Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 8665090" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/ifwZUZp.jpeg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /><a href="https://www.dmsguild.com/product/284778/Glittergolds-Clockwork-Combat" target="_blank">DM’s Guild Page</a>Glittergold’s Clockwork Combat is an adventure and minigame all in one, but with a twist. Written with charity livestreams in mind, certain aspects of the adventure can be influenced based on audience votes and donations. It’s not for any particular charity nor does it give specific donation tiers, so what it provides are more guidelines rather than hard and fast rules. Taking strong inspiration from the Robot Wars and Battlebots shows, Glittergold’s Clockwork Combat has the PCs visit a gnomish festival where they compete in a Clockwork Combat Championship. Here they design their own gnomish constructs to fight against other contestant’s creations. The adventure is designed for parties of all levels, as the challenges and encounters don’t require powerful magic or esoteric abilities and are more or less non-lethal save for one exception.On the 13th of each month it is common for gnomes to celebrate the Communion of Laughter, a holiday of whimsy, pranks, and gift-giving to honor Garl Glittergold. Located in an underground community lit with magical lights, the PCs have the opportunity to check out the prized creations of gnomish magical technology, which for the holiday are all coin-operated with the proceeds donated to charitable causes. There’s a rival adventuring party of two gnomes and a halfling known as the Fun Size Squad who act as the PCs’ foil, and their first introduction has one member drunk to unconsciousness, another declaring how unimpressed they are with the PCs’ combat prowess, and a third pretending to fire arrows at them which intentionally miss only to get called out by her other conscious partner on good pranks not being harmful.It doesn’t take long for the Fun Size Squad to earn a negative second impression, with one of them feeding hundreds of gold coins into a pie-making machine. This causes the machine to malfunction and start summoning mephits made out of whipped cream. The monsters’ attacks are all harmless, although the machine will explode in 3 rounds unless the PCs disable it. Audience participating in a livestream can make donations to have the mephits choose who to attack, which in real life has that player be sprayed with a can of whipped cream by another player.The next event gives some foreshadowing of the combat construction tournament by showing gnomish children having clockwork toys fight each other. One of the festival’s tour guides explains to the party a rumor of how this very cave is believed to be the one where Glittergold trapped Kurtulmak via collapsing an entire mountain on the kobold god. Changing her tone to a more suspenseful one, she mentions that kobold agents are believed to be infiltrating the Communion, at which point one of the Fun Size Squad members casts a Seeming spell to make the PCs appear as kobolds as a prank.At this point the PCs learn about the amateur competition of the Clockwork Combat Championship, where a local tinker by the name of Emett Bobbinoggin seeks to sponsor the PCs for the competition. The party must pay 100 GP per contestant, but in exchange Emett can give them each a clockwork construct of their own after the Championship ends. This is on top of the Belt of Gnome Giant Strength the winners get; it sets your Strength score to 10 when worn. One of the Fun Size Squad members will attempt to raise the stakes by betting one of their magic items against a PC’s in exchange for their most powerful one; the Squad member’s magic item is determined by the DM, but it should have an inconvenient side effect and unsuitable for the PCs’ current Tier.Now this is the meat of the adventure and the big minigame for this product where each PC designs their own construct at the Build-A-Bot Workshop. Combat bots are treated as creatures for combat purposes, are remote-controlled, and for the simplicity of this minigame don’t have ability scores, are immune to all conditions, have a preset +3 attack bonus, have a Shover Bumper melee attack which can push a target 10 feet away and deal damage to the target if pushed into another combat bot or hazard, and adds the controller’s Intelligence modifier to damage with their weapons if they’re proficient in tinker’s tools. PCs can customize their bots via Build points of which they have 10 to be spent on the four main features: the Body (determines AC), Material (determines HP), Wheels (determines land speed and initiative), and Weapons (determines damage die and type). One Bonus Part may be added to a bot for free, and there are four options such as a ranged steam blast attack or a roto anchor which can make the Weapon hit multiple adjacent targets.There are 2 example stat blocks for prebuilt Combat Bots, and the adventure suggests that players build their bots before the session begins rather than during it. We also have a character sheet at the end of the book for designing a Combat Bot. The Fun Size Squad uses the same rules for building, save that they’re cheating and build theirs with 12 points. They use illusion magic to hide these features before the Championship, taking advantage of a loophole that once a game starts it cannot be called off. The crowd doesn’t like this, and boos them and cheers more for the PCs.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/g4VC4se.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The contest takes place in an Arena which has its own map with various Hazards. Hazards are features of the terrain which can cause various types of automatic damage and negative effects for those within their Areas of Effect, such as slashing saw blades, acid puddles, an electromagnet which halves movement speed away from it, and a Compactor which has a chance of slamming down and reducing any non-destroyed bots to 1 HP. The audience can make donations to help the PCs, such as granting a one-round +5 to AC or temporary hit points, the placement of healing potions around the arena which can work on constructs, and so on.The adventure’s conclusion has Emett give each PC a clockwork device that acts as the tinker gnome subrace’s ability save with a month-long duration, as well as Goggles of Minute Seeing on the PC who dealt the killing blow to the combat bot of one of the Fun Size Squad members he has a bone to pick with. The Fun Size Squad will finally respect the PCs for their performance in the Championship, and offer a Small-sized PC the chance to join their party should one of the Squad’s own members retire (via death and staying dead), while gnomish PCs will be offered to do volunteer work with the priesthood of Garl Glittergold for future festivals and charities.Thoughts: I haven’t had the chance to playtest this adventure, but from my initial reading the Combat Robot aspect looks pretty cool. It’s simpler than typical D&D combat, although given the adventure’s one-off nature that is for the best. It also makes use of rules players are already familiar with as opposed to learning everything anew, which is another point in its favor. I also like the calls for the audience making subtle alterations to encounters via donations; I don’t know if this adventure was ever used for a livestream or not, but if it was I’d be interested in seeing how it went.I do have three points of contention for the module: the exploding pie machine is treated as a fireball, and given its potentially fatal effects can set a rather grim mood for what is otherwise a silly low-stakes one-off. Secondly the betting of magic items can leave a sore spot given the permanency of its loss if the PCs don’t win the Championship. Thirdly, while the adventure notes the Fun Size Squad using illusion magic to cheat, it doesn’t make any mention of what happens if the PCs try to do what’s fair in love and war and bend the rules themselves. Or call them out if they manage to discover their trickery.But otherwise, Glittergold’s Clockwork Combat rates overall positive and is a refreshingly different change of pace from most modules.</blockquote>

Verification