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[DnD 4E Discussion] Online CB has more teething problems than a sack full of puppies
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I hate all of you.
So no actually date was mentioned?
My party followed my hooks and ended up at an old tower a half days journey from town, where a group of NPC's demanded the artifact that the party is trying to research. When they refused, fighting ensued, until our parties Psion found out that the opposing side was under a compulsion to fight them.
With a great Arcana check and some roleplaying, I let the Psion break the compulsion on one of the enemies, and when the dust cleared, he vowed to help them storm the tower nearby to get the man who caused his friend's deaths.
They stormed the tower, fought some undead, and managed to foil the enemy before he could complete his ritual. (I wasn't even clear on what the ritual would do, but I knew it had something to do with channeling power through the tower, and I described it on an arcana check to be enough power to rend the countryside.) After defeating the mage, they try to remove his staff from the ritual pedestal and the staff dissolves in the bard's hand.
The tower begins to shake and then to swiftly sink into the ground. Queue the skill challenge!
I had challenges and let them solve them, it was very cinematic and fun. After swinging chasms and leaping staircases, they come to the roof of the tower just in time to jump off! But whats this? A trap door that needs to be opened, and it has a symbol traced on the inside?
Try One: Psion rolls a 1 on his arcana check.
Try Two: Bard rolls a 1 on his history check. (to see if he knew the symbol and how to get past it)
Try Three: Paladin tries to force the door open with a strength check (I decided to lower the DC a little because they were getting frustrated) and he rolls a 4!
They watch as the bar-covered windows around them slowly fill with darkness, and dirt starts to sift in.
"Wait!" Exclaims the Psion. "I remember an archway halfway up the tower, you said it looked like it had been used for making a portal before!"
The party finds it and decides they don't have time to try to plan ahead, they find the mechanism to open the portal, and one by one step inside, no idea what is going to be on the other side.
End Session!
They loved it! I loved it! Everything went off without a hitch, the party rescued an npc that I let them use for a companion character, the skill challenge was fun and hilarious and possibly the favorite part of the night for my party.
Great first time DMing for me, and the party loved it. Like 8 hours of prep paid off!
Not sure what you mean about common items only being useful in early heroic?
the CRAFTING of the item isn't very useful. That is kind of always the case, though when you go by the parcel system. You don't get many magic items in early heroic.
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
Level would be anything that would entirely annihilate a party of level 5 guys.
For reference, they are fording a sandbar across a small inlet of the Silt sea. I'm going to have them attacked by small level appropriate versions ... and then when they are about to succeed, HELLO MOM. Then, hopefully they book it.
...seems to be the most appropriate solution to that problem.
Edit: And beautiful, the wizards site is down so I can't even access the compendium for stats on a shark.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Large shadow humanoid (aquatic)
Level 10 Brute XP 500
Initiative +8 Senses Perception +9; low-light vision
HP 128; Bloodied 64
AC 22; Fortitude 23, Reflex 21, Will 22
Speed 1 (clumsy), swim 8
Bite (standard, at-will)
+13 vs AC; 2d8+7 damage.
Lockjaw Charge (standard; usable only while the flesheater shark is not grabbing a creature, at-will)
The shark charges and makes the following attack in place of a melee basic attack; +14 vs AC; 2d8+7 damage, and the target is grabbed. When the grab ends, the target takes ongoing 5 damage (save ends).
Shredding Teeth (standard, at-will)
no attack roll ; Targets a creature grabbed by the flesheater shark; 3d8+7 damage.
Feeding Frenzy ( when the flesheater shark starts its turn within 5 squares of a bloodied cerature; at-will)
The shark must make a bite attack against a creature adjacent to it. If the shark is grabbing a creature, the grab ends.
Waterborn
While in water, a fleshtearer shark gains a +2 bonus to damage rolls against any creature without a swim speed.
Alignment Unaligned Languages -
Str 21 (+10) Dex 16 (+8) Wis 18 (+9)
Con 18 (+9) Int 2 (+1) Cha 15 (+7)
Just change every reference to water into "silt" and "swim" into "burrow".
I took down a level 7 battlerager with one of these dudes last session.
Edit: Maybe use Riding sharks for the young ones, and a Dire Shark for mom.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
use sharks to terrorize PCs in a desert.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
If your players are on the new-ish side, this creature might be helpful:
I caught at least 1 movie reference, and I'm sure there are others.
because.
I wish I could find a competent DM for in person games. *sighs* At this point, I'd be happy with a competent DM via MapTool.
I really like the ending. Well played cliff hangers are a great way to keep the players coming back for more.
This is kinda why I started up Worldship, but it turns out DMing is way different than I thought it would be.
I'm feeling a lot like "my" story in Worldship is being told to me. Basically everything that's happened and is going to happen, I think, has and is going to spin out of characters submissions and the player's posts. I feel like I'm barely in control of the story sometimes, which is kind of exciting since it's barely begun.
Granted I tend to feel like (as a player) I don't have much control of the plot, but when I'm DMing at least I shudder at how much control leaves my hands.
My party was so excited that they called me up this morning and begged to play again. Our Controller called in sick to work so he could make it.
They stood around for a good 20 minutes theorizing before they finally decided to make an arcana check to see what it was. I saw a good chance for some fun, so I told him it was an immensely powerful object, but he could not see a use for it.
They decided to take an extended rest because they hadn't had a chance for one between the last two sessions. When their rest was over they decided to light new Sun Rods and continue on, but they all failed. They tried to figure out why, and finally decided that the orb had been draining them of their magic while the slept (I have no idea if Sun Rods are actually magic or if its a chemical reaction, but no one seemed to question it so meh). So the only light this group had was a slightly glowing orb that illuminated two squares around them in every direction.
Suddenly the entire tomb was twice as scary. Forced to fight in a small area to avoid being without sight, the group stands back to back as forms (I used colored stones instead of figurines or tokens) move around in the darkness just past them. When a few zombies come trundling out of the darkness followed by a few arrows (shot by skeleton archers) I thought the group was going to turn tail and run for the nearest exit!
Super excited, the session ended really well, with the group finding a tome that detailed the creation of the stone (I had the necromancer from the previous session kidnapping and murdering villagers to add power to it, with a mention that this is the first of its kind and his master will be looking forward to receiving it). They decided to head for the next large city they can find so they can figure out what it is, and we ended there.
I feel like I've found my calling, telling scary stories to other college students.
I'm not sure if we were doing something wrong, or it was meant to be that hard. I'm a bit disappointed, because I was hoping it'd be a neat way to play a game with some other people who aren't D&D players but enjoy board games, but right now I can't see anyone but a hardcore D&D player getting along in the game.
Anyone else?
The Sorcerer-King Hamanu from the Dark Sun Creature Catalog turns into a giant lion when he is bloodied.
Lolth turns into her spider-form when her human form is reduced to zero hit points.
The Old Man With the Canaries can turn into Bahamut as an encounter power, but this is just an encounter power and doesn't have an HP loss trigger.
It is an extremely tedious process.
I've played 4 games so far, the 2nd scenario twice. First, go to boardgamegeeks.com and search for ravenloft FAQ. They have a 1sheet step by step condensed rules to make it easier. There's also a reviesed FAQ that is Very useful. Second, this game is TOUGH. You will wipe, often, that's the nature of ravenloft. Try adding in more healing surge tokens. I play all my games with 3 (for 5 players) just to make it easy and after running Klak's labratory (Awesome scenario) we had 0 tokens left and managed to win the scenario, but just barely.
Trust me, after the first game, we all ran to our computers, desperately searching for Ravenloft Erratta.
I appreciate your comment, though. It is a brutal game. Definitely aimed at true D&D folks.
We did have fun though, and probably adding a third HS Token might make this a bit more managable.
Perhaps we could brainstorm a few other rule additions that might make things still challenging, but easy up a bit on the smackdown for non-D&D gamers.
Overall though, I was very impressed with the box contents, and the second scenario was fun. It's something we're definitely going to try to break out at least once each week, before our regular session. It was a perfect way to get everyone in the mood for some D&D, and gave those players who wanted to start rolling dice earlier than everyone else something to do.
If you draw a tile with a black arrow, you Must activate an encounter card. This is in addition to the monster phase. (You could leave this out for a lower challenge). We've also only been playing monsters on tiles with skulls, and then on the monster phase, moving them from the black "dead space" to the active tile as their move action. This may not be 100% correct but it's worked well for us.
We did have our poor rogue get beat down, he was facing Klak the sorcerer, a flaming skeleton And a crossbow trap, and he was the only hero on the adjacent tile so it was Rough.
Other stuff: XP is communal. Everyone who kills a monster adds that monster to the shared XP pile. 5 xp can be used to level up on a roll of 20 (hero or villan phase) OR can be spent to cancel an encounter card instead of playing it.
Treasure may be drawn by say, the figher, but is more benefit to the wizard, well, the figher player can totally give it to the wizard during his turn, at no penalty as treasure should be shared out to the player it most benefits.
Next time my party is fighting zombies. Because those are already in the damn system.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
But more and more at the table, it really just seems like a convenient cop out for the banality of D&D Evil. Not that we're making alignment checks or anything like that, but I've seen more than a few characters of... questionable morals at my table and I don't think a single one of them has been evil aligned.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Girlfriend: "I have to make a character for Encounters next week, don't I?"
Me: "Yup."
Girlfriend: "And the character builder doesn't have the Essentials stuff in it yet. Right?"
Me: "Yup."
Girlfriend: "Fuck."
I can only agree with her. I'd love to get some Dark Sun love in, but it's kinda hard without having the CB to play with.
Heh heh heh.
Yeah I wouldn't even use alignment if I DMed. It is still there as a weird legacy and it doesn't really matter.
It was. But then again, I dislike 4E's alignment system, so... yeah.
It's good as a shorthand reference, but I've never really worried about alignment in any D&D game I've ever run. Like, "oh, this monster is unaligned. It's probably just an animal looking for a meal." Or, "Okay, this guy is Chaotic Evil; it means that yes, he would backstab his friends for money. And then backstab the guy who hired him for more money."
Anything more is, *sniff* uncivilized.
@horseshoe: thanks for suggesting the unboxing idea to me last week. I stalled it this week because we're going out on a trip and it gives me something to post on my blog for Sunday. Now I just gotta find the time...
Right, but we're talking rule of lazy here; she doesn't want to write down the stats, just print them out. Myself, I can see what she dislikes.
I haven't really seen alignment crop up in what I've seen playing/DMing 4e so far, unless it's been a game specifically designed for an evil party, which is done moreso to incorporate a specific evil-themed narrative of some sort where good-aligned party members wouldn't fit all that well.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12