D&D Smackdown

[ralphmelton]

Yesterday, Kevin, Mike, and I had a "D&D Smackdown" session. The goal was to find encounters that would be balanced against the PCs' new abilities, so we had a session without consequences or roleplaying, just senseless violence.

For a first encounter, they fought a gorgon. This ended up being an exciting encounter, in which Kyle came close to death and three of the five PCs got petrified before the gorgon died. But petrification is pretty nasty, and I'm not sure I would run such an encounter.

For the second encounter, we decided to err on the low side and see how many bugbears the PCs could take on. They killed 20 bugbears or so handily with Larissa's use of Fireball. It was slower going for the next 23 bugbears. They were starting to feel the pinch, but still going pretty strong--they could probably have killed another 20 bugbears before going down. We didn't test the proposition, though; we quit after 43 bugbears.

We took too long on that encounter, and people weren't interested in trying a third encounter. So still don't feel I have a good example on ways of making encounters both survivable, manageable, and exciting.

One thing we've discovered: Kyle has by far the least hit points of any PC in the party. This is particularly problematic because he's the PC who is second most likely to get into melee, and he is perhaps most likely to get himself surrounded by monsters.

Comments

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I would have liked to have been able to try a third encounter but I was getting tired too. I did want to see if we could figure out a way to work with Kyle and Turok to get them into flanking positions without having Kyle be surrounded. I'm a bit disappointed, but not all that surprised, that it didn't work out.

[cellio]

One thing we've discovered: Kyle has by far the least hit points of any PC in the party.

This is freakish, especially given that his hit dice are bigger than those of two other party members. Granted, Larissa has good Con and Prolix (well, Dani) has an uncanny knack with HP dice, but still... given that his AC is already about as good as it can get, what can we do to boost his durability? I'm willing to have Larissa make something if we can figure out what that something would be (and if we have a way to pay for it).

Rogues can use wands sometimes, right? It depends on a skill check?

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

Well, Kyle isn't likely to be able to use a wand. The DC is at least 20 and he has a total check of 3 on use magic device. Improving his AC with magic would help. It's just that increasing his dex isn't all that useful. I was switching to fighting defensively during the smackdown and that did help a bit (with his ranks in tumble, he can get a reasonably efficient ratio when fighting defensively). I also used a potion of blurr from his bag of tricks and that helped once when we remembered it was there. :) Lori mentioned that barkskin would be useful for him. It's natural armor so it would stack. Something improving his con would be useful too. He has a con bonus of 0 right now. He could take toughness as his feat. :)

[cellio]

Well, Kyle isn't likely to be able to use a wand.

So much for my wand of Shield, then.

Improving his AC with magic would help.

My only "native" ability here is Mage Armor, which I think is not an improvement on the armor you wear. (It doesn't stack; it's an armor bonus.) Shield is personal, not targetted. We've already talked about dex mods. If Barkskin helps, maybe Liandra and I could cooperate to make you some sort of device to provide it. It'd be expensive, though, as that's a second-level spell (so the cost is 6 times the base cost for the item).

Fighting defensively sounds like a good idea. If the 3HP from Toughness make a significant difference, then things are even worse than I thought. :-)