D&D 4E Running player commentary on PCat's 4E Campaign - Heroic tier (finished)
Well if people weren't sick or unavailable we'd still be talking about the ghetto group. Just saying...
WizarDru
Adventurer
It gets worse. I heard Kevin say he loves them best. True fact.
the Jester
Legend
The privileges of power.
kuragara
First Post
We get fancy clothes?
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
You don't! Scurrilous rumors.
Well, except that when Junior Minister Odett housed you in the Low Palace, you got a full wardrobe of clothes as well. But that hardly counts.
Meanwhile, in the Grey Guard game the PCs just faced down a ghoulish schoolmistress and a swarm of undead toddlers...
Some commentary, without pre-empting Sagiro's analysis (and he'll have one. I've seldom seen him so frustrated by.. well, I'll let him say.) We ended the last game with the
My answer is "no, but it was close." The group wasn't able to focus fire at all; with immobilized heroes everywhere and ghouls coming from three different directions, they were at a major tactical disadvantage. They used a "do something cool" card to help mitigate that a little, and the school-mistress ghoul retreated so that she could gather her swarm of tiny toddler-ghouls for an ambush during the next encounter. Even so, it was a rush to eke out healing before people started to drop. When someone's best action is to eat a stonemeal biscuit (a sub-optimal alchemical item), you know you're short on good tactical options.
The ghoulish toddler swarm was delightful as an ambush. I used the Abyssal Ghoul Horde as a base monster, ratcheted it down from lvl 21 to level 8, and managed to quickly catch three of the party in the swarm when the baby ghouls skittered out from behind old schoolroom desks. The people in the party who were optimized for bursts and blasts (Strontium the warforged wizard and Gilran the sorcerer) pretty much cheered; the rest of the strikers were much less pleased. With the previously escaped school mistress appearing to push people into the swarm, I found the fight quite fun.
Ghoulish infant swarm
Level 8 Brute
Huge elemental humanoid XP 350
Initiative +7 Senses Perception +9; darkvision
Knee-biter aura 1; the ghoulish infant swarm makes a melee basic attack as a free action against any enemy that starts its turn within the aura.
HP 104; Bloodied 52
AC 17; Fortitude 21; Reflex 20; Will 16
Immune disease; poison; Resist -10 half damage from melee and ranged attacks, necrotic; Vulnerable 10 damage from close and area attacks
Speed 8 , Climb 4
m Horde of Tiny Little Fangs (standard; at-will)
+11 vs AC; 2d6 + 5 damage, and the target is immobilized (save ends). An immobilized target takes an extra 2d6 damage
C Necrotic Spit-Up (immediate reaction; when the horde is damaged) • Necrotic
Close burst 1; +8 vs Reflex; 2d6 + 5 necrotic damage
C Toddling Death (when the horde takes forced movement and when it is reduced to 0 hit points) • Necrotic
Each square the ghoulish infant swarm formerly occupied now contains one ghoul minion, which acts just after the swarm
Alignment Chaotic Evil Languages Baby-talk
Skills Stealth +12
Str 18 (+8) Dex 16 (+7) Wis 11 (+4)
Con 14 (+6) Int 10 (+4) Cha 7 (+2)
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Blood Jester
First Post
Damn the Merchant Prince crew! Damn them to Hell I say!
Really, considering one of the enemies we have made along the way, this is not the most unlikely outcome for our little crew.
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Notes on Run #37:
This will be short-ish, since Piratecat has already covered the set-up, and talked about the key tactical point of the current battle(s), which is the mobility issue.
As he said, the ghouls inflicted immobilized (save ends) with every hit, and hit about 70% of the time. Additionally, we're fighting in close quarters as we move through a warren of tunnels in search of Caldwell's kidnapped kin.
With some work, I can usually arrange for Cobalt (brawny rogue) to have Combat Advantage on about 80-85% of his attack rolls. In this past game, which included two battles, Cobalt made exactly one attack with CA. Because he and most of the party were immobilized on any given round, and because the battle was taking place partially in one-square-wide tunnels, there were no opportunities for flanking. Those factors also resulted in party line-of-sight separation, which means I wasn't getting CA from things like the shaman's Haunting Spirits power. I spent the entire first fight plinking away mano-a-mano with one ghoul, constantly immobilized, often dazed, and using non-sneak-attack Riposte Strikes with a dagger every round. Bramble's Protective Roots (giving me DR 4) and Caldwell's healing kept me alive.
Piratecat has not adequately conveyed the suckyness of the toddler swarm. In fact, he has downright mislead you, poor reader, when he says:
...all while another ghoul is trying to maneuver us into swarm, while also inflicting non-trivial damage with its attacks. And this was in a room where a 9-square creature occupied about 1/3 of the total space, so there wasn't a great deal of wiggle room.
Not that it wasn't all fun and exciting, mind you. Frustrating, but in a good, challenging way.
A last note about swarms: they're strange things in 4E. We couldn't find anything that said they couldn't be flanked – in most ways we just treated it as a single 3x3 creature. But since it can occupy enemy squares, it leads to this kind of weirdness:
-xxx-
AxxxB
-xxx-
A and B can flank the swarm (which is actually a whole bunch of little individual creatures).
-xxx-
AxBx-
-xxx-
A and B cannot flank the swarm, even though they are closer together, and clearly flanking at least one “member unit” of the swarm. Piratecat made the fairly sensible call that someone inside the swarm cannot also flank it, though I'm curious as to whether that is established by the RaW.
So, next game will feature a final fight against a ghoulish bride and her ghoulish bridesmaids, in their stinking, festering ghoulish chapel. We'll have our encounter powers back, and most of us will have Action Points, and we have some tiny number of Dailies left. I just wish Cobalt had more than one healing surge left!
This will be short-ish, since Piratecat has already covered the set-up, and talked about the key tactical point of the current battle(s), which is the mobility issue.
As he said, the ghouls inflicted immobilized (save ends) with every hit, and hit about 70% of the time. Additionally, we're fighting in close quarters as we move through a warren of tunnels in search of Caldwell's kidnapped kin.
With some work, I can usually arrange for Cobalt (brawny rogue) to have Combat Advantage on about 80-85% of his attack rolls. In this past game, which included two battles, Cobalt made exactly one attack with CA. Because he and most of the party were immobilized on any given round, and because the battle was taking place partially in one-square-wide tunnels, there were no opportunities for flanking. Those factors also resulted in party line-of-sight separation, which means I wasn't getting CA from things like the shaman's Haunting Spirits power. I spent the entire first fight plinking away mano-a-mano with one ghoul, constantly immobilized, often dazed, and using non-sneak-attack Riposte Strikes with a dagger every round. Bramble's Protective Roots (giving me DR 4) and Caldwell's healing kept me alive.
Piratecat has not adequately conveyed the suckyness of the toddler swarm. In fact, he has downright mislead you, poor reader, when he says:
While this was true for about five seconds, the cheering stopped as soon as we realized that damaging the swarm with blasts and bursts also damaged party members inside the swarm!. So, you've got an enemy who:
- Takes up a 3x3 square, and can occupy squares with party members.
- Gets a free attack on anyone who starts their turn inside its area – an attack which immobilizes
- We can't damage it with melee and ranged attacks
- Anything we can do that does damage it also does massive damage to at least half the party, because it's trivial for the swarm to swarm over a bunch of immobile heroes at a time.
...all while another ghoul is trying to maneuver us into swarm, while also inflicting non-trivial damage with its attacks. And this was in a room where a 9-square creature occupied about 1/3 of the total space, so there wasn't a great deal of wiggle room.
Not that it wasn't all fun and exciting, mind you. Frustrating, but in a good, challenging way.
A last note about swarms: they're strange things in 4E. We couldn't find anything that said they couldn't be flanked – in most ways we just treated it as a single 3x3 creature. But since it can occupy enemy squares, it leads to this kind of weirdness:
-xxx-
AxxxB
-xxx-
A and B can flank the swarm (which is actually a whole bunch of little individual creatures).
-xxx-
AxBx-
-xxx-
A and B cannot flank the swarm, even though they are closer together, and clearly flanking at least one “member unit” of the swarm. Piratecat made the fairly sensible call that someone inside the swarm cannot also flank it, though I'm curious as to whether that is established by the RaW.
So, next game will feature a final fight against a ghoulish bride and her ghoulish bridesmaids, in their stinking, festering ghoulish chapel. We'll have our encounter powers back, and most of us will have Action Points, and we have some tiny number of Dailies left. I just wish Cobalt had more than one healing surge left!
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