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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack99" data-source="post: 4978061" data-attributes="member: 53135">Session 58<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">All monsters tonight were tweaked with the 25-33 model (-25% hit points, +33% damage)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul>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.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul>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.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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!)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul>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. <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">All in all, they killed 52 lvl 15 minions.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">3 lvl 21 fomorians, 2 soldiers and a lurker.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul>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...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul>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.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></li> </ul>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.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">+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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul>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.</blockquote>

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