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.
Man, i’m glad that you are not still in that mood about 4E… I’m not ready to play som’thing else 😉 You are doing, as always, an excellent job and i enjoyed that campaign end. Thanks for that army, man 🙂
Jeez…. a Jedi Giant…. that would have been insane 😛
Interesting. The big finale I ran on Friday also was two stages, using the Long Combat rules from DMG2. I did have some walls that could provide terrain attack powers on the table but no one used them (including me!). But here’s what I had for the encounter (which was intended to be Level +5, but with 6 players).
(btw, Chatty, take a look at the Invoker 16th level Utility power from Divine Power called Pennant of Heaven’s Armies and tell me what you think of it).
Stage 1:
2 Tiamat-Sworn Reavers (Level 15 Skirmishers)
1 Thuranni Assassin (Level 16 Lurker)
1 Aspect of Tiamat (Level 15 Solo Brute)
The Thuranni Assassin was actually a 3rd party, and only focussed on one character who he was paid to kill.
Stage 2
Skather, Dragonborn Ninja (Level 15 Solo Lurker)
Sivak Draconian (Level 15 Skirmisher)
Aurak Draconian (Level 15 Controller-Leader)
Baaz Draconian Foot Soldiers (Level 15 Minion Soldiers)
4 of the Baaz would arrive in a teleportation circle until the end of the combat or with 2 successes on an Arcana check.
The entire combat took 3h30m.
The party consisted of 3 Strikers, 1 Defender, 1 Leader, 1 Controller and I’m running the 3/4 hp, +1/2 level damage house rule.
Excuse me Phil but to be able to sneak you need another foe and I was alone…
The fact that the warden was not there and the barbarian was playing with the minion didn’t help me at all.
But overall we had a great night and had fun and that what matter
Stef
Two words, Chatty: Savage Worlds
[runs upstairs to bedroom, slams door, hides under covers.]
🙂
.-= walkerp´s last blog ..episode 7 – Friendly Neighbourhood Gamer #2 =-.
An other thing, we were at our last resources so you can say that you chalenge us to the last of our capabilities. Maybe you didn’t feel you did a great job as a DM, but you manage to challenge us us as you never did before in 4e
my two cents
Here’s another thing. Five, ten years from now you won’t remember how long the combat took. But you’ll remember what Corwin did forever.
The fact that you managed to get thru an 18-month campaign with your sanity intact makes you a better man than I. ^_^
.-= Ron Bailey´s last blog ..Apple Premieres iTunes 9 =-.
@Mike: I’m happy that we completed your objectives with style! Don’t worry, 4e and me are still buddies… 🙂
Dean: Nice… that seemed to have been quite the epic fight.
@Stef: Wow! I finally baited you out to comment? Twice? Yan owes me a beer! 😛 Seriously, I’m not saying you could Sneak before the 4-5th round… but you also didn’t think to coordinate with others as soon as you reached other PCs. All players were so focused on surviving that I think any form of plan had gone out the window.
In future games I’ll try to point out when the party stays disorganized longer than needed.
I’ll never be the DM I want to be… that’s my blessing and my curse… but knowing that you guys have fun and finding my own fun is enough… even if I bitch and moan about it to a few thousand people on a semi-regular basis.
@walkerp: Savage World is on my list for the next RPG I’ll read. I’d love a system to play some Pulp/Steampunk…
@Dean: Amen to that brother. It’s the first act of non-combat suicide my players ever did. And Math has been gaming with me since we’re 13!
@Ron: You’re too kind sir.
In the 5 round i was already in survival mode and looking for the healer. But all in all it was not my bet night at all. If I can make a comment the rogue was spectacular in lower level but as we went further in the level it was quite ordinary.
Three post tonight, Yan own you 2 beers
@Stef: One of the things that did not make it spectacular Stef was that many of the last fights we had were ‘trick fights’ based on non-standards encounters… fights where you had to find the trick and the combat was over.
I plan to be more ‘classical’ in the next session and give you tons of critter to play Controller with.
@ Chatty: “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.”
Surprisingly, no one else has mentioned this. Let me just say that that simple sentence blew my mind more than anything else you have written about the clash with the Overmind.
It’s such a simple, elegant, yet game-legal way to give boss monsters versaility and cinematic flair without cluttering their stat blocks.
Kudos!
.-= Colmarr´s last blog ..Raiders of Oakhurst; Chapter 2.6 =-.
Hey Chatty! Thanks for the reports, they were really amusing to read.
I’ll chip in with Colmarr that the “Minor At will: Do Rule 42 damage” is a great mechanic! I’ll certainly steal it for the End-Of-Heroic boss of my campaign.
I’m a stickler for the “Balance Encounter by XP” rules, and I’m finding that combats are either too easy or too long (and sometimes both). The long combats are actually fun in retrospect, but the fact that I can only run about 2 combat encounters per session before our stamina run out, and that we only play once every three weeks means that there are serious restrictions on the kind of sessions I can run (exploring is REALLY difficult in these conditions).
We’re at 7th level now (started at 1st about one year ago). I’m planning to implement a “50% of combat XP is minions” for next session to see how that turns out.
@Colmar and Claus: Thanks for the Kudos. It worked surprisingly well. Piece of Ceiling falling on 1 PC : Medium Limited Damage. EarthQuake blast 3 that Knocks PCs down? Low Normal Damage + Knocked Prone.
Loved it.
Best of luck with your high minions encounter. Look at Monster Manual 2 minions… they are very interesting monsters in there.
@Chatty, did you use the Monster’s Level, the Encounter’s level, or the party’s level when taking damage from that table for your boss? For a “one off” action we usually use the encounter level, but for a monter’s power, there is an argument for using the monster’s level instead.
@Claus: I always, always use the PCs level. Simpler to adjudicate.
“Anyone else still has trouble gauging monster roles and numbers? ”
One neat trick I’ve learnt – I’d imagine that unless the scene was planned (ambush, military, etc.), most monsters don’t arrive into combat simultaneously. Get them to filter in over the course of a few rounds, and carefully gauge character energy. When players are getting fed up, stop adding NPCs 🙂
.-= Johenius´s last blog ..Five-Fold and Leadership (as opposed to five-fold leadership) =-.
Wow, Phil, thanks for the details. I’m starting a new 4e campaign in January, and thinking about the overall mechanics. Your insights about combats will be invaluable. I tend to stick pretty close to the XP budgets in encounter design, but lately I’ve been playing with more minions plus an elite-type monster in the mix. This seems to give the combats a more heroic feel.
@Johnesius: Neat trick and I look forward to stage a fight with Lurkers to change the players plans midway…
@Anarkeith: Depending on the level you play, you can use up to 6 or 8 minions to replace one standard monster… if your group has area effect powers. if they don’t stick to 4. As for playing with Elites and Solos… I heartily encourage that!
@ walkerp- Amen Brother!
Chatty, you know my love for SW because I keep prodding you about it. Also from my post I did on your site about it 🙂
One thing that you could do, and I’m not sure if you do it or not, is have a sheet on your computer of issues you have had. Or hand write them (saves on paper and you don’t have to reprint it everytime you add something). This list would allow you to see the issues you have had with combat and you can analyze the combat you are forming and be able to question it. This will give you a checklist to put it through, giving way to a great, hopefully, combat session..
*cough* Savage Worlds *cough*
.-= wrathofzombie´s last blog ..Clockworks Playtest- Chargen! Part Two =-.
Ahhhh! People what is it with Metrics and RPG players? I have enough at work and now I’m being suggested to keep combat statistics and document my lessons learned in my MS-Outlook!
🙂
You are right… however, they highly introspective exercise I did this week has allowed me to internalize many of them… Some of which I will forget. I know what makes a good 4e encounter… but like many story-minded DMs with 10 years of 3.x experience, I keep getting caught in creating combat encounters by starting with a Theme that fits my story and then making an encounter whose Story logic trumps Mechanics Logic.
It made story senses to give the Boss 3 Soldier Bodyguards… it was the damn BOSS! But that made for a poorer fight. I’ll try to other way around. Design an encounter that works and then fitting the story around it.
(You all know that I blog as a form of therapy to keep me same right? All this “cool to read” crap is just a happy coincidence!) 🙂
Also, I’m noticing a certain trend of readers suggesting, pushing and rooting for me to pick up new RPGs. I will and I have. If you read the blog 2 years ago, I had a very low opinion of other RPGs. Now I’m willing to read and try new systems… when I can spare the time. Up next is Mouseguard, which I’ll play on Dec 20th with my buddies.
After? We’ll see. I hope to get someone to demo me Savage Worlds at Pax 2010.
I have learned that when planning awesome encounters that no matter what, monsters should not heal. I planned an awesome fight at the top of an giant shadowfel castle (think Castle Vania) with a Paladin Vampire Lord. Unfortunately, between the Basic attack I gave him that provided 2 Temp hp and his blood suck ability, the fight lasted 4 hours. And while I played on the idea that he was “master of his domain” and could alter the shape of the room and remove/add features at will, my players will always remember the Bloody Baron as just impossible to kill. Infact, they pushed him out the window and onto the parapets to kill him. The barbarian went with him to “make sure” he stayed dead.
I tend to use the monsters and encounter levels as they are. There are two main reasons to put in custom content.
1- To throw something new at the players. With 4E being relatively new (the majority of campaigns have not reached high epic levels yet) all the monsters are fresh. Also with the way monsters are constructed there is alot of variance within a monster type; not every goblin is the same.
2- Plot/theme specific. I have found simply reskinning a monster of the appropriate level/type to be enough. There is a wide diversity of monsters at the various levels and just changing a fire attack to a lightning attack is enough to fit it into a theme.
I have found that using the basic encounter setups to be spot on. I have not had to double guess the encounters. So far, my players have been challenged and there are still alot of close calls; characters out of powers/surges at the end of a fight or alot of attacks come down to missing or hitting by 1 (this is really cool as it makes a characters abilities, such as a Warlord adding +2 to attack, more meaningful when you can see it having an effect).
Also I am lazy and find if I can use, and trust, a basic encounter I need to do alot less work. I would have to say I have alot of trust in the way 4E encounters are set up.
And as for Savage Worlds, play it first. I was impressed by its ease but unimpressed by its leveling process (leveling is a form of character growth, which is important to me as a DM).
.-= callin´s last blog ..Birthright Encounters Three =-.
Don’t you dare!
You’re a story-focused guy, and you shouldn’t fight that. It does make sense for the boss to have 3 Soldier Bodyguards.
What you need to do, though, is adjust the mechanics to match your story AND be good mechanically.
For this fight, your problem wasn’t that you had three soldiers, it’s that the monsters were hard to hit. This is because in addition to being Soldiers, they were higher level than the PCs. So level them down instead. Throw 3 level 12 or 13 Soldiers in, instead of level 15.
Alternately, realise that it makes sense for the boss to have 3 bodyguards, but those bodyguards don’t need to be Soldiers just because they’re soldiers (note the capitalisation). Brutes and Skirmishers make fine soldiers.
..
As for Savage Worlds, I’m currently playing a game on Wave with the system. It’s… less than impressive (the system, not the game). I’d play in another game with it, if asked, but I don’t think I’d ever run one. Too many things about the system just annoy me.
I’m told the Deadlands system might be more to my taste, (it’s similar, but different and less generic) but I haven’t tried it yet.
@Doomdreamer: Healing of monsters can be a huge issue in terms of fights. Especially repeatable healing that can nullify a PC’S attack. However, I like to remind DMs that monsters have healing surges too (1 per tier, but they don’t usually have a Second Wind ability to spend themin combat). This means that they can heal if they survive a fight.
This makes for great multi staged fights where a Solo monster will raid Fight#1 and retreat with its rear-guard minions once bloodied.
@Callin: I’m not much of a fan of the basic encounters used in the Monster Manual… You’re right that they are properly balanced, but I like to drive the Encounter Design truck alone. I sometime veer off road on the way but I’m confident I’ll eventually drive straight and keep to the pavement. 🙂
@Graham: Good point. The thing in that particular example is that I was working at cross purposes on 2 fronts. First, I fixated on having Soldiers as bodyguards, as you pointed out. Plus, I wanted to have the Boss ‘die’ rapidly so I could move on to phase 2… I mean… WTF?!?
Having a Skirmisher or a Lurker as a guard would have worked better… or as you say, one lower level soldier.
As always, thanks for the insights, here and before I wrote this report.
@Graham
I tried Deadlands Reloaded for Savage Worlds last night coincidentally. Our GM was neat enough to have a “dream sequence” so we could test out the combat and without using up resources or real fear of character death. I died in the first shot when he ‘raised’ my toughness 5 times in damage. Yeah, may need to rethink how the game works.
@Doomdreamer –
Actually, that’s a good example. I think my main issue with the system is that it’s too… swingy, I guess. It’s too easy to either fail horridly or succeed by a margin that is hard to comprehend.
I would like to offer a post by Geek Life Project that talks about having to rethink to play Savage Worlds
http://www.grogtard.com/?p=422
@Doomdreamer and Graham-
I agree that SW can be a really BRUTAL system, but there are weapons at your disposal that players aren’t used to, especially when they are normally DnD players.
One is Bennies, bennies, bennies. This will allow you to do a soak roll to absorb/shake off the damage. In all honest, most of the time that is what bennies are used for (although they do other things).
Second is rethinking how movement and holding your action works in SW. In DnD unless you take (3.5) spring attack, you can only move then attack or attack and then move. In SW, you can move some, attack, then move some. This is vital.. Because in SW cover matters. Also getting up from being prone is basically (and I may be wrong on this) a free action. So you can shoot, run, and drop prone for cover in SW. This helps surviving greatly.
Another part on this is holding your action.. My players were having a hell of a time hitting enemies when we started doing play-tests of SW. I would have an enemy pop out, shoot, then go back to cover. My players became frustrated because they couldn’t get shots off. I, still really fresh to the rules, realized that they needed to hold their actions, when doing so you can go WHEN you want, interupting someones action. So how it played out then was; baddies coming out to shoot, getting shot as player who was then holding his action popped out, baddies dies or lives and carries out his action, and then goes back to hiding, stuff moves on..
Also, as you read in the article, which I do recommend, tricks, taunts, intimidation ALL add a whole new level to combat in SW.
.-= wrathofzombie´s last blog ..Help With Building a Homebrew World =-.
@wrathofzombie –
Please note that I have not yet played a combat in SW. The swingy mechanics I’m referring to are the base mechanic, not combat specifically.
In D&D, for example, at no skill in History, I range from 1-20. As my skill increases, I go from 1-20 to 6-25 to 11-30, etc. If I’m more intelligent, that range will go higher still, but the range itself doesn’t change.
In SW, two things occur.
1) Instead of the range moving upwards, your range increases, from 1d4 up to 1d12. This means that being more skilled actually feels more “swingy” than being unskilled, as 1d4 is more consistent. Consistently bad, true, but consistent nonetheless.
2) If I have a d12 Strength, and 1d4 Climbing, I do consistently worse at climbing than the guy with a d6 Strength/d6 Climbing. Despite the fact that I could easily lift my own weight in a chin-up, probably one-handed, I suck at Climbing things, as your ability score doesn’t affect your skill result. It only affects how easy it is to raise that skill further.
(Yes, I missed a few things here for simplification. The edges that give flat bonuses to skills or Charisma, for instance, and the Wild Die.)
These are my main issues with SW thus far. Both do apply to combat, but neither is specific to it. They are issues I have with the core mechanic.
Thread Derailment!
But since I never read SW it’s good to see a little discussion of it here. 🙂
Oh, and the other issue I’ve been having:
Despite always being marketed to me as a rules-light, low-crunch, easy-to-run, on-the-fly system, there are too many random, disjointed sub-mechanics. Soak rolls are one of these.
I’m a crunch fiend, and I thought I’d dislike SW because it was crunch-light. I was wrong. I dislike it for the same reason I dislike 1e AD&D. It’s deceptively crunch-heavy, and the hidden heavy crunch is disjointed.
At least in 1e AD&D’s case, that hidden crunch was all optional. In SW, some of it is part of the core system.
@Chatty
Derailment is a bit of an understatement. But to be back on topic, do you remember how Mind Flayers procreate? With the tadpoles in the bodies of the dead? I think Corwin should totally turn into an Illithid.
.-= Doomdreamer´s last blog ..Quick Note Conundrum =-.
Sorry for the derailment Chatty.. 🙁 But thank you for allowing us to continue to converse.
@Graham-
I hope I didn’t make my post seem snarky, because that wasn’t the case, if it is, I apologize.
The one thing I will say on the dice mechanice for SW that works is usually the target number for something is generally 4, then you add the modifiers. A untrained skill is a d4-2 so it is much harder to succeed than trained. With a skill that is a d12, you have a higher chance to succeed, plus the other important thing is “raises”. If you beat the target number by 4, you get a raise which furthers your success. If the T# is a 4 and you roll a 12 on a d12, not only have you already raised twice, but you get to roll the die again and add that number since the rolling the highest number on the die is consideried an “ace.”
As far as the skills the way I look at is is, using your example, is I may be really strong, but I don’t know poo about climbing well (yeah I know it isn’t the greatest justification, but meh..)
Also don’t forget about rolling the wild die (d6) with every roll except damage, so with that, everyone basically has a d6 in ever skill/trait (although still a -2 to the roll if it is an untrained skill).
*We now continue the ChattyDM Awesomeness Show*
.-= wrathofzombie´s last blog ..Help With Building a Homebrew World =-.
@wrathofzombie –
It didn’t seem snarky. It just didn’t seem like you realised I was talking about more than combat.
Don’t worry, though, I know the statistics of it all. It just feels weird that the higher-skilled guy is less consistent than the lower-skilled guy. Sure, the guy with a d12 in Shooting can do spectacularly, but he can also shoot himself in the foot one time in twelve. He has no baseline competency.
As for the skills and attributes thing, it just seems to me as though linking skills to attributes is mostly for show in SW. My d8 Strength is nice, but mostly it’s just a limiting factor. “Do not get better than this.” Those points I spent in Strength don’t make me any better, they just make me less worse.
I dislike limiting factors in RPGs.
For those who haven’t met Graham (1/4 of our little informal multiblog team), he’s known for being brutally honest. Always polite and diplomatic, he however has no tolerance for semantics and easy generalization. If you make a statement while discussing with him, be sure to be able to defend it with facts.
That’s why I hate arguing with engineers. 🙂
Thank you, thank you.
*bows*
I’m not actually that bad, for the generalizations at least.
But yeah, I think this basically comes down to the following:
It’s a fine game if it works for you, but it will not work for everyone (nor will D&D, of course) and presenting it as a magic cure-all for all of someone’s RPG problems is disingenuous at best. (Even more so, when his players have said they don’t want to change systems, as Mike did in the first comment in this thread…)
In my limited experience of all the D&D systems, i cannot say to the point of absolute certainty that 4E is without flaw. I think it’s not ultimately broken and has great potential, and I have faith in our DM to bring us with great solutions to the irritating aspects of it.
*coughsuckupcough*
🙂
Busy day, did not have the time to comment.
Stef commented… It’s good to see those casual players bloom isn’t it… 😉
Hehe! Stef on the next game you can pick all the beers you wan’t in my pack…
As far as the game and us spreading out. The summoning of minions right in my PC’s face kind of derailed the plan of me positioning myself to help Rocco get into flanking position.
Took a turn to dispatch them thinking that their case would be solved, but they came back. After that Rocco was mostly halfling kebab…
As long as it’s Bacon-wrapped Halfling Kabab… I’m a happy camper. Hmmmm roasted hobbit, the best way to enjoy them really.
Hi. Not sure if I’m commented before, but I’m a long-time reader of your posts. I am always fascinated to read about how others play D&D since most of the sessions my friends and I play end up with battles significantly easier or harder than our DM expected.
I’ve always wished that (as much as a bore it might be for some) there were a true play-by-play recount of battles — like, how is a (approximately) 4th-level party supposed to kill a young black dragon with its darkness creating abilities? Furthermore, I’m playing a barbarian and while I’m a couple levels shy of your players, I’m jealous because I’m no where close to dealing 25-50 regularly per attack. How’d your player do that?
Hello Julia! Welcome to the blog!
I don’t do play by play because they tend to read like a Phonebook. I do suggest you listen to all 3 of the D&D podcasts with the Penny Arcade, PVP and Wil Wheaton… they are play by play 3 hour sessions.
As for the barbarian, look at Magic Items that increase the Barbarian’s charge attack damage or at-wills.
You remind me that I should write a series about having group mesh together in 4e.