Primal/Within: Showdown at the Castle of the Overmind, Part 3

Part 1 and Part 2.

Last Friday’s session was the final confrontation of the campaign.  It was supposed to be an Epic battle between an Avatar of the setting’s  sentient Dungeon and the PCs.

I had a game plan, but it didn’t play out as I wanted…again.

The fight ended up being hard and climactic… and more than 3 hours long but it was not how I wanted it to be…

What it was supposed to be.

As planned, the fight had 2 stages and 2 “external” elements that could help the party.  It was set on a D&D Miniatures battlemap called “Queen Peregrine’s Tomb” characterized by large ‘corridors” allowing Huge miniatures to move around without restriction (the boss was played by a Frost Titan mini).

It was perfect for what I wanted to achieve.

Stage 1
A level 16 encounter for 6 PCs (who are lvl 13) made up of:

• 3 Stone Giants (Soldiers that throw rocks)
• 2 Frost Giants Scouts (Artillery that slow targets)
• 1 Stone Giant Rune Carver (Controller, the Boss)

Issue #1: One player (Fangs) didn’t show up on that session.  I hesitated to remove a Stone Giant (and I should have)  but I was worried the encounter would be too easy for players.  I failed to realize that an extra Soldier, a mid-damage dealer with a bit of a controller role increased a fight’s length more than it’s lethality.

Issue #2: Soldiers are problematic in D&D 4e in that they are hard to hit, have high HP and, as mentioned above, don’t deal much damage. They also tend to keep PCs stuck to them.  It’s not a design issue, they do exactly what they were designed for… slow down a fight and protect an asset.  I can’t afford  slower fights with our current game setup.

I added a few powers to the Boss, to give him an Elite feel (while still having ‘normal’ HP and defenses)

• +2 to Saves
• He could summon, at will, 4 elemental minions (skirmishers that dealt 12 HP per hit) as a minor action, provided no minions remained from the last summoning.
• He could, as a minor, deal various attacks based on Page 42, all based on manipulating the stones, walls, floor and ceiling of the room.

Issue #3: While minions are not as significant at Paragon level, the ability to summon high-damage minions nearly at will as a minor action is WAY too powerful.  I should have factored the Minions in the XP budget of that encounter or removed the ability entirely.

Stage 2:

As soon as the Boss ‘died’ he was to morph into a second stage monster, an Eldritch Giant (a Skirmisher, basically a Jedi Giant)… 12 of those high damage minions were supposed to appear to support him as well as 2 lvl 14 Abyssal Ghouls…  without the PCs resting between stages.

Issue #4: I write this and tell myself “Dude!  What the hell were you on?”  But I really wanted to got to the Eldritch Giant.

PC bonus Powers

I wanted to weave story elements to the the fight and I wanted those elements to gravitate around 2 PCs whose stories I wanted to bring to interesting conclusions. So I granted powers the following powers:

Corwin the Halfling sorcerer could not be hit by any of the Dungeon’s monster, ever.  Whenever I rolled a d20 against him I would say “I rolled a natural 1″.  Corwin could also push out his ‘immunity” in progressively bigger circles depending on what type of action he used.  I only told Math that Corwin’s shifting birthmark showed a figure with arms outstretched surrounded by concentric circles of Power.

It took about 8-10 rolls to get the players to unanimously call me a cheater.  That’s when I dropped the pretense… it made it so worth it.  And makes playing with a screen totally worth it!

Usul the Invoker still had his stock of unused divine energy that he could use for various Rule 42 effects and recharging Healing surges /encounter powers to fellow PCs.

Both needed to roll a skill check (Arcana and Religion) over the Dungeons’ Will defense (I counted each PC’s implement bonus, giving each a roughly 50% chance of success).  A failure would lead to Mouseguarding and/or some story exposition.

What Really happened.

It took the players roughly 3h30 to kill the first group of monsters and finally dropped the Boss’ first form when the clock struck 11h30, the absolute maximum we stretch a game night. Let’s divide this to better discuss it.

What worked…

The player powers worked beyond expectations.  Each passive or active use of the powers could, when it felt right, start a little RPing vignette where the PC would have a mind discussion with either the Dungeon (Corwin) or a god (Usul).  In fact when the PC failed a roll, I would often open a vignette and try to negotiate something out of the PC in exchange if success (i.e Mouseguarding it).

That’s how I progressively revealed the complete incomprehension of the Dungeon toward the PCs (and all life on the planet by extension).  He explained how he considered the whole world to be his prison and all life to be the God’s cruel joke towards their creation.

In the very last scene where it died, the Dungeon revealed to Corwin that he had a sliver of its power in him and that it would eventually make him into an elemental Chaos Power, insuring that the Primordial would survive in some form.

That’s why Corwin committed suicide… to my shock and delight.

Usul started using his power very late, when things became grim.  He aced his Religion check, nuked the Boss for 20 some points of damage.  I described how his God opened the channel and made Usul his Avatar.

Kord: Go forth, build an army of these master-less monsters and destroy this elemental abomination!

Usul: F**K yeah!

What didn’t work..

Issue #5: Having 3 soldiers protect a Boss creature represented by huge Frost Titan completely defeated my plan to see the boss killed early and transmute into stage 2.  My players were convinced the thing was an elite so they focused on all the other monsters 1st.

Issue #6: The “Summon at-will minions” power  succeeded in jamming the Barbarian and the Invoker in the corner, severely lowering the party’s damage output.  Each time a barbarian strikes a minion, that’s 25-50 HP of damage wasted.  Although the Barbarian might have been better served by ignoring the minions… he didn’t expect the summoning to be repeatable so he got caught. That wa2 2-3 turns wasted, at 30 minutes a turn… 90 minutes for the fight wasted there.

Were I to redo that fight, I would have done:

• 1 Controller Boss (w/o the summoning power)
• 1 Soldier (Bodyguard to boss and describe to players that Boss doesn’t look all that solid to attract early attacks)
• 6 Minion Skirmishers
• 1 or 2 Pure damage artillery monsters without any status effects (like Flame Snakes).
• 2nd Stage boss alone.

That would have likely lasted 2 hours instead of 3h30 and left 90 minutes for Stage 2

Oh and while we’re at it, here’s a little tip:

If your players drop a monster within 10% of its last HPs, check the time and feel free to drop them to Zero instantly… that last round of monster damage is likely not significant anymore.

Issue #7: Players were also disorganized by how the fight started (minions and wall of soldiers) and never really re-organized until the last 30 minutes.  For instance, Stef completely forgot trying to Sneak with his rogue and spent several rounds doing ranged attacks without sneaking… I mentioned it because even with At-Wills, a rogue’s sneak attack is devastating.

Issue #8: At level 13, even with a relatively disciplined group like mine, playing one’s turn takes a good 3-4 minutes while the DM’s takes from 5-10 depending on conditional triggers from PCs.  With 5 players and a DM, that’s 30 minutes a turn for the first few rounds and goes down a bit as options run out.

D&D 4e fights last between 6 and 13 rounds… do the math.  I need to factor this in.

By the end of the evening I was very annoyed and I even threw a little tantrum I’m not to proud of (I don’t think I had one at the table in years).  I hadn’t realized all the issues I described here and I was frustrated at the Game… I was convinced that 4e was deeply flawed and that I had to start thinking about playing something else.

Good thing I like to understand the why and how of such ‘life lesson’ occasions.  I’m happy friends like Yan, Dave and Graham helped me understand it all. I’m no longer in that mood.

Unexpected feedback from a good friend

A few days after the game, Math floored me with some devastatingly accurate insight.

Math: Maybe you have been increasingly frustrated over the last few sessions because what you plan never happens as you’d like it.  If you wanted that Jedi Giant, you just had to give yourself a time like ’9h30′ and make it appear, regardless of what we’re doing.

Phil (brain exploding): …

(That guy can read me good)

Issue#9: For the last few sessions I’ve built scenes based on ideas I really liked (The Godzilla Chase scene, Using a Jedi Giant) but instead of making them happen, I decided to put my trust in the game engine and/or player choices to make them happen.  While I’m a huge proponents of giving players what they want and letting them steer the adventure, I should use the power vested in my position as DM to make sure that the cool things I want to see happen do in fact happen.  A DM is allowed his fun too!

I won’t do a lessons learned here, I’ve almost hit 1700 words, suffice to say that each ‘Issue’ I discussed here is a lesson I must ponder on.  I’m a bit annoyed that after 18 months DMing 4e, there’s still issues I don’t master for this game I’m publishing articles and adventures for… I know there’s no such thing as the perfect DM, but damn if this game isin’t giving me a run for my money, brain and ego-wise.

Anyone else still has trouble gauging monster roles and numbers?  I know I don’t use XP budget as is… maybe I should.  We should start some online encounter design seminars, like the one I did with Jeff on the Tome Show (subtle plug eh?)

Sorry for the longish post, this was a campaign ender with lots of things I wanted to discuss.

As always your comments are appreciated, about this finale and the Primal/Within campaign in general.

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