Key Our Cars

[D'oh.  There is a similar kind of thing that you can find here by GreyScott.  Different from mine but the spirit is the same.  I like mine better but then I like my kids a lot more than other people's kids so that's not unexpected.]

Barring dungeon crawls I don’t really do trivial encounters, that long progression of ‘gimmie’ fights that a DM puts a party through to do a slow drain on their resources to soften them up for the BBEG encounter at the end of the work day.  I certainly run multiple fights in one work day but typically they’re not quantified as ‘trivial’.  Each one has a chance to result in death for someone other than the NPC’s.

Let’s face it, the vast majority of us have limited play time and expending that playtime in fights that are ‘gimmies’ seems wasteful.  Many of these single type encounters can be done using Narrative rather than combat.  But there are times that you do need to show the wear and tear on the group as they go through a long series of encounters but breaking out the mini’s for each one just eats horribly into the time you have to play.

Lately I’ve been using skill challenges to drain surges from the group to simulate small but pointless fights as they flee pursuit through the swamps or try to hide from the hobgoblin tribes while making their way home.   But those seem rather flat.

So I’m considering something more combat encounter based and let the party use their combat values against some defensive value, kind of an abstract combat.

The key question is how, I like the 3 rounds and you’re out system I use for skill challenges (duh or I wouldn’t use it right?) rather than the three strikes and you’re out that is the official system. And right now three rounds of combat are close to typical for the group at the level it’s at and seems like a good place to start.

So primarily how to abstract something as tactical as 4th Edition combat is the big question.  I need to work in a way for the players to gain some benefit from the various level of powers, at-wills, encounters and dailies with the understanding that a daily used during an abstract combat encounter is a daily they will not have during that work day.  And we need a simplistic way to simulate buffage.

So my thinking is on any of the three rounds the players can elect to use an At-Will (base), Encounter (bonus), Daily (bigger bonus).  They will take their Attack value for that power, added the bonus for encounter/daily, and then roll against an abstract defense of their opponents.  This isn’t so much to abstract their ability to hit as it is to abstract their ability to do damage.  Encounters and Dailies = more damage output.

Enough failures and they will be forced to expend a surge for each round.   So the most they can cost themselves is 3(4) surges per A.C.E. which isn’t out of line with a trivial encounter.

But we also need a way to more equitably spread out the surges lost.  As we all know barring really hard fights it’s typical for some (defenders) to go through an asston of surges while classes that can remain out of harms way might spend none.

So as a first draft let’s see how this flies -

Abstract Combat Encounter System or ACES

Purpose:

To simulate resource drain for a fight the party is expected to win without much risk but without having to take the time to move to a tactical simulation.

Procedure:

The party will negotiate 3 rounds of abstract combat.  In each round each member of the party will pick one of the following, At-Will, Encounter, or Daily.  They will roll a d20, compute their attack roll and compare it to the appropriate DC for the encounter using the AC/F/R/W values as set by the DM.

On any round that there failed rolls are equal to or less than successes the members of the party will lose one surge.

On any encounter that the party does not garner at least one success they will be penalized an additional surge.

Details:

Characters /Attacks -

During each of the ACES rounds each member of the party will choose one of their powers to use.  If the power is an attack power that targets a defense, the character must roll against the appropriate DC/Defense as set by the DM.

If the power also enhances another member of the party then the player may grant/add a +2 bonus to another character’s roll using the Aid Other rules.  If the power does not make an attack against an AC/F/R/W attack but it grants a benefit to another character then the player rolls against a DC+encounter level.  If they succeed then it counts as a success and grants a +2 bonus to the other character’s roll.  [NOTE: Yes this grants higher 'value' to non-strikers in general but what the hell let's give them a time to shine.]

If the power is not an At-Will the character receives the following bonuses where appropriate:

• Encounter +5 to attack roll / Additional +2 bonus Aid Other.
• Daily +10 to attack roll / Additional +4 bonus Aid Other.

Monsters / Defenses / DCs –

The DM will determine the defenses / DC’s of the encounter using the average AC, Fortitude, Reflex, Willpower of the encounter creatures.  You can also use the following values as an overall average across all monster types

• AC = 14+Encounter Level
• F/R/W = 12+Encounter Level

All encounters are assumed to be at the Easy level.  If you wish to simulate a normal or harder fight then add +2 per increase in difficulty that you wish to portray.

Experience / Loot-

The party will earn loot for the encounter just like they would have if it had been played out tactically.

They will earn full experience of the encounter divided by 3 multiplied by the number of rounds they succeeded at with a minimum of 33%, even failure teaches us something.  i.e. if they only succeeded on two rounds then they get 2*33% or 66%.

If they win two out of three rounds they’ll also typically earn some mundane items of value.  By winnign three out of three rounds they’ll also earn some items of higher value or items of a magical nature.

Sacrifice –

One per encounter a character can elect to sacrifice a surge and take one for another member.   More than one character can sacrifice for a member but each character can only sacrifice once per encounter.

Major Failure / Death-

If the group fails all three rounds then one player determined randomly is assigned a Death Strike which counts toward their three death strikes for the day and as such can only be removed after an extended rest.

Long Term Usage / Wave Attacks -

Sometimes you might want to simulate a lot of minor attacks, wave situations for instance where the party might have to face 5-10-20… etc trivial fights.

In this case you could instead of each encounter being three rounds, you just decide how many rounds per wave you want simulate.   Each round rather than once per encounter a player may sacrifice a surge for another player.

If a character runs out of surges they’re considered out of the combat and the remaining characters incur a cumulative -2 penalty per out of commission character on their die rolls to simulate them being forced to ‘take up the slack’.  If all characters are reduced to 0 surges the encounter is considered lost.

High Level Example: Goblin Warrens for Level 1 Party

Setup: The party has been tasked with cleaning out a goblin warren on one of the caravan trails.  The creatures have been causing issues with the caravans, stealing things at night from the strong ones, attack and pillaging smaller ones after driving off or killing the guards.

Attacks against the goblins have proven of little use with only a few killed.  But now the location of the warren where they’re holed up has been found and the party has been sent to insure that one way or another the raids stop.

It’s assumed that trying to deal diplomatically has failed and there’s no point in talking to anyone but the leader of the goblins and the outside chaff won’t talk.

So the DM figures it’ll take 3 minor encounters to get to the inner sanctum of the goblins.  He chooses to do this with ACES to leave time for the big boss fight whether that turns tactical or roleplay.

The first two encounters are truly easy so the DC’s for those are going to be AC: 15, F/R/W 13 as they’re level 1 encounters.  The third one will see the goblin boss throwing in some of his personal bodyguards so he’s going to crank that difficulty up one notch and that fight will be at DC’s of AC: 17, F/R/W 15.

The final boss battle will be played out normally.

Encounter 1 – Party of 5:

• Round 1 – 4 successes – Result: No loss
• Round 2 – 4 successes – Result: No loss
• Round 3 – Only two success – Result: 1 lost surge

Total: 1 surge lost.  The paladin elects to sacrifice a surge for the cleric and loses two and the cleric loses none.  Experience gained equals 66% of the total.

Encounter 2:

1. Round 1 – 3 successes – Result: No loss
2. Round 2 – 4 successes – Result: No loss
3. Round 3 – 5 successes – Result: No loss

Total: No additonal surges lost. Full experience gained.

Encounter 3:

1. Round 1 – 2 successes – Result: 1 lost surge
2. Round 2 – 2 successes – Result: 1 lost surge
3. Round 3 – 3 successes – Result : No Loss

Total: 2 additional lost surges per party member.  The fighter sacrifices for the wizard and loses three surges while the wizard only loses 1.  The paladin does the same for the cleric losing three surges and the cleric loses 1.   Only 33% of the encounter experience gained.

ACES results –

• Wizard – Down 2 surges
• Paladin – Down 5 surges
• Fighter – Down 4 surges
• Cleric – Down 1 surge
• Ranger – Down 3 surges

Comments? Thoughts?

Image Credits

Updated my KOC Nerf application to 1.1.  I’ve added in two new check boxes to help deal with the power disparity from level 1 to 30 that have ‘necessitated’ the need for Expertise and Masterwork armours.

One box reduces a creatures defenses by -1 per Tier.  Thus negating the need for Expertise which adds +1 per tier to attack bonuses for the PC’s.

The next box reduces a creature’s attack bonus by -1 per tier. Makes the PC’s harder to hit and helps reduce any need for masterwork.

Honestly after much deliberation I think the plan to separate +’s from magic items and give them natively to the PC’s by level progression works better but doesn’t work for some people.

If you missed the first post this app takes exported Monster files and manipulates them to match my house rules.  Then I import the modified creature into the MB and then print it out for use at the table.  Makes it very easy to apply my changes to as many creatures as I want at one time without having to modify them by hand or pencil in changes on their printouts.

New version – KOC Nerf 1.1 (10)

Requires dot net 3.5′ish.  If you can run the WotC Monster Builder you can run this.

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Ran this encounter a second time.  Same creature mix and numbers, 5 new characters. This time we had a Warden, Shaman, Seeker, Monk and Sorcerer going up against the masses of creatures.  Even without all that much radiant damage what was on the middle of the Hard scale went better, primarily because Action Points were used during the fight as well as some Dailies being tossed out rather than hoarded.

I would like to admire my wife who picked up 5 brand new, no experience at all with them, classes and played them very well.  We did the entire fight in about an hour and a half playtime which given the options/powers she had to learn for each character for the first time and the numbers of monsters in the encounter (25) does her credit.

The map is flipped 180 degrees for anyone a bit lost from the last time.   Same opening sequence as the first play through, party moves up to investigate possible survivor and gets surprised and blasted with scream attack which hits 3 out of 3 this time and knocks them all backwards and prone.   The poor sorcerer gets pushed away from the rest of the group and spends a considerable amount of the fight locked in the embrace of the Steel Thewed Zombie (STZ) she was blown near who’s trying to drop her in the well but between being blinded and all that doesn’t get to.  The sorcerer was dropped to 2 hit points but managed to recover with both a second wind and the use of her Dilettante Inspiring Word daily healing in one round as well as the Shaman moving his Spirit over next to her and providing healing.

The monk’s close burst attack was a good minion clearer and the Warden’s daily Winter’s Grasp did away with 7 or 8 minions by itself.  The zone caused some issues with his own group though as they had to detour around it to avoid taking the damage.

The PC’s focused on the minions primarily at first overall then concentrated on the standards before going after the Elite.   The screamer made a couple of ‘mistakes’ using her Despairing Gaze on the warden even though he was already suffering from being Immobile and Weakened and not mixing her abilities up more like using them against the sorcerer while she was in the STZ’s grab power which granted CA.  But she was pissed at the Warden and focusing on him.   The focus of the STZ with the sorcerer to  drop them in the well also cost them a bit in total damage.

The minions did little damage, I would guess they got into position to hit and actually hit maybe 6-8 times.  Out of 20 minions that’s not great.  Ranged and AOE attacks destroy the poor minions.

Speaking of Range and AOE attacks.  There’s a Hurl Breath feat from Dragon that I had to scale back that the CB picked for the character for me.  It allows Dragonborne to use their breath attack as a Burst 2 within 10.   This COMPLETELY negates the Expanded Breath feat which turns the normal Blast 3 into a Blast 5.   A burst 2 IS a blast 5.  And has the option of centering it up to 10 squares away rather than adjacent to the character.  Why would a player EVER take the expanded breath feat over the toss it 10 squares away?  So I changed it to a Burst 1 within 10.  That seems like a pretty obvious change to me.  And leaves room for the character to take the expanded breath feat in addition and then get a blast 5 usable at range.

As this was another test of my current House Rules, I’m happy to say they’re working well.  Fewer misses (on both sides because missing a lot sucks) make for more exciting faster combats, the average damage for everything reduces dice rolling which speeds combat and eliminates the “Crap, I rolled a 1 on my damage dice” although it also removes the “I rolled max damage on my damage dice.” but I think disappointment trumps triumph in terms of emotional weight.  And you can still roll a critical and really boost the damage to get that emotional high.

Another thing that came out of this is I want to make another style of Initiative Board with perhaps the init cards held between two sheets of plexiglass and some kind of sliding flag in a slot to indicate the current player.

Piercings and Tattoo’s for fantasy characters?  Magical piercings and tatoos?  WTH?! That’s just about the du… Hmmm you know that might actually work…

This thought train this morning was put into motion by the Tattoo’s and Piercing’s article over here.  My first ‘visual’ was one of the demons that escaped from Hell in the TV Show Reaper that had tattoo’s on his body that he could pull off and use.  A tattoo of barbed wire running up his arm became a very nasty garotte, a fire-burst and flame on his neck became a fireball he could throw.

Picture if you will an Assassin tasked with getting close enough to someone, the Duke, the brilliant general of the opposing side, the gray sorcereress who’s keeping the thieves guild from expanding due to threat of extinction, whatever.  She’s going in as an exotic courtesan, a ‘painted lady of the fiery south lands’ where they don’t wear much in the way of clothing but instead decorate their skin with ink.  One of her tattoos might be of a savage beast on her back with the clawed paws coming around to cup her breasts, the tips gleaming in green.  One of those claws when ‘pulled out’ becomes a poisoned weapon to which she’s built up an immunity.   She kills the target, stabs herself and lays near death for the guards to find in the morning with some story of some fell shadow assassin that attacked them both. This would require of course some means of preventing Raise Dead, perhaps RD only works when the brain is intact.  Or you could take a page from the Taltos series and certain weapons destroy whatever it is that makes people people and un-revivable.

Anyway, the article is a good read and IMO certainly a viable option if your world supports such things.

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Found this today and thought it worthy of posting to spread the knowledge.  As a general rule I like the way 4th Edition does critical hits especially since I’ve been using a house rule that has attacks doing average damage during playtests of houserules.  Which works well I think.

But I can see where 1 in 20 attacks doing maximum damage + bonus damage might be less than appealing to some.  While the author of the post above forgot that a critical hit isn’t the same as rolling maximum damage because of the bonus damage (at least past level 1 when everyone should have a magic item of some kind) but I can see where even so it might not have a critical impact.

I’m not a fan of the Critical Hit charts, never really have been as they’re just too lethal for my tastes.  And  Fumbles on a 1 are just so Keystone Kops / slapstick comedy as to be ludicrous.  Even a novice fighter I don’t think is going to fling his sword away 5% of his swings or stab himself in the leg or whatever.   It’s not very heroic for a Demi-god to drop his sword 1 out of 20 times he tries to hit something with it.

But this particular thought on the subject doesn’t seem too atrocious to me.  I think in game play it’s going to tend to be more irritating for the players (DM’s roll a LOT more than players do) than enjoyable but with the right groups it might be a lot of fun.

The basis of this system is fairly simple, on a critical hit you roll a d20 and consult a chart and based on that chart result you apply an existing condition to the target (blind, dazed, weakened, slowed etc).

I’m recreating the chart portion below for my own perusual but I highly recommend you visit the site and peruse the items there.

Critical Hits Chart
(Assign Maximum Damage + Combat Effect as listed below)

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been meaning to make these and finally got around to finishing them up.  They’re Player Bonus Cards much like the official RPGA ones (and some ideas were based on those cards obviously).  Other ideas come from this article which I’d posted about before.

This is the first draft and doesn’t include any ‘cursed’ cards.  I’ll most likely make those a separate page definitely and perhaps a seperate download completely as they’re not everyone’s cup of tea.  I personally thing good luck should be tempered by bad or it’s not good luck, it’s a given.  So a 1 bad card for every X good card ratio I think would be more pleasing to me but I’m not you so you’ll have to make that decision yourself.

A lot of the cards are set up as Immediate Actions to add a bit of a twist to them since they then compete for the use of the one IA that a character can perform once per round.  You can eliminate that if you want.

You can download the cards here -KOC Player Bonus Cards (163)

If you like them let me know.  I do like feedback.  I just noticed for example that my Quest Card has been downloaded 700+ times and no one’s had any comments on them so I don’t know if it was worth the time to put them up or not.

Also if you have any ideas for similar cards by all means share.

Okay I ran this playtest this afternoon with my wife running the characters.  The party was 6th level and comprised of a Assassin, Fighter, Warlock, Invoker and Bard.  None of the characters were ‘character op’ped’.  I quick built them in the Character Builder then went in and tweaked them where they needed it to make them realistically built.  Things like invalid weapon focuses or powers that didn’t work well with the stat builds and that kind of thing.   I also gave each one a ‘reasonable’ weapon and armour or implement and each one got some minor item that added to their combat effectiveness or recovery.

The set up was the party had been hired by a lord to track down and destroy a band of raiders that were destroying small villages with the usual results.  The lord had lost members of his family to this band and the PC’s were the fastest way to get after them while he raised a real fighting force to deal with them.

The party was closing in but at each village they trailed the raiders to they lost time searching for survivors and when they found them they had to deal with them.  This was the third such village they’d come to and they entered it to check for if there was anyone hurt but still alive.  Several huts were still burning or had collapsed into a pile of glowing embers.  Bodies were scattered everywhere, a large pile of them in the center of town where wagons and small stands cluttered up the area.  The town well’s walls had been collapsed into it and bodies thrown in.  It was not a pretty sight.  The smell of burning flesh filled the area as did a pall of choking smoke from the fires.

The ravens had already arrived and were pecking at some of the corpses, watching the party as they entered the town.   Some of the villagers had been strung up from the rafters gutted and left to die slowly.

As the fighter and bard led the group into the village they spotted movement among the pile of dead in the center and approached it, prepared to help or put out misery whoever was still alive.

Drawing closer they stopped as one of the prone figures stood and then turned to face them,  a woman, eyes put out and a jagged gash across her throat, her front covered with her blood.  She stared at the approaching party with sightless eyes and a savage rage filled expression contorted her face and she screamed, the sound a punishing blast of force that blasted the party backwards, hammering them with sound and knocking them down.

At the horrible cry bodies all around the village rose to their feet, hungry dead eyes lusting for revenge, fueled by rage and as one their heads swiveled toward the party.

The backstory is that the girl’s death, a warlock in life, turned her into a demi-lich of some kind and now she’s driven to protect the village against intruders, any intruders and has brought the other bodies back to un-life to help protect it.

Surprise round over we roll initiative and the combat is on.

The combatants included the five pc’s and one Tortured Remains, 2 x Steel Thewed Zombies, 2 x Hanged Ones and 20 x Pyre Dead.   This is obviously a seriously harsh encounter.  As a result I kept a fairly careful eye on things and the undead didn’t always use their most efficient abilities.  That’s part of my job as the DM, to keep things in check that way.  I would rather dump in an extra 10 minions at the start and finesse their combat output of the encounter as a whole and have them if I need them rather than run ‘light’ and have a boring fight.  Under normal circumstances this would have been a day ender anyway without a couple or three minor skirmishes leading up to with raider stragglers or wild life or some other natural hazard of the area.

The house rules that were in force consisted of these -

• -1/2 level to attack rolls and defenses and skills on both sides.
• +1/2 level in damage to one target of an attack and normal damage for the rest in the case of multiple targets
• +1/2 level to healing abilities like healing words, second winds and healing potions.
• +2 flat bonus to attack rolls
• And to try and reduce the impact of randomness, all attacks did average damage.
• PC’s at dying used the Mostly Dying rule (which came into effect once)

To cut to the chase, the end results were within acceptable ranges and added to the game IMO.  Yours might be different of course.

The fight went well, various AOE’s dealt well with the minions over the course of the adventure which I fully expected which is why I was about to dump 20 minions into this fight.  The Assassin’s Heart of Dust worked VERY well when used against the Tortured Remains which was surrounded by minions.  When the dot procc’ed it killed 5 minions.  Add in the Invoker’s Rebuke Undead and other multiple target attacks from the various characters and the poor minions died in droves the way they’re supposed to.   I did get more than a few hits on the player using the minions which worked well.  The 7 damage a pop slowly ate away at their resources.

All the characters bloodied and most were brought to single digits at least once, all of them used their Second Winds and 2 used Healing Potions, each character was assumed to have one.  The Bard used both his Majestic Words which since he had the Improved feat also granted 5 Temp HP’s.

The Tortured Remains was able to keep various characters controlled, either dazed, weakened or immobilized, but the players never really lost their full turn.  Even when the Invoker went down to 0 health she was able to use the Mostly Dying rule on her next turn to trigger her Second Wind and the turn after that was able to get back into the fight.   Without that rule in effect that character would most likely be dead.   The bard was trapped on the other side of the battlefield and would have most likely died from OA’s trying to get to her and since both his Majestic Word’s had been used the best he could have done was a Healing check to stabilize.

The Steel Thewed Zombies grab attack was successful a few times where they held a PC and granted CA for some of the other monsters and the Bard was tossed down the well once as a result.  The assassin was also thrown into the well from the Tortured Remains burst with push attack which was funny, at least to me.

The assassin knocked the last of the minions down into the well as well with a pushing power which was only fair I suppose. The Assassin as a whole wasn’t too impacting with the battle, he missed a lot but the one time he did manage a hit was with the daily and that cleared a big chunk of minions that would almost certainly have pulped the bard or the fighter on their next turn.

I believe in total the fight took 7-8 rounds and took an hour and 45 minutes.  That might seem long (or maybe it doesn’t) but this was an encounter with 30 total combatants and the characters were complete unknowns to my wife, she’d never played any of these classes before so she spent time looking them over each round to see what might be the best power.  Something that one would hope wouldn’t be the case with players who’d started with these characters and had played them up to this level.

Things that helped contribute to the pacing, hitting more often (10% more often due to the +2 static bonus), doing more damage per hit (an average of +3 damage per hit) and in all honesty not having to roll damage and using average damage for everything except critical hits (we only had one over the course of the fight) sped things up as well.

Although one test does not a conjecture prove, I would at this point be perfectly willing to continue with these changes in a real campaign, assuming I could find enough players to have a real ongoing campaign.

D

Okay just in case anyone else is remotely interested I’ve uploaded the KOC Nerfer to the site.  Here’s the included Read Me below.

This is based on my thoughts on House Rules that are intended to make the game more fun (better hit rate for both sides), less draggy (increased damage), monsters are able to used at a broader range (less work making new ones).

It’s written in dot net so you’ll need dot net installed to run it. I would imagine that if you have the ability to run the Monster Builder then this should work just fine.

No I don’t intend to make it work on a Mac.  Unless you want to give me a Mac to do development on. Then we’ll talk about it.

If it’s not obvious this is a home grown app not designed to be pretty and you’ll see a lot of broken status messages flying through the text window, ignore them.

The file – KOC Nerf 1.1 (10)  [Updated link to version 1.1]

The Read Me -

This app will make certain modifications to *.monster files as exported from the
Wizards of the Coast Adventure Tools Monster Builder application.

Your use of this program is an implicit contract that you will not hold me
responsible for anything it may do down to running away with your cat to
las vegas to get married.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wrote a quickly little app that can parse a .monster file and remove 1/2 level to the defenses, add 1/2 level to the damages and adds +2 static attack bonus to the attacks.

With the current iteration of the Monster Builder you have to have a custom version of any official monster in order to export it as XML which is slighly confusing but anyway.  You can edit a monster without any edits so you have a custom version.  Then you can export that as XML using the new feature just added which exports as a dot monster file.

My app parses the monster file (or files if you give it a folder path) and based on the check boxes massages the data.  It then renames the original file to .bak and writes the new file which can be imported back into the monster builder as either a new custom monster or as to update the original custom monster.

I’ve even got a rough level modifier which because most of the items in the creature file are based on level is pretty trivial to implement and unless you’re modifying a lot of creatures at once is kind of pointless since you can just change the level in the MB.   A lot of powers are not based on this and as a result modifying a creature’s level will have over or underpowered powers.  These are typically the “Deals +xdx damage when it has combat advantage” or the resistences/vulnerabilities.  But the standard attack and damage based powers level up and down pretty well.

So primarily the way I’ll be using it is I export the monsters I need, run them through the HR’ifier, then import them back into the MB and then print them out for my needs.   Should work out fine.

A more involved parser would check every power individually for tier appropriate special damages, force movement amounts and all that.

I think actually I’m going to add in a “convert Stun to Daze” checkbox since being stunned sucks as a player.

D

This is an interesting idea.  To sum it up, you seperate the gold of the world from the magic of the world by making magic items not a corner store inventory item.  The only way to get magic (which is how I’ve always done it BTW other than consumables) is to go take them from other people (preferably the Bad Guys) or find ones lost by design, chance or just because.

To award magic items you (the dm) either hand out the items per the guidelines OR you hand out some intangible value that’s equal to the gold value of the loot that equals magic items that the players can ’spend’ to acquire magic gear.  The gear would then show up in the next adventure loot or they spend that value to enchant their existing gear by having rituals cast on it.

Anyway I just found this thread and it goes into considerable depth on it but the basic idea is sound in my opinion.  By separating world currency from magic currency you can avoid inflation, keep a small pouch of gold valuable across the character’s career and all that.  Really it avoids the “I’ve got 500,000,000 gold coins.” you might run into at Epic levels.

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IXP – Separating the sparklies from the tools

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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).   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).   The pyre undead are minions with an encounter power “Memory of flame” where they do a close burst 1 psychic fire blast.   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.   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.   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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D

I see the whole ‘average damage’ has resurfaced.  To sum it up, rather than the player’s rolling dice they simply determine what their average damage is and use that for all non-critical rolls.   So if you do a 1d6+5 then you apply 5 damage per hit.  A 3d6+7 is 9 damage etc.

I can see a draw, it certainly avoids the depressing damage rolls where people get 1’s on their damage dice which are arguably more emotionally impacting than maximum damage.  I think rolling a critical hit has a better ‘cool factor’ than rolling a regular hit and then rolling maximum damage.  But that might just be me.

After due consideration I think I’d be willing to give it a try and see how it goes.  Over time the players ARE going to end up with average damage unless they have non-uniform dice or simply don’t roll very often.

This reduces the rolling for each player to a (typically) single d20 to determine if they hit.

Monsters though typically roll very few times for their lifespan though so it’s quite possible that they’ll have very swingy results.  You might have a Solo who can’t seem to roll nothing but ones while another one is consistently hammering out big damage numbers.

Really at what point does one say let’s just do away with random? But in the interests of fairness and curiosity I suppose I could give it a shot.

What would be more interesting I think is simply boosting the attack chances combined with this damage.  Let’s face it, missing sucks ass.  I doubt if anyone will argue that point ever.

So perhaps a ‘mystic werewolf ability’ [Note: inside joke] bonus should be applied across the board?  Perhaps a flat +2 across the board?

Indeed, let’s consider these various house rules I’ve written up or about -

• Remove +1/2 level to all defenses, attack and skill rolls on both sides.  This is a wash and simply levels the playing field by quite a bit so that monsters are more viable outside a straight 1 to 1 level comparison.
• Add 1/2 level to the FIRST damage roll or the first target across the board.
• Add a flat+2 to attack rolls across the board to increase hit frequency.
• Compute the average dice per attack based on the above and use that instead of rolling for damage.

Might make for shorter combats that are more interesting (missing is not interesting).

Someone else mentioned this and it reinforced my own observations.  Defenders and and Leaders, the ones primarily in the front lines usually at least in my experience in tough fights tend to drop and then a turn later stand back up.  Aka they wobble but they don’t fall down (or stay down anyway).

What would happen if instead of dropping the PC’s at 0 hit points, we instead impose a new condition – ‘Mostly Dead’ and have to make ‘dying’ saving throws. While Mostly Dead they suffer a combination of Dazed, Slowed and Weakened.

Mostly Dead

• You grant combat advantage.
• You may take one action, standard, move, minor per turn.  You can’t take immediate actions or opportunity attacks.
• Your speed becomes the lower of 2 or your current movement rate.
• Your attacks deal half damage.
• You make a Dying saving throw every round.

Dying Saving Throws

When you are Mostly Dead you need to make a saving throw at the end of your turn each round.  The result of your saving throw determines how close to dying you are.
Lower than 10: You slip one step closer to dying. If you get this result three times before receiving healing you suffer the Dying condition.
10-19: No Change
20 or higher: Spend a healing surge and recover hit points as if you were at 0 hit points. If you have no healing surges left your condition doesn’t change.

In RPG’s, DnD specifically but most of them, there is typically no way to do the classic “Sentry Takedown” (referred to hereafter as STD because it’s funny.  Unless you have one and then you have my sympathy but not empathy).  You know the scene, the hero sneaks up to some roving watcher, grabs him by the mouth and plunges a knife in the liver/kidneys or just a deep cut across the neck dragging it over the carotid artery and boom the sentry goes down dead in seconds without a chance to alert his friends.

In DnD that’s nigh impossible.  In 4th edition it pretty much is impossible unless it’s a striker and they unleash a good daily attack and get a critcal hit with some kind of ‘debuff’ effect that at the least stuns the target.  Or unless the sentry is a minion of course but if you make all the sentries minions then technically the hero can just bean them with a rock and they’ll die.  Not very epic.

Let’s take a look at the Coup De Grace rule – Make an attack against an adjacent helpless target if you hit you score a critical hit.  If you deal the targets bloodied value or greater you insta-gib them.  That’s just pretty hard to do.  And it precludes any ability of an archer taking out a watchmen.

So with that said I thought, what the hell, let’s see if we can make a ‘pseudo’ skill challenge out of a non-minion sentry take down.

So to avoid player ’sploiting we’re going to set up some ground rules that have to be in place for this to work and of course it’s always going to be up to DM Fiat/Caveat.

1. The target must be unaware of the Hero OR be unknown to be hostile.
2. The target must not be ‘in combat’.

This means the Hero has to typically use some ability suited for the environment to get close enough to the target and that the target can’t be fighting or expecting to be attacked.  Again in any grey areas this is going to be the DM’s call.

Once the Hero gets close enough to attack they need to actually hit the target.  A miss is a miss regardless.  If they do hit the target they’ll hit for double their critical value.  If this value is greater than the target’s bloodied value they’re insta-gibbed much like a CdG and if its less then the target is stunned until the end of its next turn.  This means that this kind of sentry take out is best left to the damage dealers aka Strikers and they’d best use at least an encounter power of some kind.  As an easy alternative you could simply say that if the player gets within range to perform a  STD ( /juvenile chuckle ) and succeeds that you give it to them.  Personally I would lean toward the later since it falls into the rule of a) It’s Cool, b) players would enjoy it and c) it would only be of any real benefit where the DM set it up. It also means if you don’t kill it you have one move to get close enough to do a CDG.  So a double move/run + AP could work if you’re within that range.  Otherwise it’s going to start yelling for help or at least saying OUCH really damn loudly.

Now we’ll also have to define what is close enough to attack.  Obviously melee range is good.  Anything farther away and we quickly reach a point where it’s just not ‘fair’ to be able to one shot someone.  So do we decrease the range that it can be done or just apply an assload of penalties?  I think an assload of penalties fits my playstyle better.  So what about -4 at short range and -8 at long range?

So we have the basis of an idea of a system to allow the Heroes to take down a bad guy in one shot.  Now let’s work on the specifics.

To get into position the player is going to need to make some skill checks.  A good starting point for primary skill checks to allow someone to get within range might be something like this -

Urban environment – Stealth
Crowded environment – Thievery, Diplomacy
Natural environment -  Nature, Stealth

Since I like the three ‘phase’ skill challenge system, let’s break it down that way.

Phase 1: Approach unseen/unnoticed.

Phase 2: Make the attack.  This is a skill check using a standard attack roll.

Phase 3: Perform the Coup De Grace if needed.

So now we have a three phase skill challenge of sorts.  Phase 1 could require multiple skill checks depending on the circumstances or just one. Phase 2 is typically one ’skill check’ aka attack roll.  Phase three is the finish up phase and could require more skill checks or be a ‘gimmie’.

So while it’s not a skill challenge per se, it does allow a way for the players to potentially perform a single shot take down.

Anyway it’s a start of an idea that may grow into something.  I’ll keep you posted if I come back to it.

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[Of course if you want it simple then temporarily turn your sentries into Minions.  If the take down attack hits they're dead.  If it doesn't then you can flip them back to standards, elites etc. for the ensuing battle.]

Found an article that has an interesting idea.  If you’ve played Munchkin then you know about their Cheat cards. These cards let you basically cheat, you can ignore any restrictions or requirements for any other card and play it as if you weren’t restricted by the card’s text.  So you could equip a weapon that you didn’t have hands to hold or use an item that you were the wrong race/class/sex to use etc.

Kurt at GnomeStew has a similar idea for 4th Edition.  A deck of cards that are handed out at the start of session or after a long rest or whatever time interval seems appropriate to the DM.   Each player could be stuck with the card they draw or a more lenient DM might let them trade among theirselves and an even more lenient DM might just draw X cards and give it to the party as a group resource or let the party decide how to do it.  I’m not known for leniency myself but you play the way you want.

Snipped from article -

My previous article on rewards mentioned ‘rule-breaker cards’ (also known as ‘swash cards’ or ‘adventure cards’). Put simply, a rule-breaker card is a one-shot exception to the normal rules of the game. Some gamers find that they add a welcomed element of chaos and opportunity to the game, and provide everyone with a ‘spotlight moment’. But some gamers don’t like that they also mess with established tactics, and may apply to the NPCs as well.

And some sample ideas from his post on cards (copied here):

• Reroll one die roll of any kind (skill, attack, damage, save, etc). Use the higher roll.
• Regain an expended Encounter Power at any time as a free action.
• Regain an expended Daily Power after a short rest.
• Use an At-Will Power instead of a Basic Attack (such as at the end of a charge, or as an Opportunity Attack).
• Expend a Healing Surge on yourself as a minor action.
• Expend a Healing Surge on an adjacent ally as a move action. The ally uses his or her own Healing Surge amount, but you expend one of your Surges.
• Run for one round with no penalties to attacks or defenses for running.
• Ignore one successful Opportunity Attack.
• +5 to any attack roll or saving throw; must commit this card before rolling.
• +2 to any attack roll or saving throw; card may be used after the roll.
• For the duration of one encounter, give one Power the Reliable keyword.
• Shift as a minor action, even if it’s before or after a move.
• Your area attack or close attack does not hit one of your allies, even if he or she is in the target area.
• Reroll one failed Saving Throw.
• Take a ‘natural 20’ on any trained skill check.
• Your attack does 5/10/15 ongoing damage on a hit; save ends.  (Damage scales with tier.)
• For this encounter, and until the beginning of the next encounter or extended rest, consider yourself Trained in one additional skill.

Which is a pretty good start. A cruel DM could possibly add in cursed cards that the players HAVE to play during their first encounter…

• One successful attack misses.
• A critical hit is reduced to a normal hit.
• You suffer -4 defenses until the end of your next round.  Must be an active target of an enemy at the time this card is played.
• You trip and fall prone while charging at an enemy.
• Your primary weapon slips from your hand into an adjacent square.

I’d of course stack the deck with 5 or 6 good cards to 1 cursed card.  If I was mean enough to put in cursed cards.  Which I am.

Now about those character stats… Are they really necessary for the enjoyment of the game?  Or are they a sacred cow that no one’s quite willing to kill off and make a nice burger with?  True20 did away with them and seems to work pretty well.  They’re not completely gone but instead are simply your modifiers.  Does anyone ‘really’ care that they have an 18 strength or do they care that they have a +4 strength modifier?

The most memorable characters that aren’t memorable for what they did are the ones with really lopsided stats.  But for every single memorable character of such ilk, there are 50 that are remembered for their actions, not their stats.   And is that a great way to be remembered? “Remember that character of Temple’s the wizard who had a higher strength and constitution than the fighter did?  Haha he rolled crazy stats!”  As opposed to “Remember that character of Temple’s, the wizard? And when he kept falling and taking damage as he was running from the Headspiders down that sloped cavern and almost killed himself?  Man that was funny.”

I’m not saying that having an 18 strength or a 8 intelligence is a bad thing, just that it’s not necessarily the greatest way to own a memorable character per se.

For most characters, barring random roll, fixed placement oddballs, you’re going to have your three best scores where they do your class the most good.  That’s a given 99.9% of the time barring a player who just wants to create something lopsided for dramatic or comic reasons like the 8 strength fighter or the 9 wisdom cleric. Heck this whole thing coined the idea of the ‘dump stat’ which used to be Charisma for everyone except Paladins.  In the past editions characters were as a whole pretty average looking at best.

So the question at hand is what if we just did away with hard numeric stats and instead the player described their character’s abilities?

So if instead of – “Hi, I’m Bob the stereotyped big dumb fighter cause intelligence is a dump stat for fighters and this is Steve the highly intelligent but asthmatic wizard who as usual put his good stats in something other than constitution.”

We had something a little more prosaic and less ‘fixed’, “My character, Kel of Clan Finnan, approaches and asks you about joining your group.  He’s a fit but not overly muscled man dressed in well worn leather armour.  At first glance he appears unremarkable but there’s something about him that catches your eye on a second glance, the roguish twinkle in his eyes that might indicate a keen intellect and cutting wit.  You’ve heard of Kel, he’s known to be impetuous and leap in head first when perhaps he should have thought things through beforehand.”

As for the stats we simply give everyone the same +x across the board, or slightly more favorable to me, +x to their MAD abilities and +x-x to their other abilities.  So the big dumb fighter while he’s roleplayed dumb actually has a reasonable intelligence. Because honestly how long would a big dumb fighter really survive adventures?  Barring luck he’d quickly sucumb to the first riddle trap etc.  And the sickly wizard?  Dead the first winter.   And everything between those is generic already.

In other words make the game about the characters not the numbers.

I’m ambivilent on this whole idea personally.  On the one hand I see it has potential to make the people make the characters memorable and unique rather than the numbers.  It helps even out the MAD aka Multiple Attribute Dependency issues of classes like the Paladin (arguably the worst case of MADness). On the other I can hear it mooing and by the gods you’re supposed to have numbers for your stats and all characters will be generic.  But for the majority they’re already generic to the point where it’s unmemorable in terms of stats.

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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.

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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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.

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.