Musing of an Epic Virgin

[Puggins]

I see now. So you don't translate 1d8+5 into a fixed value that will be 33% higher - you roll damage then divide by three, round to nearest whole number and add that value to your rolled damage. That makes a lot more sense.

Probably not something I could do lightning fast, though.

If you want to do an approximation on the fly, do this:

(1) increase the die type by one. If the die type is d12, add 2 points to the bonus for every die rolled.

(2) add an additional 50% of the bonus, rounded down.

This comes close as long as the bonus isn't huge compared to the die.

Exampes:

d6 + 1 becomes d8 + 1 (~23% increase)

d8 + 2 becomes d10 + 3 (~30% increase)

d8 + 4 becomes d10 + 6 (~35% increase)

d10 + 5 becomes d12 + 7 (~30% increase)

d12 + 5 becomes d12 + 9 (~35% increase)

 

[Jack99]

I am prepping for tomorrow - and suddenly it struck me, should you even bother with "random" encounters anymore?

And when I say "random", I do mean pre-planned encounters that happen when the players are on the road, going from point A to point B.

"Random" encounters should (IMO) set the tone and show what kind of area the PC's are traveling through. If they travel through Spider Woods, they should have a spider-encounter, because honestly, what is the point of creating a wood called Spider Woods and feed the players rumors of the huge spiders that live in it, if they do not encounter any when they finally go there.

Anyway, point is, how "realistic" are random encounters that technically could challenge a minor god? I mean, there is a limit as to how many elder purple worms or the like a party can meet.

Or what?

 

[Moon_Goddess]

I'm in the camp of you shouldn't have random encounters at that point,

EXCEPT while traveling through areas level appropriate. like in the abyss itself.

 

[Novem5er]

Jack99,

Thanks for the great thread. I'm at the start of a paragon Eberron campaign and reading through your past adventures has given me some ideas.

I also wanted to share my experience using the Monster Builder to modify monsters. I plan for all my adventures and I "fix" all of my monsters using the Monster Builder. I reduce all monster HP by 33% ( just multiply the existing HP by .66 using a calculator and edit it right there in the Builder). I then go to each attack and add 50% damage using the method you described above: take average damage (dice + modifier) and then add half of that as a bonus i.e. 1d8 + 5 becomes 1d8 + 9 and I change it right there in the Builder.

I then copy each edited monster as an image, then paste it in a landscape Word document. I can usually get 2 or 3 monsters per page of a Word document, and I just print those out before we play.

It's worked great. Combats are quicker and more exciting. It's a little swingy, but nobody's died... yet.

The builder is also great for some "on the fly" encounters. My players unexpectedly ambushed a Warforged NPC that I had no stats for. I just pulled up a standard Warforged Soldier in the Monster Builder, changed his level to 11, made him an elite, and rolled init. This won't work with a whole group of on the fly monsters... but given 5 minutes I can create just the encounter I need.

I actually no longer look up monsters by level. I look at monsters thematically for what I want in my adventure, and then I edit accordingly with the Builder.

I might play third edition again... but never in a million years would I DM it

 

[Herobizkit]

I couldn't help but think of Iron Man when the OP mentioned rewarding his Armored PC. Perhaps something in silver and gold, maybe some wings, maybe a cross on the helmet as a visor... and of course, glowing gold runes/details all over.

Something like this:

Fits the religious aspect nicely, too. Thoughts?

 

[Jack99]

Fits the religious aspect nicely, too. Thoughts?

I think it's too Captain America for my player, but you gave me an idea. The player is quite good at drawing, and unsurprisingly, he likes drawing fantasy stuff when he has the time. I think I will tell him to draw up his own armor, how he would want it to look.

 

[Jack99]

Session 58

• All monsters tonight were tweaked with the 25-33 model (-25% hit points, +33% damage)
• All fomorians the players run into tonight are standard monsters (not elite, not solo). This is to simulate the fact that they are higher level than most fomorians.
• We "wasted" a lot of time tonight. One of the players had to show off an appartment for sale nearby to a good (lady) friend, so we started late. Then our guest player arrived, and we spend some time telling him abit about 4e and the combat system and how to read the character sheet.

Summary.
After a short debate about their options and clues at hand, they decided it was time to head to the Feydark. The goblin stronghold was located deep in the Forest of Autumn Rain, about a weeks travel away.

• Even though the players chose only to fly there on griffons, I fast-forwarded the treck so that the players found themselves in front of the stronghold quickly. As might have been hinted elsewhere, I am not a huge fan of random encounters at this level, unless it is to show off something or another specific purpose.

Once outside the stronghold, there was a brief debate on how to proceed. "Shouldn't we scout a bit said Torn (Wizard)" - "Nah, these are goblins, we are epic, baby" said Carric (cleric), "Lets just demand they surrender and let us past". No sooner suggested than done, and they were let inside the stronghold. Of course, since Carric had failed his initial intimidation check, the goblins were merely letting them in so that they could surround and kill the players.

• At this point, there was only 3 players - a guest star would arrive later (starting his 4e career playing a 21st level barbarian with 174 hp and 17 surges!)
• The goblins were level 15 minions doing on average 1d10+6 damage on a hit. This was actually the first house-rule I instituted in 4e, around level 2 or 3 I think. I grew bored of the fixed damage of minions and upped their damage a good bit (but still a bit below what a normal monster would do). Has definitely made minions work better as a 1-4 ratio to a normal monster. At level 15 they would need mostly 15+ to hit any character in the party. It was still possible, but I wanted to show off to the players that they were epic now, by using a lot of minions. Like, really a lot.

Obviously, things did not quite work out for the poor goblin tribe. They were completely outmatched by the epic characters and although they did manage to bloody both Carric and Torn a couple of times, they were nowhere near killing anyone. At least until the help arrived. 3 fomorians came out of the cave leading to the Feydark. That evened the odds a bit, but overall, it was not a huge challenge.

• The goblins came in random waves, with around 15 starting on the board, and around 10 arriving per round on the battlefield. 1/4th of the goblins charged in melee, while the rest stood at range and plunked fire arrows on the characters.
• All in all, they killed 52 lvl 15 minions.
• 3 lvl 21 fomorians, 2 soldiers and a lurker.
• My players have big trouble with conditions. Especially getting rid of them. They seem to have little help if they miss their save. Ie, very little ability to grant others (other than a heal check)
• Gnoguh one-shotted one of the soldiers in the first round with a crit. Then he spent 5 rounds being pounded from outside his reach because he was immobilized. Then he critted and killed the last soldier, which at this point was only slightly wounded. Criticals from a +4 executioners axe and all the other stuff is just lethal.
• Overall this fight went really well. The waves of goblins managed to convey the epic feeling well, with the fomorians' arrival making a challenging fight instead of just a walk-over.

After clearing out the stronghold (they did let women and children go) they found a dwarf named gork, who happened to have nothing to do...

• Yeah, it was a guest star thing, we kinda ignored the whys and hows concerning his character. We have never been huge on introductions in our campaigns.

Onwards they moved, or perhaps rather downwards. After a couple of hours of traveling in the darkness, they ran into some drows who were quickly dismissed.

• Again only minions (6 level 21st minions), to show off their überness. At this level, standard monsters are just walkovers, which these were as well. I even let the players get the jump on them, something they never get to almost.

Moving on, they finally arrived to what they figured to be the castle of King Balor. A 300' wide stalagmite standing in a even bigger pool of lava, all located in what must have been the biggest cave they had ever seen. A bridge was spanning the lava at the point where it was the narrowest (around 50-80 ft), leading to some huge iron doors.

Gnoguh immediately wanted to go hit whatever guards there surely was on the head and get things started. Torn's player however, said he was tired of going through the front doors. He was epic and thus felt he should do things in style. So using (flying) Phantasmal Steed and Passwall rituals, they quickly went up, away from the lava, and entered the castle through a wall, surprising 5 fomorians. The fomorians were relatively quickly dispatched, but a quickling who was also there got away.

• +35 arcana is extremely handy for a lot of rituals. I am going to have to watch even more closely what the rituals he has can do, if I want to counter his ideas at times.
• There is not 43 ways of saying things. I screwed up with the last fight. Its odd how you can figure out something is bad, then remember it every time you prep for more than a year, and then go on forgetting it from one day to the next. I used 5 different monsters. That's a big no-no in my book. In theory, I am sure it sounds like fun and complex and whatnot, but to be honest, it slows down the combats and it makes me make mistakes, forgetting powers, forgetting auras etc. It didn't help at all that the fomorians at least had 2 attacks per round, despite not being elites. One Evil Eye power, one standard attack power, although some had two. It made the combat a bit slow (as I had to double check to hits and effects a lot) and it was already way too static.
• The static nature of the fight was a more general problem, one that I will need to think about alot for time to come. Its the issue of huge creatures. Even with a huge combat area, huge stairway, hall etc, the combat was very confined to the same area. The monsters are just to big to get around easily, and they had to huddle up really close in order to be able to hit/affect the same players.
• Either I need to figure out how to design the encounter area so that they are spread more out, or redesign all my encounters so that there are way fewer huge creatures. Either by making them elite again and then adding other creatures that are smaller (cyclops most likely), or just adding other monsters. Period. One thing for sure is that my idea to make use of huge fomorian minions is dead. Stonedead.

Next time, Carric won't be there, but Tagron and Truxas will return. It's always fun to see how things go when Carric is on vacation.

 

[Jack99]

After some thinking, I definitely think it was a bad idea to not have the fomorians be elite creatures. Huge (and bigger monsters) just work better if they are elite, else the board will be way too crowded. They also might seem too weak for their size.

So for next time, I am going to remake all fomorians as elites and use a lot more cyclops. This means that the typical combat will have at most 1 or 2 fomorians. The rest will be cyclops (or other monsters, of course).

This change will hopefully improve the combats. I will notify my players though, since they now have a perceived idea about how strong/powerful fomorians are.

 

[Jack99]

Looks like tonight's game will be semi-amputated again. Cleric is on vacation and the Wizard just bought a new house and needs to work to get it ready for the move.

So a defender and 3 strikers. That should be interesting. Sure, they still have a little healing, but the mindboggling amounts of healing that Carric tosses around is gone, so they will definitely have to consider some sneaking around instead of just kicking down the front doors. Then again, they are atm inside the Fomorian fortress, so I guess they have already kicked down *the* door.

I still need to figure out a few terrain features of the mad laboratory before tonight. What could possibly go wrong in the laboratory of a mad beholder?

 

[Jack99]

First of all, we canceled a few weeks. So when we played Tuesday, it was the first time in 3 weeks. This is the longest I have gone without playing since we returned to the game during 3.5, so I think I was experiencing something close to withdrawals - Who am I kidding, I know exactly how that feels like, so yeah, it felt similar. Kinda sad.

I had 6 players on Tuesday, the usual 5 and their barbarian sidekick who so far enjoys 4e and keeps coming back. He still hasn't read a single line in the books, but going from the character sheet and a few questions, he has had very little issue keeping up, even at 21st level.

Anyway, the sacking of King Balor Castle continued. Starting where we left off the last time, the Swords of Drahar ran into (or rather found) some Eladrin who had been captured by the Fomorians. The Eladrins were honored to have been freed by the Swords of Drahar, but a little saddened that the Swords hadn't come for them. Gnoguh was very admired (which annoyed Mr. Fey aka Truxas to no end). They were freed and sent home (to the Summer Court) via a speedy Link Portal.

I allow for quicker casting time of rituals. You can halve the casting time by doubling the amount of residuum needed. You can't go below 1 minute though. So far, there has been no issues with the rule (and its been there since level 2), but I am sure if analyzed (TBH I haven't bothered), one could come up with several problematic situations. But casting Raise Dead in a minute would cost 12,8 million gold pieces, not an insignificant amount of money.

After sending away the Eladrins, the Swords proceeded to explore this level of the castle. They found a room with tubes of a gooey yellow liquid and Eladrins that had had artificial glass eyes inserted instead of their usual eye - think Aliens 4, where she discovers the clones. The Fomorians and Cyclops in the room died swiftly and without mercy. With the opposition gone, the Swords decided to smash all tubes and burn the corpses of the Eladrin. Which surprised me a lot. Epic characters who still care!

However, that was not all that was to find in the room. In the corner, chained up in magical chains like a dog, was an Angel of Akir - and also the mirror. To most, it was just another mirror, but Torn saw a glimpse of the future in it, with Carric kneeling before Asmodeus.

[sblock=Who is Akir again?]
Akir the Strong (Strength, Storms)
Symbol: Lion
Exarchs: Kord, Irotak[/sblock]

[sblock=Why the gloomy future?]
Point about the visions of the future is to make Torn (and therefore all of them) insecure of their alliance with Asmodeus and Bane. I mean, you just can't make a deal with the devil (literally) and not have second guesses, just because the DM gave you the mission. By now, Torn and Torns player are both convinced that it is some set up or trap or plot by Asmodeus to get the Swords of Drahar to do his dirty work. Well he is, but ATM, he fully intends to uphold his part of the bargain, at least more or less. Of course this may all change if the Swords start distrusting him and behave accordingly; who knows what could happen.[/sblock]

The Angel is as mentioned an Angel of Akir, named Anael. He was ambushed and trapped by the Fomorians. Why? That is a good question. I left it deliberately vague, because the point of the Angel being here was to be introduced to the players for a later purpose. I am not quite sure what for yet, but being an Angel of Akir, who is the god who has the spot Kord should have, I am sure my players will come up with something useful to do with that acquaintance. Once released, he could find his own way home, only with a little help, so he quickly left the party. Although not before giving them the means to contact him again (just a simple ritual, involving his name).

Onwards they went, into the next room of nightmares (which happened to be nearby). In there, there was stone-slabs en masse, all filled with monsters made of parts from many other monsters. I had high hopes for the level 22 undead beholder and his cronies in here, but to be honest, he went down faster than a cheerleader on prom night. Sure it won initiative, but once it's immediate ray missed the cleric, it was all but over. Solar Wrath is just brutal, and add a turn undead, and it was already fairly wounded, due to a high vulnerability to radiant damage. Then the rogue did 273 points of damage in a round and the beholder was down to 150 hit points, with one round accounted for. All in all, it survived 1½ round, despite the fact that the fighter was confused from start to finish. Not the fine battle I had envisioned. But since the first beholder combat they had (around level 15 iirc) went pretty much the same way, I have decided and announced that there will be no more beholders in this campaign, as they suck.

Moving on, they explore quite a bit (found an ancient shrine, and a patrol of guards) ending up in an Arena several floors above where they entered. There an Hydra was released on them (or rather on Gnoguh) because he decided to cross over the arena floor instead of taking the "long" away around via where the public sits. Lets just say that even with 6 attacks per round, a level 22 solo brute is not much a danger to a fighter like Gnoguh. This one died quite quickly too, and I am not sure, but I think Gnoguh could have killed it on his own.

Then, instead of leaving out through the main doors of the Arena, they got the idea to explore the VIP-box - because, as Carric said: A real King has a secret way between his box and throne-room, after all, who wants to mingle with the rabble if you can avoid it.

Which was exactly what I thought when I decided there would be a secret short-cut there. A few traps and some disarming later, the Swords of Drahar were heading up the stairs, up towards the throne room, where they ran into King Balor, his pet Quickling and Nymph (druid) lover. There is a fourth adversary in the room, but he will be a surprise.

This is where we stopped.

Overall, there was some positive and some negative. I was happy about the speed of combats, even with 6 players. 4 combats in 5 hours, and we also did a lot of exploration and a good deal of roleplaying discussing. Overall, combats must have been around 45 minutes on average. @21st w/6 players, that's acceptable.

Problem was that the fights were way too easy. It's been 6 combats since they rested, and they seem hardly affected by it. I never expected the Hydra to be a hard encounter, but the Beholder (and friends) should have been harder than it was. I am wondering if this is a trend, or merely a coincidence. Only time will tell, but if this is how the game is at higher levels, my combat setup definitely needs some tweaking to match what they can do.