The Astral Sea

Zeitgeist is amazing

2012-01-28T13:51:00.000+11:00

Life continues to be crazy professionally, and my home life is just as busy as it was when I put the Astral Sea on hiatus, but my Zeitgeist campaign has been moving along nicely

In fact, it's going so well that I felt the urge to come back and mention it here. Zeitgeist is what 4e adventures always should have been. It has intrigue. It has genuine mysteries. It has amazing set pieces. And it has the PCs doing the sort of action hero stuff that 4e really caters for.

I've been running the campaign for 3 months now, and have found almost nothing to fault it for. If you haven't yet, I urge you to check it out (downloads at the bottom of the page). It's available for Pathfinder and 4e.

And for those of you who'd like to see exactly what I'm talking about, check out my ENworld discussion thread here (I trust it goes without saying that my players should stay out).

Astral hiatus

2011-04-27T13:45:00.000+10:00

If there's one thing that I have found to be universally true when it comes to endeavours and products, it's that you can have them "cheap, quick or good; choose two".

It goes without saying that the Astral Sea blog has been cheap (it's free, after all) and I like to think that it's been good, but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to squeeze quick in there.

Work is keeping me busy, and then Mrs Colmarr and the Colmarrs Jnr occupy most of my time outside of work hours. I have enough free time to play D&D, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to find the time to blog about it. The impending move from the player chair to the DM chair is likely to result in an increase of time devoted to playing D&D, and that takes even more time away from the blog.

Long-term readers have probably already noticed the downturn in content, and for that I apologise. I took stock of things over the long weekend just passed and have reached the conclusion that I don't want to do things by halves. If I can't update the blog regularly (I can't), then I'd rather not update it at all.

With all of the above in mind, I think it's only fair to let you know that the Astral Sea will be going on indefinite hiatus almost immediately. I'll probably maintain some form of Zeitgeist campaign thread over on the ENworld boards for those of you who are interested in following along. If I do, I'll post a link to it here on the Astral Sea.

To everyone else, thank you for accompanying me on this foray into the blogging world. It's a job for professionals, but it's also pretty damn fun. Your involvement has been a blast!

Zeitgeist

2011-04-15T22:11:00.000+10:00

Those who have been following the blog for a while will recall that I've been wondering what 4e is like from the DM side of the screen. I had a taste during our Eye of Flame one-shot, and as those posts showed, I liked what I saw.

Since then, I've been content to continue playing Pieter in the SSTL campaign and enjoy being a player. But the DMing bug never really went away. I continued to fiddle around the edges, designing Paldemar and Sinruth redux and the runestalker for A Fire at Night. But I didn't want to take the reins for a couple of reasons:

I didn't want to be disloyal to my DM, who is doing a wonderful job running the SSTL campaign;
I didn't know whether I wanted the extra work that comes from DMing, especially when you DM from scratch; and
I wasn't really sure what I wanted to build a campaign around.

Then I found Zeitgeist, a soon-to-be-commenced adventure path by EN publishing. What's it about? I'll let them tell you:

Steam and soot darken the skies above the city of Flint, and winds sweeping across its majestic harbor blow the choking products of industrial forges into the fey rainforests that dot its knifetoothed mountains. Since the earliest ages when the people of Risur founded this city, they feared the capricious beings that hid in those fog-shrouded peaks, but now, as the march of progress and the demands of national defense turn Flint into a garden for artifice and technology, the old faiths and rituals that kept the lurkers of the woods at bay are being abandoned.

The Unseen Court, the Great Hunt, and the many spirits of the land long ago conquered by Risur’s kings no longer receive tribute, but they cannot enter these new cities of steam and steel to demand their tithe. The impoverished workers who huddle in factory slums fear monsters of a different breed, shadowy children of this new urban labyrinth. Even their modern religions have no defenses against these fiends.

Times are turning. The skyseers — Risur’s folk prophets since their homeland’s birth — witness omens in the starry wheels of heaven, and they warn that a new age is nigh. But what they cannot foresee, hidden beyond the steam and soot of the night sky, is the face of this coming era, the spirit of the new age. The zeitgeist.

In one fell swoop, EN publishing solved problems #2 and #3. Having an adventure path to base a campaign around would minimise my DM work, and the setting background of the rise of technology is one that fires my imagination to levels it's hard to describe. I couldn't wait to DM it.

But what about problem #1? Wouldn't my DM feel betrayed? As it turns out, no. He's just as jazzed by the idea of being a player in Zeitgeist as I am of running it. Problems solved!

Zeitgeist starts in "Spring 2011" (sometime between 1 March and 31 May), and I can't wait. When it does, we'll be putting the Stones and Shadow, Trees and Light campaign on hold for a while. We fully intend to come back to it, but for now a change of scenery is most welcome.

I'm always happy to advocate for things I'm excited about, so I encourage everyone to check Zeitgeist out. And if you're as excited about it as I am: tell your friends, tell your local gaming group, tell everyone you meet at your FLGS. Oh, and make a pledge at Zeitgeist's kickstarter project.

Damn this is going to be good!

SoW: Return to Brindol

2011-04-15T14:07:00.002+10:00

The messenger delivers her message, and the PCs find themselves returning to familiar climes.

After rescuing Alys, the PCs receive her message:

"Greetings from Sertanian, castellan of the Hall of Great Valor. I beseech you to return to Brindol with all haste, as your presence is needed here. The matter concerns one of the relics that you recovered while saving myself and our town’s other captives in Rivenroar, and is most urgent.”

Alys confides to the party that she has never seen old Sertanian as fearful as when he sent her forth. That should serve as a pretty good hook, especially if you played Sertanian as stoic when the PCs first encountered him in rescue at Rivenroar. If the PCs didn't rescue Sertanian, then the message comes from his successor Aeomon. Much of the personal collection is lost, but guilt over a life not saved might be just as strong a motivation to return to Brindol.

The PCs meet a dwarf patrol on the road, led by a dwarf named Zoram Splitershield. The purpose of that meeting seems to be solely to inform the PCs that gnolls are in the area, because virtually no other information is exchanged. I sorely suspect that Splintershield is introduced here because he'll turn up again later in the adventure path. If not, this meeting is a little bit of a proud nail.

Upon their arrival at Brindol, the PCs get to enjoy a bit of hospitality from the friends and family of the citizens they saved. It's a nice way of telling the PCs "you've come a long way, baby" and impressing upon them that they're more than just adventurers now. They're heroes. When they finally make it to the Hall of Great Valour, they discover the reason for Sertanian's summons: the platinum blade they recovered from Rivenroar has started to talk!

The weapon calls itself Amyria, and warns the PCs of a gnoll shaman seeking to become an exarch of Yeenoghu, the god of butchery. Just as importantly, the sword maintains that its form is only temporary, and that if the PCs bear it to Fortress Graystone - where the gnolls are preparing for their ritual - her true form can be returned. There's a lot of information to be imparted in this section of the adventure, and DMs would be wise to read through the scenario a few times to make sure they understand it all.

After Amyria has delivered her message, company shows up.

SSTL 61: Thunder and Lightning

2011-04-13T13:00:00.002+10:00

The Heroes of Winterhaven man the walls of Argent, and learn to their cost that battling the forces of the primordials is no trivial matter.

Read the full recap here.

The good thing for players about splitting a combat across two sessions is that you get a chance to ruminate on what you have learned, figure out effective tactics, and designate targets of importance. Hence, when we returned to the fight against the giants' airborne assault squad, the roc came in for a pounding the likes of which the sages will sing about for decades. There's nothing quite like the promise of a 200 foot drop to focus an adventurer's mind on the task at hand.

One thing that came to the fore this encounter (and has made a consistent appearance over each of the last 3 or 4 sessions) is just how much damage Nala does when she scores a critical hit. This session it was 64 points of damage, but what is more impressive is that - if I remember correctly - she has broken the campaign's record for 'biggest hit' on no less than 4 occasions. I'm not sure whether that's dragon magic sorcerors in general or just some particular quirk of Nala's build. Either way, it's impressive.

The fight against the behir was more worriesome, because - let's be honest - it wailed on us like chumps. Three activations per round gives it the capability to dish out very significant damage, and that capability only increases as it gets into melee range (no need to waste move actions on moving) and PCs fall unconscious (more chance of the Behir receiving multiple turns in a row). It swallowed Pieter and Dek at different stages of the combat, and Dek would likely have died in its belly were it not for his player rolling a natural 20 on a death save. The rule stating that swallowed characters are out of line of effect is nasty.

In the end, it was a foolhardy swoop by Soveliss and Nala that saved the day. They landed flanking the beast (which may not have been the best tactical option) and the behir promptly stomped the eladrin into the floor. Fortunately, Nala made her last shot count, and it was just enough to drop the behir before the last of the Heroes of Winterhaven fell.

We had somehow survived, but the poor performance in this encounter was to prove very costly in later sessions.

On a personal note, the DM had set aside a Cherished Ring from my wish list as Pieter's treasure from the roc encounter, but on further consideration, I realised it was a pretty poor choice. I picked it for the Diplomacy bonus, but a 14th level item is not the most efficient way of getting one. He graciously allowed me to swap the ring for a Choker of Eloquence and a Dynamic Belt. Both items together are roughly the same cost as a 14th level item, and they give Pieter skill bonuses (Diplomacy, Bluff, Athletics and Endurance) but just as importantly they also allow daily re-rolls of any of those skills. Which could come in very handy indeed.

SoW: Kidnappers

2011-04-11T21:07:00.000+10:00

The PCs track the Lost Ones to an abandoned temple of Pelor, and the search for the messenger comes to a violent end.

Once the PCs succeed or fail at the skill challenge to located the messenger that Kalad or Reniss mentioned, they find themselves in the dismal Nine Bells district. Nine Bells was once a proud neighbourhood dominated by the nine temples at its centre, but since being walled in with the Boneyard and Blister, it's wealthy patrons have fled and left the temples to their fate. As it turns out, even a shrine devoted to Pelor is not immune to neglect, and there should be a very noir feeling to this encounter. It demonstrates ably that evil can lurk in the midst of civilisation.

Alys, the messenger from Brindol, is lying bound and gagged in the centre of the temple when the PCs arrive, left there by the Lost Ones as bait. It's a good plan, because the pooling rainwater around her makes the stone floor difficult terrain. That will hinder PC efforts to move her to safety, while also making it difficult for controllers to fire off area effects with impunity.

The combat itself will largely be an exercise in the Lost Ones trying to drag ranged PCs behind the frescoes where they can gang up on them, while the attack dogs and the Lost One boss try to keep melee PCs busy. The Lost Ones' grab and go at-will power (which allows the lost one to shift 2 squares and drag the target with them) combined with their kidnap encounter power (increase the grab and go shift to 4) means that it's actually a viable tactic. Once behind the frescoes, it could prove difficult for a trapped PC to contribute effectively to the combat or hold out for rescue.

However, this combat really gets interesting if the PCs failed the skill challenge to locate Alys. They eventually make their way to the temple, but in doing so draw the attention of a group of doppelganger assassins hired by Sarshan to eliminate them. The assassins join the combat in round 3, and promptly set upon the party. As if the added enemies weren't enough, DMs should bear in mind that they'll appear from the rear at a time when the defenders and other meleers are probably fighting the lost ones amongst the frescoes. Whoever is lurking near the front door (likely a controller or ranged striker) is about to eat 3 assassin's quarry (+10 v Ref; 3d6 + 8 and 5 ongoing damage) attacks, which is going to hurt.

This encounter has the capacity to be a fitting finale to the PCs' involvement with the Lose Ones. It's a heroic tier showdown done right.

Encounter rating: 4

SoW: Message from Brindol

2011-04-02T16:45:00.000+11:00

Den of the Destroyer begins with the PCs back in Overlook, having presumably cleared out the Karak Lode and returned to Bran Ironfell with the happy news. A messenger will soon arrive with an urgent missive, but the adventure makes it clear that there is no set time frame for when that messenger must arrive. The beginning of Den of the Destroyer therefore makes a perfect time for the party to settle down and do those things adventurers need to do but can't in the middle of life-and-death adventuring. No, I don't mean drinking. I mean enchanting and disenchanting items, mastering rituals, and sourcing items that they cannot make themselves. It's easy for a DM to forget to make time for those activities, so it's good for there to be a natural "pit stop" before the action kicks off again.

Once the PCs have taken care of business, they run into either Kalad (the paladin from Siege of Bordrin's Watch) or Reniss (the half-elf ranger from Shadowrift of Umbraforge), who tells them that a messenger has been asking around for them.

I'm impressed that two NPCs are mentioned here. It adds a level of flexibility to the adventure path, and it allows some room to manoeuvre for DMs whose players couldn't (or didn't) save Kalad, or who didn't hit it off with Reniss. There's no explicit advice in the adventure about which NPC to use, and while that might be a missed opportunity to educate new DMs on the fine art of relationship-building, I don't really feel that the lack of advice is problematic.

Making contact with Alys the messenger is a complexity 5 skill challenge (12 successes before 3 failures). The skill challenge adopts the same format as previous challenges in the adventure path, but the layout has changed slightly to include headers for each of the skills. I like the change, as it calls each of the skills out more, making DMing the challenge easier.

In order to do this challenge justice, I really recommend that you familiarise yourself with the Outlook information from Siege of Bordrin's Watch. 12 successes is too many to deal with them entirely in the abstract, particularly once the PCs discover that Alys has been kidnapped and need to track down her kidnappers. You'll also need a handy collection of fantasy-appropriate names for merchants, urchins, snitches and a few disreputable taverns.

I've previously expressed my dislike for long skill challenges, so I won't repeat myself here. What I will say is that this challenge gives you the perfect opportunity to put all that setting information from Siege to good use. If your players can't picture Overlook as a living, breathing place by the end of this challenge then they never will.

SSTL 60: A Guardian Long Dead

2011-03-15T13:59:00.000+11:00

The Heroes of Winterhavern learn more about Argent's history and the coming storm, and then are called once again to the city's defence.

Read the full recap here.

Much of the information relating to divine engine Klar-Ekku has obviously been tailored by the DM specifically to the Stones and Shadow, Trees and Light campaign. Moradin and his exarch Gond make obvious appearances as creator/inventor deities and Tempus is the obvious choice as the wrathful forgotten realms deity that broke the device after it had served its intended purpose. It's no coincidence that there are Moradin and Tempus worshippers in the party.

Notwithstanding that tailoring, I like the plot line a lot. Even if "vanilla" 4e gods were to be substituted in place of Moradin and Tempus, the idea of recovering pieces of an artifact that was used to imprison a primordial is inherently "high tier". It's the sort of adventure that paragon and epic tiers demand, and it's pretty exciting to be involved in one. I'm well aware that the plot is actually somewhat of a trope (Robert Jordan's 'seals on the Dark One's prison' immediately springs to mind), but I honestly don't care. There's a reason tropes become tropes.

The encounter with the wight and guardian Qwor was relatively uneventful except for the fact that I hadn't picked out that the two were not one. After we spoke to the wight (how often do you get to do that?) and it gave us permission to proceed through the necropolis to Qwor's mausoleum, I was momentarily very confused. Suffice to say that the DM gently ushered me on and we soon had an audience with the spectre of Argent's long dead guardian. The skill challenge involved was ultimately a bit transparent, but not so transparent that I could define exactly how it worked. If I had to guess, I suspect that the wight and Qwor's tomb were part of the same challenge, but I could easily be wrong.

We're still not quite grokking skill challenges. Some flow better than others, but we still invariably have an occasion where someone tries to do something silly. In this case, it was Dek trying to impress the wight by doing exercises to prove his abilities. I think the wight said it best. "Um, yes, that's very impressive. Now, moving along..."

The fight against the giants would have been fairly uneventful were it not for the Roc. It has a standard action power that allows it to fly 10 squares, grab and pick up a target along the way, and then drop it at the end of the move. Given that there was a 200' cliff just outside the walls, that power very quickly became a source of immense concern. The first attempt was thwarted by a poor attack roll against Pieter. The second by Pieter readying split the sky (push 2 and knock prone, thank Tempus it hit!). The third by Dek twatting it with an OA as it tried to fly off with the tempuran in its claws. By the time the blasted thing did manage to grab someone (Dek), it had been slowed by one of Soveliss' powers and the cliff wasn't a pressing threat anymore.

One thing that didn't make it into the recap (it was cut for space reasons) is that the party found Valthrun's pipe in one of Argent's taverns, still smelling of recently-smoked tobacco. The old sage is somewhat of a foil for Pieter, and his reappearance was probably to be expected. Still, it did nothing to improve the tempuran's mood. Valthrun is a bit like a shock jock. I technically distrust and dislike the NPC, but he certainly does make the game more interesting. We'll see where it goes from here.

SoW: Den of the Destroyer

2011-03-12T21:13:00.001+11:00

Upon their return from the expedition into the Thornwaste, the PCs hear that a messenger has arrived from Brindol and is desperately seeking an audience with them. Of course, nothing is ever that easy.

Den of the Destroyer is for 7th level characters, and is the first of the Scales of War adventures that starts to reveal to the players exactly what is going on. It cements Sarshan as the adventure paths primary heroic tier villain, and makes it clear that he's up to more than just selling weapons and creating weird attack beasts. He's deliberately stirring up trouble all over the region, although his motivations will remain secret for the time being.

Den of the Destroyer also continues the existing planar theme, this time by virtue of a conduit to the elemental chaos, but it ups the stakes a little. Fangren, the leader of the Wicked Fang gnolls who are the primary enemies of this adventure, is seeking to become an exarch of Yeenoghu. Given that the gnoll god is a god of butchery and frenzy, letting that happen is obviously a bad idea.

The adventure takes the PCs back to Brindol, which might give DMs a chance to use some of the roleplaying opportunities that arose in Rescue at Rivenroar but weren't immediately relevant, and then sends them off to an abandoned githzerai fortress. Which, in and of itself, is a pretty big clue to what's about to happen next...

Where did all these Swiss come from?

2011-03-08T17:05:00.001+11:00

I was pleasantly surprised (and more than a little confused) earlier today to check the blog's stats and notice that Switzerland has come roaring up the chart in terms of number of views. It's first for this week (248) and only just behind the US this month (Switzerland 843, USA 884).

Most interesting of all though is that the blog had never had a swiss visitor before the last 30 days. I'm honestly curious why the sudden change. Either I'm being targetted by swiss spammers and hackers (I haven't noticed anything wrong) or someone in Switzerland has linked to the Astral Sea, presumably in relation to D&D. It almost certainly has nothing to do with my and Mrs Colmarr's brief visit to Lucerne, Lugano and Mount Pilatus in 2002.

If you're reading this now in Switzerland, please let me know how you came to find this site.

SSTL 59: Disturbing his Sleep

2011-03-03T14:23:00.002+11:00

Our heroes are too late to prevent the theft of one of Argent's greatest treasures, and then learn exactly why the giants are assaulting the city.

Read the full recap here.

The encounter in the guardian tower's vault offered a lot of opportunity for tactical and dynamic play. The sigils on the floor inflicted damage on those who came into contact with them, and then pushed the creature 4 squares. As icing on the cake, the room also contained cells sealed off by a wall of light that only allowed passage in one way: in. Those are pretty cool terrain features, but not terribly remarkable per se. They took on new significance when we realised that it was possible to push an enemy into a sigil, have that sigil push them into another sigil, then another, and so on (I think at one stage it was going to be possible for an enemy to touch 6 sigils in the same round) with the enemy finally ending up trapped in one of the cells. Sort of like a D&D version of pinball.

Of course, the tactical planners in the group (myself included), considered that level of mayhem inadvisable, and we convinced the DM to limit the number of pushes to once per turn regardless of the number of sigils passed though. He readily agreed, probably because he knew we had more forced movement powers than the monsters did.

Despite that concession, we still managed to push at least 2 of the enemies into the cells, from which they were unable to escape. Or so we thought. One of them, a human mage, almost immediately did what I was sure he would not be able to do: teleport out of the cell and escape with the item he had come to steal. What sort of fancy light-wall prison cell allows teleporting!?

Afterwards we got the massive info dump (and opportunity for prolonged discussion) that I had been wanting for the previous two sessions. There's a whole heap of stuff going on in and around Argent, and the threat to the city and to Faerun as a whole is significant. If there was any doubt about the sort of adventures that paragon tier was aimed at, Revenge of the Giants has certainly dispelled that.

My only real concern is that there seems to be a strong theme of time travel (or at least chronomancy in general) building around Argent. Time travel in the fantasy genre has never really sat well with me. It just seems too firmly rooted in science fiction, particularly early science fiction like H.G Wells. I've glossed over the time travel in the SSTL issue accordingly, but it remains to be seen how big a part it will play in the adventure.

SoW: Lost Mines of Karak Wrap-Up

2011-02-24T21:00:00.001+11:00

After defeating Shephatiah, and thus reclaiming the Karak Lode, the PCs discover some strange information. Whether by interrogating the naga or by searching her belongings (what sort of PC searches a big pile of skulls?), the adventurers discover that:

"Shephatiah discovered the portal leading to the Karak Lode on a sojourn within the Elemental Chaos. They also make reference to the reopening of the mines being financed by a group that the scrolls do not name. These unknown masters have claimed the wealth of the Karak Lode for themselves, and are having that wealth shipped to them by way of the elemental rift. While the parchments indicate that this group intends to ramp up production in the mines in response to an increasing need for ore, the cryptic notes indicate that Shephatiah herself does not know the identity of those she works for".

Depending on your players, that denouement will either be thrilling or intensely frustrating.

For players that enjoy intrigue, the lack of concrete answers behind the recovered mine will deepen the mystery that Sarshan already represents. It will be another piece of a puzzle that already overflows with planar connections. First the dark creepers in Tusk's horde. Then Sarshan and his shadowfell operations. Now a mysterious group using the elemental chaos to source material for some unknown end. Cluey players will spot the planar connection and perhaps get some inkling of the ultimate bad guys of Scales of War. But as long as they like a mystery, Lost of Mines of Karak provides it in spades.

For players that aren't into intrigue, Lost Mines of Karak will probably represent nothing more than a great big sidetrek; 4 or more sessions that do little or nothing to advance the plot that seemed to be peaking when Sarshan's operation was sabotaged. Those players will probably leave Lost Mines a little disappointed, if not outright resentful.

If your players are that sort, you might need to show your hand a little more in this section of the adventure path, just to keep their interest up. There's only so long some players will follow breadcrumbs. Sometimes you need to throw them a little meat.

SSTL 58: Under Siege

2011-02-15T14:17:00.001+11:00

The Heroes of Winterhaven arrive in Argent, quickly discovering that the city is already besieged.

Read the full recap here.

I had been hoping for an opportunity to sit down and have a meaty discussion with an NPC this session. After all, there hadn't really been anyone to converse with while we were hacking and puzzling our way through the Tomb of Horrors. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be. No sooner had we emerged from the portal than the plaza of champions was under attack from tunneling elementals and their bulette allies.

Bulettes make interesting opponents. Despite their size and monstrous bulk, they're actually very mobile, and Dek's combat superiority was the only real way we had of pinning them down and giving them a right seeing to. The galeb dhur, on the other hand, barely lasted a round; flinging some mud and then being smashed into rubble themselves.

The wards and Obanar's attempts to raise them probably didn't get enough of our attention as it should have, with Bengi, Nala and Soveliss all ignoring it for the first few rounds in favour of shooting bad guys with various flavours of arcane energy. Only when new tunnels opened up and a steady stream of new enemies appeared did it become clear that Obanar needed assistance. Especially since he kept rolling 5 or under on his Arcana checks.

The basilisk, no doubt intended by the module's author to serve as a "get your collective arses in gear" reminder didn't appear until it was almost too late, and Soveliss responded in true controller style by immobilising it out of range of either the melee near the gates or the arcanists near the ward focus. It was then more or less ignored until the wards were secured. Then it copped the sort of thrashing that only 5 angry new-paragon adventurers can hand out.

Again I took a deep breath, preparing to ask Obanar a thousand questions about Argent. He had other ideas, sending us off to the eastern area of the city. More primordial agents had breached the defences there, and there was no time to lose. Bugger.

Still, this combat went more easily that the first, particularly for Pieter with his black iron scale armour. The last few sessions have confirmed for me a tentative comment I made during the session 48/49 recap. Energy resistance is troublesome because it's either useless (if there are no enemies of that type in the encounter) or amazing (if their are).

The DM has been upgrading the monsters with MM3 math since we entered paragon, and I must admit that the change is already noticeable. Before finishing Tomb of Horrors, I had been seriously considering trading out some of Pieter's healing powers in exchange for more offence or control. Having seen what MM3-enhanced monsters can do, I'm shelving those plans for a while.

Something tells me that we're going to need all the healing we can get.

SoW: Queen's Retinue

2011-02-10T14:34:00.000+11:00

The PCs reach the furthest chamber of the mines, and there discover what became of the long-lost Karak miners.

Having bested the menagerie that lay in wait for them in the previous encounter, the PCs finally reach Queen Shephatiah and her bodyguards, a pair of mezzodemons. A firelasher also lurks in the elemental rift crossing Shephatiah's lair, ready to leap out at the PCs at the beginning of round 2.

Shephatiah and her bodyguards move to defend the northern side of the rift, "intent on forcing the PCs to come to them", and that brings us back to an issue that I've raised with other encounters in Lost Mines of Karak: there's a dearth of ranged attacks on the enemies in this encounter. Shephatiah is artillery (and thus has multiple range 20 powers), but the mezzodemons' only ranged power is a recharge 5 close blast 3 (Poison breath) and isn't likely to have an impact on range-heavy adventuring parties that choose to lurk near the chamber entrance and take advantage of their superior firepower. If that happens, you'll need to think long and hard about using the firelasher as an initiator. Use its Whirlwind dash power (move 16, no OAs, doing 10 damage to each enemy moved through) to erupt from the rift and burn most or all of the PCs in a single turn, disappearing back into the rift to avoid retribution. That, combined with Shephatiah's area burst 1 Thunderstrike will likely convince them that clustering in the tight entrance is not a good idea.

If your PCs don't get the hint, or are confident they're better of not moving to melee, take the risk and have the firelasher stick around, moving through the PCs to the rear and then using Wildfire cyclone (push 1) to herd the PCs forward toward the rift. Stuck between the firelasher and the rift, the PCs might soon see the need to engage fully with their enemies.

One thing that makes this encounter unique is that all of the enemies have either ranged attacks or reach. That in and of itself isn't overly impressive, but when combined with the mezzodemon's ability to restrain defenders with Skewering tines, it means that you have a golden opportunity to apply some real pressure to controllers and leaders who usually remain safely in the background. That, coupled with the threat of being forced into the elemental rift should be enough to have them sweating for a while.

There's potential in this encounter, and it's refreshing to finally see an encounter with a dedicated ranged component to it, but it ultimately all depends on whether you can convince your PCs to jump that rift. You really should try.

Encounter rating: 3

A glimpse of the future?

2011-02-04T13:07:00.000+11:00

I'm a lapsed aficionado of Dungeon magazine. I was an avid reader during 3.5, but when the magazine went online only with the advent of 4e, my habit lapsed. I don't like reading text on a computer screen, and the online Dungeon just didn't do it for me. For a while I tried to fiddle with settings and get the content readable on my kindle, but pdf formatting put paid to that.

So Dungeon sort of fell by the wayside, a victim of distaste for the distribution model and a lack of free time. Apart from the RPGA version of Tomb of Horrors, I don't think I've read a non-Scales of War adventure in over a year now, and that wasn't looking like changing any time soon.

At least, until yesterday.

In yesterday's Dungeon editorial, Steven Winter indicated that the basics of 4e adventure design were open to experimentation; that:

What we're really interested in exploring is adventure style and presentation. People love to categorize things, and we're no different. There's no standard classification system for adventures, but they tend to be discussed in terms of opposites: linear vs. branching; event-driven vs. location-driven; sandbox vs. shadowbox; scripted vs. open-ended; framework vs. in-depth.

For quite a while, we've emphasized event-driven, scripted adventures presented in detail. That's partly because 4th Edition is a detail-oriented game, and the form of adventures frequently mirrors the form of the game. But that shouldn't limit what we do.

So we intend to experiment a bit with adventures. That applies to theme, structure, and presentation. We might do a few with a wide-open structure that include no preplanned encounters; a few that link across months; a few based around unusual maps; maybe even a few where the goal is to avoid combat rather than to seek it out; and perhaps some that are suitable for a wide range of levels or tiers.

Hot damn!

You may recall that there was a thread on ENworld (and perhaps other places) a number of months back where Chris Tulach asked 4e fans to comment on the good and bad of 4e adventure design. This editorial certainly suggests that they listened to the responses.

For the first time in a very long time, I'm genuinely curious and excited about adventures that will be turning up in coming months. If, like Dead by Dawn, we start to see adventures that play with genre conventions and different idea about adventure construction and pacing, Dungeon may well earn a spot on my subscription list again.

SoW: Chaos Mines

2011-02-03T14:17:00.001+11:00

Having bested the troglodytes, the PCs soon learn that there is some very funky stuff going on beneath the Karak Fortress. As if gnolls and troglodytes and chokers and harpies weren't enough, there are also undead, spiders and a demon wandering around.

This is a strange encounter. It includes 2 carrion crawlers, a bloodweb spider swarm, a chillborn zombie, and a barlgura demon and players who value verisimilitude would rightly be entitled to shake their head and mutter darkly about adventure writers who don't really try.

Having said that, the encounter does create some interesting issues for the PCs. The chillborn zombie and the bloodweb spider swarm begin the encounter in natural choke points, and each has an attack that slows or immobilises, presumably aimed at trapping one or more PC "out front". The barlgura and carrion crawlers then have reach 2, allowing them to attack that trapped PC from behind the front line. The carrion crawler immobilise ability then grants the chillborn additional damage via its Ice reaper trait. Alternatively, one of the carrion crawlers can fill a front-line slot and allow the bloodweb swarm to shift among the PCs, allowing its Swarm attack aura to trigger multiple times per round.

Unfortunately, as has so often been the case in Scales of War, the enemies aren't really set up to take advantage of those synergies. The carrion crawlers begin the encounter almost a round away from the front line, and the Barlgura (who would be best off hiding behind the swarm or the chillborn) starts the combat way out front in an easily surrounded position. It's technically hidden, but only until a PC makes a DC12 perception check

Remember, this is an adventure for 6th level PCs - unless a PC has a wisdom below 10, they automatically have a passive perception of at least 13. The Barlgura will be seen unless you adjust that DC to reflect it's +7 Dex (and thus Stealth) modifer, and even then the chances are that someone in your party is going to spot it withough even really trying. And then the lovable cranky orangutang is going to forced to run away like a little girl or get absolutely destroyed. Which isn't really the way most DMs like to start an encounter.

Despite the problems with placement, the encounter does feature an interesting piece of terrain: a vein of rock named Elemental Chaos. The vein is conspicuously placed in the middle of the combat area, grants +2 attack and damage to chaotic evil creatures, and imposes a -2 to attack and damage on other creatures. In other words, get the Barlgura on the vein as fast as you can, and rely on the PCs to keep off it.

The encounter also features some carrion crawler eggs that the creatures fight ferociously (+2 to attack against creatures within 10 of the eggs) to protect, but the author falls into the old "put the new and interesting terrain at the far corner of the area"TM trap. Which is a pity.

Encounter rating: 3+

So, Rituals (Part Two)

2011-02-01T14:28:00.000+11:00

Back in October, I posted a discussion of what I saw as the problems with rituals as they exist in 4e. At the time I promised a follow-up article detailing how I propose to fix those problems.

I haven't forgotten that promise. It's just taken a little longer to find the time to really look at rituals and think about the options.

I should note right now that this discussion is based on pre-Essentials math and game assumptions. I don't own or have access to the Essentials books and obviously I don't have a crystal ball to tell me how rituals might be implented (if at all) in Essentials in the future. I've worked with what I have.

As mentioned in the previous post, I identified four weaknesses in the 4e ritual system: rituals take too long to cast, they are too expensive (both to master and to cast), they unfairly focuse those expenses on the ritual casters and they are generally ineffective compared to what a PC could achieve without the use of rituals.

I also identified three strengths of the system: they create a different resource pool for adventuring parties, they open new design space for player-created effects and they allow specialised parties to make up for missing roles or skills.

When thinking about how to address the weaknesses without compromising the strengths, I also realised that it was important to arrive at a managable change. This post is after all really just a proposed houserule, and I have no interest in creating a houserule that takes up 5 to 10 pages. There are 30+ rituals in the first Players Handbook alone, and any proposed "fix" that requires individually assessing and evaluating each ritual is not going to work. In other words, keep it simple stupid.

With that in mind, I propose:

A new Ritual Caster feat

Part of the expense of the 4e ritual system comes from the relatively high cost of mastering rituals. That in turn leads to a viscious cycle where the ritual caster doesn't know enough rituals for them to be useful frequently, which means rituals get no spotlight, which means the caster doesn't want to to learn any new ones and so on.

Third edition D&D and the power system of 4e offers a pretty easy solution here: spells known. In 3rd edition, spellcasters learned additional spells at given levels, and the spellcaster's level determined the highest level of spell they could learn. Importantly, though, the character learned those spells and was allowed to scribe them into their spellbook without cost. There doesn't seem to be any reason why that can't be applied here.

The real question then becomes how many rituals do ritual casters learn and how often do they learn new ones? One per level strikes me as too generous. It would make rituals too ubiquitous and decrease character variety. I was next tempted to grant a free ritual at every level at which you learn a new encounter power (making 9 overall), but that seems to be a little too restrictive. A suitable middle ground seems to be that you master one free ritual at every level at which you gain a feat (making 18 overall).

As is the standard rule, a ritual caster can only master rituals of their level or lower.

New component costs

It's unfortunately true that when you tie magic items and rituals to the same resource (gold pieces), one or the other is going to get neglected. Given player's generally well-understood magpie tendencies, it's rituals that suffer. One way of addressing that is to lower the cost of the components, thus making ritual use more attractive.

There's obviously a lot of room here for guesswork, and I was initially minded to tie component cost to a proportion of the cost of an equivalent-level magic item (I was originally looking at 5%), but when I compared those figures, I found that many PHB1 rituals in fact cost less than 5%.

As a draft solution, I propose instead that we halve the component cost of any ritual that already has a set component cost. That will include raise dead and it's elder brethren, which I personally am not inclined to cheapen, but in the interest of keeping this system simple, I feel that the complication that would flow from having an exception outweighs my personal preference. This change does not apply to the item enchantment rituals, because they do not have set components costs. Those rituals are pretty clearly tied to 4e assumptions about character wealth, so changing them requires more work than any good house rule should.

New casting times

Probably the biggest problem with 4e rituals is that they take too long. I previously mentioned Comprehend Languages and Detect Secret Doors as egregious examples, but the problem is pretty widespread.

Unfortunately, the problem is not uniform. Not every ritual has a casting time that is too long, nor is it possible to simple say "halve it" and trust that you're not going to run into problems. Instead, you need an easy to remember system that nevertheless maintains some room for design space. I propose a 4 tier system of casting times:

Rituals that affect only the caster have a 5 round casting time.
Rituals that affect the party or an object have a 1 minute casting time.
Rituals that affect a small area or multiple objects have a 5 minute casting time.
Rituals that affect a large area have a 10 minute casting time.

Comprehend languages and Detect Secret Doors are both personal rituals, so under the new system would have a casting time of 5 rounds. Arcane Lock affects a single door, so would have a casting time of 1 minute. Magic circle affects a small area, so would have a casting time of 5 minutes. Linked Portal affects a large area (the distance between the PC's present location and the intended destination) so would have a casting time of 10 minutes.

Ritual casters can also spend healing surges to speed their ritual use, representing them struggling with the magical energies that are harnessed by a hurriedly completed ritual. For each healing surge that the caster or a participant in the ritual sacrifices, the casting time moves down by one tier and the caster takes a -2 penalty on any skill check associated with the ritual. It's not possible to reduce a ritual to a casting time of less than 5 rounds.

One aspect of this proposal that I particularly like is that 5 rounds is a short enough time period that ritual casting in combat becomes possible, in turn opening up staples such as fighting desperate rearguard actions while the party wizard hastily prepares a ritual to allow the party to escape. But questions remain as to exactly what a ritual caster can do in a combat while preparing a ritual.

I propose that a ritual caster and any character seeking to aid the ritual must sacrifice a standard action per round to maintain a ritual and must remain within 5 squares of the ritual site (such as the magic circle or the door to be arcane locked) if it has one. If at the end of the ritual caster's turn they have not spent a standard action to sustain the ritual or are outside the ritual area, the ritual fails. The ritual caster may continue to use their other actions as normal, and may spend action points if they have them to take standard actions.

And that's my thoughts on how to fix 4e rituals. It's relatively simple, and hopefully it fixes a lot of the weaknesses I identified. Let me know what you think.

SoW: Mine Entrance

2011-01-27T13:58:00.000+11:00

When the PCs finally discover the hidden entrance to the Karak Lode, they come upon the mine's new occupants: Queen Shephatiah's minions.

The dwarves who mined the Karak Lode and built the Karak fortress were pretty clever. They hid the mine directly under the fortress, but created no direct entrance to it. Any invader seeking the mine's wealth would probably never find it, even if they managed to overcome the fortress' inhabitants.

Of course, that problem applies as equally to the PCs as it does to any theoretical invaders. Fortunately, the troglodyte curse chanter who led the chokers to them wasn't really a thinker. When he came up through the hidden elevator beneath the floor of the cells, he didn't think it appropriate or necessary to close the door behind him. And just in case the PCs were of a mind to think "doesn't matter where those new enemies came from", a mysterious trail of canary feathers leads them right to the elevator. Thanks, Birdman!

I personally think a riddle or skill challenge would have been a more appropriate way of having the PCs discover the Karak lode, but it may well be that canary clues become relevant in later adventures. If so, it's appropriate to Pavlov the PCs here to ensure obedience later.

Once the PCs move down the 80' shaft into the mine itself, they quickly confirm that the troglodytes have breached the Karak Lode. What's more, they encounter a group of them sheltered behind a portcullis. Thankfully, these troglodytes are smarter than the longtooth hunters in the Guard Hall encounter and have ranged weapons. Quite a few of them in fact.

The encounter consists of 3 standard troglodytes (2 impalers and a mauler) and 3 minions (spear warriors). All of non-minion monsters have adequate ranged attacks, although they use pre-MM3 math, and even the minion have reach weapons so as to attack PCs at the portcullis with relative immunity. It's like the author looked back at the Guard Hall encounter and thought "D'oh!".

Of course, no encounter is perfect and there are issues with this one. The area beyond the portcullis is so crowded that the troglodytes are going to be fish in a barrel for any PC with area attacks. The encounter includes a poisoned dart wall trap that is probably the most dangerous element of the combat (it attacks 2d4 targets per round and does 1d8+2 and 5 ongoing poison damage to each target it hits) but whose tripwire is neither depicted on the map nor described with any greater specificity than "south of the portcullis". And of course, the portcullis will pose problems for parties that haven't figured out that the Ironfell signet rings will raise them and don't have a PC who can reliably make a DC23 Athletics check. I can't think of many things more boring than being unable to lift the portcullis while my companions engage in an archery duel with the enemy.

Still, it just goes to prove the old adage. "Buy a ranged weapon!"

Encounter rating: 2+

A Fire at Night: the runestalker

2011-01-20T23:15:00.001+11:00

While I was writing A Fire at Night, I knew that the runestalker had the potential to turn into a sort of utlimate enemy, one with the power to do anything and stop anything. That sort of power is commonly known as plot armour, and I wanted to avoid it if I could.

I also wanted the runestalker to be a believable D&D creature; one that readers of the story could imagine themselves encountering during a session. I decided to prepare a 4e stat block for the runestalker as an exercise in mechanics and as a focus for my storytelling. The image on the right is the result of my fiddling, and uses the MM3 monster numbers.

I envisaged the runestalker as a mage-killer; a specialised type of ghoul specifically designed to eliminate spellcasters and assisted by the spellward runes carved into its skin. To that end, I gave it resist 10 to arcane, and removed the normal undead vulnerability to radiant damage.

I also saw is as sturdier than common ghouls, capable of operating independently in enemy territory. It followed that it should be an elite. When it came time to choose a creature type, skirmisher seemed too fragile while brute seemed too lumbering. The runestalker was imagined as a frighteningly quick opponent, but one who struck very hard. Which sounds to me like a soldier. Of course, the runestalker doesn't fit entirely within that classification, and nor was it intended to. Thus, it has a marking mechanic but doesn't really do anything with it. Mechanically, it operates more like a mix between a brute and a skirmisher.

It has the ability to reach a party's backline through the speed of death power, and its claw and runecarved flurry powers can make it difficult for its chosen to target to escape once the runestalker has moved adjacent. It's perfectly capable of tearing into an arcane caster who finds himself trapped alone, but - as is intended in 4e - the runestalker will need help keeping allies at bay if it is to be used in a combat with a full party.

If I were to use the runestalker in a campaign, I'd be very inclined to use it as a spotlight session for an arcanist PC, particularly one who becomes separated from the rest of the PC (such as when researching rituals or other lore). A brief scene where the arcanist is stalked and then attacked by the ghoul could be very cinematic and open up some unique avenues of investigation for the PCs: who had the capability to create one, and why was it sent after the PC?

If anyone uses the runestalker in a game, let me know how it goes.

Self-critique through frippery

2011-01-20T11:52:00.001+11:00

While stumbling around on my usual D&D forums, I came across a thread dealing with word clouds and linking to sites that will generate them. Never one to look at an application without having a bit of a play myself, I ran the short story A Fire at Night through WordItOut, one of the websites in question.

This is the word cloud it generated (after correcting for possessives like Polver's):

"Polver", "Niraya" and "Kirder" are obviously the three most common words in the story, as you would expect with them being the protagonists. Likewise, "ghoul", "creature" and "rune-stalker" are prominent as you would expect of words describing the antagonists.

Where word clouds come in really handy though, is in the analysis of the other common words that come up. "Through", "around", "moved" and "before" are all in the second tier, which suggests a story high on movement and action. That's nice to see, because those are the sort of stories that I like to tell, and which I think fit nicely into the D&D genre.

What's notably missing from the cloud, though, are emotive words. In fact, the only one there is "screamed". Given that I conceived of the story as a coming of age tale expressed primarily through fear, the lack of emotive words in the word cloud might indicate that I didn't implement that concept as directly as I might have.

Now I'm tempted to run some D&D adventures through the cloud and see what the results are.

Word cloud made with WordItOut

SSTL 57: The Lost City of Argent

2011-01-18T14:28:00.001+11:00

Our heroes continue north, headed for Neverwinter, but are soon waylaid.

Read the full recap here

I have to admit that part of me wanted to know whether the cultists in Acererak's City of Skulls knew that we had destroyed the demilich and (if so) whether they would react with despair or murderous rage. However, the much greater part of me (and thus of Pieter) had no great desire to venture into a city that might hold hundreds or thousands of hostile fanatics. Pieter was also keen to get moving for Neverwinter - the detour to the Tomb of Horrors had cost enough time already.

Of course, things never go to plan in a D&D campaign, and we found ourselves lumbered with an immobile golem. Mechanically, I know that the period of deactivation was intended to act as a segue for Bengi's paragon path, which I believe is Avernal Duellist. As far as Pieter is aware, though, he has no idea why Bengi suddenly became inactive for such a prolonged period. There's a vague feeling of unease about the golem's motives and potential, but so far Bengi has been content (even proactive) to follow Pieter's lead, so the tempuran simply doesn't see the golem as a danger the way he sees Soveliss.

The combat that resulted in Rrowthar's rescue was enjoyable on many levels. Pieter got to rush to the aid of the torrian, playing to my defender leanings. Surprisingly, doing so didn't lead to the usual conclusion (Pieter face down in the dirt), largely because of his black iron scale armour's fire resistance. Surrounded by fire creatures, most of whom were minions, Pieter shrugged off approximately 70% of the damage dealt to him in the next few rounds.

I also got to control Dek, because his player was absent for the session. Although it doesn't get a mention in the recap, the highlight of the combat was when the dwarf clambered onto the back of a stone elemental (with Ride the giant down), pulled 2 other opponents to him and whacked all 3 (with Come and get it), and then used an action point to poleaxe the stone elemental he was riding (with Little bait if I remember correctly). Very much a frenzy of destruction, and very much in character with the balls and all combat style of our resident defender. It was really quite fun to play someone else's character, especially one that does so much more damage than Pieter.

Which is not to say that I want to reroll a striker, but it is nice to see those big numbers on your dice rather than someone else's.

I have to admit that I never saw the torrian coming, and having encountered one I just find the whole idea a little weird. Argent may be a great and mythical city, but why do its servants look like hunchbacked hybrids of the predator alien, crabs and bulls? Maybe more will be explained in due course, but for the time being Pieter has done what he does best: taking Rrowthar under his wing and keeping the thing safe.

Thanks to all: 10,000

2011-01-14T14:12:00.003+11:00

As you'll see from looking at the small counter on the bottom right of the webpage, the Astral Sea clocked up its 10,000th visitor today, pretty much just as I was posting the final instalment of A Fire at Night.

I know from the blog stats that most of my readers are from the US (love you all!), so it's not really viable for me to offer a prize to celebrate the milestone even if I were inclined to.

Instead, please take this post as a big thank you to all of you who drop in, especially those who have been good enough to register as following the blog or who have left me comments. Both let me know that someone's out there reading all this stuff that I'm posting, and that's a nice feeling.

Ten thousand, huh? Wow.

A Fire at Night; Ch 3.6

2011-01-14T14:04:00.000+11:00

To Polver’s surprise, the rune-stalker did not leap toward him, instead standing motionless as he crossed the apse and dove on the glittering blade. His opponent merely watched him move, stunned by the teenager’s sudden display of bravado and rage. When Polver’s hand closed around the hilt of Kirder’s sword, however, the rune-stalker surged up onto the altar ready to pounce.

Polver scrambled to his feet and turned to face the beast. The sword felt strange in his hand. It was warm to the touch, as though it were fresh from the forge, and throbbed with a slow cadence. His fingers tingled with static energy where they grasped the hilt and he suddenly heard the sound of rushing air where none had been before.

The rune-stalker leapt; it’s powerful legs pushing it across the vast distance to Polver and its blood-covered claws reaching for him. Beyond the claws, the creature’s jaws were open wide, its rows of decaying but razor sharp teeth framing the threat of oblivion.

Polver found himself drawn into that blackness, but now it held no fear. His spirit surged and he roared again, raising the blade to meet the creature head on. The sword surged again, echoing Polver’s fury. It pulsed mightily, all of the throbs that Polver had previously felt joining into one overwhelming burst, and then golden flames roared along the blade. Polver felt the weapon join its essence to his and then he swung with all his might.

The holy blade corrected Polver’s amateurish but enthusiastic swing, and the rune-stalker descended right into the path of the burning weapon. The creature’s left arm came away in a spray of burning ichor even as it crashed yelping into Polver. The teenager staggered back from the crashing weight, but managed to retain his feet. The rune-stalker landed badly, and Polver moved quickly to take his chance. Kirder’s blade passed cleanly through the beast’s chest, the golden flames spreading with impossible quickness to trace the sigils inscribed on the rune-stalker’s body. The creature howled in pain and thrashed with its remaining arm, filthy claws scoring a ragged gash down Polver’s chest.

“Die!” he screamed, and again the sword obeyed. The flames engulfed the rune-stalker and flared brighter and brighter, until Polver was blinded by their colour. The thrashing at the end of the blade stopped, and the flames abated. Polver removed the weapon from the now-still creature. His breath came in ragged pants. His heart hammered in his chest, and his pulse thundered in his ears. Only it wasn’t his pulse. As the stillness of night settled around Polver again, he realised the sound was not the wind. It was not his blood. He could hear voices amid the din, and they sounded pleased.

A wet cough caused Polver to look up. Kirder lay on his side on the altar, blood-spattered and deathly pale but conscious. He smiled wanly, and a trickle of blood ran down his cheek.

“I see you’ve finally overcome the bitch.”

The paladin coughed again, spattering blood and loosened teeth across the apse. He sagged back to the altar, clearly spent. Polver rushed to his side.

“Kirder!” he called as he moved, dropping the sword and carefully propping the paladin’s head with his hands. “We did it. We’re alive!”.

Kirder shook his head, the movement barely felt in Polver’s palms.

“No. You survived, boy. I’m done for. Just as well. I’ve had enough of this place”. Kirder’s eyes moved to take in the temple around them, but Polver knew without asking that he was referring to the city beyond. To Luskan.

“Bring me the sword”, Kirder commanded and Polver hurried to comply. “Take care of this blade, boy. It is a link to the past, the most holy relic of this temple.” Polver placed the sword in Kirder’s hands, the paladin grasping for it desperately. Once the weapon was in his hands, a calm fell upon him. “And in the right hands… in your hands, it is the key to the future.” Kirder took a ragged breath, air bubbling in his ravaged chest. “Keep your fire alight, boy. Keep it bright.”

Kirder’s eyes closed, and then his breathing stopped. The sword glowed for a fraction of a second as something passed within it, and then it was once again just a blade. Polver slowly lowered the paladin’s head, waiting for tears that would not come for days. Instead he turned and looked toward the temple doors.

Night still hung heavy in the air, but dawn was not far off.

Polver picked up Kirder’s sword, and heard its strange whispers in his ear. He wondered whether, in time, he would be able to make out Kirder’s voice in the din. He was alone, but did not feel it. He was untrained, but did not feel it. He knew he should be scared, but was not. He thought of Kirder’s words, “There is a fire in your soul. Use it to burn away your doubt”.

He smiled grimly. Luskan awaited, and he was ready.

Fin

SoW: Foiled Ambush

2011-01-07T14:18:00.000+11:00

After the PCs have cleared the fortress, finding no sign of the Karak Lode, a sandstorm descends, forcing them to take cover before continuing their search.

While the PCs are undertaking their forced rest, they are ambushed by a quintet of cavern chokers and a troglodyte curse chanter. I say "forced rest" because that's exactly what it is. Just as the PCs are considering leaving the fortress, a massive sandstorm springs up. Not by Shephatiah's or other mortal magic. Presumably by narrative necessity. I'm never one to complain about narrative necessity in a D&D game. I don't have a problem with the plot railroad. But I do think it needs to be handled better than this module does it. A sandstorm is eminently believable in the middle of the thornwaste, but a DM would certainly do well to presage it with some early and/or ominous comments. The Desert Patrol, Gatehouse and Courtyard encounters are great opportunities to hint at what's to come, especially if you have a PC with a nature skill that would allow them to notice the signs of the coming storm.

That issue aside, I'm intrigued by Dungeon's approach to this encounter. They have set it in a specific room, despite the encounter text specifically stating "This encounter assumes the PCs set up camp in the northern overlook... If the PCs choose to rest in another location, rework the encounter as necessary." I personally would have preferred a floating encounter (without an attached delve map) at the beginning of the fortress portion of the adventure, with a short discussion covering the sandstorm, the ambushers, and the fact that you can run the encounter wherever the PCs happen to rest.

Cavern chokers, with their body shield power, can be nasty opponents because they inhibit a party's ability to freely choose their targets. A choker that successfully grabs a target is unlikely to be the victim of focused fire unless you somehow ended up with a party full of area attacks, close attacks, or melee and ranged attacks that target Fort and Will (none of which trigger body shield). And when there are 5 chokers, you can imagine the sort of difficulty a party might have getting rid of any of them without hurting their allies.

The choker(s) without a grabbed target are the obvious targets, but they can climb the walls (spider climb) to attack with their reach 2 and can grant themselves concealment with chameleon hide.

An evil DM would supplement all of this with liberal application of the curse chanter's poison ray, which weakens the target it hits. Now not only do the PCs have trouble concentrating fire, their ability to do spread damage is limited as well. And when the tide eventually turns in the PC's favour (assuming it does), chant of renewal allows the chanter to heal all bloodied allies within 5 squares, extending the punishment just that little bit longer.

Looking at this encounter on paper suggests that it might be equally as TPK-threatening as the Ogre Bombadier and Ettercap Landing encounters for Rescue at Rivenroar. Hopefully I'm overstating that. It wouldn't be the first time I'd seen PCs breeze through an encounter I had judged as being difficult or deadly.

Encounter rating: 3+ (mostly for plain bloody-minded nastiness. More synergy between the chanter and the chokers, more interesting terrain or a better range of enemies would have raised this rating.)

SSTL 56: End of Ages

2011-01-05T23:30:00.000+11:00

The Heroes of Winterhaven confront, and destroy, the demilich Acererak.

Read the full recap here.

As I was preparing to write this post, I was mentally reviewing the events of the session without actually reviewing the newsletter itself. I was all set to say that "this session revolved around the final battle with Acererak", but when I took a last-minute look at the session recap, I realised that to say so would do a great disservice to the session.

The encounter with the efreet was noticeable because our group again demonstrated an approach to encounters that has been, until Tomb of Horrors, non-existent. Namely, we took active steps to avoid a combat. Regardless of the criticisms I have levelled at the Tomb and its author in previous posts, I have to admit that the fear of death and destruction that permeates the Tomb and players' psyches very neatly counterracts the heroic obstinacy that some D&D players display ("Of course I'm going to charge Ashardalon. Why wouldn't I?").

It also showed that the mechanics of 4e aren't always as transparent as some commenters suggest. As it turns out, the efreet-producing urn can be shut down with a skill challenge. That possibility didn't even occur to us. While that might be more a reflection on us than on 4e, at a minimum it suggested that flavour and atmosphere will do wonders to clothe 4e's mechanical chassis.

The crushing trap outside Acererak's tomb wasn't terribly mechanically interesting, but I have to admit I enjoyed it greatly because it gave my PC the chance to shine. Pieter's high athletics modifier, combined with his willingness to apply Stormbringer to uses other than stabbing things, provided a perfect solution to the trap. It also provided, in my opinion, a very cinematic moment. I'll remember it for a while. Of course, I'm biased...

The 4e authors have, in my opinion done a wonderful job of creating an endboss in Acererak that neatly walks the line between TPK and difficult fight. We ended up getting through without losing a PC, but it could easily (and quickly) have swung the other way. Acererak's teleport ability could have proven very nasty indeed had we not already cleared out the rooms we ended up in or had the DM used it to propel PCs into the levitation pillars in the columned hall.

His Prison of Tears caught three PCs during the encounter. Nala made her first save and avoided any real danger. Bengi failed his first save, Pieter couldn't reach him to grant another, and Sov's attempts to switch the effect onto the Demilich itself failed; leaving Bengi in the unenviable position of having to make a saving throw at -2 or die. There was a bit of held breath around the virtual table, as we waited for the results. It was Bengi's player's cheer that gave it away first (his rolls usually lag behind his VOIP), and then people started breathing again.

After that point, Acererak again landed the attack, this time on Dek. The dwarf failed his first save but was granted an extra one by Soveliss which he promptly passed. And after that Acererak didn't really have a chance. The floating skull had taken too much damage to last much longer. He had however taken Bengi to the brink via Prison of tears and Dek to the brink via hp damage (all those Will attacks certainly helped), and either PC falling could have started a chain reaction of PC deaths.

I have to admit I really like these "two strikes and you're out powers". They strike a very nice balance between the rocket tag of high-level magic in D&D 3.X and the slow grind that sometimes exists in low-level 4e. The outcome is quick, but not so quick that you can't do anything to prevent it. There's nothing quite like being told "the next time you fail a saving throw, the PC is dead" to make an adventuring party sit up and take notice.

After Acererak was destroyed, the tomb collapsed, we had to leave half the treasure behind, and most of what we did manage to take with us turned out to be magically disguised tin. I told you Acererak was a prick.

Still, we did it. We braved and conquered the Tomb of Horrors. Watch out giants, the Heroes of Winterhaven are headed your way.

Merry Christmas to All

2010-12-25T13:00:00.002+11:00

I apologise to everyone for the lack of posts this December. Work has been frenzied, and it's been all I can do to get home in time to see the Colmarrs Junior, let alone find time for my usually frequent posting here. Don't worry, it's been a good busyness, not a stressful busyness.

By now I'm down visiting Ma and Pa Colmarr with Mrs Colmarr and the Colmarrs Junior, so there won't be any further posts this year. 2010 has rolled to a close, and I'm very quickly closing in on 250 posts (wow). I hope you've enjoyed reading the blog as much as I have enjoyed maintaining it.

It would be remiss of me to let Christmas and New Years pass by without wishing you all the best of the season. I hope you all get to take a break from whatever income-earning activity you engage in (preferrably on a fully-paid basis) and can spend some time with those you love. Or at least play some D&D.

In the same vein as last year, here's a D&D christmas song for you, courtesy of Leo Knight:

(To the tune of Good King Wenceslas)

Homeward bound and battle found
Said the dungeon master,

Minions just, but failed your trust
To help kill us faster.

Locks, keys, doors and friends are said
To help solve our problem,

Then we found that stupid lich
So he promptly screwed us.

A vision seen, a vision sent
Went to Sauron’s castle,

A power asked, a power lent
Sauron is an asshole.

Before and after came the sun
Of the stupid dragon,

Seen three times but only one
Riding in his wagon.

There and now and thence beyond
Out he came a bragging,

Found no time for there was none
We’ll send him back a draggin’.

A battle’s cost, a friendship lost
So we sing our chorus:

A debt unpaid for a kingdom waylaid
Then we’ll all kill Orcus!

Merry Chistmas everyone. I'll talk to you soon.

SoW: Crypts

2010-12-22T14:02:00.001+11:00

The PCs finish their exploration of the Karak Fortress' lower level, encountering a hideous bat-like creature in the ancient dwarven crypts.

I have to admit up front that I have no idea what the creature encountered in the crypts (a Lesser Berbalang) looks like. It is described in the text as "a hideous creature with batlike wings and feral claws, shrieking as it attacks". That's not a bad summary, but it leaves a hell of a lot of mental wriggle room. Berbalangs aren't well-bed enough in the D&D gamer consciousness to be mentioned casually this way, so I'm surprised that there's no picture of a Berbalang in the adventure.

For what it's worth, google image search tells me that they look like hairy blue (hob)goblins with bat wings and long claws. Not what I would have pictured if left to my own devices...

The berbalang's presence here is unexplained. It simply "makes its lair among these ancient corpses". If there's a reason for the berbalang's inclusion, it's not included here. It stands out to me as a "gotta have something weird" encounter, very much of the old school "fill the dungeon with strange creatures" mentality. If it were me, I'd be tempted to replace it with something more thematic. Perhaps some sort of element-themed undead (perhaps an Immolith if they're in the right level range) to pressage the portal to the elemental chaos that the PCs will soon find, or the ghosts of dwarves who lost their lives in the fortress or the mines. The latter might make a suitable replacement for the Birdman, leading the PCs to the portal beneath the cells and miming pressing its signet ring to the floor before descending through the paving stones.

Of course, if you're contemplating removing the Birdman, you should read ahead in the adventure path and consider what impact that will have on later adventures.

The berbalang itself has some interesting abilities and is unlikely to get stunlocked or easily defeated by action denial tactics as other solo monsters can. It can split into a number of duplicates, each of which has a full initiative count of actions. It can reabsorb duplicates to regain hit points (which might in fact act as healing if the duplicate was created when the berbalang itself had less than 120 hp remaining), it can detonate its duplicates to damage and daze enemies, and it can redirect attacks onto its duplicates.

All of those options could make for a very interesting combat, were it not for the fact that the berbalang can only create duplicates in unoccupied adjacent squares. It starts the combat in a 1 square x 2 square cell. Even if it manages to get out into the corridor, the chances of the berbalang having line of effect to an adjacent square that is well-suited for the appearance of a duplicate are slim. The encounter area just doesn't really allow for the berbalang's abilities to shine.

Encounter rating: 2

Character Concept: Deva Bard

2010-12-14T22:08:00.003+11:00

Deva are new enough as a D&D race that I don't really have a firm grasp on their mythology. They initially seem to be replacements for the old aasimar, but a closer inspection reveals that's clearly not the case. Angels in 4e are not the good guys they once were. Instead, they are living embodiments of their divine master's will; merciless enactors of divine decree.

Deva to some extent reflect that change. They aren't inherently good any more than tieflings are inherently evil, but they do have a historical connection to divinity they defines them and guides their existence. That is largely due to the fact that they cannot die. When a deva dies, it is reincarnated in a new body with nothing but dim memories of the lives it has lived. That's a perfect excuse for Bardic Knowledge if ever I've heard it.

Ansis was an angel serving Corellon long before humanity rose to cover the earth. Dimly forgotten memories speak to him of the dawn war itself, and of eons spent protecting the elves and eladrin against the encroachments of the followers of Gruumsh. Somehow, at some time, Ansis become bound to mortal form.

His latest body formed in the aftermath of the battle of Bordrin's Watch. Perhaps he fell defending the fortress against Tusk's horde. Perhaps not. Ansis simply does not know. What he does know, what he can feel in his very bones, is that the time has come. The Turning, an event which he does not understand but which he knows is the reason for his mortal form, is near. And Ansis knows he must rally and guide the heroes who will birth a new age.

Ansis, level 4

Deva, Bard
Build: Cunning Bard
Bardic Virtue: Virtue of Prescience

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 10, Dex 10, Int 13, Wis 16, Cha 19.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 10, Dex 10, Int 11, Wis 13, Cha 18.

AC: 20 Fort: 13 Reflex: 16 Will: 18
HP: 37 Surges: 7 Surge Value: 9

TRAINED SKILLS
Arcana +10, Diplomacy +11, Religion +12, History +12, Streetwise +13

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +2, Bluff +7, Dungeoneering +8, Endurance +2, Heal +7, Insight +6, Intimidate +7, Nature +8, Perception +6, Stealth +2, Thievery +2, Athletics +2

FEATS
Bard: Ritual Caster
Level 1: Bardic Knowledge
Level 2: Prescient Fortification
Level 4: Improved Majestic Word

POWERS
Bard at-will 1: Misdirected Mark
Bard at-will 1: Vicious Mockery
Bard encounter 1: Blunder
Bard daily 1: Echoes of the Guardian
Bard utility 2: Legend Lore
Bard encounter 3: Rhyme of the Blood-Seeking Blade

ITEMS
Ritual Book, Adventurer's Kit, Longsword, Light Shield, Cloak of the Chirurgeon +1, Master's Wand of Vicious Mockery +1, Time Link Chainmail +1

RITUALS
Comrades' Succor, Arcane Mark

Deva, with their bonuses to Wisdom and Intelligence and skill bonuses to History and Religion, are quite suited to the bardic class. They might make even better cunning bards than prescient bards, but with Ansis I wanted to focus on the idea of destiny and foresight. Ansis knows something is coming, and his divine purpose gives him insight into things that have not quite happened. That intutition is reflected in vicious mockery, which inflicts an attack penalty on enemies, and in Rhyme of the blood-seeking blade, which allows Ansis to guide his allies to just the right moment to strike.

Ansis' role as guide of heroes is reflected by his other powers. Misdirected mark, Blunder and Echoes of the guardian all work directly with allies, either by granting them additional attacks or by allowing them to mark enemies.

The latter may not seem like such a "guiding" thing to do, but marks can offer a lot of flexibility to an adventuring party, particularly when applied to PCs monsters don't necessarily want to attack (ie. the ones with the highest score in the NAD the monster favours) or whom they can't reach (ie. the ranger at the other end of the corridor). Ansis isn't directing monsters' ire out of willfulness or spite. He's directing them where they'll do the least possible damage.

SoW: The Birdman

2010-12-03T14:21:00.002+11:00

While exploring the cells below the Karak Fortress, the PCs encounter a strange prisoner.

When the PCs head down the stairs guarded by the human lackeys, iron cobra and longtooth hunters (the Guard Hall encounter), they find themselves in the lower level of the fortress. The lower level is empty but for some mould-filled store rooms, some crypts, and the Ironfell clan's cells.

We'll get to the crypts next, but for now I want to dwell on the cells.There is no combat encounter in this area. Instead inside one the cells, surprisingly, sits:

an aged human male, his lined face sporting a snow-white beard to match his fringe of hair. He wears the garb of a simple desert peasant, and appears to have not been here long. Seven yellow canaries perch on his shoulders and hop around his cell. The Birdman whistles and chirps at his tiny charges. If spoken to, he simply nods and smiles.

The Birdman plays a pretty significant role in the rest of the campaign, and I'm unclear about whether I approve of the fact that the author doesn't warn the DM about that role. After all, ignorance in a DM can lead to things happening that really shouldn't.

On the other side of the fence, it's doubtful whether players can be trusted not to read Dungeon magazine, so perhaps WotC were hoping to keep the cat/Birdman in the bag. That was probably a forlorn hope for a number of reasons: firstly because people on the internet can't keep their mouth shut (I distinctly recall seeing forum threads revealing the lore behind the Birdman within days of this adventure going public, and without spoiler warnings at that). Secondly, because WotC themselves subsequently published an article in Dragon dealing with the Birdman.

The chances of your players not knowing who the Birdman's true identity is therefore directly proportionate to the attention they pay to (1) older editions of D&D, (2) D&D internet forums and (3) Dragon magazine. Still, on the off chance that your players don't know who the Birdman is, I'm not going to spoil it here. No, not even by telling you where to search. You'll find it if you look.

Although I will say that I found it delicious that they placed the Birdman in the cells.

SSTL 55: Into the Columned Hall

2010-11-30T14:13:00.000+11:00

Our heroes near Acererak's tomb, but still have a few obstacles to overcome.

Read the full recap here.

The collumned hall is an interesting 'trap' in that it poses some very curious puzzles. The first thing that most adventuring parties will notice when they enter are the demon faces on the northern wall. Assuming they've had some sort of interraction with the devourer in the first corridor of the Tomb, then they will almost immediately know that they don't want to mess with these two either.

But it's not immediately apparent how they are intended to be threatening. After all, players who've made it this far have already learned the devourer's trick and how to beat it - ie. don't stick anything in its mouth. So the immediate reaction to their presence is one of puzzlement, and maybe a vague feeling of dread. After all, if Gygax has proved anything by now, it's that he can trick you into doing some very very silly things.

I'm not sure what caused Bengi's player to touch the pillar. I'm half convinced it was an initiator's act, intended to provoke something. There's not much fun to be had in walking through a massive hall filled with columns and not touching anuthing. Gygax probably knew that. So Bengi ended up floating through the air, and I had Pieter try to save him. Maybe I'd caught the initiator bug too, because I'm not usually the type to attempt Ethan Hunt-like shenanigans. It didn't work, more's the pity, but at least I felt cool doing it.

The study of the throne, crown and sceptre occupied a significant portion of this session. It was so obviously booby-trapped that no one wanted to be the first to touch it. Putting on the crown and not being eaten (ooh, it just occured to me that it might have been a mimic) or obliterated came as a great relief, although we then found ourselves in the position that the crown needed to come off but we didn't know how. When Soveliss' player suggested using Mage Hand, it seemed like a great idea. And it was, until some lax phrasing proved our undoing. Who would have thought that asking the hand "Which end of the sceptre should we touch to the crown?" would be misinterpreted as referring to the carving on the throne...

My guess is that the DM has played one to many games of D&D in editions where wishes get perverted.

Still, it was in the spirit of the Tomb and Pieter managed to succeed at his first save against the ongoing 20 damage that the mistake caused, so no death no foul.

I'm a little disappointed that we didn't examine the amber gem more closely, at it strikes me as the coolest thing in the collumned hall. The more I think about it, the more I wonder what it was. Although the charred bodies around it certainly don't bode well, I can't help but note that nothing else in the tomb looks obviously dangerous. Perhaps the one thing that does look dangerous actually isn't. Of course, that could be Gygax playing with my mind. After all, if we've learned anything by now, it's that (say it with me) Acererak is a prick.

A Fire at Night; Ch 3.5

2010-11-29T13:59:00.000+11:00

The rune-stalker rained blow after blow on the stricken paladin as Kirder struggled to defend himself. The golden plate mail rang like a bell with each blow but as the assault continued its tone flattened. Polver stood mesmerised nearby. Finally, the creature found the opening it was looking for and thrust its clawed hand into the gap beneath Kirder’s left arm. The paladin cried out in agony and blood flooded onto the altar.

Kirder had lost. The paladin was defeated. Polver knew that. The undead beast had killed him too, and Polver would be next. His terror flooded through him, and all that stopped him from fleeing was the knowledge that there was nowhere to go. Everyone he knew in Luskan was dead. Niraya, who had rescued him from the merchant who owned him, was gone. Kirder, whom even the other denizens of the ruined city feared, lay dead before him. No one would care for him if he ran. No one in the night-damned city would offer him succour. At best, he could only hope to be enslaved again.

The rune-stalker looked up from Kirder’s motionless form, its hand awash with the paladin’s blood. Malice glinted in its eyes.

Something hardened within Polver and his fear vanished, to be replaced by something sharp. Something strong. Something that clawed and cried and struggled for life.

He would not die here; would not bested by this thing.

Luskan would not claim him.

Would not kill him.

Would not have him.

Kirder’s blade glinted in the light from a shattered window, reflecting the blaze now burning in Polver’s soul.

“I’m not afraid of you!” Polver screamed at the rune-stalker and at the uncaring city itself. And then he leapt.

SoW: Great Hall

2010-11-23T13:57:00.000+11:00

The PCs reach the rear of the Karak fortress, and confront Queen Shephatiah. Or do they?

This section of Lost Mines of Karak works on an age-old switcheroony. Queen shephatiah, presumably suspecting that someone would come to search for the mine sooner or later, has set up a dryad as a decoy. With the dryad's deceptive veil (which allows it to appear as any medium humanoid), it's actually a pretty effective plan. Your PCs will probably believe they have killed Shephatiah right up until they encounter the real - much uglier - queen herself.

It's important to note that the duplicity extends even to the occupants of the fortress. If the PCs capture and interrogate one of the hobgoblins, humans or shifters they have so far fought, the captive cannot tell the PCs about the deception because they themselves do not know.

As interesting - and time-honoured - as the deception is, it creates an potential problem. Most D&D players (in my experience) are quite focused on the death count; judging the success of their mission by whether the bad guy is dead or not. In turn, most D&D adventurers are designed to have the bad guy at the end so that even players who lose sight of their official goal can still successfully complete it.

That doesn't happen here. The goal given to the PCs is to find and reclaim the Karak Lode. Although the dwarf fortress is linked to the lost mine, it isn't the mine. PCs who win this encounter then turn and leave the fortress with a cry of "mission accomplished!" haven't actually achieved much at all.

Which poses some interesting questions for the DM. Do you try to get them back on track? Do you let them leave? How does Bram Ironfell react to the news that they only found the fortress and not the mine? If the PCs don't find the mine, how does that affect the adventure path overall? And so on and so on. It's beyond the scope of this post (or even blog) to contemplate all those options, but I will say this: If you want to avoid the issue, make it clear to your players when the PCs first meet Bram Ironfell that their objective is to find the mine.

That issue aside, this is a fairly straightforward encounter. It contains 1 skirmisher, 1 soldier, 2 brutes and some minions. Notably all are melee attackers, so an artillery or controller monster would have been nice. There are some gems among the monster's powers, such as the cacklefiend hyena's harrier trait (enemies adjacent to the hyena grant combat advantage to all melee attackers), the lackey's mob rule and the dryad's treestride (teleport up to 8 squares ending adjacent to a tree or plant), but none of them synergise particularly well or provide any truly awe-inspiring possibilities. Which is a bit of a pity given that this is the "false boss" of the fortress.

Encounter rating: 3

SSTL 54: The Prisoner

2010-11-16T17:45:00.001+11:00

Our heroes find an unfinished area of the tomb, and discover that not all of the denizens of the Tomb of Horrors are willing servants of Acererak.

Read the full recap here.

The focus of this session was the encounter with the cave siren, but I might leave that for a moment and touch first on the massive iron door. I'm not sure whether the door - and more specifically its locking mechanism - is part of the original Tomb of Horrors, but it posed a significant issue for me during our exploration.

Those who have been reading long enough will know that my cleric Pieter Grimm now wields the bastard sword Stormbringer, the former weapon of his mentor Axis. Axis fell defending a young Pieter from orc raiders and both priest and weapon were lost for over twenty years. Pieter was briefly reunited with the long-enslaved Axis in Thunderspire Labyrinth and then recovered the old priest's weapon for Michael the Burnt's tower in the shadowfell. Long story short? Stormbringer is mechanically a paragon tier artifact of custom design, but it means much more to Pieter than its mechanical potency.

And then he's asked to slide it into a hole in a door that radiates 'hunger' in the Tomb of Horrors. The same Tomb of Horrors that already ate one of his javelins (the 'devourer' in the entrance corridor) and a magical ring (the sealed door in the chapel). Understandably, I wasn't terribly impressed with that idea, so Pieter initially refused to use Stormbringer as one of the door's keys. More on that next session, but it meant that the Heroes of Winterhaven were forced to explore in another direction, which led us into the siren's cave.

It was a pleasant surprise after rectangular room upon rectangular room to find a natural cavern hidden in the back of the Tomb, and in hindsight the sudden change in architecture did a good job of indicating that the encounter in the room was different from the others in the Tomb. Just as the walls there were different from the walls elsewhere, the occupant of the room was different from the traps and monstrosities occupying the rest of the Tomb.

The DM played up the siren's melancholy well, and it was Bengi's player who first decided to roll Insight to determine whether she was sincere in her apologies. At the time, the DM laughed and pointed out that it was the emotionless golem who first picked up on the siren's sadness. Yes, it probably should have been Pieter (the most 'good' character of the party and the one with the best Insight), but in the time it takes for initiative to roll around, I often forget to act on suspicions and thoughts I have while waiting for my turn. Oh well, Pieter is obviously rubbing off on Bengi!

Unfortunately, Bengi's arcana and intimidate rolls were abysmal (I don't think he rolled above a 5) and we ended up failing the ensuing skill challenge, leaving Dek and Soveliss no option but to kill the siren. Not that they ever really wanted to avoid that, of course.

A Fire at Night; Ch 3.4

2010-11-12T14:20:00.000+11:00

Once the paladin had donned his armour, Kirder and Polver made their way out of the crypt and back into the temple proper. At the top of the stairs, Polver moved toward the main door, only to find himself alone. He turned to find Kirder standing on the dais before the altar. The golden flame flickered around them.

“We fight them here,” Kirder said. “If we prevail then Bahamut will witness out triumph. If we fall, then he will know of our sacrifice.”

Polver glanced around them, taking in the broken paving, half-rotted pews and discarded items of worship. Finally he found a heavy iron candlestick and picked it up. It was overly heavy and more than a little unwieldy, but he had little alternative. He wasn’t going to fight the ghouls barehanded.

Polver could barely see the ghouls moving beyond the temple entrance - they were little more than shadows passing back and forth across the broken doorway - but he could hear them growling as they paced, and the sound played on his mind, recalling his earlier terror. He felt his composure failing.

“Now is the time, boy,” Kirder said. “You cannot survive this place if you allow fear to rule you. Luskan will devour you body and soul. So you must choose. Choose between fear and courage. Choose between being a victim or being a hero. Look night in its ugly teeth and tell the bitch you are not afraid of her. There is a fire in your soul. Use it to burn away your doubt.”

The golden flames around them flickered and died.

Barely a second passed before the ghouls screamed and charged into the church; dodging around fallen pillars and leaping over rotting pews. The rune-stalker quickly outpaced its companion and mounted the steps to the altar. Kirder went to meet it, and the monstrosity leapt at him with outstretched claws. The paladin batted the charge away with a sweep of his blade, but the rune-stalker’s speed and strength carried it into Kirder’s golden armour. Both went tumbling over the altar.

Polver watched the first seconds of the rune-stalker’s assault with wide eyes before he was forced to turn his attention to the ghoul bearing down on him. His brain screamed at him to run but he refused, instead raising the heavy candlestick above his head. The ghoul came on regardless. Just as it leapt for him, Polver brought the candlestick down and the heavy weight caught the ghoul’s head a crunching blow. Decayed flesh and brain matter splashed across Polver’s face. The creature staggered past him then fell to the floor, its momentum carrying the prone form more than a metre.

Polver almost cried with jubilation, but the ghoul rose to its feet with startling speed. It turned to attack again, and Polver looked into its destroyed face with new-found horror. What could kill this thing? The ghoul was on him before he could react, scratching claws grabbing at his arm and neck and head and dragging Polver’s throat toward its rending teeth. Polver fought against it with all his strength, swinging the candlestick at the creature’s head, but it was too close. He couldn’t get leverage for the blows.

In desperation, Polver dropped the weapon and grabbed the ghoul’s head. He dug his thumbs into the creature’s eyes, feeling one pop under his desperate attack. The creature squealed and momentarily tried to escape, but their arms had become intertwined in the struggle and all it did was manage to pull them both down. Polver found himself on top of the thrashing ghoul. Blood dripped into his eyes from a wound in his scalp. The stench of the corpse-eater filled his nostrils. It’s claws raked and battered at his ribs, but it was the feel of the ghoul’s ruined eye against his finger that fired him. He could win.

With all his might, Polver lifted the ghoul’s head then smashed it back down against the temple’s paved floor. The creature grunted. And again. The grunting stopped; the ghouls’ blows lessened. And again. The creature’s head was a mess; little more than a shattered face. Its arms fell limp, and it stopped moving altogether. The sound of Polver’s heart hammered in his ears. A wild victory cry began to build in his throat.

Steel rang on stone nearby, and Polver looked over to see Kirder’s blade clatter on the floor of the temple. The paladin was prone on the altar, struggling with the rune-stalker that towered above him. One of Kirder’s arms was clearly broken, lying limp beside him, and as Polver watched he desperately fended off the creature’s next attack with his one good hand.

The runes on the creature’s skin shone with fury, and Polver again saw it fighting Niraya; avoiding her lightning-quick strikes, lifting her from the wagon with one arm and then carelessly tossing her aside. She had been the most competent warrior Polver had ever met, and the rune-stalker had lazily bested her. Now it was going to kill Kirder.

Polver’s terror returned.

SoW: Guard Hall

2010-11-10T14:08:00.000+11:00

The PCs find the entrance to the fortress' lower level, but unfortunately it's guarded by humans, longtooth shifters, and an iron cobra.

This is another encounter that technically takes place across multiple areas (5) and multiple levels (2). However, unlike the Gatehouse encounter (which could possibly spread to include all of the areas within it), this encounter will almost certainly end up taking place in just two areas: 23 and 26. If you count the stairs as part of area 23, then the entire encounter may take place there alone.

That seems a waste of a multi-faceted location, so if you run this encounter you should do whatever's necessary to cause the PCs to spread out. Perhaps let them notice the chains leading to the portcullis winch in area 25 or have one of the lackeys be in the latrine (area 24) and emerge in round 2 (perhaps with belt undone!).

The encounter also suffers from poor placement of enemies. In fact, the placement is so bad that this isn't really one encounter. It's two. The five human lackeys on the first level of the fortress are minions, so they aren't going to last long even with their mob rule bonuses (+2 to defences if at least 2 other human lackeys are within 5 squares). There is then a locked portcullis between the PCs, the iron cobra and the longtooth hunters.

That wouldn't necessarily be a problem if one of the lackeys raised the portcullis to allow the shifters to reinforce them, if the cobra had an at-will ranged attack, and/or the cobra did anything at all before the PCs entered it's guarded area centred on the staircase landing. Unfortunately, as things stand (and as the printed tactics suggest), the longtooth hunters come to the landing and then wait for the PCs to breach the portcullis.

What will happen in actuality is that the PCs will massacre the lackeys (which might at least be entertaining viewing for the shifters), then fire ranged weapons and spells through the portcullis at the longtooth hunters, who have no ranged attacks of their own. By the time the shifters raise the portcullis from the wrong side themselves to get at the PCs, the fight is all but over. Then when the PCs do raise the portcullis and proceed downstairs, they trigger the iron cobra and have the joy of pitting five 6th-level characters against one 6th level skirmisher.

I struggle to find anything complimentary to say about this encounter. It's simply not worth the time it would take to run it as printed. Either you significanltly change the positions or types of the enemies or you ditch it and handle it via an ad hoc skill challenge instead. I recommend the latter.

Encounter rating: 1

Lost Boys

2010-11-05T17:35:00.001+11:00

I've always wondered why edition wars burn so bright; why we geeks get so heated about something that is ultimately inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. After all, a new edition of a game isn't a big deal, right? As my DM likes to say, "WotC isn't exactly likely to send goons around to take away our rulebooks".

** Long rambling personal rant following - skip to the end if you want to**

Of course, I've always been on the progressive side of the edition wars. I came back to D&D right on the cusp of 3.0/3.5 changeover. Despite the fact that I bought the 3.0 core rulebooks less than a month before 3.5 released, I held that against the retailer who let me blunder into that, not WotC. I bought 3.5 and enjoyed it. And then 4e came out just at a time when my love for 3.5 was waning and I loved the new child even more than the last. I was on the progressive side again.

With the release of Essentials and, more recently, the announcement of the web-based character builder, I'm finally getting to experience what it feels like on the conservative side of the fence.

My group hasn't bought into Essentials. We're happy with the "classic" 4e. Which is not to say that we mighn't be happier with Essentials, but there's no drive to outlay money to fix a game that we don't consider broken. We'll stick with our D&D, thanks very much. And while WotC was talking up how the two versions of 4e were compatible and would be supported, I was happy with that. But over the last month or so, it seems to be increasingly clear that Essentials is where WotC sees 4e going. And when I saw core 4e characters referred to as "Classic Characters" in the screenshots of the new web-based character, that outcome seemed beyond doubt. "Classic" is a very loaded word.

Being left behind by Essentials is bad enough, but having my lovely offline character builder "taken away" is another thing altogether. It offered me some opportunity of staying current, even if I wasn't picking up the Heroes of [insert here] books. Now that support for it is being (has been?) discontinued, I'm officially a dinosaur. I could of course maintain an active DDI subscription and use the new web-based builder but to be perfectly honest I don't think I'd get enough value out of an ongoing subscription to justify it. I don't have enough time or opportunity to read Dragon or Dungeon regularly - I have approximately 20 issues saved on my hard drive; I've read maybe 2 of them - and even if I did I haven't been particularly impressed lately with the previews and advertising masquerading as articles. And although I love - LOVE - the character builder to bits, I don't really need to use it often enough to justify maintaining a subscription just for it. My cleric last levelled up in August.

Now, I was at one stage shortly after the character builder announcement filled with nerdrage of the "I don't want to play this game any more" variety, only deciding to stick around when I realised that I play D&D exclusively with 5 other people. So long as they were in the same boat as me, we could have just as much fun as we have always had.

** End of rambling personal rant. **

So why the big deal? Why the hurt feelings?

While dwelling on that fact, I came to a bit of a realisation. D&D for me (and I would like to suggest other geeky pursuits are the same) is not just a game. It's a community. It's why we lurk on and inhabit forums, sharing stories and debates and kudos with other gamers. It's why I write a blog about the game, and follow blogs by others. It's why we follow each other on twitter, or listen to podcasts or attend games days.

And when your version of the game is left behind, that carries with it the very real risk that the community moves on, leaving you behind with the version that you cling to. When I see a thread dealing with Slayer mechanics or the new monster builds in the Monster Vault, it might as well have a great big neon "not for you" sign on it.

WotC does have a right to make money. They do have the right to take D&D in the direction they consider best for them (and hopefully for the game itself). And we all have the right to decide whether we follow. But now I understand the flames.

SSTL 53: Behind Green Tapestries

2010-11-04T14:16:00.000+11:00

Our heroes descend into areas of the Tomb filled with slime.

Read the full recap here.

I think an anthropologist or psychologist could base a PhD on observing this session. In every "encounter", one player or another (or multiples of us) exhibited some strikingly out-there behaviour.

First was Dek's player's obstructionism. In my opinion there's a real failure of verisimilitude when a PC actively tries to stop another PC from killing an enemy just to prevent "kill-stealing". Fortunately, in low-pressure environments, it's also quite funny. I was almost literally stunned with Dek's player pushed the last ooze behind cover and then explained he had done it so that Soveliss couldn't kill it before Dek did. My first instinct was to decry the action as silly (ok, perhaps my wording would have been stronger than that...), but then the DM started laughing and I couldn't help but join in. Does that mean we're not taking Tomb of Horrors seriously enough? Maybe, maybe not, but I suppose there's only so long a group of gamers can repress their natural yahoo before it comes leaking to the surface.

Second was my paranoia over the elongated pit trap. Even when faced with a 25' wide pit trap filled with poison-coated spikes, I still came to the conclusion (without the benefit of being able to see a tell-tale smirk on the DM's face) that there was something we weren't seeing. My brain immediately jumped to the infamous - and time-honoured - invisible wall over the pit trap (to stop people from trying to jump across it), but as it turned out there was instead a teleport-stopper (which defeated Bengi's attempts to get across) and a fusillade of iron spikes. I think it's probably fair to say, based on my continued paranoia in the Tomb and my rants against its play-style, that I am an emotionally-(over)invested gamer.

Third was the encounter with the green slimes, where no one wanted to leave the room until it was pointed out that the rocking was too great to avoid (push 1d6 in a room that was approximately 6 squares across) and that there was seemingly no end to the number of green slimes that might appear. They weren't having an overwhelming effect on us at the time, but if they continued to appear at the rate of 2-3 per round (and they would have), it wouldn't be long until we were overwhelmed. Fortunately, we pulled out just before things got crazy.

Finally, there was Caelan's player (for this session it was the same person who plays Bengi) attacking the green slime engulfing Pieter even though I had specifically mentioned (remember, we had fought green slimes before and the text of the power comes up in our Maptool when it is used) I would take half the damage, that the engulf was not a grab, and that it could not be ended other than by a save. His explanation? "I thought that forced movement would break the engulf". Bengi's player is normally the most mechanically-minded and correct of us, but I suppose rules mastery sometimes gets in the way of your ability to just accept things as they are.

Notwithstanding the anthropological value of the session, it was overall pretty fun. Bengi and Soveliss got most of the way towards some character goals (picking up an Ebberon mark feat and learning the ritual to become a lich (!) respectively). Dek got to hoard his kills (and they were many), and I got to double-guess Gary Gygax twice (the pit trap and realising that the "other" door in the green slime room was a fake intended to get us to re-enter it). We got a nice collection of high-liquidity loot. And we didn't lose a PC, which is always a good thing.

Especially in the Tomb.

SoW: Courtyard

2010-11-02T14:13:00.000+11:00

The PCs push deeper into the Karak fortress, running into a carrion crawler and four harpies.

It's not explained in the adventure text why Queen Shepatiah's cronies allow a carrion crawler and a clamor of harpies (I just learned that collective noun) settle into the giant courtyard just inside the entrance to their newly-occupied fortress, but in their defence it is possible to move about the fortress (once you're inside) without ever entering this courtyard. Maybe the carrion crawler and harpies are new additions, and Shephatiah's folk recognised the utility of having monsters hanging around - you know, just in case adventurers turn up...

The harpies and the carrion crawler make a pretty interesting pairing (as you might expect 2 controllers would). The alluring song of the harpies can pull PCs 3 squares into the 2-square reach of the carrion crawler and immobilise them there. The carrion crawler can then use its tentacles to deal 1d4+5 damage and 5 ongoing poison damage, all without either enemy ever being close enough for melee PCs to attack back. Adding juice to the combo is that PCs who fail repeated saves against the crawler's tentacles wind up stunned rather than immobilised, and that the carrion crawler has a climb speed - making spiderman tactics possible.

Alluring song is close burst 10, so with four harpies it's possible to drag all of the PCs over to the carrion crawler and leave them marooned there while the crawler slobbers them to death, generally with the ranged attackers being the first to go. A particularly disquieting end, if you ask me.

Of course, parties with more than 2 ranged attackers, or whose DM is not clever/mean enought to stop the harpies' pull before they are adjacent to the crawler will quickly realise that focusing fire on the carrion crawler is a good idea. With 81 hit points and an AC of 20, it probably won't last too long. And at that point the harpies either wise up and flee or get mauled by the PCs. They just don't have a viable at-will ranged attack that will allow them to stay out of reach. This encounter could have been very interesting if the mix-up were changed to 3 harpies and 2 carrion crawlers.

The only real disappointment with this encounter is the lack of three-dimensional terrain. With 4 flying enemies, I would have liked to see attempts by Shepatiah's minions to repair the broken roof; wooden planks suspended above floor level, a giant crane with a suspended slab of stone (so that the PCs can engage in the obligatory cut-the-rope-to-be-catapulted-into-the-sky scene), ropes for ensnaring the harpies or even loose debris to make imprompu ranged weapons. Instead we have a big rectangular area containing nothing but a big patch of difficult terrain and columns no one will bother to shelter behind. Pity.

Encounter rating: 2+

Character Concept: Half-orc avenger

2010-10-29T14:21:00.007+11:00

Nogu was a small-time hoodlum in Overlook for much of her early life. With the Elsir Vale constantly suffering from the depredations of the orc tribes west of the Stonehome mountains, life was not easy for the half-orc whose mother had abandoned her as soon as her fangs appeared.

She fell in with the wrong crowd early, and her orcish fire and passion gave her an edge when it came to intimidation, breaking and entering, and street fighting. She found a home of sorts among the back streets and alleyways of the city. Unfortunately for Nogu, success in her line of work is hard to maintain. There's always a rival, a guardsman or an adventurer who wants to make their name with your (metaphorical or literal) scalp, and so it came to be that Nogu was forced to flee Overlook shortly after her 20th birthday.

She knew her pursuers would expect her to flee to Brindol, so she gathered some supplies and set off into the wilderness instead. There, she made the fateful decision to waylay the wrong traveller. The man was a dark and dangerous servant of Melora, the goddess of Nature, and he sensed a kindred spirit in the unruly Nogu. He revealed to her the Dark Heart, a secret temple of Melora that trained its adherents to serve nature by destroying those who imperilled it.

When Nogu's training was complete, she set off again into the world, this time with a purpose and a goal far greater than her own material wealth.

Nogu, level 1

Half-Orc, Avenger
Build: Pursuing Avenger
Avenger's Censure: Censure of Pursuit

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 12, Con 13, Dex 17, Int 10, Wis 17, Cha 8.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 13, Dex 15, Int 10, Wis 17, Cha 8.

AC: 16 Fort: 12 Reflex: 14 Will: 14
HP: 32 Surges: 8 Surge Value: 7

TRAINED SKILLS
Religion +5, Endurance +8, Stealth +8, Perception +8

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +3, Arcana, Bluff -1, Diplomacy -1, Dungeoneering +3, Heal +3, History, Insight +3, Intimidate +1, Nature +3, Streetwise -1, Thievery +3, Athletics +1

FEATS
Level 1: Toughness

POWERS
Avenger at-will 1: Bond of Pursuit
Avenger at-will 1: Overwhelming Strike
Avenger encounter 1: Angelic Alacrity
Avenger daily 1: Oath of the Final Duel

ITEMS
Cloth Armor (Basic Clothing), Adventurer's Kit, Holy Symbol, Greataxe

Half-orcs make surprisingly good avengers. The avenger ethos revolves around isolating a target and then going mano-a-mano with that target until it's dead. Of course, doing so requires that a PC: (a) have high enough defences and hit points to survive and/or (b) do enough damage to put the enemy down first. The half-orc racial traits help in both departments.

Nogu has toughness as her first level feat, giving her a total of 32 hit points. That's equivalent to most 1st level defenders. She also reaps the benefit of Half-orc resilience, which grants 5 temporary hit points when she is first bloodied in an encounter. With 37 hit points to play with, Nogu has staying power. On the other side of the coin, the half-orc racial power Furious assault allows her to add 1[W] damage to a hit once per encounter, and the ability to add 1d12 damage (Nogu wields a greataxe) to a hit is nothing to be sneezed at.

Nogu is a pursing avenger. With her half-orc speed bonus when charging, long shifts from censure of pursuit and Angelic Alacrity and teleporting from Oath of the Final Duel, its difficult to see an enemy escaping her. And if it does, then she gets to chase it down, likely with a bonus to damage.

Unfortunately, I'm advised by far better optimisers that I that the avenger's damage output isn't quite in line with the top tier strikers like the rogue and the ranger. The greataxe (with its high crit property) goes some way to aiding there because Nogu can probably expect to get twice as many crits as a rogue, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to advance her down a multiclass into rogue or ranger for their striker bonus damage. Either class fits her back story.

A superior weapon proficiency is also an obvious option, but my primary goal when advancing Nogu would be to bolster her defences. If you're going to pin a bad guy to you, you should make sure the bad guy isn't going to enjoy it.

SoW: Gatehouse

2010-10-27T14:05:00.003+11:00

After following Ironfell's directions for 3 days through the desert, the PCs discover an abandoned dwarven fortress. Passing into it, they realise that it may not be abandoned after all.

The first thing that jumps out at you when you read this encounter is that it takes place across 6 areas. That harkens back to the early 4e design goal of creating encounter areas rather than just encounters. While it might be inaccurate to describe each of areas 1 to 6 as different areas (they're all part of the same gatehouse), areas 1, 2 and 3 are clearly distinct from 4,5 and 6 and it's good to see that design goal getting some love.

If nothing else, this encounter gives parties that are strong (or clever) enough to get inside an awful lot of room to play with when engaging the troglodytes that attack them. And it's surprisingly easy to do so. The southern portcullis is not locked and can be lifted with a DC 15 Strength check. The stone doors leading into the fortress are barred with rough timbers, but can be broken through with a DC 18 Strength check. Any of a fighter, barbarian, assault swordmage, warlord, melee ranger (the list goes on...) has a reasonable chance of making those checks, and it's well worth sacrificing a few standard actions to do so.

If the PCs don't manage to make it into the fortress under fire from the troglodytes, they find themselves split in two: one or two PCs near the stone doors and the others beyond one or both portcullises. It's here that the author reveals a bleeding heart. Rather than have all the trogs focus on the PCs near the stone door, he has them split their fire between both groups. He states that the arrow slits and murder holes through which the trogs are firing provide superior cover each way. He also states that the PCs don't suffer the effects of troglodyte stench through the arrow slits.

I'll leave it as a decision for individual DMs whether any of those are good ideas (**cough** sissy **cough**) .

Regardless of whether you change any of those factors, take careful note of the illumination conditions for this encounter. The first 10 squares of the entrance tunnel are brightly lit by sunshine. Both gatehouses are dimly lit by sunshine through the southern arrowslits. The rest of the encounter area is dark, which plays perfectly to the trogs' darkvision - particularly if the PCs don't think to bring a light source because it's daytime.*

The trogs themselves are fairly standard opponents. An area attack would have been ideal with the PCs trapped in the entrance tunnel, but none of the trogs have one. What they do have are respectable (but not amazing) ranged attacks that allow them to plink away at the PCs until they either break in or run away.

All told, this is an interesting encounter, and is certainly unlike any that came before it in Scales of War. It should at the very least engender a sort of paranoid carefulness in your PCs about what else to expect in the Karak Lode's fortress.

Encounter rating: 3+

* This encounter plays perfectly into the hands of those gamers who use some form of virtual table software that handles lighting for you. I'd love to see it run on Maptool.

So, Rituals (part One)

2010-10-21T14:20:00.002+11:00

Those of you who have been playing 4e for a while will probably have noticed something: rituals don't really come up that often. Despite WotC (and third party publishers) having devoted literally hundreds of pages to them, they just seem to sit on the fringe of the game and don't get much love.

I've been thinking about that problem for a while now. I've been playing a 4e cleric for 10 levels, and I can count on two fingers the number of times Pieter Grimm has used a ritual (Gentle Repose in the campaign's first ever session and a Magic Mouth while we wandered in Thunderspire Labyrinth). The party's wizard uses them more often than Pieter does, but I don't think even Soveliss would have cracked double digits yet. If a party with two ritual casters - played by players who enjoy roleplay and invoking the themes of their characters - can't get the most out of rituals, then it's not unfair to suggest that something is amiss.

That feeling is only exacerbated by the fact that none of the Essentials products have (I am told) made mention of rituals at all, instead moving some of the more well-known rituals such as raise dead back into the realm of class features.

In fairness to WotC, the absence of rituals from Essentials is not a confession that rituals don't work. At best, it might be viewed as an admissions that the system is complicated; more complicated than they wanted in Essentials. The inclusion of rituals-like powers as class features might be nothing more than a reflection that those particular effects are crucial to the game, and needed to be preserved somewhere.

Regardless of the real reason, there doesn't appear to be a fix for rituals on the horizon, so I figured I'd take a look at the issue and see how I would tackle it. The first port of call is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current system. After all, until you identify the problem, you can't solve it.

Strengths

Siloing - the rituals system allows players to have capabilities that don't compete directly for character creation space with their powers and feats. Siloing was the term used by WotC before 4e was released to refer to the fact that utility powers and attack powers no longer occupied the same character real estate; you no longer needed to choose between Fireball and Invisibility. But the term also applies to rituals, and the existence of rituals outside the power/feat structure is in my opinion a definite strength of the system.
Separation of powers - this strength overlaps with siloing to some extent, but is different in one important way: time. One of the strengths of the ritual system is that it creates a pretty clear delineation between the sort of capabilities that PCs can bring to bear in the long-term and the sorts of capabilities they can bring to bear during an encounter. For example, many powers grant temporary flight, but (barring obscenities like a certain cleric Chariot power) it takes the Overland Flight ritual to give a party long-term flight.
Fillers - rituals allow parties to at least partially cover holes in their makeup. No rogue? No ranger? No problem.

Weaknesses

Expense - rituals are expensive. Doubly so because you generally have to pay for them twice; first when you initially master them and then against whenever you want to perform them. While later rituals for the bard go some way to addressing this problem by allowing a number of free uses per day, that doesn't help the Wizard or Cleric, or even really solve the problem.
Unfair - the expense involved in ritual casting is usually also unfair in that (in the absence of agreement between party members) those costs are born by the ritual caster. 4e uses equipment (and by extension wealth) as a balance factor, so it's a problem when one PC must allocate personal resources (their wealth) towards what is generally a party benefit (rituals). While parties can agree to pool money to learn and perform rituals, that level of discussion detracts from the game in my opinion.
Time - with a standard casting time of 10 minutes, rituals are not generally the party's "go to" option. For some rituals (Comprehend Languages and Detect Secret Doors come to mind), a 10 minute casting time is downright ludicrous.
Ineffective - this one might not deserve to be a weakness on its own, as it's really a combination of weaknesses 1 and 3. Whether it be because of the expense or the time taken, many rituals are less than efficient at what they do. In the time that it takes to cast Detect Secret Doors, for example, a reasonably competent companion would have searched the room and found whatever there was to find, and for much lower cost.

Those then are my thoughts on the good, the bad and the ugly of rituals as they currently stand. In part two of this post, I'll lay out my proposal for how to minimise the weaknesses without giving up the strengths.

SoW: Desert Patrol

2010-10-20T14:14:00.003+11:00

After discussing the Warden with Dunesend's inhabitants, the PCs set out to find the Karak Lode, only to be ambushed by one of Queen Shephatiah's patrols.

Most of the enemies in this encounter (3 razorclaw stalkers) begin this encounter in hiding. The perception check is DC 22, which for 6th level PCs requires a roll plus modifier of 19 after adjusting for half-level bonus. In other words, a PC that rolls an 11 on their die would need to be trained in Perception and have a +4 wisdom ability modifier (assuming no other factors come into play) in order to succeed.

The stalkers are therefore the first hidden enemy that I recall seeing in Scales of War that aren't absurdly easy to spot (compare them with the "hidden" hammerers in the previous encounter) and it's pleasing to finally find an intended ambush that might actually produce an ambush.

The use of a howling hag as the "bait" is well-conceived, as the creatures shapechange ability allows it to appear as "an elderly human female crawl[ing] towards you on hands and knees, her face lined and sunburned beneath the hood of a ragged cloak". Unfortunately, little old ladies lost in the desert are the sort of strangeness that paranoid players loved and I suspect that the bait is going to be less effective than intended against some parties. If you really want to surprise your players, it might be a good idea to seed for this encounter by having the Dunesend villagers tell the PCs that some of their friends and family had been taken by the Warden as slaves. If the PCs know that a woman was taken, they'll be less likely to suspect a trap when they find her wandering near-dead in the desert.

And then you can attack them.

Once the hag has lured the PCs in, she unleashes her close blast 5 shriek of pain and then fey steps back behind the razorclaws. At this point the encounter becomes standard, with the three stalkers (skirmishers) and the hag (controller) fighting the PCs. Fortunately, the hag's howl power works well with the patches of soft sand, and the stalkers' shortsword riposte (make a melee basic attack against an enemy that takes an OA against you) power gives the DM the option to make this combat lightning-fast by deliberately provoking OAs. Is it better to live fast and die young? When it comes to D&D combats, the answer is probably yes.

Ranged parties will have an advantage in this encounter, because none of the monsters have an attack with a range greater than 5 and PCs that needn't worry about closing with the hag are less likely to fall foul of the soft sand terrain effect.

Which segues nicely into an observation that the mechanics of the soft sand are unclear. The patches are difficult terrain and require an Athletics or Acrobatics check to move through. "On a failed check, a creature is restrained as its movement stops and it sinks up to its knees." Given that no (save ends) or "until the end of its turn" wording is included, I assume that restrained is used as a flavour item rather than as a mechanical term. I would play it that failing the check ends that move action. The PC could then spend additional actions trying to get out of the soft sand, but would have to make the check again.

Encounter rating: 3+

Class and Role

2010-10-14T17:29:00.002+11:00

Over on his blog, NewbieDM has mentioned that "“What I want to see more of now in dnd are builds for character classes that break the roles, like the slayer did & the ranger will as well. I want role to be a choice, not a label of a class.”

I disagree, and personally dislike the slayer concept for this exact reason. The reasons are not short, so rather than post a comment there, I'm responding here.

I should start by acknowledging the point that NewbieDM makes about confusion in new players - that it's not immediately apparent to new players exactly how much role factors into the way a given class plays. If you roll up a swordmage because you want to be a spell-flinging guy with a sword, you'll be disappointed if your imagining of that concept revolves around doing buckets of damage. As a design concern, role arguably trumps most other considerations in 4e, so if dealing damage is your goal, you better be looking at a striker.

So with that in mind, I agree with NewbieDM that if your not going to change its importance then role should be more visibly prominent as a mechanical factor.

I disagree you should allow classes to cross roles. That route seems to be tied almost inseparably to nostalgia, and as I commented in the Nostalgic Missile post, I don't consider nostalgia to be a good reason for changing (or creating) a game.

When discussing classes, it helps to acknowledge up front that classes in 4e serve a mechanical purpose, a communication purpose and a design purpose.

By mechanical purpose, I mean that class is used as a prerequisite for feats (including power-swap and multiclass feats), powers, paragon paths and epic destinies.

By the term communication purpose, I mean that class is used as a short-hand between players (and between the game and players). It acts as a signifier of what a character (PC or NPC) belonging to that class is about.

Finally, by ideological purpose I mean that a class is a self-contained concept, which aids (and sometimes constrains) design. For example, you don't see many fighter powers that attack Will.

Now, some people will immediately say, "those things aren't determined by class; they're determined by a combination of power source and role". And they're exactly right. In fact, that's sort of my point. What are classes in 4e if not an anchor to a role? They can't be a signifier of equipment, because with the disappearance of arcane spell failure, now even wizards can wear heavy armour and wield fullblades. They can't be a signifier of modus operandi, because "I hit things with swords" or "I blast things with arcane magic" can apply to a multitude of classes. No, what classes are (as originally envisaged in 4e) is signifiers of what a given character does. A fighter is a martial defender. When someone says fighter, you know exactly what that character is (or should be) good at - using weapons to protect their allies - even if there is room for manoeuvring in terms of exactly how they do it. Ditto Ranger, Wizard, Cleric and all the other classes.

But if you break the connection between class and role, you lose that ability to act as a signifier. Now that the slayer is out, "fighter" no longer tells you anything about someone else's character. In fact, the term "fighter" now serves no communication or ideological purpose at all - it's simply a mechanical element that determines what feats, powers, paragon paths and epic destinies a character can take.

In trying to cater to what some people/players think "fighter" should mean, WotC has in fact made sure that "fighter" doesn't actually mean anything at all. And I think that's a significant design mistake.

Happy Birthday

2010-10-14T13:00:00.002+11:00

Today the Astral Sea turns 1 year old, so I thought I'd take a little break and reflect back on what's happened during that time, what worked and what didn't.

I must say that the year has flown past, with lots of ups and downs, and while I've had trouble keeping up a consistent posting schedule, I don't really have to apologise for lack of content. This is the 201st post on the Astral Sea, which amounts to better than one every second day. That's not bad at all if I do say so myself. The only disappointing thing is that I didn't think of something better to write for the 200th post!

So, on to the festivities.

High points

Having the first ever comment on the Astral Sea come from none other than NewbieDM himself. Does it make me a squealing fanboy that it gave me a thrill when he turned up? Of course, the dity rotter hasn't been seen since!
Getting to converse with dignitaries such as Crazyred and AngryDM about the hobby and their (and to a lesser extent, my) contributions to it.
Getting involved in the collaborative blog carnival with Angry DM that he was kind enough to name after me: Colmarr's Monster Mayhem. If you haven't checked it out, please do so or better yet, check it out and contribute a boss monster of your own.

Most viewed posts

This list is according to blogger stats, which has only been operational since May. It's obviously not comprehensive, but statcounter (which I have running behind the scenes) works on "pages" and doesn't really handle the fact that posts exist primarily on the main page unless you try to comment on them. So, with that caveat in mind:

Yes, Essentials is D&D 4.5. Far and away the winner with 308 page views, although interestingly it drops to fourth on the list if you only consider views in the last month. Clearly Essentials rage/curiosity is a time-finite resource.
Monster Mayhem: Paldemar Redux. 227 views. It's very satisfying to see this one up in the rankings, because I put a lot of work into grokking AngryDM's system and "fixing" the problems that I saw with Paldemar as originally written. This post is in second place for all-time and for the last month, which suggests that creative and productive posts might have more chance of being evergreen. A nice thought, but it's curious that Paldemar has done so well while the very similar Sinruth post languishes in 8th spot. Maybe firstborn get the love even from blog viewers?
Sandbox vs Safety Rails. 222 views. I was probably riding on the shoulders of giants here and stealing page views through association with a host of other - better known - D&D bloggers. Nevertheless, it's flattering to think that all those people took the time to check out that Colmarr guy's blog, despite the fact that they'd probably never heard of me.
Character Concept: Eladrin Sorceror. 105 views. Narrowly edging out:
Character Concept: Halfling Druid. 97 views. I'm not sure why these two character concepts have so many more views than the others (Elf fighter has 83, Tiefling rogue has 52, Valenar elf has 41 and the poor old Dragonborn rogue and Half-elf cleric don't even have enough views to appear in the stats). Maybe there are more people out there who want to play this type of character. I thought it might be due to character concept fatigue, but then I noticed that the eladrin sorceror was one of the first I did and the halfling druid one of the last I did. Weird. No idea what to make of it.

Most commented posts

This is really what it's all about. As Harlan Ellison wrote, "No matter what it is a writer may say is his or her reason for writing, I suggest it is pure codswollop, whether self-delusional or purposefully obfuscatory, unless that writer cops to a hungering for permanence. The nod of Posterity. Let me be read and remembered, if only a little".

By commenting, viewers tell a blogger that "yes, we are reading, and your output has intrigued or inflamed us enough that we will take the time to reply, to share our output with you". Thanks to everyone who has. Note that this list includes comments by me. It was simply too much work to go through every post in the list and discount my own comments. Besides, I try to reply to every comment on the blog, so the skewing effect should be minimal:

Yes, Essentials is D&D 4.5. 10 comments. No-brainer here. Strong opinions invite discussion, and this post was a stronger opinion than I would normally present. Probably didn't hurt that I dumped a link to it in an ENworld discussion of D&D Essentials...
Raiders of Oakhurst; Epilogue. 6 comments. I've always enjoyed writing fiction, while simultaneously acknowledging that it's hard work and I'm damned slow at it. It was truly enjoyable to see so many people actively express that the enjoyed Raiders of Oakhurst. The story adds up to something like 30+ pages of text when compiled, so it was good to know that I hadn't wasted my time.
Sandbox vs Safety Rails. 6 comments. This was my first real foray into dialogue with other gamers and bloggers, so it was good to get some feedback and discussion going. It was also my first encounter with AngryDM, and ultimately led to the Monster Mayhem carnival, so another gratifying post.
Raiders of Oakhurst 3.4. 4 comments. Equal with
Raiders of Oakhurst 1.10. 4 comments. Both of these entries come courtesy of j.packer, who was clearly a big fan of the Raiders of Oakhurst story. I had hoped to lure him out of the woodwork with the A Fire at Night story, but either he's not as big a fan or he's moved on. Either way, thanks for the positive comments. They were certainly instrumental in getting this blog past the do-I-want-to-continue-putting-in-all-this-effort stage.

So that's year 1 of the Astral Sea in a nutshell. It's certainly been a ride. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next. I hope you'll join me.

SSTL 52: Find the False

2010-10-13T13:00:00.071+11:00

The Heroes of Winterhaven continue their exploration of Acererak's tomb, before seemingly encountering their host.

Read the full recap here.

Like I mentioned in my post about session 51, this session was the one in which I cast aside my Tomb of Horrors funk and decided that I was going to do my best to enjoy things. And I did. When I mentioned the outcome to the DM after the session, he flippantly replied, "Yeah, it had a combat". There might be some truth to that, but it had occurred to me long before the combat that I was actually having fun.

There's no real reason for that. The corridor behind the "ring-activated door" was no different really to the opening corridor of the tomb (ie. full of pit traps). If anything, it's actually less interesting because it doesn't contain the bizarre and ominous mural that the first corridor does. But nevertheless I decided to pay attention, contribute and interract with whatever was put in front of me. Unsurprisingly, that active involvement greatly increased my enjoyment.

I particularly enjoyed the broken golem (warforged) at the bottom of the pit - a clear reminder that in our campaign Acererak is more than just a lich-prick who wants to kill adventurers - and the strange voice behind the locked door. Given the weirdness of the Tomb, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the singer was princess Vespa* and that by turning away we've doomed her to an eternity locked in the Tomb. Either that or some horrendous death-machine. Could be anything really.

The encounter against the false Acererak was a little confusing because the decoy's "crown" was in fact a separate entity modelled on a blaster trap. Even though the DM was saying things like "the crown attacks Dek and Caelan", I think it's the first example we've had in the campaign of an enemy mounted on another enemy, so perhaps it's not entirely my fault I didn't figure it out sooner. Either way, I (and maybe others) was splitting my damage from the rest of the party and both the crown and the false Acererak survived a round or two longer than they should have.

Which proved costly. Acererak's aura 5 was inflicting ongoing necrotic damage, and his Shadow Storm zone (which pretty much filled the room) was dealing 10 psychic and necrotic damage per turn to anyone inside it. Dek and Caelan were therefore taking 15 damage per turn before a dice was rolled, and Pieter was taking 10 (he has resist 10 necrotic). Add to that the lightning attacks from Acererak and the fear blasts from the crown and it's not truly surprising that at one stage Dek, Pieter and Caelan were all at negative hit points. Bengi was still relatively healthy but wasn't going to take out Acererak on his own. And Soveliss was still fleeing in terror from the mist (he failed two saves, so spent a total of 4 rounds out of the combat).

Getting back through the mist required Soveliss to make an endurance check (to hold his breath) and then survive the mist's attack against his Fort. Neither endurance nor Fort are Sov's strong points, so his successful passage through the mist probably ranks up there with Shadow's bull rush on Kalarel for sheer arsey good luck. Once he got into the room, he revived Pieter through hybrid artificer goodness, and with Consecrated Ground (my power of choice for "omgwtf, we're in trouble" moments) then in place, it was just a matter of time before Acererak fell.

This combat was probably as close to a TPK as the encounters against Kalarel or Murklemore. If Sov had succumbed to the mist again (removing him from the combat for another 2 rounds), Bengi would likely have been close to (or at) unconsciousness and one or two of Dek, Caelan and Pieter would have reached negative bloodied (and thus death). In those circumstances, it's strange that the tension wasn't as bad for this encounter as it was for those others. The only thing I can put it down to was the speed. Kalarel and Murklemore were grinding combats (in the attrition sense, not in the negative MMO sense). False Acererak just blasted the crap out of us, and we were in over our heads before we knew it. Fortunately, lady luck turned up to the session and we live to fight another day.

* A cookie to the poster who can tell me what she's likely to be singing.

SoW: The Warden

2010-10-12T14:11:00.003+11:00

The PCs reach Dunesend just in time to see the cruelty of Queen Shephatiah's emmissary.

After crossing the Thornwaste, the PCs arrive at Dunesend moments after Queen Shephatiah's minion, a gnoll named the Warden, has slain a villager in retribution for perceived withholding of 'tribute'. In fact the villagers aren't holding out - but that's really neither here nor there. What's important is that when the PCs crest the ridge and see a gnoll and a behir standing over a dead villager in the middle of a ring of his fellow citizens, they'll probably yell "Charge!" faster than you can blink. A clear call to battle is a fine thing indeed.

Together with his juvenile behir thunderlance (now that's a mouthful) mount, the Warden is accompanied by 3 satyr rakes who are patrolling/hiding on the outskirts of the village. The rakes join the combat once melee is joined, firing with their shortbows from the cover of the buildings.

There's a lot to like about this encounter, including its high "set-piece" value, the thematic choice of opponents (actual monsters in a little village), and the individual powers of some of the enemies. The Warden's Bloodthirst trait triggers when he bloodies enemies and allows an ally adjacent to that enemy to make a melee attack against that enemy as an immediate reaction. Note that is does not say "melee basic attack". Any melee attack qualifies.

The behir's Devour power allows it to chomp on an enemy (grabbing and restraining it and dealing further damage every time it sustains the power) while still using its basic Bite attack against other PCs. I'm not sure why, but the image of a behir biting Gandalf with a mouthful of Aragorn gives me the giggles. Notwithstanding that quirk, the most interesting thing with the behir is its climb speed 4. There certainly seem to be a lot of big buildings in town for it to climb... Of course, if you do that, make sure the ranged PCs aren't able to out-distance the behir (curse you bow ranger with your 40' range!)

But as groovy as the Warden and the behir are, it's this little nugget secreted away in the middle of the satyr rake stat block that really floats my boat:

"Feint (move; at will) +10 vs Reflex; the satyr gains combat advantage against the target (see below)"

At-will combat advantage as a move action is in my opinion simply that good for what is generally a ranged combatant. And of course "(see below)" refers to the Combat Advantage trait, adding 2d6 damage to attacks when the satyr has combat advantage against the target, for an impressive total of 1d8 + 2d6 + 4. Nice.

Unfortunately, despite all that good stuff, there are still some issues with this encounter. For example:

The Warden has a Leader of the Pack aura that adds +1 (+2 when the Warden is bloodied) to the attacks of allies within 5 squares. None of the satyr rakes begin within 5 squares, and the behir doesn't really want to remain there.
The Warden's Bloodthirst trait might never matter, because he's unlikely to have an ally adjacent to the enemy he's attacking - his companions are Artillery and Skirmishers.
The behir doesn't really want to remain in melee (it's Artillery), but it doesn't have a ranged at-will attack (at best they are recharge 3).
There's no indication in the Feint power of when the combat advantage ends. Unless there's errata for this floating around, I'd guess it ends at either the end of the satyr's turn or the beginning of the satyr's next turn. You decide.
The map includes 12 villagers, who have no stats whatsoever and play no role in the combat (other than to presumably be collateral damage - I recommend you treat them as level 6 minions).
The tactics section refers to a banshrae appearing when none exists in the encounter (or adventure - presumably a typo that should refer to the behir).

Despite those problems, I'm pretty excited by the possibilities in this combat. You might consider swapping one or more of the satyr rakes for melee bruisers (soldiers or brutes) to accompany the Warden and benefit from his Leader of the Pack, but otherwise this encounter adds up.

Encounter rating: 4

A Fire at Night; Ch 3.3

2010-10-08T17:07:00.000+11:00

Polver followed the paladin through the derelict temple, passing through long-broken doors and ransacked rooms. The golden flames danced around their legs as they moved. As they passed down a flight of stone steps Polver noticed that the flames burned around them even below ground. At the bottom of the stairs, Polver found himself standing before a massive stone door.

The paladin stepped forward and placed his bare palm against the stone. There was silence for a moment, and Polver thought he saw light snaking across Kirder’s dragon tattoo, then the door ground open, filling the small space with noise.

Beyond was a spacious chamber, easily larger than the nave of the temple above and lit by sconced torches that burned with the now-familiar golden flame. Sarcophagi lined the walls, each lidded with the likeness of priests and paladins. A stone mosaic filled the floor, dominated by a depiction of Bahamut as a platinum dragon. Polver took in these details in an instant, and in the seconds that followed, had eyes only for the object that stood in the centre of the room. There, on a wooden and leather mannequin, hung a suit of golden plate mail that seemed to glow like the sun, absorbing and amplifying the light of the surrounding torches and the flickering flames.

Kirder strode into the chamber and Polver quickly followed. The paladin moved to the mannequin and then turned to his companion. “Help me into the armour,” he said.

Polver hesitated, and in that moment the flames around them flickered and died. One of the ghouls above cry with excitement. Then Kirder’s eyes flashed with divine fire again and the flames rekindled, roaring back to life. The paladin’s face was stoney as he turned to Polver while taking the first piece of the armour from the mannequin.

“I told you I cannot maintain the blessing for long. I will not be able to renew it again. Now help me into the armour, damn you!”

Polver strained to hear the ghouls, but there was no sound above them. Either the creatures had not crossed the threshold when the blessing faded, or they had discovered a way to avoid the now-blazing flames. Either way, Polver knew they were still out there.

He went to help Kirder.

SoW: Clan Rivals

2010-10-06T14:19:00.001+11:00

As the PCs cross the Thornwaste, they are ambushed by dwarves from a rival clan, keen to stop them recovering the missing Ironfell mine.

I confess to having entirely missed this encounter when describing the Thornwaste skill challenge as "maddeningly flat". In part, that's because the encounter is first mentioned eleven pages after the skill challenge information, with no prior or subsequent indication - even by way of general note in the adventure synopsis - that it exists.

The ambush occurs after the PCs have tallied their fourth success or second failure in the challenge, and serves as a combat fix for those who - perhaps as I suggested might happen - get tired of rolling Nature, Endurance and Perception checks. The ambushers, dwarves of the rival Hammerfist clan, are hoping to relieve the PCs of the directions to the Karak lode.

I struggle with the premise of this encounter a little, largely because I don't quite grok with the author's assumptions about clan culture among dwarves living above-ground. But that's more a personal quibble than any sort of real problem, so enough said. If you agree with me, you can easily reflavour the dwarves as mercenaries or Thornwaste brigands. You can replace them with other enemies more fitting to the adventure path's overall plot (at this stage, Sarshan is still the villain and he's shown a preference for humans and shadar-kai), or you can make them allies of Queen Shephatiah, the villain of Lost Mines of Karak.

What is jarring is that the Hammerfist dwarves are accompanied by a hellhound, which if you're playing the adventure as written is likely to send your PCs off down all sorts of dead ends as they try to figure out why the dwarves are using elemental beasts as pets and/or combatants. If you reflavour the dwarves as servants of Queen Shephatiah, the hellhound actually works quite well, because it prefaces the portal to the elemental chaos that the PCs will later discover.

Mechanically, the encounter is satisfactory but not impressive. The 2 hammerers on the northern side of the ravine are intended to charge the PCs and attempt to push them in. That plan relies on (1) the hammerers remaining unseen until the PCs have gone past and (2) the PCs not avoiding the ravine by pushing through the brambles. The first possibility is almost negligible (even with total concealment, the hammerer's still only have stealth modifiers of +2), while the latter is possibly even less likely, especially if your PCs bother to ask you what effects the brambles have (difficult terrain and granting concealment). There's nothing actually stopping the PCs from just walking around the ravine.

In the end, the two hammerers will wind up facing five angry adventurers (plus Mag if your PCs picked him up). They'll have some support from the two bolters, but not enough to keep them alive. And once they're down, not even the hellhound and the third hammerer will stop the PCs finishing off their opponents easily.

Encounter rating: 2

A Fire at Night; Ch 3.2

2010-10-01T13:58:00.000+10:00

Polver vaulted over a stack of fractured crates, pulling them down as he passed. Behind him, he heard one of the ghouls crash into the debris and fall. He risked a glance backward and saw with relief that it had been the rune-stalker. The other ghoul remained agonisingly close, its dirty and clawed hands reaching out for him.

Kirder had already reached the temple and now stood wide-legged in the threshold. Polver focused on the paladin, pushing aside thoughts of the ravening ghoul behind him.

30 feet

20 feet

10 feet

Polver felt a leathery hand, immensely strong, close around his arm. Rough claws dug into his flesh, and he stumbled as the ghoul tried to halt his flight. He reacted instinctively, jabbing the trapped arm back and upwards, and felt his elbow smash into the ghoul’s face. He felt the creature’s rotting teeth scrape against his skin even as his blow knocked them loose, then the ghoul released its grip. Polver ran on.

The delay had given the rune-stalker just enough time to catch up, and it launched itself over its stricken comrade. Polver heard it land behind him, and saw Kirder grasp his weapon in both hands. The paladin’s eyes filled with golden fire, wisps escaping at the edges, and then the earth itself burst into flames.

The rune-stalker screamed, and Polver staggered past Kirder into the church. Only once he was safely inside did the teenager realise that the flames filled the temple as well, flickering about his legs. Yet they did not burn him. He turned in awe to look back through the doors. Kirder stood immobile in the opening, watching the rune-stalker and its companion as they paced frantically just beyond the flames. The rune-stalker’s legs were scorched and blackened up to its knees, and the creature hissed in pain as it paced.

Seemingly satisfied that they would not brave the flames, Kirder turned inside. Remnants of flame still flickered in his eyes, but the initial inferno had died away.

“Come”, he said. “We must prepare to make our stand”.

Polver followed him deeper into the church, hurrying to catch the striding paladin.

“What… what is this?!” he exclaimed, still glancing about at the golden flames through which they moved. He stooped and passed his hand through the dancing light. It did not even warm his skin.

“The temple is blessed”, Kirder answered. “I can invoke that blessing, and the temple will protect us.”

He stopped and turned to Polver. He looked the teenager up and down for long seconds, then nodded to himself. “But I cannot maintain the blessing for long. Sooner or later we must fight them. Come."

Hmmm

2010-10-01T13:32:00.000+10:00

This is why democracy doesn't work.

After leaving the poll open for a week, we have ended up with a dead-heat (and a disappointing number of votes) about which direction I should take the character concepts series of posts.

I'm not sure how to deal with that. On the one hand it paves the way for dictatorship of the democratic masses paralysed by indecision. On the other, it may mean that I need to form a coalition with Rob Oakeshott, Tony Windsor and the Greens to get any further character concepts posted*.

I'll give it some thought. You'll know which way I turn based purely on what character concept appears next. Or if none appear at all.

*Apologies to non-Australian readers for the local reference. Google "australian minority government" for an explantion if you're that interested.

SoW: Through the Thornwaste

2010-09-30T17:47:00.001+10:00

The PCs cross the thornwaste in search of Dunesend.

After accepting Ironfell's commission, the PCs need to cross the vast thornwaste, "a parched landscape of washed-out gullies and tangled briars. The directions from the parchment indicate that a road once passed this way, but it has long since disappeared. Though the area appears inhospitable, dozens of species of desert animal dwell here, hunted by predators including lions and wild boar."

That's a pretty vivid landscape and, as I mentioned in the last post, quite fitting to the Dark Sun overland travel rules. I recommend you consider them if running this adventure. If you go strictly by the book, crossing the Thornwaste is a complexity 3 skill challenge (8 successes before 3 failures) encompassing four days of travel. That complexity/time pairing seems appropriate to me, but unfortunately the skill challenge is maddeningly "flat".

By "flat", I mean that it offers the PCs little in the way of options. Endurance, Nature and Perception are the only primary or secondary skills, which creates a small class of characters that have anything truly useful to add to the challenge. Everyone else is reduced to aiding another, or trying to convince the DM of how another skill might assist. I imagine that after the 6th of 7th Endurance, Nature or Perception check, at least one character might be hoping to simply fail the challenge so that something interesting happens.

I find that structure strange, because the thornwaste as an area seems ripe with possibility for an overland travel skill challenge. Its gullies offer obvious uses for Athletics, prolonged exposure to wind and heat pose opportunities for Heal and roving predators provide uses for Stealth. Feel free to ad lib what happens in the waste to keep the players interested and involved. Collapsing gullies, sandstorms, aggressive predators and quicksand all offer exciting vignettes and a way to get other skills (and characters) involved in the challenge.

The highpoint of crossing the thornwaste as-written is when the PCs encounter Mag Blackthorn, a human ranger and disciple of the Ghostlord (a druid lich made infamous by the 3.5 adventure Red Hand of Doom). The PCs encounter Blackthorn after their second success or first failure in the skill challenge, and he is friendly enough to PCs that don't immediately attack or provoke him. He agrees to guide PCs through the thornwaste (adding a +2 to subsequent checks), but leaves them as soon as they reach Dunesend. He plays no other part in the adventure.

I personally feel that is a mistake. Blackthorn represents yet another way to spice up the skill challenge. As an alternative to the character as written, make gaining Blackthorn's trust a little harder; perhaps even a challenge within a challenge. If the PC's gain his assistance (probably through using Diplomacy or Bluff, or by bribing him with something he would want), then he accompanies them and tells them what he knows of the Thrornwaste and Dunesend. He might even agree to meet the party later and escort them back, or aid them against a 'posthumous revenge' attempt by the BBEG's minions after the adventure proper is over.

If the PCs don't gain Blackthorn's trust, have him stalk them through the waste. He considers himself a protector of the Thornwaste, but he's clearly unable to defeat the PCs alone. That's not to say that he can't lead other predators into the PCs' path, set traps for them, and generally make a nuisance of himself so that the PCs can't take an extended rest.

Whatever you do, make crossing the Thornwaste a memorable event. Either that or hand-wave it and move on to events that will interest you and your players more.

SSTL 51: What wealth in danger lies

2010-09-28T16:18:00.003+10:00

Our heroes continue their exploration of Acererak's tomb, encountering their first animate opposition.

Read the full recap here.

I'm writing this entry for session 51 a few days after having completed session 52, so it's a little strange trying to think back about what we did and how I felt. I can say with almost complete clarity that session 51 was the session of D&D in which I've had the least fun for quite some time.

In part that's a reflection of how Tomb of Horrors and my wants from a D&D game don't see eye to eye. I want high adventure and heroics. Tomb provides riddles, paranoia and an abundance of crucially-important minutia (which feeds back into the paranoia). However, that's only part of the story. The other (larger) part is that I had pretty persuasively convinced myself that I wouldn't enjoy the session. So of course I didn't.

It's lucky that I took as long to write up session 51 as I did. If I had written this recap before playing in session 52, that insight would probably have escaped me. Perhaps not so much "lucky" - after all, the delay was caused by the lack of fun - as karmic.

I've mentioned in some previous posts (notably this one about morality) that players control characters, not the other way round. Perhaps I should take that a step further and point out that the person who most influences how much you enjoy a D&D session is not the DM (assuming he's not a complete turd). It's not your co-players (assuming they're not complete turds). It's you. By allowing myself to enter the session with such a negative outlook, not only did I not enjoy the session, I probably adversely impacted the other participants' enjoyment.

Learn from my mistake - don't do it. Focus on the positives and convince yourself that you're going to enjoy the session (or at least not hate it). You and everyone else will have a better time if you enter the session with a good outlook.

Mechanically, the most notable thing about session 51 was the enormous amount of loot that it threw at us without us having had to do anything particularly dangerous to obtain it. At first, that seems like a mistake, but in reality it's best summed up by this email from the DM:

Well like I said in my other email, not only do I have some lvl 11 [treasure parcels] to drop I think I missed everyone's lvl 10 [parcels]

The end result was an amazingly large find of magical loot scattered throughout the Tomb. As much as it served a mechanical purpose (getting us back on the wealth by level curve), it also served a perhaps-unintended story purpose (explaining just why it is that adventurers are willing to enter what is so obviously a death-trap in the midst of a city of crazed cultists).

After all, not every Forgotten Realms adventuring party contains a golem that was created by the evil ol' demilich himself. But more on that next time.

PS. Neither my DM nor my co-players are turds, complete or otherwise. Just in case your mind went there.

You learn something new...

2010-09-23T14:25:00.000+10:00

I'm currently reading Germs, Genes and Civilisation by David P. Clark (currently available as a free kindle download on Amazon).

The book details the interraction between disease and civilisation, not just from the perspective of how disease has decimated human populations, but how it has altered the path of human history.

For example, Clark asserts that the Indus Valley civilisation, one of the world's earliest advanced civilisations (in what is now Pakistan and India), was virtually destroyed over as little as two centuries by a number of factors including a cholera-like waterborne disease that found perfect conditions in the closely-packed Indus. Before the rise of heavily-populated cities, diseases like cholera didn't have the conditions (namely, sufficient victims) necessary to thrive and spread. The diseases burned out a small population, but then died off before they could spread to new victims.

He also notes the correlation between rigid class systems (such as the ones in ancient India and Egypt) and fixed agrarian societies, suggesting that:

"Class systems are not based on merely social forces. Although those forces might contribute to class segregation, deeper biological reasons exist.

...the peasants who waded barefoot in the flooded fields would almost all have been infected by parasitic worms. The military aristocracy would have been far healthier, stronger and more vigorous. In contrast, unsettled peoples such as the Huns, Mongols, Vandals, and Arabs tend to be difficult to rule and their empires short-lived. Here the lower classes are not subject to debilitating disease as an inevitable result of their economic role."

In other words, the lower classes stay low in large part because of significant health problems caused by their role in society. If your "economic role" requires you to wade through infected water every day, your health will suffer and you become easier to rule. Conversely, if your economic role exposes you to less disease, you are overall healthier and stronger and thus more difficult to control.

It's an interesting insight, and one that can have direct relevance to a DM designing a village, city or empire. The larger the population, the more exposure that population will have to infectious disease. That in turn leads to the development of a strong class system, with the low getting lower as the risk increases. Exposure to disease-causing agents (vermin, domestic animals, and unclean water) worsens the risk.

Incorporating that information into a fantasy world poses some very interesting possibilies.

4e ritual casters have access to a number of rituals that cleanse water or banish vermin, making organisations of such casters (eg. wizard schools and churches) very resistant to outbreaks of disease. Organisations with the rituals to avoid disease vectors are also the same organisations that will have the rituals to cure the disease. The former keeps the organisation's members physically strong and the latter allows it to pedal influence to other powerbrokers who might find themselves stuck in a city racked by pestilence.

Against that background, an organisation of ritual casters might amass significant power in a densely-packed city. Their combination of mystical might and good health makes them all but untouchable by the common people, who (barring the sort of cultural goodwill that exists only in fantasy settings) become a downtrodden underclass.

Conversely, in a nomadic civilisation the risk of infectious disease is lessened because the population is dispersed. While an individual ritual caster might use their abilities to garner power within their own group, there is unlikely to be enough contact between groups or enough threat of disease to allow ritual casters to form a ruling class. Instead you might expect the stereotypical "adviser" or "witch doctor" to spring up in those communities. Although the ritual caster has abilities that the common people don't, they are unlikely to be sufficiently better off to create rigid class divisions. You wind up with a "first among equals" civilisation instead.

New Poll

2010-09-22T17:29:00.000+10:00

As long-time readers will know, I'm not averse to occasionally tinkering with my toys and seeing what functionality they might have that I haven't discovered or fully explored yet.

Blogger has a poll gadget. It allows me to ask you (the reader) what your opinion is on a specific matter; things like your favour colour, the country you live in or whether Essentials is 4.5e. Just kidding!

I have been thinking for some time about how (or if) I should continue the character concepts series of posts. As some of you may know or might have guessed by now, I'm quite the traditionalist in my player style. The character classes that most grab my interest are the ones most heavily represented in literary archetypes and D&D lore. The fighter, the wizard, the cleric, the rogue etc. In other words, the classes in Players Handbook 1. There are some classes from PHB 2 (such as the druid and barbarian) that pique my interest, but once you start getting into weird stuff like battleminds and assassins, there's no telling what might happen.

In the Character Concepts series I have so far provided a low-heroic sample character for each of the PHB 1 classes, so I thought I'd leave the decision of where to go from here to you, the readers.

If you'd like to see what the existing character concepts look like at paragon tier, I can do that. If you'd like to see character concepts for PHB2 and PHB3 classes and races, I can do that too. It'll stretch me; give my D&D brain a bit of a workout. Or if you don't like the series at all, well then here's your chance to say so.

There's a poll in the sidebar over on the right about which direction I should take the series. Please lodge your vote. The poll will be open until 30 September 2010.

SoW: Bram Ironfell

2010-09-22T13:51:00.002+10:00

Lost Mines of Karak begins with the PCs meeting their patron Bram Ironfell. He tells them that the city guards' search of Sarshan's operations in Overlook uncovered a strange parchment that he believes records the route to the lost Ironfell mine known as the Karak Lode.

Bram gives a convincing explanation of why the PCs should investigate the parchment, and why it should be them that does it:

“Discovering what became of my kin would end a sad chapter in Ironfell history, but that is not my primary motive in seeking your aid. If the Karak Lode can be found, its wealth offers the means to shore up the defenses of Overlook and the Elsir Vale. However, it is anyone’s guess what manner of creatures might lair there, or what defenses the last of the clan left to guard the mines. This is not a job for the city watch, I fear.”

That's a significant call to arms, and the combination of long lost secrets, wealth and unknown enemies should be enough to get your players interested in the latest step in the adventure path. However, it also raises some very real questions about the Karak Lode itself, and DMs should make themselve extremely familiar with the background information provided in the adventure. It's easy to miss the importance of that information, and you don't want your players becoming paranoid about Bram (as some players are wont to do with any NPC) simply because you/he can't provide a convincing enough explanation of the history of the mine.

After accepting Ironfell's quest (and a 1000gp up-front payment certainly helps there), the PCs must set off overland to the village of Dunesend, located beyond a vast badlands known as the Thornwaste. We'll deal with that journey more in the next post, but it's worth mentioning here that the journey might be a good opportunity to introduce some of the overland travel mechanics from Dark Sun. The Thornwaste is not the sort of place to trifle with, and the Dark Sun mechanics might be a good way to sheet that message home to your players.

Taking Inspiration: Environmental Change

2010-09-21T17:55:00.001+10:00

There are some pretty heavy-duty roadworks about to commence near the Colmarr household; the sort of roadworks that forever change the neighbourhood and the way you think about the way you live. To be precise, a major freeway will soon be ugraded within 100m of the house.

Contemplating the changes that the roadworks will bring (and to be honest I'm not all that worried by them) inevitably turned to the concept of environmental change in D&D and how and when it can be useful in a campaign.

Environmental change is a fairly loose term, so it might help to clarify. I use the term to mean a change in the background "reality" of the world in which the campaign takes place. The change might be a geographic change such as the appearance or disappearance of a continent or city. It might be magical, such as the Forgotten Realms' spellplague. Or it might be humanoid, such as the appearance of the first Warforged, Tieflings or Deva. Whichever way you look at it, the event changes things - often forever.

Environmental change can serve as a good way to shake things up, to breathe new life into a campaign that was getting stale. By changing the canvas on which the campaign is painted, you offer new opportunities and new stories to your players without jettisoning all the hard work you have done to establish your plot.

I have been contemplating an Eberron campaign for some time now. I don't want to give too much away (in case the campaign does eventuate one day), but one of the ideas that has flitted across my consciousness while brainstorming serves as a good example here. In this event, a malfunctioning eldritch machine enrages a vast nest of kruthiks that lies undiscovered and undisturbed beneath a city, causing them to boil out of the ground in a terrible night of bloodshed and terror. While the kruthiks are eventually pushed back into the newly-exposed nest, the city doesn't have the resources to completely eradicate the threat. Instead, a FR-equivalent of the Berlin Wall goes up around the area.

That one event completely changes the city. The area inside the wall becomes off-limits to all but the city watch. Of course, looters, smugglers and assorted ne'er-do-wells are willing to take their chances and sneak into the area from time to time to see what they can make for themselves. The area around the wall quickly degenerates from its previous status (which might have been academic, mercantile, or even noble) and becomes a ghetto. No one wants to live near the wall in case the kruthiks swam again. Of course, sooner or later the PCs will need something from the zone, or might even need to enter the kruthik nest itself.

The other use for environmental change is as a herald for a change in tier.

The sort of event described above would be a fitting cap to the heroic tier. In that case, the kruthik rampage would begin just as the PCs were reaching level 10, and the city's struggle against the swarming creatures would form the basis for the last level of the tier. The PCs would be instrumental in repelling the horde, perhaps by meeting and destroying a kruthik queen or otherwise threatening the nest as a whole. Although they might not be able to stop the environmental change itself, their actions to minimise its impact make them famous, which opens the door to the sort of stories paragon adventurers get involved in.

A DM with a vested interest in the status-quo might allow the PCs to prevent the environmental change; to drive off the horde or shut down the machine before any long-lasting damage is done. If you're going to do that, make sure that the environmental change is imminent and real. Yet another bad guy trying to take over the world doesn't have any real emotional impact, even where the plot is local, because the event hasn't started yet. A screaming citizen telling your PCs about the horde of bugs pouring out of the ground in the Civic Ward is imminent and it's real. If the PCs don't act, they know (or soon will as they speak to more and more citizens and militia or personally encounter the swarming kruthiks) that unless they act fast, the world as they know it is about to change.

SoW: Lost Mines of Karak

2010-09-15T14:11:00.002+10:00

"This is a mission for heroes who have shown their mettle in defense of others. If the evidence you have uncovered is true, the Siege of Bordrin's Watch was but the first sortie of a larger campaign, against which Overlook and the Elsir Vale cannot stand for long. I will tell you of the Karak Lode, and of lost wealth with which we might defend our land against the war that is coming."

So begins Lost Mines of Karak, the fourth adventure in the Scales of War adventure path. In Lost Mines, the PCs are retained by Bram Ironfell, a member of the Elsir Consortium, to follow directions on an ancient parchment and rediscover the long-lost Karak Lode.

The PCs' journey will take them far from Overlook, into the Thornwaste to a village named Dunesend. There they meet a tryannical gnoll named the Warden and follow its trail back to Fortress Ironfell. Deep within they find the path to the Karak Lode, only to discover that it contains a portal to the elemental chaos and - worse - is currently under the control of a guardian Naga named Shephatiah.

The adventure reinforces the scope of Sarshan's plots (the Shadar-kai's name crops up here again) and increases the planar feel of the campaign. By the end of Lost Mines of Karak, cluey players will have strong suspicions about which way Scales of War is headed.

Fortunately, there is no real incongruity between the end of Siege of Bordrin's Watch and the beginning of Lost Mines. If the dwarf paladin Kalad survived Siege, he summons the PCs to meet Bram Ironfell. If Kalad didn't survive, a member of the city guard serves that roll instead.

It's a low-key and traditional beginning to what is quite a traditional adventure.

Surf the D&D wave

2010-09-14T17:18:00.001+10:00

I've been thinking a bit lately about exactly what makes a good D&D session for me. That's a dangerous thing to do, because often it turns out that we don't actually like what we think we like.

It's doubly dangerous when you're a blogger because there's the risk that readers will assume that you're proclaiming "the one true way" of playing D&D, and that everyone who plays it differently is wrong. Although controversy is good for site traffic (the "Essentials is 4.5" post is the most visited on this blog by a margin of over 50%), it's not really how I like to do business.

There are times when I do head off in that direction (usually involving PvP or in-game morality discussions). This isn't one of them. This post is as much introspection as it is commentary, and I post it with the intention that it might inspire others to consider exactly what it is about the game that makes them most happy.

So, with that disclaimer out of the way, what does make a good D&D session?

I think the answer boils down to one of two things: Good Combat or Good Plot.

The idea of Good Combat is almost self-evident. Every D&D player of almost every vintage will have one or more combats that stick in their memory and refuse to fade away. In the current SSTL campaign, the combats against Kalarel and Murklemor Grimmerzhul take the cake. Regardless of anything else that might or might not have happened those sessions, my attendance was worth it just for the fun and nail-biting tension of those encounters. They still bring a smile to my face.

Good Combat doesn't necessarily mean hard combat. It refers to a combat that is notable for something it contains. It might be a special manoeuvre that one of the combatants pulled off (an unlikely bull rush), it might be the enemy involved (Illithid!), or it might be the area in which the combat is fought (the bottom of an active volcano). It might be all of the above. But whichever sort of Good Combat it is, there's something about it that the PCs remember. By extension, combats that aren't Good Combats have nothing or little that is memorable about them. I'd be willing to bet that there are no D&D players whose best ever combat involved a straight up knock down fight against goblins.

At the other end of the role/roll spectrum, you have Good Plot sessions. These sessions enhance your campaign's story somehow. It might be specific to one player (such as the death of a mentor) or it might affect the campaign as a whole (revealing the baron as the villain). It might be a world-shattering event (the beginning of the spellplague) or it might simply be a passage of roleplaying that fills in an NPC's place in the world. At its core, a Good Plot session is a session that makes the players want to interact with your world more.

There's nothing mutually exclusive about Good Combat and Good Plot. Indeed, as you'll see from the graph attached to this post, a session that rates highly for combat quality and plot quality is a pretty damn fine session as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, you can't expect every session to be like that.

For starters, I suspect it would be impossible to achieve. Good Plot especially is hard to roll out consistently. Too many immersive elements in a campaign bog it down and rob it of momentum. Too many plot twists simply leaves the players confused and unsure how to respond. And plot takes time to establish, depriving you of time to actually play out all those good combats.

Which is where the post title comes in. You'll see that the graph looks a little like a wave. If you're DMing a D&D game, try to surf that wave a few times per tier. Don't expect every session to be great, but try to work in a few truly memorable sessions in the first few levels of your campaign. Then let the campaign settle for a while, before building for the crest again. And of course, try to get a "Good Combat, Good Plot" session in at the pinnacle of each tier. There's no better way to launch your players into Paragon or Epic than with a session they're going to remember.

Postscript: When considering this idea, bear in mind that - although I used ratings from 0 to 5 for each of the axes on my graph - different players like different things. In my personal case, a great plot session is more satisfying than a great combat session. Combat goes to 5 on my personal graph but plot probably goes to 7. It's worth considering exactly where your players' preferences lie before trying to surf the wave.

SoW: Shadow Rift of Umbraforge Wrap-up

2010-09-09T14:06:00.001+10:00

In the aftermath of the battle with the specters, the paladin owners of the Happy Beggar discover the secret complex below their establishment and summon the authorities. The PCs have the opportunity to explain what they discovered and, assuming they reveal the shadowfell arch and their actions against Sarshan, become heroes of Overlook. After all, no one wants an active portal to the shadowfell in the middle of the city and a planar arms dealer walking around town.

"The PCs have plenty of time to rest up and plan their subsequent moves. Little do they know, however, that their notoriety will take an unexpectedly dark turn in the next adventure."

I'm torn about how to finalise my review of Shadow Rift. From a narrative sense, Scales of War gets better and better. The adventure path has gone from a somewhat-inept attempt by goblinoids to raid Brindol, to a massive orc horde moving against Overlook, to a planar jaunt to the shadowfell where it becomes clear that something big is about to happen. If handled right, the players should by now be well and truly hooked with a sense of foreboding.

From a mechanical sense, I don't think Shadow Rift surpasses its predecessors. While it makes much more interesting use of terrain (such as the magma vent, the cliff and shriekers under the Happy Beggar, and especially the levitation lift in Sarshan's tower), its mechanics for that terrain are in my opinion often overly complicated. It also suffers from having too many uniform combats. The combats against the shadowhunter bats, wraiths and specters each contain at least 4 of the same monster. The combat in the shadow garden contains 3 rot scarab swarms. Those combats have the potential to be dull and grinding rather than exciting, which lowers to overall impact of the adventure.

As a whole, Shadow Rift is a satisfactory but not amazing adventure, and (as the DM of my SSTL campaign proved), there is potential for it to be uplifted and deposited with some amendment into any campaign that features - or is about to feature - large-scale military action.

A Fire at Night; Ch 3.1

2010-09-08T14:17:00.000+10:00

Polver followed the rogue paladin across Luskan’s rooftops, using Kirder’s grapnel where necessary but otherwise leaping, clambering or crawling their way across the darkened city towards the river. They rose and fell through the city as they went but always remained above ground level; always avoided buildings with intact stairs. Kirder seemed focused on their route, but Polver could not help but look behind and below them for signs of the rune-stalker. He occasionally heard it bellowing in frustration or caught the cries of its lesser companion, always nearby, but it never allowed itself to be seen.

After what seemed like an eternity of travel, Polver grabbed the paladin’s cloak and forced him to pause. Kirder looked at him in annoyance.

“Where are we going?” Polver asked.

Kirder’s eyes went blank for a moment as though he were visualising something, then they focused on the teenager again. “Hallowed ground”, he replied before moving off. Polver rushed to follow.

Eventually the pair arrived on the outskirts of a deserted square. Broken carts and impromptu barricades littered the area, evidence of the outright chaos that had befallen the once-impressive city. Shattered and smoke-scarred buildings stood at the square’s edges, and it was from the second floor of one of these that Polver first laid his eyes on Luskan’s temple of Bahamut.

The building was in no greater state than its neighbours, its façade cracked and faded. Fractured remnants of stained glass windows glittered in the orange light. Vandals or looters had smeared the walls with paint and refuse, and Polver could easily make out more than one spot where someone or something had spilled their lifeblood against the temple’s stones. Of its ornate bronze double doors, one remained in place dented as though by a battering ram, while the other had come from its hinges and lay haphazardly across a pile of rubble. Only the gargoyle above the main entrance remained intact and clean, glaring down at the square with haughty eyes.

Polver looked to the other buildings surrounding the square, and quickly realised that there was no way for them to reach the temple through the ruins. Too many thoroughfares fed into the open space, and each of them meant that Kirder and Polver would need to descend to the street to cross the gap. Each of them meant an opportunity for the rune-stalker to ambush them. He turned to the paladin to ask, but Kirder knew what he was thinking.

“Get ready to run, boy”

Polver started to object, but before the words were half out of his mouth, Kirder had leapt down from their vantage point, disappearing out of sight. Polver scrambled to the edge and looked down just in time to see the paladin hop off the cart he had landed in and move quickly toward the open square. Kirder did not look back, and Polver knew he had to follow.

The landing in the cart sent tingles through Polver’s legs, but he forced himself to focus on the paladin, who was already moving away, and jumped down again into the square. He broke into a run almost as soon as he left the building, swerving around the scattered debris that rose in his path. He tried not to look back, knowing it would only slow him down, but halfway across the square, he could not help himself.

Behind him, the ghouls had appeared in the street below Polver’s previous vantage point. Almost simultaneously, both creatures caught sight of him and broke into a loping run. Their speed was alarming, and Polver knew it would be close; that they might catch him before he could reach the safety Kirder had promised in the temple. Fear filled him again, this time battling with determination.

“Faster, fool boy!” Kirder called, and suddenly Polver’s thoughts cleared. His fear receded. He would not fall. He was not alone now. They would not have him. He turned away and forced his legs to pump harder, driven on by the ghouls’ frenzied howling.

Only fifty feet to go.

Monster Mayhem: Sinruth Redux

2010-09-06T23:39:00.006+10:00

After having a go at rebuilding Paldemar Spellweaver for AngryDM's blog carnival, I thought it would be interesting to attempt another boss. Paldemar was level 11 and another contributer to the carnival has contributed a level 26 boss, so I decided the other end of the scale needed some love; I would do a low-heroic boss.

I fired up the monster builder to see what I had to work with, set the filter to monsters from level 1 to level 4, and as I scrolled down the list who should I come across but our old friend Sinruth, the ill-fated leader of the Red Hand...

If I had the time and more experience with monster building, I'd be tempted to build Sinruth as a solo leader. As much as I maligned his choice of headquarters and allies during my review of Rescue at Rivenroar, he did manage to unite some disparate and rather terrifying monsters together against a common enemy, and that speaks highly of his "diplomatic" skills. Ultimately though, I'm not overly familiar with leader monsters and especially not with leader solos so I decided to leave Sinruth as he was; a soldier.

As I mentioned when I reviewed the Sinruth encounter, the room in which Sinruth is intended to be encountered is about as boring a place to encounter a solo as you could imagine. This version of Sinruth is intended to be encountered in the menhir room (area 20 from Rescue at Rivenroar) as you'll see.

Stage 1: Sinruth, Hobgoblin Chieftain

As a general comment, note that I reduced Sinruth's AC and defences by 1 across the board. The monster builder was showing them as non-default, possibly because of the recent Monster Manual 3 changes to monster design. Whatever the reason, the lower defences makes Sinruth a little easier to hit, which reduces the grind possibilities inherent in using solos.

Sinruth has the usual +5 bonus to saving throws, but I chose not to give him special resistances (such as my Paldemar's increased defences against charms and illusions) largely because his hobgoblin resilience power achieves the same end.

Although hobgoblin resilience is normally usable once per encounter, Sinruth gets to use it once in each of his phases. Coupled with his +5 bonus to saves from being a solo, he already has enough of a defence against stun tactics that there's no real need to buttress it further.

In stage 1, Sinruith is a very orthodox combatant. His spiked chain and dual slash powers are little more than delivery vehicles for damage.

Sinruth's only real surprise in this phase is his body slam power, which I envisage as Sinruth physically slamming his body (and thus his spiked plate mail) into opponents.

Between dual slash and body slam, Sinruth has the capacity to cause significant damage to melee-heavy parties that choose to surround him.

Sinruth's stage 1 transitional ability is chain whirlwind from the standard WotC Sinruth. It's not awe-inspiring, but it does give a pretty clear indication of what to expect from stage 2 and indeed stage 3: physical interractions.

Stage 2: Snarling Sinruth

In stage 2, Sinruth loses his "stiffness" and becomes a much more physical opponent. If you were to think about it in terms of roles, he moves a little toward brute without formally changing any of his statistics or mechanisms.

Snarling Sinruth is mechanically very similar to WotC's Sinruth except for the fact that he is not a solo. He has 1/3 of the solo Sinruth's hit points and his attack and defence values have been adjusted, but he has all the powers and abilities of the original; chain yank, chain trip, chain whirlwind and jackboot stomp

In this phase, Sinruth loses his body slam and other powers because he's changed his tactics: he's now focused on using the room's menhirs against the heroes.

You'll note that every standard action power Sinruth has in this stage has been modified to add a forced movement effect; one each of push, pull and slide. The idea behind those effects is that Sinruth should be pushing at least 1 PC per turn into a menhir for a bonus 1d6 cold damage. I fully expect that will come as sweet revenge for the DM after the PCs had busied themselves doing the same thing to Sinruth during phase 1.

In keeping with the menhir theme for stage 2, Snarling Sinruth's transition power involves him (hopefully) wrapping a PC up with his spiked chain and then looping the chain around a menhir, allowing the cold to spread through the conductive metal weapon. The power can be played exactly as written (as a save ends effect) or you can allow your PCs to use other means to end it. Athletics checks might break the chain, acrobatics checks might allow a PC to wriggle free. Mage hand might lessen the ongoing damage by unravelling the chain. Let your DMing ad lib go wild with this power. There's no need for you to worry about what happens to the chain itself, as we're about to see.

Stage 3: Desperate Sinruth

In stage 3, Sinruth is bloodied and he knows he's on the ropes. While he's not far enough gone to abandon his warrior's disciplined training, he is desperate enought to stoop to wrestling and personal combat with the PCs. Having wrapped his chain around a menhir in the last act of stage 2, he's left to punch, kick and grab his way out of trouble.

Sinruth retains forced movement powers in stage 3, but I strongly suspect that it's the head lock power that will be most surprising for the PCs. Head lock is just what it sounds like, and doubly painful because Sinruth is wearing spiked armour. It also forms the basis for both of Sinruth's "special" moves in stage 3; desperate throw and body shield.

Desperate throw is a minor action attack power specifically so that Sinruth can head lock and throw a PC in the same round. Note that if the throw is unsuccessful the PC stays grabbed until they escape. If Sinruth does pull off the throw, the PC takes an impressive 1d10 + 2d6 + 6 (average 23) damage from the head lock and desperate throw combo plus 1d6 cold damage for starting their next turn in a menhir square. It's a recharge 6 power simply because if Sinruth could do that every round he'd be a recipe for a TPK against a first or second level party.

For those rounds when Sinruth doesn't have desperate throw available, he has body shield. This power is originally taken from the cavern choker and is normally found on lurkers such as the infamous bugbear strangler. It fits surprisingly well on Sinruth because of the pattern we have already established of Sinruth grabbing enemies and/or crushing them against his armour spikes. It also serves a mechanical purpose by turning one of the PCs' attacks against their own - effectively changing the fight from 5 vs 1 to 4 vs 2 for a short time.

Lastly, I gave Sinruth a minor action attack power to allow him to punch head locked PCs (ooh, that'll get them revved up!) or other PCs who try to come to their allies' aid. I couldn't resist calling the power The Red Hand.

Sinruth doesn't have a final attack. When the PCs finally drop him, I want them to breathe a sigh of relief. If one of or more of them get thrown into a menhir, I'm pretty sure they'll do exactly that when they finally defeat Sinruth, the leader of the Red Hand.

SSTL 50: In Acererak's Domain

2010-09-02T13:38:00.002+10:00

Our heroes continue their investigation of the Tomb of Horrors, before finding themselves in a very strange chapel.

Read the full recap here.

Note: our group is going through the RPGA DM reward Tomb of Horrors, not the newly-released retail re-write of the Tomb.

I'm not quite sure what to make of the Tomb of Horrors so far. Part of me thinks it should have been called the Tomb of Confusion and Paranoia. There's been an abundance of both, but a real absence of Horror. We haven't lost a PC (or even looked like losing one) or encountered anything other than the devourer that could be considered lethal.

Of course, it's entirely possible that we're bumbling our way clouseau-like through the Tomb, avoiding the worst of its snares and denizens by sheer luck - more arse than class, if you will - because I don't exactly feel that we know what we're doing. For example, we spent most of the first session trying to apply every line of the Tomb riddle just to the first corridor.

Then we spent ten minutes crushing gems in the gargoyle statue without any idea what it did, just because it was there.

Which brings me back to the first point about the Tomb of Confusion and Paranoia. The main reason the Tomb is so memorable is that its metagame forces you to engage in a series of puzzles to which you can (if you are lucky) figure out the how but almost never the why. Why exactly does the mist-archway have glowing keystones that act as a combination lock? Why is there a four-armed gargoyle that crushes gems? What's the purpose of the big hall full of spheres? The meta answer appears to be "to drive players batty", but there doesn't really seem to be an in-game answer, other than perhaps "it's all there just to kill adventurers".

Halfway through the session, the DM described to us a surrounding feeling of malevolence and I - half in jest - said it was stored in the tomb by previous players focusing their anger and frustration at Gary Gygax. I'm not sure now how much I was joking. Tomb occupies a strange spot in the D&D world. It's a massive left turn where almost all other turns are to the right. It's a puzzler's paradise (or nightmare), but it's one that has no real self-justification in the game world. It takes heroes and turns them into over-cautious 10-foot pole wielders.

The Tomb can make sense in a campaign focused on exploration, but in a campaign dealing with bigger threats and PC characterisation, it's a proud nail. I'm happy to have gone through it in the same way that I'm happy to have visited Cairo. It's nice to say you've been, but you don't necessarily want to go again.

SoW: Shadows of Doom

2010-09-01T14:07:00.000+10:00

The PCs manage to escape Sarshan's tower, only to discover that their encounter with the Shadowfell is by no means over.

At any time after the fight with Thannu and his panthers begins, the PCs are free to investigate the large portal standing against the south wall of the garden. You might need to remind your PCs that it's there, because a lot has happened since they entered the garden and encountered its vermin occupants.

Once the PCs decide to try to activate the portal, they'll likely find that it's ridiculously easy to do so. The default skill challenge attached to the portal involves Arcana, History, Perception and Thievery. All of the DCs are 14, so assuming a PC is trained in one of those skills and has a 14 in the appropriate ability, they succeed on their check on a roll of 4 or more. The challenge requires four successes before three failures. Like I said; ridiculously easy.

I'm not sure I'd recommend increasing the DCs. The portal is the only easy way for the PCs to make their way out of Umbraforge, so unless you want to run an "escape from Umbraforge" skill challenge or a few more combats (or some combination of the two) let the PCs have their successes and get through the portal.

Once on the other side, they find themselves in the Black Shrine (the Shadowfell cave where they first appeared after leaving the prime plane's White Shrine), from which they can watch as Umbraforge is consumed by the volcano's erruption. Thannu's panthers follow and continue the attack if they're still alive, but Thannu himself doesn't pursue fleeing parties. With him out of the equation, the panthers will drop quickly.

The PCs can then activate the Shadowfell portal and return to Outlook and the final combat of the adventure. As the PCs jump through the shaking portal, 6 spectres follow them through.

Unfortunately, the final combat of the adventure is not one of the best. Spectres are insubstantial undead that have an aura that imposes penalties to defences. They can fly and hover and have phasing, a standard action at-will power that makes them invisible and a +9 bonus to stealth. Their only real weakness is that they are level 4 (likely 2 levels below the party) and thus suffer some attack and defence problems.

In the hands of a devious and merciless DM, six of these guys could prove a lot of heartache. An obvious tactic that springs to mind is for them to turn invisible and hide from the party before rematerialising and simultaneously unleashing 6 spectral barrages (close burst 2, targets enemies, +7 vs will; 2d6+2 psychic damage and the target is knocked prone), before phasing and retreating down the Shrine's rock hole until spectral barrage recharges or they can turn invisible again.

Although they have minimal hit points (30 each), insubstantial effectively doubles that and puts them on par with the gnoll huntmasters and the shadow beetle. If played to their maximum, this could prove to be a drawn-out and frustrating combat.

It would be a good idea to change the dynamics of the encounter somewhat. Perhaps the spectres aren't after the PCs, but simply wish to escape into the wider world. That possibility should give moralistic PCs nightmares. Perhaps the spectres are tied to the Shadowfell arch for the first few rounds, unable to move more than 2 squares from it until the arch is destroyed by the eruptions in the Shadowfell.

Another option is to change the participants to mix up the abilities. Perhaps a few of Sarshan's shadar-kai guards or ogre mercenaries find the portal in time to escape and now need to fight their way past the PCs to freedom.

Alternatively, accept that getting out of the Shadowfell is the end of the adventure. You've had a meeting with the big bad, a combat against his personal lieutenant, volcanic eruptions, a collapsing tower and Umbraforge in flames. A slap-down fight against 6 uniform opponents doesn't really add to that. Let your PCs breathe a sigh of relief and bask in what they've achieved.

Encounter rating: 1

Tempts Fate

2010-08-27T11:28:00.001+10:00

Those of you who have bothered to check the 'Webcomics I Enjoy' list on the right hand side of this blog will have noticed that I'm a regular reader of a webcomic named Goblins.

While it's a great comic, it's not the comic itself that I want to discuss in this post. Instead, I want to discuss a sub-comic that Goblins' creator writes.

It's called Tempts Fate (the eponymous Goblins are named after their characteristics eg. Big Ears, Dies Horribly and Fumbles) and details the adventures of a solitary goblin who ransacks his way through various dangerous situations.

Originally Tempts Fate was a method of generating revenue - each issue of Tempts Fate had a donation goal, and if the goal was met then Tempts Fate survived and garnered some groovy loot). In its latest incarnations, Tempts Fate includes both a donations goal and a puzzle goal. If insufficient donations are received, or if insufficient correct answers are given to the puzzle, then Tempts Fate meets a grizzly end.

Tempts Fate has successfully made his way through 9 adventures so far, but it's looking a bit dicey right at the moment. Donations are above the required level, but successful answers to the puzzle are very low. Of the 75 correct answers required by 1 September 2010, only 21 have been received. There have been one hundred and sixty three incorrect answers.

I'm not sure why, but I've grown attached to this spunky goblin. I urge you - even if you don't want to donate - head over to Tempts Fate 10 and have a go at the puzzle. I think I've figured it out and I'll give you a hint:

You do want to look at a larger version of the picture.

Be sure to comment back here if you think you figure it out.

SoW: Last Stand

2010-08-24T22:54:00.000+10:00

For one reason or another, Sarshan has decided to end the PCs lives. Fortunately, Modra's plans come to fruition just in time.

Just as all seems lost, Modra's sabotage in the foundry is discovered as the building goes up in flames. Sarshan sends his guards to investigate, but remains just long enough to utter some words that are sure to make your PCs hate him to the core:

“If I was as cruel as my reputation implies, I would send you back to watch your world die,” Sarshan calls. “Be thankful that I am merciful.” Then to Thannu: “Kill them.”

Now, the reference to "watching your world die" is obviously a pretty big hint that something seriously troubling is going to happen later in the adventure path, but for the time being it's enough that Sarshan just made himself public enemy #1. I'd make sure he's standing behind a squad of shadar-kai at the time, if I were you.

Of course, your PCs can't really do anything about it. Attacking him with the other guards present would be suicide, and the author knows it. He doesn't even provide stats for Sarshan. I have a strong feeling that most groups will consider this parley encounter to be extreme railroading, and that it will cause friction. To avoid that, I think most DMs will need to work quite hard to establish the scene before the PCs enter the tower. They need to know that if they get caught in there, they're probably not going to make it out alive.

You want them to feel suspense the whole time they're in the tower, so that when the guards pour into the garden, the PCs don't feel ambushed by that turn of events. If they feel that they failed, they're much more likely to take the chance at survival with a grin on their face.

Either way, your disgruntled/gleeful players get to take their revenge by proxy on shadar-kai battle champion Thannu and his two umbral panthers.

The outcome of this battle will depend heavily on how well your PCs handled the other encounters in the tower. If none of the other encounters really made a dent, then Thannu and his panthers are nothing more than soon-to-be-roadkill. None of them have any truly threatening powers (although the umbral panthers' 5d6+4 damage when flanking with Thannu is sure to come as a very nasty shock to the PCs) nor the hit points to survive a prolonged combat with fresh PCs.

In those circumstances, suggest to your PCs (in-game if you can, such as by Thannu moving to block it saying, "oh no you don't!") that the portal against the southern wall (which can be activated with a skill challenge) is their quickest way out. Having one or more PCs pre-occupied with the portal might divert just enough firepower to create a memorable encounter.

If your PCs got savaged by the earlier combats and have used up most of their surges and/or daily powers, things could be different. Thannu and the panthers can put out just enough damage to cause trouble to PCs that are already on the ropes. In that case, let your PCs ignore the portal until Thannu is down. They already have enough on their hands.

Encounter rating: 2+

Strahd returns

2010-08-20T14:00:00.000+10:00

We've known for some time now that WotC planned on releasing D&D board games (no jokes about 4e please!), and the first of them has now seen the light of day. It's Castle Ravenloft, and that's the cover illustration on the left.

Wizards of the Coast were kind/brave/savvy enough to post the game's entire rulebook on the D&D website a few days ago and I leapt at the chance to scrounge through it.

Why? Because I'm a mature gamer, and one thing that many mature gamers have in common is that their hobby is viewed as something of an anomaly by their significant others or family members. Even those who might be interested in the concept of D&D or the stories it creates (such as my teenage nephews) rare put off by the almost-300 page rulebooks.

Essentials is one of the ways Wizards is trying to combat that problem, and the board games (and the recently announced computer game) are another. By getting the D&D brand to a wider audience, you increase the possible uptake of the core product - the D&D roleplaying game itself. It's clever marketing, but will it work?

Castle Ravenloft seems to stick quite closely to the core of 4e rules, while jettisoning everything else that would slow down or overly complicate the game. That's a good approach. A board game with crazy-complicated rules is as significant a barrier to entry as a 300-page rulebook. It aims for games of 45 - 60 minutes duration, which is a good length. Shorter and the game has no gravitas; longer and it prevents impulse play. And it's modular. Different adventure scenarios, randomised monsters and events and interconnecting board pieces mean that no two games are going to be the same.

Wizards seem to have hit all my personal "high notes" there. My favourite board game is Betrayal at House on the Hill, and Castle Ravenloft borrows mercilessly from that game.

My only concern, having read through the game rules, is how hectic a game of Castle Ravenlopft seems to be. If the game has 4 players, then in a single round they will likely encounter 4 monsters, 4 "events", or some combination of the two. There doesn't appear to be any respite or even much room for strategising (which was a big feature of Betrayal). It's driving force is also significantly different from 4e D&D or any previous version. D&D is generally a game where the players choose when things happen. Castle Ravenloft seems to remove that power by forcing the encounter and villain phases on the players.

It may be that the currently-unknown variables (the event, treasure and power cards) go some way to mitigating that problem. I guess I won't know till someone posts a full review of the game, or until I get my hands on a copy.

Monster Mayhem: Paldemar Redux

2010-08-18T14:00:00.009+10:00

I've spent some time recently reading AngryDM's articles about staged monsters, specifically his treatise on building multi-stage boss monsters as a way of avoiding grind in D&D encounters. Inspired by the possibilities, I proposed an impromptu blog carnival and AngryDM gave the green light. This post is hopefully the first of many (on this blog and others).

For those of you who don't wish to read AngryDM's original three articles (you really should), they operate on the premise that a lot of the problems with boss grind can be eliminated by created a staged fight; three stat blocks that represent the same creature during different stages of the combat.

AngryDM's sample work was on a three-stage ogre boss named Bloodknuckles, intended to take the place of a solo monster. While solos are certainly the most "grindy" of 4e's opponents, the staged monster idea is not limited to solos, and I was intrigued to see whether it could be adapted to elites. I decided to re-imagine Paldemar Spellweaver, the ultimate villain of Wizards of the Coast's adventure Thunderspire Labyrinth.

When my group went through the final combat of that adventure, we found it exciting, but we didn't really feel the same way about Paldemar himself. It's a common problem with arcanist-type villains; once the melee PCs get them in lockdown, it's essentially game over.

I wanted to turn that issue on its head, and the idea of a two-stage elite offered a lot of possibility.

General comments

Paldemar is an elite, rather than a solo, so I didn't feel that the three-stage schema was appropriate for him. Instead, I created a two-stage fight. Doing so avoided the hit point strangeness inherent in a three-stage monster. In such creatures, you either make them bloodied halfway through stage 2 (tricky, but 50% hp), or you make them bloodied at the end of stage one (66% hp) or stage two (33% hp). One of the advantages of a two-stage monster is that the unbloodied/bloodied division is easier to create. Paldemar becomes bloodied at the start of stage 2.

The difficulty with staged elites (and staged creatures in general) is what to do with action points. As an elite, Paldemar would normally be entitled to one action point. I decided to stick with that number, rather than giving each stage an action point. A DM could easily rule the other way, and indeed it might be preferable to do so if you think that action denial is going to be a real issue. After all, the entire purpose of this style of monster design is to make the creature interesting. More is better than less in that regard.

AngryDM also advocates dealing with the common "lockdown" conditions that bosses find themselves faced with. The central justification for doing so is that solos occupy most of the DM's encounter-building space. If they get locked down, the whole encounter is locked down.

Elites aren't quite as expensive in an encounter design sense, so I decided not to give Paldemar the sort of across-the-board benefits that Angry DM gave Bloodknuckles. Instead, I gave Paldemar the Master of Arcane Secrets trait. It's certainly not fool-proof (there are lots of ways to stun or daze that aren't illusions or charms) but it is flavourful and fits Paldemar's role in the adventure. He's the guy that figured out how to control the bronze warders, after all.

Stage 1: Paldemar Spellweaver

My stage 1 version of Paldemar retains the lightning focus of the original. I've removed the bonus crit damage from the staff attack because it doesn't really fit Paldemar's arcane leanings. I've simplified the Lightning Bolt power so that it's easier to determine targets, and I've added the Quick Portal and Arcane Infusion powers.

Quick portal is the sort of power that every arcanist boss needs. Sooner or later they all wind up adjacent to the defender, and walking away is just never a viable option. However, I didn't want to make Paldemar too hard to pin down so I made Quick Portal an encounter power (although note that the next stage has one too so it's effectively 2 per encounter) and the teleport distance is relatively minor.

The Arcane Infusion power is, I understand, something similar to the abilities possessed of the green crystal pillars in the official Thunderspire Labyrinth encounter. Putting it in Paldemar's stat block serves as a reminder for the DM.

Finally, I included This Can't be Happening!

If you're going to use a staged boss, it's a good idea to have some sort of "shock and awe" power for the point of transition. That power serves two purposes. It gives players the metagame knowledge that something has changed, and (if done well) gives them some indication of how.

This Can't be Happening! is a close burst power. It's the only one of its kind in stage 1, but they are much more common in stage 2. Furthermore, it signifies a big change in Paldemar's behaviour. In stage 1, the best way to deal with him is to get in his face. In stage 2, that's not necessarily the case. This Can't be Happening! also puts Paldemar in direct contact with an active green crystal pillar, which will be the focus of the second half of the encounter.

Stage 2: Paldemar Unfettered

In stage 2, Paldemar realises that he is on the verge of losing everything that he has worked for. His plans for the seven-pillared hall will be for naught. His breakthrough in controlling the Bronze Warders will never be realised. He will have failed Vecna. He doesn't take it very well.

In fact, he takes it so poorly that he becomes a brute. His AC and Fortitude defence rise while his Reflex falls, although his Will stays impressively high. He gains the Crackling Vortex aura (representing magic running uncontrolled through him) and his powers change from attacking Reflex to generally targeting Fortitude.

By the start of stage 2, most (if not all) of the other creatures in the combat should be down or almost out, so Paldemar needs to be able to stand more on his own. He picks up two close burst powers (Shock Wave and Shock Portal), and two options for getting PCs off him (Thunder staff and Shock Wave).

Ultimately, I would like to see stage 2 concentrated around the green crystal pillars, with Paldemar trying to get to them to recharge his powers (Lightning Bolt when he reaches one followed by Shock Wave when he is ready to leave is a particularly nice combo) and the PCs trying to lock him down or activate the pillars themselves.

Paldemar's brute hit points and increased AC while in his Unfettered stage means that the second "half" of the encounter should last a round or two longer than the first. I'm happy with that, because I think Paldemar Unfettered offers a much more interesting opponent that Paldemar Spellweaver.

When building staged monsters like these, it's always a good idea to save the best for last.

SoW: Unexpected Parley

2010-08-17T13:48:00.000+10:00

The PCs incursion into Sarshan's tower finally comes to a halt.

After besting the shadar-kai in the library and the great hall, the gnolls in the guest chambers and the vermin in the shadow garden, things get serious. Someone or something (likely the sounds of combat in the great hall and/or garden) has alerted the guards and they begin to arrive en masse.

"Six shadar-kai hit the levitation lift, and footsteps in the distance herald groups of four coming through the doors of each of the towers".

That makes for 18 (one of the towers doesn't have any stairs) enemies closing on the PCs' position, which is as close to an unwinnable encounter as I have ever seen in a 4e adventure. It's certainly not safety rails. Unsurprisingly, the author notes that "the PCs should hopefully recognize that this is a fight they cannot win, and that standing down is their best bet in the short term. However, if the party is more the fight-to-the-death crowd, allow them to strike back but have a pair of shadar-kai witches show up to immobilize them with magic."

I don't like that latter approach. I would instead recommend that the shadar-kai focus all of their attacks on one of the PCs until that PC is unconscious (but not dead). At that point (which should only take a round or two with that many attackers), have the shadar-kai captain call for the PCs' surrender. If your PCs are wise, they'll play along. If not, well then clearly they weren't having fun with the Scale of War adventure path anyway and are itching for an excuse to start something new...

All of this is setting the scene for Sarshan's appearance. After all, if you put PCs in a room with the bad guy, chances are pretty good they'll attack him. Unless he has 18 friends with him. Come to think of it, you better make it clear that those 18 friends aren't minions or else the PCs might try their hand after all.

Sarshan offers the PCs a chance to work for him, and I can only hope that they are the noble heroes that WotC assumes they are because the adventure doesn't really deal with what to do if the PCs accept. In that event, play along and let the PCs think they're safe (and newly employed) for now.

Regardless of whether the PCs accept Sarshan's offer, things are about to get shaken up.

A Fire at Night; Ch 2.4

2010-08-12T14:01:00.002+10:00

Kirder moved like quicksilver. Even as Galen's booted feet twitched, the hunter moved to the opposite end of of the courtyard. He reached under his cloak and extracted a fist-sized black object. Then he muttered a word that Polver didn't overhear, and tossed the object onto the half-collapsed roof above. It instantaneously sprouted a rope, which trailed down into the courtyard.

Kirder turned to Polver. "Well?" he asked impatiently.

Polver didn't hesitate. Any fear he felt of the stranger was easily outweighed by the knowledge that the rune-covered ghoul had found him. He scurried over to the rope and shimmied up it with with an ease born of months living in a city with few surviving stairs. Once the teenager reached the roof, Kirder gripped the rope in one hand.

A ghoul burst into the courtyard from beyond the gate, it's maw dripping with blood that steamed in the frigid night air, and rushed toward him. The former paladin's blade slashed out and the creature dropped, screaming and scrabbling at the deep gouge across its chest. Kirder cast one last glance at the gateway, then sheathed his weapon and followed Polver.

One the paladin reached the roof, he picked up the black object now shaped like a grapnel. With a word, he commanded it to resume its previous shape. The rope retracted instantaneously, and Kirder returned the object beneath his cloak. Together, the two of them watched from the safety of the roof as the rune-stalker loped into the courtyard. The creature moved to its stricken companion and silenced it with a savage blow that crushed its face, then looked up at them wordlessly.

"It won't stop", Kirder said quietly.

Polver knew immediately what he meant. Something in the creature's soulless eyes spoke of limitless hatred and rage. But there was something more there, something that Polver had seen before in the merchant who had purchased him. The creature believed he belonged to it. It would not stop until it had recovered him and when it did, he knew what would happen.

Polver felt a hand on his back and immediately pressed against it with all his might, sure that Kirder had made the same realisation and resolved to throw him down to the ghoul. The paladin responded only by withdrawing his hand.

"Don't be foolish boy. I didn't rescue you just so I could throw you to a runestalker. Come. We need to move to more favourable ground before we battle that thing."

Kirder turned and moved away, not waiting to see if Polver would follow.

SoW: Garden of Shadows

2010-08-11T14:12:00.000+10:00

The PCs begin their ascent through Sarshan's tower, only to find that even the vermin are dangerous in the Shadowfell.

The monsters in this encounter lack versatility, as you might expect from rot scarab swarms (R) and a shadow beetle (B). But what they lack in options, they make up for with pure pain-in-the-neckedness.

The rot scrab swarms have the swarm attack aura, which allows them to "make a basic attack as a free action against each enemy that begins its turn" adjacent to the swarm. With three of them in the combat, it's not unforseeable that melee PCs might find themselves facing two or three +12 vs Reflex attacks at the start of each of their turns, and suffering 1d8+5 necrotic damage and ongoing 5 necrotic damage for each one that hits. That's going to hurt.

When you couple that with the fact that the swarms take only half damage from melee attacks and the shadow beetle's shadow spray power immobilises targets, this is clearly an encounter that favours range(and/or close and/or area)-heavy parties. In fact, if I hadn't seen first hand just how tough PCs can be, I would suspect that this encounter might be a little too one-sided.

Instead I'll settle for simply suggesting that you carefully consider your party makeup when assessing the difficulty of this encounter.

That issue aside, there are some interesting gambits available to the party here. The rot scarab swarms can't move through the area of the levitation lift, so a party who realises that could choose to retreat downstairs while their ranged alpha-striker stands in the middle square of the lift and goes toe-to-toe with the shadow beetle. If that does happen, let it go on just long enough for the shadow beetle to fall. At that point, spring the surprise that we'll be dealing with in the next SoW post.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this encounter is that your PCs can reach it without going through the great hall below (by going up the stairs in area 5). That's not really to their advantage though, because the encounter text states that the shadar-kai and wraith in the great hall come to investigate. That's really bad. As outlined in the adventure text, the vermin don't attack shadow creatures. The shadar-kai and wraith are therefore safe from the rot scarabs and shadow beetle, and adding them to the combat tips it from frustrating to potentially deadly.

On the other hand, if you ignore the adventure text and rule that the rot scarabs do attack the shadar-kai, the encounter could become very interesting indeed. Just be sure to focus the scarabs standard-action attacks on the PCs so that you're not losing your action economy. Their aura attacks against the shadar-kai will mean that the added opponents aren't overwhelming.

Encounter rating: 3

Yes, Essentials is D&D 4.5e

2010-08-10T14:14:00.011+10:00

Gencon has seen a lot of revelations about the future of D&D over the last few days. Aside from a seeming focus on boxed sets and board games in future, much of the news has been about the Essentials line.

I've stayed out of the discussion about Essentials until now because I didn't feel that we had enough information to really comment about it with any sort of insight. I'm not the sort to jump to hasty conclusions or love/hate something based on what I guess it might be like. Ditto for the claims by some that Essentials is D&D 4.5e, an obvious invocation of the transition from 3rd edition D&D to edition 3.5 in June 2003.

Having now seen the excerpts on the Wizards site and heard some of the releases from Gencon, I no longer feel the need to sit on that particular fence. I am satisfied that Essentials is D&D 4.5.

In making that statement, it behooves me to define what I consider to be indicative of a .5 edition. Without being exclusive, they are:

Rules changes that might be limited in scope but which are significant to the areas involved.
Significant changes to spells, powers or abilities where the old version is no longer correct.
Changes in mechanics or the default assumptions of the system.

4th edition Dungeons & Dragons is what is known in some industries as a "living game". It isn't printed once and then left inviolable for all time. It is (and will presumably be for a long time yet) regularly updated and tweaked, both as an object d'art and for more crass commercial reasons. That process makes it difficult to discuss concepts like half-editions, because there is no set point at which to judge an edition. The field is constantly shifting. Wizards of the Coast could probably have continued releasing errata and other "updates" without ever really having to accept that a half-edition had been published, because there would never be a point gamers could rally around and say "this is the time that the game changed!".

I think Essentials changes that. At or by the time of essentials, we will have (I'll sort them according to the numbering I've already used):

stealth, implement, and race rules that are significantly different to the rules originally penned;
magic missile and infernal wrath being completely re-written, with all wizard encounter powers getting miss effects; and
feats that are no longer assigned to tiers, loss of daily powers (with a corresponding focus on basic attacks) for martial classes, and additional class features after 1st level.

The obvious answer to all of the above other than #2 is to say, "but they're just options. It's not a new edition because you can use the old options in the same game". And that's half true. You can continue to use the old options in most cases. But the same was true of 3.0 material during the reign of 3.5. The only difference here is that Wizards of the Coast have been clever enough to paint this revolution in a bright coat of "all the old stuff is still core".

Unfortunately for them, the massive alterations that Essentials will require of old material (eg. feats and items that affect basic attacks) gives the lie to such proclamations. 4.5 is upon us, even if we don't want to admit it.

I'm finally ready to admit it.

SSTL 49: The Pull of Forgotten Memory

2010-08-07T13:35:00.001+10:00

The Heroes of Winterhaven garner fame in Waterdeep, then journey to Acererak's tomb.

Read the full recap here.

This was a most unusual session for us. It lasted almost five hours, and didn't include a single combat. More importantly, not once was that lack of combat problematic. The scenes and situations involved were just incredibly gripping. Along with the big combat setpieces (Kalarel, Murklemor, Paldemar), I think this my favourite session of the campaign so far.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, the necromancer series of RPGA Living Realms modules contain an awful lot of stuff that is intrinsically cool. What I didn't realise until the session just past was how fitting they were to 4e D&D at the end of heroic tier.

The modules bring the PCs into contact with the movers and shakers of Waterdeep, and in the process the PCs can make powerful friends and enemies. But more importantly the modules have the PCs recover the Lantan collection, a folio of documents recording technological marvels stolen from Waterdeep two decades earlier and long thought lost. The Lantan collection is inherently Waterdhavian. It's the sort of find that makes for local heroes, but on a regional/citywide - rather than villagewide - scale. The PCs who return the Lantan collection are going to be recognised and loved wherever they go in Waterdeep. They're not movers and shakers on a worldwide scale, but when they talk in and around Waterdeep, people should listen. And that's exactly where you want your PCs to be at the end of heroic tier.

We were paranoid about returning the collection, fearing an ambush or betrayal that didn't arise. Instead, our DM allowed us to have a triumphant handover at the base of Timehands, surrounded by a mob of adoring citizens and the heads of most of the important entities in the city. As I mentioned at the time, it felt a lot like the scene at the end of A New Hope where Luke, Han and Chewie get their medals. I would have been happy to end the session there. It was a very cool feeling.

Of course, that would have meant a very short session so we pressed on. Mixed in with the Lantan collection were the notes referring to what we all knew (outside the game) was Acererak's tomb, the fabled and nightmarish Tomb of Horrors. Bengi was obviously interested in exploring it, feeling a calling (the titular pull of forgotten memory; my words not his).

I'm not sure why Soveliss is so keen to visit the tomb. His recovery of the black prism from Michael the Burnt's tower has resulted in him showing a renewed interest in necromancy (not surprising given his Thayan heritage), and the eladrin's desire to delve the tomb of an archlich is not reassuring. Nala is openly suspicious of him (especially humourous given that Nala's player and Sov's player are married), and Pieter would much rather not enter the tomb.

In fact, were I a stickler for character, Pieter never would have entered the damn place. But as I have said before: players control their characters rather than the other way around. I knew that Bengi's player was keen to explore it and (the foolhardy) part of me wanted to experience the tomb, so I told Bengi's player what he needed to say to get Pieter to enter the tomb. Specifically, he needed to press Pieter's loyalty buttons. It made for a very interesting scene, with me sending private whispers to Bengi's player as the conversation went back and forth. Maptool has recently instituted a "so-and-so is typing" message, and the DM commented during the session "I know you're all whispering to each other because I can see the typing message but nothing is coming up in chat!"

The tomb itself has me worried. Until we triggered the second trap, I was reasonably confident we could get through without too much trouble. After all, it's just a matter of being careful, right? Then we discovered that the trigger to the second trap was an invisible latch that you couldn't accidentally trigger. In other words, only people who were actively searching for the trap could fall afoul of it.

As I mentioned to the DM afterwards, that's just dickery of the highest calibre. If being incautious gets you in trouble, and being cautious gets you in just as much, then the whole Tomb looks like it might just be a crap shoot. I'm suddenly very very concerned. As Pieter said to Bengi at the end of the session, "This makes no sense. Why hide a trap so that only those who look for it are caught by it? Something sinister is afoot here. Are you sure you wish to proceed inside, or that what is in there - if anything is in there - is worth the obvious risk. Perhaps Nala was right."

Only time (and the bodycount) will tell.

SoW: Guest Quarters

2010-08-04T14:02:00.001+10:00

The PCs encounter gnoll mercenaries waiting for an audience with Sarshan.

This encounter is much simpler than any of the other encounters in Sarshan's tower. Gnolls are mechanically simple monsters to begin with, and the area in which the encounter occurs is not complicated. It contains beds, blankets, and a fire pit; a far cry from the magical elevator and collapsing shelves of the previous two encounters.

Unfortunately, the area is also very tight. There is only a single 5ft-wide entrance, and beyond that entrance lies another chokepoint, a 10ft-wide tunnel. Those confines will likely (in the absence of numerous forced movement, shift or teleport powers) mean that the majority of the combat is stationary. And that's not very much fun.

In terms of versatility, none of the Gnolls really have anything amazing to offer. The huntmasters have 1 melee attack and 1 ranged. The marauder has 1 melee attack and a free action bite for when it hits a bloodied target. The clawfighter is the only gnoll that has options, and for most DMs its options consist largely of powers that will (in these tight confines) provoke a billion opportunity attacks and turn it into gnoll paste faster than the combat otherwise would.

Even the gnolls' racial strong point (pack attack; +5 damage when the gnoll hits a target adjacent to 2 or more of the gnoll's allies) doesn't really fire in this encounter because the gnolls are outnumbered by the PCs.

For devious/dubious DMs, there might be a little more hope. One of claw fighter's powers, mobile melee attack allows it to move 4 and attack someone along the route. The gnoll doesn't take OAs when moving away from the target of the attack. It's a matter of interpretation (unless there's relevant errata) whether the claw fighter can use this power to attack an adjacent target and then move four squares, thus making all squares of movement subject to the "no OA" proviso. I personally wouldn't do it, but if you do it might be the only thing in the encounter that surprises your PCs.

Unless your PCs are behind the XP curve for the adventure path and you can't think of a better way to have them catch up, you should seriously consider dropping this encounter from the adventure.

Encounter rating: 1

Character Concept: Tiefling Rogue

2010-08-02T17:54:00.001+10:00

When it came time to prepare a character concept for a tiefling, I must admit that I initially hit a bit of a brick wall. Tieflings are "new" enough that they don't really have any stereotype or other emotional space that they occupy. At least not one that doesn't contravene the overriding rule of this series - don't put races in the classes they best suit.

That rules out the redeemed tiefling paladin atoning for their infernal blood, the anger-filled tiefling warlock, or the wizard that dabbled a little too deeply in the affairs of demons. For a while I contemplated making a tiefling warlord, but that seemed more an exercise in fitting stats to a race rather than crafting an internally-consistent character. After all, the strong motif of the tieflings is that they are outsiders (in a social rather than planar sense), so it doesn't really make much sense to me that they rise to leadership.

So I went the other way. What do you do when you are an outcast? When your neighbours view you with suspicion and ostracise you? When you can't get an honest education or work because of prejudice? Without a mentor or a benefactor, you often turn to crime. I made a rogue.

Kaira, level 1

Tiefling, Rogue
Build: Trickster Rogue
Rogue Tactics: Artful Dodger
Rogue: Rogue Weapon Talent

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 14, Dex 17, Int 12, Wis 8, Cha 16.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 14, Dex 17, Int 10, Wis 8, Cha 14.

AC: 15 Fort: 12 Reflex: 15 Will: 13
HP: 26 Surges: 8 Surge Value: 6

TRAINED SKILLS
Stealth +10, Thievery +8, Streetwise +8, Intimidate +8, Acrobatics +8, Bluff +10

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Arcana +1, Diplomacy +3, Dungeoneering -1, Endurance +2, Heal -1, History +1, Insight -1, Nature -1, Perception -1, Religion +1, Athletics

FEATS
Level 1: Versatile Duelist

POWERS
Rogue at-will 1: Sly Flourish
Rogue at-will 1: Deft Strike
Rogue encounter 1: Opening Move
Rogue daily 1: Spinning Blade Leap

ITEMS
Longsword, Leather Armor, Dagger, Adventurer's Kit

Kaira is an artful dodger because that's how she survived on the streets growing up. She didn't have the height or brawn to menace people the way Bharhash (the character concept dragonborn rogue I previously made) does. She gets what (and where) she needs by being quick and dextrous.

However, she still harbours a hint of the fiend deep in her soul, which manifests as anger and the desire to harm those who confront her. I've chosen Kaira's powers and feat more for their damage-dealing ability than their utility. While she would prefer to avoid going face to face with an enemy, she has the capacity to cause a lot of pain when she is backed into the corner.

I wasn't really happy with the longsword as Kaira's weapon. While mechanically appropriate, it's visually too neat to fit the 'dissafected and resentful' vibe that I'm after. And then I remembered what a Bael Turathi longsword* actually looks like, and now it doesn't bother me at all. No doubt Kaira inherited her weapon from a less-than-reputable member of her family...

*Does anyone know where I can find a copy of the tiefling weapons illustration on the web?

A Fire at Night; Ch 2.3

2010-07-30T14:01:00.002+10:00

The man on Polver’s back jumped off him in surprise, and Polver rejoiced in the ability to fill his lungs with air. Galen’s axe was in his hand in an instant, and the big man’s feet crunched on the gravel-littered cobbletones as he took up a fighting stance. Although his back was turned to Polver, the teenager could hear the smile in his voice.

“Kirder,” Galen said. “I’ve always wanted to kill you.”

Wert moved to the big man’s side, long blade held out in wariness. He looked questioningly at his leader, and when he spoke his voice was full of doubt.

“But… it’s Kirder.”

Polver well understood the man’s fear. Kirder was a legend – a bogeyman – to those who scavenged a living in the ruins of Luskan; a rogue paladin who was said to stalk the streets indiscriminately killing those he encountered. His victims were legion, readily identified by the sign of the dragon carved into their foreheads.

The stranger smiled, although his voice did not change as he replied.

“Very well, scum. Test your arm.”

Galen bellowed a curse, and then charged. The stranger stepped forward to meet him, and axe met sword in a crash of steel. Galen rained blow after blow on the stranger, but could not breach his defences. The stranger’s sword moved like lightning, intercepting each fresh assault with ease. Galen grunted with effort, and the stranger smiled.

“Get over here, Wert,” Galen called to his companion, and the man – until then frozen in a mix of shock and fear – cautiously moved to flank the stranger. Polver rose to his feet as Wert moved out of range. His mind was awhirl. Should he help the stranger who had seemingly come to his aid? Or if the man was indeed Kirder, was Polver soon to be just another of the paladin’s victims?

Before he could decide, Wert moved to within striking distance. The skinny man positioned himself behind the stranger, who was busy fending off Galen’s renewed assault. Wert’s long knife glinted in the orange light as he leapt forward to plunge it into the stranger’s back. A cry of warning tore itself from Polver’s lips, even as his brain knew that it was too late.

Impossibly quickly, the stranger’s boot lashed out even as Wert lunged. The boot connected heavily with Galen’s abdomen and the big man staggered backwards with a cry, almost toppled by the weight of the axe held overhead. Simultaneously, the stranger half-spun and brought his blade down in a vicious slash that met Wert’s outstretched arm. The scavenger’s hand, still clutching the long knife, came away at the wrist in a spurt of blood. Before Wert could react, before he could even cry out, the stranger completed his spin. The sword flashed down, around and then up again, removing his head from his shoulders.

Wert’s lifeless form collapsed at the stranger’s feet.

Galen’s mouth gaped, and he stepped back towards the courtyard’s gate in fear. The stranger glanced at Polver, his one eye stony, before turning his attention back to the big man.

“You can’t escape me,” he said. “No one escapes Kirder”.

The stranger stepped forward, raising his bloody weapon. Galen took another step beck, and Polver knew from the look in his eyes that Galen was weighing his options; to run or to fight. The choice was taken from him.

Leathery grey arms covered in multi-coloured runes reached out from beyond the gateway and latched onto Galen’s shoulders, pulling him out of view. There was a scream, ending in the sound of wet ripping, and then the noise of feasting.

Maybe you can have the kitchen sink after all

2010-07-28T17:31:00.000+10:00

This post is a continuance - perhaps more a clarification - of my earlier Everything including the kitchen sink post.

I said in that post that one of the easiest ways to make your campaign unique is to remove options from an otherwise overflowing setting. I stand by that comment, but I've given it some further thought in the past week and I feel that the earlier post was a little simplistic.

What brought me back to the topic is the warforged warlock Bengi in our Forgotten Realms "Stones and Shadow, Trees and Light" campaign, and more specifically its genesis as an invention/creation of the archlich Acererak (of Tomb of Horrors fame).

Warforged were one of the things that I mentioned in the last post as being immersion-breakers for lots of D&D players. Many gamers feel that they sit too far outside of standard fantasy genre conventions to have a place in D&D, especially in such a high fantasy setting like the Realms.

Notwithstanding those misgivings, Bengi has become an integral part of the campaign's individuality. Its dispassionate and mostly amoral view of the world is a keen contrast to the passions of the other PCs, its inorganic origin poses interesting story-telling possibilities about memory loss, upgrading and the passage of time, and the extreme rarity of Bengi's race allows the DM to take the campaign in interesting directions.

In this case, allowing a little extra water from the kitchen sink has enhanced the uniqueness of the campaign rather than detracted from it. Which is not to say that you should open the faucet completely. But a little trickle can certainly have unexpected (and wonderful) effects on your campaign.

Image Credit: Darren Calvert

SoW: The Great Hall

2010-07-27T16:55:00.001+10:00

The PCs encounter more of Sarshan's henchmen... henchcreeps... henchthings?

When my 4e group went through Shadowrift at Umbraforge (adjusted to 8th level), this room contained some chainfighters and an anaxim hound. As much as I loved the anaxim hound (what's not to love about a close burst 5 attack?), I think the original occupants are potentially even more devious.

The clear star of the encounter is the dark haunter, a meta-cousin of the dark creepers (and Modra) that the PCs have already encountered. Where the creepers are skirmishers, the haunter is a lurker and comes with an interesting little power named dark fog. Dark fog is an encounter power (sustain minor) that creates an area burst 4 zone within 10 squares. The zone blocks line of sight for everyone except creatures with darkvision.

It shouldn't take you long to realise that area burst 4 can easily cover almost all of the great hall. The shadar-kai chainfighters don't have darkvision, but the dark haunter and his mad wraith ally do, so in effect this power gives you the ability to inflict a -5 penalty to attacks (for total concealment) on 5 PCs but only 2 of the monsters. For parties heavy with close and area attacks (which ignore concealment), that's not an automatic choice, but for parties that rely on melee and ranged attacks, it's a no-brainer.

If you couple the dark fog with the mad wraith's dazing mad whispers aura, you again have an encounter that focuses very heavily on demonstrating how battling the denizens of the shadowfell is often a tricky endeavour. It also poses a very difficult question to the PCs: do they focus their attention on the haunter to try to end the fog, or do they focus on the wraith to end the whispers. It's not an enviable choice, but hard choices often make for interesting encounters.

If you choose to use the dark aura to its best advantage, be aware that you will need to make a ruling on whether creatures in the fog grant combat advantage. By the rules as written, they don't (they aren't technically blinded and the enemies aren't technically invisible) but the truth of the matter is that PCs in the fog have no line of sight to anything. If you do rule that they grant combat advantage, be aware that that ruling gives the dark haunter a significant damage boost through its combat advantage trait.

This is the first encounter in which the levitation lift features, and as a DM I'd be inclined to have it inactive until the encounter is resolved. Most PCs would find the lift shenanigans a distraction when fighting in the dark while dazed, and it might be too much too soon to add the complexity associated with the lift.

If I were to nitpick something in this encounter, it would be to point out the couches that provide cover but which it is almost impossible to position between an enemy and a PC (so why bother pointing out that they provide cover?) and to refer to the fire pit in the Features of the Area section that is conspicuously absent from the map. But otherwise this is a solid encounter. One that may provide endless frustration to your PCs, but solid nonetheless.

Encounter rating: 4

SSTL 48: Eye of Flame

2010-07-23T14:01:00.001+10:00

The Frozen Steel overcome their opponents, and close the Eye of Flame.

Read the full recap here.

My overall impressions of DMing 4e this session were quite similar to those of last session. Characters (or at least mid-paragon characters) are still juggernauts that more-or-less run riot through encounters that consist solely of MM1 monsters.

However, there were a few things that came into focus during the session.

Minions are fiddly

The last encounter featured 5 azer minions, and I struggled to think of the best way to use them. The azer's fire aura never came into play because a PC was never adjacent to two of them, and their sole attack (which does fire damage) would normally have been (almost-)completely negated by the fire resistance of the PCs. More on that later.

I had a few of them take the new Aid Attack action to give the fire giant soldiers a +2 to hit, but I'm pretty sure that by the time the giants' initiative rolled around I forgot about the +2 altogether.

Of the five minions, only one of them was killed by a melee or ranged attack (Ox killed one if I remember correctly). The significance of that is that I can't even really say that the presence of the minions was costing the PCs actions. They were getting picked off by area and close attacks that the PCs probably would have used anyway due to the roiling melee.

I'm sure there's a trick to using minions effectively, but I'm not sure exactly what it is yet.

Monsters need to be versatile

While it's true that adding versatility to a monster makes it harder for the DM to play it, it also gives the DM more opportunity to tailor a monster's behaviour to the situation in the encounter. In the last encounter of the delve, none of the monsters had more than 1 non-basic attack. Of those non-basic attacks, all of them were encounter powers except the forgecaller's flame burst, which was recharge 6 and only recharged in the dying rounds of the fight.

That made things easy for me to run, but it also made it relatively boring. When initiative rolled around, I (and the players) knew the fire giants would be attacking with their greatswords and the forgecaller would be using her single-target nuke.

On top of the lack of powers, there was little opportunity for the monsters to manipulate the PCs. Only the air archon had a forced movement effect, for example. That lack of manipulation meant that I was always only reacting to the PCs, and we all know how that sort of combat ends.

Defenders supported by leaders are tough nuts to crack.

As a rough estimate, I would guess that Garth was the focus of approximately half of the monster attacks in this combat, largely because he was handing out his mark like candy. Despite being on the receiving end of 2 soldiers, a skirmisher and an over-levelled artillery opponent, he still didn't go down.

That experience is consistent with how Dek has stomped his way through the SSTL campaign. While there have been occasions where the fighter has been overwhelmed, they usually coincide with significant Will attacks (Dek's glaring weak spot) or with other PCs being sufficiently threatened that Pieter can't keep up the healing on Dek.

This combat, Garth was the only one really in trouble, and Varos had enough juice to keep him going. I got close, but missed out on the cigar.

Despite the increased hit points in 4e, monsters still go down fast.

When we started the session, both salamanders in the second encounter were blooded. One was on 34 hit points and the other approximately 20. They were separated from the PCs by the pillar of flame, and I assumed I had 2 or more rounds left to play with them. Neither survived the first round.

The fire archon lasted a little longer because he had more hit points, but once the salamanders were down and the PCs were able to focus fire, its days were clearly numbered. It used its cinder burst power, and then had it triggered again by its death throes before the round was over.

It's really easy for a 4e DM to "cheat"

After running the first two encounters, I knew that the PCs fire resistance was swinging things too far. The fire-themed monsters simply couldn't overcome it, and it was seriously screwing with their expected damage output.

So I made an on-the-spot decision to allow the forgecaller's flame burst to "dispel" the fire resistance of PCs caught in the blast. I described the inferno battering against the wards, causing them to collapse one by one. No one really batted an eyelid, although at least one of the players suspected what I had done.

There's nothing that says I couldn't have done the same thing in a D&D 3.5 game, but I'm almost certain I wouldn't have. That edition (and its regulated monster creation and spell lists) always struck me as sacrosanct. The designers and general public have made a much bigger deal about 4e being malleable; about the DM having the power (or even responsibility) to change things on the fly, so I didn't think twice. I knew I and the players would enjoy the encounter more if it was finely balanced, and I was right.

It was definitely interesting, and fun, to get into the DM's chair for a few sessions and take the "new" edition for a test drive, but I'm equally happy to be going back to Pieter and continuing his adventures. Now I just need to make sure he's as effective a leader as Varos, or else I'll never live it down...

Everything including the kitchen sink?

2010-07-22T14:56:00.003+10:00

I'm currently reading the Kobold Guide to Game Design, Volume 1 on my kindle (the link is to the kindle version, but amazon has paper versions as well), more out of general interest than out of any real desire to work as an industry freelancer. It's an interesting book, comprised of short essays by Wolfgang Bauer and others about adventure pitches and how to write good adventures. Well worth a look if you have the $US11.99 to spare.

Forgive me if this post rambles a bit. I'm not quite sure what, if anything, I have to say other than "look, someone famous agrees with me!"

What really interested me in the book so far were some quotes in the section dealing with realism.

"I hate the common critique of fantasy adventures and settings that they are "not realistic enough". At the same time, I totally understand. The critique is not about realism. It is about depth and plausibility"

I've long been of the opinion that the first person to bring up realism in a debate about D&D loses. It's simply not an issue (or shouldn't be) in a fantasy game. What is an issue, is verisimilitude, and that's what Bauer is getting at here. Dragons aren't realistic. No creature that size or of that body shape has ever flown. But dragons are an integral part of D&D and none of us bats an eyelid. Yet you add robots/cyborgs (Warforged) or dragonkin with breasts (female 4e dragonborn) to the mix and half the gaming world grabs their torches and pitchforks and storms the castle.

Bauer goes on to say:

"If you present these things in a serious, respectful and coherent way, it wins over more fans that if they are munged together haphazardly. The magpie tendency to want to do everything cool is a powerful force. As a designer, you must resist it."

Later in the article, he says:

"Both Forgotten Realms and Eberron suffer from trying to put all possible flavours on the map. This makes them useful as sales tools, because everyone can find something they like."

Bauer hits on something that I've thought about many times during my gaming career. For example, I've always had a problem with the fact that four types of magic (arcane, divine, primal and psionic) exist simultaneously. It stretches my imagination too far. My rule of thumb is that if I can't see it happening in a novel or movie, then it shouldn't be in the game either, and I certainly can't imagine a movie that has four different types of magic.

He also touches on what I like to call "focus" when he talks about the magpie tendency. When your game contains everything including the kitchen sink, then it becomes homogenous with every other game. Something needs to be done to make it unique and gripping, and the easiest way to do it is by removing items from the otherwise overflowing pool of options.

When I ran my 3.5 campaign, I outlawed monks and paladins. I made the spiked chain specific to a single country in the campaign world with heavy arabian flavour. I decided that the world had no undead, no shapechangers (including no polymorph magic), and no dragons (I lied...). I didn't want the kitchen sink - I wanted the setting to be mine.

To give another example, there is a George R. R Martin short story called the Skin Trade (spoiler's ahead!). It starts out as a private eye story (stage 1), then becomes a werewolf story (stage 2), before finally becoming a story about what is effectively the werewolves' bogeyman (stage 3).

I'm a big fan of Martin's work, and the writing in this story is of his usual high standard, but as soon as the story reached stage 3, my interest waned. The story had wandered too far from its core; had included so many "shinies" that they cancelled each other out. The story had, in my opinion, lost its "focus".

In the 5 years that have passed between ending my 3.5 campaign and reading the 4e Eberron Campaign Guide, my thoughts on the issue haven't changed. I read through the Eberron Campaign guide and notice just how much stuff it has in it. Almost all of it is good stuff, and I'm spoiled for choice as to which elements I would focus a campaign on, but I would never even consider trying to include it all in a campaign.

SoW: The Library

2010-07-21T13:47:00.000+10:00

The PCs enter Sarshan's tower through a secret passage, inadvertently surprising some of the warmonger's guards.

There's an awful lot going on in this encounter; so much so that the Tactics section goes for twenty eight lines. The encounter includes a good mix of enemies (two soldiers, a lurker and a controller) and each of them have at least one power that is guaranteed to drive your players batty.

The shadar-kai soldiers have cage of gloom, a recharge 5 power that can restrain targets. The shadar-kai gloomblade has gloomstrike, which blinds targets. The shadar-kai witch has beshadowed mind, a recharge 4 power that renders the target unable to see anything more than 2 squares from them. Add to that list the fact that each of the enemies has the ability to teleport 3 squares once per encounter (note how small the encounter area is) and the rooms contain a shadow trap that only targets the PCs and you'll quickly get an idea of the sort of shenanigans that the shadar-kai can get up to.

While the enemies are offensively quite daunting, they don't really have the defenses or hit points to survive a party of adventurers who know what they're doing. The warriors are the only monsters with a good AC (24), and of all the non-AC defences in the encounter only one reaches 20 (the warrior's reflex defence). Character's shouldn't have too much trouble hitting their targets (assuming they're not blind or restrained) and if they do, the enemies aren't going to last terribly long. The highest hp total in the encounter is 86.

The author has again given us interactive terrain, in this case the book shelves that can be pulled down as a minor action to create difficult terrain and the table that small characters can dart under for cover. The bookshelves attack targets as they fall, and the Tactics states that the shadar-kai collapse them on characters before shadow jaunting away, but it's difficult to see that working out. There are very few squares from which you can collapse bookshelves without being crushed by them, and the effect (1d6 damage and being stunned until the start of your next turn) is more dangerous to the collapser than the crushed.

There is a technical issue with the encounter that doesn't immediately gel with me. The gloomblade's veil of shadows power, an at-will power that allows the gloomblade to turn invisible and move up to its speed. The power doesn't specify when the invisibility ends, and I don't think the same general rules apply in 4e that applied in 3rd edition. Having said that, it does seem to be the intention that the gloomblade becomes visible again after attacking. Of course, by that stage gloomstrike may have triggered and a PC is blinded.

I suspect that, despite the foibles of the encounter, it will adeptly create the impression that the author desired: a sense of desperate combat against harrassing shadow creatures that inhibit your attacks as much or more than they attack you directly. It's a definite change to the straight up fight in the forge or in the training grounds, and does well to embody the shadar-kai as troublesome opponents right off the bat.

Encounter rating: 3.5