks between the PCs and the other faction, forcing the PCs to take notice of the aberrants too. The portals from the Far Realm had a push 5 aura to keep enemies at bay and allow more minions to port in each round. The portals could be closed with a Moderate Arcana check. I made it easier simply because the main Arcane skilled character was likely to ignore the portals knowing his play style.

How it went:

All in all, I think it went fairly well. The PCs charged into combat against the undead as I suspected. This was my main reason for having only one faction present at the beginning so as to avoid having the PCs simply sit on the sidelines until a "winner" was declared. I did foreshadow this fight though by having the PCs go through the complex in previous encounters and see obvious signs of undead fighting aberrants.

The avenger used his mass movement abilities to get right up to the BBEG and engage. He rolled high and . . . missed. Elven accuracy gave him a second shot and he hit for quite a bit of damage and was told that it did not appear to hurt the BBEG very much. At this point the party realized that they would have to take out the altars if they wanted to defeat the BBEG.

When the aberrants ported in and attacked both sides, the players had their "Wow" moment as they realized the scope of the fight. Their second "Wow" moment came when the portals and altars began spawning more minions. The first inclination of the party had been to try to defeat the other creatures first, then deal with the BBEG and the altars. However, they soon realized that wouldn't work since there would be a constant stream of new enemies, so they started to go to work on the altars.

As the fight progressed, I was glad that I had made two factions. The party was struggling early on and so having the faction focus on each other made things easier without making it obvious that I was "helping" out the party. The biggest problem the party ran into was that their two biggest religion skill characters didn't get involved in trying to shut down the altars until fairly late in the combat. This left two characters who were not all that skilled in religion trying to focus on the altars and thus, doing poorly. The dice were not kind, but they were also not the ideal candidates for it. Complicating matters was the fact that the PCs got pretty spread out, making it even harder for the two main religion PCs to get to the altars. In retrospect, I probably should have made the DC somewhere between moderate and hard.

To compensate, I shut down the incoming minions from both the portals and the altars early on for fear that the PCs would just get overwhelmed. Once all the PCs got up to where the altars were, things progressed fairly quick and the tide soon turned in their favor. The PCs eventually prevailed but "groaned" when they saw that the two vampires in the encounter were based off of the Vampire Muse and thus, simply crumpled to dust but would be able to revive themselves (can't leave out the possibility of the BBEG coming back).

The Wrinkle:
[sblock]
The machine that the BBEG was tinkering with at the start of the encounter was actually a time machine. The MacGuffins that the PCs have been chasing were hidden by the six gods after the Dawn War. One was given to the King of a Dwarven empire to be fitted into his crown and passed from heir to heir. Only problem is that the dwarven empire disappeared 500 years ago during a war involving all the races. Many fortune hunters have sought out the ruins, but none have been known to return. The BBEG was attempting to go back in time to when the empire was still around to try to get the MacGuffin from the king. Unfortunately for him, when a creature was forced into the workings of the machine during the fight, the machine began to malfunction. It initially manifested as an attack against Will. A hit resulted in the target (all creatures targetted) losing its next move action. A miss granted an extra move action. The idea was that some creatures appeared to be moving really fast while others moved really slow. As the fight progressed the malfunction grew worse until the machine finally let out a massive burst of energy and shut down. Before it shut down though, it hurled everyone into the future.[/sblock]

By the end of the fight, we were passed our allotted time and so ended it there, before the final effect of the machine was revealed to the players.

Improvements I could have made:

First, I really like the idea of granting them some of their paragon abilities mid-fight. Unfortunately, I did not know their paragon path choices (most have yet to make them) prior to the fight, so I could not do this. However, I am absolutely going to bank this idea for the future as it is just too cool not to use.

The second mistake I think I have made over the course of the heroic tier, is that I don't think I have done enough to show the PCs rise in power. They've clearly been shown that they are considered with more respect, are brought into council meetings, etc., but I don't think they have been shown to be close to true "paragons" yet. However, my plan to fix this is that since they were hurled into the future, they were not around the last several years when the crud really started to hit the fan. As a result, the aberrants have taken over the region and the last of the six seals (mentioned earlier) is either about to be broken, or has been broken. Paragon tier will largely focus upon the PCs trying to "correct" the mistakes caused by their absence.

What I like about this is that I am making the machine hard to use (powered by very rare crystals) so that they cannot just use it indiscriminately. They may be able to use it about 2 or 3 times in total. I am thus going to give them several options toward fixing the problems. With regard to the dwarven kingdom for example, the MacGuffin still needs to be recovered. They can either go back in time and confront the king, or they can look in the "present". The two choices will result in two completely different adventures. Similarly, the PCs can choose to return to where they were before they first time travelled, or can just remain in the "present". They won't; however, be able to jump back and forth through time repeatedly so as to have "do-overs" when things don't go well.

Finally, I really liked the suggestion of the even bigger badder creature bursting through the floor mid-fight. While I didn't use it here, I will definitely use it later!

All in all, I think the players really enjoyed it. I think it could have gone better with a little more prep on my part and if the numbers had been tweaked a little bit. While it certainly could be improved, I am, for the most part, happy with the results. The addition of more minions and the need to confront the altars mid-fight was actually well received by the players, the DC just ended up being a bit rough given the way the encounter played out. The only fear I have now is how they'll react to the time travel story line. My hope is that by limiting their ability to travel, it will help avoid some of the more common problems associated with time travel story lines.

All in all I am really looking forward to the paragon tier. I'm hoping that the developments will sort of act as a fresh start without actually throwing out the original story line. It should, I hope, feel like a new direction in the campaign, almost like a new campaign, without being an actual reboot. As always, any thoughts, comments, etc. are appreciated as I start out the paragon tier.