See part 1 here.
Oh wow, I leave my last post with a cliffhanger and a “What would the reader do?” and I get a ton of answers far better than I did.
Still I’ll chalk this one in my lessons learned below.
Here’s a reminder of the setup:
All players are inside a room with one bloodied duergar guard. The Fighter, Cleric and Warlock are soaking up as much healing as possible in the sustained Consecrated Ground zone. The Warlord stands beside the guard, having been hit by a critical hit and running out of Hit Points.
Outside the room sits 2 Spined Devils who’ve spent the last few rounds firing burning needles in the room. Behind the devils stands an Elite duergar Theurge (Fire mage). The situation looked grim, players were tired (so was I)and the cleric (taking ongoing 5 fire damage each turn) was 3 HP away from falling uncounsious and losing his healing zone.
Up came the Theruge’s turn. He had a free views of the room and could easily fire any of his Bursting powers that would deal plenty of damage to all players.
Here’s where I feel somewhat sheepish in hindsight. At the time I was furiously racing through possible scenarios to recover the game should the players fail in combat. I had though of asking players to surrender. I thought the PCs would get chained with the rest of the slaves and end the evening there. I even thopught that Rocco could escape his captors and come save his buddies at the start of the next game.
Here’s what it came down to instead. I had had a hard week at work and so did most of my friends. Some of them were getting somewhat frustrated (as is normal when the tide is against you) at a point of the evening where usually they experienced the release of having successfully achieved a goal . I didn’t want to end this game with a downer and I was in no position to do some frustration management.
I wanted the players to win but only by the slightest possible margin.
So I decided to change the Theurge from elite to normal (cutting Hit points by at least 50%). Also, instead of firing an area spell into the fray, I sent a Firebolt to the head of the Fighter (who had plenty of Hit Points left).
I also stopped trying to disrupt the player’s strategy and let each PC play it’s full roll (i.e. Monsters focused on the fighter instead of trying to work around him). I in fact started playing the monsters like Mobs in a MMORPG.
Of course I later then made the greatest mistake of the evening: I told the players what I did, much to thier protests. Man! I feel like I’m this reverse evil overlord where I only gloat about how easy I just made it for the players. I need to stop doing that, I’m not 12 anymore!
Anyhoo. On the next turn, the group rallied. The Warlord finished the guard and returned close to his buddies.The fighter then stepped out of the room and took both Spined Devils all by himself! The cleric helped by moving his healing zone over him and the Devils (it damages enemies every turn).
I was impressed with Yan’s temerity in the face of such odds. Then again, Yan had calculated that his fighter would be much more effecient by automatically dealing 1[w] damage to all adjacent ennemies who started their turn beside him (that was his level 5 daily power, Rain of Steel)
Slowly, helped by calculated risks and truly low rolls by the DM (I may have fudged one damage roll when the theurge fired an area attack that hit almost everyone later in the fight), the party managed to beat both devils and make the theurge bloodied.
I had achieved my goal, the players were going to win.
Towards the end, when I was sure of the combat’s outcome, I had the doppleganger (who was hanging back all along) say something like ‘must I always do everything here?” and move back in the fight.
Of course, the theurge was dispatched and the shape-shifter found himself facing 4, very tired, very angry PCs. He dropped his short sword and offered to trade his life for the Halfling’s in his custody. The PCs pressed for more and he agreed to provide the PCs with a map of where 2 slaves (one being the warlord’s brother… of course!) had been delivered recently.
The party grudginly accepted the trade, released the slaves and set out to return to thier home base, back in the seven pillared-hall.
We concluded the session and all players seemed to have enjoyed thier session. It was a hard fight and most PC ressources were used up. All in all, a good session. Loot was distributed and we all went home.
Lessons learned
- Unless you have planned for the likely outcome of player failure, don’t mix nearby encounters. If you want to design a dungeon with the idea of group A triggering group B and so on, make sure that the main encounter falls in the “easy to average” difficulty, that most forces in Group A are bloodied or 1/2 is dead before trigger occurs, and make sure the total encounter stays at worst within the ‘hard’ category.
- I have to stop fearing player failure. Every situation can be salvaged with judicious application of ‘Bad guys never kill the heroes’ trope. The comments on my last post attest to that.
- Clerics are cooler to play than ever before. Although Math’s needs to get a melee weapon.
What players liked:
- Beating unbelivably hard odds with style!
- Yan and Math loved dealing/healing about 100 points each with thier 5th level dailies.
What players disliked
- Being told that I nerfed a monster so they could stay alive (ingrates! Just kidding!)
All right, I’ll catch you all later.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. You did the best you could. You got nothin’ to be ashamed of.
BTW, first comment, yay me! ^_^
Ron Baileys last blog post..From PRNewswire: McDonald’s(R) All American Games 2009 Team Rosters Revealed
Sounds like a fun game. which should always be marked a success
Vulcan Stevs last blog post..Gaming in your favorite cinema universe
If you want to design a dungeon with the idea of group A triggering group B and so on, make sure that the main encounter falls in the “easy to average” difficulty, that most forces in Group A are bloodied or 1/2 is dead before trigger occurs, and make sure the total encounter stays at worst within the ‘hard’ category.
Not bad advice, but even dead enemies increase the challenge, due to the resources they depleted from the party beforehand. While this wasn’t a huge issue in 3.X (as almost all resources were daily), it is much bigger in 4e, as there are a number of per-encounter resources. And I don’t mean just powers.
Hit Points are a per-encounter resource. The break in between allows HP to be restored. And healing can only be activated so often in each encounter. As such, any depletion of HP in the first “encounter” puts the group at a significant disadvantage for the second one.
So to make things even simpler, both for encounter design and while at the table:
When designing an encounter in 4e, include every enemy that will end up in that encounter. If reinforcements are to arrive from the next room, it’s not merging two encounters. It’s all one encounter.
So if you want it to be a decent challenge, pick a difficulty (say, party level + 2), and use that XP budget for all monsters in the encounter.
Just remember to treat it as a single encounter (if a tough one), and you’ll be fine.
I dunno, i still say it was a job well done. I’m really looking forward to putting together an epic battle like this!
I have the same wuss syndrome as you do sometimes. 🙂
My last session was mostly just one long, terribly difficult fight for the PCs. They are 3rd level, party of 6, and were attacked on a bridge over a 50′ gorge, by two orcs (an Eye and a Raider) mounted on Wyverns.
The fight was long and brutal and slowly the PCs started to lose. Then it turned slightly, they got the riders off their mounts and finished them off, but three PCs were down, two near death, and the three standing were all bloodied.
I had been running through my head all kinds of contingencies, capture, NPC resurrection, etc.
The ranger and cleric rallied and laid some serious damage on one of the wyverns, taking it down to single digits. At this point, my notes read, with riders dead the wyverns would flee if they were both bloodied and one was near death. So they did and the PCs carried the day.
I felt compelled to tell them, though, because of my softie disposition, that I did not fudge that ending at all and I showed them my notes on the wyverns.
In this case, I think telling them helped, as they seemed suspect at first, then basked in the glory of a hard won fight against a recurring enemy (the orcs were from a rival mercenary company).
@Ron: Ha ha, Once you start to know my style you’ll notice that I have a self-critical style. The goal of these chronicles is to help me get better as a DM. But yeah, I’m satisfied with how things turned up.
@Vulcan Stev: I agree with you that fun game = successful game. I have no other quality metric than that one.
@Graham: What you suggest to do, in much clearer terms is what I had in mind when I wrote about the whole Group A and B business. Make it one encounter with waves… like the kobold lair in Keep on the Shadowfell.
@Physics: You will have them, sooner than later. What adventure are you currently playing? If it’s your first RPG and first game, I’d say you’re playing Kobold Hall.
@Thasmodious: Er… I wouldn’t have used Wuss syndrome but I know what mean. (Maybe empathic gloater?) Glad to see your players made it through.
The idea of calculating as a single encounter spreaded in “waves” allows you to make an extremely hard encounter into an easier one.
As for the nerfing I think the drop of elite status did not make that much of difference since he was the only one left at the end. It would only make the fight last, but at that point we where all standing.
The change in tactic made the biggest difference:
1- Delaying for 1 round the area attack gave the cleric the time to benefit from is healing zone
2- Not moving through me with the unmarked spined devil allowed me to take the heat instead of my remaining bloodied comrades. I was out of multiple attack power an could only mark one target.
Oh and Rain of steel with a D12 weapon is some sweet damage over time. 😉
Corollary: Always assume that players will defeat, be defeated by and totally circumvent or ignore any given encounter.
Sounds like a great game. You’re right though, never tell your players you cheated in their favour. As a player I’d rather have my PC die, than know the DM tweaked some numbers.
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@Chatty
Actually, I’m running a game of my own creation, the first dungeon is very similar to kobold hall. However, since i don’t quite have a firm grasp of all the mechanics i think continuing on to something like Fallcrest may be a better choice for me, less work, and more mechanics practice.
@ Tommi: Good corollary. I must say that I had completely failed to prep that week. I read the encounter areas and let it at that. That will teach me to play on a tired week.
@Wimick: Yup, that’s a lesson I systematically failed to learn… for more than 26 years!
@Physics: Feel free to email me DM questions if you feel like it. I’ll gladly answer them. chattydm@chattydm.net.