Need advice on creating the Jar of Souls fight in DnD

[Da3mon]

Hey fellow DMs!

My party ding'd level 2 last night and for the next little adventure I am thinking about an undead themed one, and I decided I want to incorporate of my favorite little events from Diablo 3, the Jar of Souls ([ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95MnncEd2BI"]you can watch it here[/ame])

The point of the battle is to survive a given time, and try to stay alive until the timer runs out. The enemies rise in waves, with each with more monsters.

It sounds nice however I am not sure about the mechanics, of how to implement it mechanicly so it somewhat balanced. I did some calculations using Masterplan, and came up with the following:

• Monster Vault Decrecipt Skeletons (Minions) were modded up to lvl 2, so they are worth 31 XP
• The encounter is the finale of the adventure so it should be hard, which for 5 players starts at 812XP (according to masterplan :>)
• For this to occur I need at least 27 minions during the encounter.

So my question is how do you think I should implement this fight numberswise? I am thinking start at 4 skeletons and with each wave n+1 (n is number of monsters from the last wave) mobs appear. This way the breakdown of the mobs is:

• Wave 1: 4
• Wave 2: 4+5=9
• Wave 3: 4+5+6=15
• Wave 4: 4+5+6+7=22
• Wave 5: 4+5+6+8=30

XP worth 930
If they make it to round 6, the jar breaks, all the mobs die and they win!

What do you think? Is this too hard? should I pace the monsters out a bit more? Is this too much XP for just one fight? They would be pretty much almost at level 3.

The current party btw is: Twin Blade Ranger, Fighter(Defender), Primorial Fire Sorc, Ardent healer, and the last member should be coming with a new Hexblade

 

[Trit One-Ear]

Sounds like a very cool idea, and from my inexperienced quick glance, the numbers seem pretty accurate. My primary hesitation in a fight like this is the potential for your group's AOE. Assuming half the party hits one minion a turn (and I think it's safe to assume the Ranger and Sorc will most likely hit more than one) you're taking out 2-3 minions a round, with a potential to take out... shall we say 7-8 (5 if each player takes out 1, an extra 1 from the ranger, an extra 1-2 from the sorc).

This could wind up being a 5 round combat in which the heroes just wipe out every wave each turn. Which could be fine. Especially if the minions "rise" right before their initiative count to they're guaranteed a turn before they're destroyed. Just be aware of the group's potential to completely wipe out a wave before the next one rises. It could be a fun encounter, or it could throw your design on it's head.

Trit

 

[fba827]

the last time i tried spawning minions until an object summoning them was destroyed, i have to say it turned out very lackluster compared to what i had in my head.

Basically some PCs 'camped' at the spawn spot and just kept hacking at them (some doing so with an atwill blast) before they got to do much... and with the bottleneck that formed at the spawn spot due to the PCs blocking they didn't even get to move around much, just zapped


I'd suggest something else (simple) in the mix, some ideas ....

(Either, not 'all')
* After wave 2, the minions have following power
Trigger
Tough Bones * Encounter
Trigger: When reduced to 0 or fewer hit points by a noncritical hit
Effect: The skeleton is instead bloodied at 1 hit point

(thus the skeletons are there for 2 hits rather than one)

*there is a magic circle on the ground that offers some protection to the PCs. Not that the skeletons can't enter it but rather PCs in the circle are protected from some nasty power that you can assign to them (some sort of enervation type thing).
This would provide a bit more tactical choice and also discourages camping at a spawn spot.

* Maybe the skeletons have a bonus to their defenses from the soul jar. And a PC that is adjacent to the soul jar gains a bonus to hit to counteract the defense bonus (thus encouraging, but not requiring, PCs to be next to the soul jar and not camp).


* the floor is trapped (hazard). necrotic energy fills the room. if you end your turn on the same square that you started you take 1d6+1 necrotic damage.

again just something to encourage movement.

*if you want to really be a pain, give the following power to all the skeletons
Trigger
Powered by the Soul Jar * At-Will
Trigger: The Skeleton is reduced to zero or fewer hit points and the soul jar is still intact
Effect: The skeleton is instead at 1 hit point and bloodied and dazed until the soul jar is destroyed

* if you don't mind borrowing from an orc trick....(ie don't do this if you use a lot of orcs)
Death's Revenge * Encounter
Trigger: When reduced to 0 or fewer hit points
Effect: A bone from the skeleton flies towards the creature that killed it, make a melee basic attack at range against the triggering creature

this option let's you ensure to get -some- form of attack in if it's likely that the PCs will get to act first and kill them before they can do anything.

* some sort of hazard or obstacle that has to be dealt with also, thus splitting the PCs attention for the duration.


again, don't do all these sorts of things at once. but find a concept that you like an incorporate one of them (maybe 2 at most) else it will be come too complicated for you to have to adjudicate and remember all the working bits.

edit: a couple other simple things simply from placement:
* have more spawn spots than there are PCs (and randomly determine which spawn spot any given skeleton comes out of)
* have the spawn spots around corners or on catwalks or other things that would block an immediate line of effect from every angle


In any case, it sounds like fun. let us know how it goes.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I'd toss in a couple of standard brutes or something to represent the skellies with the big axes. Give the players something to chew on and some choices to make instead of just pounding minions. That and this will make the strikers happy.

 

[pneumatik]

The trick to making this work is to have one or more monsters survive to the next wave. If 4 skeletons aren't a challenge, 5 won't be, either. But if the PCs only 3 each round they'll quickly end up in a tough fight. When I've run or played these types of encounters I consider them a success when the players worry about the upcoming round during the current one.

Sometimes I'll fudge the actual number of creatures that show up each round to keep the challenge level where I want it. Since the monsters are all minions you'll want to keep them spread out so that it's hard to kill more than one at a time.

 

[Saagael]

I find that when using waves of creatures, the combat is actually easier than the XP value states because focus firing is a thing, and there's less threatening things on the board for less potential damage in a given round.

Second, if the goal is to survive, and not kill everything (because if they hit round 6 then everything dies anyway), then you can throw the standard encounter xp allotment out the window. They don't need to kill things, just survive.

Instead I'd treat this like 2 or even 3 encounters, something like such:

Wave 1: 6 minions
Wave 2: 7 minions
Wave 3: 8 minions + 1 brute
Wave 4: 9 minions + brute
Wave 5: 10 minions + 1 brute

My reasoning is that since there's a 2 weapon ranger and a sorcerer, your multi-target will be pretty good. Sorcerer should be killing 2 or 3 per round, ranger should be killing at least 1. The fighter might be able to kill 2 per turn if he has cleave or dual strike for at-wills. For this you really want to stress that as the combat continues more things keep showing up, and if they can kill whole waves before the next one, there's not much tension.

I'm going to go with an average wave-clearing potential of 5-6 minions per round. This means that at the end of the rounds, there should be:

Wave 1: 0-1 minions left
Wave 2: 1-3 minions left
Wave 3: 3-6 minions left + 1 brute
Wave 4: 6-10 minions left + 2 brutes
Wave 5: None (they all die at the end of the round)

This gives you a decent idea of how large the challenge will be through the fight. The last round (round 5) will be purely a "tough it out and hope to survive" round, which is what you want I think. This also makes sure that minions don't all die in their own wave and so there's a slow build up of monsters over time.

The brutes are there because they hit hard, and are easy to hit, and give the Ardent, Fighter, and Hexblade (who are all mostly single-target guys) something to beat on and feel productive compared to the minion-slaying Ranger and Sorcerer.

That said, this sounds like a fun fight. Good luck, and let us know how it goes.