Tales from the Table: The God of Many Faces

I mentioned in my last Tales from the Table that we were going to finish talking about the Frog-Pot Phenomenon, so here we go.

When last we left our intrepid adventurers, they were traveling up the mountain to the original birthplace of the primal spirits. Long ago, the Dragonborn built a ring of small cities around the mountain, intending to protect it as a sacred place. The Tieflings saw that someone else could potentially have something nice, which could not be allowed. The fighting shattered the mountain, enraged the spirits and prevented the animal fathers from moving to stop the obyriths. When they come to the summit, they meet one of the oldest and most powerful of these spirits, but he’s not in a good mood.

This is the base. Keep in mind that Meloga is only one creature, despite the fact that his various forms have unique stats and separate hit points. Also, in case it isn’t clear, the base provides his forms with two or three standard actions per turn. Meloga is technically a solo, but lacks the solo characteristics. I suppose that he should have the +5 to saving throws, but he doesn’t need action points. Trust me on this.

It’s also worth discussing Prone and Marked. These are conditions, but my experience has been that many players consider them to be in a separate, special category. In my version of the combat, Meloga shed these conditions the same as any other, but your mileage may vary.

This was the first form they saw. It’s perhaps the most deceptive of the forms, as everything but its recharge power is easily manageable. The real trick here is to manage to stay in the form long enough for two or three party members to become restrained, at which point Consumed by the Earth becomes the equivalent of the atomic bomb. Most players will not have much fear of restrained in the epic tier, as they have good access to teleport.

Mirrored Carapace was originally (tokens x 15) and it got up to 60 twice during the encounter. It created some interesting tension at the table. The real purpose of the Turtle form is to use Harden to provide an opportunity for the Firebird form to have an open turn to murderate someone.

This was the least satisfying of the forms. It isn’t bad, it just isn’t as exciting as the others.

This form is actually supposed to be HUGE.

Once the players realized what the brute form could do and that it would have three of those bombs per turn if it was one of the last two remaining forms, they started working to force Meloga into the Firebird so that they could kill it first. (if you’re interested, the order they achieved was Treant -> Firebird -> Storm -> Turtle, which actually got a little dicey when the Turtle got back up to four shell tokens.)

These were the models I used for the forms. Yes, the storm was just a tile.

I’ve long said that boss fights work best when there is a metagame that transcends routine tactics and this fight is no exception. Applying conditions is the mechanism by which the players force Meloga to switch forms. There is also the metagame of who gets to establish which of the forms remain when Meloga goes into “berserk mode.”

This is one of the most complex monsters I’ve ever designed, so I was a little nervous about how it could turn out and told my players that before we began. I think they were a little surprised to hear that I was worried, as they’ve come to expect that I will have a plan for how the fights are supposed to feel. This brings us back to the Frog-Pot theory.

There were two encounters between their last extended rest and this combat: a “red ooze” trap and the spirit encounter from my previous post, both of which were harder on the party than I expected. Thankfully, the only resource that was problematic was the number of healing surges left to the Rogue. The players remembered that they have a ritual that allows them to shimmy around healing surges, so they stocked the Rogue back up and kept going. Things could have turned out very differently, however.

There are many sensations associated with being low on gas.

Part of the reason that the frog-pot problem exists is that, while we spend a fair bit of energy teaching GMs how to build an encounter, we spend almost no time talking about how to build an encounter arc. I would like to fix that.

Decide in advance when the rests can occur.

Yes, the most effective solution really is that simple and, yes, it does mean more planning or at least an awareness of where you are going with the arc.

Learn to read the gauge.

Your players will have their own comfort level. Pushing people past that level is a sometimes food.

Keep simple fights simple.

When you make a setup fight more complicated or more challenging, you run the risk of depleting more resources than you intended.

Provide methods of resource management and recovery as needed.

This is actually a form of power creep, as being low on resources is intended to be a consequence of a variety of choices, so use a delicate hand here. It’s one thing to give them magic mushrooms that give them healing surges. It’s quite another to recharge powers. Comrades’ Succor is a simple solution, but you should notice that none of the published rituals allow you to regain dailies (at least not that I’ve seen).

Reward hitting milestones.

I was reading an article recently, one that I cannot now easily find, that talked about giving the characters benefits for reaching milestones. It’s an excellent idea. After all, the thing keeping the party from moving forward is the apprehension of risk vs. reward. Being low on resources means more risk.

Tales from the Table: The Frog-Pot Phenomenon

I have a problem with extended rests and it took me until just now to figure out why. In earlier editions, almost everything was truly expended until you rested. There were only so many spells, so many heals.This meant that it was fairly clear to everyone involved when the party was too weak to go on, so it hardly ever became a source of disagreement. It did, however, add to the tension, as you watched the gauge slowly slip towards “E”. Part of the metagame was recognizing when you were in a dangerous environment where resting was going to be difficult and adjusting your expenditures accordingly. This led to what was known as the “15-minute workday“. I agree with that author when he says that 4e didn’t solve the 15-minute workday problem, it just made it less painful.

It also led to “austerity management“, which is the idea that, when your economy is in the dumper, the best solution is to cut spending. I suppose you could call it rationing, but that seems more measured and reasonable than the actual behavior. If you’ve ever been hard up for money and stood there paralyzed by the decision of whether or not you can afford whatever item you’re considering, you know exactly the sensation of austerity management. I take the very firm position that this sort of thing has little, if any, place in roleplaying. That doesn’t mean that we should remove resource management from the game. It means that our desire to model hardship and scarcity must be tempered by the knowledge that being completely out of resources for any meaningful length of time sucks donkey balls. As a policy, it’s generally much better to say, “You can’t spend or regain X” than to impose blanket restrictions on recovery.

In 4e, very little is actually lost between encounters. I think it only amounts to daily powers, healing surges and item dailies. A 4e party that has no dailies and is reduced to only two or three healing surges apiece still packs a wallop and probably has decent durability, especially if the players are mechanically-minded  enough to seek healing that doesn’t require surges. (For an interesting thought exercise, you could try to design a fun, balanced and challenging encounter in which the characters are somehow prevented from spending healing surges. It can be helpful in understanding exactly what the characters can be capable of in a pinch.) The thing is, dailies are often seen as the most exciting thing a character can do. In low-level play, players are taught to hoard their dailies. Later, when they have more to choose from, dailies become the mechanism by which the players tilt the field in their favor. At-Will and Encounter abilities are less fun because they’re routine. In older editions, resting mostly just increased your resources. The only things you genuinely regained were your highest level spells and some class features.

I’ve written about my concerns with the timing of the extended rest before, but this is a separate issue. I feel that 4e supports situations in which the players and the GM can genuinely disagree as to whether or not the party is “strong enough” enough to keep going and this schism can make it harder for the GM to properly balance encounters.  I also believe that the nature of 4e’s dailies causes players to want them to be always available. That’s because, even though the party can usually win without the use of dailies, the fights play very differently when they are used.

Now, because of the impact that dailies can have on an encounter – especially complex “boss” encounters – it’s important to have a grasp on what dailies the party has access to and what they can do. This is where the frog-pot phenomenon comes in. Let’s say that the characters are delving through a crypt, looking for the lich, making for a series of happyfun undead encounters over a couple of sessions. Being a properly evil GM, you take this into account when you’re designing the climactic fight.

Then, for whatever reason, the players decide that they need to take an extended rest. The traditional 15-minute workday problem here is that there should be consequences for them leaving the dungeon at this point: maybe the lich moves on, maybe it adds guards and magical traps. Giving in to the players isn’t unreasonable here, especially because just having the lair reset will feel grindy and just lead to a repeat of the problem. So you give in… and the players crush the lich, resulting in a flat, uninspired end to a plot arc.

More on fixing this problem in a future post.

If you’re a regular to this blog, you probably know that “Tales From the Table” is the tagline I use for posts about something that happened in my game, which is somewhat incongruous with an abstract discussion about how the mechanics of extended rests interact with good story. This article came about because listening to my players talk about last Monday’s combat sparked my epiphany. So, in kind of a two-fer, you get the crunch along with the theory.

Ghosts of the Old Ones (Level 22 encounter for six)

There were two of each type of spirit creature. One of my players actually ran the fight for me (more about that in my next post). He definitely ran with the idea that the spirits are angry, yet remain intelligent, focusing their attacks very intently. For an at-level encounter in the epic tier, characters reached zero or fewer hit points six times in this fight. Four were the Rogue, who actually did an excellent job “tanking” as they figured out what the monsters did.

This is the only monster of the three where I feel I made a serious mistake. The others can use some tuning, but I failed with this creature.

To begin with, this creature is a soldier that does brute-level damage. It does this because I didn’t think it through. One of the considerations with an epic-tier soldier is that the characters are devilishly difficult to control by this point, as they have accumulated a number of “get out of jail” abilities. I have had fights where the soldiers were ignored because they couldn’t do anything that demanded attention, so I wanted to give this creature a way of “tanking” that was based more on actual threat than mechanics. Now, there’s nothing wrong with putting big damage on a soldier frame, as long as it’s done correctly. To me, the defining quality is that the soldier keeps saying “pay attention to me or pay the price!” In that sense, Enraged Flurry would have been much better if it read “The Spirit Bear must not have taken damage since its last turn.” That might have been significantly less effective, but it would have been more thematic.

The central issue, however, is that the monster punishes proper play. Given that there were the same number of monsters as characters, good tactics says that the tanks and controllers scramble to hold as many of them down as possible while the strikers burn down the most dangerous monsters. This most likely means AoE abilities… which means that Enraged Flurry gets triggered. Doing the right thing shouldn’t make things worse for the party unless it’s intended as a gotcha, which this isn’t.

I liked this design, though my friend was correct that Go For the Eyes is going to be almost always the correct play, meaning that Dazzling Screech gets underused.

I love Cunning Stalker as a mechanic so much that it hurts because I feel that it is a very “lurker” ability that doesn’t require a lot of terrain and doesn’t slow down combat.

Enjoy!

Tales From the Table: Inkblot

Another Monday night, another fun fight. Hey… can you tell that I saw Dr. Seuss over the weekend?

Nothing especially complicated here. I think it’s a good, solid design. Obviously it will work better with some undead than with others…

This monster took a bit of tweaking after the fight, as I failed to make them nasty enough to counterbalance the inherent weaknesses of being undead. None of the Echyrr got past 3 darkness and they originally had a trait that allowed them to make a second Claw attack at 5+ darkness. This version will always be a decent threat, especially when led by a Deathwatcher.

Enjoy!

Edit: Level 14 version as requested.

Tales from the Table: Splatter!

What has two thumbs and killed the two defenders in successive rounds? This guy:

One of my players challenged me to come up with an epic-tier solo boss that was truly solo. This was the result. I make no bones about the fact that I ladled on a truckload of anti-effect powers. I was also trying to establish that the epic tier was going to feel a little bit different than the paragon tier. Bad things are going to happen more often. I’m sorry if the following is too “mathy” and technical. A good GM can create story around any monster or NPC, but that’s separate from learning how to balance a complex design.

As with every monster that has a “minigame”, there were a number of design questions. The first was whether or not Berzerk had to be an encounter power with no possibility of recharge. My theory was that Berzerk would be best when it hit eight or nine rage. This would provide a rage dump to prevent Tantrum from getting too large, while still keeping a level of threat. If it starts taking three or four turns a round, however, the encounter could spiral out of control.

During the actual running, Gutbuster read “Free Action, 1/turn; Spend 1 rage: Y’gal’s attacks do +2d10 damage until the start of its next turn.” I had expected that Y’gal would hover at 3-5 rage until one of the larger rage gains triggered, most likely the one for becoming bloodied. It would then activate Berzerk, bringing it back down to 3-5. In this way, Gutbuster would always remain a meaningful question – Is +2d10 damage worth an extra attack? As Slam averages out to 32 damage, Gutbuster is only a net gain if it hits with three or more attacks. Against a high-AC target, more attacks is better, whereas Y’gal can just mulch a softer target.

This created a pleasing mechanical tension where the defender(s) felt good about keeping the monster’s attention. Every time Y’gal turned on one of the other characters, the defenders were quick to punish it. Forced movement became key.

The problem arose when Y’gal missed all its attacks, going to 6 rage. This would have been manageable, except that the Rogue hit it with a critical and was bloodied by Lash Out. Suddenly at 10 rage, there was absolutely no reason to not activate Gutbuster. The Paladin recognized the danger and pulled the monster over into the corner so that it could only attack her. While this worked out great for protecting the rest of the party, it exposed her to 9 boosted attacks. She went from barely hurt to dead in a single turn, preventing the Cleric from being able to respond. The Fighter rushed in and Y’gal repeated the process its next turn, taking him from unhurt +15 temporary hit points to dead, despite jacking his AC to 43. (To be fair, I did crit twice during that series. I needed a 14 to hit him. Had the rolls been more average, he definitely would have survived.)

This revealed the main mechanical fault: once Y’gal reaches “critical mass”, it’s going to pretty much kill a character a turn. To my players’ credit, they dug in when they realized this. The Cleric actually said, “We’re going to sacrifice one of us at a time until it’s dead or we are.” They were able to drop the monster just before it fixed itself a bowl of Rogue Chow. So, yes, the fight is on a clock, but it’s not a fun clock, at least not for my table.

So we need a good reason to bleed off rage so that Tantrum doesn’t get too out of hand. It’s possible that other parties might have more abilities that would make the monster want to use Burning Fury but not trigger Obyrith Unshackled (As an aside, the obyriths in my home campaign are aberrant creatures that can infect elementals, but are not themselves elementals. You might want to change the keywords accordingly for other settings. In a more canon environment, Y’gal would be a Huge Elemental Humanoid.) This version of Gutbuster is intended to meet that need. I don’t know if it changes the “correct” play to something that’s more fun, but it certainly gives the GM a tight tuning knob for the number of attacks and amount of damage.

Enjoy!

Tales From the Table: When the Shadows Came

Monday marked our first fight in the epic tier in Nations of Rage. It was amazing! At my table, that means that the fight was challenging without the players feeling that they had lost too much of their cool and they had meaningful choices to make. We had a small flare up at the end of last session/over the week that really came down to remembering the difference between dying and dead. I had been holding back in the wrong way because I was being too sensitive to the unfun of sitting there with an unconscious character and my players had been feeling some “sticker shock” over the recent damage numbers (they’re seeing more epic tier foes). We all needed to relax and return to the idea that it’s okay for characters to lick floor,  but it’s not okay for them to stay there.

This encounter included three Masked Assassins and three Masked Conjurors (27,750 EXP for a party of six).

Masked Assassin

• The imagery associated with this monster was especially pleasing. “Wait, it peeled off its shadow?” … and then it peeled off its face.
• Having them produce minions made for interesting tactical choices for the characters. I normally reserve summoning-style powers for elites/solos or casters, but it worked well here. They spent a fair bit of energy prepping against potential gotchas for when the shadow was killed.
• Unmasking was intended to work as a mild anti-defender mechanic where the tanks get pushed off a target and can’t return. I ended up using it more for a damage boost because of the way the fight unfolded. Giving people the ability to slide themselves in response to a fear effect seemed to work better than pushes or obligating people to move.
• The way that Unmasking is templated (“cannot come within 3 squares…”) is somewhat confusing with regard to what happens if the Masked Assassin moves to within 3 squares of someone under the effect. If it had come up, I probably would have ruled that the character couldn’t move closer to the Assassin, but that they weren’t forced to leave. “Bully zones” can work, but they can have a punishing feel beyond what is intended.
• +28 vs. AC against level 21 characters woke up the players, as they were suddenly hearing 42+ attack rolls more often than they had before. It did expose what was going on with the party’s AC because the fighter has an AC of 40 (41 with Boots of the Fencing Master), while the rest of the party hovers between 33 and 36.

Masked Conjuror

• I could write at length about the strength of the Like a Moth mechanic. Ranged monsters generally need something for when the characters roll up on them but, at the same time, making the escape/avoidance mechanic too powerful can be very frustrating. Like a Moth found the sweet spot because it put the conjuror in a position to use Ignition, but not in a perfectly safe place.
• Unwelcome Gift was not on the original monster. The “increase the ongoing damage and hot potato it to an ally” was included in Ignition. Obviously I knew what the power was supposed to do, but I cleaned it up for other people. I’m not sure that the phrase “The ongoing fire and necrotic damage is always save ends, regardless of how it was applied” is necessary, but I had a nagging feeling that leaving it out opened up the possibility of a negative rules interaction.
• That said, Ignition is an awesome power, as it demonstrates the principle of doing awful things to the characters and having it be okay as long as they have some level of control. The Genasi warlock had resist 15 to both, which was fine until the ongoing damage hit 40. Keep in mind that parties at this level should have access to saving throws, making this power a little less scary than it appears.  The residue of Ignition (2d10+20 for each attack they make) is similarly strong. The Tiefling paladin/warlock took 87 damage for attacking three guys while under this effect, but that was okay because it was the choice that he made.
• The miss effect on Night’s Flame never came up, so I don’t know whether or not it was necessary or flavorful. I suspect that it could be safely deleted.

Enjoy!

Tales from the Table: Time for Some Seafood!

When I’m creating a custom monster, I try to make it as complete as possible. Yes, I make some adjustments at the table, but I would rather not have to if I can avoid it.

For this week’s session, I was playing around with two concepts. First, I wanted to include a solo that wasn’t part of a plotline. That is, I wanted a random “big bad.” I also wanted to set up a fight that included as many narrative elements as possible.

Behold, the Tundra Crab in all its might and glory!

I used a 4×4 dungeon tile to represent the monster.

This fight was a lot of fun, but it did require a large number of GM’s calls:

“I want to running jump on top of the 15′ crab.”

“Can I tunnel into the snow?”

“When it burrows with me on top of it, I go with it?!?”

I think you get the idea. The point is, don’t be afraid to let your players try crazy stunts.

Tales From the Table: Starship Troopers makes a guest appearance…

Hilarity ensues.

So my guys have just hit level 20 and they’re feeling their oats with all these new sexy dailies. Everyone enjoyed the first combat so much that I thought it might be fun to share.

The context of the fight is that the PCs are visiting a fortress that has been taken from the enemy, but is still under occasional attack by demonic hordes. Suddenly, shouts ring out from the soldiers. The army is under attack!

I used a big open map without terrain, preferring to narrate the obstacles, but you could always litter the area with trampled tents, cook fires, wagons and the like. Keep in mind that this fight is going to require a lot of space. With one queen, four behemoths and four einhorns (Level 22 encounter for six), plus the swarms of minions, expect to use about a 20×20 area or more.

Art by Francis Tsai.

A giant kruthik queen clambers up out of a hole, eyes red with rage .  Thousands of hatchlings chitter from beneath her scales, each waiting its turn to launch itself at the men that surround her. A kruthik horde would be bad enough, but these seem infused with infernal energies.

The queen’s spawn are no larger than a hunting dog, but lightning quick with sharp fangs and claws. Watching the young swarm over a man and strip the flesh from his bones is enough to sicken even the hardiest adventurer.

I started the encounter with 10 skitterers arrayed around the queen. In the course of running the encounter, we discovered that it was probably best if the skitterers act immediately after the queen. This prevents the players from delaying the army’s turn (see below) so that they can squish the minions before the kruthik have a chance to act.

Art by Wizards of the Coast

Male kruthik normally bring food back to the queen, but these hunt alongside her. Their spines contain a potent venom that causes flesh to burn as though it were dipped in acid. 

These infertile females protect the queen. The use a strange tactic of shielding themselves by digging into the dirt. Not only does this protect their soft underbelly, but the loose soil makes for treacherous footing. You watch as soldiers flee from them, terrified by their roar.

You could always add the fear keyword to Bellow.

Recognizing you as allies, the soldiers turn to you for guidance. If you lead them, they will fight.

The army is an abstraction. It doesn’t actually appear on the table. It worked very well to have five of the six players take the part of generals and decide on an action by themselves. We realized that if the party isn’t aggressive it’s very possible for the army to lose one or two actions in the first turn, potentially spoiling what it brings to the fight. We adjusted it on the fly to 1,000 health (losing an action every 200 damage), but 750 health (losing an action every 150 damage) would probably have been spot on.

You might not have noticed it, but there’s a gotcha in this fight. If the minions swarm over someone who has been hit with the vulnerable 10 and are within the queen’s rage aura, they’re doing 30 damage a chomp. The “slab-of-meat” Battlerager Vigor Fighter went from barely hurt to licking floor in a single bad round (18 minions hit the table). They recovered, but they were definitely scared. The PCs have to manage the skitterers very carefully or they’re going to get absolutely overwhelmed. Bug Stomping is an obvious answer to this problem and it makes for really good story. Having the army fight the minions makes the fight feel massive.

How they manage the army can have roleplaying consequences. In my game, that army is poised to make an assault that might end a war that has been dragging on for 80 years. The story would have changed if they let the army get chewed up. It could also affect their reputation, both with the common folk and with the movers and shakers. If the army takes a lot of damage, someone who lost a friend or relative in the fight might seek out the PCs to ask for an “explanation.” The fight could also produce heroes and martyrs. If you want to get maximum narrative value out of this encounter, have a list of ten or so throwaway names for NPCs that stand out.

The army also makes an excellent “release valve” so you can tune the encounter as it is happening. All you have to do is have the kruthik attack the army. That’s very reasonable, especially if the army has been killing the hatchlings. The players can do this as well. If they’re in trouble, they just have the army Taunt a monster or two.

Tales from the Table: Three Simple Ways to Improve Your Game

Stop Handing Out Experience

It’s been several years since I handed out experience and it’s very liberating.  This cuts down on bookkeeping at the table and eliminates arguments about how much experience a specific event is worth. Your players need to know that you’re keeping track of it (I use a spreadsheet) and you should be ready to tell them how much farther they have until the next level, but that’s about it.

Turn On Inherent Bonuses

Having your players obsess about magic items because they’re lagging behind in a slot is hugely disruptive. They’re not thinking about story, they’re thinking about mechanics. Turning on inherent bonuses gets them thinking about other things.

Let Them Take It Back (Within Reason) and Set Them Up To Succeed

This isn’t chess, where you’re obligated to move a piece once you’ve touched it. If you force them to sweat the small stuff, they will slow down to avoid mistakes. They will also feel more frustrated when they forget something. Beat them down with strong encounter design rather than pouncing on errors.

Also, don’t be afraid to remind them when their character is about to do something stupid. Combat can get complicated and sometimes they either don’t hear you or they don’t think it through. Gotchas very rarely make something fun.

Tales from the Table: It Goes to 11

We had my usual Monday night game tonight and it was one of the most awesome solo combats I’ve ever had because it was always in the sweet spot where the players feel threatened and challenged, but never like they were out of control.

It was killed by a critical hit that would have brought it to 11 heads…

• I should have included something that made it immune to blind, not because it would have neutered a magic item, but because it makes sense.
• The damage per bite was originally 2d10+7, but one of my players pointed out that the Heroslayer Hydra uses the low damage expression because it gets so many attacks. The Feybriar gets just as many and they’re worse. I kept the “super critical”, however and scored four of them during the encounter. 1d10+10 felt a little low because damage resistance became a much larger percentage of each bite, but I was generally pleased with the mechanics.
• I probably should have added something that says that Severed Head only triggers off a damaging attack, as the Bard threw Astral Seal on the hydra a couple of times. I would have adjusted on the fly, but I prefer not to have to do that.
• For the first couple of turns, I spread the attacks around as evenly as possible amongst the characters within reach. This had the benefit of slamming a couple of them with Daze and Blind. Then, once the hydra had added a couple of heads, I focused on one target a turn. This put the Fighter on the ground, with no healing surges and no way to make a saving throw. I wasn’t quite able to put down the Paladin, but I did wreck the Bard.
• The Fighter did manage to stand back up, however, thanks to the Battle Standard of Healing, which the Runepriest had dropped as his first standard action of the combat. In many ways, that was the “play of the fight.”
• Suppression worked as well as I had hoped, with the characters making decisions about how many people it was safe to have in the aura. The Bard was able to suck up a full rack of ick early in the fight with one of his powers.

Enjoy!