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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 5036929" data-attributes="member: 2">Interesting game last night, as the PCs were charged with sewer-checking before a royal parade and stumbled across some would-be royal assassins. Things that helped the fight:- The bad guys were two lurkers (doppelganger assassins), a leader (a cleric of the God of Change) and a controller (a halfling wizard.) With no central brute or skirmishers, the fight largely hinged on who could gain combat advantage and keep it. - I've learned that the PCs are largely unbribeable; being offered a sack of 1500 GP to go away didn't even cause 'em to blink.- The fight occurred at a four-way intersection in a 20' wide sewer, with 5' ledges hugging the walls to keep people out of the sewer trench. Wooden planks had been set up by the bad guys to get from one side to the other. Movement pretty much required leaping across sewer trenches and jumping from one ledge to the other.- Having doppelgangers in the enemy group (along with a priestess of Aika, Toiva's Goddess) made for some interesting decisions for Toiva, who of course is also a doppelganger.- The PCs did a fantastic job of focusing fire, completely destroying one foe before moving on to the next. It was demoralizing to their enemies, let me tell you. And considering that the group is optimized to make their foes grant combat advantage, it's really nice to see how many attacks would have missed if not for that extra +2. The wizard was particularly effective here, leading with a spell (phantasmal assailants, maybe?) that ended up making the enemy leader particularly vulnerable.- The foes scattered when things went poorly for them, requiring the PCs to decide who to hunt down and who to ignore.- The intended assassination weapon was a box of alchemical bombs on a jury-rigged platform in the middle of the sewer intersection. It was set off early by a foe who didn't like how the fight was going. The result was spectacular: +15 vs reflex, save half, a burst 10 fireball doing 5d10 damage to the sides (and twice that straight up, as it was supposed to kill the upstart new <s>dictator</s> king. It also set people on fire (ongoing 5 / save ends) and blinded them for one or more rounds. - Fictionally, the explosion also jiggled something loose in the warforged wizard's torso, and it caused his clockwork familiar to emerge. (Strontium took the familiar feat at 6th level, but fictionally hadn't had time to build him yet. This seemed better!) The familiar believes that Stront is not actually the property of the ancient Imperial Inquisitor Zacris the Undying, he IS Zacris the Undying. Hmm.)- Following the explosion (still in the same encounter!) the halfling (who had dim-doored out and then returned for his bribe money) tried to run.  I ran a variant of the chase mechanic on the previous page: I set an arbitrary goal where the NPC escapes if he reaches first. In this case, that was 150. Then I give the NPC a bonus to model his head start (+50 in this case) and everyone in the chase rolls an appropriate skill (athletics, endurance, dungeoneering, that sort of thing). If the PCs pass the NPC's current total, they've caught up to him. It worked well; they caught up just short of the escape pipe he was going to use. He was smart, but an old-school halfling and a lousy runner.While this is turning out to be a really fun and fast method of modeling chases without having to map them out, I could have done a few things better. For instance, I didn't narrate the chase well enough. I also should have put in additional challenges at various waypoints (frex, when you pass 50 you have to jump a trench or lose 10 from your total. When you pass 100, you're in a maze of twisty little passages that all appear the same, roll a perception or dungeoneering or halve your next roll. That sort of thing.)We ended up with the halfling surrendering, and being offered the choice of joining the Grey Guard or being turned over to the Royal Guard -- who often look down on assassins, it appears. One last thing I did (in addition to discussing the end of year summary above.) I asked people what their least favorite magic item is. That actually tells me more than figuring out what their most favorite item is, and tells me what slot they want something else in.</blockquote>

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