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I railroaded my players last Sunday and I feel pretty bad about it. I didn't really recognise that I was doing it at the time but now I feel like a dick. I'm not asking for advice I just came here to confess.
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Dec 16, 2009 11:34
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Fenarisk posted:I've done this before but on a much larger scale (defending a town), but with undead forces and orcs. Basically, play each side how their would normally go. The kobolds are going to try and keep their distance from the zombie, perhaps using their shifty racial to put the PC's between them and the zombie. Sounds good, thanks!
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Dec 16, 2009 15:35
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Cirofren posted:I railroaded my players last Sunday and I feel pretty bad about it. I didn't really recognise that I was doing it at the time but now I feel like a dick. Thank you for being honest, my son. As penance, you must also tell your players that you have railroaded them. Only then can you be truly forgiven.
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Dec 16, 2009 18:31
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Bedurndurn posted:Shatter - Utter dick move, but this can destroy the fighter's sword or whatever fairly easily. Shatter succeeds automagically against non-magical weapons/objects. Magic weapons get a save of some kind, but a high caster level would obviously wreck their collective poo poo. It also has an area of effect, I believe. A friend of mine used this to great effect against all of the low-level goons we encountered, making them stupidly easy to dispatch/capture/rout afterwards. Ray of enfeeblement is also great against big beefy dudes in armor, especially if your DM follows encumbrance rules. Suddenly the guy in fullplate can't even move because he's pinned under his own armor!
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Dec 16, 2009 18:54
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Yarrbossa posted:I'm plotting the last setup for our campaign, and they are going to be facing off against the king, the king's head wizard, and his personal assassin. Depending on how you have setup the wizard and assassin this pretty much begs for the old betrayal of the vizier. So the party take out the King and then the Wizard (or the Assassin) makes an evil speech before teleporting away. Players get the jollies of killing the King. You get a recurring villain who will "Get you next time!"
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Dec 16, 2009 19:17
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Green Intern posted:Shatter succeeds automagically against non-magical weapons/objects. Magic weapons get a save of some kind, but a high caster level would obviously wreck their collective poo poo. It also has an area of effect, I believe. Actually, it only succeeds automatically if the object isn't "attended" (held, worn, grasped, etc). Otherwise, the creature holding/wearing/using the item gets a Will save to negate the effect. See Shatter and the (object) note for saving throws. The AOE is only against stuff like glass or porcelain, and only affects a pound a level.
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Dec 16, 2009 19:20
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Tolan posted:Actually, it only succeeds automatically if the object isn't "attended" (held, worn, grasped, etc). Otherwise, the creature holding/wearing/using the item gets a Will save to negate the effect. See Shatter and the (object) note for saving throws. I forget if my buddy was forcing will saves or not on the mooks. Either way, they likely would have failed against his high DC. I guess Magic Weapons always get a save, then (with a bonus, also, I imagine). Regardless, it's still a great (and mean) tactic in the right situations.
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Dec 16, 2009 20:30
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Green Intern posted:I guess Magic Weapons always get a save, then (with a bonus, also, I imagine). I don't think magic weapons get a bonus to avoid destruction from spells. If I remember correctly, they are allowed a save if they are unattended, while normal items automatically fail.
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Dec 16, 2009 20:36
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Harkano posted:Depending on how you have setup the wizard and assassin this pretty much begs for the old betrayal of the vizier. This would be great, if it wasn't the last session. Two of my group members are moving away for school next semester, and one leaves Monday so I've been planning on wrapping it all up in a (hopefully) satisfying ending for all. Basically, they've been butchering everything I've thrown at them, which is partially due to me not having enough experience as a DM to level the encounters right and they've been lucky as all hell sometimes. The big-bad before all this started was a Warlock who was made to gently caress their poo poo up. Appears for a big showdown(where he was supposed to escape and torment them further) and the rogue successfully critted a called shot to the head...so I bent the rules to try and keep him alive...until the cleric cast Hold Person successfully and everyone converged on him and beat the snot out of him, removed his head and burnt his body keeping the head as a token. He had time to get two spells off before being beaten bloody. Lesson learned, I'd say. Needless to say, they were pretty stoked about slaughtering their rival, and I had to conjure up a new plan. Since then, they critically forged a letter from one country to another declaring war, and are taking part in said war. They are part of a strike force sent ahead to take our various supply routes and assassinate key figures, including the king and wizard. All they have left to do is to assassinate the king and wizard, but I'm not going to make it easy...hopefully. I wouldn't shed a tear if someone died in the final fight, that's for sure. They've barely been scratched the entire campaign. I think I'm going to have the wizard stay out of range, have the the assassin(who I'm thinking will just be a rogue/fighter...not sure what to do there for maximum devastation) invisible, a decoy king in the same room(possibly a lowly guard desguised as the king?). Once they (probably) kill the assassin and/or decoy king, I'm thinking of having the wizard Dimension Door to where the king is actually held, at the top of a keep or something and have them intercept the king and wizard en route to their escape. If they kill the wizard, they'll discover the king is a decoy and hunt the real king down. From there, I can have the wizard(if he's still alive) buff the king(who I think I'll make a fighter) and give him a decent chunk of HP so they can have a nice fight for a finale. How much HP is good for big bad's at the level they are at, 6-7? The warlock I made as a normal PC generation and he had WAY too low of health, I think. I don't want to make it absurdly high, but at the same time enough so they have less of a chance of ending it in 2 rounds without lifting a finger. Off topic, but highly relevant question...how can you defend against players casting Hold Person then slitting their throat? This seems to be their method of choice and usually works... Sheesh, that was WAY longer than intended. I should visit here more often and bugger you guys for suggestions.
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Dec 16, 2009 20:37
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4e again. Anyone ever run an all minion encounter? Would you just use a 4 pack per pc? Sorry to have so many questions, but I have no one else to bounce things off.
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Dec 16, 2009 20:39
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projecthalaxy posted:4e again. Anyone ever run an all minion encounter? Would you just use a 4 pack per pc? Sorry to have so many questions, but I have no one else to bounce things off. This is going to be a really easy encounter. The official rule is 4 minions = one real monster, but that isn't actually true in my opinion. It's more like 4 minions = one real monster if there's a real monster on the field to take advantage of the minions clogging up the battlefield, or enhancing them in some way.
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Dec 16, 2009 20:45
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:This is going to be a really easy encounter. The official rule is 4 minions = one real monster, but that isn't actually true in my opinion. It's more like 4 minions = one real monster if there's a real monster on the field to take advantage of the minions clogging up the battlefield, or enhancing them in some way. What would you recommend? 6 per? 8? I kind of want the first encounter to be a lot of paper minions so everyone can acclamate to AC, how their powers work, etc. With a shot of dynasty warriors style overpowered fun.
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Dec 16, 2009 20:50
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I don't recommend this, because you aren't acclumating to powers where breathing on the guys cause them to die, and their terrible to-hit only really threatens low-AC classes. It's going to allow some players (controllers, anybody with burst/blast abilities) to feel like monumental badasses, and make the rest of the party feel terrible as they slowly. kill. one. wimp. a. round. Here's what you can do: take a monster, half their hitpoints, when they are killed they "burst" into 4 minions. Regular monster experience for getting rid of all the minions. This way the players get to mow some guys down without having the Wizzo and the Dragonborn guy just crush on everyone. There's also a bit of a tactical puzzle to it. Plus, witha ton of minions, they are going to get in each other's way, bunch up, etc. etc. Then it's bye-bye minions when the Wizard uses her encounter to take them out. edit: if this is your first combat, just make it a tank and spank using Brutes. They are great target dummies. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Dec 16, 2009 |
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Dec 16, 2009 20:56
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I don't recommend this, because you aren't acclumating to powers where breathing on the guys cause them to die, and their terrible to-hit only really threatens low-AC classes. It's going to allow some players (controllers, anybody with burst/blast abilities) to feel like monumental badasses, and make the rest of the party feel terrible as they slowly. kill. one. wimp. a. round. you make good points. I will probably go that route.
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Dec 16, 2009 21:11
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projecthalaxy posted:you make good points. I will probably go that route. Also be sure to provide multi level terrain to push people off of. Also fire/acid/spikes to push people into. Or rocks/bookshelves/anvils you can push onto people. 4th edition is much more fun when there is terrain you can use tactically for more damage.
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Dec 17, 2009 01:42
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projecthalaxy posted:4e again. Anyone ever run an all minion encounter? Would you just use a 4 pack per pc? Sorry to have so many questions, but I have no one else to bounce things off. Much later I ran an encounter for 4 level 7 PCs with 32 minions at their level, 1 elite at their level, and 11 standards a few levels below them. They won. They did have 4 allied monsters that they controlled (one elf archer each) who basically cancelled out XP-wise the 4 the goblin archers and helped them clear out the minions before being overwhelmed. It was REALLY long, though. But the minions were mostly dead rather quickly. With the way my players are set up, I'm pretty sure I could throw 100 melee minions at them and they'd win. If the minions were artillery, maybe not, since with that many dice rolling at you, a bunch are bound to hit, and the controller wouldn't scare them as much. (Written in fire caused a mass exodus from the right hand side of the field at one point.) I'd expect that as long as they have a controller or somebody with AoE/multitarget spells, 8 per PC would be a decent balance - it won't be a cakewalk, but also won't be overwhelming. I think that it's a good idea for a learning encounter because people wouldn't have to worry about rolling damage yet, so they could focus on getting the actions down and the rolling to hit a target defense, and it would be fairly short. I don't think the fact that the wizard will kill more than the rogue is a big concern, since there will be ample time later for the rogue to rack up huge damage on a dragon or something. If you've decided to go against the minions, I would say that while brutes might be good for learning the rules on, they are also likely to be boring. Just go with a brute, an artillery, and some minions - the defender can tank the brute, the striker can get the artillery (and if he doesn't, the leader can heal up the wounds), and the controller can waste the minions. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Dec 17, 2009 |
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Dec 17, 2009 06:03
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Yarrbossa posted:If they kill the wizard, they'll discover the king is a decoy and hunt the real king down. From there, I can have the wizard(if he's still alive) buff the king(who I think I'll make a fighter) and give him a decent chunk of HP so they can have a nice fight for a finale. How about they attack the King, still sitting on his throne and it turns out its an illusion of some kind? Or if the melee guy goes for it then its an exploding throne. Wizards in 3.5 can do all sorts of horrible things if given time to prepare as everyone else has shown. What would a Wizard do if he knew someone was coming for him? Yarrbossa posted:Off topic, but highly relevant question...how can you defend against players casting Hold Person then slitting their throat? This seems to be their method of choice and usually works... Spell Resistance? Ridiculous Will save? Having the baddies start off far away enough that they can't be coup'd until they get a chance to make at least one save?
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Dec 17, 2009 16:09
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I'm running a mass-combat heavy campaign where the players are frontline officers in a future military (one leads an infantry platoon, one is an artillery officer, one has a tank unit and one leads a lance of combat mechs) and would like some feedback. Is it a good idea to have the grunt enemies focus mostly on the players' own grunts while the boss-type enemies single out the players as threats? I'm thinking this, if it works right, will lead to the classic action movie battle where in the background tanks are blowing up, infantry are storming pillboxes and helicopters are gunning things down, while the players/heroes themselves are engaged in fights to the death with enemy aces and elites and ultimately winning the day. I figure if the players are also fighting the battle of grunts, wargame style, it leads to two "levels" in the encounter - the more efficiently they mop up the weak enemies the better, since they'll then have stuff like air superiority, artillery and fortified positions to fall back to which will make the "boss fights" easier. If they mismanage their forces, they may find the boss gets reinforcements, or they don't get the air strikes they request as the bombers got shot down. I very much like Rogue Trader's system of spaceship battles where every player not only takes a role in commanding the ship but also managing other aspects of the battle (it makes playing the Rogue Trader so much fun, especially when you can put on your best starship captain impression and be all "Helm, ahead full! Gunnery, maintain full broadside! Engineering, get us ready to warp in ten seconds or we're all dead!" and am trying to make something similar for a ground war.
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Dec 17, 2009 16:38
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Yarrbossa posted:Off topic, but highly relevant question...how can you defend against players casting Hold Person then slitting their throat? This seems to be their method of choice and usually works... Have the dude wear a gorget. Kinda hard to slit someone's throat when they have a quarter inch of steel in the way.
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Dec 17, 2009 16:44
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I've been sporadically running an adventure in 4E D&D, and while I was prepping this weekend's content, one of my players complained about the length of combat (our most recent fight took an hour and forty-five minutes to resolve). Part of that is my fault-- I had been designing a small amount of tough fights rather than a string of easier fights-- and part of that is due to having several new players who aren't really ready to roll when their turns come around. However, I figure that I could speed up combat significantly, and on the side appeal to the bloodlust of our resident 2E veteran, by dropping monster health about 25%-50% and upping non-minion damage 33%-100%. If I went ahead with this, would I risk killing all of my players in what should be an easy fight? They're rolling with three ranged strikers, so they should be able to burn straight through the most dangerous monsters on the battlefield before they can cut the cleric in half, but I haven't been too impressed with their grasp of tactics or teamwork, so I'm not too sure.
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Dec 17, 2009 17:54
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Yarrbossa posted:Off topic, but highly relevant question...how can you defend against players casting Hold Person then slitting their throat? This seems to be their method of choice and usually works...
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Dec 17, 2009 18:00
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Yarrbossa posted:Off topic, but highly relevant question...how can you defend against players casting Hold Person then slitting their throat? This seems to be their method of choice and usually works... If it's something the players have been doing repeatedly on everybody who crosses them, it's probably fair to say that the King has heard of their favoured tactic, and if he recognises them as a threat, has specifically had his wizard make him up some sort of magical item for him to wear that reflects Hold Person (and only Hold Person) spells back at the person who cast them. Possibly it also creates magical fireworks that spell out "LIKE I WAS GOING TO LET YOU BEAT ME WITH THAT ONE."
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Dec 17, 2009 22:18
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Michaelos posted:A Potion/Scroll/Ring/Wand of Freedom of Movement (Depending on how much loot you want available afterwards) would help a lot. Alternatively use all 4 of the "Heart of (Earth/Fire/Water/Air) spells." They are long enough that the Boss can plausibly have them on before the fight so he doesn't need to waste time casting them, and they should protect against that and give a few other defensive boosts as well. I think I'm going to have the king wearing one of these. I've tried the gorget before, but they all decided to slide their swords in holes in varying places in the plate armor to make the kill. Poor paladin  I think I also like the idea of the trapped king-on-the-throne idea, because they are suckers for rushing into stuff. Thanks for the help guys, you're giving me lots of good ideas to work with.
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Dec 17, 2009 22:53
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Yarrbossa posted:I think I'm going to have the king wearing one of these. I've tried the gorget before, but they all decided to slide their swords in holes in varying places in the plate armor to make the kill. Poor paladin Sounds like a great campaign and a great bunch of players you've got there.
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Dec 17, 2009 23:46
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I'm thinking of starting a 4e campaign with my group to run during the downtime from our other DM's d20 Modern campaign. None of us have even played 4e before so it'll be an interesting time. I've just started bouncing ideas around to make the setting pop and one was to have the characters begin as troops under the control of the Evil Overlord. So the Evil Fortress is under attack and our players go through a couple of scraps with some mooks to get them used to the mechanics. Then one of the wizards tells them they're being teleported to the front lines as reinforcements. As he casts the spell the tower they're in is hit by catapult fire, the wizard gets bonked on the head and the spell goes haywire. The players appear outside a town in the middle of nowhere, completely disoriented and, for the first time in as long as they can remember, unable to hear their master. Where they go from here is up to them as any influence the Evil Overlord has had over them starts to fade away. Is this a dumb idea? It means that the players may have very different outlooks / motivations but we've played with similar issues in the same group and it worked pretty well. Hopefully being stranded in an unfamiliar land will force them to stick together and the knowledge that there is a Big Bad (very far away) will give them a goal to work towards. Also are there any 4e pitfalls that a DM who's new to the system should be wary of?
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Jan 28, 2010 02:25
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Party Boat posted:Also are there any 4e pitfalls that a DM who's new to the system should be wary of? 4e is a very tactical game. Don't have fights in a 14x20 square room; have tons of cover, concealment and effect areas (DMG2 has some awesome ones) Announce to your players right off that you will award "Stunt Bonuses" for trying awesome stuff (like swinging from a chandelier and kicking over a firepot) to get them to try fun things. I like the concept of "generally dominated bad guy mooks being transported away from their master's control for the first time," it's a decent plot starter. Kinda like the movie Soldier, where they have to learn to live, when all they know is dying.
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Jan 28, 2010 02:37
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tendrilsfor20 posted:Monster HPs in the MM1 (and to a lesser extent, MM2) are all hosed up. Reduce Solos by 1/2 and Elites to 2/3 of their listed HP value. All this, but wanted to emphasize the blank room thing. Players will have lots of powers that let them push, pull, and slide enemies all around. Make sure to have things enemies can fall off of, fall into, crash into etc. Also, just ask your players if their interested in that plot hook. That should give you some good feedback.
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Jan 28, 2010 04:54
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tendrilsfor20 posted:Monster HPs in the MM1 (and to a lesser extent, MM2) are all hosed up. Reduce Solos by 1/2 and Elites to 2/3 of their listed HP value.
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Jan 28, 2010 06:16
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Good advice, thanks guys. I'm used to making interesting terrain so that's no problem (although I don't have or intend to get the DMG2 unless I see it on the cheap). I'll check out the enemy HP thing as well. Some of my group like to write back-stories so I was thinking of saying they could be mind-controlled prisoners of the Big Bad. This way when they "wake up" they can have plothooks ready to go, but by starting them on an isolated island nation I can stop them from running off immediately.
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Jan 28, 2010 09:02
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Party Boat posted:Good advice, thanks guys. I'm used to making interesting terrain so that's no problem (although I don't have or intend to get the DMG2 unless I see it on the cheap). I'll check out the enemy HP thing as well.
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Jan 28, 2010 12:04
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I have a necromancer's castle. It is currently filled with variants of zombie and skeleton, along with a room of rats and beetles. What else should I put in?
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Jan 28, 2010 17:21
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projecthalaxy posted:I have a necromancer's castle. It is currently filled with variants of zombie and skeleton, along with a room of rats and beetles. What else should I put in? Literally everything from Open Grave including horde of zombies which is a skill challenge.
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Jan 28, 2010 17:38
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projecthalaxy posted:I have a necromancer's castle. It is currently filled with variants of zombie and skeleton, along with a room of rats and beetles. What else should I put in? What's the party's level and what classes do they have?
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Jan 28, 2010 17:56
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projecthalaxy posted:I have a necromancer's castle. It is currently filled with variants of zombie and skeleton, along with a room of rats and beetles. What else should I put in? Oozes are always a winner. I also enjoy over sized skeletons, orgre skeleton, drake skeleton. Also Dire Maggots are sweet.
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Jan 28, 2010 18:06
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ItalicSquirrels posted:What's the party's level and what classes do they have? Coming in 2nd leaving 3rd, beast ranger, summoner wizard, great weapon fighter. Also, in your opinion, can zombie/skeleton generating equipment be hijacked or is it personal? My plan was to say that the necro had put enough energy into the forge that it was just a matter of shovel corpses in here, make Arcana check there and voilą.
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Jan 28, 2010 18:23
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projecthalaxy posted:Also, in your opinion, can zombie/skeleton generating equipment be hijacked or is it personal? You could come up with reasons to make it either. If you don't want your players to take it, make the boss pseudo-load-bearing. "What's that? He's dead? Well, all the stuff he invested his life force in is completely unusable. His magic items are still good, though. Feel free to take those." If not, sure, it's a piece of magic equipment just like any other.
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Jan 28, 2010 18:43
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Epicurus posted:Literally everything from Open Grave including horde of zombies which is a skill challenge. Can you use bluff to move through the hoarde like Shaun of the Dead?
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Jan 29, 2010 04:32
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RagnarokAngel posted:Can you use bluff to move through the hoarde like Shaun of the Dead? Depends how cool your DM is.
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Jan 29, 2010 07:08
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I've got a bit of a problem, TGD, and I'm trying to work out if I should just carry on regardless or do something about it. The gist of my campaign is that the players are futuristic mercenaries, and as a result they're very salvage-happy to the point where they've been picking weapons that allow for "clean" kills. This ordinarily isn't a problem. But they've managed to assassinate the pilot of an encounter boss prototype mech and have captured it pretty much intact. They also have the right in-game stats to operate it. This thing is incredibly powerful and I was kind of hoping that it wouldn't get captured (they have a tendency to panic against bosses, fire everything and then overkill them gloriously) but at the same time I feel it was mostly due to their clever planning that they got it. My options, as I see them, are: 1) Let them use this unit after a session of downtime to get it repaired. This risks throwing the balance of the campaign out because it's seriously powerful. 2) Come up with some reason why they don't get it (for example the corporation who made it intervene and say "return the prototype or else, this isn't a loving movie.") However, this seems really railroady. 3) Let them use it, but come up with a table of "malfunctions" to represent it being a prototype. Each time they deploy it, roll on this table and have something go wrong because it's not being properly maintained and is still work-in-progress (these things might be "the laser cannon's power output is down 20%" or "the front left leg is dragging, your movement is reduced.") This seems pretty grognardy and passive-aggressive, though. Option 3 is more in keeping with the "this thing is experimental unfinished technology which usually has a team of 15-20 specialists monitoring it at every point and fixing every slight flaw as soon as it returns to base" angle that goes with the unit, and is the one I'm thinking of going with (with perhaps Option 2 as a background thing if they're gullible enough to contact their corporate contacts and say "hey guys we found your main rival's latest prototype want to help us fix it?") Am I taking the right approach? And if not, what courses of action would be better? I really don't want to punish them for inventiveness (and sniping a dude with a railgun equipped with a "see through walls" scope and getting away with it is pretty cool) but equally I don't want to have to start upping the ante ridiculously in combat (and going for a video-gamey "you know those bosses you fought? They're mass-produced now" thing.)
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Jan 31, 2010 21:11
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Wouldn't government intelligence agencies be very nervous if a group of mercs got their hands on something that powerful and presumably illegal for them to have? Maybe they send some people to try and retrieve it.
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Jan 31, 2010 21:24
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