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Captain Walker posted:Write My Plot For Me, I Am Bad At The Short Term Edition Three options are: 1) give them something that they're running from -- a crime they didn't commit or a powerful organization that destroys things and people they like 2) give them something they're protecting -- airships and home bases are good bets 3) give them something they're working toward -- prophecies and such can work out
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Apr 8, 2013 19:00
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Have any of you guys tried something I call "the class of '49" approach to groups of player characters? In a game where the characters are soldiers have them all be from the same cadet class so that if a character gets killed an npc they share history with will step in and take their place. This way you can keep the party going even if, at some point, you don't have any original characters left. I used this in an Only War one-shot and it worked fine for our group.
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Apr 8, 2013 19:08
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Sit down and figure out where you want to go with Morpheus and the party. Then start dropping Morpheus related things into your campaign, even if they aren't actually important. Party successfully sneaks up on a sleeping guard? Just before they coup-de-grace him, they notice a butterfly fly away. Morpheus-related imagery in murals. Even if you're just stringing together unrelated encounters, tie them into your main plot even if the tie-in isn't (immediately) relevant for anything other than that. Give your party a goal beyond "all the money"; better yet, have them give the goal. I mean, all the money is fine as a motivator, but make sure they have a reason for wanting these vast sums besides the fact that a ring of phasing can make the Scrooge McDuck pool a reality.
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Apr 8, 2013 19:16
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P.S. STILL COMPLETELY DEVOID OF MERIT
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As far as NPCs go, it depends on the game system really for me. I never actually GMed DnD 3.x (I basically stopped running DnD in 1999) and just recently started up a game of 4.0. What I do in 4.0, however, is I only stat NPCs if there is a strong possibility that the NPC will be part of an encounter. However, on occasion my players do something I don't expect (as they should). On these occasions I have a file of generic monsters, sorted by role and "class," from which I take the stats/reskin the powers as appropriate. Now having said all of that, I'm currently preping for a warhammer fantasy roleplay campaign (2e) and the way this works for me is entirely different. I'm basically blowing a lot of time going into excessive detail and "creation" for all of my named NPCs and their associates--the plot important ones and/or ones I know they're going to encounter--for what I hope is the first 3 months (6 or so 8 hour sessions). I'm also busily assembling generic characters for some of the most common professions. This involves me actually making 3 characters in three separate word documents for each profession based on "skill" level. All of which, to be honest, is entirely unlike me and the most organized I've ever been in my entire life.  Typically I create whole campaigns with little or no notes, and games like oWoD I know so well that I have almost zero need to do any prep work (including NPCs) at all.
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Apr 8, 2013 21:01
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Getting close to game day, and I'm statting out what should be the last fight I need. I want to do a solo monster, and I have a template for it, but I only have 3 characters. Since they're level 1, should I just do a solo monster and they should be ok? Do I need to adjust his stats and then maybe flavor with minions?
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Apr 8, 2013 21:46
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Eldercain posted:Getting close to game day, and I'm statting out what should be the last fight I need. I want to do a solo monster, and I have a template for it, but I only have 3 characters. Since they're level 1, should I just do a solo monster and they should be ok? Do I need to adjust his stats and then maybe flavor with minions? Just remember that nothing bad happens if they steamroll your bad guys. You can make more. An interesting solo with terrain stuff or a lower-level solo with some minions is great.
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Apr 8, 2013 22:20
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I've been running a three man party in 4e lately and I've found that elites plus minions + a strong lieutenant or two make much better bosses. Solos just take too drat long to kill, the one solo I threw at them ended with the players being too glassy eyed by the end of the fight to really appreciate overcoming the bad guy.
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Apr 8, 2013 22:48
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1: Don't use older solos, they're balanced WAAAY into the slogfest side of things. 2: Generally, a single solo is not a good boss fight. It needs other critters, terrain effects, other goals, etc etc etc, to make it interesting. 3: I couldn't say for sure, but I'd suspect that solos are going to be sloggier against a low-numbers party. I'd probably swap for elites in general anyway.
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Apr 8, 2013 23:04
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Boss fight advice: 1.) If it isn't a dramatically appropriate ending, don't use a solo. Use an elite, use some neat scenery and at least one terrain effect, season with minions and other monsters (to taste). 2.) If you are going to use a solo, change everything when the monster gets bloodied. Throw in a wave of lurkers, change the terrain effects, add some gizmos to collect and have the boss move to a dramatically new location and chance its tactics.
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Apr 9, 2013 01:36
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Captain Walker posted:I'm hoping to finish this adventure and move into Cairn of the Winter King before moving Morpheus front and center. I've come up with no motivation and long term goal for the characters, no reason for them to stay together. Basically, I have no clue what do do after about 5th level. I'm trying to establish smaller fish for the PCs to fry that requires cooperation. I'm gonna read over the DMG2 again, but what can I provide to give the campaign a sense of continuity, and make the PCs feel like Big drat Heroes, not just "dungeon of the week" fodder? What I'm doing is sort of a 5-act setup. We're just finishing (roughly) Act 2, and on into Act 3. Everyone is level 4 or 5, so this should be fairly applicable to you (I hope) There are 3 "layers" to my campaign:
- Mystery/Investigation: who is the enigmatic leader of the rebels? why did he do this? where is he now/is he still alive? - Tragedy: this is what the story is really about. Telling the story of the feud that led to all of this violence and hardship; showing the emotional/psychological impact on the survivors, to pull at the heartstrings of the PCs (and make them reflect on the choices people have made, including themselves) Now, we basically did the "Star Wars: A New Hope" thing (which happens a lot in trilogy-type movies) where Act 1 introduced the pertinent setting info and characters (fake edit: you can always introduce more NPCs along the way as needed) and then wrapped it up with a little mini-sidequest (akin to blowing up the first Death Star, because a movie about introducing the characters isn't really a movie). Then tie back in to the main plot; in our case, it was "the Friendly Spirit who protected the lizardfolk from the merlocs until she was kidnapped, is actually the ghost of a Royal family member who died a long time ago in an alleged accident." I introduced the party recently to the main survivor of the family involved in the feud, showed the impact this had on her, and expand in the details of the feud. This continued pointing them towards her missing brother and the rebel leader (who share some circumstantial connection that was introduced in the first act). As well, politically, City B is petitioning for autonomy from City A, but The General who ousted the rebellion just had himself declared regent. So, Act 3 is where poo poo starts to go bad. NPCs start being murdered (possibly because of things the PCs have done, in some cases), more factions are wading into the unstable region to make their power grabs, City C is about ready to take matters into their own hands, The Party (or other parties) get framed for some sort of crime or backstabbing, one of the Royal Family members is actually still alive and is plotting something, etc. etc. So, they still need to investigate the missing brother, the true cause of death of the spirit they encountered, and the rebel leader who has cast this dark cloud over the region, all while outside factors make for this slowly-tightening noose. Tie it all together and lead up to the big climactic battle at the end. The other thing is not every adventure is all about fighting. The session we did this past weekend was "what would your character do with a long weekend in the big city?" to relax and unwind after the long fight in the swamp and the emotional plot exposition of meeting the surviving family members. I like to encourage my players to explore their characters in this way, and give them some depth of persona.
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Apr 9, 2013 03:11
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Mendrian posted:Boss fight advice: If you're worried about the boss being an older solo with too many hitpoints, I've found 75% to 80% of the original HP is a good amount. A more accurate way is to use MM3 math, like in this: http://blogofholding.com/?p=512
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Apr 9, 2013 18:11
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Agh one last thing. Is there a canon god who would be in charge or harvests and the like? Pelor seems to be the sun guy and I can roll with that just want it to be specific if that figure already exists.
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Apr 10, 2013 05:43
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I think the phb lists agriculture as one of Pelor's domains. But I'm 200 miles from my books so I'm probably wrong.
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Apr 10, 2013 05:59
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Eldercain posted:Agh one last thing. Is there a canon god who would be in charge or harvests and the like? Pelor seems to be the sun guy and I can roll with that just want it to be specific if that figure already exists. I'm far from books myself and never use canonical gods for anything but warhammer. So take with appropriate grain of salt, but if you can't figure it out I'd just do a quick google for harvest gods and pull one out of an historical pantheon, then just rename it.
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Apr 10, 2013 06:17
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Pelor is the god of Harvest and Agriculture in 4e.
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Apr 10, 2013 13:57
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So I've been DMing a new group for 2.5 months, sessions each week for around 3 and a half hours a session. The group is made up of veterans and newbies and is relatively balanced (in that they haven't had any real difficulties yet). But tonight a player (the wizard) couldn't make it at the last minute. So rather than re-tune the encounters I had the group run them a man down... And it was glorious. The players were challenged and the encounters were a LOT tougher mainly because without the Wizard they couldn't wipe out minions by the handful. My question is, how do I maintain this difficulty level when the Wizard returns without just having non-minions in encounters?
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Apr 12, 2013 04:35
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Balon posted:So I've been DMing a new group for 2.5 months, sessions each week for around 3 and a half hours a session. The group is made up of veterans and newbies and is relatively balanced (in that they haven't had any real difficulties yet). But tonight a player (the wizard) couldn't make it at the last minute. Do what every smart GM does: Kill the wizard first thing, every fight.  But seriously, I haven't found a good answer. The best success I've had is respawning minions, and a lesser degree, minions that explode/otherwise do a final-attack when killed; the problem with the latter is this also can dick over fighters. You could also buff the minions' defenses vs the wizards AoE at-wills, but that's also sort of cheap. fe: I guess I did have a lot of luck with keeping the wizard from using AoE stuff when I had them fight minions in the poison tower; he couldn't use mass-target spells, because they'd hit the barrels full of toxins. But, he couldn't use his AoE Encounters/dailies either, which was meh.
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Apr 12, 2013 06:44
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Minions with THP and/or items and/or something can resurrect them.
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Apr 12, 2013 13:03
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Not all minions are dumb. After they see the first AoE spell, one can shout 'It's a wizard! Spread out!' Equally -- if the wizard is dominating every encounter then your fights probably are a little minion-heavy. Which is not to say that you should cut them out altogether -- just remember that minion-heavy fights are the wizard's chance to shine, and fights with more regular enemies let your strikers take centre stage for a bit.
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Apr 12, 2013 13:40
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homullus posted:Minions with THP and/or items and/or something can resurrect them. I was thinking of trying 2-hit minions (flip em over to the bloodied side) and/or adding the resurrection thing the zombies from MV have to some of them.
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Apr 12, 2013 14:23
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Whybird posted:Not all minions are dumb. After they see the first AoE spell, one can shout 'It's a wizard! Spread out!' Yes -- that reminds me -- you can also use lower-level (like L-5 or more) enemies to make the trash much harder for the wizard to kill. Stuff meant to pop level-appropriate minions will nearly always hit but not necessarily kill them, especially if their HP is above the expected damage on the wizard's go-to crowd control spells. The thing about "minions" of this kind is that they will rarely hit the PCs without a lucky shot, but they clog up the battlefield and hand out CA to the small number of level-appropriate enemies you also put into the encounter. Choose ones that do interesting things other than soak up AoEs: auras, zones, triggered effects.
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Apr 12, 2013 14:27
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Guesticles posted:Do what every smart GM does: Kill the wizard first thing, every fight. I have a recurring minion-type that explodes on death, but with 3/5 of the party being melee is got to the point where they'd just delay until after the wizard had taken out as many as possible. I've tried respawning minions (summoning reinforcements, regenerating zombies, etc.) but one the first wave goes down and the "main" enemies have all been cornered they just ignored the minions all together. I tend to run more claustrophobic encounters where terrain and movement matter a lot more so "spreading out" becomes less of an option. I lean on minions because running encounters full of regular enemies tend to reach a point where no one wants to move anymore - most enemies get flanked or pinned and just wailed on for a few turns. I want the party to feel like they're overwhelmed. not the enemies. Just have to find a way to accomplish that.
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Apr 12, 2013 14:32
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Balon posted:I've tried respawning minions (summoning reinforcements, regenerating zombies, etc.) but one the first wave goes down and the "main" enemies have all been cornered they just ignored the minions all together.
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Apr 12, 2013 14:45
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Balon posted:I have a recurring minion-type that explodes on death, but with 3/5 of the party being melee is got to the point where they'd just delay until after the wizard had taken out as many as possible. Oh hey, something I can pipe up on. Have you tried murder-swarms? I had a lot of success forcing a moving battle using several zombie swarms in a cramped environment, which were slow but had buckets of HP and were difficult to dispose of thanks to their resistance to forced movement abilities. Instead they pretty much just kept lurching forwards, taking piles of damage from AoE attacks but were threatening because even the high damage didn't keep them from getting closer. As a kicker, they had a special grab attack that they used when they managed to close in on a PC, which dragged them into the swarm and subjected them to a no holds barred zombie beatdown, which, while not immediately deadly was a great deal of constant damage and cause for immediate alarm no matter who gets dragged in - which makes them doubly terrifying to squishies. The other tricky manoeuvre I pulled was ranged (sometimes minions) in cover. Minions are already hard to hit relative to your standard goon, but throwing cover bonuses on top of that makes them an incredible pain to dislodge if you stand still and they'll be racking up the damage the whole time. On the flipside charging into the thick of things obviates the bonus, and makes CQC much more effective against them. EDIT: Also, bear in mind that you can throw monsters above the APL at the party. When I ran some of the premades they had no problems whatsoever regularly throwing monsters a few levels above APL. Pingcode fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Apr 12, 2013 |
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Apr 12, 2013 15:16
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Balon posted:I have a recurring minion-type that explodes on death, but with 3/5 of the party being melee is got to the point where they'd just delay until after the wizard had taken out as many as possible. Regarding the exploding minions, make them fast so that delay of more than a few turns isn't an option. One of the ones I've used does a psychic scream that targets the mind of the person that killed in in a 5-square burst, so they can't really just pick them off or that melee isn't superboned. What if minions activated an ability when they died that gave their surviving compatriots defensive bonuses/temp HP/etc. Ping, I like your idea of shamble hordes.
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Apr 12, 2013 17:16
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I also experienced some success with superminions that have Resist All X, where X is enough to make them survive a chosen percentage of common area effect attacks.
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Apr 12, 2013 19:23
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NinjaDebugger posted:I also experienced some success with superminions that have Resist All X, where X is enough to make them survive a chosen percentage of common area effect attacks. A temporary Resist X would be pretty awesome, but I thought that even if the attack is resisted fully, it would still do 1 point of damage. (However, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be houserulesing that if a minion resists all the damage, it counts as a miss)
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Apr 12, 2013 19:53
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In my last set of battles I just had the minions need to be hit twice before they fell. The controller still had an advantage against them compared to the other PCs, they just didn't instantly wipe the floor with them. If I hadn't done that they were completely wiped out in the first round, which made the other enemies too easy to deal with.
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Apr 12, 2013 21:54
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Guesticles posted:A temporary Resist X would be pretty awesome, but I thought that even if the attack is resisted fully, it would still do 1 point of damage. I think you are imagining the minimum 1 point of damage. Damage cannot be reduced below zero.
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Apr 12, 2013 22:07
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Guesticles posted:Do what every smart GM does: Kill the wizard first thing, every fight. Easy. Have them fight wizards. Also, bring back the spell "Silence."
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Apr 12, 2013 22:44
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My group plays D&D 4E and my idea is to have the party be sentenced to fight as gladiators in the Arena for insulting the Sultan with their foreign ways and being suspected of a failed assassination during a diplomatic mission. The first fight will be everyone unarmed versus other criminals, mostly minions with rusty swords. Punches instantly downing scared thieves in a spray of teeth, etc. Then maybe some decent gladiators and/or a big wild beast, last step is the current champion. They will start naked and unarmed, having to loot what they can from enemies they defeat. After the first fight they pick up the rusty swords and a spear, the decent gladiators have shields if they want to pick one up, etc. The Warlord and Fighter will be gimped by no armor and no weapons, so lower AC, less damage and no proficiency bonus, but their powers still work with unarmed attacks. The Rogue has it a bit more difficult since most of his powers don't work unless he has a light blade so the unarmed stage is tougher for him. What I worry about are the Wizard and Warlock. No armor makes no difference to them, but taking their implements means they cannot cast anything except for Shield and the Warlock Curse. They are at a far bigger disadvantage. Anyone have an idea how to compensate for this? Best thing I could come up with is giving them makeshift implements that only work xx% of the time, or once every three of four turns. One cast and then three turns of fighting should mix it up for them, but I worry it might turn into them feeling useless until they can cast and not going in for a few swings to help the fighters out. Anyone try something like this?
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Apr 13, 2013 15:00
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Give the rogue a crappy dagger. For gods sake don't let him go unarmed. As for the casters, you don't need an implement to use implement powers, but you don't get the benefit of any expertise feats or other benefits that would apply from having a staff or rod. They'll be ok.
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Apr 13, 2013 16:09
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BioTech posted:My group plays D&D 4E and my idea is to have the party be sentenced to fight as gladiators in the Arena for insulting the Sultan with their foreign ways and being suspected of a failed assassination during a diplomatic mission. It does not sound like a very fun campaign beginning for most of the party, or, really, one that's very good. You will top 50% of the party being able to actually learn its powers once the rogue has a light blade, but even then two party members are still stuck with "I try to hit with my non-proficient fist" or "I run away" for your thrilling beginning, including against the champion. This sort of beginning is just fine in many non-4e games, mind you, I am not criticizing idea, only its application here. Having powers just not work some % of the time still sounds really, really unsatisfying, and also hard to match up with the dudes not having armor or their favorite weapons. Maybe give them makeshift implements that require them to use healing surges to power them? They would get to pick their times to use them.
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Apr 13, 2013 16:16
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So I'm DMing a Fallout d20 game and I really suck at role playing at story poo poo. I need some thoughts for a protagonist to give my players an actual goal. In the group we have a robot, escaped slave, gangster, prostitute, and merchant/scammer. They all different personal goals and they don't keep the party together.
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Apr 13, 2013 16:18
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SlayVus posted:So I'm DMing a Fallout d20 game and I really suck at role playing at story poo poo. I need some thoughts for a protagonist to give my players an actual goal. My best advice here is "never let that happen again" in any game where the party is expected to bond and be together. "My character wouldn't do that" has its time and place in a campaign, but when it's regularly in response to "should we follow the main plot line?" then DMing gets pretty unfun.  My second best advice is to start dropping hints that their paths may be more related than they thought. Maybe gangster used to be mentored by the person who captured the escaped slave; one of the prostitute's parents may have had some relationship with somebody important to the merchant. Identify areas in the backstory that the individual players are willing to let you set or change, and weave stories together. Make sure that there's something "out there" that leaves them wanting to find out more, and dole it out slowly.
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Apr 13, 2013 16:31
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Captain Walker posted:Give the rogue a crappy dagger. For gods sake don't let him go unarmed. As for the casters, you don't need an implement to use implement powers, but you don't get the benefit of any expertise feats or other benefits that would apply from having a staff or rod. They'll be ok. For sure the rusty swords and other crappy weapons in the first wave will have a dagger in there as well. But he will have to take it. Seeing how they are minions I doubt it'll be more than one or two rounds before the Rogue punches one to the ground or dashes over to one the Fighter downed and picks it up. I am mostly going for that first round of "this isn't good...", as explained below. I didn't know that about the implements, very helpful. Thanks! homullus posted:It does not sound like a very fun campaign beginning for most of the party, or, really, one that's very good. You will top 50% of the party being able to actually learn its powers once the rogue has a light blade, but even then two party members are still stuck with "I try to hit with my non-proficient fist" or "I run away" for your thrilling beginning, including against the champion. This sort of beginning is just fine in many non-4e games, mind you, I am not criticizing idea, only its application here. Having powers just not work some % of the time still sounds really, really unsatisfying, and also hard to match up with the dudes not having armor or their favorite weapons. Maybe give them makeshift implements that require them to use healing surges to power them? They would get to pick their times to use them. This isn't the beginning of the campaign, sorry if that wasn't clear. They are currently level 4 and this will happen somewhere before hitting 5, after a dozen encounters with normal gear in this campaign so far. It has been a continuous story of building up support to go on this diplomatic mission and prove themselves to the Duke. The idea isn't to start at L1 with half the group messed up before they ever get a normal weapon, I agree that would be quite bad. I am considering this because it will take them out of their comfort zone for a few fights to mix things up. Normally, even if the enemy is stronger, it can be kind of hard to feel vulnrable when you have magic armor, a flaming sword and all that stuff. I think that losing everything they won so far for a short period will make them connect more with having to fight for their lives. Not being in your comfort zone for a bit can lead to great character development and roleplaying in my experience. It is easy for a Wizard to stand in the back blasting everything with fireballs, it is hard to realize that man in front of you is going to strangle you until your eyes pop unless you can bash his face in first.
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Apr 13, 2013 19:37
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BioTech posted:My group plays D&D 4E and my idea is to have the party be sentenced to fight as gladiators in the Arena for insulting the Sultan with their foreign ways and being suspected of a failed assassination during a diplomatic mission. Never tried this, but it sounds like it could be fun - make your party earn their starting equipment. Have your thief pick up a broken bone from the sand, or maybe someone throws a pot at them and he picks up a shard of pottery and uses one or the other as an improvised light blade. For your magic users, as other people said, they can't use the implement encounters, but should still be able to use their powers. Maybe your Wizard How about this: Maybe the arena itself is trapped - there are wards high on the walls that try to zap anyone who uses magic inside of it. So your wizard/warlock are given implements so that the crowd can laugh as they have to make REF saves vs. being zapped whenever they cast spells. Now, instead of just dealing with the pit fighters, the party needs to disable the runes so the Wizard and Warlock can cast spells. This could also open the a way for the party to escape, as the runes could also run a forcefield that prevents climbing out.
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Apr 13, 2013 22:15
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Never mind, inspiration struck.
Project1 fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Apr 14, 2013 |
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Apr 14, 2013 07:06
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Okay, so as I'm still trying to coordinate getting my d20 Apocalypse campaign going, I'd like to ask for advice on a couple of things. First, what's the best info to soak up and the best info to skip in the d20 book to get the mechanics down so I can start playing? My friend is super experienced but he's playing and I don't want to have to ask him about rules every five seconds. Second, what system is similar to D20 but more fantasy-ish and has published adventures? Would this just be good old D&D? I was thinking of trying to do some quick Dark Sun oneoffs with a couple buddies but I'm not sure about learning ANOTHER ruleset.
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Apr 14, 2013 07:41
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| # ? Jun 2, 2024 17:36 |
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Apocolypse world. Easy peasy, you'll grok it quick.
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Apr 14, 2013 08:49
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