FabioMilitoPagliara
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Angel of Vegenance in the Profecy of Priestess from Greg Bisland gleemax blog
http://www.gleemax.com/Comms/Pages/Communities/BlogPost.aspx?blogpostid=52462&pagemode=2&blogid=2948
4E Campaign Report - Creating Dynamic Encounters
Posted By: WotC_GregB, 3/24/2008 5:12:08 PM
It’s been some time since I’ve talked about my Prophecy of the Priestess campaign, so I’ve decided to devote some time talking about last week’s encounter.
For the past several months, the characters in my campaign have been relentlessly making their way toward a barbarian nation in an effort to avert a war. During our last game session, they finally crossed the border into the hostile nation of barbarian tribes. This triggered several events, the most significant of which was a challenging fight.
For the past few sessions, the PCs have faced exhausting fights as they fought their way through abandoned smuggler that led under a river and into the barbarian lands. Each fight became harder and harder (and it didn’t help that two of the fights had only three PCs present). However, grells and six-headed hydras could not compete with the climactic battle that was to take place in town on the night of the PCs’ arrival.
The choice of creature was determined by several factors. I always try to delicately choose each creature that appears in my campaign. Each creature has a reason for appearing where it does, even if the PCs don’t always discover that reason. I knew I wanted a formidable creature—something that would shake the PCs resolve, and I wanted it to have some tie in to the story. I had an inkling of an idea, which led me to search a pdf of the monster manual for the word, “revenge.” The result gave me the creature: an Angel of Vengeance.
In 3E, I was always reluctant to unleash an angel on the PCs and instead used them as allies and NPCs. However, I have no such reservations with 4E. At first, I was concerned because the creature was 9 levels above the PCs and an elite to boot. My concerns were quelled, though, by my desire to see how the character would handle the challenge.
The coming of the angel was the result of the actions of Gerheart, the mischievous pyro wizard played by Chris Tulach. He and the elf paladin (who was trying to keep the wizard out of trouble) played by Michele Carter managed to thoroughly *** off a seer who was the head of the church in the nation they’d previously been traveling through. (How they angered the seer is another story altogether). The seer had been biding her time, waiting until the PCs crossed into hostile lands before releasing this creature upon them.
As usual, the encounter went not at all how I expected. The angel tore through the side of the inn and into the room where the PCs were staying. It immediately scanned the room and found the target it sought—Gerheart—who had incurred most of the seer’s wrath. However, by a stroke of fortune (for Gerheart), Valinae (the paladin) managed to act before the angel and issued a divine challenge to the angel.
Well that got the angel’s attention (and also spared Gerheart from being the target of the angel’s sign of vengeance). The angel turned its full attention to Valinae, unleashing ice and fire. The group members at first attempted to attack, but they quickly realized that the creature’s defenses were great, so a retreat was called.
The only problem was that over half the group wouldn’t retreat. Valinae remained fighting the thing even as it did 40-50 damage per round. She was trying to cover the escape so the others could get out. However the warlord, Mal, refused to leave Valinae alone to fight it, and the rogue, Whisper, wouldn’t leave because he just didn’t want to leave. So while half the group jumped out of the window, climbing (or falling) the 50 feet down to street, the others remained in the room fighting, unleashing daily powers and hoping for criticals.
Eventually (after Valinae had gone through about five times her max hp), she was able to urge Whisper and Mal to leave, following just behind them. The angel was relentless, though, and it quickly followed after them. The result was that the battle was taken to ground level. The warlord, meanwhile, was joined by three NPCs (who the characters had successfully befriended in a previous interaction), and headed down the stairs to join the fight.
The dragonborn rogue, Kriv, and Gerheart had recovered the horses, hoping to outrun the angel, and they were just riding up as the battle moved to the street. At about that point, out of the darkness emerged a chimeric form that the PCs recognized as the malignly transformed priestess (after whom the campaign is named; see my previous playtest reports for more info). The PCs had recently come to suspect that she might be an ally, and so in a valiant effort to show friendship, the paladin threw down her sword, despite still being engaged by the angel of vengeance. Encouraged by Valinae’s actions and their calls for help, the chimeric form descended on the angel, joining the fray just as the game session came to a close for the night.
Half the PCs were without encounter and daily powers, and they had not yet even bloodied the creature. Still, the encounter promises to be a climactic battle because with the PCs now joined by allies, they might just stand a chance. I’m eager to see how it all plays out.
This encounter goes to show that it’s difficult to predict how the PCs will handle an encounter, and it becomes even harder to anticipate their recourse as the encounter’s difficulty goes up. I would have never anticipated they’d stay fight as long as they would, nor that they would gain the trust of all the NPCs.
In addition to trying to make every encounter have some tidbit of story behind it, I’m also learning how to create more dynamic encounters. This is something I’ve observed from Chris Perkins’s game. There’s almost always some kind of twist, surprise, or dynamic element of the encounter. Sometimes its subtle—after all, if you do a surprise every time, it makes each surprise less significant. It could be a trap that springs mid-battle, or a creature that calls another creature to its aid, or the terrain could turn out to be a dangerous slime that grasps at your feet. Forcing the PCs to adapt to different situations and circumstances encourages them to think outside the box, which in the end, makes the payoff much greater. Providing subtleties that characters can use to their advantage gives a sense of satisfaction when a player picks up on that detail, and it encourages all the players to pay closer attention to what’s going on. Maybe this isn’t the best kind of encounter for the hack-n-slash player, but even the hack-n-slash player can enjoy the encounter when he takes advantage of a giant chasm into which he pushes an enemy. These days, I’m thinking about upcoming battles weeks in advance, brainstorming ideas when I’m driving my car or going to bed, trying to think of the next best way to bring originality to the encounter.
http://www.gleemax.com/Comms/Pages/Communities/BlogPost.aspx?blogpostid=52462&pagemode=2&blogid=2948
4E Campaign Report - Creating Dynamic Encounters
Posted By: WotC_GregB, 3/24/2008 5:12:08 PM
It’s been some time since I’ve talked about my Prophecy of the Priestess campaign, so I’ve decided to devote some time talking about last week’s encounter.
For the past several months, the characters in my campaign have been relentlessly making their way toward a barbarian nation in an effort to avert a war. During our last game session, they finally crossed the border into the hostile nation of barbarian tribes. This triggered several events, the most significant of which was a challenging fight.
For the past few sessions, the PCs have faced exhausting fights as they fought their way through abandoned smuggler that led under a river and into the barbarian lands. Each fight became harder and harder (and it didn’t help that two of the fights had only three PCs present). However, grells and six-headed hydras could not compete with the climactic battle that was to take place in town on the night of the PCs’ arrival.
The choice of creature was determined by several factors. I always try to delicately choose each creature that appears in my campaign. Each creature has a reason for appearing where it does, even if the PCs don’t always discover that reason. I knew I wanted a formidable creature—something that would shake the PCs resolve, and I wanted it to have some tie in to the story. I had an inkling of an idea, which led me to search a pdf of the monster manual for the word, “revenge.” The result gave me the creature: an Angel of Vengeance.
In 3E, I was always reluctant to unleash an angel on the PCs and instead used them as allies and NPCs. However, I have no such reservations with 4E. At first, I was concerned because the creature was 9 levels above the PCs and an elite to boot. My concerns were quelled, though, by my desire to see how the character would handle the challenge.
The coming of the angel was the result of the actions of Gerheart, the mischievous pyro wizard played by Chris Tulach. He and the elf paladin (who was trying to keep the wizard out of trouble) played by Michele Carter managed to thoroughly *** off a seer who was the head of the church in the nation they’d previously been traveling through. (How they angered the seer is another story altogether). The seer had been biding her time, waiting until the PCs crossed into hostile lands before releasing this creature upon them.
As usual, the encounter went not at all how I expected. The angel tore through the side of the inn and into the room where the PCs were staying. It immediately scanned the room and found the target it sought—Gerheart—who had incurred most of the seer’s wrath. However, by a stroke of fortune (for Gerheart), Valinae (the paladin) managed to act before the angel and issued a divine challenge to the angel.
Well that got the angel’s attention (and also spared Gerheart from being the target of the angel’s sign of vengeance). The angel turned its full attention to Valinae, unleashing ice and fire. The group members at first attempted to attack, but they quickly realized that the creature’s defenses were great, so a retreat was called.
The only problem was that over half the group wouldn’t retreat. Valinae remained fighting the thing even as it did 40-50 damage per round. She was trying to cover the escape so the others could get out. However the warlord, Mal, refused to leave Valinae alone to fight it, and the rogue, Whisper, wouldn’t leave because he just didn’t want to leave. So while half the group jumped out of the window, climbing (or falling) the 50 feet down to street, the others remained in the room fighting, unleashing daily powers and hoping for criticals.
Eventually (after Valinae had gone through about five times her max hp), she was able to urge Whisper and Mal to leave, following just behind them. The angel was relentless, though, and it quickly followed after them. The result was that the battle was taken to ground level. The warlord, meanwhile, was joined by three NPCs (who the characters had successfully befriended in a previous interaction), and headed down the stairs to join the fight.
The dragonborn rogue, Kriv, and Gerheart had recovered the horses, hoping to outrun the angel, and they were just riding up as the battle moved to the street. At about that point, out of the darkness emerged a chimeric form that the PCs recognized as the malignly transformed priestess (after whom the campaign is named; see my previous playtest reports for more info). The PCs had recently come to suspect that she might be an ally, and so in a valiant effort to show friendship, the paladin threw down her sword, despite still being engaged by the angel of vengeance. Encouraged by Valinae’s actions and their calls for help, the chimeric form descended on the angel, joining the fray just as the game session came to a close for the night.
Half the PCs were without encounter and daily powers, and they had not yet even bloodied the creature. Still, the encounter promises to be a climactic battle because with the PCs now joined by allies, they might just stand a chance. I’m eager to see how it all plays out.
This encounter goes to show that it’s difficult to predict how the PCs will handle an encounter, and it becomes even harder to anticipate their recourse as the encounter’s difficulty goes up. I would have never anticipated they’d stay fight as long as they would, nor that they would gain the trust of all the NPCs.
In addition to trying to make every encounter have some tidbit of story behind it, I’m also learning how to create more dynamic encounters. This is something I’ve observed from Chris Perkins’s game. There’s almost always some kind of twist, surprise, or dynamic element of the encounter. Sometimes its subtle—after all, if you do a surprise every time, it makes each surprise less significant. It could be a trap that springs mid-battle, or a creature that calls another creature to its aid, or the terrain could turn out to be a dangerous slime that grasps at your feet. Forcing the PCs to adapt to different situations and circumstances encourages them to think outside the box, which in the end, makes the payoff much greater. Providing subtleties that characters can use to their advantage gives a sense of satisfaction when a player picks up on that detail, and it encourages all the players to pay closer attention to what’s going on. Maybe this isn’t the best kind of encounter for the hack-n-slash player, but even the hack-n-slash player can enjoy the encounter when he takes advantage of a giant chasm into which he pushes an enemy. These days, I’m thinking about upcoming battles weeks in advance, brainstorming ideas when I’m driving my car or going to bed, trying to think of the next best way to bring originality to the encounter.
