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I think that all players loved the super monster. There was even a dazed character willing to spend his next minor to whack it. Aside from that, on my table, every character hit the SM, and in return the SM missed everybody. Was that intentional or is that luck of the dice?

I'm fine with giving an extra AP for a tough adventure; however, allowing an AP to reroll an attack or recharge a power strikes me as unnecessary. It's just something players forget, and not generally worthwhile anyway.

I don't see the mythal surges adding much. Almost all players took the heroic pose of not using them, and a few were using them all the time with a "nyah nyah" attitude, giving their characters infinite surges for no reason. Even the parties that didn't use mythal surges were unlikely to run out; I find that PCs rarely if ever run out of surges in LFR, and that the limiting factor has always been how many in-combat healing powers you have. And that's without Comrade's Succor.

Finally, everybody loved the mission system. Everybody also loved the special effects you get in part two depending on which missions were successful in part one.

Spoiler: Show

It is biased, since ranged characters are able to use their attack powers while melee characters can't.

I'm pretty sure that Threatening Reach is a lot harder for ranged characters to deal with if the Solo decides to move next to them.  You can spend two turns trying to move away so that you can attack without drawing an opportunity attack, while the melee guys pick up one OA and can go to town against it.

... you're making quite an assumption that the ranged character provokes.

It is a pretty mean fight for ranged characters that provoke, though. 

Played this over the weekend at Totalcon at AL 18.  The con had 10 total tables and it was great time/atmosphere -- thanks again to Dan Anderson for putting on a great show.  We also were fortunate enough to have Keith Richmond as our DM.  Keith did a great job -- in particular at being fast which is really important to finishing things well.

I liked the choosing your mission portion and that the con was tracking who was doing what mission.  I did wish it was a little clearer though what we needed to accomplish, e.g. you need x points per mission.  In particular, I wish it was articulated how much aggressive or glory would add to the success of the missions.  It was tough to know which level to choose when we didn't know what the level would do.  I would suggest being explicit with this info for future runnings of it and to track progess in this way was things are ongoing.  That is, "Each mission requires X points, standard success is Y, aggressive is Y+X and Glory is Y+Z, etc" and with each completion, track the point total and post it.

I thought the adventure did a good job incorporating skill check mechanics into the adventures.  I liked the story.  The combats were interesting and Keith had some great maps.  We were an optimized table playing normal and challenging levels and for the most part were more challenged by real world time limitations instead of the danger level of the mod.  But the time pressure was still real, so that made it challenging.

A few notes that require spoiler block:
Spoiler: Show

Overall, I really liked it.  I would rate it as my 2nd favorite interactive, just after the Paladin's Plague (2 years ago at Totalcon).  Thanks again to everyone at Totalcon and in particular to Keith for running for us.

Daren

Feb 27, 2012 -- 11:48AM, Bargle0 wrote:

Feb 27, 2012 -- 9:48AM, lunattic wrote:

It is biased, since ranged characters are able to use their attack powers while melee characters can't. This means ranged characters have a fighting chance, while melee characters are doomed. For melee characters to be able to do anything, they need support from a class able to attack him at range and constantly slide him back into melee.

If you bring a party of melee-only characters to the table, you have to expect that things will go badly at some point. This is true even in a regular LFR mod, where you might find an encounter that is very difficult without good ranged attacks. I played ADCP3-2 once and ADCP4-1 twice, and all three times my table has struggled with certain types of encounters. I don't blame the mod writers, though. I blame it on our inability to fill a particular role.

I don't think that's fair for ADCPs and other adventures that are specifically written for cons. In Lunattic's case, there were only 4 players who entered AL14 characters, none of which were ranged. So as organizer, I could either mix AL12 and AL14 characters together to ensure a good mix of ranged and melee (but introducing severe differences in power between players), or let them all play their appropriate tier. I chose the latter, but it's something to take into consideration in the future.

Feb 27, 2012 -- 2:25PM, svendj wrote:

I don't think that's fair for ADCPs and other adventures that are specifically written for cons. In Lunattic's case, there were only 4 players who entered AL14 characters, none of which were ranged.

Why is it not fair for cons? Are you suggesting that we assume cons will have unoptimized tables?

If we're assuming that, we should also back to assuming home games have optimized tables?

I prefer that games are written middle of the road and be as challenging as appropriate. In this case, Spoiler: Show

On the ranged issue for melee characters.  I think this issue is much better than it was in the beginning of 4.0.  Almost all weapon groups now have weapons that allow ranged basics available:  Farbond Spellblade, Dwarven Thrower and Hungry Spear to name 3 that characters I have use.  At least for Strength-based melee characters (and Swordmage's due to Intelligent Blademaster), there is a way to get a melee basic with your main weapon.  Also at AL 14, teleportation is quite common and as a melee character you would normally have a plan at what to do when you can't close.

However, this still boils to down to a DM issue to me.  Hosing a party round-after-round would clearly make it "not fun" for them.  Since having fun is the whole purpose of the game, it would seem to make sense to allow the PCs to close to melee reach to at least have a chance at winning.  Not that he had to tank the fight, but he probably could have/should have let up a bit with the hard control when he saw that you had no way to counteract it.

Daren

Feb 27, 2012 -- 2:36PM, Drezden wrote:

However, this still boils to down to a DM issue to me.  Hosing a party round-after-round would clearly make it "not fun" for them.  Since having fun is the whole purpose of the game, it would seem to make sense to allow the PCs to close to melee reach to at least have a chance at winning.  Not that he had to tank the fight, but he probably could have/should have let up a bit with the hard control when he saw that you had no way to counteract it.

True.

Just because a creature has access to an optimal power doesn't mean the DM is required to use it.

On the other side of the screen, players can remember that they are playing a roleplaying game and take some ownership of the situation. For example, if a PC took a standard action to make an Intimidate or other appropriate check, Dagon might change his tactics. "Ha, the mighty Dagon is too fearful to face us directly? Other bards shall sing of this day, noting his cowardice!" Or even a simple, "I'd like to make a bluff check to convince Dagon that we're all ranged characters that provoke so that he'll close into melee with us." 

There are a lot of good DMs out there who might fall into the trap of spamming optimized tactics because they don't think of other options. Players can help out here by "providing an out" for the DM who wouldn't mind engaging in melee, and just can't think of a good in-game reason to do so.

Jan 31, 2012 -- 7:43PM, Bargle0 wrote:

I played this twice at DDXP and I had a great time. Jay Marland and Dan Anderson were my DMs, respectively, and they couldn't have done a better job.

I do have a question about one of the story awards.

Spoiler: Show

ADCP29 Severed Eyes of the Deep gives access to the robe of eyes (2+ uncommon) and greater armor of eyes (14 rare). This is mildly disappointing, since the rare item is very cool but doesn't do my level 19 character much good without a considerable investment of money for upgrades. Also, the story reward makes no mention of auto-scaling like other rare items that scale across levels. Is this something likely to be addressed by errata to the Story Award, or perhaps language in a forthcoming Campaign Guide?

Question on this particular award:

Spoiler: Show

Daren

I played this at TotalCon and had a blast.

Question about BI rewards: We can choose 2 treasure bundles, but can't pick the same one twice (except more gold). There was a list of specific magic items, plus the Any Uncommon / Any common options. So, i couldn't use the Any Uncommon option twice, but I could take the Uncommon and Common options, for example? Or were they they same bundle? I forget.

Finally, question on Rare items. The cert provides campaign documentation, and I need to spend a found item slot, but does it count as a treasure bundle, or does it exist outside of the treasure bundle system? So in my hypothertical example, could I take an Uncommon item, more gold, and a Rare by spending two found item slots after the BI?

Feb 27, 2012 -- 4:49PM, Drezden wrote:

Jan 31, 2012 -- 7:43PM, Bargle0 wrote:

I played this twice at DDXP and I had a great time. Jay Marland and Dan Anderson were my DMs, respectively, and they couldn't have done a better job.

I do have a question about one of the story awards.

Spoiler: Show

ADCP29 Severed Eyes of the Deep gives access to the robe of eyes (2+ uncommon) and greater armor of eyes (14 rare). This is mildly disappointing, since the rare item is very cool but doesn't do my level 19 character much good without a considerable investment of money for upgrades. Also, the story reward makes no mention of auto-scaling like other rare items that scale across levels. Is this something likely to be addressed by errata to the Story Award, or perhaps language in a forthcoming Campaign Guide?

Question on this particular award:

Spoiler: Show

Was this on a separate cert or only available at heroic?  I played the adventure at AL 18, we defeated the Beholder, but the only awards on my cert are:  ADCP 22-27 (with 27 being crossed out because the interactive failed at the mission).  Am I missing some awards?

Daren

It was on my cert. In that particular case, I played at an AL18 table like you.

K, final words from me on the topic of the melee vs ranged:

Every character in our party had multiple ways to save or remove immobilized. In the end, none of that mattered because we were immobized ten times over the course of five rounds + pushed further and slid away each time. It's true that at level 14, as a paladin I could have picked up *one* teleport power to be able to be adjacent to him for *one*  round, but i can't see that mattering even remotely. And where are the teleportation powers for dwarf fighters and barbarians? This is an extreme, extreme scenario of melee hate.

I had a farbond spellblade to make ranged basic attacks, which ofc provoked each time. Most ranged characters have feats or items to ignore provoking from threatening reach.

Like Svendj said, we didn't really have much of a choice to bring an optimal party with a mix of melee and ranged. Is it acceptable that an encounter is designed to be instant death for those unfortunate enough to be in a non-optimal party? I'd say not, and this could have been very easily avoided by changing the immobilization status effect to something that would be more universally annoying but wokable with, such as dazed, or having that blast be a recharge power and just amping up his damage/stats.

Feb 27, 2012 -- 11:40PM, lunattic wrote:

Like Svendj said, we didn't really have much of a choice to bring an optimal party with a mix of melee and ranged. Is it acceptable that an encounter is designed to be instant death for those unfortunate enough to be in a non-optimal party? I'd say not, and this could have been very easily avoided by changing the immobilization status effect to something that would be more universally annoying but wokable with, such as dazed, or having that blast be a recharge power and just amping up his damage/stats.

I agree, that shouldn't happend. 

Feb 27, 2012 -- 2:36PM, tirianmal wrote:

Feb 27, 2012 -- 2:25PM, svendj wrote:

I don't think that's fair for ADCPs and other adventures that are specifically written for cons. In Lunattic's case, there were only 4 players who entered AL14 characters, none of which were ranged.

Why is it not fair for cons? [/spoiler]

Because you don't always have the option of playing with a well-rounded party, especially at smaller cons. If only 4 people registered for a specific AL, there's only so much the organizer can do.

Feb 27, 2012 -- 11:26PM, Bargle0 wrote:

It was on my cert. In that particular case, I played at an AL18 table like you.

If I remember correctly, the certs between the Friday and Saturday slots at DDXP differed slightly based on the overall success of the tables and NOT on individual success.

Feb 28, 2012 -- 1:37AM, Madfox11 wrote:

Feb 27, 2012 -- 11:26PM, Bargle0 wrote:

It was on my cert. In that particular case, I played at an AL18 table like you.

If I remember correctly, the certs between the Friday and Saturday slots at DDXP differed slightly based on the overall success of the tables and NOT on individual success.

Yes, but IIRC we did succee  on the misson that fits the SPEC29 story award.
And I didn't see a SPEC28 either (?).
Anyway it seems there are two certs? Or was this only at DDXP?

Gomez

Feb 28, 2012 -- 1:34AM, svendj wrote:

Feb 27, 2012 -- 2:36PM, tirianmal wrote:

Feb 27, 2012 -- 2:25PM, svendj wrote:

I don't think that's fair for ADCPs and other adventures that are specifically written for cons. In Lunattic's case, there were only 4 players who entered AL14 characters, none of which were ranged.

Why is it not fair for cons? [/spoiler]

Because you don't always have the option of playing with a well-rounded party, especially at smaller cons. If only 4 people registered for a specific AL, there's only so much the organizer can do.

And, to be clear, I do not blame the organizer for this, since it was obviously the correct choice to group together the characters with the same level of expected power. I do however question the design choice of the final encounter, since exchanging the spam-immobilization effect with any- or mutliple of increased stats on dagon, ongoing damage or dazed would have changed the encounter from completely impossible and frustrating to very challenging but still fun, and it would have accounted for the fact that not everyone would be fortunate enough to go at him with ample ranged backup. 

Even though I'm at this point repreating myself, If three pull effects from come and get it and knightly intercession and two-save granting effects per pc and 4 action points aren't enough to get more than three melee attacks in 5 rounds of combat, there is a design problem. The one teleport power my entire party had access to but didn't pick (paladin utility 10), would not have helped at all.  

Feb 28, 2012 -- 1:47AM, gomeztoo wrote:

Feb 28, 2012 -- 1:37AM, Madfox11 wrote:

Feb 27, 2012 -- 11:26PM, Bargle0 wrote:

It was on my cert. In that particular case, I played at an AL18 table like you.

If I remember correctly, the certs between the Friday and Saturday slots at DDXP differed slightly based on the overall success of the tables and NOT on individual success.

Yes, but IIRC we did succee  on the misson that fits the SPEC29 story award.
And I didn't see a SPEC28 either (?).
Anyway it seems there are two certs? Or was this only at DDXP?

That I don't know. I suspect DDXP only. The certs are too small to have a reward for all options and I don't know the final designs of those certs.

Feb 28, 2012 -- 1:49AM, lunattic wrote:

Feb 28, 2012 -- 1:34AM, svendj wrote:

Feb 27, 2012 -- 2:36PM, tirianmal wrote:

Feb 27, 2012 -- 2:25PM, svendj wrote:

I don't think that's fair for ADCPs and other adventures that are specifically written for cons. In Lunattic's case, there were only 4 players who entered AL14 characters, none of which were ranged.

Why is it not fair for cons? [/spoiler]

Because you don't always have the option of playing with a well-rounded party, especially at smaller cons. If only 4 people registered for a specific AL, there's only so much the organizer can do.

And, to be clear, I do not blame the organizer for this, since it was obviously the correct choice to group together the characters with the same level of expected power. I do however question the design choice of the final encounter, since exchanging the spam-immobilization effect with any- or mutliple of increased stats on dagon, ongoing damage or dazed would have changed the encounter from completely impossible and frustrating to very challenging but still fun, and it would have accounted for the fact that not everyone would be fortunate enough to go at him with ample ranged backup. 

Even though I'm at this point repreating myself, If three pull effects from come and get it and knightly intercession and two-save granting effects per pc and 4 action points aren't enough to get more than three melee attacks in 5 rounds of combat, there is a design problem. The one teleport power my entire party had access to but didn't pick (paladin utility 10), would not have helped at all.  

As much as it pains me to admit it, I think Dan has a valid observation here. (Hi dan -waves- ) In retrospect it would probably have been a better play experience had the most optimal attack not been used every single round. But it is the most optimal against a melee party and I can hardly fault a DM for making that choice when not provided with guidance to the contrary. Yes, I too have at points in time decided to use the most optimal monster power over and over and over till one or more of my players got sick of it (to those I did this to: sorry). Sometimes it is hard not to. Maybe I am getting old (ok not so maybe), but this monster didn't need to, so that may be a take-away. 

Knowing the encounter I do not agree that it is fully a design issue, rather I would view it as a communication failure, a lot of bad luck and the lack of a recharge keyword on a crucial power. It sucks to be sure and I truly wish your experience had been better , but sometimes, between the players, the encounter and the DM, you just cannot reach a happy medium. I think this has happened to all of us at one point or another. Its just life and should not be taken to hard..or to heart for that matter.

Feb 27, 2012 -- 1:08PM, Kurald_Galain wrote:

---stuff snipped--
I don't see the mythal surges adding much. Almost all players took the heroic pose of not using them, and a few were using them all the time with a "nyah nyah" attitude, giving their characters infinite surges for no reason. Even the parties that didn't use mythal surges were unlikely to run out; I find that PCs rarely if ever run out of surges in LFR, and that the limiting factor has always been how many in-combat healing powers you have. And that's without Comrade's Succor.

---stuff snipped--

As a player I love the Mythal surges and that is not just because I was playing my merchant halfling that doesn't do silly heroics (nyah nyah is my middle name). It forces people to think with the end goal in mind. The adventure makes it fairly clear there is a long day ahead and as such being the big hero and spending only your own surges in the beginning may end up costing you the final victory. And so will overdoing it on sucking Mythal surges. I like the balance of that.
Speaking for my character (nobody else is likely to), had not most everyone else at my table been so heroic as to spend their own surges, my halfling would have had to actually think about maybe possibly using one of his own... So I am grateful for the existance of heroes (3 cheers and free dri,,ehm 20% off beers provided they are MaDougal's Blaine(tm) brand). Nevertheless the rampant heroism could have been a major liability to the overall success.

 

RE: Certs

My understanding is that the "Certs" available is dependent on the mission the organizer chose for 2.1.

Spoiler: Show

The certs available depend on which path the organizers decide to run. I hope that clears it up!

 

Feb 28, 2012 -- 3:36AM, Uthrac wrote:

RE: Certs

My understanding is that the "Certs" available is dependent on the mission the organizer chose for 2.1.

Spoiler: Show

At DDXP Friday, we used the "Graveyard" version of the adventure, which had a specific list of available certs. On DDXP Saturday, we did the "Diplomat" version, which had a different set of certs.

At TotlaCon this weekend, I chose to run the "Graveyard" version, so we used the Graveyard cert rewards. (Total Success on the key story missions was still needed to earn the cert.)

The certs available depend on which path the organizers decide to run. I hope that clears it up!

 

Ah, ok.  But one more question on the version we played at Totalcon: Spoiler: Show

Daren

Spoiler: Show

At least, that's my understanding. Perhaps Sean will stop by and explain it better than I have!  

Now I am curious on what the other verison entailed... and wondering if that would have better suited my bard.

Gomez

I just want to take a moment to remind everyone that BIs and Specials are significantly written to much more challenging than normal adventures and that you encouraged to come prepared for that, should you choose to play them.

Feb 28, 2012 -- 6:04AM, Uthrac wrote:

Spoiler: Show

Correct - that story award is related specifically to the Beholder Encounter.

The two different versions of the adventure (I'll call them "Graveyard" and "Dignitaries") have different "Key Encounters" that can earn story awards. In the "Graveyard" version, the Beholder Story Award is not one of the key awards that you can earn. Likewise, in the "Dignitaries" version, there are some "Graveyard" story awards that are not available.

So, at least for now, the "possible story awards" are based on the version of the adventure, and then the "group success" determines which of those are available.

At least, that's my understanding. Perhaps Sean will stop by and explain it better than I have!  

Spoiler: Show

Feb 28, 2012 -- 1:49AM, lunattic wrote:

I do however question the design choice of the final encounter, since exchanging the spam-immobilization effect with any- or mutliple of increased stats on dagon, ongoing damage or dazed would have changed the encounter from completely impossible and frustrating to very challenging but still fun, and it would have accounted for the fact that not everyone would be fortunate enough to go at him with ample ranged backup.

I am positively laughing at this.

"I feel this encounter was badly designed, because instead of having powers and status effects we're accustomed to dealing with, the monster had a different power that our oddly-composed party wasn't equipped to handle."

Here's an idea -- how about we petition the admins to release ADCP 5-1, but make it a reprint of ADCP 3-1 with all the monster names changed? That way, you'll already know what to do to march through the module like a bunch of Big Damn Heroes, regardless of party composition! And that'll save time that would otherwise have been spent trying to come up with new and original encounters, when all the players want are 'fun' encounters that do exactly what they expect!

--
Pauper

Eh, the (empowered) version of Dagon that I ran has flatly problematic stats. It can immobilize a group at-will twice per round (plus APs), teleporting itself wherever it wants as it does so.

That's not good monster design. No amount of "Well, you should just be more awesome at ranged" really changes that. It's not _fun_ design. Especially not in an encounter that wants you to move around and do Skill Challengey stuff.

I DMed the adventure recently, used the power once, saw how annoying it was... then used my other more fun stuff for the remainder of the combat. Because there's a section at the front of every LFR adventure that says to make sure you run a fun game that is appropriately challenging, and that rules text comes before the one that told me the power was at-will, and certainly before the non-existant one that said I _had_ to use that power over and over if that was my best chance of killing everyone   

Hopefully, the collective feedback gets it tweaked slightly in the final version - rather than necessarily berating people for complaining about an encounter that was _unfun_.

Feb 13, 2012 -- 9:29PM, comicbradsell wrote:

Loved the maps, I expect to be running this at a convention in the next 3-4 months-were they from Book of Vile Darkness?

Some of the maps were from the Book of Vile Darkness and some were from the Haunted Temples map pack. In Part 1, 5 map were from Haunted Temples and 2 were from BoVD. In Part 2 (missions that every table does), 1 map was from Haunted Temples and 2 were from BoVD. At ~$12, the Haunted Temples map pack is pretty useful since 6 of the BI's 10 maps come from it.

As others have said, I really liked the mission structure of Part 1. I liked that each table could do encounters they thought sounded interesting/important. It also made it feel like a real attack - bad stuff was happening all over the city and you couldn't be everywhere at once, so you had to prioritize and try to help as much as you could. I didn't even realize until after DDXP that there weren't any special missions in the B.I. It didn't feel like the play experience was diminished by not having the special missions because it was like everyone was doing special missions.

I also really liked the impact the part 1 structure had on timing. Some tables simply play faster than other tables due to a wide variety of factors. I liked that the "do as much as you can in X time" meant that people could play at whatever pace they wanted. Fast tables weren't sitting around bored for long periods of time waiting for other people to catch up and slower tables didn't feel pressured into racing through everything and/or never getting to complete anything due to time constraints.  

At TotalCon we had a large map on the wall and each table had a sticky with their table number on it. Once a table decided which mission they were going to next, they put their sticky on that location. When a table successfully completed a mission, the event organizer put a green smiley-faced sticky on that location (or a yellow neutral-faced sticky if it was a partial success). That way players could quickly look at the map and see what missions needed the most help. 

Overall I had a lot of fun playing the BI at DDXP and helping Dan coordinate it at TotalCon. (And it was fun wandering around as the "hideous multi-headed bride of Dagon - rarh" )  

Feb 28, 2012 -- 9:42AM, lorika wrote:

Overall I had a lot of fun playing the BI at DDXP and helping Dan coordinate it at TotalCon. (And it was fun wandering around as the "hideous multi-headed bride of Dagon - rarh" )  

Hmm, bride of Dagon. Bride of Dan. 

Does that mean Dan is banished from Myth Nantar forever?

More seriously - _loved_ the use of the poster maps for this adventure. It made DMing _so_ much easier, and I'll keep using the maps in other adventures. Great stuff. 

Feb 28, 2012 -- 10:03AM, Keithric wrote:

More seriously - _loved_ the use of the poster maps for this adventure. It made DMing _so_ much easier, and I'll keep using the maps in other adventures. Great stuff. 

The poster maps were absolutely fantastic. We were Keith's table and the maps made things cleaner, simpler, and much more visually attractive. I hope the campaign staff keeps up the trend and uses the new poster maps for all BIs.

I actually liked the Dagon fight. I like that the DM had the tools to challenge parties as he deemed fit - the power should be in the DM's hands. You might get some abusive DMs but that's how the game works, right? I think the melee-only table story was unfortunate, but most tables should come prepared to handle difficult situations in the final encounter for a BI - especially one where they've deliberately made it more challenging on themselves.

On another note, I have never been targeted by coup de grace so many times in one encounter. Keith actually had me sweating a little. I guess it serves me right for trying to keep a beholder marked.

Feb 28, 2012 -- 8:27AM, Pauper wrote:

Feb 28, 2012 -- 1:49AM, lunattic wrote:

I do however question the design choice of the final encounter, since exchanging the spam-immobilization effect with any- or mutliple of increased stats on dagon, ongoing damage or dazed would have changed the encounter from completely impossible and frustrating to very challenging but still fun, and it would have accounted for the fact that not everyone would be fortunate enough to go at him with ample ranged backup.

I am positively laughing at this.

"I feel this encounter was badly designed, because instead of having powers and status effects we're accustomed to dealing with, the monster had a different power that our oddly-composed party wasn't equipped to handle."

Here's an idea -- how about we petition the admins to release ADCP 5-1, but make it a reprint of ADCP 3-1 with all the monster names changed? That way, you'll already know what to do to march through the module like a bunch of Big Damn Heroes, regardless of party composition! And that'll save time that would otherwise have been spent trying to come up with new and original encounters, when all the players want are 'fun' encounters that do exactly what they expect!

--
Pauper

The end-boss was a downscaled version of a level 32 solo. At that level, parties are expected to be able to deal with at-will area burst save ends immobilization that also teleports the monster. At lower ALs (including all heroic levels!), it's just unfair. 

But I have faith Sean will change this in the final version of the adventure.

Feb 28, 2012 -- 10:26AM, dkay807 wrote:

On another note, I have never been targeted by coup de grace so many times in one encounter. Keith actually had me sweating a little. I guess it serves me right for trying to keep a beholder marked.

Heh, I _was_ really clear that it was his only way to remove a mark so all you had to do was not mark him

I just wish I hadn't rolled a 2 with the CdG Disintegrate. Ongoing 40 would have been funny.

Feb 28, 2012 -- 11:20AM, Keithric wrote:

Feb 28, 2012 -- 10:26AM, dkay807 wrote:

On another note, I have never been targeted by coup de grace so many times in one encounter. Keith actually had me sweating a little. I guess it serves me right for trying to keep a beholder marked.

Heh, I _was_ really clear that it was his only way to remove a mark so all you had to do was not mark him

I just wish I hadn't rolled a 2 with the CdG Disintegrate. Ongoing 40 would have been funny.

Well I rolled consective 1s [needing only a 3 or 4] on attempts to daze/blind and dominate that monster; and Dave rolled 3 or 4 2s in a row.  lol  It was unreal.  But it made things more interesting and ultimately fun.  So that was good.  Thanks again, Keith.

Daren

Feb 28, 2012 -- 9:12AM, Keithric wrote:

Eh, the (empowered) version of Dagon that I ran has flatly problematic stats. It can immobilize a group at-will twice per round (plus APs), teleporting itself wherever it wants as it does so.

That's not good monster design. No amount of "Well, you should just be more awesome at ranged" really changes that. It's not _fun_ design. Especially not in an encounter that wants you to move around and do Skill Challengey stuff.

I DMed the adventure recently, used the power once, saw how annoying it was... then used my other more fun stuff for the remainder of the combat. Because there's a section at the front of every LFR adventure that says to make sure you run a fun game that is appropriately challenging, and that rules text comes before the one that told me the power was at-will, and certainly before the non-existant one that said I _had_ to use that power over and over if that was my best chance of killing everyone   

Hopefully, the collective feedback gets it tweaked slightly in the final version - rather than necessarily berating people for complaining about an encounter that was _unfun_.

Thank you  

I think it's a valid assumption that a party of Paragon PCs (that didn't just hit 11) will have more than save granting when it comes to mobility penalties, especially melee characters since that's one of their biggest weaknesses; same goes with having ranged attacks to deal with fliers.

I cannot comment on the overall brokenness of the creature, I'll just have to take keithric's word on it; however, "Creature with ranged attacks that can stay out of melee trivially" is a thing, and it is a common thing, if it was unfun, it was unfun for the same reason that driving to the fair but having forgot your wallet is unfun, and it is certainly not the fault of the fair for costing money.

Basically just a slightly altered form of the standard Dagon stats, reduced somewhat in effectiveness for level difference (12-30 levels lower), and given two sets of actions per round (more modern solo design). Even at level 30, the at-will burst 3 immobilize and teleport isn't terribly _fun_ but it's a lot more dealable... and it normally can't do it twice per round. At level 14, it's pretty trivial to use it every round along with the slides and pulls to keep someone permanently immobilized. So they can teleport out once, say, and save before acting once, say... but if they save at end of turn, they just get re-immobilized.

And most flying creatures can be more easily moved and/or proned. And don't hover near you taking opportunity attacks when you make a ranged attack - something which might mean that taking ranged attacks are actually _counterproductive_. Force moving your allies or granting them saves is probably the more realistic option. Dunno if the DM was also force moving them so they weren't adjacent to stop that. That'd be a more perfect storm of BLEAH.

I'm actually a fan of forcing melee PCs to deal with slow and immobilize and such, but it's not necessarily interesting when it's so easy to reapply. Worse, in this particular encounter it's _far_ more interesting if the PCs are able to move around and deal with the various portals and such.

Even a character with Disciple of Freedom might be pretty frustrated in that combat. At least, one with my luck

P.S. Pulling out rule 42 and doing an improvised attack with some crazy skill theory on Dagon sounds like the way to go for that group. Or maybe calling out for assistance from the battle interactive and maybe bringing in a PC from another table.

Feb 28, 2012 -- 9:52PM, Keithric wrote:

Or maybe calling out for assistance from the battle interactive and maybe bringing in a PC from another table.

Keep in mind that a lot of events that run this encounter won't really have this as an option. The only AL16 table, for example, shouldn't be calling for help when they are the highest level table at the event, and the next highest level is AL12.

Feb 29, 2012 -- 11:24AM, JRedGiant1 wrote:

Feb 28, 2012 -- 9:52PM, Keithric wrote:

Or maybe calling out for assistance from the battle interactive and maybe bringing in a PC from another table.

Keep in mind that a lot of events that run this encounter won't really have this as an option. The only AL16 table, for example, shouldn't be calling for help when they are the highest level table at the event, and the next highest level is AL12.

Although for LFR interactives, most of the time that I have seen the "call out for help mechanic" in play, it would involve removing monsters from the table that needs help and then placing AL Appropriate monsters at the table helping out. 

Now, I do have fond memories in 3.5/LG of taking part in all kinds of wide-spread APL battles where monsters intermixed -- my BDF had great war stories of entering an APL8 fight at 3th level [with a reach weapon ] -- but in the LFR model with balancing for the specific table, the "we need help" mechanic could work even if there are no other tables near your AL.

Daren

That worked for every other encounter in the adventure, but sending a SECOND Dagon over to another table might be a bit overkill (not to mention the effect this would have on overall continuity).

The "we need help" mechanic can be interpreted by the senior DM in a number of ways, not just moving a creature. For example, since the help needed was to remove perma-immobilize, the senior DM could rule something like: "The PCs at table 2 hear your cry for aid and siphon the harmful effects through the whirlpool gate to their location . . . Everyone at table 1 immediately ends the immobilized condition. Everyone at table 2 gains weakened and slowed, save ends both."

Aid give to table 1, challenge increased for table 2. Fun for all! (Note: AL independent!)

I'm sure there'd be some table that was doing crazy good, and you'd be like "The high mages of myth nantar think they can channel a power to help out your comrades, if you're willing to provide some life force to power it"

They say sure, you deal their bloodied damage to the table, remove the immobilize power from Dagon on the other table, and play continues - now more exciting for both tables!

Mar 1, 2012 -- 10:07AM, Keithric wrote:

I'm sure there'd be some table that was doing crazy good, and you'd be like "The high mages of myth nantar think they can channel a power to help out your comrades, if you're willing to provide some life force to power it"

They say sure, you deal their bloodied damage to the table, remove the immobilize power from Dagon on the other table, and play continues - now more exciting for both tables!

I'm sure they can do that; what I'm not at all clear about is how they should know that they're supposed to.

This is the glory tier in the final combat of a battle interactive; if that isn't a situation in which a DM is supposed to be playing the creatures to their full potential, I don't know what is.

I consider this a campaign issue, not a DM issue.

We're in the fourth year (and, odds are, pretty near the end) of the campaign.  We still don't have a coherent philosophy as to when failure or death is an acceptable table outcome, beyond "when the DM thinks you have it coming".

I find that incredibly bizarre.  On the one hand, any time anyone shows up with a complaint about a module, the reflexive answer is always that it's the DM's fault, that the DM should have tweaked the encounter to suit the table.

On the other, we have (particularly in the case of battle interactive and epic events) adventures where PCs have the opportunity to earn above-average rewards, in many cases with the adventure taking into account the possibility of a whole range of outcomes and rewards, justified in part by the greater challenge level.

I'm perfectly okay with the idea that, sometimes, pushing your luck (e.g., playing glory tier, choosing not to trade with evil to replenish your resources) means that you were not able to objectively overcome the obstacles before you, so you fail.

I'm also perfectly fine with a campaign in which PCs are always Big Damn Heroes who never fail and always have a full success, with the DM being responsible for tweaking things so that this outcome always occurs.

I just wish the campaign would pick a paradigm.  You can't have both at the same time.

If rewards are things that should be objectively earned, then sometimes PCs fail, and it's pretty rare that the failure makes the event fun (though the counter-argument is that it makes the campaign more fun as a whole).

If PCs are supposed to always succeed, then the campaign should long ago have come out and stated that, rather than hiding behind the nebulous concept that the DM is wrong to run the adventure as written if that isn't fun, without dealing with the fact that everyone sitting at the table is likely to have different (and in a convention context, completely unknown) assumptions as to what that means.

I feel there should be a serious chance of failure and, by personal preference chracter death, when players chose the hard route. I also feel that it needs to be pretty clear to players that they are choosing the hard route. While I would argue it was pretty clear that the empowered would be scary/bad juju, the players(s) in question claim they did not realize. I have no reason to doubt them on that so rather than force huge far reaching conclusions from the situation, concerning DM, players or adventure, I maintain it was just a perfect storm. A combination of factors that sunk the ship.

As for the campaign and paradigm choice. Sure the campaign can have both. It just cannot have players that always expect to get their preference in paradigm As long as we make sure players realize what paradigm is in effect at any given point it should be fine. Or rather would be to me. 

And A DM is never wrong running an adventure as written, just often better if they do not. Fact is not everyone is comfortable going off script and we provide little guidance for doing so. If anything we need to work on that rather than chosing and stating a prevalent paradigm. Especially if the paradigm choice seems mostly needed to be able to apply it as a rule. Less rules, more play

From what I understand the campaigns paradigm is and always have been: what ever the players at the table have the most fun with. Yes, this means that different tables have different experiences and DMs should really adjust the challenge based on whom is playing at the table (and a DM should always make sure the players realize what they picked). Having said that, just because I point out the ultimate responsibility for how much fun the players have with a particular encounter is with the DM, that does not mean I don't pay attention to the complaint for future reference.

Mar 1, 2012 -- 12:45PM, imaginaryfriend wrote:

I feel there should be a serious chance of failure and, by personal preference chracter death, when players chose the hard route. I also feel that it needs to be pretty clear to players that they are choosing the hard route. While I would argue it was pretty clear that the empowered would be scary/bad juju, the players(s) in question claim they did not realize. I have no reason to doubt them on that so rather than force huge far reaching conclusions from the situation, concerning DM, players or adventure, I maintain it was just a perfect storm. A combination of factors that sunk the ship.

As for the campaign and paradigm choice. Sure the campaign can have both. It just cannot have players that always expect to get their preference in paradigm As long as we make sure players realize what paradigm is in effect at any given point it should be fine. Or rather would be to me. 

And A DM is never wrong running an adventure as written, just often better if they do not. Fact is not everyone is comfortable going off script and we provide little guidance for doing so. If anything we need to work on that rather than chosing and stating a prevalent paradigm. Especially if the paradigm choice seems mostly needed to be able to apply it as a rule. Less rules, more play

If this is still referring to the story at our table, I'd like to repeat that i wouldn't have had any problem with dying or failing there as long as we had some sort of chance to actually fight back or make any attacks of our own against him. With the way his party-wide immbolization power is at will and teleports him away, which apparently is completely unchanged from his lvl 32 solo stackblock, this is *completely* impossible.

I agree that In retrospect we could have called for some kind of help, but that would have required the organization to improvize heavily since you couldn't send a final boss over to another table. Also, by the third consecutive round in which we were unable to attack him, everyone was really frustrated and demoralized since by then everything we could have done to remove it was expended, which doesn't really help creativity much. This ENTIRE issue could have been avoided by design by changing the at-will immobilization to something that would allow people to actually make attacks back but still hinder them, like dazed, ongoing damage, giving dagon even higher stats...

No-one has really commented yet on why that at-will immoblization status effect is such a good idea vs the at-will non-melee hosing variants.

Mar 2, 2012 -- 4:11AM, lunattic wrote:

Mar 1, 2012 -- 12:45PM, imaginaryfriend wrote:

I feel there should be a serious chance of failure and, by personal preference chracter death, when players chose the hard route. I also feel that it needs to be pretty clear to players that they are choosing the hard route. While I would argue it was pretty clear that the empowered would be scary/bad juju, the players(s) in question claim they did not realize. I have no reason to doubt them on that so rather than force huge far reaching conclusions from the situation, concerning DM, players or adventure, I maintain it was just a perfect storm. A combination of factors that sunk the ship.

As for the campaign and paradigm choice. Sure the campaign can have both. It just cannot have players that always expect to get their preference in paradigm As long as we make sure players realize what paradigm is in effect at any given point it should be fine. Or rather would be to me. 

And A DM is never wrong running an adventure as written, just often better if they do not. Fact is not everyone is comfortable going off script and we provide little guidance for doing so. If anything we need to work on that rather than chosing and stating a prevalent paradigm. Especially if the paradigm choice seems mostly needed to be able to apply it as a rule. Less rules, more play

If this is still referring to the story at our table, I'd like to repeat that i wouldn't have had any problem with dying or failing there as long as we had some sort of chance to actually fight back or make any attacks of our own against him. With the way his party-wide immbolization power is at will and teleports him away, which apparently is completely unchanged from his lvl 32 solo stackblock, this is *completely* impossible.

I agree that In retrospect we could have called for some kind of help, but that would have required the organization to improvize heavily since you couldn't send a final boss over to another table. Also, by the third consecutive round in which we were unable to attack him, everyone was really frustrated and demoralized since by then everything we could have done to remove it was expended, which doesn't really help creativity much. This ENTIRE issue could have been avoided by design by changing the at-will immobilization to something that would allow people to actually make attacks back but still hinder them, like dazed, ongoing damage, giving dagon even higher stats...

No-one has really commented yet on why that at-will immoblization status effect is such a good idea vs the at-will non-melee hosing variants.

Part of the problem with dealing with stories like these is that there's so much information that is left out. Sure, at-will group immobilize is hard, especially with an all-melee party, but other factors influence just how hard it is. For instance, I played this adventure with an AL 18 mostly-melee party, and the at-will immobilize really didn't bother us because we made choices in power and item selection that mitigated those effects. I played a barbarian and realized at early levels that immobilize and restrain effects are bad for me, so I've got items and powers that let me save against them as a minor action even if they don't normally allow a save - choices that I made at the cost of doing more damage, having higher attack modifiers, or having higher defenses. As levels increase, the variety of available choices also increases, and a given group's effectiveness against a particular monster also starts to vary with the monster and party. My barbarian is less effective against ground-based foes than other barbarians because I have a Flying Carpet instead of Dice of Auspicious Fortune, but I can do things that barbarians with Dice often can't - consistently attack flying foes with melee attacks, and travel to Xxiphu without calling in favors. When analyzing feedback, authors, writing directors, and Globals need to carefully consider why a given difficult situation occurred. Did it happen because the power is unbalanced at the tier it's presented, or did it happen because (as is often the case but not necessarily in yours) the player didn't concern themselves with anything other than high attack rolls and high damage when building their PC? It's a very difficult balance to keep, even in 4th Edition.

True, but I think I more or less gave enough information on what happened for anyone reading it to have a decent idea of how the encounter went,without the need of a play by play. If this would help, I guess I could go into extreme detail. Overall though, if you lose initiative vs him, which is very easy, he at-will immoblizes time and time again. When the party used run rampart/the barbarian save reaction encounter utility/etc, it did bring that character closer to him, but on the monsters second attack he repallied immobilize and slid you away with another attack and/or teleported away.

If what Svendj said is true, there is no scaling whatsoever between tiers/ALs regarding this at-will immobilization, completely disregarding the amount of feats or utilities a party at any level has of countering this, while it was designed for an AL 32 solo. At AL 14, this is extremely hard/impossible to deal with. At upper paragon, you have two more feat slots and an additional utility slot to be able to cover extreme situations like this far more easily.

Mar 2, 2012 -- 4:33AM, JohnduBois wrote:

Part of the problem with dealing with stories like these is that there's so much information that is left out. Sure, at-will group immobilize is hard, especially with an all-melee party, but other factors influence just how hard it is. For instance, I played this adventure with an AL 18 mostly-melee party, and the at-will immobilize really didn't bother us because we made choices in power and item selection that mitigated those effects. I played a barbarian and realized at early levels that immobilize and restrain effects are bad for me, so I've got items and powers that let me save against them as a minor action even if they don't normally allow a save - choices that I made at the cost of doing more damage, having higher attack modifiers, or having higher defenses. As levels increase, the variety of available choices also increases, and a given group's effectiveness against a particular monster also starts to vary with the monster and party. My barbarian is less effective against ground-based foes than other barbarians because I have a Flying Carpet instead of Dice of Auspicious Fortune, but I can do things that barbarians with Dice often can't - consistently attack flying foes with melee attacks, and travel to Xxiphu without calling in favors. When analyzing feedback, authors, writing directors, and Globals need to carefully consider why a given difficult situation occurred. Did it happen because the power is unbalanced at the tier it's presented, or did it happen because (as is often the case but not necessarily in yours) the player didn't concern themselves with anything other than high attack rolls and high damage when building their PC? It's a very difficult balance to keep, even in 4th Edition.

I'm very sorry to see that you take this stance. While I sympathize with the writers for having to account for (sometimes severely) different levels of optimization, what you describe above is in the upper echelons of optimization in my opinion. You can't expect all, or even most players to invest feats and/or powers that shore up all of their class' weaknesses. By taking advantage of that, you're actually punishing people for taking interesting offbeat feats and powers because they came at the expense of the sky- or dark-blue powers in the Char Op handbooks. 

And that's not even considering the fact that, like lunattic said, the area burst 2 immobilize (save ends) was already incorporated at AL2, where no PC can escape it regardless of powers and feats. 

Finally, claiming that there's "so much information left out" is just untrue, because apart from a play-by-play, the problem that occurred should be pretty clear by now. 

Mar 2, 2012 -- 6:04AM, svendj wrote:

Mar 2, 2012 -- 4:33AM, JohnduBois wrote:

Part of the problem with dealing with stories like these is that there's so much information that is left out. Sure, at-will group immobilize is hard, especially with an all-melee party, but other factors influence just how hard it is. For instance, I played this adventure with an AL 18 mostly-melee party, and the at-will immobilize really didn't bother us because we made choices in power and item selection that mitigated those effects. I played a barbarian and realized at early levels that immobilize and restrain effects are bad for me, so I've got items and powers that let me save against them as a minor action even if they don't normally allow a save - choices that I made at the cost of doing more damage, having higher attack modifiers, or having higher defenses. As levels increase, the variety of available choices also increases, and a given group's effectiveness against a particular monster also starts to vary with the monster and party. My barbarian is less effective against ground-based foes than other barbarians because I have a Flying Carpet instead of Dice of Auspicious Fortune, but I can do things that barbarians with Dice often can't - consistently attack flying foes with melee attacks, and travel to Xxiphu without calling in favors. When analyzing feedback, authors, writing directors, and Globals need to carefully consider why a given difficult situation occurred. Did it happen because the power is unbalanced at the tier it's presented, or did it happen because (as is often the case but not necessarily in yours) the player didn't concern themselves with anything other than high attack rolls and high damage when building their PC? It's a very difficult balance to keep, even in 4th Edition.

I'm very sorry to see that you take this stance. While I sympathize with the writers for having to account for (sometimes severely) different levels of optimization, what you describe above is in the upper echelons of optimization in my opinion. You can't expect all, or even most players to invest feats and/or powers that shore up all of their class' weaknesses. By taking advantage of that, you're actually punishing people for taking interesting offbeat feats and powers because they came at the expense of the sky- or dark-blue powers in the Char Op handbooks. 

And that's not even considering the fact that, like lunattic said, the area burst 2 immobilize (save ends) was already incorporated at AL2, where no PC can escape it regardless of powers and feats. 

Finally, claiming that there's "so much information left out" is just untrue, because apart from a play-by-play, the problem that occurred should be pretty clear by now. 

I don't think that I was clear enough. To clarify:
1. Tier is a huge part of what's appropriate and what's not. At lower levels, options are limited, so conditions are much harder to deal with. Group immobilize at low levels is crazy, even on encounter or recharge powers.
2. It's not about punishment, it's about choice. If you choose to take rules options that primarily improve your numbers (attack, damage, defenses), you leave yourself vulnerable in encounters that have a large numbers of conditions. If you choose to take options that improve your ability to handle conditions, you are going to hit less frequently, do less damage, and your ability to handle conditions may not even come into play, making those choices worse for encounters that don't have conditions. This is not a problem. What *is* a problem is when expectations are generated that encounters are designed with a certain character build philosophy in mind. Over half the complaints I have received about adventures can be boiled down to this - players who, after reading the CharOp forums, take all the powers that increase attack and damage and can't handle conditions at AL 18. So, when I say there isn't enough information, I'm not saying I want to know more. I'm saying that to determine the propriety of an encounter (as we often do in playtesting), you sometimes need to consider build choices that have been made since level one to determine if the encounter itself is poorly balanced or if you've got a group of PCs that are remarkably well-suited or poorly-suited to the task. As an example outside of this adventure: I had a playtest group for one adventure tell me that the encounter was underpowered because they were able to fly over everything and nuke it from orbit where the other three playtest tables TPK'd. The other three tables weren't especially weak, and the table that thought it was underpowered wasn't especially strong; it's that one table had the tools to handle an otherwise overpowered encounter (and that encounter was scaled down).
3. It's not about punishment, it's about presenting a diverse set of encounters. If every encounter worked the same way, and no encounter offered challenges that haven't been faced before, the game would be boring (and, in fact, the lack of varied challenge options is one of the biggest limitations of the early releases of any edition). Part of the way the game is designed is that no matter what you choose when building your character - unless you are able to *really* spike initiative and damage - there will be something that happens that you have a hard time handling. That does not necessarily mean that it is overpowered (although the reverse is true - just because my party was able to handle it does not mean the encounter wasn't overpowered).

My primary piece of evidence that the encounter wasn't overpowered? At DDXP, where my group played the adventure, a supermajority of tables that chose to take on the empowered Dagon won. This leads me to believe that the tables that did not defeat Dagon either rolled poorly, bit off more than they could chew, were not a balanced party, were especially underprepared for the encounter's challenge, followed poor tactics, or were the victims of poor clarity on the part of the DM. That's a pretty large set of possibilities, and I'd accept any or all (in fact, it appears that "poor clarity" is probably the largest culprit). All of this is beside the initial point, though, which is that determining the reason a party failed at an encounter is more difficult that it may appear.

Mar 2, 2012 -- 6:04AM, svendj wrote:

I'm very sorry to see that you take this stance. While I sympathize with the writers for having to account for (sometimes severely) different levels of optimization, what you describe above is in the upper echelons of optimization in my opinion. You can't expect all, or even most players to invest feats and/or powers that shore up all of their class' weaknesses. By taking advantage of that, you're actually punishing people for taking interesting offbeat feats and powers because they came at the expense of the sky- or dark-blue powers in the Char Op handbooks. 

And that's not even considering the fact that, like lunattic said, the area burst 2 immobilize (save ends) was already incorporated at AL2, where no PC can escape it regardless of powers and feats. 

Finally, claiming that there's "so much information left out" is just untrue, because apart from a play-by-play, the problem that occurred should be pretty clear by now. 

John has already well explained his ideas. I just wanted to comment that I hear these two sides time and again "The mod was too easy!" or "The mod was too hard!". Those complaining that the mod is too hard say that the writers shouldn't assume optimization (even if that was not part of the conversation when the mod was written), because damn, everything is about optimization. Those that complain that mods are too easy, complain that the writers aren't assuming enough optimization by parties, because damn, everything is about optimization.

Look, John said it plainly, the players make choices with their characters and some of those choices sometimes impact play. The writers can't predict every choice that a player is going to make so they choose to tell a story and write a module with mechanics they feel embodies some goal. And a demon god coming into the middle of a city and being allowed to manifest is a huge threat.

Examine for a moment how they could have written such a threat and you'll find that 1) the options are incredibly diverse, 2) that playtesting them all would have been insane and impossible and 3) perhaps most importantly, we (some of us anyways) would have complained about the mod no matter what choices they made. I won't give examples of those complaints, you've seen them all before.

So, they do their best, they pick some monsters, and we roll our dice.

Mar 2, 2012 -- 7:20AM, JohnduBois wrote:

Mar 2, 2012 -- 6:04AM, svendj wrote:

Mar 2, 2012 -- 4:33AM, JohnduBois wrote:

Part of the problem with dealing with stories like these is that there's so much information that is left out. Sure, at-will group immobilize is hard, especially with an all-melee party, but other factors influence just how hard it is. For instance, I played this adventure with an AL 18 mostly-melee party, and the at-will immobilize really didn't bother us because we made choices in power and item selection that mitigated those effects. I played a barbarian and realized at early levels that immobilize and restrain effects are bad for me, so I've got items and powers that let me save against them as a minor action even if they don't normally allow a save - choices that I made at the cost of doing more damage, having higher attack modifiers, or having higher defenses. As levels increase, the variety of available choices also increases, and a given group's effectiveness against a particular monster also starts to vary with the monster and party. My barbarian is less effective against ground-based foes than other barbarians because I have a Flying Carpet instead of Dice of Auspicious Fortune, but I can do things that barbarians with Dice often can't - consistently attack flying foes with melee attacks, and travel to Xxiphu without calling in favors. When analyzing feedback, authors, writing directors, and Globals need to carefully consider why a given difficult situation occurred. Did it happen because the power is unbalanced at the tier it's presented, or did it happen because (as is often the case but not necessarily in yours) the player didn't concern themselves with anything other than high attack rolls and high damage when building their PC? It's a very difficult balance to keep, even in 4th Edition.

I'm very sorry to see that you take this stance. While I sympathize with the writers for having to account for (sometimes severely) different levels of optimization, what you describe above is in the upper echelons of optimization in my opinion. You can't expect all, or even most players to invest feats and/or powers that shore up all of their class' weaknesses. By taking advantage of that, you're actually punishing people for taking interesting offbeat feats and powers because they came at the expense of the sky- or dark-blue powers in the Char Op handbooks. 

And that's not even considering the fact that, like lunattic said, the area burst 2 immobilize (save ends) was already incorporated at AL2, where no PC can escape it regardless of powers and feats. 

Finally, claiming that there's "so much information left out" is just untrue, because apart from a play-by-play, the problem that occurred should be pretty clear by now. 

I don't think that I was clear enough. To clarify:
1. Tier is a huge part of what's appropriate and what's not. At lower levels, options are limited, so conditions are much harder to deal with. Group immobilize at low levels is crazy, even on encounter or recharge powers.
2. It's not about punishment, it's about choice. If you choose to take rules options that primarily improve your numbers (attack, damage, defenses), you leave yourself vulnerable in encounters that have a large numbers of conditions. If you choose to take options that improve your ability to handle conditions, you are going to hit less frequently, do less damage, and your ability to handle conditions may not even come into play, making those choices worse for encounters that don't have conditions. This is not a problem. What *is* a problem is when expectations are generated that encounters are designed with a certain character build philosophy in mind. Over half the complaints I have received about adventures can be boiled down to this - players who, after reading the CharOp forums, take all the powers that increase attack and damage and can't handle conditions at AL 18. So, when I say there isn't enough information, I'm not saying I want to know more. I'm saying that to determine the propriety of an encounter (as we often do in playtesting), you sometimes need to consider build choices that have been made since level one to determine if the encounter itself is poorly balanced or if you've got a group of PCs that are remarkably well-suited or poorly-suited to the task. As an example outside of this adventure: I had a playtest group for one adventure tell me that the encounter was underpowered because they were able to fly over everything and nuke it from orbit where the other three playtest tables TPK'd. The other three tables weren't especially weak, and the table that thought it was underpowered wasn't especially strong; it's that one table had the tools to handle an otherwise overpowered encounter (and that encounter was scaled down).
3. It's not about punishment, it's about presenting a diverse set of encounters. If every encounter worked the same way, and no encounter offered challenges that haven't been faced before, the game would be boring (and, in fact, the lack of varied challenge options is one of the biggest limitations of the early releases of any edition). Part of the way the game is designed is that no matter what you choose when building your character - unless you are able to *really* spike initiative and damage - there will be something that happens that you have a hard time handling. That does not necessarily mean that it is overpowered (although the reverse is true - just because my party was able to handle it does not mean the encounter wasn't overpowered).

My primary piece of evidence that the encounter wasn't overpowered? At DDXP, where my group played the adventure, a supermajority of tables that chose to take on the empowered Dagon won. This leads me to believe that the tables that did not defeat Dagon either rolled poorly, bit off more than they could chew, were not a balanced party, were especially underprepared for the encounter's challenge, followed poor tactics, or were the victims of poor clarity on the part of the DM. That's a pretty large set of possibilities, and I'd accept any or all (in fact, it appears that "poor clarity" is probably the largest culprit). All of this is beside the initial point, though, which is that determining the reason a party failed at an encounter is more difficult that it may appear.

While it may be true that the group was very unoptimal for this encounter, I still have no idea how I'm expected to counter group-wide immoblization each turn as a melee character at AL 14, or worse, at heroic. To give a list of what everyone had in order to remove the effect:

-me: guiding verse, divine mettle, virtue's touch (which, I realized then, did not actually remove immobilize but did remove roughly everything else...).
-fighter: fighter's grit, daily item power.
-barbarian: run rampart, 2 other utilities that removed ongoing effects.
-Bard: granted 3 saves to others each combat.

I can't say the party was unprepared to handle debalitating effects or took only the options that increased their numbers. In fact, the only things I could have taken additionally myself is one teleport utility at the cost of the saving throw, and the disciple of freedom feat. Of those, only the feat would have mattered, but then, am I supposed to have the equivalent of superior will with me at all times just in case I run into this extreme locking mechanism originally designed for AL 32 and one set of actions per turn?

There are two easy mitigation methods to not get hurt by this:

1) Don't be in a burstable formation
2) Have the DM not use the same attack power over and over

1) The best and easiest method to avoid this is probably to go first and heavily control Dagon. Also to just start spread all over the map - which is totally valid, but not something most groups do. Note that even high initiative groups can still lose to him when he rolls twice for initiative, and I'm not sure I'm "for" reinforcing the adage that you have to go first by all means. For example, when I ran it my group had a warlord and still largely went after me. Note that with his aura of pull and slides on his blasts, it's very easy for him to regroup people back together. The next method involves some very solid teleports. But, again, all he has to do is use the power again, teleport a couple rows, then do a blast on the people he's facing.

2) This one is the actual request - make it recharge, instead of at-will, and he won't use it twice (or more times) every round. Alternatively, have DMs just not do that.

I have a very mobile melee character at that range - I have two teleports and disciple of freedom (as well as flight). That would have covered me for two of the rounds, but after that I'd be looking at 50/50 chance of being pretty screwed. Course, hopefully at that point Dagon is pretty screwed too... but eh.

The funny thing for me is Dagon is _filled_ with stuff that puts you next to him where he can mess with you, but this is choosing not to use those to specifically put at an annoying place. It is the optimal choice, of course. For some tables (and this might be one of them - the most melee oriented folks I've seen are all super charge folks who can't function well out of their narrow niches), that might be the appropriate response, but for a lot, I'd rather optimize for fun.

Personally, I'd like - if we're talking about changes at all:
* Make his less controlly attacks (ie, the slides / pushes, not the immobilize + daze ones) deal more damage, so that "more damage" is a good alternate option. Personally, I would have loved more damage, cause I spent two rounds weakened and none of his attacks really dealt damage, even with crits. 

Heh, I spoke with the guy today who would've been in the melee-group if he hadn't gotten sick. He told me his Fighter has, of all things, a Feyslaughter weapon. That would've made the encounter quite a bit different for you ^^

Heh, that certainly might have helped quite a bit, though I suspect their DM would have responded by blast-sliding them back the 1 square and/or just shifting back (possibly taking the combat challenge attack, though he'd have a chance to daze the fighter)

Still, that might have been enough to just convince the DM to do something else, and poof, whole situation averted. 

Mar 2, 2012 -- 12:41PM, lunattic wrote:

While it may be true that the group was very unoptimal for this encounter, I still have no idea how I'm expected to counter group-wide immoblization each turn as a melee character at AL 14, or worse, at heroic. To give a list of what everyone had in order to remove the effect:

-me: guiding verse, divine mettle, virtue's touch (which, I realized then, did not actually remove immobilize but did remove roughly everything else...).
-fighter: fighter's grit, daily item power.
-barbarian: run rampart, 2 other utilities that removed ongoing effects.
-Bard: granted 3 saves to others each combat.

I can't say the party was unprepared to handle debalitating effects or took only the options that increased their numbers. In fact, the only things I could have taken additionally myself is one teleport utility at the cost of the saving throw, and the disciple of freedom feat. Of those, only the feat would have mattered, but then, am I supposed to have the equivalent of superior will with me at all times just in case I run into this extreme locking mechanism originally designed for AL 32 and one set of actions per turn?

Dagon still has to hit with the attack in order to immobilize people, right? Or is the immobilization an effect of the power?

He definitely has to hit. It's basically level + 5 vs. Reflex (he gets +2 for being aquatic), with two chances to hit.

Mar 2, 2012 -- 7:20AM, JohnduBois wrote:

My primary piece of evidence that the encounter wasn't overpowered? At DDXP, where my group played the adventure, a supermajority of tables that chose to take on the empowered Dagon won. This leads me to believe that the tables that did not defeat Dagon either rolled poorly, bit off more than they could chew, were not a balanced party, were especially underprepared for the encounter's challenge, followed poor tactics, or were the victims of poor clarity on the part of the DM. That's a pretty large set of possibilities, and I'd accept any or all (in fact, it appears that "poor clarity" is probably the largest culprit). All of this is beside the initial point, though, which is that determining the reason a party failed at an encounter is more difficult that it may appear.

Nah, As keithric said, this is an example of a DM being an ass. Dagon is designed to pull people into melee and the DM played him as an Artillery with perfect escape ability. Even a party with multiple lockdown controllers is going to be torn apart by a double acting, control erasing, at-will teleporting, area bursting, non-action clustering bomber. Played with op tactics, if your party lets him act, you're in deep doggie-doo. (Barring a certain Swordmage daily that no solo can cope with)

Mar 10, 2012 -- 4:43AM, Marshall wrote:

Mar 2, 2012 -- 7:20AM, JohnduBois wrote:

My primary piece of evidence that the encounter wasn't overpowered? At DDXP, where my group played the adventure, a supermajority of tables that chose to take on the empowered Dagon won. This leads me to believe that the tables that did not defeat Dagon either rolled poorly, bit off more than they could chew, were not a balanced party, were especially underprepared for the encounter's challenge, followed poor tactics, or were the victims of poor clarity on the part of the DM. That's a pretty large set of possibilities, and I'd accept any or all (in fact, it appears that "poor clarity" is probably the largest culprit). All of this is beside the initial point, though, which is that determining the reason a party failed at an encounter is more difficult that it may appear.

Nah, As keithric said, this is an example of a DM being an ass. Dagon is designed to pull people into melee and the DM played him as an Artillery with perfect escape ability. Even a party with multiple lockdown controllers is going to be torn apart by a double acting, control erasing, at-will teleporting, area bursting, non-action clustering bomber. Played with op tactics, if your party lets him act, you're in deep doggie-doo. (Barring a certain Swordmage daily that no solo can cope with)

If I were to blame anyone, I'd blame the event organizers/designers. Quick, is it appropriate for heroic-tier characters to take on a demon lord and have any chance of success? Heck, even paragon-tier characters should have had no chance. Saying "Oh, the elves' mythal weakens him" is a cop-out.

I don't recall seeing Dagon's Intelligence when I ran him, but I'll bet it's high enough for him to know to immobilize melee attackers far away, and ranged attackers near. Is that fun for the players? No (and that's why I didn't do it at my table). But don't put words in keithric's mouth, and don't blame the DM for running the final boss as intelligently as he could.

It depends also on the choices the PCs make. They can opt for a ormal fight or for a hard fight. If you go for the hard fight...e xpect a HARD fight. And that does mean all the dirty tricks the monster has.If Don't pick the hard option if you don't want a hard fight that you may loose.


Pierre 

1 - As I pointed out above, my table fought the easier version of Dagon.  When the 2-minute warning sounded, we had just barely bloodied him.  He managed to jump over the rest of the group and touch a pillar.  The only thing between him and the edge of the map was the ticking timer - oh, and me, at 3 HP and down to my Last-Chance Desperation daily (burst, slide, push).  I could not get it off in time.  Had we had all night, Dagon would have gotten away, with us shooting at him from behind.  We were not being immobilized (save ends), we were just being overmatched.

2 - Did whoever wrote up the Myth Nantar certs play 'Dawn to Dusk' at PentaCon?  The thing about taking a beholder's eyestalk is exactly my trophy from the last fight there, where I took down the beholder (well, I did have help) and used up both my Dailies to do it.

P.S. Dawn to Dusk works as a 'Special Forces' scenario - PentaCon was really small last year - and it is the only BI that I have been in where that statement is true; most BIs NEED the big crowd to feel right.

I notice this mod is still not available on the public play request, although DDXP was over two months ago. Are there some revisions occurring? I'd like to request this for a convention over Memorial Day weekend.

If you are reading this post and wishing that you had a chance to play this BI, join us on April 21st in Columbia, MD!  Details are available at: warhorn.net/columbia-md-dnd/

Having just played the game at Columbia, I wanted to ask about the XP. The numbers for this, and From Dawn til Dusk seem disturbingly low compared to the earlier BIs, for an AL 16 table with total sucesses on 4/6 of the tasks and the entire 2nd half (or total sucesses in every encounter in ADCP 3-2), you earn 2800 less xp than you would for the same number of encounters in Swarm of Chaos or 4660 less xp than Paladin's Plague. Heck, the P2 High xp from Paladin's Plague was higher than the AL 18 xp in this one or fDtD by roughly half an encounter.

I know you've switched to this base xp + objective xp system, but it certainly feels like we're being cheated out of 2/3 of a mods worth of xp here.

I am sure the admins will thank you for pointing out the errors in the XP rewards of the older BI's. They were obviously too high, but I think it would be unfair to ask the players of Swarm of Chaos or Paladin's Plague to deduct XP from their current total. Too much time has passed.

Additionally the concept of "being cheated out of XP" is just weird to me.

Apr 24, 2012 -- 3:37AM, imaginaryfriend wrote:

I am sure the admins will thank you for pointing out the errors in the XP rewards of the older BI's. They were obviously too high, but I think it would be unfair to ask the players of Swarm of Chaos or Paladin's Plague to deduct XP from their current total. Too much time has passed.

Additionally the concept of "being cheated out of XP" is just weird to me.

Battle interactives are harder to run and play. I have to wonder why they're not worth any more than two standard modules. It doesn't really match the expecations of high risk, high reward: I'm better off playing two SPECs, if that's what I want. Honestly, the last two SPECs that I played were cakewalks compared to my BI experiences.

I didn't write, edit or do the xp/gp for this particular adventure, so I can't speak to what the intent was or should have been, but I will say that if you are only playing solely because you want xp/gp/story awards and not any enjoyment of the unique sort of experience, yes, you would be better off playing easier adventures and getting the same rewards. If, however, you played it for the fun and challenge, well, its hard to find anything else like a BI. I know I have always LOVED them myself and I try to never turn on down, even though I know not everyone will be spectacular.

Apr 24, 2012 -- 12:02PM, Skerrit wrote:

I didn't write, edit or do the xp/gp for this particular adventure, so I can't speak to what the intent was or should have been, but I will say that if you are only playing solely because you want xp/gp/story awards and not any enjoyment of the unique sort of experience, yes, you would be better off playing easier adventures and getting the same rewards. If, however, you played it for the fun and challenge, well, its hard to find anything else like a BI. I know I have always LOVED them myself and I try to never turn on down, even though I know not everyone will be spectacular.

I feel the same way. I would still play them if they were worth nothing.

That being said, you can't fault people for asking the question. If everyone felt the way you did, we wouldn't bother giving out rewards for adventures at all.

I actually still wish we'd taken the suggestion to just level every X adventures that was asked at one point. Boo to tracking xp at all.

Risk vs reward translates in a lot of ways, treasure for the mechanically minded. the social experience for others, etc. etc. I would argue that all BI's have a more than decent risk vs reward factor and anyone that feel this is not the case is more than welcome to find adventures better suited to their tastes. LFR nay D&D is great that way

In the end though I just see no possibility for anyone to ever be cheated out of anything as that would require an entitlement first. 

Apr 24, 2012 -- 4:07PM, Keithric wrote:

I actually still wish we'd taken the suggestion to just level every X adventures that was asked at one point. Boo to tracking xp at all.

This works great for EPIC. No reason IMO that it wouldn't work for lower tiers as well, even though those adventures are shorter and thus spread apart. 

Apr 24, 2012 -- 3:37AM, imaginaryfriend wrote:

I am sure the admins will thank you for pointing out the errors in the XP rewards of the older BI's. They were obviously too high, but I think it would be unfair to ask the players of Swarm of Chaos or Paladin's Plague to deduct XP from their current total. Too much time has passed.

Additionally the concept of "being cheated out of XP" is just weird to me.

In From Dawn till Dusk, the xp spent at AL 20 (not counting the hazards which were present, nor Glory or Special Missions) was 135600. With 5 PCs, each PC should earn 27120 xp from defeating the enemies alone, but the Maximum Possible XP is listed as 19000. Now, I'm sure someone will mention that defeating the enemies isn't necessary, however in 4e, you don't get XP for defeating enemies, you get it for successfully completing the encounter and the difficulty value of the encounter is what determines how much xp you can "spend" to create the encounter.

In the specific case of Cities of Destinies, XP is additionally based on the number of total and partial successes, as well as the difficulty, of the encounters. This apparently caps out, so aside from intangible benefits in the last encounter, there is no benefit for a fast table to even attempt additional encounters beyond a certain point.

While I understand that the RPGA has "moved away from that" or whatever office lingo you want to use, and is using a base+quest objective reward system, but when you are regularly (a majority of year 3 mods included) rewarding less than 80% of the earned XP, then there is a serious flaw in the new system, and PCs are being cheated out of XP in the name of author's prerogative. 8120+quests is an excessive amount.

And yes, I'll use the words "earned" and "cheated" because D&D is both a rewards based game and a math based game. There is definitely an entitlement to the XP value of successful encounters. It's not being said, but what's happening is "You kill an Orc, but that wasn't a complete experience of dealing with an Orc in combat, I'd call it less than 80%" and that's just absurd.

Well darn, we still got within 70% on Dawn till Dusk? I will have to try harder next time.

Kidding aside though, XP was less of a concern than writing a hopefully fun and challenging experience was. I would have liked to be closer to the 100% you feel entitled to, but I am convinced the adventure would have suffered if we had limited ourselves to the 19k. So the intangible rewards will have to compensate.  If for you they don't, too bad. I have learned over the years it is impossible to please all players and don't try to anymore. As long as the majority really couldn't care less about the XP thing. Its all good. 

The gap that lies between the "D&D is checkers with miniatures" and "D&D is an interactive story experience" is not likely to be bridged in this edition (I hold out hope for Next). Our difference of opinion on entitlement is not likely to change either. You will continue to feel cheated, I will continue to not really care. I can live with that state for now and we can see if things get better somewhere down the line  

Bottom line from a rules perspective to me is that within the rules the DM is free to deviate pretty much anywhere. For LFR the role of DM is filled by the campaign administration. As such the end rewards of an LFR adventure are simply a DM's call.

Apr 28, 2012 -- 10:18PM, Backmask wrote:

And yes, I'll use the words "earned" and "cheated" because D&D is both a rewards based game and a math based game. There is definitely an entitlement to the XP value of successful encounters.

That's certainly a valid way to play D&D, but it's a bit myopic to consider it the one true way to play D&D.

I haven't played a campaign which assigned XP mechanically like that for over a decade, with "You gain a level after the DM thinks you've completed enough encounters" fairly solidly being the norm for me.

At the point where the DMG explicitly discusses that method, before launching into a discussion about why it's best to just give XP to everyone in the party whether or not the player even showed up (DMG, p. 121-122), I think we've clearly moved beyond the idea of "I earned 500 xp for killing that orc; if you don't give me the full 500 xp, you're cheating."

I'll confess to being especially perplexed at this point of view in the context of a living campaign, where extra XP just means you get to play fewer adventures before you level out.  If I could play a BI and receive all other rewards as normal but only half XP, I'd take that option in a heartbeat.

Obviously values are different for different folks. Many gamers in a campaign with either hard caps or rapid advancement are concerned about getting too much xp as it has two negative effects: you have less opportunity to play more adventures with that PC and your PC advances to a higher level with less wealth (treasure) to buy stuff.  Possibly the second effect is not as critical in 4e as it was in earlier editions.

In LFR, we have mostly stuck with the 4e connection of xp associated with the toughness of the encounters.  We have allowed some bump up for the finale of a trilogy, a Special and a BI certainly. That has ranged from 5% to 25% usage of xp to create the challenges. In the case of the trilogy, usually you have the opportunity to get an encounter's worth of bonus xp (from the major quest) so linking that to a tougher combat seems reasonable.  The shift in Year 3 to a base amount of xp (regardless of completing one or ten encounters) plus some xp for accomplishing major and minor objectives frankly disconnects (intentionally so) the challenge from the xp assigned.

However, if your concept for "winning" by playing D&D includes being the first PC to reach 30th level and retires "wins," then it is hard to argue that not getting all the xp potentially earned is a form of being cheated. (Although if it is true for everyone, I am not sure why it hurts one player more than others.)  Of course, I would expect such players to be more offended by the rule allowing starting PCs at advanced levels.

I suggested we allow players to start PCs at 30th level and automatically win the race, retire the PC and start another one.  Surely that will maximize their happiness?! 

YMMV.

Keith 

I will also point out that while it is typical of a BI to have more xp worth of challenge in it than is handed out, some story/skill heavy adventures (CORE3-1 comes to mind) actually handout more xp than you would likely otherwise earn. I suppose you could argue that you should avoid story adventures because you are not "earning" that xp by playing and having a good time, but I suspect that the over under on xp more or less comes out in the wash (with likely a small bias to shorting you a few xp, but hey, no one wants to level out of the campaign).

You know, I really don't think there's any good reason for the tone of those responses, smiley faces or not. I am posing a legitimate complaint, and I expect a legitimate answer, not to recieve the treatment I'd expect from a Vice Principal. This isn't High School, this is an organization with a rather overt statement of "we follow the rules as they are written".

I have absolutely no problems with a freeform system where "the DM decides you level", I think EPIC has done it quite nicely. Maybe I missed some blog post explaining the xp budget change, but to me it certainly seems like a rather covert change from "Here is the XP that the game says you earned" to "Here is the XP that we decided we'll give you". It really has nothing to do with "winning" and everything to do with consistency and honesty about policies; when a dozen people at a convention are noticing "how come I'm being rewarded less for 7 combats in a battle interative than I would be for 6 combats in a couple specs?" then something has gone wrong.

My thanks for the honest replies, to the rest ... 

May 3, 2012 -- 2:33AM, Zathris wrote:

I have absolutely no problems with a freeform system where "the DM decides you level", I think EPIC has done it quite nicely. Maybe I missed some blog post explaining the xp budget change, but to me it certainly seems like a rather covert change from "Here is the XP that the game says you earned" to "Here is the XP that we decided we'll give you".

How XP is calculated and awarded changed at the same time that the new "Year 3" style of adventures did. In newer LFR adventures, XP is based on achieving major and minor objectives in the adventure and is not based on a rigid system of "killed ____ XP worth of monsters." 

I do not recall if it was announced in a blog post or not, but I found this post from Madfox: "In the year 3 adventures you do not get XP for defeating the encounters. You get xp for achieving goals." (community.wizards.com/lfr/go/thread/view..., last post)

May 3, 2012 -- 2:33AM, Zathris wrote:

You know, I really don't think there's any good reason for the tone of those responses, smiley faces or not. I am posing a legitimate complaint, and I expect a legitimate answer, not to recieve the treatment I'd expect from a Vice Principal. This isn't High School, this is an organization with a rather overt statement of "we follow the rules as they are written".

I have absolutely no problems with a freeform system where "the DM decides you level", I think EPIC has done it quite nicely. Maybe I missed some blog post explaining the xp budget change, but to me it certainly seems like a rather covert change from "Here is the XP that the game says you earned" to "Here is the XP that we decided we'll give you". It really has nothing to do with "winning" and everything to do with consistency and honesty about policies; when a dozen people at a convention are noticing "how come I'm being rewarded less for 7 combats in a battle interative than I would be for 6 combats in a couple specs?" then something has gone wrong.

My thanks for the honest replies, to the rest ...

I really think the tone of responses might have been a lot more reasonable had you not mentioned the concept of "being cheated out of XP". I admit though that it is also possible that I am just very alergic/sensative to the concept of entitlement where it relates to LFR...

It may be worth noting that even before the change to 'xp for goals', xp gained was hardly ever exactly accurate with the sum of xp values of the monsters encountered.
It was simply too hard to get the right amount of xp and offer an appropriate challenge over 2 tiers. That gets worse when you have to make changes for 4 or 6 players.
I designed a spreadsheet for encounter xp, and imo when you have to use a spreadsheet as a game deisgner, something is seriously wrong.

So the idea that you got the 'right' amount of xp in the early stage of LFR and you didn't get it later is inaccurate.
Also, the idea that we stick to the 'core rules' in LFR applies to rules of the game itself, not to rewards. XP, as a reward, is not fixed. XP values for monsters are indications for their value.
The right amount of XP for an encounter is dependent (in normal play) on many elements, including party success, terrain, tactiscal (dis)advantage, situation, tactics employed, social interaction, DM mood, and the amount of salami on the pizza.

If LFR, we use a system that allows DMs to quickly assign XP and players to earn the same xp for the same adventure, to avoid (among other things) Player-to-DM arguments on the rewards gained. It works, but it also means we may cut a few corners. However, given that we can't get an accurate xp tally anyway, that is a small price to pay for a game that is easier to design and run.

Gomez

Played a slot zero of this yesterday, in preparation for Comicpalooza here in Houston at the end of this month.  Got a couple of questions.  These may be spoilery, but you shouldn't be in the review thread if you haven't played it, right?



1.  Mythal Surges:  we couldn't seem to find anything detailing the effects of the number of surges used from the Mythal.  I see folks in this thread talking about people drowning or a bonus for not using many, but we could not find it in the module anywhere. 


2.  Planting the Banners:  The text seems to mention that planting the standards (don't remember the mission number, sorry) has some type of relic effect which covers the whole battlefield, but we couldn't seem to find anything detailing those effects.



I dunno if we have an early version of the mod or just starting drinkin' too early, but couldn't come up with answers for either of these.  Anybody help clarify, or got a page ref?  There is mention of Handout @XXX,  but that didn't seem to be included, either. 

Anybody?

When I had a chance to play this, I believe the threshold was on the mythal was 1 surge per player, but I can't be certain. I do know that if there isn't at least one surge left at the interlude the mythal's benefits deactivate. The DM's in LA allowed us to donate surges to turn it back on.

So the mythal starts with one surge per player, and if more than that number is used in the first half, it deactivates, which means everybody who can't breate water without it dies?  That seems...odd.

This is still not based on anything written in the mod, because, like you, I couldn't find it. But here's how I'm running it.

• The mythal will be active for the entirety of part one, regardless of how many surges are consumed.
• During the interlude, we will tabulate how many total surges were consumed.
• If fewer surges were consumed than the total number of players, the mythal will be active for the second half.
• If the amount of consumed surges was equal to or greater than the number of players, players have a choice.
• They can leave the mythal inactive for the second half, requiring each table to find their own ways of dealing with the underwater environment
• They can donate surges to bring the mythal back up to at least one remaining surge, which will keep the mythal active for the second half.

Raise thread!

I played this mod at DDXP and then later at a local con.  Our con organizer did not have certs printed for us, so I was wondering if the certs changed from the DDXP one.Spoiler: Show

The short answer is: bug your con organizer for the story awards earned at your event. 

Getting ready to run this later this month for the Twin Cities, Minnesota folks, so sorry for the thread necro.

May 7, 2012 -- 9:50AM, eudemonist wrote:

1.  Mythal Surges:  we couldn't seem to find anything detailing the effects of the number of surges used from the Mythal.  I see folks in this thread talking about people drowning or a bonus for not using many, but we could not find it in the module anywhere.

In the current version of the mod, what happens to the mythal if a certain number of surges are drained is described on p.57, in the Interlude section. Note that this is also the only place where the benefit to the tables in Mission 2.2 is noted if the mythal remains strong.

2.  Planting the Banners:  The text seems to mention that planting the standards (don't remember the mission number, sorry) has some type of relic effect which covers the whole battlefield, but we couldn't seem to find anything detailing those effects.

In the current version of the module, there's a call-out box with an Important Note that describes the three different battle standard powers for the relics in Mission 2.2 (page 66). While there is a reference to a Handout that contains the battle standard descriptions, that handout does not appear to have been completed and included in the module. The descriptions of the battle standards' powers can be found in the online Compendium, however, so can easily be printed before the adventure.

I'll also say that it looks like the various complaints about Dagon had an effect -- based on the paper stats, it could be argued that empowered, non-glory-tier Dagon isn't even the most dangerous monster in the module, though we'll get a better idea once we finish our Slot Zero. Even glory-tier Dagon would have less than a 50-50 shot on any given attack of hitting the AC or Fort defense of the defender who'll be on the table I'm running at our BI.

--
Pauper

Twin Cities? When? Where? 

Mar 11, 2013 -- 11:23AM, Pauper wrote:

Even glory-tier Dagon would have less than a 50-50 shot on any given attack of hitting the AC or Fort defense of the defender who'll be on the table I'm running at our BI.

I'm curious how they changed it. In the older version, he was

Level = AL + 2 (+2 on glory)
Attack = 5 + Level + Aquatic (+2)

So, a 19th level PC with, say, AC 39, Good NAD 35, Bad NAD 31 at AL 20, Dagon needs a 8 for AC, 4 for good NAD, 0 for bad NAD, and gets +2 for CA

Mar 14, 2013 -- 11:44AM, AH_Iceman wrote:

Twin Cities? When? Where? 

Go to warhorn.net
Select 'Recurring Game Days'
Search for 'ogre'
Select "D&D Encounters @ Armored Ogre Games" in Inver Grove Heights

Sadly, the only seat we have available is on the AL20 table, which is the table I am running.

Mar 14, 2013 -- 11:53AM, Keithric wrote:

I'm curious how they changed it. In the older version, he was

Level = AL + 2 (+2 on glory)
Attack = 5 + Level + Aquatic (+2)

So, a 19th level PC with, say, AC 39, Good NAD 35, Bad NAD 31 at AL 20, Dagon needs a 8 for AC, 4 for good NAD, 0 for bad NAD, and gets +2 for CA

Doesn't look like they changed it -- I must just be playing with a munchkin. by the end of his first turn, he's jacked his AC to 42 or 43 (I forget which), and can do this every encounter.

Oh, and he's a Spoiler: Show

.

I will stand by my comment about him not being the most dangerous creature in the mod, though. Spoiler: Show

--
Pauper

Heh.  Looking at the rough numbers, that's not that munchy.  That's just "stupid elven chain", getting +4 armor, and either a couple of feats or one of the "+2 until hit" items.

Yeah, helm of able defense doesn't last very long at all in that fight. Multiple Effect: damages and a half damage on miss AoE, in addition to Dagon just rolling lots and lots of dice.

But, yes, Elven Chain Shirt monkeys with math. Mmhmm. 

Mar 14, 2013 -- 2:25PM, Pauper wrote:

Spoiler: Show

That would be the Eye of the Deep in Mission 1.7. That was the only mission we absolutely refused to run in our Slot Zero.

I disagree. When I played this at DDXP last year, it only ever got off one ineffectual attack before we killed it. Dagon was much more trouble ...
Spoiler: Show

Mar 14, 2013 -- 5:05PM, Bargle0 wrote:

I disagree. When I played this at DDXP last year, it only ever got off one ineffectual attack before we killed it.

That's the cool thing about table experiences -- I'm sure the DM who ran us through the second mod of the CALI mini-series at GenCon thought we were a typical alpha-strike optimized party...

Spoiler: Show

Which made it humorous reading through the reports about how difficult that fight was for some tables.

Not saying you're wrong, but rather that your group appears to be optimized for damage, while mine is apparently optimized for AC and skill challenges. (Heck, I multi-classed Invoker, not for mass-stun/dominate cheese, but to get the 2nd level utility that lets you count a skill challenge success with Diplomacy as two successes. And for my paragon path. ; )

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Pauper

When I ran the Eye fight, I had a solid party at the table. Didn't stop me from knocking the defender unconscious about 3 times (he kept marking me and it was the only way to drop the mark so I wasn't screwed on the free eye rays), and I had everyone on the board try to coup de grace him.

Didn't really make the fight actually difficult, but it definitely made the fight feel dangerous. 

Mar 15, 2013 -- 7:28AM, Keithric wrote:

When I ran the Eye fight, I had a solid party at the table. Didn't stop me from knocking the defender unconscious about 3 times (he kept marking me and it was the only way to drop the mark so I wasn't screwed on the free eye rays), and I had everyone on the board try to coup de grace him.

This is exactly what I mean when I talk about 'providing me with tools as a DM to deal with situations without having to drop the ban-hammer' in my 'credit where credit is due' thread.

I'll admit, I'm kinda torn between encouraging my AL20 table at our upcoming BI to tackle this mission first (because a total success will encourage the other tables to attempt the mission), and warning them away from it (because of the effect that failing the mission has later in the BI).

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Pauper

Mar 11, 2013 -- 11:23AM, Pauper wrote:

In the current version of the mod, what happens to the mythal if a certain number of surges are drained is described on p.57, in the Interlude section. Note that this is also the only place where the benefit to the tables in Mission 2.2 is noted if the mythal remains strong.

Reading through the mod one more time before running this weekend, and this section also notes:

If the PCs donate enough surges then they get to keep the benefits listed on Handouts 4 and 5, but they still suffer a consequence in Mission 2.2.

However, I can't find where it's noted, either in this section or in the Mission 2.2 description, what the consequence is if the mythal collapses, but is then restored by party healing surges. If the mythal is weakened but doesn't collapse, there is no benefit or consequence, and I assume the text quoted above is meant to point out that there's meant to be a distinction between 'the mythal is weakened but holds' and 'the mythal collapsed but was restored'. Assuming I haven't just overlooked it, I'll just use the Optional Complication as the consequence.

Also, and this is nit-picky, but the flavor text for the unfavorable consequence for Mission 1.3 refers to "a mightly bronze dragon", but the actual dragon encountered in the BI is a brass dragon. I'll make that correction on my own, if needed. : )

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Pauper