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madadric posted:Don't have a miss on a roll mean they don't get the clue, give them a clue, at a cost. Make them expend resources, put one of them in a tight spot, give them a tough choice, or a hard compromise. Ok, can you give me any examples of what you mean? Also, are there any systems out there that have some sort of detective system that isn't tied to specific stats or whatever, so can be used in any system?
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Jan 26, 2013 02:57
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Project1 posted:Ok, can you give me any examples of what you mean? For example, your party thinks they might find a clue in an old newspaper article so they go down to the library to try and find it, you get them to roll the appropriate skill check and they fail. Rather than just saying "You don't find anything" you could instead: a) You find the article in the reserve section and get what you're chasing for but in your rush to get it you've damaged one of the rarer books the library has in their collection; you might be banned from this library, get a hefty fine or worse if you can't cover your tracks. b) You get the article but skim read it, Bobby McLegit is mentioned as having talked to that person of interest and you've gotten his address; You did, however, miss the part where he's a paranoid ex-con who has taken shots at other people poking around his place. c) You can't track down the article so you need to ask the librarian for help, they ask you a few too many questions as to why you're after it but you're too distracted with what the gently caress is a dewey decimal to realise; now they know you're on to them. Any check that isn't time urgent and failure isn't anything interesting and you can just try again; don't roll for. Kicking in the door or picking the lock, presuming you're at least capable of it at the best of times, shouldn't be a thing you need to roll for unless you're trying to pick the lock before the police officer returns to his office and he's just down the corridor, or whatever.
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Jan 26, 2013 03:19
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So I'm running King maker in my pathfinder game, and we just picked up a projector. I'm planning on using it to track the world map among other things. Does anyone know of an easy way to do this so I can hide the map notes and only have the terrain visible when I reveal it to the players?
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Jan 26, 2013 03:51
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Lord Yod posted:So I'm running King maker in my pathfinder game, and we just picked up a projector. I'm planning on using it to track the world map among other things. Does anyone know of an easy way to do this so I can hide the map notes and only have the terrain visible when I reveal it to the players? MapTools will let you do this. IIRC, the guy who runs d20srd.net used an image manipulation (Photoshop I think?) program and layers with an erase tool for his set up.
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Jan 26, 2013 04:16
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P.S. STILL COMPLETELY DEVOID OF MERIT
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Captain Walker posted:I didn't say that, but I don't entirely disagree. I mean, if you think of a super great way to run it, sure, but don't force the party I to a TPK so your guy can narrate his story. In a collaborative game the story is the players', and you shouldn't put all this effort into something the PCs will invariably gently caress up. Reading over what I posted before, I should clarify (because I think you guys are misunderstanding me) In this case, the "PCs" would be listening to an NPC narrate a story, while the players would be playing "NPCs" in the adventure that is being narrated; effectively their real characters are safe and sound around the campfire, but the players are actively navigating a different character within the story that is being told. If that "character" dies, the player's character is unaffected. So rather than just being told a story, they players would get to play through it as part of the retelling, while their PCs are in no actual danger of dying or being TPK'd. My objective wouldn't be to kill off their "temporary characters" but if they do die, it's easier to retconn it and say "oh that was totally in the script i had/served some greater epic purpose" or whatever. Your PCs could get XP for "listening" to the tale (and the players actively taking part), so it's not like "you get no XP because that poo poo happened to someone else before you were ever born." tl;dr I guess I should make more of a distinction between "PCs" and "players", sometimes I/we get in the habit of using the term interchangeably. e: more clarification: This would be a one-session kinda thing, and maybe reuse the "format" if it goes well; I wasn't intending to base a whole campaign around living out an NPC's history. P.d0t fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Jan 26, 2013 |
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Jan 26, 2013 04:19
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I think it could work, but you'd better be ready for the extra work that's going to entail, and you'd better make sure the players are all on board for that.
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Jan 26, 2013 04:30
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P.d0t posted:Writing of the roleplaying variety. gently caress it, just go for it! It sounds like a really cool idea and it probably has a lot of little kinks that need to be worked out. In my mind it's mainly drawing a line between PC and the NPC that player is portraying. IE when you jump out of the story and sit around the campfire and talk about it. My advice here is to draw clear lines. The players should never feel confused wether they are playing the story or their actual characters. Good luck, sounds really fun!
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Jan 26, 2013 10:35
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SafetyTrain posted:gently caress it, just go for it! It sounds like a really cool idea and it probably has a lot of little kinks that need to be worked out. In my mind it's mainly drawing a line between PC and the NPC that player is portraying. IE when you jump out of the story and sit around the campfire and talk about it. My advice here is to draw clear lines. The players should never feel confused wether they are playing the story or their actual characters. Good luck, sounds really fun! I think this is what you should do too. Let them know it is an experiment, collect feedback, and (this is selfish) report back to us. If you can get it to work it's a fun tool to add to the campaign toolbox.
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Jan 26, 2013 18:39
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Generic GMing question: If my players don't all know each other at the beginning of the story, what are some tips and tricks to corral them into the same area and get them talking to each other?
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Jan 27, 2013 07:00
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Do you mean the players or the player characters? If it's the players you're talking about, get them around a table and have them work together on making characters. Make it a party, you know. If it's the PCs, have something bad happen to them all that forces them together, like a fire or a tiger attack.
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Jan 27, 2013 07:05
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Arkham Angel posted:Generic GMing question: If my players don't all know each other at the beginning of the story, what are some tips and tricks to corral them into the same area and get them talking to each other? "You all meet in a tavern" Actual advice, make sure they get out of it quickly and fairly easily but throw them in a situation where it's imperative to cooperate. Say the local evil warlord throws them all in a dungeon for bogus crimes. The first parts of session one could be having them play off each other's skills to bust out of prison, retrieve their gear and get on the run. Or the king has sent messengers to assemble a small, unofficial party to complete a task for him without being officially tied to the crown. You could even use this to establish a rival party that was sent before or after the player group went on their way. First one to the objective gets paid. And I think this one would be a little trickier in practice. Some time ago in this thread a DM mentioned that he described a scene in which a condemned man was to be hung in the town square. After setting the scene he asked each of his players who they were in that scene. Let's say the Rogue is pickpocketing people in the crowd, the Fighter is a local guard at the gallows, the Cleric is performing last rites and the Wizard is the condemned man. Then drop a goblin raid/drake/undead invasion on the square and have the players work their way out of it. EDIT: And yeah, if the players don't know each other do a loose session 0. Everyone comes to the first week of the game and figures out their characters over a couple beers. Ask what kind of games they've played and find a middle ground to make it enjoyable for the party. Talk amongst each other and get comfortable joking and dicking around with some dice.
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Jan 27, 2013 07:15
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Razorwired posted:"You all meet in a tavern" We had everyone together for character creation and they seemed to get on well. The game is modern day, though, and the player characters live in different cities. I was thinking maybe sending them all on quests to a specific city, and then doing the 'you all meet in a pub' thing. The possibly dropping a monster or three into the general vicinity of said pub, I'm just worried about being railroady or having player characters basically be antisocial toward other player characters.
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Jan 27, 2013 07:53
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Razorwired posted:Or the king has sent messengers to assemble a small, unofficial party to complete a task for him without being officially tied to the crown. You could even use this to establish a rival party that was sent before or after the player group went on their way. First one to the objective gets paid. This. What I did was "you are a band of mercenaries [in the style of Reservoir Dogs or The Usual Suspects] and you are on retainer to [important/rich person]; sometimes you work solo, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in larger groups. So you have as much or as little/passing familiarity with each other as you want; you may not even get along. You're just coming back from a big job and..." The other thing is if you have char-gen done as a group, put the onus on the players to make characters that synergize well, and to come up with their own motives/justifications for working together. As the DM, you can kinda take as much or as little responsibility as you like for building the world/setting and making it "plausible"; it's ok to extend that job to the players. P.d0t fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Jan 27, 2013 |
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Jan 27, 2013 09:11
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I recently began a campaign by declaring that all the PCs had some unrelated business elsewhere that they were en route to. Traveling by carriage is appropriate in this setting, so I declared that they all wound up being transported by the same driver, the only one crazy enough to enter the country rather than take the very long path around the mountains. There's only one driver because of the troubles the region has been having lately, like the monsters that attacked the carriage in their first session, leaving them slightly stranded, and utterly at my mercy for the convenient introduction of plot hooks. Naturally this will not work for every campaign. But the lesson is - if each player is invited to come up with their own reason for being present at the start (which is helpful for those players who don't find it natural to develop backstories), then you can easily give them some reason to work together. You can even use those reasons as fodder for future activities, or ignore them completely, depending on what kind of campaign you're running.
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Jan 27, 2013 09:32
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Arkham Angel posted:Generic GMing question: If my players don't all know each other at the beginning of the story, what are some tips and tricks to corral them into the same area and get them talking to each other? Flip it. Tell them they've traveled together for a short time, then ask the players one at a time how one met another. Ask them questions like: "Thief, what have you stolen from one of the other characters? Which other characters know you did?" Get them to build a shared history through character generation and questions you ask
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Jan 27, 2013 09:58
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I read (maybe in this thread) a good idea I plan on stealing later. Start your party off as guards transporting a prisoner.
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Jan 27, 2013 10:10
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madadric posted:Flip it. Tell them they've traveled together for a short time, then ask the players one at a time how one met another. Ask them questions like: This. Ask the players as much as possible about how they met. A good group will really run with it, and be able to free associate. A not-so-good group should still be able to answer, and there you have your story.
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Jan 27, 2013 10:15
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Arkham Angel posted:The game is modern day, though, and the player characters live in different cities. If it's modern day, another alternative would be to have them be Internet-friends going to a live meetup.
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Jan 27, 2013 11:09
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Arkham Angel posted:We had everyone together for character creation and they seemed to get on well. Hang on a second; there's some information missing here. Why are all the characters living in different cities? And what's the game concept? If this was a conscious design choice on your part, what led you to it? What's the intention of having them not all start out in the same place? The answer to that should be key to the answer to getting them into the same place. If this wasn't a conscious design choice on your part - if the players picked home cities without your input, and didn't bother to put themselves in the same place - why did you allow it? It's important to allow players to play a character they want to play, but it's equally important - if not more so - to make sure that they work together as a group, and that's hard to do when they're 500 miles apart. If your players independently chose home cities for their characters without your input, just talk to them and tell them that it's important that they all be in the same general area. They don't have to know each other yet, but if one of the characters gets fed up and says "gently caress this, I'm going home", it's much easier for you and for the other players to get him back in the group if he's going back to his apartment down on 5th than if he's getting on a plane to Chicago. (If nothing else, a cab is cheaper in time and money for the characters than airfare; they might just decide that it's not worth the effort to fly to Chicago to cajole Whiny into coming back.) And it'll be much easier to get them together again after the first adventure is done and they've all gone home, for that matter. When you're getting the party together, don't worry overly much about railroading them. "Assembling the team" is one of the traditional acceptable breaks of suspension of disbelief, and good players will understand that. (A thought: use madadric's idea, but delay the conversation about how they met. Start the session by saying "You're all outside Frank's Pub in St. Louis, where a monster has just come up through the pavement, severing the power lines to the block on the way up. It isn't paying attention to you yet, but it's about to flip a car toward a group of tourists on the far side of the street. Who's got initiative?" After the combat, then start asking how they got there.)
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Jan 27, 2013 15:14
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WFRP3 had a nice answer for this, with its party cards. The problem with "you all meet during this first adventure" is that the more unique snowflake-y their characters are ("the only survivor of his race and is out for revenge on the guy who did it"), the harder it is to swallow that they'd stay together for life just because they all got out of the burning building together. I don't think I'll ever do "you meet during this" again unless it's set up so that they literally have no other choice but to stay together for the rest of the campaign (and I don't see myself playing that sort of campaign right now). I definitely prefer to make the players do the work of deciding how they already know each other, and deciding points of tension and agreement amongst themselves.
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Jan 27, 2013 16:05
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Besesoth posted:Hang on a second; there's some information missing here. Why are all the characters living in different cities? And what's the game concept? The game is Scion, which is set in modern day, where all the characters are children of gods. Basically the players are from different places because it makes sense for their backstory. For example, our Loa character is from New Orleans because NO and Haiti are two of the places with the strongest Voudoun influence. Our Aesir, a Scion of Loki, spends most of her time in Vegas because there are lots of opportunities to scam people, especially since most of the people in Vegas are travelers. I think we only have 2-3 people in our group that have done tabletop before, though, and it's one of the newbies I'm worried about going 'You know what? Nope.' Also, some of the PCs are not good or friendly people. They would need serious motivation to stick around other people Their concepts are as follows: The unethical businessman The medical professor The corporate courier/spy The assassin The burly nature guy The trickster/thief The reveler I think I'll just over-prepare this session, and be prepared for both 'you're all here' and 'you're not all here.' At worst, I can use the extra material later. Then I'll talk to them again right before we start the first session and work around what they say. Edited for clarification
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Jan 27, 2013 20:47
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With Scion, saying "Your divine parent has set up an adventuring playdate with some other god kids, try not to embarrass them too badly" is a legit reason to have a group meet up.
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Jan 27, 2013 20:56
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Mr. Maltose posted:With Scion, saying "Your divine parent has set up an adventuring playdate with some other god kids, try not to embarrass them too badly" is a legit reason to have a group meet up. But also kind of boring. "Your divine parent/patron needs you to do this, and you will be rewarded" allows you to set up a secondary objective for each player at the place the all need to be. Then have something massive happen where they have to work together... or have them all meet the night before, checked into the same hotel on the same floor, drinking at the same dive bar, whatever. Or start in the middle, and have them go back and explain how they all got together works well for this kind of game, too.
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Jan 27, 2013 21:36
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TheAnomaly posted:But also kind of boring. "Your divine parent/patron needs you to do this, and you will be rewarded" allows you to set up a secondary objective for each player at the place the all need to be. Then have something massive happen where they have to work together... or have them all meet the night before, checked into the same hotel on the same floor, drinking at the same dive bar, whatever. Or start in the middle, and have them go back and explain how they all got together works well for this kind of game, too. How about having their parents go 'Hey, kids, mom or dad has something to do for you in [city] (or there is business oppurtunity for you in [city] for the shady business guy)', with rewards for completing those quests, and then have them end up in the same bar, when a monster (or three) who wants to eat them because they have tasty god-blood shows up. Do you think that will work? Or should I do the bar/monsters first, and then have them work in groups for the other quests?
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Jan 27, 2013 21:42
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Arkham Angel posted:How about having their parents go 'Hey, kids, mom or dad has something to do for you in [city] (or there is business oppurtunity for you in [city] for the shady business guy)', with rewards for completing those quests, and then have them end up in the same bar, when a monster (or three) who wants to eat them because they have tasty god-blood shows up. Do you think that will work? Or should I do the bar/monsters first, and then have them work in groups for the other quests? Keep in mind that you're only one person, which means that every time you do something where the characters are separated, the players whose characters you're not currently focusing on are going to be sitting around bored. (In an asynchronous game, like play-by-post or PBEM, this goes over better than in a synchronous game, like literal tabletop or IRC.) This is especially dangerous if it's the new players who have nothing to do. That said, your description of their archetypes has given me an idea for a plot seed that gives each of them a legitimate reason to be present: MetaCortex, a pharmaceutical firm, is holding a major press event at a significant industry conference to announce their latest antidepressant, a "revolutionary new treatment that shows significant immediate and long-term improvement in nearly 100% of cases". Each of your characters has a reason to attend the conference: * The unethical businessman wants to get in on the ground floor; * the medical professor needs to evaluate the drug; * the corporate spy has been hired by a rival firm to steal the formula; * the assassin has been hired to take out the doctor in charge of development; * the nature guy has been hearing rumors about waste from the drug's production (and possibly the drug itself) causing euphoric stupors in animals; * the reveler wants to see what happens if you take the drug when you're not depressed (think ecstasy); * and the trickster wants to see what happens if you steal some of the samples and spike the punch. (Naturally, there's another drug debuting at the conference, this one in a more back-alley sort of way, that (somewhat stereotypically) improves the user's musculature, endurance, and skeletal strength - and that should never, ever be combined with MetaCortex's new antidepressant, unbeknownst to the guy who's slipping the antidepressant into people's drinks...) SneezeOfTheDecade fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Jan 27, 2013 |
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Jan 27, 2013 22:40
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Had an encounter idea. Wanted to experiment with trap filled encounter rooms but was worried about how to justify it if it's not for a big reward. So my idea is this: there have been a string of high class burglaries and the local governer is paranoid that his preciosu artifacts are next for the taking. So he hires the group to guard it for him. However, I was going to describe him as a bit of a fruit cake so for extra effect he littered the treasure room with trip wires, pressure plates and even had some bolt stone flooring installed. I was thinking giving the thief a few slide, push and pull powers so his main attacks are just using the terrain against them but can also do pretty well in a straight up knife fight.
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Jan 28, 2013 01:08
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Manic_Misanthrope posted:Had an encounter idea. Wanted to experiment with trap filled encounter rooms but was worried about how to justify it if it's not for a big reward. This is pretty awesome. Be sure to give a trip report, because I might want to steal this; I think this could work really well as a stand alone. Depending on your group/setting, I would make all the traps non-lethal. Stuff like a dominate charm that makes the person dominated walk into a near by cage and lock themselves in. In addition to daze/stun/slow sorts of things. fe: I remember playing this when I was little. One person played a thief and the others tried to catch them. The other players had defenses like motion detectors and video cameras that they could set up to help limit the thief's ability to move.
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Jan 28, 2013 09:08
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Razorwired posted:"You all meet in a tavern" Meeting in a tavern is a great intro. Sure it's a humongous cliche but it gives you a discreet base of operations to work out of at low levels, a place to learn about new adventures, and it feels like the Fellowship of the Ring which can be a very good thing for getting everyone on the same page. People know what to expect from You Meet In A Tavern adventures. Also good: The King has put out a call for heroes, your boss has called you all together, you're on a ship/caravan/motorcade and it's attacked. With more specific adventures you can make more specific backstories but these are all cliches for a reason. YOu don't really want your players struggling to justify being there and getting along with the party, that poo poo just causes trouble. an easily digestible cliche lets you jump right into the adventure. Liesmith fucked around with this message at 12:28 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 12:25
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I recenetly set a party of 5, against an equal, but different, party of 4, that happened to have one baddy who was a 6th level Dustman/Tiefling sorcerer. The 5 players were at level 2. My squad was I lev 3 mon. 3 level 1 fighters. And 1 6th level Dustman sorcerers, who had stuff like Gas Form, magic-missile, summon undead and sleep based spells. Darkness, was of course a racial trait for my baddy. The fight was fair and balanced. But... It lasted 12 hours. But resulting in 1 player death and 2 player stabilizations. In the end, the players won by a thread. My question is.... Is there a better way to put on a grueling, epic, balanced and memorable fight without it lasting 12 hours in real time? How do you present an equal challenge and avoid a 12 hour fight when DMing a boss fight? God Of Paradise fucked around with this message at 13:06 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 12:58
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God Of Paradise posted:How do you present an equal challenge and avoid a 12 hour fight when DMing a boss fight? Assuming 4E: Don't stat bad guys like characters.
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Jan 28, 2013 16:55
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I don't think there's any edition of D&D where a fight containing something 4 levels over the party (particularly at level 2) can accurately be described as "fair and balanced". If it was 3e, the fact that the level 6 enemy was a spellcaster means that it's a miracle your PCs won at all. EDIT: yeah your post history in this thread suggests this was probably your 3.5 game. If you'd made the sorcerer more offensively oriented he probably could've soloed your PCs in a couple of rounds. It was not in any way remotely a fair fight, whatever the CR system claims. Moral of the story: The Challenge Rating system is almost entirely worthless for determining how challenging a fight is. Zereth fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 17:19
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God Of Paradise posted:I recenetly set a party of 5, against an equal, but different, party of 4, that happened to have one baddy who was a 6th level Dustman/Tiefling sorcerer. The 5 players were at level 2. My squad was I lev 3 mon. 3 level 1 fighters. And 1 6th level Dustman sorcerers, who had stuff like Gas Form, magic-missile, summon undead and sleep based spells. Darkness, was of course a racial trait for my baddy. Here's a more abstract approach. Step back from running the game as-is. Figure out how many hits you want each enemy to go down in. Say, the sorcerer needs six hits, the fighters need two each, and the monster takes three. Write these down as tally marks on a sheet of paper. Erase them as your characters get hits. Erase two if they get a critical, pop a powerful spell/ability, or think of something creative. If they manage to combine these, give them three. Of course, this only slows down the total number of hits it would take. So you're going to have to sit down and do some math. Figure out how much damage characters can reasonably sustain (this has to factor in HP, how hard it is to hit them, and recovery abilities, but you do have some leeway), figure out their average to-hit rolls, and set it up so that the boss endangers them but they can hit it. Now you've got a basic boss setup. Here's where you need to get a little creative to make things more memorable. Run the boss in phases. Let's pump up our sorcerer to eight hits of health, and we'll set up four-phase and three-phase variants, depending on how you want to run him. A four-phase variant: In phase 1, the sorcerer lets his henchgoons do all the work and sits back tossing sleep spells and rare magic missiles. This lasts until all of the henchy types are out or he gets hit. In phase 2, the sorcerer turns his lower half into gas and flies around throwing offensive spells and stabbing at people. This lasts until he takes three hits. In phase 3, the sorcerer summons a bunch of 1-hit or non-attacking animate shadows and cloaks himself in darkness. He shouldn't attack very often, or at all. Encourage the players to do creative stuff to identify him- eg he's the only shadow to have its own shadow, the only one that doesn't recoil from the light. Two hits will force him out of this phase. In phase 4, the sorcerer goes nova and starts firing off gigantic, impressive spells, possibly tearing up the area and creating cover or terrain hazards. This lasts until he dies, which will take three or two hits depending on whether the players hit him to knock him out of phase 1. Kill his minions if they haven't already died at the start of this phase or phase 3. This guy is a skulker who uses his companions as living shields. Play this up in his banter. A three-phase variant: In phase 1, the sorcerer picks out a target, hits them with a spell, and moves on. Three hits forces him out. In phase 2, the sorcerer uses gas form but throws spells like before. Come up with creative ways to hit him, but two hits will force him out. In phase 3, the sorcerer turns solid but starts picking targets and focusing on them, firing spell after spell until they collapse or something more pressing happens. Three hits will take him down. This guy can be one of several things. A team player, a smug puppet master that loses his cool, an aloof and unknowable sort. Pick a type that works well and work it into banter. More importantly, both of these guys shift from supporting other attackers, to a "puzzle stage" where some creativity or use of wide-range abilities is necessary to hit him at all, to a final, more dangerous stage where they turn up their damage output. Use the phases to shift things up regularly and make the fights more memorable. Take inspiration from videogames, especially action-adventure ones, and work nifty stuff into the fight. The most important part, though, is to take an approach that allows you to basically set the pace at the beginning and keeps things from going too fast or too slow (note that I made the puzzle stages weak enough to take out in a single hit, because they could easily be the most annoying parts of the fight), so that the fight doesn't become anticlimactic or a slog. But allow players to influence it too- if they come up with a clever and fun way to murder the boss instantly, go ahead and let 'em have it. Also, don't become too wedded to the rules, unless that's what your players are expecting, in which case this becomes much more difficult to use.
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Jan 28, 2013 18:57
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Looking for advice on how to make a faction seem more powerful without going over the top or beating my party over the head with it. So, the party has encountered the last major faction, which is someone who claims to be the Queen of the ruined city She totally is, she's a lich who's basically using a meat puppet, and her phylactery is a gate to Hell. They've been invited to a banquet by the Queen; her scouts noticed the party's Shardmind Wizard, and she's interested in him because she's bored royalty and he's shiny and something she's not seen before. The Queen is not exactly mentally well, and she has a little of a "Dictator with Crumbling Regime" complex going on; ie: "We haven't lost control of that district, we've temporary ceded control as a strategic feint.", but while the force she controls is small, its very powerful; if they had an effective commander, the Royalists could take back the city (holding it might be another matter). The party has picked up on the fact she's not playing with all her cards, but I don't think I'm doing a very good job of conveying that the Queen and her forces are still quite powerful and dangerous; I think they're thinking that the Royalists are still around only because they're set up in a very defensible position, and no one has cared enough to dislodge them. I've had NPCs express that Royalists are quite powerful, and had things like invitation to the banquet granted the party safe passage through the normally very dangerous ruins. So I'm looking for more ways that I can demonstrate that the Royal Guards are not light weights. One of the things I thought of was have the Queen get the sense that the party (particular the Shardmind) isn't very impressed with her forces, and arrange a demonstration.
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Jan 28, 2013 23:30
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During the banquet, have the Queen ask the PCs, almost as an aside, which other faction sent them. (If they're not in a position to know any of the other factions, suggest a couple.) Let her persist for a few minutes; unless one of the PCs names a group just to shut her up, have her intelligence officer suggest one of the factions. "<Faction>? Hm. I didn't think <leader of faction> would be so bold." Then let the aide suggest that perhaps the PCs were sent to evaluate their defenses. "They are growing stronger, after all." (This is a lie - they're particularly vulnerable - but of the group privy to the conversation, only he knows that. This is the only way he can manipulate the Queen into doing something about them, though; if she knows they're weak, they're not worth her time.) Have the Queen order her troops to roll in and claim that territory to teach that faction their place - and then carry on with the banquet as if nothing had happened. Later in the evening, let the PCs overhear someone mentioning that the <Faction> expedition was an overwhelming success. This lets you emphasize the volatile nature of the city as well as demonstrate the Queen's power (as far as the PCs know, she demolished a moderately-powerful rival faction), without resorting to "you don't think my NPC is as powerful as I keep telling you she is". (Plus, it keeps them on their toes, since now they don't know whether she's actually interested in them as individuals or if she thinks they're spies and is playing games with them.)
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Jan 29, 2013 01:02
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Have you seen Batman: Under the Red Hood? There's a scene where the Red Hood invites all of the heads of the major organized crime families to a meeting and tells them they have to kick in with him and stop paying protection money to the Black Mask. When they ask why, he tosses a duffel bag onto the table, and says, "those are the heads of all your lieutenants." and makes it very clear to them that obtaining those was about as inconvenient as an afternoon picnic. he adds, "make no mistake, I'm not asking you; I'm telling you." So maybe go with what the above poster said, but give it that kind of twist. Assuming that'll work for your campaign.
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Jan 29, 2013 01:36
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Besesoth posted:During the banquet, have the Queen ask the PCs, almost as an aside, which other faction sent them. (If they're not in a position to know any of the other factions, suggest a couple.) Let her persist for a few minutes; unless one of the PCs names a group just to shut her up, have her intelligence officer suggest one of the factions. "<Faction>? Hm. I didn't think <leader of faction> would be so bold." I think I can make this work. She won't be able to, or interested in, hold what she takes. I think she might inquire about the party, and either ask questions about one of the factions, or see if any of the other groups have given the party trouble, and then invite the Party out the terrace where they can watch the a section of the city explode into flames. I mean, the only thing better than playing with your toys is showing them off to other people. This sort of "Ability to hit anywhere" actually has a chance to come into play later. The Queens Phylactery is buried deep in a series of vaults beneath the mountain the royal palace is built atop. Its a gate to hell, and it gives her command of all devils in a certain radius for the next two weeks; in addition, she is a necromancer. So the the Royalist troops are a mix of contracted-Devils and Undead, and supplemented by some constructs. (This is a Tiefling empire city, so making agreements with devils was pretty common.) She views anyone in the ruins as thieves and looters, exploiting the state of emergency. Never mind that the city fell about 1000 years ago. There is a group of "free" devils that have taken over a series of forges and have managed to reactivate them, making taking care of this situation in the party's best interest. So they might find themselves needing to play nice with the crazy royal to get air support to attack the forges. P.d0t posted:Have you seen Batman: Under the Red Hood? That's a great idea, but the Queen doesn't have any interest in working with inferiors. Right now, the party is an interesting diversion. When they stop being interesting, she'll probably kill them, either to raise them as undead or to have an arts and crafts day with their corpses. Probably both. There's a group of Tieflings who want to rebuild the city, and would ally themselves with the Queen in a second (well, except for the leader, but he'd be sort of forced to join), but she views them as beneath her. The biggest thing that is keeping the Queen from retaking the city is herself.
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Jan 29, 2013 03:25
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Zereth posted:I don't think there's any edition of D&D where a fight containing something 4 levels over the party (particularly at level 2) can accurately be described as "fair and balanced". It was 3e. No. It was a perfectly even fight. 1 - Two of the players are playing Level Adjusted planar races. 2 - They already have magic weapons. 3 - Some of them have some strategic power-gaming bonuses using obscure items they bought with their starting gold. (IE- A Dwarf Ranger playing as an exterminator who goes around with a Sprayer filled with bug poison. 4 - One of these players honestly rolled a Tiefling thief with a natural 18, and two 17's. This player, she of course, had two +2 bonuses. So this is a level 2 character with a game-breaking 20 dex, 19 intelligence, and 17 Constitution. So yeah, I feel justified in making the players fight a level 6 Tiefling caster. The only player death in their party of 5 happened towards the end, and he was quickly stabilized by a health potion. The other "death" was a riding dog owned by a player's critical fail. The level 6 caster was a challenge, but was set up to be beatable. (She was a Dustman Tiefling, her spells 2 magic missile, 2 sleeps. A few stat lowering rays. She also had ghoul and vampire touch. 2 gaseous forms. 2 levels of summon zombies. And 1 animate dead.) There was also a player-saving NPC that was there to save the party if they were about to be TPK'd. However the NPC, a higher ranking Dustman Sorcerer, just cast Hold Mass Undead whenever the baddie cast Animate Dead raising the skeletons on her baddie party members. It was her only 4th level spell. However, it was an act of cowardice when she was about to lose. You see, philosophically, she cast animate dead, which stole her Dustman commrade's chance at obtaining the true death. She cast it as she was running in panic from the death she was supposed to covet. Both of these things are considered sacrilege by members of the dustman faction. So this pissed off Deus Ex Machina NPC offered to take the caster out, to which the party replied, "gently caress THAT WE ARE KILLING THAT BITCH." To Effectronica, the phased battle ideas, and simplifying the HP of monsters to numbers of hits is a good one. The Sorcerer boss, though, she had like a constitution of 8 and like 18 HP. I just wanted a chance to try to fight them to the death with what is like, another player-controlled party, instead of a monster. Unfortunately, this lead to a loving 12 hour fight. God Of Paradise fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 03:49
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Level 6 sorcerers don't have fourth level spells? 
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Jan 29, 2013 03:55
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Zereth posted:Level 6 sorcerers don't have fourth level spells? I believe they can have 1 at level 6 provided they have a +4 cha bonus and a plus 5 int bonus. But I might be mistaken. In which case she will drop a magic item that would let her. gently caress it. I believe that sometimes players need to fight something truly threatening. That fight, while it lasted way too long, is going to be one those players will remember for the rest of their life. They are going to remember grappling with zombies under a spell of darkness. They are going to remember trying to dogpile a woman who then turns into a vapor and travels through a keyhole. Then breaking into the room to find that she's summoned more zombies. They are going to remember shooting her as she was about to open the front door of a mansion to escape them. Surviving that. Winning that. That win. That win is going to mean something. God Of Paradise fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 04:00
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 00:01 |
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... I'm pretty sure sorcerers get no benefit from Int to spellcasting, that's wizards (who get no benefit from Cha). They also don't prepare their spells in advance, that's how you can tell they're sorcerers and not wizards.
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Jan 29, 2013 04:02
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