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dwarf74 posted:Oh for heavens sake I might be back up to 7 players Don't do it man! You have so much life left to live for!
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May 13, 2014 17:46
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:34 |
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Make extensive use of area attacks, temporary domination effects, terrain deformation, and zone control (threatening reach and/or persistant zone attacks like setting the ground on fire). You can also increase the damage. If (and only if) your players have too many strikers, increase the HP too. All that to say... use more elites/solo monsters, and if a standard monster looks like a good idea, give it additional elite/solo abilities.
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May 13, 2014 20:08
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I noticed that MM3 on a Business Card lacks any kind of guidelines or formulae for generating the stat block, which is where initiative and perception is derived. Is there such a thing, or are the stats arbitrary as far as MM3 is concerned?
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Jan 10, 2015 15:55
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dwarf74 posted:Just set initiative to taste. Use the PCs as a baseline. Well, let me explain what I'm trying to do. In 4e, you're supposed to fight monsters that are at, or very near to, your level. Certainly no more than 4 levels above or below. However, there's a mechanism to be able to use a much higher or lower level creature than you in the Minion/Elite/Solo system. If you adjust a creature's level up or down by 5 (or 10, in the case of solo), and then add (or subtract) abilities to suit the new status, then you can fight the exact same creature at different levels. What I'm trying to do is write a program... well, a database in Microsoft Access... that will take in the barest minimum of information about a creature, and then generate the stats (according to MM3) for it at Minion, Standard, Elite, Solo, and even "Super-Solo" or "Boss" levels, requiring me only to tweak the abilities/traits in the end. As a side benefit, when I stick in the bare information for MM1 creatures, it'll convert it to MM3 math for me as well. I don't want to have to manually put in initiative and perception. Hence, wanting to calculate it via the stat block, if I can generate a stat block by level. I might not be able to get away with it, but... Any suggestions?
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Jan 11, 2015 04:41
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I was hoping to get by with only inputting the stuff that in the header bar (and the abilities/traits, later). You know, Name, Level, Role, Rank (Elite/Solo/etc), Size, Origin, Type, Keyword. Even if I add in stats, the stats will have to change when the level adjustment happens, so I still need a formula to calculate new values. Hm, I guess I can work backwards, set initiative and perception from the Skill DCs by Level chart, and figure out what the Dex and Wis should be from that, retroactively. Defenses can be calculated, and then related stats calculated from those.
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Jan 11, 2015 05:17
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I used it constantly, and it certainly works, but be aware that it doesn't use the MM3 values, so you may want to tweak it on the fly. Particularly, the suggested damage values are WAY off, although you can get by with using the "high" damage values for everything.
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Apr 30, 2015 02:49
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I publicly "allow" death, BUT, I nudge things to avoid it. That is to say, I fudge dice rolls like crazy to play brinksmanship games with the 0, and I allow plenty of chances for the other players to revive. Saving a downed comrade is pretty entertaining, and can be a good moment. Actually ending a character? Only when the player wants to change characters, which has happened a few times. But everyone knows close calls are much more fun than having to restart. I also kill off the characters of players who leave the group. That happened every few months-- we had a core group, and a number of floaters that'd pass through. The core group always got a kick out of helping me set up the scenarios to kill them off, as we always talked about it first. We'd keep interesting characters as NPCs, but to my memory, there were only one or two of those. As for improbable/impossible encounters? I play a pretty rough tactical game, and my players love that... big X-COM fans. I REGULARLY pit them against overwhelming odds, and maybe half the time they surprise me with some awsome out-of-the-box solution and I let them get away with it, and the other half of the time they make up their own victory conditions. If I put them against a "by-the-book fair encounter" they practically sleep through it, so I use those only as "restful" "easy walk-in-the-park" breaks. Any interesting fight will be quite difficult for 'em. But that's my group, YMMV, in fact, it probably will. I feel lucky in that, when it comes to these impossible fights, when they CAN'T think of a solution, they're pretty good at figuring out to run away on their own without me telling them. Heck, sometimes they run away when I personally think the fight is perfectly doable. But again, when they run away, they always find some other victory, like stealing the cultists ritual equipment and using it to infiltrate another cell elsewhere. That sort of thing. To be honest, my group's fondness for overly difficult combat scenarios might be why it's hard for us to hold on to that 5th player slot for long.
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Oct 29, 2015 16:07
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I can DM 4e, but my prior attempts at PbP have failed pretty badly, with players just ceasing to post after a week or two. Is PbP just not a good match for 4e? If you guys have any tips, I'd be happy to give it another go as DM. I have a homebrew setting/campaign I've run for a few years that I'd love to polish up by giving it a second run.
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Nov 29, 2015 11:57
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Any good ideas for magical gear that could be made from an aboleth corpse?
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Oct 16, 2020 09:48
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Lemon-Lime posted:Mechanically or narratively? More mechanically minded. The campaign doesn't really allow for "magic shops" and the corpse should be treasure. I'm hoping there's some good magic items I'm less familiar with that would match thematically, and help the party significantly. Resisting charm might be a bit weak... particularly now that the aboleth is dead. I'm hoping for more universally useful items to give them.
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Oct 16, 2020 10:46
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I need advice for a homebrew channel divinity power at paragon tier (I'm the DM, a player will need this soon). The deity's theme is civilization, but more specifically, keeping monsters away from said civilization. The deity is also dying and on the edge of survival, so I thought adding a feature that costs the user's healing surges would be interesting. Here's my initial draft-- thoughts?quote:Light of Civilization Bonus Feature I know the religion check is a little wonky, but I wanted a way to make sure that non-ranged, non-reach monsters aren't automatically *completely* negated. I would love to hear ideas to make that better. I'd considered making the sustain the healing surge drain, but that seemed a little harsh. An alternative idea would have creatures entering the aura be automatically attacked with an implement power that interrupts movement. That'd be more balanced, but slightly less thematic, as the deity's blessing has been a bit more absolute in the campaign so far-- not sure how I feel about powerful creatures being able to ignore it, when extremely powerful creatures being stymied by this blessing is the in-universe reason that civilization can exist at all. Could also make it target only a single enemy or group of enemies and prevent them from coming nearer, but I also like the idea of making a clear boundary line.
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Feb 24, 2021 13:27
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Anyone have good homebrew monster mechanics that are useful for incentivizing players to utilize more space in a large battlemap? I have these awesome huge maps, but my players tend to prefer spending their time in one small corner of them. I mean, if not, not a big deal. We're still having fun. Just hoping there might be some interesting mechanics to explore.
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Aug 20, 2021 04:27
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I am looking to build a difficult set-piece encounter that involves a combat skill challenge (obsidian system) on top of six defending creatures on the Astral Plane, each an exemplar of the six 4e "power sources" (martial, divine, shadow, psionic, primal, arcane). This is all at level 21. I have the skill challenge pretty well established, and obviously the basic stats for the six creatures are going to be from MM3 on a Business Card... but I'm really not sure where to start with the combat abilities and powers. How should I mechanically go about making them really FEEL like they each are a different power source. Not just fluff... I can do fluff... but something about how they behave with movement and dice should strongly suggest their power sources. If it helps, these six creatures are automatons built by Modrons (or perhaps are a type of Modron themselves purpose built by Primus or other high-order Modron, same difference) to enforce a decree onto the prime material plane, each making sure that their assigned power source does not violate the decree in question. The players are attempting to unravel and cancel said decree... a suitably epic-level task to introduce them to the tier, I think. Any advice?
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Sep 7, 2022 02:19
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My Lovely Horse posted:In terms of pacing, how would you feel about having six themed encounters rather than creatures? I feel like the idea of fighting the power sources themselves deserves that scale. While this would be cool, I'm really not sure I can get away with stringing this out longer... this isn't the end of the campaign, just a stepping stone to the next part of their epic quest, almost qualifying as a side quest. I know it sounds like end-of-campaign stuff, but that's just because this is epic tier. Things should get out of hand at this power level, I think. SynthesisAlpha posted:Okay, brainstorming because i love making 4e monsters: This is great stuff! Very epic level... the biggest challenge will be making this fight hard, but not impossible. To that end, I'm going to keep all your various defensive options, especially the martial's defense of whirling steel, but the divine healing and defending as well, the primal pushing and making walls... but I'm also going to drop their damage to the lower end of what MM3 suggests. These things will be VERY hard to kill, but they'll be slightly less lethal. Not non-lethal, just less than what I've been using recently (dishing out 50+ damage per turn is fine when the party has a highly optimized healer character in it). The key to the encounter is that their success is less "kill the players" and more "be sufficiently distracting so the players can't do the skill challenge". More context on said skill challenge: there's a barrier surrounding the machinery of the "Decree" in the Astral Plane-- when they breach it, it'll be a new encounter with the Lich King who made the decree in the first place, probably aided by an Angel of Death, but that's for later. Anyway, the barrier. It's rapidly shifting how it functions, so every initiative count... not turn, but literal count... it changes what skill check it's vulnerable to. They need 8 successes of 8 different skills... not sure whether to require a standard action or a minor action to make an attempt. Probably minor, as they first have to figure out how the barrier works at all, so that's going to make it even more difficult. So they'll need to work out who in the party can manage each of the needed 8 skills, have them delay to the correct initiative count, get to the proper location, and then actually succeed at the DC 30 when it's time, all while being harassed by the automatons. Since success of the encounter is tied to the skill challenge, not destroying the monsters, I think making the monsters beefy, hard to hit, and nigh-unkillable will be fine.
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Sep 7, 2022 14:46
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Thought I'd show you guys what I've got. Still have a day to tweak things if need be before the session tomorrow if need be, and I always adjust things on the fly based on how the encounter is going as well. If anything is unclear... well... I understand what I mean, and I'm not exactly publishing these guys, but feel free to ask me to clarify. I really liked the idea of the Primal one being a controller more than a Brute, which does leave out the Brute role entirely, but I don't think there's going to be any lack of fear. I did say I was going to decrease the damage output... but I always start leaning high again when I remember how overly optimized the party healer it. The martial guy here is definitely going to be a key feature of the encounter, with it being able to fly across the battle field EVERY turn, making driveby attacks on the way if possible. But I think all of these guys will be memorable for one reason or another. quote:Martial Guardian Modron Level 21 Elite Soldier; XP 6400 quote:Primal Guardian Modron Level 21 Elite Controller; XP 6400 quote:Psionic Guardian Modron Level 21 Elite Artillery; XP 6400 quote:Shadow Guardian Modron Level 21 Elite Lurker; XP 6400 quote:Divine Guardian Modron Level 21 Elite Leader; XP 6400 quote:Arcane Guardian Modron Level 21 Elite Controller; XP 6400 quote:Axiomatic Maelstrom Node; Hazard Things I'm considering: halving the HP and thus dropping the "elite" status... but then again, I don't want them killing these things, I want them harrassed by them incessantly while they solve the skill challenge hazard thingy. When they solve the skill challenge, the modrons are all "defeated" instantly. I could also hand out more vulnerabilities, targeted to specific abilities my players have, to encourage them to focus on the modron they can best fight, while organizing who is managing the skill this turn. Anything else to think about? Iunnrais fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Sep 10, 2022 |
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Sep 10, 2022 04:32
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:34 |
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On the subject of interesting potions: one homebrew potion / grenade I got a lot of good use out of was a combo. One grenade creates a damaging zone that lasts a couple rounds or until the end of the encounter. Another grenade does nothing on its own, but acts as an accelerant to existing zones on the ground-- add xdy+z damage to any damaging zone it overlaps with. It's a simple idea, and you might think that it's basically the same as two different damaging grenades... and yet my players fell in love with the things, couldn't get enough of 'em.
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Jul 12, 2023 08:21
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