Tag Archives: 4E

Dateline: Storm Point

By | | Storm Point, What's he playing?
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It’s been a while since we played, but we managed to sync up schedules this past Sunday and play. As is usual when we haven’t played for an extended period, the game was fairly scattered, as socializing took precedence over actual play.

But play we did.

Given how distracted everyone (including me) was, I tried to scale back the complexity of the encounters, with some success. The party was investigating the temple that they’d sheltered in after the battle with the dragon last session, trying to find the centre of the magical energy and device that was causing the island to slip through time. They used Arcana and Dungeoneering to navigate the Arkhosian construction towards the source of the power, and the control room they figure must be at the top of the temple. And, of course, they ran into some of the guardians.

I scavenged some of the encounters I had seeded elsewhere on the island to populate the temple, and the one they ran into was a collection of wights, battle wights, and a few glyphs of warding. To make things a little less complicated, I laid it out in a manner that meant the party would only have to face the wights and one of the glyphs initially, but if they went through one of the other doors, they would get hit with another glyph and possibly the battle wights. They managed to put down the wights in good time*, but the distracted players meant that no one was listening to each other, and managed to trigger another glyph when the rogue went through the doorway rather than checking it for traps, despite other players telling him to stop.

I let them take that action back, and they spent a fair bit of time disarming the glyph. Then they blew the disarm roll on the other glyph and froze a few of themselves, while the battle wights opened the doors from the far side and attacked, backed up by the dragon.

Well, my complete surprise kind of got derailed, because the ranger had rebuilt his character with an ability that lets a bunch of his allies just not get surprised. So the hit-and-run, shielded-by-brutes attack that I had planned for the dragon wasn’t nearly as great as I had expected. He got in a blast of breath weapon, but the dwarf fighter was right up in his face again*, smacking him around, so he ran sooner than I had planned.

This little attack accomplished two things: first, the party now knows that the dragon’s going to be stalking them through the temple, sniping at them and running away, which is going to make them pay attention to stuff. Second, they really hate that dragon, now.

That was where we left it. I’m looking at probably two more sessions to wrap up this adventure. And then we’ll have to see where the party wants to go from there. There is a chance that they’ll be trapped in some past era, so I can’t plan too far ahead, but I’ve got some ideas, and I know they do, too.

 
 
 

*Man, I like the mechanics on the wights. Draining healing surges and shifting after a hit. They’re skirmishers, and they really feel like skirmishers. Back

*Blue dragons, being artillery, are most effective at range. They can mix it up hand-to-hand, but it’s not their comfort zone. Back

D&D Encounters Information Session

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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Next Wednesday is the start of the Spring 2010 season of D&D Encounters at Imagine Games here in Winnipeg. This is a 12-week program, running every Wednesday night at 7:00, featuring one encounter an evening, building a mini-campaign that will wrap up in June. You don’t have to come to every session, but there are rewards to be had based on renown points earned during play. There are pregenerated characters to be had, but you can also create your own 1st-level Forgotten Realms character and bring it to play.

This coming Saturday, March 13, I’m going to be at Imagine Games from noon until about 4:00, answering questions and helping people create characters if they wish. I’ll even have my computer with the Character Builder there, so we can run any characters created through the Character Builder for an extra bonus of renown points. Extra points are also awarded if you create a character using a race, class, or feat from Player’s Handbook 3, which releases next week.

So, if you’re in Winnipeg, and you’re interested in D&D Encounters, come on down to the store on Saturday afternoon, and I’ll do my best to answer any questions you have. I’ll even help you get set up with a character.

Also, remember that there are limited slots available on Wednesday nights – and I have already had two people reserve seats at the table. If you want to make sure you don’t miss out, drop me a line here, or leave your name at the store. The adventure is designed for 5 players, but I can probably scale it up as high as 7 if required.

See you there.

D&D Encounters: Undermountain

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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A quick D&D departure.

So, I’ve managed to talk myself into running this first season of D&D Encounters at Imagine Games. This is a 12-week mini-campaign, where you play one encounter every Wednesday night starting March 17 at 7:00. It’s set up so that you can come and play as much or as little of the campaign as you’d like, either with a pregenerated character that we provide, or with an original 1st-level character that you build and bring with you. There are apparently going to be good incentives for players and a fun extended adventure that will advance characters up to somewhere between 2nd and 3rd level.

We don’t have any character creation details (or really, any other details that you don’t see on the official site), but when we do, I’ll be setting up a couple of info and character creation sessions for interested parties.

Now, the kit we’re getting is good for up to two tables of six players and one DM each. I’m the only DM we’ve got right now, so that means there are going to be limited spots. Six is about the maximum I can handle and keep things moving well through a session. If you want to make sure you get a spot, I recommend you either leave your name at the store or contact me through the info posted there to reserve a space.

And if you’re interested in trying to DM a session of 4E D&D, let me know. I’ve got no problem with helping get a new DM started, or sharing with an experienced DM.

As always, let me know if you have questions, and I hope a few of you are interested in joining me for the games.

We now return to the Dresden Files Q&A Deluge.

Player’s Handbook 3 Game Day March 20, 2010

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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On Saturday, March 20, I will be back behind the DM’s screen at Imagine Games, running the Game Day adventure celebrating the release of the Player’s Handbook 3. Here’s the blurb from the site:

Player’s Handbook 3 Game Day
March 2010
Celebrate the release of Player’s Handbook 3 with a day of adventure! Psionic characters, skill powers, and hybrid classes abound in this essential rulebook. Test out the new classes and rules as you play a unique adventure and grab a copy of Player’s Handbook 3 while you’re there.

Now, that’s not a lot of information, so here’s the intro blurb from the adventure:

Beneath the Lonely Tower

An adventure for five 6th-level characters

The Far Realm’s distance from other planes, reinforced by wards erected at the beginning of time, protects those other worlds from the outer madness. Over the course of history — particularly in the wake of the Dawn War—the wards’ power has weakened, permitting the madness to leak into other planes, including the mortal world.

Recently, a rift to the Far Realm opened beneath an abandoned fortress called the Lonely Tower, twenty miles from the frontier village of Beorunna’s Well. Ten days ago, a troop of foulspawn emerged from the rift and began luring mortals for sacrifice. As each victim dies in the dungeon beneath the tower, the foulspawn ritually gather the escaping life force to expand the rift and to prepare for the arrival of a greater evil.

The braver folk of Beorunna’s Well—barbarians, rangers, and other warlike folk—have mounted two investigative assaults on the Lonely Tower. No one has returned.

This adventure challenges characters to find and close the rift. If they fail, more creatures of madness will pour forth and corrupt the land.

And just to further whet your appetite, here’s a list of the characters available to play:

  • Balashi, Shardmind Psion
  • Caewin, Elf Seeker
  • Foostus, Minotaur Runepriest of Kord
  • Izera, Githzerai Monk
  • Kalen, Half-Elf Ardent
  • Zazenna, Wilden Battlemind

So, if you’re in the city, and you like D&D, or you’d like to try D&D, come on down and play.

It’ll be fun.

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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We were back on the Floating Island this past Sunday, now hopelessly adrift in time.

Well, maybe not hopelessly. But still. Adrift in time is not encouraging. And faced with a fire elemental and four hellhounds can be a real downer*.

It wasn’t as bad as all that, though. Even though I got the rules for auras wrong, and dished out extra fire damage for multiple overlapping auras*, the gang managed to tear the elementals apart fairly quickly. Indeed, the fire elemental (a level 12 controller) didn’t get to unleash his best attack at all before dying. The hellhounds gave the group more problems, because of the huge raft of hit points each had.

After that, they made their way up toward the only shelter they could see on this island: the temple with the crystal spires at the top of the central hill. I ran this as a skill challenge, with them trying to make their way through the driving rain and wind, each turn taking a half-hour, and requiring an Endurance check to keep from losing a healing surge from the effort and harsh conditions. I considered throwing in a chance of lightning strikes, as well, but they’d already been through three encounters, and I knew what was waiting for them at the temple.

What was that? Well, a blue dragon*. And a network of smaller crystal spires that kept arcing lightning across the battlefield.

Now, the group was fairly beaten up, and I had some doubts about their survivability, but I didn’t want to pull any punches on this fight. Dragon fights are supposed to be tough and memorable. On the other hand, the warlord was out of healing surges and down to about 75% hit points, and I’m pretty sure the daily powers in the group were all gone. Maybe one or two left.

But that’s okay. If the players start feeling that the DM will never kill them, then the spice is gone from combat. It was a real threat, and they had to deal with it. If they fell, so be it. I wasn’t going to be vicious, but I was going to play the dragon as smart and deadly as I could. I made one concession to the party’s depleted condition, and that was starting the dragon on the ground. Blue dragons are artillery monsters, and I had originally planned to sit it up on the side of the temple where it could blast away with it’s lightning with impunity, but I put it on the ground in front of the temple instead.

Which made a huge difference in the fight. Once the fighter got up close to it, it was stuck. A bad tactical choice got it a little breathing room and it took to the air, but then the cleric trotted out his command and brought it back down, thanks to his elven accuracy power to reroll the attack. Once they got the dragon surrounded, it was quickly bloodied, and the warlord had managed to duck into the temple doorway, where he kept using his powers to get other characters to thump the dragon*.

At this point, I pulled out the dragon’s frightful presence power, which stunned the adjacent party members, including that blasted sticky fighter. The dragon then took to the air, and used an action point to blast out some more lightning at the group. Next round, it flew away to lick its wounds*.

So now the party is resting in the temple, hating the dragon with all their might. And the dragon is resting in a hidden lair, hating the party with all its might.

You know what that means, right?

Grudge match!

 
 
 

*Fire elemental firestorm, 4 hellhounds, 1900 xp, a 7th-level encounter for 6 characters. Back

*One of the players said he thought I was doing it wrong, but I thought I was doing it right. He didn’t press, and I looked it up later. He was correct: similar auras don’t stack their effects. Sorry, guys. Back

*I scaled the adult blue dragon, normally level 12, down to level 11, which set it at 3000 xp, or a level 10 encounter for 6 characters. Tough for a 7th-level party, but not insurmountable. Back

*In what I consider to be perfect warlord fashion. Back

*I gave the party a third of the xp for driving the dragon off in their weakened condition, because I thought that was a pretty impressive accomplishment. If they manage to take it out, they’ll get the full xp on top of that. Back

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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Last night was the latest installment of the Storm Point game. It was even more scattered than usual, because we started later, and had two missing players. Still, we got through the initial bits of the adventure to the surprise twist I had planned, which was good.

The combat we started with went on far too long for the challenge level it represented*, primarily because two of the players were running two characters each, and weren’t overly familiar with their capabilities. This meant they took substantially longer to decide what their characters were going to do on each turn, and slowed the combat a fair bit.

After the combat, we ran into a stumbling block. I’d been describing the increasingly bad weather as the floating island drifted through the eternal storm at the centre of Lake Thunder, and we got to the point where I told them that soon they wouldn’t be able to fly on their hippogriffs in it, and visibility was down to about twenty feet. I did this so that I could run an interesting exploration scenario, with the party wandering through the jungles and climbing the hills and creeping through the rain-drenched ruins of the dockside, all underneath the dramatic raging of the storm.

But I guess I overplayed it, because instead of setting out to explore any of the other adventure sites I’d dotted on the island – and on their map – they decided to wait out the storm in the ruined fort, then head up to explore the temple on the peak when the weather cleared. I tried to tempt them, because I had some things planned, by showing them a glimpse of what might be a blue dragon flying overhead in the raging storm, but that didn’t do the trick.

So, I had to advance the plot without them.

After they thoroughly searched the fort, they settled down for an extended rest. About an hour into it, the entire island shook, and started to vibrate, and a loud, long peal of thunder sounded. I gave each player two seconds to tell me what his or her character was doing at that moment, and several of them ran outside to look at what was going on. That’s when they saw the pillar of lightning stabbing down from the heart of the storm to the crystal spires of the temple on the peak, and a strange ripple rolling out from it to cover the whole island. As the ripple moved, the trees seemed to fall into the ground, and when it reached the fort, they saw the surrounding jungle shrink to a sparse brush covering the nearby hills, and the fort itself vanished, leaving everyone standing out in the rain.

They immediately realized that they had been thrown back in time to an era before mortals had claimed this part of the world, and only elementals ruled the islands. The big clue about this was the fire elemental and pack of hellhounds coming over the hill toward them through the hissing, steaming rain.

This is the twist I had been planning from the beginning of designing this adventure, about a year ago. This is a moment when the entire campaign might take a real left-turn from what everyone has been expecting. See, the lightning striking the temple causes it to jump through time erratically, and it might not get back to the “present” before the island moves out of the storm. The party’s going to have a chance to try and steer themselves home, but if they fail, then the rest of the campaign (or at least a good chunk of the next part of it) is going to take place some time in the past – possible during the establishment of the Arkhosian Empire, or during the war with Bael Turath, or even at the height of the Empire of Nerath.

So, I don’t know where things are going to go after this, and neither do the players. It’s fun. I look forward to seeing what they do and how things play out.

*5 ghouls and a rotclaw, 1600 xp, a level 6 encounter for 6 characters. Back

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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We wrapped up the siege of Storm Point yesterday, putting an end to the rebel shadar-kai storyline.

I had left the previous game just as the big bad arrived to try and finish off the heroes. Opening the game this session, I started with a bit of flowery description, talking about this skeletal figure in heavy robes, one eye and one hand replaced by ghostly replicas of black fire, gripping a massive mace, mounted on a manticore, and flying out of roiling black clouds, paced by three mastiffs made of shifting shadows with glowing eyes, swooping in on them in the flickering light of the burning buildings, framed by the smashed-open gates.

There was a moment of silence, then one of the guys said, “That is so metal! That would make an awesome ’80s heavy metal album cover!”

We then had to wade through a few minutes of people riffing on that idea (“I’m gonna paint that on the side of my wagon! I’m sure to be able to pick up chicks that way!”) before play resumed.

Now, I had wanted this fight to be tough. Very tough. That’s why I placed it after another tough fight, at the end of the long siege, when resources were low. I don’t try to kill my players, but I do want the chance of death to be there. Otherwise they get no real sense of accomplishment if they succeed.

To that end, the combat was a level 10 encounter for 6 characters, at 3,000 xp. I stole Barthus from FR1: Scepter Tower of Spellgard, who is a level 6 solo, and mounted him on a manticore, which is a level 10 elite. To round out the xp, I added three shadowhounds, which are standard level 6 creatures. I changed the description of Barthus and renamed him Tolvar Shadowborn, making him cosmetically a shadar-kai lich, better fitting the fact that he was leading a group of shadar-kai worshippers of Vecna, but I left his powers the same. Just described him as being skeletal, with a huge mace, and having his left hand and his right eye missing and replaced with black fire substitutes.

All in all, I thought, a tough combination.

Then, in the first round, the dragonborn rogue commando used trick strike to drop the leader off the manticore. He then leapt onto the back of the manticore, and they spendtthe next several rounds tearing viciously at each other flying above the city.

Everyone else wipes out the shadow hounds as quickly as possible to concentrate on dogpiling Tolvar. He held his own for a while, what with dominating the dwarf fighter for a brief time and using his desecrate ground power to mess people up. And when he was on the ropes, he turned to mist and fled into the city, letting everyone chase him.

Well, by this time, the manticore had managed to ditch its unwelcome passenger, but was really hurting, and the high-mobility swordmage was really crowding Tolvar, so he got on the roof of another house to try and remount the manticore.

And the rogue knocked him off again.

So he jumped up when the manticore swooped low, and got back in the saddle.

And the cleric commanded him off again.

And that was about it for him, thanks to the fighter’s rain of steel and a nice lance of faith to put the capper on it.

The manticore kept attacking through all this, but I was plagued the whole night with bad rolls, while all the players were making great rolls. I did some damage, but not enough to even put one of them down. Really, they had had more trouble the previous fight, when I almost managed to kill the warlord.

To finish things off, they decided that they wanted the manticore as a gift for the leader of the town guard, and asked if they could use Intimidate to cow it enough to be taken captive for retraining. I told them they could, and that they could each assist the main character, but that failed attempts to assist would in fact impose a penalty – my logic being that this is a vicious, fairly intelligent, war-trained beast that is going to attack any sign of weakness.

And they rolled a natural 20.

So, they cowed the manticore, the Storm Point forces chased the disintegrating army away, and in a few days, they had a nice little ceremony where the characters were given stuff.

Now, on to the Floating Islands.

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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Sunday was the latest installment of the Storm Point game, and saw the breaking of the siege of Storm Point.

After defeating the demons who broke through the city’s magical protections last time, the gang went back to the skill challenges protecting the city. They had reached a tipping point, though; failing the magical protection skill challenge took it off the table, and that meant they didn’t need to spend a character’s attention on it each turn, giving them effectively one more body to deal with the other skill challenges. This allowed them to start gaining some traction, and in about an hour and a half after start of play, they had succeeded in the majority of the skill challenges, which was the cue I was looking for to unleash the endgame encounters.

So, with the besieging forces in disarray and trying to quit the field, the enemy commander sent one of his lieutenants to lead a squad of ogres and orcs to burst a side gate, opening a way for the general to enter the city and deal with these pesky kids heroes*. The fight took pretty much the rest of the evening, but fresh from my experience with the end of the Post Tenebras Lux game, I warned them going in that this was one of two final fights to end the siege. This meant that they husbanded their resources a little more carefully, and didn’t immediately drop all their dailies on this combat. It made for a more careful, conservative fight which, coupled with the fact that some of them were down a few healing surges thanks to their actions during the siege, meant it took a little longer than it otherwise might have.

Boy, did they ever start hating that vampire shadar-kai witch, especially since she twice got to use her blood drain ability to jump back up in hit points. Only her vulnerability to radiant damage made them happy.

And, as the last foe dropped, and they stood panting by the ruins of the gate, the enemy general arrived on his manticore mount with an escort of shadowhounds. Fade to black.

Tomorrow is Rememberance Day here in Canada, and the gang has decided that, after the memorial services honouring the members of our armed forces that have fallen is service, we’re going to spend the afternoon finishing off the siege. Maybe we’ll even get to the start of the next adventure, when our intrepid heroes visit the Floating Islands, and ride one through the perpetual storm at the heart of Thunder Lake. I created that scenario for their second adventure, but they never got around to it, what with one thing and another, and they’ve been anxious to finish up this storyline so they can get there. I’ve kept the basic structure of the adventure, but beefed up the encounters to reflect the fact that the characters will be 7th level instead of 2nd.

I’m looking forward to it.

*Three ogre savages, four orc pyromaniacs, and Laundae Ethari, a vampire shadar-kai witch I found in the Monster Builder. 2,102 xp, a level 8 encounter for 6 characters. Back

Post Tenebras Lux Report – The End

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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Post Tenebras Lux is done. The campaign ran to 5th level for the characters, and ended with them stopping a cult of oni who were using gnolls to harvest children in the Thornwaste in order to feed the power to the Chained God in the Abyss. Success, and good feelings all around.

The last session wasn’t really what I had planned. See, I didn’t want the last session to just be one big fight, with the party using the linked portal scroll to teleport into the lion tower and just kill the boss. I wanted to put in a bit more variety, but that didn’t seem to happen.

First of all, I let them try to sneak around some of the denizens of the tower, and they failed miserably. So, I pulled one of the encounters I had prepped for the frontal assault option and pulled out a battle map from one of the WotC modules, and laid it out. I chose the encounter that had an oni in it, just because I wanted them to get the idea that there was more than one oni hanging around.

Well, that encounter wound up being a level 8 encounter for 6 characters – an oni night haunter, 3 gnoll huntmasters, 5 gnoll packrunners, and two evistro demons (!), for a total of 2120 xp. It wasn’t until the second round that that really clicked home for me, with the realization that this combat was going to be far longer than I had anticipated. Had I caught it in time, I could have dropped the evistros, reducing the fight to a level 6 encounter, but it was too late when I twigged.

Too late? Yeah, because the the room looked like a final boss fight room, with the remains of the Pool of Rebirth in the centre, and a large number of monsters, including one that looked like the boss. So, the players started immediately laying down their dailies and spending their action points, so it would have been a bait-and-switch in my players’ eyes to turn it into a short, easy encounter.

Instead, I toughened it up. Instead of making the Pool of Rebirth cracked and empty, I put a pulsing, swirling purple light in the bottom, and had it generate four undead gnolls each round (Gnoll scavengers that I had turned into minions and otherwise changed slightly using the Monster Builder. I love that thing.), having them crawl up out of the pit to join the fight. I also added the challenge of unraveling the nature of the purple light and turning it off.

Things got pretty hairy. The paladin spent a couple of turns hanging in the pit, and the avenger had terrible, terrible dice luck. But the sorcerer got to use one power to create a lightning zone to keep the monsters slightly bottled-up, and the cleric used consecrated ground to keep erasing the minion undead.

Having these two zones (three, actually, counting the battle standard the paladin planted) could have made things a bit tough to keep track of, but my buddy Clint, who sculpts miniatures for various companies, had just provided a couple of us with one of the new things he had created – zone corner markers. Even unpainted (which mine won’t be for too long), they were great, allowing us to keep track of what was inside and what was outside the two stationary and one mobile zone. Clint talks about them on his blog.

The current ones are flame-shaped (but could be radiant or cold, depending on the paintjob), and he’s just finished up some different themed ones, as well as base markers for showing marked/cursed/quarry targets and the bloodied condition. They’ll be flat bases with interesting markings on them that you can stand your figure on, sticking it with little blob of blue tack or something similar. I look forward to them.

Anyway, the party killed the bad guys, closed the energy flow from the abyss, and helped the nomads of the Thornwaste destroy the gnolls and tear down the lion tower. Success and heroism for all.

Except the bad guys, of course.

What was I going to have them face? I had planned to have them have to seek out the shattered chamber of the Lion’s Heart, where the master oni had been pulling on Tharizdun’s power to use the spirits to reanimate fallen bodies and call up tainted elemental energy. The encounter was going to be an oni souleater, 2 witherling horned terrors, 3 gnoll huntmasters, and 14 of the minionized gnoll scavengers, for a total of 3,032 xp – a level 10 encounter for 6 characters.

Level 10 is pretty high, but a large number of the enemy were undead, and this group is hell on wheels against undead. I thought that they could probably take it, going in fresh (or nearly so), though it was going to be tough.

But that didn’t happen. Everyone seemed to have fun, though, and I think the consensus was that the campaign ended well. As I try to do at these moments, I asked everyone to tell me a little story of what happens to their characters after the game ends, and they did, and everyone pretty much lived happily ever after.

So, thanks to everyone who played:

  • Chris: Torrin, dragonborn paladin of Pelor, and the most civilized dragonborn I’ve had in the games I’ve run.
  • Tom: Akmenos, tiefling rogue monster bait.
  • Fera, Sergheia Jackalope, half-elven ranger, and winner of the Angsty-est Backstory award (a real achievement in this group)
  • Penny: Who first played a fighter, then dropped out, then came back with Bellamira, a half-elven sorcerer working under the name Kara.
  • Clint: Who followed the same path Penny did, but came back with Ruinghast, and eladrin revenant avenger of the Raven Queen, and winner of the Most Power Cards award.
  • Michael: Arcos, human cleric of Lathander, who dropped out about half-way through the game and was replaced, Bewitched Style, by…
  • Erik: Originally played Ash, a tiefling warlock who liked to burn things (and people). When Michael left the group, Erik took over Arcos, converted him to Pelor, and never looked back.
  • Dillip: Sparkantos, a human mage who liked to blow stuff up. He left the group at about the same time Michael did.

Thank you all. I appreciate the contributions you all made to the game, and have enjoyed playing with you.

Now to finish up the Hunter adventure for Friday.