Session 2 Monsters

Based on lessons and feedback from the first session, I've been busy putting together the encounters for the rest of the adventure. I am punching things up a bit, incorporating more monster types, and more terrain and maneuver constraint in the map design. I haven't pulled maps yet, but I do have my monsters picked out.

The Mine Entrance: This will be an attack on a defensive point held by the monsters. The encounter consists of an orc witch doctor, human guard, 2 goblin warriors, and 4 goblin cutters. This gives a mix of minions and standard monsters, with both a controller and a mark to mess with the PCs' actions and tactics. There is also a level 2 trap allocated here, but I haven't decided what form this will take. The plan is to harass with the witch doctor and goblin warriors at range, while the guard and cutters hold a defensive position.

Ironmentals: This is something of a wandering monster encounter, as they can burrow and thus pop out of the walls pretty much anywhere. I can slot it in as needed for some pacing. I have tweaked them since the original version, increasing the crusher to level 2 and adding an ambusher version. Revised stat blocks are below. Basically, the lurkers can pop up and immobilize, and the crushers get a special charge they can use against the immobilized target.

Collapsy Cave: This is set in, well, a collapsy cave. Well, not as in its going to cave in, but many of the stalactites are prone to breaking and falling. I'm thinking any creature that moves more than 3 or 4 squares is subject to an attack, that has the potential to also create difficult terrain. The monsters are coming back from the following encounter, and is a goblin acolyte of Magulbiyet (or the Eye), two orc raiders, and their two trained fire beetles.

WYRM!!!: Here we have a just feed grey dragon wyrmling and two dark acolytes. I wanted something to break up all the orc and goblin action. A wyrmling as an elite sounded like fun. I'm imaging this as some sort of deal where the wyrmling is a “gift” from an established element of the Cult of the Elder Elemetal Eye, with its handlers.

GOBLINS!!!: A goblin cursespewer, three goblin lurkers, and four cutters. This is the general “nest of goblin followers” from which the other gobbos came. Basically, this encounter mostly serves to show that the twins have a bunch of goblin followers. Or something. The cursespewer is a nasty piece of work.

Orc Guards: This is the twins' personal guard. The orcs are younger ones that the twins have recruited from their own and other nearby tribes. It's pretty straight forward, an orc sergeant, a half-orc archer, and two orc raiders. All level 3, when the PCs are going to be level 2, so a hair tougher, but still pretty doable, the way they've been playing. With the sergeant and the orc warrior's surge, this should be a more tactical battle.

The Twins: Here they are, Karad and Lyshhak, devotees of the True Eye, as they know it. They are level 2 elites (stat blocks below), designed to work together a bit, and be a lot of fun. I especially look forward to messing with the PCs using Lyshhak's beguiling call. Along with the three orc freaks to support them, this should be a dramatic fight. I'm thinking of having this set in the deepest part of the mine, where Lyshhak was messing with the mojo of the mountain. I can include some sort of aura terrain feature to help represent this. Especially with the PCs enjoying the favor of the mountain. I may have some central thing give some kind of bonus to adjacent creatures. Or, if the fight is looking rough, I could grant a recharge on an encounter power or a triggered healing surge, as the spirit's power flows through them. Something I'll have to finish mulling over.

Now, without further ado, the ironmentals and the twins!

The ironmentals I envision as small, mobile amalgamations of rock and rough iron. They are vaguely quadrupedal, with iron claws and plates. The iron parts blend seemlessly into the ore-like rock of their bodies. Their heads have a single sensory organ, which appears as a globe or egg of polished hematite. Which, incidentally, can serve as treasure, based on the quality of it and how well it survived the fight, i.e. I can adjust how much treasure to award for any given pack.

Meet the PCeebles, and Session 1 After Action

Last week we had our character creation session.  Everyone liked the sound of the second level 1 encounter power, so we went ahead with that.  We ended up with:

Elyissa Soulaxe, axe and shield-wielding dwarven fighter.  She is of a clan that, two generations ago, brought ruin to their mountain through unchecked avarice.  They ended up migrating south and becoming seafarers.  Driven by wanderlust, she has struck out on her own, to see the larger world.

MorCu, elven beastmaster ranger, and his Unnamed Raven.  His tribe is from a series of islands off the western coast, with a strong Pacific Northwest tribal feel.  When away hunting, his entire tribe vanished without a trace, and he left the silent haunt of his home.

Constantine, a human hybrid barbarian/ranger.  His tribe, the Obsidian Spear, lives in not too far from Briarridge, and he has had dealings there.  However, with the encroachment of both growing operations in Briarridge, and an increasing Torrenvold presence from the south, his tribe is finding itself squeezed out.  Seeing the writing on the wall, as it were, he seeks to find a place in the larger world.

Lucan, half-elven archer bard.  Adopted and raised by elves, he originally envisioned a life as a priest of Corellon.  But Sehanine has other plans for him, and with her touch on his destiny, he seeks out the deeper mysteries of past empire.

Yesterday we had our kickoff session.  It went smashingly well, all things considered.  The first few encounters I did kind of softball in how I built them.  However, the creating characters together and everyone talking about what they were taking really paid off tactically.  They, sad to say, took my monsters apart.  The first encounter had Elyissa yo-yoing on HP for bit as she was surrounded by minions, until Constantine finally hit with a power that did a burst 3 CON mod damage to enemies and swept all but one out.  MorCu, predictably, was a killing machine.  Lucan really fouled things up for me, between his Virture of Cunning, which broke my flanks several times, and a power which let an ally make an at-will as an interrupt, which basically aborted half of the frenzied mountain spirit's avalance charge.

Everything flowed really well.  We got through four (simple) encounters, and a bit of exposition and set-up in town, all in three hours.  Everyone was fine with the set-piece encounters and the light narrative thread, this being the war up for the whole campaign and for our group.  More story and character oriented stuff will come in time.  A big part of that was my pre-game prep.  I got a multi-pocket plastic file folder.  For each encounter, I had a card with the monster, XP, and treasure info, printed out stat blocks for the monsters (cut apart), and the map or tiles for it, all in its own pocket.  I had minis picked out and bagged for each encounter.  So when it was time for a new encounter, I was able to pull everything right on out and have it ready to go in just a minute or two.

Into retrospect, I was pretty happy with the bandits and crazy critters encounters.  I think the goblins at the looted wagon could have used a little more oomph, and the frenzied mountain encounter probably needed more than just the spirit.  The players really enjoyed that one, both seeing the potential threat it presented (even as they punked it), and the flavor and background of the encounter.  I will definitely have to think of a way to reuse the spirit as an NPC.

Going forward, I know I can punch things up a bit.  I think I will aim more for level+1 and level+2 encounters, and a more varied monster mix.  I certainly need some lurkers and artillery to put pressure on MorCu.  I also will be looking at doing some more complex encounters.  The next one is going to be the party busting into the mine, and I figure that will be fun, as they assault a defended location.  There's also the encounter with the falling stalactites coming up as well.  Good thing I have plenty of commute time during the week!

Finally, there's my personally victory: not only did I run a fun, entertaining game with nary a hitch, I did so with almost no nerves.  Sure, I was anxious about how it was going to turn out, but I had none of the fear of public performance that has undermined previous attempts to run games.  That has really helped get things off on the right foot, and I look forward to next week's game!

The inaugural encounter of the game I intend to be a chance for the players to start getting a feel for their characters in play, as well as highlight the dangerous nature of the area around Briarridge. It is going to be a classic “bandits attack”, and I am most likely going to tell the players, “You'll be able to take an extended rest after this, so fell free to drop dailies.”

As an encounter to ease them in, it is level 1, consisting of a desperate bandit boss (level 1 skirmisher-leader), two desperate bandit archers (level 1 artillery) and eight desperate bandit scum (level 1 minion, I may have four players and drop them to six scum, between a level 1 and 2 encounter, but lots of minions should still make it easy). While it is a lot of enemies on the field, the minions will get swept sway in pretty good order. The main synergy is the boss's don't let them win that easily! power, which will allow him to direct an ally to make a basic attack whenever a PC drops one or more bandits. Since it is an opportunity attack, the boss can only use it once per PC turn, regardless of how many bandits are dropped.

For the map, I'm planning on using the map from Keep on the Shadowfell, for the initial “kobolds ambush you on the road” encounter. It's the same concept, and allows me to use a map I already have. Being desperate bandits, I'm not giving any treasure as part of this encounter.

I foresee two potential troubleshooting issues. First, if the players try to talk the bandits down, I may turn that into an impromptu skill challenge. Second, the bandit scum can daze when they attack with combat advantage. That's a lot of potential dazes that can go out. I'm not too worried, as the minions will be going down fast, so it will be tough for them to get many combat advantage situations. Still, I may change the effect to weakened for a turn anyways. I'm still thinking on that. If it looks like it's being too much of a pain at the table, then I can also change it mid-encounter (little do the players realize the stat block was supposed to say “dazed or weakened”!).

And now, some desperate bandit stat blocks:

Ruling Down the House

One of the strengths of RPGs is the ability to tweak and customize. While I do greatly enjoy 4E right out of the box, I am looking at some potential house rules for this game. Some affect character building, and another isn't so much a rule, as an adjustment to some of the default assumptions about running the game.

First, I will be implementing global Expertise. I don't have a horse in the “were these patches for broken game math” race. However I do feel these feats are just too good, and kind of boring. While some builds may feel they can do without the +1 to attack in favor of other things for a while, it is an autopick when it upgrades to +2 at 15th level. Also, missing sucks. I don't want to trivialize the potential to miss, but I don't want to see the game get too whifftastic. Thus, I will be dropping the whole series of Expertise feats, and just granting their bonuses as an automatic up grade.

Second, under consideration but with a strong chance of being used, is two level 1 encounter powers at level 1. In my experience, low level play can be a little boring due to the lack of options. While many races and classes bring some additional encounter powers, many of these are of a more utilitarian nature. The PCs get one chance to pop something cool each encounter, along with their daily every so often. It makes for fallback on a lot of at-will spam. So I would let the players take a second level 1 encounter power. Then, at 3rd level, they would just upgrade one to 3rd level, instead of getting a new one. It will provide more options and choices in every encounter, and I think the overall power boost is minor enough to not cause any headaches.

Third, and this is more of a “develop for possible later use,” ties back into “missing sucks.” Various people have proposed some sort of mechanic where you gain a cumulative bonus each time you miss, which you can expend, all at once, on a later attack. It is a little more fiddly, requiring an extra element to track. I'm not going to use it right off, but will keep it in mind.

As a “behind the scenes” change, I'll be handing out some extra utility magic items, i.e. those that aren't primary bonus items or that give significant direct combat buffs. There's a bunch of cool, weird items to had, especially with access to the Adventurer's Vaults and DDI. I figure dropping an extra one per level will give more toys to play with, without significantly affecting the power curves.

All in all, nothing that will significantly alter the way the game plays, but I think it will have a positive effect on pacing and giving some more choices for the players to work with.

"But", the Magic Word

While we are going to have a joint character creation session, my players are already pondering character ideas, both in mechanical and background terms.  This is exciting, because it shows they are interested in the game, and means we'll have plenty of material to work with when we get together to start hammering stuff out.

One of the players is considering a bow ranger, but isn't too excited by the basic archery build from PH1.  His idea was to play an elf beastmaster ranger, focusing on ranged attacks.  While the beastmaster build assumes a STR-focused, melee character, mixing it up with his beast, by focusing on ranged DEX pwers for himself and beast powers that just involve the pet attacking, an archer beastmaster should be plenty doable.

Where things got interesting was when he asked if he could have a hummingbird as his beast, trading out some or most of its damage for extra speed, and essentially use it as a quarry spotter.  I thought about this, and the fact that the raptor beast template is already relatively low damage, at 1d6+1 to start, and very maneuverable with a fly speed of 7 (hover), and decided that I really didn't like messing with that.  So I said, "No, but..." and made the counteridea of using the raptor stats as-is, and the hummingbird is some kind of three foot long dire fey hummingbird, with a dirk- (if not rapier-) like beak.  It would still be a great spotter for him, still present a potential threat itself, and dude, killer hummingbird.  He liked the idea (his wife evidently laughed with glee), so it looks like he may go with that.

I looked at the beast powers some more, and started to consider letting him take some that are of the "you and your pet both make attacks" variety, and change the character's attack portion from melee STR-based to ranged DEX-based.  I figure that this will still be pretty balanced, as, one: there are plenty of ranger multi-modal powers already.  Two: he's giving up the easy flank oppertunities with his pet of the melee beastmaster.  The Distant Advantage feat does help to overcome that, but at the cost of a feat and the added complication of needing a third character to set up flanks for him to exploit.  Three: having a dire fey killer hummingbird pecking away bloody gobbets out of some hapless monster while the ranger pumps arrows into it passes my Rule of Cool handily.   Or, as a friend so succiently put it, "That's not just D&D.  That's D&D in capital letters, that are fifty feet tall, on fire, and resting atop a crushed halfling."