WotBS Wintry Song of Agony Finale (4th edition) clarification

[Cheeslord]

Hi, anyone who happens to read this post ...

Tomorrow night I will be running the final battle from WOTBS Wintry Song of Agony in 4th edition. I have looked through the encounter description but it seems to have a couple of contradictions. I could just make stuff up but would appreciate some insights into what is likely to provide a balanced fight (currently we have a party of only 4 21st levels, with Guthwulf & Gus as the only friendly NPCs (the players hate having a menagerie of NPCs clogging up fights following the Fire Forest/start of Shelter where they had 5 at one point)

Anyway, questions I have:

- The Setup refers to having only 1 Claw of Leska and 1 veteran inquisitor, but the text refers to 3 veteran inquisitors and "claws of leska" in the plural - which is true? Should the numbers vary depending on what allies the party have (if they had Agony on-side I would expect a few extra inquisitors would help make it less one-sided...)

- The only effect of shutting down agony on the Obelisk appears to be to make it take an unspecified amount of damage when used. What is this amount? Should removing agony shut down its regeneration too?


- Should Kreven have action points and saving throw bonuses befitting an Elite? (I won't bother asking about equipment as this has not been on stat blocks for 2 chapters now - everyone is assumed to have suitable mundane equipment)

- Should Koren be able to teleport? (particularly relevent since in 4th edition at this level almost everyone in the party can inflict forced movement/teleport on enemies so many will get thrown down the pit, possibly leading to a very short fight if they can't get out again)

Thanks in advance for any advice anyone can give me,

Mark.

 

[RangerWickett]

I wonder if some of the problem might be due to the conversion from 3.5. When I get home I'll see if I can screenshot the relevant pages in that version. I didn't work on the 4e one, so I don't know what their design intentions were.

 

[Cheeslord]

Thanks!

Mark.

 

[RangerWickett]

1. It looks like the text's description of the foes is the same as the 3.5 version, so the editor probably didn't update it to match the number of foes required for a proper balanced encounter in 4e.

2. In the 3.5 version, there's a sidebar that says how Kreven can use the Obelisk to power up his spells, and how much damage it takes to produce various effects. I'm not sure how that would translate to 4e.

3. I didn't design the 4e stats, but I imagine yes, Kreven should have Elite bonuses.

4. Did you mean Koren (the wayfarer wife, whose who schtick is teleportation), or Kreven? For Kreven, yeah, 4e has a lot more forced movement than 3.5, so I'd maybe give him some sort of link to the Obelisk that lets him teleport beside it (to the scaffold) as a free action.

 

[Cheeslord]

Thanks for the advice. As it was, on the spur of the moment I threw in an extra claw of leska and inquisitor. I was glad I did so as that made the fight at least reasonably challenging (one character down and bleeding at the end, though the party still had enough healing that he would have got back up next turn anyway). With just one of each it would have been way too unchallenging I think.

Mark.

<edit> Aside from the scripted force wall, the obelisk itself was pretty irrelevant to the fight. The very small bonuses to Krevens attacks it could give were nowhere nearly as good as kreven spending those extra actions to make more attacks (since he had a minor action "at will" attack)