See part 1 here.
A Wet and Freezing Welcome
The PCs traveled through the Dungeon without any trouble and reached the door that the Elementalists had identified as being the way to the Water Temple. Indeed, a triple-wave design stood on the door and a rapid verification of it showed it to be arcane locked…
…which proved to be only a minor nuisance to Rocco the Rogue who unlocked it without breaking a sweat (DC 28 beaten by a 31 thievery roll).
As the door opened, a large quantity of water poured out into the Dungeon’s corridor, soaking everyone’s feet within seconds. Once the initial volume of water behind the door escaped, the debit slowed to a steady flow a few inches over floor level.
The PC entered into a large columned hall (I love columns, I really do, all my dungeons have plenty of them). The hall was decorated with faded mosaics of various water-related calamities (floods, whirlpools, tidal waves, etc). A large hole was dug out of one wall, piles of mud and rocks found near it. Two columns had been smashed and a large door had been busted open.
Obviously, something large and capable of burrowing had been here recently.
Dun, dun dun!
Behind the door stood an immense circular pool from which water was overflowing.
Before the PCs could explore further, I described how the room became noticeably cooler and that 6 twisters of mist/vapour were rising from the water-covered floor. Those twister formed into 6 spectral guardians that attacked the PCs.
Those spectral guardians were initially Moon Wraiths (from Open Grave and the D&D Compendium). They are level 7 soldiers with an interesting recharging power. I re-fluffed them into Water Wraiths and used them almost as is.
Well, those frakers nearly spoiled the whole evening.
You see, Wraiths are insubstantial undead creatures. In 4e, insubstantial means only 1 thing: the creature takes 1/2 damage from all sources. While prepping, I thought that insubstantial only got 1/2 from untyped damage… go figure. That will teach me not to review keywords before an adventure.
So in essence, these level 7 undead soldiers had 112 virtual HP instead of their printed 56.
But that’s not all! Their basic melee attack (which targets fortitude, i.e. they almost always hit) causes Weakness. This mean ‘you now deal 1/2 damage’. So the monster actually has somewhere between 112 and 214 hp when you think about it.
Also, each wraith had a rechargeable encounter power that allowed them to shift 10, passing through a PCs’ space and doing another fortitude attack that dealt damage and dazed the target!!!
And to top it all, I had made the Dungeon’s involvement in this encounter as doing freezing the water of a random PC’s square, attacking his Ref defense and immobilizing him until Save.
Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that the Wraith regenerated unless damaged by a Radiant power?
So what basically happened is that all the hard hitters of the group spent most of the fight being Weakened or Dazed, while the Shaman and Sorcerer stayed frozen to the ground, unable to make their save round after round.The fight lasted about 2 hours. What’s becoming more and more known as ‘The 4e Grind”.
On top of all those elements that made the fight harder, all players were unlucky with their d20s. After more than 1 hour, with all the healing powers gone and only half of the wraiths bloodied, the frustration in the room was palpable. In fact, I don’t think anyone minded when I stopped freezing the water underneath the PCs.
Then Franky made the 1000$ observation.
“Hey, how come there’s no music playing?”
Indeed, the energy level of the group was low, it was already passed 9 PM and there was no music playing in the background. Math got up, hooked his iPod to the basement’s speakers and we were treated to the dynamic and peppy music of CSS.
And low and behold, the evening was saved! Slowly, the mood lifted, the players started concentrating their fire on the bloodied wraiths, the monsters weren’t able to recharge their Dazing bombing runs and the players discovered some really cool combos like teleporting monsters in a tight 3X3 space and letting the Invoker and Sorcerer blast away at them gleefully.
From that point forward, I knew that the players had won the fight and it was over 30 minutes later.
While the fight lasted too long, I was able to see enough of the PCs in action to know we had winning choices. Seeing the emerging strategies was awesome and quite promising. Coupled with the rich backstories, I think the campaign is off to a good start… provided that I seriously revise the remaining encounters of this dungeon as I realized that they were all in violation of the excellent guidelines found in this EnWorld post.
After of the fight, I had Jaiel and Usul (both divine characters) roll Religion checks. I told them that the spectral guardians of this room were still lingering around and were likely slowly reforming. Their ties to this temple must be someplace else.
That totally ruled out spending an extended rest here or outside as nobody wanted to have to fight these bozos again.
Thus, the PCs had a short rest during which I rolled on my trusty Random Event chart and I described a loud cry and sounds of rocks being crushed somewhere in the distance beyond the dug hole in the room. It was nice to see the players look worried for a second.
The Font of Sorrows
After the rest, the party proceeded to the Font’s main chamber beyond the crashed door. The room was very large and featured the same type of Mosaic on the walls and on the floor, including inside the large overflowing pool with a Water Elemental statue behind it. In a side chamber was a raised Altar-bath flanked by a pair of statues like the one behind the pool.
Eric: “To inspect the pool closer, Fangs jumps in the pool”
Gotta love an instigator, always available to get things moving!
Me : “The water in the pool is very acid, you take 10 points of damage and ongoing 5”
Eric “Oops. I climb out!”
After exploring the room and after having found a book of ritual and several pieces of jeweled sacred ritual tools, the party decided to deal with this room later and focused on the room’s only apparent exit. They wanted to find where the water of the temple traveled to reach the waterfall.
The door was arcane locked like the entrance to the temple. However, Rocco wasn’t as lucky and failed his thievery check, getting him a face full of acid from the Glyph of Warding protecting it.
Me “Ha! That door just sneezed on you!”
The Prison of Glass
The door opened onto a strange and morbid chamber. On each side were alcoves into which glass sarcophagus filled with water rested. In each was the form of a very very rotten humanoid corpse… that was actively trying to claw itself out!!!!
Franky: “Ewwwww”
The party then found where all the temple’s water was going to as they discovered the canal where the water drained and heard the distinct sound of a nearby waterfall. The one they had found earlier. They also noticed that whatever had burrowed into the temple had passed through this room too, crushing two glass sarcophagus. No bodies were seen anywhere.
Once again I had Usul and Jaiel roll for religion and filled them on the very likely possibility that the corpses trapped in the glass cases were likely the source of the spectral guardians. The party started discussing the possibility of offing each corpse one by one while in their glass prisons.
Mike: “I’ll shoot one with Avenging Light”
Me: “All right! As you invoke the power of Kord, you feel a strong reverberation forming within the chamber, rising into a crescendo of holy power….Shattering all glass in the room! The Sodden corpses rises in unison and jump on you, screeching in hatred! Oops, look at the time, its 10h15 PM, I guess we’ll do that next time!”
Group: “What? NO!”
Me: “Hell yeah, I won’t risk this fight lasting more than 30 minutes, otherwise we’ll all regret it”
Unplanned Cliffhanger FTW!
An no, my tires weren’t slashed when I got my stuff in the car after everyone else had left.
Good session, too long fight… but the players were happy to have beaten such hard foes.
Next session in 2 weeks… I can hardly wait!
Lessons Learned:
- Monsters with reusable Status attacks need to be used sparingly. Not all monsters in a fight should have them.
- Insubstantial + Weakness = Boooooring in a Wolf Pack type of encounter.
- I’ll need to review all my remaining encounters to make them less likely to lead to needless frustration (High Defenses + High HP + Status effects = 4e Grind)
- I really really dig my new campaign setting!
Forgive Chatty, father, he knows not what he does.
A WoW water elemental as a 4e illustration? Oh, the edition wars that you will unleash! 😀
P.S. Hopefully not…
Lol… I doubt that… the Wow image is aptly appropriate given the flavour of my current adventure.
And if that sparks a flamewar I can attest that I’d be solely disappointed. 🙂
Water Temple? Has Zelda taught you nothing? 😛
Thinking about the wraith encounter some more, it occurs to me that I am yet to hear a positive recount of a 4e encounter that consisted of 5+ of the same monster.
I’ve heard a lot of negative press about all-wraith encounters, and I’ve personally seen how boring an all-brute encounter can be. If and when I DM 4e, I’m going to make it a point to avoid making those encounters.
The WoW art is even more horrible than most 4e art, so no flamewars on that account.
“Thinking about the wraith encounter some more, it occurs to me that I am yet to hear a positive recount of a 4e encounter that consisted of 5+ of the same monster.”
Well, the DMG suggest “all skirmishers” as one of its encounter templates – the “Wolf Pack” with half the skirmishers acting as a “front line”. I can see how “all other role” might end badly, though.
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Sheesh! Everyone’s a critic! 🙂
@Tangent 128: Would you believe that the only Zelda game I ever played was the 1st one? So I didn’t know about the punishing Water temple.
@Colmar: You’re quite right I think. A good mix of monsters is always your best bet. That’s why I read that EnWorld post with great interest.
You can have a whole group of skirmisher or minions and it should be ok, but it will seems rather blend unless you spice it up with some environmental features…
Oh and for Eric’s character observing his suicidal tendency, I think I figured where is amnesia came from… He tried to go through a door with is head or something like that. 😉
Yeah, I agree. Like I told you offline, I filled the Font with Monsters based on fitting with the theme and without thinking too much about the kind of encounters they would make.
At least we stopped early enough in the adventure to allow me to do a few fixes behind the scenes.
As for Fangs amnesia, you may be right!
I have to say I’m surprised you didn’t simply nerf the phantoms when you saw what they had and were worried. Why be surprised when a simple change would have alleviated things? You could have removed their Weaken ability or link them and say that destroying one destroyed another. Describe pairs of them as looking very similar, attacking in unison, etc. When the first one went down and its pair also fell, the PCs would have gotten the idea (maybe). Glad to hear things went well, though, despite the tough odds! Focus firing is definitely a good thing to do given a monster with 1hp is as deadly as one with 56. Are you sure all damage is 1/2, even magic and radiant keyword damage? (I don’t have any books in front of me so I can’t check. I had thought Phantom Warriors or whatever took full damage from divine and arcane sources.)
Anyhoo… there are lots of ways to rework monsters on the fly so that combat doesn’t become too overpowering like that, or take 2+ hours. I’ve been there, though… combat in D&D has become just silly. It’s hard to play the game when you know you only have an evening.
@Rafe: Its one of those things that you see in hindsight and slap your forehead but in the course of the game, dealing with everything, my default mode is to trust the game’s mechanic. Although I really should put a timer on the table and start pushing things forward and, as you say, fudge the monsters if we get passed 1 hour and the fun level drops.
Yeah, I think that’s what I’ll do, I’ll appoint a timekeeper and checki every 30 minutes or so the fun level of the group.
It’s definitely tough with D&D. You want those awesome encounters . . . but you also want a night of gaming that doesn’t involve 60% of it taken up by a single combat encounter. (And given a couple of recent D&D experiences, I’m afraid 60% is not an exaggeration.)
Regardless, in the end, it worked out for ya to keep those monsters with all their powers intact. In fact, I’m thinking that interest levels would have really bottomed-out had you dumbed them down. Imagine 2+ hours of whack-a-mole instead of “omg we’re a-gunna die! … maybe!”. 🙂
Something else you can do is time actions — not constantly, but only when the interest levels or fun factor wanes. Suddenly: “Okay, you have 15 seconds. What are you going to do? GO!” It injects some intensity back in and, once moods are back up, stop timing actions.
There was an other factor that as not been mentioned that did affect the time of the fight. As player we where all mastering a new character except for one of us… Discovering new synergy as we went, but also taking a lot more time to decide what to do.
Fascinating how your encounter had pretty much the same issues mine did!
I hesitated a lot to “nerf” the monsters – my players usually surprise me most when they absolutely need to!
Great suggestion about keeping time on a fight to checkon the energy level of the players.
I think I’ll combo that with the music that should have been playing in the background – music often makes for a subtle timer!
(Oh! And awesome cliffhanger! I’m taking notes!)
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This ‘4e grind’ you mention…does it happen a lot?
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Sorry people, I have been working on ‘other’ stuff lately.
@Rafe: Yeah, at least we were able to get to the ‘Satisfaction’ point of the encounter before the frustration became to high to scrap the evening. At no point in the night did a player take a turn with a ‘what’s the use?’ mindset.
As Yan points out, character synergies weren’t established and turns were longer to take as players were weighing options.
@Tahakkis: It happens when you don’t design encounters carefully. Too many soldiers (high HP/ High Defense) and/or too many Status attacks that prevent players from doing actions.
I’ll write about this soon enough,
Shouldn’t be a problem, then, I’m running Scales of War ATM, although apparently Graham noticed a lot of problems with Number Three.
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I’m sure that if you drop Graham a line he’ll be pleased to give you pointers.
Something that comes up many times is to either drop the high defenses of Soldiers or cut HP in a fraction of their total.
I plan to design better encounters instead and may sprinkle them with more damage inducing terrain instead of Hindering terrain.
The skirmisher thing reminded me of an idea. I’m not sure how well D&D supports this type of action these days but one of the tactics I used when running Earthdawn was to have a small pack attack the way tribal hunters would bring down a rhino.
The PCs were surrounded by a fairly strong force but not all of the monsters would attack every turn. Some were just there to hedge the PCs in and were fighting much more defensively while a couple each round would nip at their heels. This sort of thing is an intelligent tactic that works best with monsters that are smart enough to run away after they get pounded a bit or just plain realize the PCs are tough nuts that take too much effort to crack.
Another use for this is in encounters where you want the opposition to potentially end up as friends afterwards. Not certain if that could work well in 4e or not. I think it’d be fine if some members of the monster group allowed attacks of opportunity as they shifted position but probably not all of them should.
Chatty since you like columns, how about rooms full of partially toppled columns? Where the sections are all off center and wobbly with the whole thing ready to topple with one good shove (a str test of course) or any type of blast or pushing spell. It could be like a mix. One time damage terrain that turns into hindering terrain. Toss in a couple animate karyatids and you’re off to the races. Provided your characters don’t just look at you after the description and say “Huh?” That’s always a downer.
@Lanir: As I read more accounts of dynamic 4e fights, I see that Skirmishers are to be the meat and potatoes of fights, using some of the tactics you mentioned. I also learned that in a mix of monsters, you want your low damage dealing monsters to help out the high damage ones hit their targets.
As for having monsters that can become friends, 4e can surely allow this as players can choose to kill or knock out monsters when they drop them to 0 HP.
And you are right on the money about your examples in using collapsed columns and allowing PCs and monsters to push others to fall on enemies… this is exactly the type of fun stuff I like to see in combat.
The only thing that confuses me about highly mobile fights in D&D is how to make it work in front of everyone on a battle map with opponents that go at different times during a turn. But anything’s better than the gridlock I’m used to seeing. I always thought it was kind of depressing that adding a map to D&D tended to make the fights have less mobility than it’s miniature game roots. I think they partially fixed that in 4e but I haven’t played it enough to really know yet.
In order to foster mobility in 4e, you have to make it more worthwhile to the players to move around the map than to stay in place and blast/hack monsters.
To that effect, the way you will play monsters and the number of movement limiting abilities the PCs have/use will often dictate how dynamic a combat will be.
Also, you have to take into account the relative hesitation that players/DMs will have in triggering Attacks of Opportunities. Sometimes I feel that this whole concept to allow people to attack you out of their turn did more harm to the game than good.
At least there are feats/class features that allow PCs to dodge such attacks.
Finally, some PCs need movement to be more efficient, the Strikers classes, especially the Barbarian deal more damage when they can move across the board.
In D&D 3.5 mobility was more or less killed by the multiple attacks that PCs got at higher levels, making extra attacks at lower attack bonuses often seemed to be a much better option than moving and hitting just once. Later classes and source books tried to address this. With limited success, the Tome of Battle being a good path to explore.
I actually had a pretty good experience with a literal Wolf Pack encounter just yesterday, but I’m coming to think that it’s really all in how you play it.
The party (All 4th level: a rogue, a barbarian, a wizard, and a pair of paladins) was heading back to an established safehouse in the outskirts of a huge ruined city, when I rolled a wandering monster check. They came across a feral pack of about 15 wild dogs surrounding the house and menacing the two NPCs the party had left behind to mind the fort. Roving packs of feral animals are an omnipresent threat during the day in the ruins – I used the MM entry for a wolf, which is a L2 Skirmisher. The hapless pair of NPCs had boarded up the doors and were (not very effectively) throwing bits of debris from the second-story window.
While the rest of the party hung back and threw things to try and drive the dogs away, the barbarian and the rogue charged them with drawn swords. Needless to say, they ended up surrounded by about four dogs each, while the others watched and waited to see what the rest of the PCs would do. The dogs knocked creatures prone on a successful attack and got extra damage against prone creatures, so things got really ugly really fast.
The key to the whole thing was when I realized that these were *predators*, and that if the Discovery Channel hadn’t played me false again, predators behave in certain predictable ways. Specifically, prey that puts up too much fight isn’t worth going after. So I started having any dog that took any damage back out of the fight and regroup about 30 feet behind the two prone characters.
Through the use of a well-timed Force Orb by the wizard and some well-aimed rocks from one of the paladins, they managed to drive the dogs away from the barbarian, but by the end of Round 3, the rogue was one hit point away from the minus-half-hp death limit. With the prospect of a meal, at that point, the dogs got a little less aggressive. The half that hadn’t yet been wounded or slain stood fast for a round or two, trying to defend their kill by scaring off the party.
A few more missiles and a few dead dogs made it apparent that the other PCs were tougher than the pack could easily deal with, and that no shenanigans would be tolerated. The pack reluctantly abandoned the dying rogue and fled. He was brought back by a quick Lay On Hands, a little shaken by how narrowly he missed the reaper. No animals were harmed in the making of this encounter, except for three dogs that the barbarian and the wizard killed, and two others that retreated after being bloodied.
The combat was pretty quick and exciting (lasted maybe an hour, real-time), the 4e grind didn’t kick in, and most importantly, everybody seemed to have a lot of fun. Ignoring the usual “This monster fights to the death!” clauses in the rules helped a *lot*, because there wasn’t much need to whittle down the dogs’ HP – they just left as it became clear that this wouldn’t be an easy meal.
So I guess the moral of the story is 4e really needs a good set of house rules for morale. The hit-and-run tactics made for a much quicker and more interesting battle, and had the added benefit of the enemies getting away for once. The phrase, “Crap, what do we do if they come back?” is music to my ears – *evil grin*. I’m definitely looking forward to finding ways to adapt this sort of thing to other scenarios in the future.
Hey man, welcome to the blog. That’s a great example you shared here and I totally agree with morale rules. That’s why we see more and more DMs advocating having monsters and NPC try to flee once bloodied, unless they are mindless or have no reason to leave (undead come to mind).
I know that a Wolf Pack isn’t automatically bad and I commend you on playing them believably and using predator habits to model the monster’s strategy.
I’ve really learned a lot in the last two weeks and I’m looking forward to put down my ideas to modify my remaining encounters.