Orcus of Necromancer Games says "You were right, I was wrong"

[billd91]

Now, I'm not saying my group was general at all. But, if you designed an adventure for my bunch assuming flight by 7th level, you'd be pretty much wrong. 15th? Sure, I'll buy that.

I wouldn't buy it at 15th level either. But then, I tend to subscribe more to the 3-clues method of getting around these chokepoints (to use terms from the Alexandrian blog posting on Random GM Tips) rather than require a particular way of overcoming an obstacle.

If you need to do something, be it find a clue or overcome an obstacle, to handle the adventure, there should be multiple ways to do it accounted for. In the case of getting to a cloud giant's floating fortress, I can think of a few options.

1) Personal transport magics in the hands of the PCs
2) Permanent teleportation location (give clues that the giants always seem to raid out from and return toward a particular point on land)
3) Pay for transportation by someone else
4) Bribe a disgruntled cloud giant exile to help get you there

But I would make sure I wasn't requiring any single solution to the problem. Not all of the solutions may be equally favorable and some may require additional legwork. I think that's fair.

If it were a question of uncovering a side chamber of loot or some other hidden cache of non-essential but nice goodies, then I wouldn't necessarily have mulitple methods of overcoming it. Optional stuff is just that. Optional. If they can find it, spiff. If not, OK.

That said, if the PCs are consistently finding that they're having a hard time accomplishing things with the skills and abilities they have, they should really think about being proactive about fixing their deficiencies. If you're fighting a lot of flying creatures out in the wilderness, and you aren't investing in ranged attacks because they're not part of your "concept", time to rethink your concept or at least make room for pushing up daisies within it, because that's what you'll end up doing.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Hm. Well, good. That is, all this = some more adventures I might check out some time.

Can't go wrong with a bit of Necro in your life, after all.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You're 9th level adventurers going into a dungeon to loot it (no other reason given in the module). Come prepared to fly, swim, and climb or go home and farm pigs on flat land.

If we're talking about a dungeon dungeon, most people wouldn't look at entering a subterranean space and think "I need to stock up on Fly spells." Rock to Mud and its reverse, maybe, or Move Earth, or Passwall or Dimension Door...but not so much the flying thing.

Or, just sticking to 3rd level arcane spells, Dispel Magic, Summons, Fireball/Lightning bolt, Deep Slumber, Tongues, Displacement, Gaseous Form or even Ray of Exhaustion might be prioritized for a dungeon crawl before Fly.

 

[Remathilis]

If we're talking about a dungeon dungeon, most people wouldn't look at entering a subterranean space and think "I need to stock up on Fly spells." Rock to Mud and its reverse, maybe, or Move Earth, or Passwall or Dimension Door...but not so much the flying thing.

Or, just sticking to 3rd level arcane spells, Dispel Magic, Summons, Fireball/Lightning bolt, Deep Slumber, Tongues, Displacement, Gaseous Form or even Ray of Exhaustion might be prioritized for a dungeon crawl before Fly.

So I guess those flying, improved invisible wizards reigning fire and death down safely from orbit aren't; ya know, FLYING?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So I guess those flying, improved invisible wizards reigning fire and death down safely from orbit aren't; ya know, FLYING?

Sure they are...which is why smart combat engineers started building bunkers (AKA "dungeons")!

(Somewhere out there, thousands of Dwarven engineers are shouting "At last, one of the surface dwellers gets it! Its DANGEROUS out there!")

Flying isn't that much of an advantage when it only gets you 6" of elevation before you hit the ceiling. That's not even going to get you out of the reach of a determined kobold with a stick.

 

[Hussar]

And, just to add to DannyA's point if I may. If there is a vampire's crypt in the dungeon and no potions of gaseous form lying around, what does the party do? Should adventure designers assume that groups have access to gaseous form?

"Go back to town and stock up on potions" is a huge presumption on the part of a designer about my game world. It also assumes that going back to town is a viable option in the first place, never mind the wealth assumptions and availability.

This kind of adventure design is just bad. Presuming the party has exactly the right tool and no other tool will work is poor adventure design.

 

[Wicht]

This kind of adventure design is just bad. Presuming the party has exactly the right tool and no other tool will work is poor adventure design.

Its only bad design if you assume the PCs should be able to overcome every obstacle put in their way. Personally, in most of my worlds, I just design things in a way that seems reasonable to me and its the PCs problem to overcome. If I was a vampire I jolly well would have a hard to get to coffin, especially if I was clever and intelligent and had hundreds of years to prepare it.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Its only bad design if you assume the PCs should be able to overcome every obstacle put in their way. Personally, in most of my worlds, I just design things in a way that seems reasonable to me and its the PCs problem to overcome.

This is how I look at it, too. I'm not big on "path" adventures where there is a track for the PCs to follow and it's expected that they'll do this, defeat that, et cetera. Consequently, I avoid designs that assume the PCs must overcome a given obstacle or the adventure grinds to a halt. Actually, I like the PCs to run into seeming "dead ends" sometimes: an encounter or area that they just don't seem to have the knowledge or tools to handle. When they do figure out the way to meet that obstacle (sometimes after returning to it several times with different ideas or approaches), it makes it pretty sweet.

 

[AllisterH]

I was always of the opinion that you had to wait 3 spell levels before I would assume a spell could be assumed to be had among the party in sufficient quantities.

Thus, if the spell was a 2nd level spell, I would assume that the party would have it only at 9th level.

Of course, this only applies to 3e since 1e/2e, spell acquisition was much more haphazard.

 

[Skywalker]

Greg is right on. Reworkings of 3E stuff for 4E--straight conversions, that is--just doesnt seem to work well. That means the whole adventure would need to be redone. That, frankly, is too much to ask of an author in my book. And you know what, I like 3.5. I like it alot. There are things about 4E I really like, but I have never jumped on the 3.5 is broken bandwagon. It had its faults, yes. But it is a great system.

Thank you.