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Soniv if you want to kill your party just go and throw a bunch of Drow at them. That'd be good. Or a Draco-Lich or something. I'm guessing that'd get the job done!
Interesting story about the Hydra though. I'm guessing it would have turned out much differently had you rolled a little better. From my limited experience of playing Dungeons and Dragons, dice rolls can make all the difference. Like last night we were a bunch of level 1 characters fighting a bunch of goblins. It was supposed to be an easy encounter for us.
And then the DM rolled a 20, another 20, followed up by a 19. He killed one of our party members straight up. I mean I know part of the reason the guy died because he was level 1, but those dice rolls did work.
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Oh, yeah, I've had nights where I've rolled amazingly; last night was not one of them.
And it's not about killing the party. It's about making it challenging enough so that everyone actually feels threatened in an encounter rather than just a couple key (tank) members.
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United States47024 Posts
On June 24 2014 01:56 jcarlsoniv wrote:
And it's not about killing the party. It's about making it challenging enough so that everyone actually feels threatened in an encounter rather than just a couple key (tank) members.
That's going to be increasingly hard in a few levels simply due to the power progression of casters relative to fighting characters, lol.
On June 24 2014 01:46 Tooplark wrote:
You can do a lot with a pack of goblins/ogres/humans/other sentient race led by a handful with class levels. You can make some pretty tactics-heavy encounters out of it, and it's pretty easy to justify - "A hastily cobbled-together barricade blocks the road. As you approach, a voice calls out "Your goods or your life!" On a pair of raised platforms behind the barricade are a group of archers prepared for the second option."
Yeah, just remember the difference between "challenge rating" and "encounter level". An encounter isn't simply the aggregate difficulty of the monsters involved--there's a lot of ways to add challenge through environmental factors.
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Oh god the Dark Souls DLC this is my chance
*salutes*
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On June 24 2014 02:04 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2014 01:56 jcarlsoniv wrote:
And it's not about killing the party. It's about making it challenging enough so that everyone actually feels threatened in an encounter rather than just a couple key (tank) members. That's going to be increasingly hard in a few levels simply due to the power progression of casters relative to fighting characters, lol.
I'm already noticing it. It's fine, I just have to find magic resistant creatures!
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Dear soniv, they sound like they are near water.. are they perchance on a boat or will soon be on a boat? Or just near water? or you just had a water elemental and hydra for giggles?
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They had to take a boat to get to the hydra, they will soon be trudging through a secret mountain pass along the coast.
The mountain pass opens up some cool potential for ideas with terrain/random shit cuz no one knows about this area
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On June 24 2014 02:04 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2014 01:56 jcarlsoniv wrote:
And it's not about killing the party. It's about making it challenging enough so that everyone actually feels threatened in an encounter rather than just a couple key (tank) members. That's going to be increasingly hard in a few levels simply due to the power progression of casters relative to fighting characters, lol. Show nested quote +On June 24 2014 01:46 Tooplark wrote:
You can do a lot with a pack of goblins/ogres/humans/other sentient race led by a handful with class levels. You can make some pretty tactics-heavy encounters out of it, and it's pretty easy to justify - "A hastily cobbled-together barricade blocks the road. As you approach, a voice calls out "Your goods or your life!" On a pair of raised platforms behind the barricade are a group of archers prepared for the second option."
Yeah, just remember the difference between "challenge rating" and "encounter level". An encounter isn't simply the aggregate difficulty of the monsters involved--there's a lot of ways to add challenge through environmental factors.
Also, please remember that "having a challenge with a challenge rating that is challenging but not too challenging" is not all that an RPG is about. I know that DnD tends to steer you in that direction, but a lot of other games handle stuff differently. There is a reason a lot of people hate the autolevelling stuff in Skyrim. What you are doing is basically the same.
The party always knows that they can win against whatever they meet, as long as they fight smart enough. This turns the whole thing into basically a tabletop party wargame thingy. If that is the game you want to play and have fun with, fine for you, be happy and ignore all of the following.
But that is not all a tabletop RPG can be. Consider instead writing a story that can not be solved by running at 4 balanced encounters a day and killing them until the problem goes away. There could be stuff that is much stronger or much weaker than the party, if it makes sense from the narrative. Character interactions that are meaningful beyond "Questgiver" "Evil guy" "Shopkeeper". Mysteries. Cool stuff happening that can't be summed up with "Yeah dude i totally rolled 3 20s in a row!". Players Characters with their own Agendas beyond "Get loot and XP"
Personally, i greatly prefer more narrative/investigative games along the lines of Call of Cthulhu or FATE to classic dungeoncrawls. To my great disappointment a lot of people don't even seem to realize that there is something to RPGs beyond that basic power fantasy, and i think they are losing out.
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On June 24 2014 02:13 jcarlsoniv wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2014 02:04 TheYango wrote:On June 24 2014 01:56 jcarlsoniv wrote:
And it's not about killing the party. It's about making it challenging enough so that everyone actually feels threatened in an encounter rather than just a couple key (tank) members. That's going to be increasingly hard in a few levels simply due to the power progression of casters relative to fighting characters, lol. I'm already noticing it. It's fine, I just have to find magic resistant creatures!
Drow are magic resistant creatures. I don't know how'd you fit them into your campaign but Drow are have spell resistance 12.
But I get what you're saying about having difficulties balancing the encounter so that everyone feels a challenge. So much can happen that you just can't account for. Like for example, we had a total party wipe the one time simply because an NPC Cleric failed a fortitude save. It wasn't the failing of the save that killed us, but rather that failed save led into one thing, that thing led into another, etc. The events just spiralled out of control to the point where everyone died.
And that encounter wasn't supposed to kill us at all. But talking to my friends that are DMs, it seems like that the "easy" encounters turn out to be difficult where the "hard" encounters become really easy because all the party members roll amazingly.
The plight of the DM I guess haha.
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United States47024 Posts
If you want to strain your party's casters as much as the fighters, it's going to be hard to do it with single encounters. The reason is that casters have limited resources that they can allocate more of to harder encounters and less of to weaker ones, while the fighters have more fixed fighting power in each encounter. So if you have a lot of big fights where the party can't really continue after each one, this is going to favor the casters because they can expend an entire day's worth of spells on a single encounter and jack up the party's ability to handle difficulty that's out of their depth.
The scenario where the casters are going to feel pressure is when you have a long encounter day with many encounters and they have to therefore ration their spell usage over the course of the day carefully. The difficulty as a DM is creating a sense of urgency where the party feels like they actually have to continue rather than just stopping when the Wizard has no spells left for the day. If you haven't been doing this and the players haven't played in a scenario like this, it can be a bit jarring to them to have that sense of urgency that hasn't been paramount to them before.
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@Simberto: Well, this group is all very new to DnD, and I am very new to DMing. But I hear what you're saying. My world is starting to get developed enough so that they have actual choices in what they want to do, and more lethal things are being discovered. I definitely want there to be situations that will outright kill them if they force a fight.
The underlying story is still developing, and the players are still learning how to play and what their characters want to do. I'm also figuring out how I want the world to be set up, which is tough because I have VERY little play experience myself.
On June 24 2014 02:23 TheYango wrote:
The difficulty as a DM is creating a sense of urgency where the party feels like they actually have to continue rather than just stopping when the Wizard has no spells left for the day.
Yeah, this is really hard. I still don't quite know how to manufacture urgency.
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battles are probably my least favorite things in tabletop rpg, i find character interaction, conversation loopholes and backstories far more interesting. that's just me tho.
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On June 24 2014 02:27 wei2coolman wrote:
battles are probably my least favorite things in tabletop rpg, i find character interaction, conversation loopholes and backstories far more interesting. that's just me tho.
Yeah I have to agree with this sentiment. While I think the combat is really fun, doing things outside of combat can be so much fun as well. That's a big reason why I did a Rouge in the campaign I'm in. Bluff checks are too much fun. Always lie to people and never not lie to people.
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You had your chance to give them hell on the boat. Krackens, Lizard men ambush trying to pull them under water for drowning(suddenly wearing heavy armor seems like a bad idea), lake monsters etc. I mean I guess you could still do the lizard men thing on the coast.
I'm sure you could find some giant crab monsters in a book someplace or online, have them sleeping under the sands? It's not too late to pull a water monster with tentacles if your mountain pass with a side of water wants to take a LotR ish nod.
What I'm saying is you want to make your party fear the water.
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United States47024 Posts
On June 24 2014 02:24 jcarlsoniv wrote:
Yeah, this is really hard. I still don't quite know how to manufacture urgency.
There's a pretty good D&D 3.5 official module that sets this up decently--it's called "Red Hand of Doom". You could try something thematically similar to that.
Basically it's an espionage/military-themed campaign where the players are working to thwart an hobgoblin invasion in the local area through subterfuge, trying to communicate with the outside world, etc. The entire campaign is set up over the course of several in-game months--where the progression of the invasion is essentially on a clock--unchecked, the warband will reach certain points within a certain amount of time--and the PCs actions or mistakes can delay or advance that time-frame and alter how the invasion plays out.
Essentially, it doesn't really create a short-term sense of urgency by directly punishing the players--but very quickly the players get a sense of their long-term timetable and how dangerous it can be for their overarching goals to waste too much time resting.
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On June 24 2014 02:36 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2014 02:24 jcarlsoniv wrote:
Yeah, this is really hard. I still don't quite know how to manufacture urgency. There's a pretty good D&D 3.5 official module that sets this up decently--it's called "Red Hand of Doom". You could try something thematically similar to that. Basically it's an espionage/military-themed campaign where the players are working to thwart an hobgoblin invasion in the local area through subterfuge, trying to communicate with the outside world, etc. The entire campaign is set up over the course of several in-game months--where the progression of the invasion is essentially on a clock--unchecked, the warband will reach certain points within a certain amount of time--and the PCs actions or mistakes can delay or advance that time-frame and alter how the invasion plays out. Essentially, it doesn't really create a short-term sense of urgency by directly punishing the players--but very quickly the players get a sense of their long-term timetable and how dangerous it can be for their overarching goals to waste too much time resting.
This...might work out perfectly for what is coming up in the campaign. I definitely want to find out more about this. Long-term urgency makes more sense for what they're doing, I think, and it should help them realize that there is a world outside of themselves.
edit: ahhhh so many ideas
I need to write them down tonight and really plan out the plot more.
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I like Primetime Draven but the fact his axes dont make a noise when they're coming down bothers me :<
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On June 24 2014 00:29 jcarlsoniv wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2014 00:25 Requizen wrote:On June 24 2014 00:03 jcarlsoniv wrote:On June 23 2014 23:54 Requizen wrote:On June 23 2014 23:51 jcarlsoniv wrote:On June 23 2014 23:49 Requizen wrote:
Good morning friends! I hope all is well, considering it is Monday after all. How are you feeling today? It's Monday. And I woke up with no Internet. And my party killed the hydra I threw at them with ease...they struggled more with the water elementals before the hydra ~_~ We're playing again on Wednesday, so I have to figure out some way to kill someone soon. How'd they drop it so easily? Was it good rolling or did you not account for an ability/spell they had that made short work of it? - 1. I rolled poorly all night
- 2. It was a side quest for them, so I didn't make it too hard (they're all lvl 4, the hydra was lvl 7)
- 3. The hydra in the bestiary can't use its head regeneration if it had been damaged by fire that turn. It had an awful initiative roll, and the cleric and wizard both used flaming sphere on it first turn ~_~
What else is in the party? A Hydra kind of gets shut down by casters, but if you want to make it more of a challenge for your wizard/cleric, you could start to introduce things that are more designed to shut down/ignore casters. Yeah, I'm going to. Yesterday I realized I hadn't put an adventure together, so I just decided to make a hydra that was plaguing a trade route (because I knew the party would be going to the city port to try and set up their own trade deal type stuff). The party is a Wizard, a Cleric, a Bard, a Fighter, and a Ranger
Holy shit, a balanced party. What is this? I always have to be the singular caster in the party because my friends are allergic to spells/day.
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Straight outta Johto18973 Posts
On June 23 2014 15:13 Frudgey wrote:
Gilliam was good, but Oswin was legend. Good grief. Also apparently the female knight that wears pink in Fire Emblem 6 is supposed to be good as well, but mine didn't turn out that well.
I also have a huge soft spot for mercenaries and heroes. I love those classes.
Knight/General triangle attack is hilar lol. Too bad they're so slow. But Amelia in Fire Emblem Sacred Stones is really good!
On June 23 2014 19:29 arb wrote:
Swordmasters in 7, and Swordmasters/Berserkers in 6 are pretty lols too.
Its hilarious when you give them a killing edge/axe or the Wo Dao on Swordmasters and have like 80% crit chance lolol.
Pls Sacred Stones you could glitch Dark Magic onto your high Con and +15% crit Beserkers.
On June 23 2014 23:53 jcarlsoniv wrote:
dat product placement
Hi everyone are you remembering to Eat Fresh? You need to Have A Break Have A Kit Kat because it's Finger Licking Good and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! You need to Have It Your Way since Impossible Is Nothing and you need to have a Breakfast Of Champions to Pinch An Inch. Once you Just Do It because 15 Minutes Can Save You 15% Or More Because You're Worth It and like the Energizer Bunny it Keeps Going And Going since I Got Milk (malk) since if you Bring On The Real Thirst Quencher you can Think Different and Fly The American Way since if you're always Ch' Ch' Ch' Ch' Charmin then What's The Worst That Could Happen?
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Eh, I just decided the appropriate reaction to not getting the vast majority of it is to be glad.
Thanks MB, making me feel good while working overtime!
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EPT
