Key Our Cars

You couldn’t possibly get the reference but I just made a swarm for a 4e encounter called razor fish.  It dates back to an extremely goofy sequence during a game played using the Heroes System and is designed because it fits the setting I’m using (swamp sequence) and to elicit a chuckle for those in the know. After looking at all the swarms, they’re pretty uninteresting so I’m thinking I’ll make a ’swarm like substance’ that doesn’t follow the existing swarm mantra.

Because it doesn’t matter now, there’s no chance the people involved are going to read this before it happens and because someone asked, the upcoming “while you’re here” sequence synopsis is going to run like this:

1. Interlude 1 – Party uncovers a need for their talents (which I believe is plausible but won’t go into now, just in case).  The party is comprised of Pre-Gen’s although they did pick their classes/races/powers but I equipped and set them up otherwise.
2. Tactical Encounter 1 – Difficulty Hard – A mix of artillery and skirmishers and a bunch of minions.
3. Skill Challenge 1 – Skill challenge with a varied range of results that all have them getting where they need to be but with possibly depleted resources.
4. Interlude Two – Party finds a random descriptive event designed to illicit character development.
5. Extended Rest possible at this point (due to my house rule).
6. Tactical Encounter 2 – Difficulty Standard – A mix of Soldiers and Minions.
7. Tactical Encounter 3 – Difficulty Standard – Artillery, Brutes and Controller.
8. Extended Rest possible at this point (due to my house rule).
9. Tactical Encounter 4 – Difficulty Hard – Boss, Controller and Minions.  Tough fight but the party could retreat before engaging if they feel they have to after the previous two encounters.
10. Extended Rest possible at this point (due to my house rule and DM fiat exception)
11. Skill Challenge 2 – Same as the previous skill challenge really.  Just adds a bit of randomness to how the party shows up at the next major area.
12. Tactical Encounter 5 – Difficulty Standard – One brute/controller and an ASS load of minions.
13. Tactical Encounter 6 – Difficulty Standard – Artillery and Brutes fill this niche in the defenses.
14. Tactical Encounter 7 – Difficulty Hard – Solo and soldiers are the final combat in this sequence of encounters and events and will culminate in some Phat Lewt as well as a level after defeating all the encounters prior to this.

I just noticed I have 400 miniatures for playing DnD.  And that I’ve hit 100K visitors.

No meaning to this post, just thought it interesting.

In preparation to the “Running with Zizzors” I started printing out monster sheets last night (sample one below) and I need 12 of them.  And 5 sets of character sheets (2 pages + 1 spreadsheet of powers).  And miscellaneous tracking pages.  And the adventure itself.

And my printer decides to go tits up. And my laser printer doesn’t print colored monster pages very well at all.

So one dissection later and several wooden matches (W.T.F?!) removed later and it’s working again.  Yay!

This is the Shade Master, he’s going to show up with 24 minions of Shadow…

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Shade Master Level 4 Brute Medium Natural Humanoid XP 175
Initiative +3 Senses
HP 66; Bloodied 33
AC 15; Fortitude 17, Reflex 13, Will 12
Speed 6
Slam (Standard; at-will)
+7 vs. AC; 1d10+4 damage.
Smashing Darkness (Standard; at-will)
+7 vs. AC; 2d6+4 damage.
Enveloping Shadows (Standard; encounter)
Close Burst 3; +6 vs. reflex; all enemies in the area take 1d12+4 damage. Sustain minor, the area persists as a zone that causes blindness in all enemies that enter or start their turn in the zone.
Cast Shadows (Minor; at-will)
The Shade Master can teleport one shade within 20 squares to an empty square adjacent to him, or teleport one adjacent shade up to 10 squares.
Consuming Darkness (Minor; at-will)
The Shade Master can consume one tattered shade within 3 squares and gain a +4 power bonus on attack and damage rolls and 4 temporary hit points until the end of its next turn.
Alignment Chaotic Evil Languages
Str 18 (+6) Dex 13 (+3) Wis 10 (+2) Con 14 (+4) Int 9 (+1) Cha 10 (+2)

This is the list of house rules I’ll be using for my upcoming game(s).  There are others that I’d use that would vary by the level of the party and if it was planned to be a long term permanent group and even by the party make up, but these are some basic changes that fit across all facets of the game for me.

This isn’t a “do you think these are stupid/awesome” post, just a post for those that are curious as to how I’ve changed or tweaked things for my own twisted Evil DM needs.

The tokens are to encourage the party to use dailies more often, let them pool resources and to have more non-at will spamminess.   I don’t think it will be a problem at all for my table, yours might not be so lucky if you have CharOP – Min/Maxers – Power Gamers.  If it turns out to boost the power output in a unbalancing way, then as the DM I’ll adjust the damage sinks as needed (duh).

The damage and health is to shorten combats a little primarily as far as the players are concerned but honestly it gives me a larger XP budget to play with which means more monsters which means bigger brougha’s.  One of the encounters I currently have planned has 25 monsters that will be facing the party.  Yes they’re mostly minions but I think it’ll make for an interesting fight because of the powers the creatures have.

Healing changes are to counteract the damage output of the players.  They can now ‘react’ with a healing word or whatever when a player is close to dying without having to wait for their turn.  I honestly don’t want to kill the players, I just want to give them enough resources that they can survive if they play smart, barring just asinine die rolls.  And frankly as a player it sucks to skip your turns because the healer is too busy to heal you. I try to avoid suckage where I can.

The resting is to encourage (force) the players to have at least two encounters a day.   I’ll admit in a CRPG like Balders Gate or Neverwinter Nights that I’d go into each encounter at full strength.  I think 4th edition lands in a great spot to encourage that not to happen.  I just want to reinforce that with the resting limitation and the recharge token gathering.

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House Rules

Recharge Tokens
At the end of each encounter a character earns a Recharge Token.  These can be used to recharge or ‘untap’ expended Encounter or Daily powers or gain a to-hit bonus on At-Will powers.  They can be accrued during the day but are reset to one at the end of an extended rest.  A player may transfer one token per extended rest to another player.  Multiple players may transfer one token to the same player. They are spent as such:

• 1 token to gain +4 to hit with a single attack roll for an At-Will power.  This can be done no more than twice per encounter and once per turn.
• 2 tokens to recharge one expended Encounter power.  This can be done no more than twice per encounter and once per turn.
• 4 tokens to recharge one expended Daily power. This can be done once per short rest.

Damage
All damage rolls for PC and NPC gain 1/2 level in damage.  This damage is added to the first damage roll only in the case of multiple attacks per power. 

Monster Hit Points
Monsters reduced in hit points by 25%.
Monster XP reduced by 25% including for encounter budget purposes.
(i.e. 25% more monsters that go down 25% faster, this of course does nothing to change the combat time since the total hit point sink remains the same but gives the DM (me) more resources and ups the body count.)

Healing
Healing powers, items and effects heal for an additional +1/2 level of the target of the healing. – (To balance the increased damage intake)
Healing powers in general become Immediate Reactions (Trigger: When you or an ally is wounded) and follow the normal limitations of Immediate Actions (once per combat round).

Resting
The party must reach a Milestone before taking an Extended Rest.  Milestones are reached after each two non-trivial encounters.  This rule can be superseded by DM fiat.

Upgraded to WP 2.8 and lots of issues.  Bear with me.  Of course if you’re getting the 500 internal server error then you won’t see this so it might not help much.

UPDATE – I think the worst of the bugs from the upgrade are taken care of.  I need to figure out why the RSS feed from Wizards is fubarring my CSS but other than that I think we’re okay.

Mesh_Hong has come up with another ‘book of’ for your player annoying pleasure.  Filled to the brim with aberrant beasts, humanoids and things better left unlooked at the Book of Distant Stars should give you a little something creepy and slimy to hide under the next outre tavern the PC’s decide to stop at.  64 monters spread between level 2 and 12 and across all monster types should give you something to work with.

He has also added in a set of optional rules to go with some of the creatures that allow for Mental Disorders to really screw with your players.  Nothing like a jibbering phobic paranoic mass of huddle humanity trying to adventure together…

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I’ve re-written (okay it’s not a full write up just some notes on each encounter) the encounter of one area that I’ll be running to better fit the new setting I’m coming up with.

While the creature doesn’t give much away, I can’t really go into details on the setting as that would empower the players with information that would change the way they’re going to tackle the encounter so for now it’s just the first rough draft of the creature that I’ll be using.

But now I need to create something else as well in an Artillery form factor to go with this guy or the whole encounter doesn’t make much sense.

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Black Slime Thug

Black Slime Thug Level 4 Soldier Medium Aberrant Animate XP 175
Initiative +5 Senses Perception +3
Acidic Fumes (Acid) aura 1; after the black slime thug is bloodied, any creature that enters or starts its turn in the aura takes 5 damage.
HP 56; Bloodied 28
AC 20; Fortitude 18, Reflex 14, Will 14
Resist 5 acid, 5 necrotic; Vulnerable 5 radiant
Speed 6
Slam (Standard; at-will)
+11 vs. AC; 1d10+4 damage.
Double Fist (Standard; encounter)
+11 vs. AC; 3d8+4 damage.
Flow Step (Move; at-will)
The slime thug can shift up to 3 squares.
Death Splash (Immediate Reaction, when taken to 0 hit points) ♦ Acid
Close burst 1;+9 vs. Reflex; 1d10+4 damage and the target is blinded (save ends).
Alignment Unaligned Languages
Skills Intimidate +7, Stealth +9
Str 18 (+6) Dex 14 (+4) Wis 8 (+1) Con 16 (+5) Int 8 (+1) Cha 10 (+2)

A pretty interesting take on the Skill Challenges is over this way and well worth a read.  Rather than segments or rounds it’s more of a gestalt thing where there are forces at work against the party.  As an example to use an skill challenge I’m working on for my upcoming session(s) to find the Zizzor lair (the first SC in the planned occurances) the party will be working against getting lost in the swamp, avoiding the standard dangers of the swamps (sinkholes, snakes, poisonous plants), avoiding the patrols of Zizzor’s that will be in the swamp and fighting the physical exertion issues in such a draining environment (insects, heat, humidity).   Under Conflex these would all be ‘conflicts’ that are working against the party simultaneously and each one would have consequences for failure.

The downside is the system is more complex although he does have a nice worksheet.  More complex for the DM of course, as is usual for the players they simply get told the situation and roll their dice.

My current skill challenge looks something like this and is using a modified Obsidian System.  Three segments which are titled “Navigate the Swamps”, “Avoid the Dangers of the Swamps”, “Approach Undetected” and the whole SC is entitled “Find the Zizzor Lair”. My main modifications to Obsidian are the DM rolls an opposed check on each segment and that modifies the base DC for the segment.  I like rolling dice too.

The penalties for partial successes will be a cost of healing surges when the party reaches the lair (full success will of course find them there untaxed). Partial levels of failure will incur encounters with Zizzor patrols with the party down either 3 or 4 healing surges, or in the worst cases of failures they’ll take so long to get to the lair that this will have the end result that some of the kidnapped will be dead by the time the party gets to them.

All the results from perfect success to utter failure will result in the party reaching the lair, just the consequences or condition they arrive in will vary. They have to reach the lair eventually or it’ll be a very short adventure and there’s no real point in making them re-do the skill challenge in such a case.

Since I’m awarding experience by ‘quest turn in’ rather than by ‘monster killed’ the extra encounters will only serve to drain resources from the party and thus will be something to avoid rather than something seen as a ‘easy xp grinding’ by the party.   I’m leaning more and more heavily on awarding XP that way completely and using monster XP solely as an encounter budget and as a rough rule of thumb for the level up process.

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Well my two level table is finished.  It’s far from furniture quality or even up to my normal standards but like my wife reminded me when I was picking out good wood, “who are you trying to impress?” and I had to agree.  So this is a very rough construction for me.  No inner bracing, just glue and wood biscuits with a few screws screws to hold it all together while the glue dries.   After manhandling in and out of the house to do the fitting and finishing it’ll hold up to any normal or even abnormal play.

So while it’s not ‘awesome’ it works, it’s acceptable for playing and it’s sturdy enough for what I need it for.  These pictures are with the lighting on and with it off because of the flare out when it’s on.

I hope to use it in the next week or two with a some new players as well as a couple or three of the old ones.

Now that I’ve done it once what I like to do is use frosted polycarbonite as the table top and base and put lighting inside it to really make a decent glow and indirect lighting effect that would be pretty cool I think.  And with the right lighting setup I’d be able to cycle the lighting to different colors for dramatic effect.  Yellow for daytime and cycle it to blue for night, red for battle and green for happy times, things like that.   I think big.

The reason it’s white for the curious is that I needed/wanted it to reflect as much of the light as possible to make it easy to read otherwise I’d of gone with ‘good wood’ and stained it to match the original table style.

Just a random thought while relaxing by the pool watching bikini women go by.  See you can tell I’m still pretty much in love with my wife if I thinking of crap like this while young women who have every right to wear a bikini do so in my visual range.

Anyway, I wanted to do something for at-will powers with the recharge tokens.  Right now my rule is 1 token at the start of the day, 1 token per successful encounter completed, tokens reset to 1 at the end of the day.   Day = between extended rests.

They’re spent, 1 token to recharge a encounter power, 3 tokens to recharge an expended dialy power that wasn’t used in the same encounter that it’s recharged in, and 1 token to gain a +4 on an at-will power.

This is a revised from the original thoughts I had in that you can recharge a daily power but can’t double nova them in one encounter and you could instead just try to insure you hit with ’some’ damage in the form of an at-will.

Sorry no picture for this one, I’m working at the extreme edge of cell reception using my phone as a modem and getting something on the order of about 28.8k dialup speeds.

I just wanted to jot this down after coming up with the idea for someone else.  It’s a magic item that lets people find people.   Or things.  It comes in several levels and it can only find someone of an equal or lesser aura (aka level).  It’s a rough draft and not following the specific magic item format, I just had a brain cloud of an idea for an adventure series that could use this.

Aura Compass –

Crafted from the cornea of a dragon, purple preferred, this arcane device is a exquisite device.  It is etched in gold with arcane sigils and runes, with glowing crystals formed of the tears of an invisible stalker on the cardinal points.  Although fragile in appearance the device is anything but.  A slender black thread, the optic nerve of a beholder is embedded inside.  A small cavity about the size of a four year old human’s end finger joint is cut into the size of the disk, stoppered by the central crystal.

Highly prized by bounty hunters and trophy killers alike these items are rare and unusual due to the cost in lives to gather the materials and the year long construction time.

If a fresh sample of a creature’s flesh, blood or secretions is placed in the cavity the thread will unerringly point in the direction of the creature forever after.

Level 6 – xxxx gold
Level 16 – xxxx gold
Level 26 – xxxx gold

Daily Power - Once per day this device, once activated with the appropriate material from a creature, can be directed to display show the direction, but not distance by the angle of the thread indicator line in the disk.   This indicator will stay focused for 60 seconds at which time it will again start to slowly swing in circles.

NOTE: The item can only locate creatures of its level of crafting or less.

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It’s a recurring and oft occurring concern with combat in 4E.  With the increase in hit points and the decrease in ‘huge damage’ growth potential, fights are naturally taking more rounds.  Some argue each round is faster but that’s a personal issue, there are certainly things that can slow down a round and they are numerous.  Players who aren’t familiar with their powers, players who have to ‘do the math’ each and every time they want to use a power, players who’s class or build have very ‘mechanic heavy’ powers, DM’s speed of dealing with all the NPC’s, players who aren’t ready to go on their turn when it comes up.  And of course the basic hit point sink versus damage output issue.

Anyway a random off the top of the head list of things that can speed up play without major detriment to game play.  I’m sure there are other things but these are what I came up with.

The biggest thing is to find the worst offender in terms of time and fix that as best as you can, whether its one player who’s always slow, or the DM is always looking up stats or your battles are simply battles of attrition without any question as to the outcome, find the problem and fix it.

On the player side there are options -

• Each player should have power cards or a simple spreadsheet outlining their powers in a concise format.  In other words ANYTHING BUT having to look the powers up each time and then figure out what the attack bonus is and then figure out their damage.   The spreadsheet format is definitely the fastest option.  A player’s powers can be displayed on a single page with their Attack value, what defense the power attacks, the damage they do with their standard weapon, and a short sentence that outlines any special effects of the attack.
• Do the math ahead of time for ALL the player’s powers and basic repeating dice rolls.
• Each player should have a ‘worksheet’ that they can keep track of their surges, hitpoints, second wind usage, action points and death saves.  90% of the information on the character sheet is not needed 95% of the time.
• Each player who’s not ready on their turn reserves their action and the player is deal with while they figure out what they’re going to do or if they’re not ready then they use an At-will attack on their current or closest target if it’s possible to do so.
• Use tokens for things like hit points, surges, action points, etc.  A stack of white poker chips and red pokers chips (or nickels and pennies) for health (although this can get messy with high level characters obviously).  When they’re down to the red they’re bloodied.  When they’re out of yellow chips they have no more surges.  Three black chips (failed death saves) and they’re dead.

On the DM side -

• The DM should have all his material ready and printed out.  He should have cards or sheets that have the monsters he’s going to be using printed out and not be flipping back and forth through the books.
• He should have a cheat sheet showing the player’s base standard ‘all the time’ defenses so he doesn’t have to keep asking, “Okay the orc rolled a 15 Bob against your AC, did that hit?”
• Know your material. Plan ahead what tactics the npc’s are going to employ against the party.  Don’t spend 15 minutes figuring out what your bad guys are going to do.  If you don’t have a plan then just have them attack the nearest thing with their biggest damage.
• Have your mini’s or tokens or whatever you’re using grouped and ready to go.
• Buy a large sheet of 1″ chart board paper at your local office supply store and pre-draw your maps then whip them out as you need them.  They don’t have to be works of art but they’ll avoid that 5 minutes delay (or worse) while you draw the encounter area which can give players time to get distracted which takes time to get them back into the game.
• Look up the rules later, make a ruling now and retract it later if you need to. Keep the game flowing.
• Just say NO to toys.  Phones, laptops, handhelds.  Leave them at the door, incoming phone calls only.  No texting, no surfing, no playing super mario.  I can’t stress that one enough.  It’s just strikes me as disrespectful at worst and a major annoyance and waste of the other players time at best for a player who spends time texting with his friends/girlfriends or playing the latest ‘it’ game on his iphone etc.
• Reward speedy play don’t penalize slow play.  If a player is ready on their turn when their turn comes up give them a +1 to hit or a +1 on damage roll or a free minor action.

General -

• Roll your damage dice with your attack, saves you a few seconds each time that adds up over time.
• The DM should have several different color D20’s and roll them all at the same time, assign each player a color or just always use the same colors in the same order, whatever works for you.  Or go to random.org and generate a 1000 d20 rolls based on solar activity and just mark them off as you use them.
• 4th edition specific Combat speed ups-
• Increase all damage on the first damage roll of an attack by 1/2 per level.  (i.e. an AOE has one attack that does normal damage+1/2 level and the rest are normal).
• Reduce elite and solo hit points by 20% (easier math than 25%) and reduce the xp reward accordingly.
• Don’t use monsters that stun or reduce their stun to a daze.  It’s so NOT fun to have to sit out a turn because you were stunned.  Or stunned multiple times in an encounter.  This promotes players who aren’t interested in what’s going on which can distract other players and cause more delays.  Not to mention the damage or support value of the player who’s sitting this one out.
• If a fight is a forgone conclusion then end it quickly via narration and charge the party 1 healing surge per narrated away monster.  (or one for two or whatever seems appropriate).
• Don’t waste game time on easy fights, just narrate them out and charge the party healing surges as coin of the realm.   In MMOG parlance, don’t waste your time with yard trash.  Unless I’m showing new players the gaming system, all my fights fall on the high end of ’standard’ in terms of XP budget.   You want each fight memorable.  Although some fights can be memorable by their ease, you don’t need to roll it out.
• Make fights interesting.  Get out of the mindset of older editions and games of “I roll d20 and do damage.  Monster rolls d20 and damage”.  Design the encounters with options, make them ‘action movie’ with chandeliers to swing on, barrels to roll, flaming braziers to tip over. And lead by example, have the npc’s do something other than stand there and swing.

Example Pointless Combat  – “Lara comes back and tells you there are two orcs dicing in the corner of the next room and another nodding off in a chair.  *party decides they’re going to attack and explains their battle tactics* The orcs are taken off guard easily as you flood through the doorway and although they fight fiercely for several moments your able to easily take the gamblers down and the sleeping orc never even woke up from the sword thrust through its throat.  Trask as the one at the front of the charge, you need to use a healing surge to recover the damage.  The fight seems to have gone unoticed thanks to the heavy closed doors leading out of the room although a distant rythmic thudding can be felt near the large iron door to the south.”

That fight although appropriate for the setting in that it made ’sense’, took only a minute or so depending on how much the players talked about what their characters would do.   To play it out would have taken several minutes with the same result barring just silly ass dice rolling.

Unless your group enjoys the ‘fight’ keep pointless fights to a minimum.   Your fights should advance your shared storytelling, not just be a way to garner experience and loot.

Miscellaneous -

Speaking of experience, don’t get hung up on it unless your players are pretty much tied to it.  Just decide at what point in your storyline the party should level and level them then.   Checkpoint based experience IMO feels better and works better in terms of “Hey Dennis, I know with that last group we’re well over into 6th level and even though we’re in the middle of the session I want to level up my guy.”   But if instead you reward experience by ‘quest’ and not by ‘grinding’ then it becomes less gamist.  A classic quote from my group from way back in the day, “Shit I’m only 5 exp short, okay I lean out the window and use a throwing dagger to kill someone.   *DING!*”

If you make experience goal based and not mob based then you can end up with a lot more creative ways to accomplish a goal from your players rather than “they’re like experience atm’s, let’s stay here and let the coffins keep spewing more skeletons out at us, we could level up in this room easy.”

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Just some screen shots of the double decker gaming table topper (DDGTT?).  This is after painting although the top needs another coat or two but unfortunately I ran out of green paint.  I only had one can and that was a fluke that I’d bought for another project several months back.   Otherwise it would be solid white.  But since I’m going to be puting a big sheet of plexiglass on top of it I thought I’d use the green since it could be slimy dungeon floor or a grassy meadow or something else that’s green in color.

That’s one of my sons, one of the twins actually, in the background on his bike.  Ignore the mess, my garage is always in a state of semi organization.  I can usually find what I’m looking for so it’s not as haphazard as it looks.  The black car doors my son is in front of belong to my mustang, 1967 coupe, that I took off an embarrassingly long time ago to rework the innards of and haven’t put back on as of yet as I’m going to strip the interior to replace the dash and wiring etc. Some day.

Anyway, I didn’t have much else going on that I’m willing to share but I thought people might be interested in the status of the new gaming table.  Well the top to it.

Just a quick pic (poor quality due to using my blackberry as a camera) of the double deck addition to the gaming table. That’s my wife holding the light in place for the picture purposes as it all needs to be actually assembled and finished before I can screw that down.

It’s constructed of two sheets of 1/2 ’smooth one side’ or rought craft grade plywood.  I went cheap here for a couple of reasons, one they didn’t have 1/2 oak or birch plywood at the store, I’d of had to order it special and I didn’t want 3/4″ as it was too thick.   Two, the top piece is going to be covered in something with a plexiglass mapping sheet on top of that so good wood would have been wasted.   The bottom piece I’m going to paint white for light reflecting purposes so again we’re wasting good wood under paint.

Now the center piece that separates the two pieces of plywood I did make out of oak, primarily for strength and just because I was able to get precut pieces that are perfectly square which makes the parts go together stronger.

The two sheets of plywood are exactly 35″ by 64-3/4″ and fit inside the well in my gaming table with about a 1/16″ gap on all sides to allow for expansion and easy removal.

I’ll be screwing the center divider down onto the lower piece of plywood.  The top will be attached to the divider by a peg and wedge system so that I can take it off easily just in case.  I’ll attach some 2x blocks of oak to the underside of the top that will fit inside the divider snuggly and then drill a hole through the divider and into the blocks and use pegs to affix them to each other.

The reason I want to be able to take it apart is I’ll be mounting a power strip inside the divider and running the wiring into it so there’s only one cord coming out of everything to power the lights.

The light is a cheap little 24″ flo I got at Lowe’s for $9-$10 as a test to see if it works well enough.  It’s not actually that ‘hot’ a light, the picture just contrasts it that way but still I’m not sure if I’ll be adding one to each location or one to each side.  (4 lights versus 6).  6 would work ‘best’ but not sure if it’s necessary until after I get the wood painted white and see how it all reflects.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing with my evenings the last couple.  Working with wood is a slow process as you’re always waiting for glue or stain or poly/varnish to dry before you can continue working and those generally run into the 24 hour blocks for best results.

I’ve knocked out the first rough outline of the Running with Zizzors module I’ll be running.  It has 7 tactical encounters and 2 skill challenge encounters (each of which may include 1 tactical encounter).  For the most part the monsters are uniquely mine although I am using some basic creatures for two of the encounters, one of which has 24 hostiles (I have the mini’s for them so why not?).

The encounters are ranked (by exp) as Hard, Standard, Standard, Hard (boss), Standard, Standard, Hard (boss).   Both boss encounters included a Solo (with reduced HP but increased damage) as well as minions although they may not be minions but standards.

The terrain will run from thick muck to shallow water to a rooftop fight complete with swinging pendulums of death, doom, destruction, bad things, fluffy bunnies.

The bad guys run the gamut from firey avatars of the plane of ice to minor godlings of slow haste.  (Like I’m going to give them that much of a hint).

Anyway I hope to provide a level enjoyment with some tough fights, some hard targets and some mass wave attacks to allow everyone to enjoy their enjoyment. So to speak.

Later.

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Nothing to see here, just storing this for later perusal for the purposes of garnering ideas from it -

Original Post

Phase Two: Searching the Moor
In order to locate the Tower Aardant the characters have to search approximately 10 square miles of swampland. Every time the characters narrow the search they eliminate 1 square mile of swamp they currently reside in from the search. The search is completed when they search all 10 square miles (or sooner if they roll the tower found boon). Whenever a character succeeds on a check by more than 5 he may roll on the Swamp Boon table. Whenever a character fails a check by more than 5 they must roll on the Swamp Bane table.

Navigating the Swamp: Every day that the characters search the swamp they must successfully navigate its hazards by succeeding on an Athletics (Moderate), Endurance (Moderate), or Nature (Moderate) check. The group must achieve more successes than failures (ties count as a failure) or accrue a failure.

Narrowing the Search: Instead of searching the swamp manually the group can attempt to narrow the search by combing through old legends and natural features by succeeding on an Arcana (Hard), History (Easy), or Nature (Moderate) check. Every success eliminates one square from the search or erases a failure while every failed check accrues two failures.

Searching the Swamp: The characters can comb the swamp carefully to try and find the tower this day by making a Nature (Moderate) or Perception (Moderate) check. If the group achieves more successes than failures (ties count as failure) they eliminate one square mile from the search. A failed check accrues a failure.

Making Camp: At the end of each day of searching the characters must find a suitable campsite and make up a safe encampment for the evening by succeeding on a Nature (Easy) or Perception (Moderate) check. If the group achieves more successes than failures (ties count as failure) they sleep well and gain a +2 bonus on all checks made the following day. If the group accrues more failures than successes they sleep poorly and all checks made the following day are made at a -2 penalty.

Effects of Failures
# of Failures Ongoing Effect
1-2 No Effect
3 The characters become damp and weary. All Athletics and Endurance DCs are increased by +2.
4 The characters begin to question their sense of direction. All Nature and Perception DCs are increased by +2.
5 The characters begin contracting horrible diseases that sap their strength. All Athletics and Endurance DCs are increased by +4.
6 The characters have become somewhat lost in the swamp. All Nature and Perception DCs are increased by +4.
7 The swamp has really taken its toll on the characters. Each PC contracts filth fever and all DCs are increased by +5.
8 The characters become hopelessly lost and wander the swamp for 1d4 days before stumbling across their first encampment. They will be unable to locate the tower without outside help.

Swamp Boons
Roll Effect
1-2 The characters find a great campsite! No roll is needed for Making Camp this day.
3-4 The characters find an old raft lodged in some weeds. All rolls made to navigate the swamp this day are made at +2.
5-6 The characters find the remnants of an old tower in the moor. All rolls made to narrow the search are made at +2 thanks to the discovery.
7-8 The characters find an old hunter’s pack lodged in some weeds. Any one character can recover a burned equipment card.
9-10 The characters stumble across a hunting party that has had a run in with some Kruthik! Go to the Kruthik caverns encounter.
11-12 The characters find some rare herbs that ease their suffering. Negate one failure if they have 3 or fewer failures.
13-14 The characters find the shack of a crazy hermit who takes them in for the night. There is no need to make camp this evening and the characters negate two failures.
15-16 The characters find a wounded member of the Fallen God Tribe. If they heal him up they gain 2 free successes in the next challenge and receive a warmer reception than normal.
17-18 The characters stumble across a beautiful dryad who gives them directions. The characters eliminate one square mile from their search.
19-20 The characters find the Tower Aardant through sheer luck!

Swamp Banes
Roll Effect
1-2 The characters get a bit lost. Nature and Perception checks are made at +2 for this day.
3-4 Someone is bit by a snake! One character looses 1d4 healing surges.
5-6 Some equipment breaks. One random equipment card is destroyed.
7-8 An animal steals some food. All Endurance checks are made at +2 difficulty for this day.
9-10 The insects are wicked this day. All checks are made at +2 difficulty for this day.
11-12 Animal Attack! A large animal attacks the group!
13-14 Horrible sickness. The characters contract filth fever.
15-16 Quicksand! One character falls into quicksand. Everyone else must succeed on a Moderate Athletics or Nature check to pull him out.
17-18 Horrible Storm. A horrible storm comes up, destroying 1d4 equipment cards and making the task of finding camp for the night very hard (+5 DC).
19-20 Horribly Lost. The characters immediately accrue 2 failures.

In an effort to be extremely clever and witty I’m calling the module I’m writing for an upcoming session Running With Zizzors. Bow before my awesomeness and weep in joy. This module is for players new to 4th Edition and in the case of one, new to PnP RPG’ing due to hype and hysteria surrounding the hobby in it’s early days.  Ah those were the days, sitting around the pentagrams trying to summon Orcus using the spells out of the players handbook.  Sweet times indeed.

This is my current “Read Aloud” text that I will be presenting the players with at the start of the adventure -

“You are all residents of a medium sized fishing village on the shores of the Timpani sea.  The climate is moderate with mild winters.  The fishing fleets go out every week and return loaded with fish.  These fish are preserved, some in heavy brine, others dried and the very best ones are subject to rituals by the village ritualist and his apprentice that slow their decay so they can arrive at the city markets as fresh as they were pulled from the waters.

The area has many dangers, bandits from the hills to the south like to prey on travelers, wild animals and worse wander the countryside’s thick forests and low hills making travel a very dangerous thing for the solitary or weak.  To the east lay the dense marshes of Fenglidden (Black Marsh) swamps.  Tribes of reptilian humanoids known as Zizzors live on the edges of these fetid waters and stories abound of the greater dangers that lay deeper inward.

It was a successful trip and you have good news to report to the village, disease has wiped out a good portion of the beef herds so meat is at a premium and your barrels of fish brought a good price. You’re in a hurry to get home and the three day trip seems to drag on forever but finally the trip is drawing to a close.

But what’s this? A sullen glow lines the night sky south.  And as morning breaks, you see billowing smoke columns are on the horizon from where you know your village lies although several hours distant at the speed of the wagons.  You draw straws to see who will take the few horses and hurry on ahead leaving the plodding oxen to continue pulling the wagons of empty barrels.

As you come over the last rise the village lays before you.  Several  houses on the east side are nothing but burning embers,  others further in are partially burned or scorched.   Two of the big warehouses and the docks are in ruins.

You hurry down, weapons drawn to find the a pile of zizzor bodies, easily 20 or 30 of them and many shroud covered forms you know to be the bodies of your friends and relatives.

Elders of the village fill you in and answer your questions, a large force of zizzors attacked in the middle of the night setting fire to buildings and destroying and killing.  The villagers fought back but took heavy losses much as the hated reptiles had.

The one thing that sticks out to you from the stories is that the Zizzors seemed to be raiding with a purpose other than just random pillaging.    A head count reveals that several children are missing and feared taken but the remaining villagers are too few and there are too many wounded and injured to go after them.

But now that you’re here perhaps that can change, perhaps a quick chase could recover the children… or their bodies if the worst has already happened.”

The party, in my case, will consist of villagers, the best of the best so to speak and as a result they’re the only ones on hand able and capable of going after the zizzors with any speed or hope of success. It could just as easily be a group that’s passing through the village in the time of it’s need by land or perhaps they pulled into dock after spotting the fires and smoke from the oceans, whatever the reason they’re here now and tasked with saving the children.  That’s the good thing about using children, everyone with an ounce of compassion is going to make the attempt.  If the zizzors had raided the Home for Criminally Insane then perhaps it might not be as critical to save them.

And here’s one of the many types of Zizzor’s that I’ve created, not sure why I felt the need to make unique monsters for everything for this module since the people playing aren’t familiar with all the 4E monsters anyway but what the hell right?

Zizzor Spinethrower

Zizzer Spinethrower Level 2 Artillery Medium Natural Humanoid XP 125
Initiative +1 Senses Perception +7
HP 38; Bloodied 19
AC 14; Fortitude 14, Reflex 13, Will 13
Speed 6
Claw Strike (Standard; at-will)
+9 vs. AC; 1d6+3 damage.
Spine (Standard; at-will) ♦ Weapon
Ranged 10/20; +9 vs. AC; 1d10+3 damage.
Poisoned Spines (Standard; encounter) ♦ Poison
Ranged 10/20; 1d10+3 damage and target suffers 5 ongoing poison damage and is immobilized (save ends both).
Spine Volley (Standard; encounter)
Area burst 1 within 20; +9 vs. AC; 2d6+3 damage.
Bloodrush (Immediate Reaction (when adjacent enemy is bloodied))
The Zizzer makes a Claw Strike as an immediate action when an adjacent target is bloodied.
Alignment Evil Languages Common, Draconic
Skills Nature +7, Stealth +7
Str 13 (+2) Dex 14 (+3) Wis 12 (+2) Con 13 (+2) Int 10 (+1) Cha 12 (+2)

And voila the dice tower she is finished.  This is a basic one made of 1/4 red oak primarily with a decorative ‘railing’ for the catch basin made out of (at a guess) birch or pine, a soft wood anyway that as usual took the stain not so great but I was out of prestain and didn’t feel like going and getting more.

Things to take away from this first attempt, don’t use cork for the catch basin, the sharp cornered dice, like my big casino d6’s catch on it and tend to pile up at mouth of the tower.  Also the ’super heavy duty sticks anything to anything permanently’ contact adhesive I have isn’t all that super duper. I know this because I was able to peel the cork from my catch basin quite easily.  That’s been stained and poly’d so it’s fine if not as ‘finished’ looking.

Because of my haste in making the tray (i.e. plan three times, measure twice, cut once) and lack of testing my tray doesn’t attach per se.  So I think right now I’m going to epoxy a couple of the little neo earth magnets I bought to the tray and the tower so that the two pieces stay together that way in either the ‘game’ or collapsed position.

Tower 2 will I think be more like a pachinko machine inside and round(ish), at least something more interesting than a square tube looking think.  But T1 is functional and semi-stylish if boring and that’s what matters does it not?

This is a quick houserule I want to try out.  As far as I know it’s my own, at least if I’ve read it before I’ve forgotten the fact that I read it.

Anyway, along with Action Point tokens I’m going to hand out Recharge tokens.  You start the day after an extended rest with one Recharge Token (much like you start with one Action Point).  For each encounter you get another token (much like for each milestone you get another Action Point).  An encounter power takes 1 recharge token to recharge/untap, a daily power takes 3 tokens to recharge/untap.

This helps reduce the 15 minute work day or provides some incentive to do so, provides a way for the players to use an encounter power twice in one encounter (or more if they save up) and after their second encounter of the day they could use a Daily power twice.   Which is more valuable?  3 encounter powers or 1 daily power?  Depends on the situation I’m hoping.  Could the players just horde them and then nova on the boss?  Sure but at 1 token per encounter that’s a lot of fighting where they’re using up the Currency Of The Realm (aka Healing Surges) and is self limiting in my opinion.

Perhaps the ultimate in Pencil and Paper geekism is the Dice Tower.  This is stage two of mine.  Stage one was simply cutting and gluing three sides of the tower together.  Not really picture worthy.  Next was cutting out the ramps which you can see in these pictures.  No the work isn’t all that good (free hand jig saw and random orbit sander only tools used) and I’m sloppy with the gluing but I’m going to line the inside with thin cork so the glue won’t be visible.  And when dealing with 4 pieces that have to slide into a tight U shape and yet want to fall out while trying to clamp it, well let’s see you not get wood glue everywhere.  The outside I believe I’m going to use black walnut stain on to match the inlays on my gaming table.

I decided against the drawbridge approach for a couple of reasons.  I wanted to get this project done so I could in good conscience start on the table add on until I clear some of the wood working project backlog and my wife wants to do a drawbridge for hers so I don’t want to step on her toes in that way.   This will be a tower and ‘box’ design although there’s now way I’m going to make my catch box as long as the tower is tall so I’m not sure how I’m going to work that.  I might do a V shaped catch and then have a wooden dowel that pins it to the tower that can be removed so that the tower and tray can be stored in less space with less chance of major breakage.

Vertical Open

Ramps