and #3 (?) is something to consider. I’ll have to ponder that one.

3 – Speed modifiers. Stealth master makes the check. Everyone else makes an Aid Another roll. For every failed Aid check, speed is reduced by 5′. If speed is reduced to 0, the party fails to be stealthy. The thought here being that the party takes care to go slow enough that people can be stealthy.

-A person untrained in stealth can aid other, and if they pass their check they don’t apply their -2 penalty to the ’stealth leader’s’ roll. I’d change it this way because it seems odd to me that a person untrained can add +4 to the roll (-2 to +2) and a trained person can only add +2 (0 to +2).

-The ’stealth leader’ must stay within 5 squares of the group, if he goes outside that then the group is on its own.

Great idea as usual Dennis.

But I like it. Let me consider it and put it forth to the players. Most of my house rules are approved as a co-op system.

Dave
twitter/djkester

the triangle bits are handy for floor decorations, actually. I’ve used the bigger arches for feet of doors and other decorative bits.

if you are lazy about the mold 85 type stuff, http://www.itarsworkshop.com/catalog/ has a nice selection

Cheers!

No, of course not! Let your PLAYERS do the sinking. ‘A wandering healer of Tiamat comes across the scene, and agrees to resurrect the poor man if only you’ll agree to be branded with the Mark of the Fivefold Mother, which entitles the Church of Tiamat to one (1) favor within the next year and a day. Whatd’yasay?’

Thanks!

Also, I just stumbled upon your blog after finding a copy of your 4e module template in a DM’ing forum. I have to say– great work. I’m definitely going to be using the template (with proper attribution, of course), and I can’t wait to come back and look through some of your old posts where I have a feeling I’ll get some more good ideas. Thanks!

1 Internet Explorer 6.0 2486 72.10%
2 Firefox 3.5 202 5.86%
3 Mozilla 5 185 5.37%
4 Google Robot (www.google.com) 140 4.06%
5 Safari 85 2.47%
6 Internet Explorer 7.0 67 1.94%
7 Firefox 3.0 66 1.91%
8 Yahoo Robot (www.yahoo.com) 63 1.83%
9 Internet Explorer 8.0 47 1.36%
10 Netscape 31 0.90%
11 MSN Robot (search.msn.com) 28 0.81%
12 Opera 8.0 9 0.26%
13 Internet Explorer 5.5 8 0.23%
14 Firefox 2.0 6 0.17%
15 Opera 9.0 5 0.15%
16 Ask Jeeves Robot (www.ask.com) 4 0.12%
17 Alexa Robot (www.alexa.com) 3 0.09%
18 Internet Explorer 5.0 3 0.09%
19 Internet Explorer 3.0 2 0.06%
20 Internet Explorer 4.0 2 0.06%
21 Opera 7.1 2 0.06%
22 Netscape 8.0 1 0.03%
23 Opera 7.0 1 0.03%
24 Opera 7.5 1 0.03%
25 Opera 9.2 1 0.03%

It also means that you can capture your players form time to time, strip them of their gear and they can grab any mundane weapons/armour and be completely effective.

The most difficult part is having to do character sheets manually since the Character Builder isn’t designed to deal with this.

As to whether or not an acid pit that inflicts double-digit damage per round is a fair trap for what I think was a first-level character, well, that seems like a legitimate beef.

Bottom line: the PCs had their chances, and Aeofel died a proper avenger’s death. Wil seems genuinely excited about where this goes next, as am I. Hopefully, the story will become even more compelling because Aeofel died. We’ll see.

And p.s. I am fully aware of what ’s are for. That doesn’t mean I won’t make mistakes. I’m long done with term papers where I might actually pay attention to what I’m typing much less go back and check something I type. It’s always been interesting to me that “s always seem to be the target of punctuation superiority complexes.

Personally, I think Chris was in the right on both counts. While the DM’s story is important, the player’s story is just as if not moreso, and that story is built on the player’s actions and the dice they roll. Every time the DM fudges a difficulty or gives a pity reroll, it steals some of the thrill from the critical hit that takes out the boss or the lucky skill roll that saves the day.. and denies them the shock of seeing a character fall into darkness because they tripped on a dangerous ledge without a belay, or get roasted alive because they assumed narrative causality would save them from the angry dragon. Just look at how this one turned out: If Aeofel had slipped out of the pit by DM fiat, the adventure would have been a rather bland partial victory. The artifact retrieved but no loot, the big bad escaped. Instead it’s, as someone on Wil’s blog noted, Aquisition Inc’s Empire Strikes Back. They’re beaten down and demoralized by the loss of their ally, and now bound and determined to track down his soul and restore him by any means necessary or at least get vengeance on the Ambershards. What was a rather slapstick series with Aeofel as the straight man has developed an epic story.

More than just letting the dice rule, though, I think it was an appropriate fate. True to the Avenger’s nature, Aeofel charged after his prey not once but twice, the first time blindly following a teleporter away from his allies, the second lunging at the dwarf who had just rang the gong, seemingly confident even in his bloodied state and within charge range of the avenger that he now had the upper hand. And though it’s hard to judge without being able to see the map, I suspect that the rest of AQI could have gotten to him in time for a save had they been willing to take some lumps from opportunity attacks and falling damage, but greed and self preservation won out in the end. Chris even had the opportunity in the end there to let Jim pull up Aeofel’s half-dissolved skull, but I suspect he felt that doing so once the rest of the gang had accepted the permanence fo Aeofel’s death would have cheapened it. And now he and Wil have another 6 months or so to plan his return, either through a lucky bit of bone left dangling from his iron bands and an expensive resurrection, Aeofel’s return as a revenant, or as another new hire joining them on their continuing quest.

PS: Dude.. apostrophes for contractions and possessives, not plurals. Unless you’re a greengrocer. http://bit.ly/pddBG

Also, Scott Kurtz and Wil are friends. Most of that was all good natured, as you can tell by Wil’s later blog post.

As an aside I strongly believe that it was Wil’s determination to RP a ‘real’ character in spite of the others that brought them to the RP well to drink and they found it good. Go back and listen to all the podcasts over a short time and it comes off to me that Wil’s unabashed, unself concious roleplaying taught the others that hey it was okay to try it. Of course he has the huge benefit IMO of being an actor where RP’ing is a fact of life.

Also, giving the spoiler warning after the actual spoiler (which is in the title) doesn’t help all that much

Storywise, both Binwin and Aeofel were being RP’d well. Binwin was torn between his revenge and his friends. He was trying to do the honourable thing – stay with his friends. However, Binwin split the party by trying to get Aoefel to enact his revenge for him. Lying to his friends originally, and not fully committing to protecting his friends by pulling Aeofel back cost an innocent their life (two assuming the prisoner will not have a nice end). And there was no ‘reward’ in terms of revenge, just a hollow coat (the one that got the others except Aeofel to join in the first place).

That’s a brilliant story and character beat for Binwin.

The fact it was also a loss to an innocent player doing aa darn good RP job as Wil was doing really hits the story point home. Character and player shame making it a great ending, though not a happy one.

Just a thought!

Yes I’m not sure of how serious that whole intra-group play by play was. Given Wil’s what seemed to me to be obvious attachment to the character I do hope Chris has something up his sleeve.

I also really would have liked to have seen the other characters have done something to help resolve the issue. Without actually seeing the map it sounds like Jim Darkmagic could have used a combination of Move, Expeditious Retreat, Action Point Move. But again I don’t know if Chris didn’t have a real idea of how many HP Al had and that a single failed climb check would kill him. I was a little surprised that Al was still only a Level 1 character though though. A level 2 character would have been enough to have given him another round to absorb the acid without dying.

Heh, as far as giving him more time for doing other things, it has been only 2 days in roughly over the first half of this year. Even if you give him a day before and after for travel time that’s only 6 days out of 6 months devoted to playing.

Scott Kurtz *was* a bit of a dick, though.

Or you can liken it to the real world. When a company buys another for US $40 billion, they don’t use wads of 100s. It’s all paper value. I think a PC with 3mil GP on his character sheet has the same buying power as someone with $3mil in stocks, except you can run someone through with a flaming sword…

Follow the link to read more –

http://spiritsofeden.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/injury-mechanics-a-different-way-to-look-at-it/

Even with campaigns that I’ve spent huge amounts of time designing, I still had a blast if the party went off the edge of the map and I had to ad lib the entire session.

Kudos on not being a rules lawyer too. For the sake of game pacing all too often I would fake the math in my head, come up with a arbitrary and hopefully unbiased result that the players would both believe and have fun with. I’ve seen times where the dice were merciless and wanted nothing but Armageddon. Well I’d alter that, allowing for a very narrow escape and it was much preferred over character loss.

So again, kudos on concentrating on *making it fun* more so than making it perfectly accurate.

On a side note, your controllers must be pretty frustrated, given that a lot of your homebrew monsters have a big shift/ignore difficult terrain power.

Otherwise, cool monster and hook!

Our villagers only need to roll attack vs. AC10 to grant an ally within reach +2 bonus. Arm ‘em with a Reach weapon and 10 villagers could grant up to +20 to one ringleader. That should be enough for a horde of angry villagers to hit even the highest level foe.

There’s a reason why mobs went after Dracula with long-handled pitchforks

AMdG

How do you deal with damage taken while mostly dead? I think it would be interesting to largely drop the idea of negative hit points and instead say that damage taken while mostly dead counts as an automatic failed save — possibly multiple automatic failed saves based on total HP value. So, (damage / (HP/4)), round up = number of failed saves. Avoids negative hit points, puts a cap on the number of times you can get hit, etc.

Anyway, I really do like letting the players stay more active during a long combat! Thanks.

AMdG

http://www.mediafire.com/?kjwgygnmtnz

Use this link to download it; I’m no longer using Adrive!

AMdG

Bummer.

We have a new one releasing on Monday – our first anniversary and there’s a chance to sign up for a benefits program. There’s also a subscription if anyone is interested and I think I’m out of things to plug at the moment.

I was also considering adding in a morale check, say a DC 10 and they roll a d20+(Lower of Attack or Defense) once one of those numbers hit negatives. And then PC’s could boost that with Bluff, Intimidate, Diplomacy checks. If the unit routs the PC’s would have one chance to recover them at a higher DC and if not then the unit is ‘destroyed’. If they do recover then probably go back in action at half A/D. Routed units tend to rout again after all.

That kind of thing is what I was thinking about.

Also do remember this is just an initial “How could I do this?” kind of idea, it might completely suck in practice.

I also agree that if the whole group is sub-par the DM should scale things down to compensate for inexperienced players/poor characters; and vice-versa the DM should scale up for experienced/optimal characters. Otherwise there is no challenge, and the enjoyment of the game (generally) is from overcoming challenges.

I think the most memorable RPG moments are when a character escapes from a really tight situation through the narrowest of margins. I know the majority of my favourite RPG moments are like that.

But as a DM if a group as a whole was performing under par, I’d try adjusting the encounters before I started to enforce a play style. Make them challenging based on the groups ‘real’ ability, not their expected ability if that makes sense?

One could play devil’s advocate and say that in the last example the DM might need to ask one of the other players to play another role? The groups are ‘imbalanced’ in both examples from the classic group make up.

Or in the end simply tell the player their play style isn’t a good fit, tell them why, and move on.

But it’s all good, every group should play in a way that works for them and the DM should be and is responsible to make it fun for them all as equitably as they can.

Sure that one person may really love his Wizard who nukes everything (including his allies), but if one of the players at the table doesnt like being targetted its down to the DM to put a stop to it, for the enjoyment of all.

An example of one of the things you may not agree with is this:
We play 4e LFR (Living Forgotten Realms) and one of our players repeatedly plays defenders, however the said player rarely ever marks anything, and their paladin tends to spend 90% of the comabt at range throwing javelins.
Fortunatly their paladin is in a group with 3 other defenders (and 2 leaders, we are like a brick wall), however their swordmage is in a group with 4 strikers and no leader. This leads to problems, everyone at the table expects them to act like a defender, marking things and generally taking the heat off the other characters so they can do their job. This is the time when the DM(s) need to step in and try and steer the player toward acting more like a defender, as their current behaviour is detrimental to the group.

They have an added “neato” feature, when a Reward Card is used, it is turned sideways on the table. Each sideways Reward Card (referred to as “in play”) provides either an untyped +1 or +2 bonus to any die roll…for any player except the one who used the card and put it in play.

It’s a great dynamic for fostering cooperation, planning, and strategy – with a little metagaming thrown in for good measure.

Have you thought about playing with less lethal, but equally debilitating results? Dismemberment, extensive burn scars, blindness, deafness, etc… One game I played in had a rule that ‘cure’ spells left scars; it took a Heal or greater spell to remove them. So someone burned by a dragon might have such extensive scarring that his Dex, Con, and Cha are reduced quite a bit, possibly along with his movement rate and carrying capacity.

On the other hand, taking a full power blast of dragonfire to the face, after extensive injury, probably should just leave a pile of ash and a pair of smoking boots. (Literary convention pretty much requires the latter.)

I can say that it was the player’s actions or lack of them that got their characters killed. I’m a fudger, always have been. If players are playing smart or simply not stupid then I’ll nudge dice, to hit and damage, and monster decisions a bit so that things work out so the players are unlikely to die. With 4th edition, things are balanced though to the point where I now roll my dice in the open and I’ve only occasionally had to nudge the bad guys to shift targets to spread the damage around.

I really like 4e for that. It’s so closer to being balanced than previous editions that it takes a load of work off me to constantly adjust things on the fly.

I’m glad to hear you rarely kill off a character. I tend to kill very few myself, but I have had more than several kill themselves through stupid actions. Stupidity in action is rarely forgivable, but equally rare is the random kill just because the dice say so.

I’ve never been a big fan of fumbles personally but that’s a personal preference and not a condemnation. They penalize the players more than the NPC’s since the NPC’s rarely last more than a few rounds and have little chance to fumble as a result.

Essentially though yes we’re both rolling in the same area on all these.

Thoughts?

The quoted part struck a chord with me though as I heard that conversation over teamspeak or read it in guild forums in a MMOG venue where some people would get mad at other people because they didn’t have their characters maximized for the utmost in efficiency. “But I like this hat, I think it makes me unique.” – “Yes but the stats don’t do anything for you, at level XX you should have #001_uberclasshat”. And that kind of thinking isn’t something that goes hand in hand with with a PnP game.

But with that said, if a player is intentionally taking powers that contribute to the duration of combat because of the mechanics involved in processing his turn are a burden to the others then certainly it should be dealt with in a viable fashion.

If the length of combats are an issue there are ways to deal with it or at least alleviate it.

I do not like 4E combat as it takes way too long, sometimes longer than 3E. We have one player in particular who loves to take overly-complicated powers that are more time consuming but equally or less effective than other powers.

This was my way of saying “stop it” to that one player without coming out and saying it.

There you go.

If I want more realistic narrative then I go freeform and the ‘characters’ tell me what they’re trying to accomplish we talk it out between players and DM and when I feel a roll is needed I just toss in an appropriate DC with a related skill.

I too would love to listen in on a professional DM or three running campaigns. The Penny-Arcade podcasts don’t really give anything other than a series of battles which while appropraite for the venue, a one shot play session, for a longer running campaign there would be narrative/roleplay/skill challenges and I’d really like to hear those.

Overall though I got tired of skill challenges and realized it’s bogus. It hinders role playing and skill challenges are just an attempt to make a framework for skill uses. It’s an incomplete system and they are still working out the flaws. It’s like the developers were playing too many “indy games” and felt like pretentious geniuses when they came up with skill challenges and labeled the whole idea of using skills to overcome a challenge a brand new invention.

I’m lurking in your blog since quite a while, and I have to admit you really have a lot of great ideas.

This one is indeed clever and well-implemented; I plan to use it in my campaign. I’ll let you know the results, especially my players’ reactions

But as always your mileage may vary.

I think a lot of the ‘math’ issues arise because in part that WOTC has stated that this is the most balanced and math ‘right’ version ever. So people are always going to pick a stance like that apart. In addition a lot of the current gamers also play MMOG’s where balance (and the nerf bat) are huge deals because most of them tend to have PVP elements and Bob the Warrior has to be at least close to balanced to Steve the Mage and vice versa or you end up with nothing but groups of BoB’s or Steve’s, whichever is the current strongest.

I’ve updated the adventure a little, and I’ve published another one and have two more in the pipe. Please visit http://4eyes.code66.se/

I tried to do a double damage dice thing but ended up cutting a quarter of enemy HPs. The add half level to damage rolls seems like it would scale better.

On the other hand, it looks great and the flavor is perfect. If your party doesn’t have another Defender (and if the Rogue promises not to take the Rakish Swashbuckler Paragon Path, which turns him into a Defender), go for it.