Primitive Screwhead
First Post
This is going to be a quick recap of the events of the last two sessions, focusing on feel. I have posted the document and rules questions raised during these sessions in the main discussion thread.
I am running the group through a conversion of a 3x module titled 'White Watch', an ancient watch tower/keep on the fringes of the wilderness that has been controlled by undead mercenaries since their decision to turn traitor on the defenders in the middle of a major battle. These undead are Sword Wraiths {as listed in my monster thread}.
A previous session saw the group with characters built under the May document attempt to enter the keep via a secret passageway. When they triggered a trap at the secret door they were ambushed from outside by Gargoyles and from inside by two Sword Wraiths. With a heroic effort, the party was able to kill/drive off the Gargoyles and destroy the two Wraiths. In the process the casters spent the majority of their juju and the Cleric used his healing touch on everyone. It was an almost devastating fight.
The next session saw the group with characters modified under the Oct document, albeit a work in progress in some cases. We rebuilt the existing characters using 5 free traditions and around 5k XP. The biggest gap was the lack of spell paths. The group moved further into the Keep and encountered 4 Sword Wraiths. A fast and bloody battle ended when the Cleric Turned the Wraiths and the party retreated from the Keep. They succeeded in killing two of the Wraiths but almost lost two of their own. Completely out of spell casting juju and knowing that there were more ahead, leaving for the night was the best option.
This session saw the group return with improved character conversions, better selection of spell paths and full juju. They re-entered the keep and came to where the Wraiths had set up their defenses. A total of 8 Wraith Brothers, one Lt, and one Commander stood in their way with their typical arrogance {they had survived over 150 years since the day they became undead}. 4 where on the main floor while the rest were waiting in a balcony overlooking the floor.
The group had time before entering the castle to cast a number of buff spells, increasing everyones STR by 5, providing everyone with superior quality weapons and plate mail {Pocket Armory}, and summoning 5 Wolfs.
They burst into the main floor with the Musketeer firing and charging in, followed by a stream of Wolfs. Turned out the Wolfs could not damage the Wraiths, but they could still provide flanking bonuses. The rest of the melee warriors charged in while the casters stayed at the door.
It was a battle of titans. Most physical Defenses were upwards of 24 and pretty much everyone had a SOAK of 16 or better {the Druids Thornskin stacking with Superior plate = 26 SOAK!} Again the battle was quick and bloody. Focused attacks took down the Wraith Brothers in two turns or less. Likewise the focused attack of three Wraiths dropped the Musketeer from full health to flat out dead in one round. The Druid made excellent use of the Achilles Heel exploit while the Fire mage did what Firemages do.. light up the Wraiths and turned them into Crispy Critters.
The battle was tense, mainly because the threat of being dropped within a round was there. The Wraiths were averaging 24 points of damage with their attacks, without the superior plate the party would have become mincemeat.
We ran out of time before the encounter was completely played out, but the Cleric called upon Blinding Glory and added his divine favor to the attack and luck dice to the damage {which exploded twice!} destroying all the Wraiths but one. The Commander had yet to join the melee and was still on the balcony. We had to stop after the Barbarian Small folk charged up the stairs to put a small dent in the commanders plate mail.
Next session will start with finding out just how lethal that commanders sword is {he has a MasterCraft weapon while the Wraith brothers did not...can we say 8d6 damage?} and whether he can lead the group into the dungeons below where a Drider awaits in the darkness.
The spell casters were much more cautious about using big spells, so the group could probably take 2 more similar encounters before they ran out.
So: Thoughts on game play.
The Wraiths are 8th level monsters and are melee threats. They have no real ranged or spell capability. Had they prepared more seriously with forcing the group to fight up the stairways and not be able to surround an individual Wraith the battle would have been much harder, but still winnable.
Had the group not invested in pre-battle buffs, they would have lost. I think even facing only half of the Wraiths {4 plus the Lt} they would not have won through without the buffs.
Even with the buffs, positioning and exploits were critical to success. The group was thinking both offensive and defensive positioning, blocking the Wraiths ability to band together where they could. Almost every turn an exploit was used.
I would declare the session a success, the players were involved in the battle and worrying less about the fiddly bits of the rules and more about what their characters were doing.
Even at that, a comment was made in play that the phrase 'that rule used to be cooler' came up pretty often. Primarily this revolved around the new dice calculation method.
Speaking of dice calculations and all those fiddly bits. The game pretty much requires an electronic character sheet that can calculate changes to stats, to include temp adjustments. The PC's came in with a +5 STR and the sword wraiths deal 1 point of Str damage. They chose to not use the AGI booster buff of +5 Agi. Since they did it prior to combat we had time to figure out all the changes, but even then I am not sure everyone was rolling the right number of dice. I would much rather have everyone's character on my computer so I can validate the dice being rolled until I know that everyone gets the math.
Monsters. We need monsters! and some way to determine how to build an encounter that won't splatter the PCs while not being a calkwalk themselves. I got pretty lucky with the encounter last night.
Spell Paths:
I think the restrictions I have been building on feel about right. The Fire mage has a LOG of 10, which gives him a very broad access to spell paths. Having the paths limited to about 10 spells focused on one secret and theme still gives him a lot of flexibility while forcing choices. I think that the initial game should have at least a hundred paths to choose from, with most being the 0 to 10 MP variety.
Lastly: Mods. Short list of what I did different that what is written in the rules:
- Base Caster classes gain +2 MAG per Rank
- Specialist caster classes gain +1 MAG per rank, but spells related to their specialized secret cost 2MP less to cast {minimum of 1, does not stack with reduction from Mage IV ability}
- Cleric/Druid spell paths based on WILL {Multi-class Mage/Cleric spell paths are based on highest of Will or LOG}
- Cleric gains the secret of Virtue and another secret at Rank I
- Traditions restrictions: Once you specialize in a class {Mage > Fire Mage} you cannot go back and revisit the base class {in this case, Mage}. If you do not specialize you can revisit any class {Mage > Guard > Mage}
I am running the group through a conversion of a 3x module titled 'White Watch', an ancient watch tower/keep on the fringes of the wilderness that has been controlled by undead mercenaries since their decision to turn traitor on the defenders in the middle of a major battle. These undead are Sword Wraiths {as listed in my monster thread}.
A previous session saw the group with characters built under the May document attempt to enter the keep via a secret passageway. When they triggered a trap at the secret door they were ambushed from outside by Gargoyles and from inside by two Sword Wraiths. With a heroic effort, the party was able to kill/drive off the Gargoyles and destroy the two Wraiths. In the process the casters spent the majority of their juju and the Cleric used his healing touch on everyone. It was an almost devastating fight.
The next session saw the group with characters modified under the Oct document, albeit a work in progress in some cases. We rebuilt the existing characters using 5 free traditions and around 5k XP. The biggest gap was the lack of spell paths. The group moved further into the Keep and encountered 4 Sword Wraiths. A fast and bloody battle ended when the Cleric Turned the Wraiths and the party retreated from the Keep. They succeeded in killing two of the Wraiths but almost lost two of their own. Completely out of spell casting juju and knowing that there were more ahead, leaving for the night was the best option.
This session saw the group return with improved character conversions, better selection of spell paths and full juju. They re-entered the keep and came to where the Wraiths had set up their defenses. A total of 8 Wraith Brothers, one Lt, and one Commander stood in their way with their typical arrogance {they had survived over 150 years since the day they became undead}. 4 where on the main floor while the rest were waiting in a balcony overlooking the floor.
The group had time before entering the castle to cast a number of buff spells, increasing everyones STR by 5, providing everyone with superior quality weapons and plate mail {Pocket Armory}, and summoning 5 Wolfs.
They burst into the main floor with the Musketeer firing and charging in, followed by a stream of Wolfs. Turned out the Wolfs could not damage the Wraiths, but they could still provide flanking bonuses. The rest of the melee warriors charged in while the casters stayed at the door.
It was a battle of titans. Most physical Defenses were upwards of 24 and pretty much everyone had a SOAK of 16 or better {the Druids Thornskin stacking with Superior plate = 26 SOAK!} Again the battle was quick and bloody. Focused attacks took down the Wraith Brothers in two turns or less. Likewise the focused attack of three Wraiths dropped the Musketeer from full health to flat out dead in one round. The Druid made excellent use of the Achilles Heel exploit while the Fire mage did what Firemages do.. light up the Wraiths and turned them into Crispy Critters.
The battle was tense, mainly because the threat of being dropped within a round was there. The Wraiths were averaging 24 points of damage with their attacks, without the superior plate the party would have become mincemeat.
We ran out of time before the encounter was completely played out, but the Cleric called upon Blinding Glory and added his divine favor to the attack and luck dice to the damage {which exploded twice!} destroying all the Wraiths but one. The Commander had yet to join the melee and was still on the balcony. We had to stop after the Barbarian Small folk charged up the stairs to put a small dent in the commanders plate mail.
Next session will start with finding out just how lethal that commanders sword is {he has a MasterCraft weapon while the Wraith brothers did not...can we say 8d6 damage?} and whether he can lead the group into the dungeons below where a Drider awaits in the darkness.
The spell casters were much more cautious about using big spells, so the group could probably take 2 more similar encounters before they ran out.
So: Thoughts on game play.
The Wraiths are 8th level monsters and are melee threats. They have no real ranged or spell capability. Had they prepared more seriously with forcing the group to fight up the stairways and not be able to surround an individual Wraith the battle would have been much harder, but still winnable.
Had the group not invested in pre-battle buffs, they would have lost. I think even facing only half of the Wraiths {4 plus the Lt} they would not have won through without the buffs.
Even with the buffs, positioning and exploits were critical to success. The group was thinking both offensive and defensive positioning, blocking the Wraiths ability to band together where they could. Almost every turn an exploit was used.
I would declare the session a success, the players were involved in the battle and worrying less about the fiddly bits of the rules and more about what their characters were doing.
Even at that, a comment was made in play that the phrase 'that rule used to be cooler' came up pretty often. Primarily this revolved around the new dice calculation method.
Speaking of dice calculations and all those fiddly bits. The game pretty much requires an electronic character sheet that can calculate changes to stats, to include temp adjustments. The PC's came in with a +5 STR and the sword wraiths deal 1 point of Str damage. They chose to not use the AGI booster buff of +5 Agi. Since they did it prior to combat we had time to figure out all the changes, but even then I am not sure everyone was rolling the right number of dice. I would much rather have everyone's character on my computer so I can validate the dice being rolled until I know that everyone gets the math.
Monsters. We need monsters! and some way to determine how to build an encounter that won't splatter the PCs while not being a calkwalk themselves. I got pretty lucky with the encounter last night.
Spell Paths:
I think the restrictions I have been building on feel about right. The Fire mage has a LOG of 10, which gives him a very broad access to spell paths. Having the paths limited to about 10 spells focused on one secret and theme still gives him a lot of flexibility while forcing choices. I think that the initial game should have at least a hundred paths to choose from, with most being the 0 to 10 MP variety.
Lastly: Mods. Short list of what I did different that what is written in the rules:
- Base Caster classes gain +2 MAG per Rank
- Specialist caster classes gain +1 MAG per rank, but spells related to their specialized secret cost 2MP less to cast {minimum of 1, does not stack with reduction from Mage IV ability}
- Cleric/Druid spell paths based on WILL {Multi-class Mage/Cleric spell paths are based on highest of Will or LOG}
- Cleric gains the secret of Virtue and another secret at Rank I
- Traditions restrictions: Once you specialize in a class {Mage > Fire Mage} you cannot go back and revisit the base class {in this case, Mage}. If you do not specialize you can revisit any class {Mage > Guard > Mage}
