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2. Level up the Beholder to 11 and add a few monsters to pad out the encounter since you're running with a larger than normal party.
3. If there's a lot of undead in the area, have some negative energy pools. Black liquid that absorbs light. Maybe even causing it to be dim in a Burst 1 radius around the pool. You could also have some good old fashioned spike and spear traps from the floor, walls, and ceiling. Rolling boulders. If your dwarves were heavy into runes, have a few of those on statues or sarcophagi.
Maybe the Beholder zaps an eye ray at the door and traps them in with him himself? The Wraith has convinced the Beholder that if he doesn't deal with the party then more dwarves will come to kick him out of his lair so he has good motivation for cutting off their escape.
WiiU: JamWarrior
A lot of the games I've been playing in/GM'ing for the last few years, the players are fairly familiar with the system (almost universally some variant of d20, be it 3.5, Saga, or 4e) and more than a little character optimization occurs, as well as some players leading other players in their character build choices. Fine, I suppose, if that's your thing. I'm not a big fan of it myself, and I think it's led to a lot of d20 burnout on my part. Familiarity breeds contempt, etc.
So I've been wanting to hit the bookshelves and try out some other games I've had for a while and have never gotten to play. Among them are the Serenity RPG, Hollow Earth Expedition, and Mouse Guard. I won't get into the logistics of my plan to try these out in a timely fashion, but long story short I'm starting with Mouse Guard.
I'm really excited to be playing a game where none of the players are familiar with the ruleset. Herein lies my problem.
One of the potential players is interested in borrowing my rulebook or getting a pdf copy to look things over before we play. Aside from needing the book to familiarize myself with the system before I GM it, I'd also like all of the players to start on a clean slate, and explain the system to everyone as they're creating their characters and as things happen during play. It worked out pretty well in the World of Darkness game I played for a while. He thinks this seems a little weird. I'm not militantly opposed to him borrowing/reading the book before we play, but I'd still prefer everyone to be on the same page. Am I out of line with this?
It's not like you're demanding he sacrifice a goat to play in your group.
Though, I suppose if you think it's such a sticking point with him that he might decide he doesn't want to play, and that's not an outcome you're willing to allow, he probably won't get more than a cursory understanding of the rules by the time you start playing anyway.
So... in summation: It's up to you, boss.
He's in regardless, having had the most interest in the game for the longest time aside from me. I won't be starting until after we get back from GenCon in August anyway, so having the book on loan for a short time before then won't make a big difference in the long run, as you said.
This is very loosely based on an item from 2nd Edition called a "Spirit Womb". They used to be huge elementals/constructs that could be ridden around and have PSPs siphoned off of them. This is going to be a little thing that starts as a turtle shell carved out of sandstone and feeds off of the party's healing surges (which they will be happily giving it) until it has enough power to pupate and start wrecking house.
Here's the initial item writeup:
Wondrous Item: Earth Spirit Womb
Effect: As part of a short or extended rest, any character can spend a healing surge to activate this item. Once activated, that character can spend any number of healing surges, which are then stored in the Spirit Womb. During a short or extended rest, any character can retrieve surges stored in this manner and add them to their number of available surges. No character may exceed their normal maximum number of surges in this fashion.
So basically the Fighter spends a surge to activate it (which is just lost) and then can put any number of his remaining surges into this thing for someone else to pull out. It works exactly like Comrade's Succor as far as the players know, except that it's repeatable.
Then, as more surges are channeled through it (I'm counting the ones that are used to activate it and any that are "left" in it at the end of the day), extra effects start to show up. Like a character that retrieved surges from the womb gets DR 5 until the end of their next turn whenever they spend a surge. Something that gets them thinking that this thing is pretty cool. And then I'll throw in something like Slowed (save ends) on spending a surge, something to get them wary of using it maybe. Though I'm betting they become pretty dependent on it pretty fast. Then, at some point well down the line, the thing finally busts open and pops out fully grown from the plane of Earth as a huge elemental creature and tries to eat them during their short rest. Because I think this sounds like fun.
Thoughts or suggestions?
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
WiiU: JamWarrior
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
The Beholder fight was then great fun for both sides of the screen as we're all intimately familiar with this D&D classic but nobody had actually ever fought one. Eye beam shenanigans all around.
Ok. Next session, next request for idea help.
The party need to interrupt a ritual to raise a dragon. The dragon skeleton has been unearthed (map in Keep on the Shadowfell) and four captured dwarves are circled around it. As the party enters the scene, a silver dagger is plunged into the chest of each captive and visible chains of life force start to drain from them into the dragon as it starts to raise.
The end of the encounter I envision is that a PC tries to pull a dagger from the chest of one of the captives. At this point the ritual all goes highly tits up, the energy back fires along the chains and the four captives messily explode. A swirling maelstrom then whips up the dragon bones along the party members and sucks them all into the Shadowfell. They drag themselves from the wreckage as the Wraith who was conducting the ritual flies off into the sky on his shiny new Dracolich (tied to the Shadowfell due to the interrupted ritual, but the PCs don't yet know this) leaving the party stranded in the wasteland.
The question is, what comes in between? How do I have a fight that will keep the PCs away from the captives?
My lame ideas are limited to some kind of impenetrable magic plot barrier that will only drop once certain bad guys have been defeated, or bad guys with some kind of rule breaking power to whip the players back into the fight whenever they break for the captives.
Help?
WiiU: JamWarrior
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
So, D&D Beer: +5 charisma, -5 Fortitude and instant fail any endurance checks.
You win at DMing. I must do this to my party at some part. Totally inspired.
But five or six beers? I'm worse than when I started. It's a very tiny point at the top of that hill before you tumble down the other side.
That being said, since my group is all in our early 30's and we get together only a few times a year for a "big dorky weekend"...it's kinda the point.
IKRPG: Chains of Corvis - Phelan Rathburn (Human Ranger/Spy)
As long as it doesn't get to the point where we're losing game time because someone can't pass their dexterity check to roll the dice, it's usually fine.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
Make the gem holders evasive ranged types. Throw in some defender style enemies to tie the PCs down.
Sounds like a plan to me.
WiiU: JamWarrior
Party is at level 11.
I'm thinking 2 x lvl 11 Skirmisher (Chain Devil reskinned to Spinewhip Skeleton),
2 x lvl 11 Artillery (Nganga reskinned to Skeletal Archer firing various cursed bone bolts, lose the Curse of the Oba power),
2 x lvl 10 Brute (Skeletal Tomb Guardian)
and 4 x lvl 11 Minion (Putrescent Zombie).
The skirmishers and artillery being the afore mentioned gem keepers. Too much?
And for the DCs to hold on through the energy pulse:
No gems destroyed = DC infinity
One gem destroyed = DC 27 (Hard)
Two destroyed = DC 23
Three destroyed = DC 19 (Moderate)
Four destroyed = DC 0
Always a moderate DC athletics for pulling the dagger out.
If it all goes wrong and they pull out a dagger on like turn two then I can readjust the end condition on the fly and require more daggers to be pulled out
WiiU: JamWarrior
My game is Dark Sun, and it's kind of light on the maical items (though not as much so as I really feel like Dark Sun ought to be), and so I've given each of my PCs a scaling boon that is basically their own personal artifact. They build up resonance with it and it improves based on their actions, etc. But that's basically just background for why I was thoroughly inspecting this sheet.
I had a player rebuild their character fairly extensively recently, so some of the stuff that their boon did was no longer valid. Having asked them to send me their new character sheet, I discovered that this character is rather poorly built. Almost as badly as one could misbuild a non-Essentials character. For example this character, at level 12, has Axe Expertise, Master at Arms and Weapon Expertise (Axe). There are also a number of obvious trap feats that got picked here, and some other build missteps that could be very easily corrected. I don't think it's out of line to say that this character could be roughly 50% better at doing its job with a few simple changes (that would honestly combine into a fairly extensive rebuild).
Now, I'm not generally one to dictate how my players build their characters, but it really seems like not offering some degree of help would be a disservice at this point. Combined with the fact that this player basically uses one At Will over and over again unless they are blowing dailies for encounter long effects (rages), I really want to point them toward the Slayer and say go nuts. But this is kind of a sensitive topic, so I'm not quite sure how to proceed. I really don't want to say the equivalent of "Hey, so I noticed you suck at D&D" because that's just not true and pretty darn hurtful.
Anybody got advice on how to broach the topic without making it personal? Because I really do think this player would be much happier with a Slayer than their current Barbarian, but I really don't want to dictate their choices to them.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
Thoughts of a Part-Time Hobbyist - A Wargaming and RPG Blog
Which is what I want to avoid.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
Also, be aware that there is a rule for the basic low level magicness in Dark Sun on p209: Inherent Bonuses. (Which add scaling hit, damage and defenses based on level).
"Hey, these feats have the same type of bonus, so unfortunately they don't stack. You probably want to pick some different feats to replace two of them. Some great other options might be: X"
Then you fill in the X with the feats that would be better, and let them make the choice on whether or not to fix it. If they want to just keep playing w/ the substandard character, that's their decision, but at least you've made the effort to broach the subject...and I don't think anyone would get upset at the DM trying to help them.
Then, if the player is receptive to the help, you can start looking at other areas, like powers/items/etc.
I'm think that after 10 uses a band of red will appear around the circumference and when using a donated surge you'll get +1 to all defs for a round. After 20 uses the band will pulse and you'll get a 50/50 chance of +1 to all defs and to hit and dmage for a round or -1 to all the above for a round. 30 uses is elemental monstrosity hatching time!
WiiU: JamWarrior