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Running a group through Madness at Gardmore Abbey again, it still owns, but I have to say on closer inspection it's kind of weird, but also very D&D, that the module is full of beholders, orc chiefs, giants, demons, necromancers and dragons, and your final boss encounter is "some dude". I feel like if you've bested all these creatures and then your capstone is fighting Lord Padraig it's a minor letdown. I think I want to engineer it so Mekkalath is the final boss.
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Feb 1, 2022 13:12
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 18:47 |
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Honestly skill challenges as written are pretty much unusable, and I tend to go around the table and ask everyone how they specifically contribute, much like you do, but I let the challenge come to an end when our collective descriptions suggest the issue at hand is pretty much resolved. Usually it takes going around twice at most.
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Mar 7, 2022 17:02
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Goddamn it. I had a beholder fight coming up and since they're so fiddly to run and you have to do a whole attack routine every turn, I prerolled like 100 eye ray attacks and wrote them on little slips of paper to draw from a bag. I even made sure to have equal amounts of each type of ray in there, as well as give each type an even spread of rolls, because I had visions of rolling something like 8 petrification rays with high attack rolls in the first two rounds and wanted to have as diverse a pool to draw from as I could manage. Guess what I did draw in the first two rounds
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Mar 21, 2022 16:04
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If I ever run Madness at Gardmore Abbey again I'll probably heavily modify it too. Some stuff needs fleshing out, some stuff could use paring down, some elements don't really work well with each other. Mainly I'm thinking about what it would play like if instead of having 5-6 key encounters with bosses that each hold 3-4 cards, there would be ~18 big setpiece encounters, each mechanically influenced by a single card, and only like 3-4 wandering monster type additional encounters.
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Mar 25, 2022 14:49
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There's something to be said for running it on a laptop with a second screen facing the players. I used to do it on Roll20 with two accounts, or if you can track down a copy of Masterplan that can do the same thing completely offline and helps a ton with turn and condition tracking too.
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Apr 12, 2022 15:39
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Verisimilidude posted:2. “At-will powers don’t make sense because where are the characters getting the energy to produce the effects? An infinite energy source?” I'm nearing the end of a Madness at Gardmore Abbey playthrough and my group has completely derailed it by tricking the dragon Mekkalath into thinking the orcs were attacking his lair, prompting him to go and burn down the village, while the party slaughters his underlings and makes off with the hoard. No final showdown with the orcs for them! Which actually suits me fine because we're trying to end the campaign in the near future and that's one less scenario to have to deal with. But it's also looking like they'll have an opportunity to be fully rested for a final showdown with the secret collector. I'm already planning to turn that into a more elaborate encounter than what's in the book. In all the years of 4E analyzing and homebrewing, has there been a good way to balance a single encounter out for a fully rested party so it's fun and can't be solved by brute forcing it with three rounds of Daily powers? Not sure if a Lair Assault is going to fit the scenario.
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May 1, 2022 09:21
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I mean nevermind cantrips, the whole reason fighters were allegedly balanced against wizards was supposed to be "wizards can run out, fighters can swing their sword all day" and ain't no one added up the energy required for one sword swing against the fighter's calorie intake that day
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May 1, 2022 11:28
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Coming up on the end of Madness at Gardmore Abbey and I feel like the final fight against the secret collector needs a gimmick that involves the Deck, beyond the usual "draw random card for a terrain power" (which, on a sidenote, has been largely bookkeeping and seemed more of a nuisance than an interesting addition to everyone in my two playthroughs so far). I already thought I'd make each of the collector's cards into an enemy creature, based on the card's power, and place the whole thing in a sort of Dimension of Cards, but it feels like it still needs something. Maybe each round a different card power manifests no matter what and the players have to work around it in some way?
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May 9, 2022 10:08
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One Legged Ninja posted:And here's the updated Master plan Github. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 13:01 on Jun 1, 2022 |
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Jun 1, 2022 11:49
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I always thought the only thing that Masterplan still needed was a lighting system. One that actually fits the mechanics of 4E and puts entire squares as either brightly lit, in low light or dark individually, based on the actual line of sight/effect mechanics.
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Jun 2, 2022 10:18
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For the upgrade option you could just say it takes 5 hours. I don't think any enhancement bonuses are ever anything other than 5 levels apart. Matter of fact, I'd just say "you can increase an item's level by 5" to head off any potential misinterpretations. So like: - An item can be upgraded, increasing its level by 5. Its enhancement bonus and any other properties are modified accordingly. - The process requires ritual components of a value equal to the difference between the original and upgraded items' values and takes 5 hours. For the fire stuff: Flaming weapon is an enchantment whose item levels are at a multiple of 5. If you upgrade an item of level 1-4, it costs residuum and time accordingly, that's fine; if you want to turn a level 5 (10, 15...) item into a flaming weapon, as written you can do it for free. Bug or feature? Resistance Armor is a level 2 (7, 12...) item. Are you allowed to take a level 5 armor and downgrade it to level 2, maybe gaining residuum in the process? Or can you only *up*grade and turn the level 5 +1 armor into a level 7 resistance armor +2? (Which is fine, but does probably bear restating.) And, same question as above but for same-level items.
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Aug 22, 2022 21:30
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I think it's okay to enable the hammer to upgrade any weapon or armor into a higher level Flaming Weapon or Resistance (Fire) Armor, at the cost of the difference as specified. But not downgrade, and not turn a fire item back into something else. In terms of the party's wealth, you're keeping things balanced with the cost requirement. With the armor, crafty players might realize they don't have to pay the full cost of upgrading, say, a level 5 +1 armor to a level 10 +2 armor if they can just make a level 7 +2 armor at a fraction of the cost, but the fact that it'll specifically have to be Resistance (Fire) Armor probably makes up for it. If someone's in it purely for the AC bonus it becomes a little more worth it to them, but it only works once per item - next time you have to upgrade from level 7 to 12. And turning a level 5 weapon into a Flaming weapon for free is probably okay too, same goes for any level 2/7/12... armor. You had a level X item, you still have a level X item, but you had a little bit more agenda over what it is.
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Aug 25, 2022 20:22
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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. Martial could take place on an open battlefield and have soldiers protecting artillery, Primal in a dense jungle with lurkers and skirmishers and brutes, and so on.
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Sep 7, 2022 13:14
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In that case I'd instinctively say Martial is a Soldier, Divine is a Leader, Shadow is a Lurker, Primal is a Brute. Arcane could be Controller, then Psionic could also be a Lurker (one of those that enters PC's heads), and maybe shift Shadow to a Skirmisher. Or make Arcane an AoE Artillery and Psionic the Controller.
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Sep 7, 2022 15:00
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Is there a reason you're not using established charge mechanics for the martial's movement & attack gimmick? Defining "a straight line" on the grid gets a bit murky once it's not a cardinal direction. Plus, if you've been playing with regular charge mechanics for 20 levels, it's gonna be tough to convey to your players how this enemy uses almost-but-not-quite the same ones; they might try countermeasures that work on a charge but not this and be annoyed, or they might preemptively assume they can't avoid the "charge" when they really could.
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Sep 11, 2022 10:44
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If you can short rest after every single encounter, those 1-2 wandering monsters become utterly trivial. If you run your dungeon in such a way that there are designated safe zones for resting (somehow made non-exploitable), and there are, say, 1.5 - 2 encounters' worth of monsters inbetween safe zones, then it becomes a different matter. Now it's a game about splitting up an enemy group before you enter a fight, or keeping one from pulling the alarm, or not allowing them to gang up, or whatever you can imagine. Not, it must be said, the game 4E was designed to be, but I don't think it would take much adaptation, either.
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Feb 6, 2023 12:24
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It might be fine and even a good challenge if the party just doesn't get to rest for that whole dungeon level and is able to avoid some monsters, lure them into traps, or split groups.
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Feb 20, 2023 16:44
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Yeah, that's probably the main concern: half an encounter will easily be defeated by at-will powers only so they never will have any motivation to use encounters or even dailies. It's a good idea for a game, but 4E is not the kind of game that is, out of the box. Maybe if entering every mini encounter carried the danger of attracting the other monsters if you're not quick enough in defeating them, or similar conditions. Some incentive for the players to not take it safe and easy.
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Feb 20, 2023 17:00
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 18:47 |
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I've been saying for a while that feats and magic items occupy much of the same design space ("stuff that you acquire over time and that mainly modifies existing powers and abilities") and therefore we should have either feats or items, although I guess that was a lot more true when magic items weren't "a way to get more Daily powers, but ones you'll forget you have".
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Feb 27, 2023 18:12
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