Introduction (March 26th 5h00PM)
Okay, here’s the thing. I’m short on time and my friends are coming over to play a 4e game using the new PHB2 classes tomorrow night.
I’ll have time to work on it tomorrow but I’m throwing my thoughts here as ideas arrive.
The party will be made of three 2nd level adventurers. An Invoker, a Shaman (Bear Spirit) and a Sorcerer.
Therefore I want a 3 encounter adventure, based loosely on the Kobold Hall model, that will feature challenges specifically for these classes. (i.e. Minions, traps and a cool solo boss)
I was thinking something crazy, like the PCs interrupting an American Gladiator-like contest between 2 crazed necromancers. I’d have the players be ‘drafted’ once again into ‘The Crawl’ reality show. (An idea I use when I’m doing one-shot adventures).
Here’s me thinking out loud:
Scene 1:
Players are sent to be the half-time show entertainment into the middle of a Gridiron-like dungeon where a team of Zombie Rotters are playing Blood Bowl against a team of Decrepit Skeleton… …except the undead players are not bright enough to stop playing.
Lots of minions and 2 ‘coaches’ (Artillery and Controller)
Scene 2:
The PCs must capture the “Ball” (Maybe a Kruthik baby?) and bring it back to the equipment room… The encounter would feature corridors, fans trying to get the ball. And the ball’s ‘Parents’ not too happy with the setup.
(I’m open to better ideas here)
Scene 3:
Disagreement with the owner.
A Dragon fight in the dragon’s VIP booth. Probably the same dragon as in Kobold Hall… plus some minions to challenge the PCs as they are veteran players that will likely kill the dragon real fast.
Anyone want to riff on that and help me? Tomorrow, if I can, I could possibly live-blog my work process to make the adventure into something playable.
Thanks in advance!
Second mental Draft (March 26th, 8h00 pm)
While driving to and from an appointment tonight my thoughts about the adventure became clearer.
As Yan puts it, this is a perfect setup to work my atrophied improvisation muscles.
So here’s how I see Scene 1 (and it might be the only scene of the night)
The PCs are going to be the Half-Time show of a Zombie vs Skeleton game of Football. This means I’ll set up my Blood Bowl map on the table and I’ll use my Dungeon Tiles to build a Stage.
The scene will be the biggest Skill Challenge in the book: 12/3. All Skills allowed, as long as it makes sense to Wow the crowd (read: the DM).
Any success counts for the 12 successes AND can be used to recharge any Encounter Power or Cancel a Failure
Any failures will bring something bad/hostile to the terrain, looking for trouble, the higher the # of failure the worst the threat.
A Complete failure will bring in a Boss monster (Think Bone Chewing, Necrotic spewing Zamboni!), regardless of the tactical situation on the board.
Hell yeah! I’ll work on this tomorrow!
The Bonegrinder Zomboni (March 27th, 11h50 AM)
All right so the stage is set and I have most, if not all the adventure planned out in my noggin’.
Scene 1: half-Time Show as described above.
Scene 2 (If skill challenge of scene one succedded): Players are invited to play the second half of the Blood bowl game because the players are almost all dead. I think I’ll make a Kobolds team as opposition.
This will be a Rule 42 (as in the page in the Dungeonmaster Guide) heavy scene, completely improvised.
Scene 3: Show’s Over, Zomboni time!
Here’s the final boss for those who expressed an interest in it.
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| HP 156; Bloodied 78 | ||||||
| AC 17; Fortitude 18, Reflex 18, Will 16 (Can be targeted by Turn Undead effects) |
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| Immune Gaze | ||||||
| Saving Throws +2 | ||||||
| Speed | ||||||
| Action Points 1 | ||||||
| R Skull Cannon (Standard; at-will) | ||||||
| Ranged 10/20; +8 vs AC; 1d10+4 damage plus 5 ongoing necrotic damage (save ends) | ||||||
| m Bonegrind Engulf (Standard; at-will) | ||||||
| The Bonegrinder Zamboni attacks one or two Medium or smaller targets; +6 vs Reflex (automatically hits an immobilized creature); Hit: 3d8+4 damage, the target is grabbed and pulled into the Zamboni’s space; the target is dazed and takes ongoing 5 damage until it escapes the grab. A creature that escapes the grab shifts to a square of its choosing adjacent to the Zomboni. The Zomboni can move normally while creatures are engulfed within it. | ||||||
| c Ghoulish Blast (Standard; encounter) ? Necrotic | ||||||
| Close Blast 5; +6 vs. Reflex; 3d6+4 Necrotic Damage and the target is immobilized (Save Ends) Recharges when an engulfed creature dies. | ||||||
| c Raise Cleaning Crew (Standard; encounter) | ||||||
| Burst 4. Place 4 Zombie Rotters and 4 Decrepit Skeleton in empty squares within the burst. | ||||||
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This is going to be fun!
Blood Bowl, 4e style! (March 27th, 13h00)
Okay, here’s the final part of the adventure. Scene 2.
If the Skill challenge of Scene 1 was won, the PCs are “invited” to field a team to play the second half of the game (since all players were destroyed during the show and the crowd wants to see the new stars in action).
So shall I play this.
Here’s the rules:
Make the ball a Kruthik Hatchling. 1 hp, Defenses between 12 and 15
Whenever it’s ‘free’ it moves toward the center of the field and stays there.
When it’s in the hands of a player it bites during its turn and damages the carrier on his turn (aura power).
Picking up the ball = Minor Action, Grab attack on ball.
Running with the ball: Move Action. No rolls necessary, I’ll ignore the “drag a grabbed creature” rule.
Passing the ball (i.e. landing it in the targeted square):Std Action, Dex check vs DC equal to distance thrown squares.
Kicking the ball: Str attack vs DC equal to distance thrown squares
Catching the ball = Immediate Reaction: Dex attack vs ball’s reflex defense
Intercepting an in-flight ball = Same as catching, must have immediate action available.
Failing on a throw/kick/catch: Pick ball up and drop it from a few inches over the spot.
Dropping the ball: A carrier drops the ball whenever it is immobilized, Knocked Prone, Stunned and Dazed.
A goal is scored when a ball carrier finishes his turn across the goal line with the ball in hand.
A goal scores one point and recharges one Encounter Power to one player of the scoring team (or allows one monster to spend a Healing Surge).
The game will last one hour of game time, or three points. (Subject to change if players are having too much fun).
The opposing team would be: 3 kobold Skirmishers and 2 kobold Dragonshields(making it a level 2 encounter)
Credits: Graham Poole (For suggesting using the Gelatinous Cube as a model), Dave Chalker (Suggesting I tweak the monster’s name ), Yan Décarie (For suggesting scene 2)
Perfect setup to shake some latent improvisation muscle… 😛
My thoughts on it have crystallized. I’ll add a second part to the post.
Sounds cool. That promise to be a fun evening…
It’s so insane it just might work….
Rauthiks last blog post..Cleric of Juiblex
This is win just for the Zamboni of doom…
justaguys last blog post..Rhogar returns
4e Blood Bowl…that is awesome! I have been a fan of Blood Bowl for ages, and the idea of playing in that setting with the 4e rules is great.
@Rauthik: Yup,I’ve got this crazy insane vibe in my mind that may turn out to be one of those great D&D sessions!
@justaguy: I’m planning how to stat it out. I’ll probably borrow from a Dragon or a Bulette.
@DNAPhil: It sure is a great way to reuse that awesome playing board!
I’ll keep everyone posted on my progress, as soon as I’m satisfied with the installation of my new PC
Just got a crazy idea, we could each introduce our character as if it was the game commenter that comment on our entry into the stadium… That would be a cool way of introducing our character while creating on the spot fluff…
I agree 100%… I can already imagine how this will go tonight!
All right time to let the PC alone and prep this game!
Part 3 is up (for those who follow my comments RSS feed).
Everything is done… players are here. I’ll let you know how it went in a Game log.
The game was a resounding success. A bit too lethal for my taste but players enjoyed it immensely. With a few tweaks, this could become a hit Convention game to show the strength of the D&D 4e engine to simulate a sport game.
I love the idea of doing a sport-like combat encounter with a “ball”!
I shall borrow it someday!!
Eric Maziades last blog post..Kobold Keep Remix Finale – Showdown
Sounds like a lot of fun. I may have to adapt something like this. 🙂
Games like this always make me think of the old Circus Maximus game. I never got a chance to play it myself but it sounded like a blast so I was always curious.
If you run a game like this again, I have an idea you might like. Since you might whip the zam-bone-y out ahead of time if someone fails really badly (or possibly even tour it out for a round just for amusement value and see if the players poke at it or not), your end encounter might seem slightly anticlimatic. One way to keep interest might be to have whoever has to fix the thing come out and be angry at the PCs for breaking their favorite toy or for re-breaking the machine they get stuck fixing all the time. Whichever you think would be funnier to play off. I’d personally go with something kinda big and mean looking… And maybe use that NPC to transition to the next mini-adventure which would resemble a robo-rally and the players are tasked with picking up parts between matches (but just so happen to get caught in them a lot). 🙂
You already did it!?!?
I wanted to suggest some rules you could add to make it more like a real BloodBowl game.
1. The weather needs to change drasticly at the beginning of each half. Exemple: Snow to rain, or sunny to a dence fog.
2. Everytime a team lose the ball or miss a throw, the whole team lose his initiative and dex bonus to his AC until the next turn.
3. The crowd needs to get the ref at the start of the game.
4. You have to include a player with a chainsaw, mowing players around the field.
I like Bloodbowl. But all those things, especially points 1,2 and 3 are iconic symbol of the complete nonsense which IS a game of Bloodbowl. In fact I would add this:
5. You need to have a wizard messing with the game constantly.
Exemple: Casting a force field around the player about to throw the ball… imagine what happen next…
@Lanir and @D_Luck: I’ll keep your ideas for when I’ll run the adventure again at Cons!
Hell, I thought I posted my report already… something must have glitched…
Interesting to hear that the bloodbowl game went well.
I honestly expected it to be a bit unsatisfactory. My experience suggests that you should always convert RPG characters to tabletop rules, not the other way around. (Ie. Warhammer quest characters to Warhammer Fantasy Battle rules, rather than vice versa).
Did you do anything to limit the number of blitzes? Part of the tactics of bloodbowl is that only one player per team turn can move and attack*. That’s very different to the 4e standard of -everyone- doing so.
* For the uninitiated: everyone else on the team can move -or- attack. Only one player gets to do both.
My goal was not to transpose Bloodbowl directly in 4e. I wanted to have a game session inspired by the game.
As such, we played all players in order of initiative and each had the usual trio of action known in 4e. So in effect, a PC could Tackle a ball carrier (std) grab the fallen ball (Minor) and make a run for it.
We did hit a snag, which I’ll touch in my next post, in that I ended up putting all kobold players on the same initiative count, which ended up giving them an unfair advantage (I ended up killing the sorcerer with an all out ganging up by all 5 kobolds).