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I was going to post an encounter I made last night for testing some house rules but I forgot to export the files and send them to myself here at work so I’ll have to do it later.  Which really begs the question where the MB keeps it’s files?  I couldn’t figure it out at first glance where it’s storing custom data.

The encounter would be the party comes upon a destroyed hamlet (tiny bit of civilization) where the inhabitents were put to the sword and flame.  Heading toward the place they’d see signs of a large mounted force, probably barbaric from the trash strewn in their wake.  As they got closer to habitation they’d find one or two people hung from tree branches.  Then pyres of faintly smoking coals (maybe 12-24 hours earlier) and blackened bodies and bones.

The stench of roasting meat would be a sickening odor hanging like a pall over the area (fortitude check to avoid vomitus eruptus). Â  Once in the village they’d see the entire place had been slaughtered, the people hung from makeshift gallows or burned on pyres.

As they searched (or just passed through) some of the bodies would shift and rise, driven by their living pain, fear and anger to destroy any intruders.

This was a level 6′ish hard encounter (1600xp) and includes one screamer, 2 steel thewed zombies, 1 hanged man and 10 pyre undead (custom undead). Â  The pyre undead are minions with an encounter power “Memory of flame” where they do a close burst 1 psychic fire blast. Â  The steel thewed zombies are soldiers with the ability to grab their opponents or smack them around and while grabbed their target grants CA to everything and -2 defenses.  The screamer is an elite controller who’s screams and moans befuddle, weaken and outright blast the crap out of the party.  The hanged man is a skirmisher with reach, using the rope that he was killed with (by the neck till dead) he can trip, lash and grant bonuses to the other undead as he interferes with the players powers with Immediate Interupts.

The encounter is just a playtest I’m going to do so I can see the effect of a collection of house rules (remove +1/2 level to everyone’s attack rolls, defenses and skill levels, add +1/2 level to one damage roll per attack and healing powers, use average damage, add +2 back to all attack rolls) and see how the encounter plays out.

The removal of +1/2 level is a wash and has no effect for equal level and flattens the power curve the farther up or down the level difference. Technically at this point you’d want to adjust XP because creatures lower level just got a bit tougher and creatures higher level just got a bit easier, that’s lower and higher level than the party level that is.  But honestly unless you normally do add in monsters 4+ levels higher or lower than the party level it’s probably not enough to matter.   The average damage is primarily to help reduce the vagaries of randomization from the test. Â  The +1/2 level to damage and healing will reduce the number of rounds required by some amount.  The +2 to all attack rolls will also reduce the number of rounds by a marginal amount and in general make combat more dynamic, exciting, whatever.  (missing a lot sucks for both player and DM)

Interestingly with the update to the MB this month, I can easily write a little app that would let me run a bunch of exported files through it, adjust the various settings that I want to adjust and then I can import them all back in for saving. Â  So a list of check boxes or spinners [] Reduce Attack Rolls by 1/2 Level [] Add +X to Attack Rolls [] Reduce Defenses by 1/2 Level or X.

Actually with a bit more work it would be almost trivial to write an app that you could use to level/de-level an exported creature or to shift perhaps the MM1 creatures to MM2 build strategies.  Although trivial doesn’t mean quick mind you.

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