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I'm going to be running my first 4E game next week -what tips would you give me going in/focus on prep areas
I'm still boning up on the rules but I've run a couple of 1 v 1 fights to make sure I get the basics. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Oct 30, 2015 |
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Oct 30, 2015 00:03
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Zereth posted:I'm pretty sure everything is balanced around characters taking the feat tax feats, actually. Sorry, to be clear, by that I meant 'do I just hand out improved defences and expertise for free, or do I make them spend a feat to take them?' - I was planning on going with forcing them to spend a feat, rather than giving people 2 free feats.
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Oct 30, 2015 00:09
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Lemon Curdistan posted:Yep, thirding 'give them free feats'. CB can handle this. And give them '+1 feat bonus to hit across the board' rather than with specific gear. Just watch the scaling on non-implement/weapon powers, inclusive of any bonuses to hit they should wind up at (iirc) +3/6/9 vs NAD and +4/8/12 vs AC. To easy - the consensus seems to be something like you are proposing (which seems to be basically 'give everyone master at arms for free') or an expertise feat at level 1, and improved defences (or similar) at level 5 so I will go with that. Anything else? Edit: I've found CB loader and am currently trying to work out how to get it to go. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Oct 30, 2015 |
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Oct 30, 2015 00:35
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thespaceinvader posted:In general, don't nitpick small details. Arrows, XP, gold, minor actions, none of these really need to be tracked most of the time - gold needs tracking on the macro scale, but past about 5th level, don't micromanage individual GPs. Yeah, I've never really bothered before (other than GP) and the setup for Zeitgeist (you are the police) offers a perfect opportunity to tip that out the back as well. Good tip about the actions though, that is pretty ridiculous.
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Oct 30, 2015 05:00
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Ran my first game of the Zeitgiest adventure path and am wondering if I need to do anything about encounter balance. GM + 4 players and ran the first two encounters straight out of the book and they beat them pretty soundly. The first encounter is obviously a soft handed intro, but the 2nd battle is a climatic set piece. As the players were playing smart/rolled well I gave them favorable setups, but I don't think they were seriously taxed. People were holding dailies until some mild prompting. However, for the next session I am getting a 5th player and am wondering if I will need to change the encounter balance. If it was moderate-easy to four players, will it be way to easy for 5? One of the players is an experienced 3.5/5th GM and he had was of the view that I might need to step it up slightly. I wasn't conciously soft handing the monsters, and I like to think I am a fairly smart/tactical player. My players are generally reasonably optimised (e.g. 18/18 or 20 attack stat lineups) with the group comprising a sensibly built twin strike bow ranger, predator druid (who is a sharp tactician as well) and a less well optimised, but still solidly designed dragonborn inspiring warlord and a goalith warden. The 5th will be rolling some sort of sorcerer or wizard. Edit: Other than the encounter balance issue, which may just be me, I was very impressed by the adventure path and so where the players. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Nov 18, 2015 |
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Nov 18, 2015 04:05
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Does anyone have an updated Zeitgeist path files that includes the full themes and paragon paths?
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Jan 3, 2016 04:41
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Doubleposting - I'm running the Zeitgeist adventure path and that features a ton of skill checks outside of skill challenges for finding clues or whatever. I was thinking about changing the skill check rules for outside of a challenge to being as follows (no changes to combat): Easy: Anyone not obviously incompetent succeeds (like, if you are blind you're failing the check to visually identify someone fails) Medium: Anyone trained makes the check Hard: Roll as normal - maybe with 2d10. The other option is to just make skillchecks 2d10. The idea is basically that the PCs are magical police and I can safely assume they have solid level of competence. The adventures so far seem intelligently written so that required clues are behind easy/medium and hard is for bonus content. (Zeitgeist Adventure Path spoilers) e.g. the fact that it wasn't the security officer who shot the 'thief' is easy, but the fact that Cillian Creed is an unatural being is hard I've pretty much been doing this informally, but will I horribly break anything? Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 23:21
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Mustache Ride posted:Here's one I found off of ENWorld that seems to work okay Unfortunately that one is missing the level 5 and 10 theme powers and the paragon paths. However, thanks for the link because it does have this later in the thread: https://drive.google.com/folderview...THpwN1RvRTZ0bWs which is more complete. Still missing the paragon paths (except monument of war) and most of the level 5 and 10 theme powers, but that's fixable.
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Jan 5, 2016 00:38
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Rules question - how does the Githyanki silver sword (which converts all damage to psychic) work with the Malec Kath Emissary Level 16 power which adds 1d4 elemental damage (e.g. thunder) to a power. There is a general question here of how do I resolve the order of operations in this sort of case as the GM.
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Jan 7, 2016 23:06
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Jolyne Cujoh posted:The attack does whatever damage it would normally do as psychic damage+1d4 thunder damage. This is still a single damage roll. So you can still apply resounding thunder and psychic lock then because it's got both keywords? Cool.
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Jan 7, 2016 23:16
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What are the benchmarks? I've seen the following which is lifed from the strategy guide (I think?) about system math: Attack vs. AC: 6 + level Attack vs. NAD: 4 + level AC: 15 + level NADs: 13 + level But that seems a bit low - I feel like you want to add 2 to the attacks for well optimised and 3 to the defences for a defender and 1 to the defences for a non defender. My players are currently running around with +9s at level 2 which mechanically feels OK.
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Jan 8, 2016 13:12
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^ I'd be keen to know. I'm trying to make a zeitgeist custom .part with the rest of the themes and the paragon paths. Some stuff isn't calculating right. For example, the following attack doesn't add the ability modifer etc. I think the specific name under attack & hit is wrong though I based it off the other paragon paths. Unfortunately as the Wiki with the documentation has exploded, I have no idea what I am doing wrong. Can anyone help? <RulesElement name="Hyper Beam" type="Power" internal-id="ID_FMP_POWER_SHOOTIST_3" source="Zeitgeist" revision-date="x/x/x"> <Category> ID_INTERNAL_CATEGORY_ATTACK,ID_INTERNAL_CATEGORY_ENCOUNTER,ID_INTERNAL_CATEGORY_ENCOUNTER_USAGE,ID_FMP_CATEGORY_8,ID_FMP_CATEGORY_31,ID_FMP_CATEGORY_24,ID_INTERNAL_CATEGORY_STANDARD_ACTION,11 </Category> <Prereqs> Mad Shootist </Prereqs> <Flavor> You overcharge your blaster, gaining immense power for a short period of time. </Flavor> <specific name="Power Usage"> Daily </specific> <specific name="Display"> Mad Shootist Attack 20 </specific> <specific name="Keywords"> Weapon, Arcane </specific> <specific name="Action Type"> Minor action </specific> <specific name="Attack Type"> Ranged weapon </specific> <specific name="Target"> One creature </specific> <specific name="Attack"> Highest ability modifier vs. AC </specific> <specific name="Hit"> The first time you attack with this power, a hit deals 3[W] + primary ability score modifier force damage. The second time, a hit deals 4[W] + primary ability score modifier damage. The third time, a hit deals 5[W] + primary ability score modifier damage, and at the end of your turn your blaster explodes, as detailed in Inventive Gunnery above. </specific> <specific name="Special"> You must use your blaster for this attack. </specific> <specific name="Class"> ID_FMP_PARAGON_PATH_SHOOTIST </specific> <specific name="Level"> 20 </specific> <specific name="Power Type"> Attack </specific> </RulesElement>
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Jan 9, 2016 06:07
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Generic Octopus posted:I'll check it myself in a bit if you don't beat me to it, but a few of your Category tags don't agree with your Specific Names (i.e. CATEGORY_ENCOUNTER : specific name = Daily, STANDARD vs Minor, etc.). Thanks! that fixes part of the problem, but it's still not adding the dexterity modifier to the attack. Full part file: http://pastebin.com/041jwqkH Screenshot of output: http://imgur.com/C3HqZ4N
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Jan 9, 2016 11:04
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Generic Octopus posted:Replace "Highest ability modifier" with "Your highest ability modifier" for the attack line. Cool - thanks for that. I'm very happy to edit the pdf but I couldn't work what the way to get the damage to work. Is there documentation kicking around somewhere?
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Jan 10, 2016 07:04
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Rules question about order of operations that I don't understand. Say I'm firing off 'static charge' the Elementalist close burst that says "one enemy adjacent to your target takes CHA mod in damage" and I have Mark of Storm which is "when you hit an enemy with a lightning or thunder power you can slide that enemy one square" can I choose the order of operations or is their a fixed damage->other effects. I'm asking for cases like this. If you have a grid like: code:1) Resolve guys one at a time, in a fixed order (damage -> slide) (results in 1 x cha mod to damage) 2) Resolve guys one at a time, in a chosen order (slide -> damage) (results in 2 x cha mod to damage) If I can slide then apply damage, I can hit the top left guy, slide him into the middle and he zaps the other guy with damage splash, then the other guy zaps him. But if you do all the damage, then slide guys you don't get the cha mod. If you do them damage -> slide one at time, then Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Jan 22, 2016 |
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Jan 22, 2016 00:36
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That thread got saved here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?471616-Night-at-the-Roxbury-Tricks-for-Multiple-Defender-Parties-(by-GelationousOctahedron)
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Jan 23, 2016 13:21
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Mecha Gojira posted:How do you pick up Avatar of Storm as a Sorcerer? Don't you need the Channel Divinity Class Feature? And can this method be adapted to martial classes? The prerequisite for avatar of the storm is the feat storm sacrifice - which it appears you can qualify for by getting Divine channeler. The downside is it becomes basically very to grab the improved critical feats due to the strength requirements.
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Feb 18, 2016 23:00
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berenzen posted:Avatar of storm gives +2 strength, +2 con, so as long as a player has 11 strength as a sorcerer, you get it without strength investment. And yeah, it requires divine channeler, which means low-int for the sorcerer. 11 strength, 13 con, 14 dex, Int 8, Wis 13, Cha 16, grab religion through a background, take divine channeler to grab one of the chaladin CD, grab storm sacrifice. It's feat heavy, so try to convince your DM to just let you grab the feat. But AoS is the best storm sorcerer Epic Destiny in the game, It's a CHA hit, so you'll end up with 26 charisma in the end, but you'll be hitting for +70-80 modifiers on your damage for an encounter. It's amazingly fun, and you end up clearing out massive swaths of the battlefield. The +2 strength that you get from Avatar of Storm lets you qualify for the expanded criticals. Yeah, it's a huge number of hoops to jump through for a very strong payoff.
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Feb 19, 2016 01:02
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dwarf74 posted:Wow, so Adventure 12 of Zeitgeist just got released. We talking the big climatic fight? That is a really well written adventure though - one of the things these guys are doing is talking about the themes they are trying for and that makes it a lot easier to run.
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Feb 24, 2016 03:26
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dwarf74 posted:Yeah, I think an epic party could chew through him. But then again, maybe that's okay? You're considerably ahead of me in the AP, so I'd appreciate if you could give us your thoughts on what you'd change/watch out for/cut/adapt in the adventures - my one beef with this AP is that there is a real shortage of that sort of input kicking around.
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Feb 26, 2016 02:08
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I'm running War of the Burning Sky which means I need to redo all the monster, because the monster design is dumb. Given I cannot sign up to the online tools, what is the bet approach to get this done these days?
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Mar 19, 2016 03:43
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The Crotch posted:I've heard generally good things about War of the Burning Sky. What's so awful about its monsters? Ryan Nock is pretty good but some of the other module authors do not have a great grasp on encounter design. For example one module uses tons and tons of underlevelled bad guys instead of minions for filler. Would have been better if they were replaced with minions. The solos are a train wreck as well. More broadly I think some of the monsters are a bland. For all these knocks I've been just using the MM3 on a business card and it's pretty good though Zeitgeist is about 4000 times better.
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Mar 20, 2016 05:53
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Yukari posted:How would you build that hybrid swordmage? Con/Int There is a pretty good build in the responses here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?286494-Assistance-required-building-a-Swordmage-Warlock-Coronal-Guard
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Mar 26, 2016 09:31
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gradenko_2000 posted:On that note: 4e with Escalation Die. Would you play it? I really want to try this, has anyone got any good rules on how to make it work? I'm not totally sure it should just be a direct pot of the 13th age die. I've looked at: Turn 1: Nothing Turn 2: Escalation die set to 1. Monsters with recharge powers on a 4+ get them back Turn 3: Die 2. Monsters with 5+ recharge powers get them back. Turn 4: Die 3. Monsters with Recharge powers on a 4+ get them back Turn 5: Die 4. Monsters with 5+ recharge powers get them back. Turn 6: Die 5. Monsters with Recharge powers on a 4+ get them back Turn 7: Die 6. All monster encounter powers are refreshed, maybe minions (re)spawn? I think it also needs another effect tied to it, like the BBEG's damage ramps up, the ritual completes or minions spawn or the building collapses. But I'm a bit scared to roll it out into a live game. I also question if the shot clock of the turn 7 will ever come into effect. Jolyne Cujoh posted:As for the damage stuff, usually when I call a fight early I'll just say "hey, everyone lose a surge, 2 if you were adjacent to an enemy/more than one enemy" or whatever. Granted, I also run a consistent, 3 combat long adventuring day (levels every 2 days) so I'm probably not the person to talk to about enforcing the resource-management part of 4e I just have the monsters explode/surrender/run away if plausible for them to do so (e.g. implacable undead hordes don't, but if the leadership is all killed they will collapse or w/e). I make fights a bit harder to compensate - basically with 5 players they have an XP budget of 6 players. I also regularly use huge swarms of minions because from asking for feedback and listening to chatter everyone is like 'holy poo poo that was really close' in fights when 20+ figures hit the table for the bad guys and minions are a bit overcosted in the budget. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Mar 30, 2016 |
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Mar 30, 2016 02:54
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I think a blackguard/bard hybrid going into the war chanter PP would meet the requirement, gives a source of THP you can spend to power the suicide powers and an interesting range of power selection.
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Apr 15, 2016 09:25
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Your DM is being weird and whiny. You need to solve the personal problem there then move onto the game mechanocs. Moving on to the game mechanics, the canned adventure paths are designed for low to moderate optimisation adventurers. The guy who authored the Zeitgeist AP recommended giving monsters a flat +1 to hit and a damage boost across the board of the party is built to sensible guidelines (e.g. 20s in attack stats, synergistic feat choices). The other option I like is to use this as replacement for the standard damage values: http://dmg42.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/boot-on-face-of-level-1-damage-forever.html?m=1 This makes the combat as dangerous as 1st level. I'm current DMing two AP: zeitgiest and war of the burning sky. Zeitgeist I am using the monsters 'as is' but increasing minion counts and adding either 1 normal or 5 minions to every fight. In war of the burning sky I am converting the monsters to use those damage expressions. Both seem to make for very tough combats, but less monsters who hit harder is a bit faster if that's a concern.
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Apr 17, 2016 12:39
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isndl posted:Your party members are living with each other twenty-four hours a day, talking and training together. You're looking at it from the perspective of a five-minute slice of their life, but the characters should understand each others abilities far better than the players who probably get together only once a week and level up for new abilities every few sessions. The discussion is just as much about getting the players up to speed with character abilities as it is about combat planning. Sometimes you do have players who understand every character and that's how you get the well-oiled machines that breeze through epic-level fights in an hour, but those are far from the norm. When I was a teenager I was in a defence family, and at another kids birthday party we did paintball vs the parents. It was fun, but what was really interesting that the army guys (who didn't actually serve together and only sort of knew each other, but had all infantry training) had really good group coordination and quickly shook out into a tactical system that I would bet money was 'army circa 20 years ago when these guys did their training' based on maybe 2 minutes of discussion about who was doing what and the odd shouted command during each round. I know this is a bit 'well I wrapped a mouse cord around my wrist', but I'm pretty sure that actual trained combat veterans who'd lived with each other and fought together through impossible odds would have vastly superior coordination. quote:If it's overplanning you're annoyed by, that's a problem that will solve itself as players learn what they 'should' be doing, though everyone learns at their own speed. Having monster turns interspersed more frequently between player turns also tends to discourage overplanning by simply forcing new variables more frequently. You can also soft discourage people from selecting out of turn actions as these slow the game down a lot more.
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Apr 19, 2016 01:03
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Anyone got any good suggestions about cheapish terrain for 4E? I am super lazy and would prefer to buy something than make stuff by hand, but not totally adverse to the idea. I'm running the Zeitgeist and War of the Burning Sky adventure paths, so need a mix of urban ish and traditional fantasy terrain. I've got an old set of Heroquest so I have a bunch of doors and the like, as well as altars, tables and chests. Was looking at buying a bunch of O scale model railway trees that I could base and use for trees and such, but not sure what is cheap in the crates/barrels end of the market and other generic terrain that could be good to supplement the battlemat with.
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Apr 20, 2016 05:49
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Mecha Gojira posted:If you look around hard enough, you can still find the 4e Dungeon Tiles for relatively cheap. If nothing else, your local gameshop should have premade flip maps or tiles made by Paizo for Pathfinder. I was probably thinking three dimensional stuff - so cover feels more natural than just drawing it on the matt. That said, those look like a good idea anyway.
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Apr 20, 2016 06:45
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wallawallawingwang posted:It's actually a little worse if you are playing a fightymans. The 4e model was everyone's turn (DM included) takes about the same length of time to play out, call it 5 minutes. For 3 players and a GM that means: a full turn takes 20 minutes, everyone waits 15 minutes between each of their turns, and everyone is the active player for about 25% of the time. In the 5e model you end up with the caster and DM's turn taking 9 minutes each while the fighter and the rogue take a minute each. That is, the caster has to wait 11 minutes to play but the fighty types each have to wait 19 minutes, IE, the caster and DM are each active for about 45% of the round and the other 2 are active for about 5%. I agree with this comments and would add that my experience is once you swing past level 11, fighters turns are not even that fast in absolute terms if they are being played by the people that cannot quickly make decisions and add up. Was playing a fairly high level game with a dude who was slow to add and his turns were fairly straightforward but took FOREVER "I shoot at the dude." *contemplates using sharpshooter* "Nah, will attack straight up" *Roll to hit* "Does AC 22 hit? No?" *contemplate using precision*, "Okay I will use that maneuver that lets me add a superiority dice to my roll" * roll precision* confirm he's hit, roll damage, add that up, then REPEAT THREE MORE TIMES. Very, very annoying. GM gave serious consideration to making all his attacks average damage to speed things up. Edit: Not that you don't get this in 4E but multiattacks are sparer on the ground. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Apr 21, 2016 |
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Apr 21, 2016 04:24
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If you wanted to fix the vampire you'd probably need to do all the following: 1) Add a straight to hit bonus 2) Add a straight damage bonus at paragon and epic 3) At level 16 or so add an ability that is every time you use a power as a standard action, you get a free melee basic or at will attack.
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May 15, 2016 23:46
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Elfgames posted:What about increasing base damage by a little bit and then giving them a striker mechanic that triggers against bloodied enemies? I was mostly bench-marking them to elementalists who get as a damage bonus secondary stat+0/stat+2/stat+4, access to get accuracy boosts and easy at will multiattacks (static charge) AoE spells plus a class ability that lets you throw an addition target + bonus damage on 4 times an encounter at level 13. The Vampire has scaling damage, but lacks of accuracy boosters and additional target stuff, so honestly maybe the best solution is two extra class abilities: Predator's instincts: Vampire gets +1 to hit, +2 to hit against bloodied targets. Flat to hit bonus to help keep up with Elementalist. Vampiric Celerity: Trigger: Using an attack power. You can (Option 1: Make a vampiric slam against any target either before or after you shift from this power Option 2: make one additional creature a target of the triggering attack). If the attack's range is melee or ranged, the additional target must be within 5 squares of you. If the attack's range is area or close, the additional target must be adjacent to the burst or blast. In addition, you may shift up to half your speed. Attack Options Discussion: Giving a free slam is fairly safe. Giving an extra usage of the power makes Vampires a lot better as they are basically single target DPR. Free slams may be enough, but be more generous giving out uses of the power in that case. Special: You can use this power UsageX times per encounter, but only once per round. You regain one use of this power whenever (recovery mechanism). Possible Recovery Mechanisms: Bloodying an enemy, regaining UsageX: You can make this as blood themed as you want. 1/encounter starting at level 6, growing to twice at level 13, gain a use whenever you gain a healing surge? Lots of possibilities That gives you an easy multi-attack approach modeled off the elementalist's Elemental Escalation, plus boosted accuracy. You want to make that multiattack granter fairly generous if it's limited to once per round just because there are not that many rounds a combat. Basically they need to be able to use it 4 times an encounter from mid Paragon onwards. This will basically double their DPR, so sweet.
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May 16, 2016 06:13
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I've been using the companion rules which give them an at will an encounter and a utility. This works very well in practise.
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May 30, 2016 11:37
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I must confess that while I level my players as a group, the rule is whoever shows up has first dibs on magic items and cash is only split between attendees. The structure of 4E is such that the guys who had to miss a game will still get their gear (one game I use inherent bonuses, other game I make sure I hand out the correct levelled gear in the correct quantities for the weapon/neck/armor slot), but there is still a soft reward for being their every session because I randomly roll all other drops.
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Jun 2, 2016 23:09
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thespaceinvader posted:This is OK. As long as the mechanical bases are covered, there;'s a lot less risk of peoples' interest spiralling because they coulnd't turn up for a couple of second and now their dude can't hit for poo poo because everyone else has a +2 weapon and is 4 levels higher than them or whatever. Use IBs, keep the PCs at the same level as each other, and build and play your monsters to challenge but not dominate. Everything else is secondary to that. Yeah, it's a small reward for being there on the reg, it's not punitive because once you are out of the big 3 slots the mechanical effects in 4e are not very significant, highly situational or both. For example, having the gloves that let you convert a spells damage to necrotic once a day is very useful because it can let you hit a vulnerability and squeeze out 10-20 extra damage, but it might not even show up in any given adventuring day. How often are monsters vulnerable to necrotic damage? One of my players has had those gloves for 5 levels and only used them to bypass immunites to fire attacks, which I am totally fine with.
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Jun 3, 2016 02:18
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No Luck Needed posted:Bitter Grognards The big draw of 4E is a mathematically balanced combat framework and tight class balance. By not using those you're leaving a bunch of fun on the table. If you want to give a reward for regular attendance, there are ways to do it - I suggest giving out modest boons/cash/magic item rewards - that don't require making players underlevelled.
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Jun 3, 2016 03:21
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Pharmaskittle posted:I do want to ask a non dnd philosophy question, tho. I'm playing an Ardent in my Dark Sun game and, while I crank out heals like nobody's business, I'm finding myself getting downed almost every fight. I've taken a halberd to get myself a little distance, and I think I'm probably one of the more tactically proficient players in the group at 4e, but I'm still getting wrecked and counting on a hybrid healer to get me up in the last quarter of most fights. We tend to play pretty mercilessly no matter who's DMing since we know the system can handle a balanced fight with no punches being pulled, but no other characters seem to be having this issue. Any generic advice? If the DM deliberately targeting you? I generally target the healer in fights (because it maximises the pressure if you burst down the healer). This leads to the leader in one of my games getting routinely wrecked. In the other game I struggle to take out the warlord because the player is a tactical savant who plays very safely and also the main striker is a glass cannon rogue so I often settle for punching him to death. Specific advice probably requires knowing your build and the party build but generally it's going to be 'acknowledge that you are going to be targeted, so position yourself where monsters are going to struggle to get into melee with you. This is going to involve working in tight tandem with the defender.
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Jun 3, 2016 05:11
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:I think we established that it's latte art and laneway graffiti. I suspect this depends how many interrupts people have because that is what makes combat a shitstorm. Things as so much faster after I gently put my thumb on the scale and got people to get rid of them. Also, themes make level 1 more playable. Going to go with 3 (utility + 2nd encounter) or 5 (2nd daily) through about 16ish but limited experience.
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Jun 3, 2016 08:12
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Elfgames posted:hell go all out and make a solo have multiple turns. The solo in the first Zeitgeist AP adventure has 2 turns, precisely on this basis, but it effectively only gets a standard action on its extra turn (it effectively has a charge attack backed in). This works really well and makes it a tough fight. edit: The encounter balance in Zeitgeist is pretty good, but not perfect. I started out having to add ~5 minions or ~1 standard enemy to each encounter, but in module 3 the PCs are really struggling. An elite controller who can push opponents back, damaging and immobilizing them until EoNT with 2 standard actions almost completely dunked the party. quote:when you run minions do you tell the players that they are minions? I always enjoy just describing the monsters, five pig nosed orcs bust into the room. One is wearing chain holding a shield and sword, three are wearing hide wielding axes, and the last is barely wearing any cloths, covered in tattoos, and wielding a mace made from a ogre or troll's skull. Ok, one can figure that tattoo orc might be a shaman and the one with the chain and shield is probably stronger than the ones in hide. But the ones in hide could be anything. I don't want to just say, "an orc commander, an storm shaman, and 3 minions attack you, roll initiative." Even though I have done that. I just don't want the players using up daily powers on monsters with 1 hp. I tend to up encounter difficulty by adding more minions so my players can metagame guess: OK so there is an obvious mage, some sort of golem and 15 thugs at this black market operation? Those thugs are clearly going to be minions. Similarly I tend to use more significant figures for the big guys on the battlemaps, but may only use coins or goblin figures I have a zillion of for the minions Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Jun 9, 2016 |
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Jun 9, 2016 02:10
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dwarf74 posted:My players figure out who's a minion really drat quick when they are represented by little plastic Cthulhus or glass beads. Yeah, I give it away in that sense. Also physically use bigger models for elites/solos and smaller stuff for minions if olaying with someone elses gear.
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Jun 9, 2016 02:54
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