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10 months ago ::
Aug 01, 2012 - 11:16AM
#1
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This thread is for asking questions and providing feedback for ABER4-1 The Price of Freedom. This adventure has not been officially posted for download, but it has run recently at a convention and is available by e-mail for convention and home play.
DALE1-6 The Vesperin Initiative (P1) (author)
LURU2-2 Shadows of the Knights (H3) (author)
DALE2-4 Illsyldra (P1) (author)
IMPI2-4 Goblins Strike Back (P3) (co-author)
NETH4-3 Purifying the Profit (paragon) (co-author)
ABER4-1 The Price of Freedom (paragon) (co-author)
EPIC4-2 Age of Ruin (Epic) (co-author) (in development)
BALD3-1 Lost Refuge (paragon) (co-author) (in development)
NEVE4-3 Spider's Web (heroic) (co-author) (in development)
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9 months ago ::
Aug 27, 2012 - 10:02AM
#2
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I just ran this mod at AL14 on Sunday and I have some comments. Spoiler:
Show
In the first encounter, the Maroon Prince is tough. He gets three full turns each round and is a solo. He basically cannot be negatively affected because of his feeding frenzy trait, which lets him negate one negative effect or condition at the start of each of his turns.
There are no "mechanics" for the Maroon Prince eating the children, so I was allowing the PCs to use the Save the Kid! power any time the Prince would target a child, even with the breath weapon. Since there are no stats for the kids, I assumed that an attack would auto hit (except on a nat 1) and the kid would die, so this was important since the Prince gets three times to use his breath weapon *and* can recharge those each turn.)
So, suggestions: make the breath weapon only once (not once per head) and make it recharge on a 3, 4, 5, 6 or just a 4, 5, 6. This gives the Prince a good chance to recharge the breath weapon but he can't simply spam it on his first three turns.
Also, split up his available actions per tier. At AL 12, give him one standard action on each of his turns. At AL 14 and 16, give him a standard and a move. At AL 20, let him have all three actions. He's got two action points, so he can easily move where he needs and action point to get at the first kid or two...
In the final combat, the banderhobbs were awesome! I would have liked to have seen a "swallow" power like they had on the Maroon Prince in the first encounter. It would have made sense that the Prince could swallow a PC easily. I guess the problem would come down to DMs trying to use it on the kids which would also make sense story-wise, but would prove detrimental to getting those kids to safety. 
Overall, this mod is great and the storyline (so far) is neat. I can't wait to run my group through the second and third part.
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9 months ago ::
Aug 27, 2012 - 3:34PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Mar 15, 2001
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I just ran this mod at AL14 on Sunday and I have some comments.
Spoiler:
Show
In the first encounter, the Maroon Prince is tough. He gets three full turns each round and is a solo. He basically cannot be negatively affected because of his feeding frenzy trait, which lets him negate one negative effect or condition at the start of each of his turns.
There are no "mechanics" for the Maroon Prince eating the children, so I was allowing the PCs to use the Save the Kid! power any time the Prince would target a child, even with the breath weapon. Since there are no stats for the kids, I assumed that an attack would auto hit (except on a nat 1) and the kid would die, so this was important since the Prince gets three times to use his breath weapon *and* can recharge those each turn.)
So, suggestions: make the breath weapon only once (not once per head) and make it recharge on a 3, 4, 5, 6 or just a 4, 5, 6. This gives the Prince a good chance to recharge the breath weapon but he can't simply spam it on his first three turns.
Also, split up his available actions per tier. At AL 12, give him one standard action on each of his turns. At AL 14 and 16, give him a standard and a move. At AL 20, let him have all three actions. He's got two action points, so he can easily move where he needs and action point to get at the first kid or two...
In the final combat, the banderhobbs were awesome! I would have liked to have seen a "swallow" power like they had on the Maroon Prince in the first encounter. It would have made sense that the Prince could swallow a PC easily. I guess the problem would come down to DMs trying to use it on the kids which would also make sense story-wise, but would prove detrimental to getting those kids to safety.
Overall, this mod is great and the storyline (so far) is neat. I can't wait to run my group through the second and third part.
Yah, I gotta say the Prince is probably the most OP critter yet published. He's functionally three elites and the "ignore one effect per head" power is ridiculous. One action per head and drop an effect at the END of each turn would be much more reasonable. As-is this guy is just an obnoxious drawn out drag of a fight that punishes the PCs for doing anything BUT damage.
Otherwise, its a good mod. A little on the oddball side, but its nice to have a meaningful choice involved also.
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9 months ago ::
Aug 27, 2012 - 7:15PM
#4
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When I ran through this encounter, the PCs made the kids top priority, so the Prince got three full turns in against them before they started really fighting back. But even then, the heavy hitters were still focusing on the rest of the kids, so the combat took a while. But once they got all the kids to safety, it wasn't too difficult. Although I did get most of the party to bloodied by the end of the second round.
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9 months ago ::
Sep 17, 2012 - 6:08AM
#5
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Date Joined:
Apr 14, 2010
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I'm DMing this adventure on Friday. Got a couple of questions regarding the Maroon Prince: Spoiler:
Show
1. Would it be wise to "fudge" initiative a bit and spread the three initiatives of the Prince between the players' initiatives? For example like this:
- Player 1
- Prince 1
- Player 2
- Player 3
- Prince 2
- Player 4
- Prince 3
- Player 5
If I leave it up to chance, I feel there's a good possibility of (nearly) all players taking their turns between initiative count 20 and 30, for example. That means the Prince effectively gets three turns in a row, which can easily be a TPK once he chooses to focus on them instead of the children. It also seems a lot less fun.
2. What the hell kind of dragon is a three-headed maroon? Source plx?  Thanks in advance!
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9 months ago ::
Sep 17, 2012 - 6:41AM
#6
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Date Joined:
Aug 10, 2007
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2. What the hell kind of dragon is a three-headed maroon?
Do a google search for "pyrohydra picture" - there's a 3-headded one, just add wings.
Dan Anderson
@EpicUthrac
Living Forgotten Realms Calimshan Writing Director
Living Forgotten Realms Epic Writing Director
Meet me at TotalConfusion:
http://www.totalcon.com/RolePlaying.html
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9 months ago ::
Sep 17, 2012 - 10:16AM
#7
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Date Joined:
Mar 17, 2005
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1. That is probably a good idea, especially if your players are even a little bit squishy.
2. Its Calystrx (Threats to Nentir Vale)
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9 months ago ::
Sep 22, 2012 - 2:45AM
#8
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I was one of the original playtesters for the adventure, and I played this adventure at AL 16 for the first time since the test a year ago. We played this with a party of 4 consisting of: -a level 14 dragonborn paladin/questing knight, the dragon-hating party leader. -a level 15 elven avenger of Sune. By far the most sane person in the group. -a level 15 genasi warlord I runepriest. Drunk for most of the adventure and hit on every dwarf she came across. -a level 15 human sorceror/demonskin adept (me). Came along since my character prefered certain death over living a life of wealth, safety and fame in Almraven. Overall, we had a great time playing it due to the role-playing aspects the mod offers, and we had many cool moments for most characters involved. After the first combat, one highlight was our avenger flying through the air in angel form while being chased by dragons to cover the party retreat, then using invisibility + phasing to suddenly disappear completely. All the while, the paladin and myself used our own skills to cover her escape, in turn. The second combat (we played the 'no sacrfice of necessary' variant), was nice; not too difficult, but kind of memorable for the heroism factor of what excactly you're doing. Now, on the maroon prince... Spoiler:
Show
He is without any doubt the most rediculous creature I have ever seen in LFR, even worse than the sharn included in corm 1-4. I remember platesting him at AL 20, where he used to have some mechanism to turn PC's unconsious en masse, yet somehow this version at AL 16 was on a whole new level of diificulty, due to his semi instant TPK levels of AOE damage.
Putting that aside for a moment, I think his feeding frenzy ability more or less makes the encounter impossible and decidedly unfun for any controller. I really pity them in this fight, since that person will not be able to contribute anything at all to it other than making skillchecks for the children. Automatically ending 3 to 4 effects at the start of each turn is absolute and rediculous overkill. Even when our DM nerfed it to the end of each of his turns, I don't see any of them doing anything useful here at all. Luckily for us, i suppose, we didn't have a controller in the group.
Now, on the issue of the damage, yeah. A high defense 844 (-20%?) hp enemy with high damage and extremely accurate, near auto-hit attacks ( we were missed twice over a 3.5 round combat), who can easily attack each PC every turn he gets, even two to four times between each of his of his own turns per round, depending on zones and a child being included in one of his many AOE's, well, I can't really call it balanced by any stretch. Even with the DM intentionally spreading his initiatives, which was a very good call, I somehow wonder how this is supposed to be possible to a normal party without extensive cheese usage.
To put this into perspective, over the first three rounds of combat, my 96 HP sorceror took *329* points of damage, almost enough to drop him to 0 four times over. Similar figures were applied to the other three members of the group, with our leader being dropped below 0 before he even got his first turn. Our paladin used all his self-healing and massive anti-dragon resistances and was barely standing at the end, and if he had been a defender without extensive self-healing he'd also have died for sure.
The one and only reason I survived was because I was able to chain drink potions of invulnerability as a minor each turn I got, which lowered the damage to somewhat manageable for me. However, doing that also removed any sense of real victory I had since those potions are almost universally considered cheesy and broken, also by me. However, cheesy and broken seems to be the only out an average party has to deal with him, so i more or less had no choice.
In short, there has to be a stricter limit on the amount of breath attacks he has, or his auto hit movement attack needs to recharge less often and/or not be an auto hit. In addition, to make it fun for controllers, there has to be a limit to his feeding frenzy shield. As written, they can do literally nothing.
Anyway, I'd like to thank Svendj for DMing the adventure. I think everyone had a great time, and the maroon prince fight was definitely tense despite the things outlined above. I just wish I wasn't forced to use cheese to survive him.
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9 months ago ::
Sep 22, 2012 - 4:54AM
#9
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Date Joined:
Apr 14, 2010
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For what it's worth, I had a lot of fun with the Maroon Prince. It feels good to run a solo from time to time who can actually challenge the party. That said, it's also a monster that comes with a user manual, especially if your players aren't very optimized. I made a few small nerfs that I can recommend to everyone: Spoiler:
Show
1. Spread out the initiative between the player's turns. I talk about this in the above posts, and it really made for a great fight. If I ran the initiatives as written, it would've been like this:
(- Bloodied Maroon Prince)
- Player 1 & 2
- Maroon Prince
- Player 3 & 4
- Maroon Prince
- Maroon Prince
If I wouldn't have spread it, the Prince would've gotten 2 turns in a row, 3 when he was bloodied. That would have laid the party low in no time, effectively ending the adventure.
2. I like the wording of Feeding Frenzy better than Action Recovery, since there are many more harmful effects than just daze, stun and dominate. But the Maroon Prince should shed the effect at the end of his turn, not at the start. Otherwise controllers can just pack it up and go home.
3. The recharging auto-hit blinding movement power is brutal, brutal, brutal. I chose to only try and recharge it at the start of one of the Maroon Prince's turns, not all of them. If you roll at the start of every single turn, players will spend most of their time blinded, which is not fun at all. Not to mention this gives the Maroon Prince yet another attack against multiple targets in addition to Breath Weapon, Rip and Tear and his two action points. I mean, I like some serious firepower against good players, but this guy is a tactical nuke.
Disclaimer: I ran the Maroon Prince as if I were playing with a 5-person party instead of 4, because I know these players can take a beating. If I would've run him as a level 16 Brute, the players would've been hit less for fewer damage (but I also have to add that the dice gods were on my side that fight). So Lunattic, take solace in the fact that you had to bring your cheese to bear against an enemy that was 2 levels higher than it was supposed to be
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9 months ago ::
Sep 22, 2012 - 1:14PM
#10
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Date Joined:
Mar 13, 2008
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Spoiler:
Show
SvenDJ, many thanks for DMing this module and for making it great for us
That said, the Maroon Prince can shed any effect on the beginning of each of his turns? Wouldn't that include marks and stuff like my Symbol of the Champion's Code as well? That sounds like way too much. How can you get an effect on him at all if it's like that?
However, if you do use it at full effect at the beginning of each turn, maybe some kind of debilitating effect for shrugging off the effect would be good too.
For example, since he's going into a frenzy, he might ignore his defenses in favor of being able to eat people more effectively. -1 stackable penalty to all defenses until the end of the head's next turn, if he uses Feeding Frenzy.
Heroic Dungeon Master
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