D&D Feb-12-2004
Feb. 17th, 2004 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ralphmeltonThursday's D&D session was pretty satisfactory, though it was basically just a monster mash.
The situation: the PCs are heading into the Caverns of Laryn, the larynx of the Great Dragon of the Land. I had been poorly prepared for this session (another effect of the "doing work while at work" thing), so I grabbed a map from the Wizards' web site (I'd thought of using the map from Laurel Caverns, for real authentic cavern shape, but I found it too complex to read) and a list of monsters with a connection to sound, and quickly whipped up a dungeon-crawl.
The lineup of fights:
- six ghasts. They couldn't hit the PCs, and Turok and Kyle could hit them on a 2. Plus, of course, Larissa threw a fireball or two that blasted them away.
- three cloakers. The PCs were supposed to have an advantage here because they had stopped their ears with wax, thus preventing the cloakers from moaning. As it was, the cloakers did manage to engulf Kyle and Turok at different times, but they did hardly any damage.
- one yrthak, a flying sound-projecting monster. Liandra cast a languor spell on it, and after that, it was pretty much all over. If it had been able to find a better ledge to collapse upon, so that it could have survived until the languor wore off, things might have been better for it--but such a thing would be very unlikely, since Larissa could fly into any reachable position. As it was, Turok made a coup de grace on it that did 50 points of damage or so because he was using Power Attack.
So once again we see that my PCs are diverse enough to handle almost any encounter with little difficulty. Both of the front-line fighters have very high ACs (Turok's is 28 or 30, even with the loss of his plate armor), Larissa's fireballs are good against most mobs, and Liandra's languor is deadly to single big foes.
The answer is the same as it was the last time I complained about this; I need to munchkin up the monsters I throw at the PCs a bit. Giving monsters somewhat better attributes (a +2 to Str, Dex, and Con, say) would be entirely reasonable, and it is appropriate for me to use the best combos I can find. (Fortunately, I have some ideas...) But I probably should still have some harpies or somesuch, to reward the PCs for their preparation.
But that's really just a quibble, because this was a satisfactory, fun session, even if not an inspiring one. It's nice to return to simple monster-bashing sometimes, and if the fights are too easy, that's still better than being too hard.
One side point: I worried about the slapdash way I was designing the cavern layout, and worried that it would be just railroading the PCs from fight to fight. But my players were pretty happy to just follow the right wall in their explorations; if I didn't have a map but just a list of encounters, I don't think they'd mind much. What map shapes or features might make it matter to the players' experience for me to have a map of the cavern?
The situation: the PCs are heading into the Caverns of Laryn, the larynx of the Great Dragon of the Land. I had been poorly prepared for this session (another effect of the "doing work while at work" thing), so I grabbed a map from the Wizards' web site (I'd thought of using the map from Laurel Caverns, for real authentic cavern shape, but I found it too complex to read) and a list of monsters with a connection to sound, and quickly whipped up a dungeon-crawl.
The lineup of fights:
- six ghasts. They couldn't hit the PCs, and Turok and Kyle could hit them on a 2. Plus, of course, Larissa threw a fireball or two that blasted them away.
- three cloakers. The PCs were supposed to have an advantage here because they had stopped their ears with wax, thus preventing the cloakers from moaning. As it was, the cloakers did manage to engulf Kyle and Turok at different times, but they did hardly any damage.
- one yrthak, a flying sound-projecting monster. Liandra cast a languor spell on it, and after that, it was pretty much all over. If it had been able to find a better ledge to collapse upon, so that it could have survived until the languor wore off, things might have been better for it--but such a thing would be very unlikely, since Larissa could fly into any reachable position. As it was, Turok made a coup de grace on it that did 50 points of damage or so because he was using Power Attack.
So once again we see that my PCs are diverse enough to handle almost any encounter with little difficulty. Both of the front-line fighters have very high ACs (Turok's is 28 or 30, even with the loss of his plate armor), Larissa's fireballs are good against most mobs, and Liandra's languor is deadly to single big foes.
The answer is the same as it was the last time I complained about this; I need to munchkin up the monsters I throw at the PCs a bit. Giving monsters somewhat better attributes (a +2 to Str, Dex, and Con, say) would be entirely reasonable, and it is appropriate for me to use the best combos I can find. (Fortunately, I have some ideas...) But I probably should still have some harpies or somesuch, to reward the PCs for their preparation.
But that's really just a quibble, because this was a satisfactory, fun session, even if not an inspiring one. It's nice to return to simple monster-bashing sometimes, and if the fights are too easy, that's still better than being too hard.
One side point: I worried about the slapdash way I was designing the cavern layout, and worried that it would be just railroading the PCs from fight to fight. But my players were pretty happy to just follow the right wall in their explorations; if I didn't have a map but just a list of encounters, I don't think they'd mind much. What map shapes or features might make it matter to the players' experience for me to have a map of the cavern?
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-18 04:13 am (UTC)What map shapes or features might make it matter to the players' experience for me to have a map of the cavern?
That's a question that begins to suggest its own answer.
The shape can matter in one of several ways. One fairly common
approach is to try to make the shape or scale impressive or
interesting.
This usually works less well than one might hope (one day I might
relate the tale of the ancient dwarven art of Feng Shui).
I believe that it doesn't work so well because it is all virtual -
what may be rendered impressive in a work of fiction can seem fairly flat in an RPG session.
The second approach is to have the shape carry meaning for the players - to convey information in some sense. That may have more potential, but the trick here is to be able to do it without being really cheesy.
I don't know if any of this helps.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-18 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-18 04:40 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-18 04:43 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-18 04:46 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-18 05:09 pm (UTC)According to the EL arithmetic, a party of 4 PCs should be able to handle a level-equivalent encounter with the expenditure of 20-25% of their resources. I think that's a pretty good target for a normal pace. It means that after a couple of encounters, you're getting into the more exciting zone where you're at less than 50% of your resources, without too much risk of sudden death.
The ghasts were about EL 8 according to the El arithmetic, as were the cloakers; the yrthak was EL 9. So, the encounters were a bit lower than level-equivalent, and the party is a bit more potent. So perhaps the fact that y'all are about 25% down (if that) is within the predictions of the model.
Even so, I should still crank up the threat level a bit to whittle y'all down a bit faster, because it's more exciting to be using non-negligible amounts of resources.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-18 05:10 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-18 05:26 pm (UTC)I don't know how far down the party is in general. I'm down 25% hit points, 3 4th-level spells (out of 5), 2 or 3 (can't remember) 3rd-level spells (out of, I think, 7), and most of my 1st-level spells (mainly by supplying mage armor to most of the party). Just one person's data points (and from memory, so there might be some fuzziness here, but this is approximately right).
Re:
Date: 2004-02-18 09:16 pm (UTC)I do have a couple of cool poly friends in Chicago. I think they have some gaming background. But that's about the best you'll get from my friends list (assuming that's where you found Ralph).