When Your Group Jumps the Shark

[Cadfan]

These 4e wraiths seem like badly designed monsters to me, though. Why half damage AND regeneration? Trollish regen is unlikely enough, why do incorporeal critters get it?

Fought one recently. It died plenty fast.

They tend to have small amounts of hit points, but they take half damage from most attacks and they regenerate. To give you a comparison, the other monsters in the fight we were in had 80 to 120 hit points. The wraith had just over 40 and regeneration 5, and since we didn't have anything to bypass his incorporeality, that meant he had a functional 80 with a functional regeneration 10. His AC was middling.

We lit him on fire then curb stomped the poor guy. That shut him down pretty effectively. He ran away through some walls to heal, but we got to him before he put the fire out and beat him down.

If we'd had the right skills, he would have been even easier- there are feats and items that let you deal full damage to incorporeal creatures. That would have trashed him really fast.

 

[Scribble]

Wow. That's a complete failure to understand the meaning of the term, "jump the shark".

Jumping the shark is not failing, or having a bad day. Jumping the shark is doing really outlandish and nonsensical things in order to generate interest in a flagging storyline.

I agree that this article didn't seem to have much to do with the term... Not sure why he used it. But- I think you're slightly off on your definition Umbran...

I don't think the storyline really has to be flagging for a show to Jump the Shark... It's just that in order to not just re-do something the show has already done, it needs to up the ante, which often results in a shark jump.

The writers had already shown us various ways Fonzie was "awesome." After a while though the "awesomeness" of fonzie becomes the norm, so they have to up the ante, and make him do somethign even bigger in order for us to once again think- "Yeah he's awesome." Eventually though it gets to jumping over sharks, and we hit the, "No that's not awesome- that's ridiculous" phaze.

 

[Jack99]

Fought one recently. It died plenty fast.

They tend to have small amounts of hit points, but they take half damage from most attacks and they regenerate. To give you a comparison, the other monsters in the fight we were in had 80 to 120 hit points. The wraith had just over 40 and regeneration 5, and since we didn't have anything to bypass his incorporeality, that meant he had a functional 80 with a functional regeneration 10. His AC was middling.

Try making the wraith an elite via the cleric template. Not the best idea some crappy DM who shall remain nameless has had...

*whistles innocently*

 

[Brown Jenkin]

(To be distinguished from the times where the group just suffers from failing to roll more than 5 over 5 rounds.)

Ah, last Friday. Right now I have a dead Elf because I couldn't roll above a 5 on 5 consecutive saves (Any one of which succeeding would have let my elf have enough hit points to survive). I then proceeded to roll under 5 on the next two attacks that I had when given an NPC to play with that would have finished the encounter as well.

Any way to up the fun when only one player has his own dice turn lethal, and not the entire group at once? I'm not really upset. I had fun and my elf will be raised this week.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

I´m pretty sure that Chris predicted a certain amount of "nooo, weak on your players kills fun dead" responses. Maybe he even lurks on this tread?
Anyway, a "you used the phrase 'to jump the shark' wrong" flamewar. I really have seen it all on the internet.