At Will

Last Time: The players spoke and fought with a dragonking mummy possessed by a necrotic branches.  They found an ancient book, The Book of Names, which might give them an advantage in dealing with the doppelgangers.

This Time: The players exit the tunnels and find and agent of Troy Blackshield (head of the New Water militia) waiting for them.  Troy needs to see them urgently.  In the last few days, the Tillwood has gone from dangerous with kobold raids to deadly, filled with all manners of the undead.  The whole forest is covered with the necrotic mist that the players have seen already in the tomb.  The party gets back and helps the town decide whether they combat the menace or flee north to Fellis.  The party helps convince them to stay and fight.

The party finds their first doppelganger!  A few slip-ups and the party is upon him.  They come very close to torture when he reveals himself, but a sigil appears on his forehead and kills him before he can confess anything of real value.

They manage to make plans and research through the Book of Names, but everything is cut short when the enemy attacks sooner than expected.

The Twist: When the party leaves the tombs, they have to climb down.  This is complicated by the fact that the dead from the other caves have risen, and are no coming out and falling down the cliffside.  the party makes it down the cliff in a scene that is as dangerous and creepy as it is comical.

Some Background: The doppelganger revealed before dying that their true enemy is the Baron, not the people of Greyharbour. The players aren’t sure of the implications of this yet…

The Best Part: Skill challenges.  Each major scene was a skill challenge, and we rolled seamlessly from doing research in the ancient tome to giving a rousing speech to commoners to interrogating the doppelgangers.  I’m going to say it yet again –Skill Challenges are the true heart of 4e.  This was maybe the best session yet, and there was no combat at all.

Last Time: The characters slogged through combat with some ettercaps.

This Time: The party makes it’s way into the last few rooms of the dungeon.  They find a room guarded by flame-throwing statues with a broken scepter used to resurrect an ancient dragonborn king.  The warlock uses make whole to fix the scepter, and the party is able to talk to one guardian and forced to fight the other guardian, and then meets the king, who tells them of the doppelganger’s (known to him as ‘the faceless’) pogrom versus the kingdom of Ossa in times past. He tells them to search the tombs for the “Book of Names” before being surrounded by the black vines and branches that permeate the tomb, and attacking the players.

The Twist: The paladin, Marc Greysun (worshipper of Pelor) really wanted no part of resurrecting Kyro-Tar.  Arctana, our half-elf warlock, was neutral, but somehow the adventure-crazed elf ranger Bobric was able to “smooth-talk” them into it.

Some Background: Kyro-Ta was the ruler of the and Ossa, an ancient kingdom of dragonborn.  A faceless known as Isami the Slayer lead an infiltration war that plunged the kingdom of Ossa into a bloody civil war.  By the time the plan was found out, the damage had been done, and the fractured splinters of the dragonborn kingdom were unable to fight this enemy that they could not see or recognize.  The Book of Names is a book of rituals to help alleviate that problem. Isami is believed by Kyro-Ta to still live.  He didn’t know whether or not he was responsible for these necromantic vines or not.

The Best Part: The end fight with Kyro-Ta.  The dragonborn mummy became the heart of a huge construct built of the black vines and branches, and took an impressive amount of damage before collapsing into a heap of dust and branches.

Last Time: The players entered the tombs of an ancient dragonborn kingdom, in search of someone who they think might be a doppelganger.

This Time: The players move into a room that is inhabited by a small group of ettercaps and spiders.  The combat drags along for the majority of our three hour session, which admittedly started late.

The Twist:  Here, the twist was this combat taking too long.  Our warlord is having his first combat and is still getting used to his abilities, and teamwork isn’t at it’s best.  The warlock almost bites it. This also Rachel’s (our rogue) last session with us, so we bid her a found farewell.

Some Background: Not much background this session.

The Best Part: This session prompted much soul searching and prompted me to post an article about it.  There are some great thoughts in the comments, and I got a lot of solid troubleshooting and encounter design techniques for the future.

In over twenty years of gaming, I’ve been back and forth on the concept of taking session notes. sometimes they seem just the thing.  We had an old Forgotten Realms campaign where one of the players took the notes as his bard, which ended up hilarious since the bard was something of a narcissist and wrote very biased accounts of the session’s activities.  Other games, it just wasn’t going to happen.  I’m here on the waxing part of this issue once again, and I like session notes, but.  They take. Too Fricken. Much. Time.  Seriously.  Maybe I blog frequently enough that you doubt this, but I’m a pretty busy guy.  While I appreciate having the notes –it makes it super easy to get new players up to speed with what’s happening and serves to refresh my crappy memory–  the way I’ve been taking session notes is killing me.

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“Do you want fries with that?” 

Continuing on with last week’s post regarding the potential for 4e combats to run a wee bit longer than we sometimes want, a cabal of brilliant GMs brainstormed with me about steps we can take to build more effective encounters.  I think the top answer was, use more minions.  OK.  But the Monster Manual as it stands doesn’t provide minions for everything.  What then do we do? 

In keeping with 4e’s (timesaving, lifesaving,sanity-preserving) motto of “less GM prep-time”, here is a quick procedure for taking any monster and making a minion out of it. I’m going to use the gray wolf, as I ran a combat with a group of them which, in hindsight, should have had minions out of them with the dire wolf being a full HP bad-ass.

Minimize Powers

Keep the at-will attack and then choose one power to keep.  Drop everything else.  In the case of the gray wolf, this is very easy, as it only has one other power — knock the opponent prone if it hits on combat advantage.

Make the Variable Damage Static.

All I’m going to do is add up the maximum damage, and half that.  In the case of the wolf, they do 1d6+2 damage, and 2d6+2 to prone targets.  So, 4 normal damage and 7 versus prone targets.

Quarter the XP cost.

The gray wolf costs 125 xp normally, so each minionized wolf now costs 31.

And we’re done!

That was a little simple, so let’s try it again with a more complex monster.  Let’s use everyone’s favorite, the deathjump spider.

First, which powers to keep?  I want to keep the at-will basic attack and one power that is iconic.  So the deathjump keeps it’s bite, and Prodigious Leap.  As minions, the deathjump spiders will be all about poison and speed.

Then we take a look at the spider’s bite.  This one’s a touch more complex as it has poison damage.  What I’m going to do is give it 7 damage on the bite (half of 2d6+3 maximum) and give it 2 poison damage in place of 5.

Chop up those XPs, and we are done! The minionized deathjump spider is 44 points.

It really is that simple.

Strange Island is still looking for players!  If you’re intimidated by what it might entail, don’t worry.  The Twitter game involves only a few minutes a few times each day to go forward.  All you need is a desire to try something new and a commitment to participate!

If yuo have further questions on  this, drop them in the comments or e-mail me.

So…show of hands…how many people have had a 4e combat last the entire session, dragging on and on and on? Our latest dungeon escapades have had seen the characters involved in some horrific grinds that I’d rather avoid.  I’ve had a few weeks hiatus from game, but tomorrow we get back to it and I’ve been brainstorming/reading the intarwebs to find a solution.  My game in particular has very limited time, three hours if no one is late and every

The first idea I came across slapped me pretty hard in the face (thanks Propagandroid!): halve the hit points of the monsters.  Apparently R & D have suggested this themselves if you find combat dragging.  I like this idea, and may use it at times.

The next idea, mine this time, though I don’t have any patents on it yet –minionize me!  It’s like super-sizing sans calories and all that regret…the damn…regret…

Anyway, minions are squishy.  Squishy is fun.  Further, squishy is fast-paced.  When I was in putting the newer stuffi n 4e through it’s paces, I made heavy use of minions. Those combats were all very fun.  The less exciting combats have all been those where minions were minimized, and the full-hp monsters were used. 

My opinions of minions are pretty high –they allow you add more weight without dramatically slowing down the game.  PCs get more room to show off.  One thing I’ve implemented in my games is to hand over the particulars of minion-death to the players.

“I hit.”

“How does the kobold die?”

But here’s the thing –sometimes you don’t want to throw a 50 bad guys at the player (wimp!).  Sometimes you want a small elite cadre of opponents to contest the players.  Going with the half hit-point fix might make the game run smoother, avoiding that mid-combat grind that just sucks the life out of your combats.

Also, consider the proportions of minion to full monster combat encounters in your adventure.  In my current dungeon, not one fight has had a minion in it, and an 11-room dungeon has taken three session, streching into a fourth, which is not what I had planned.  I’ll take some steps to modify these last few rooms, and I’ll tell you how it works out.

It’s been a busy time for me lately, but I wanted to pause in the midst and ask you:  What do you want to see more of?  I’ve gotten lots of positive response on some of my Gamemastering tips, and the mindwitch (I will cover this later, but it is taking me longer than I thought) when it gets done will garner some interest, but I guess what I want to know, what all of my readers can help me answer is:  What would be make At-Will a “definitive” 4th edition resource/blog/destination for you?  Do you want more news?

Anyway, I’d love to talk with regulars, new readers, and lurkers alike to see what I can do.  Writing the blog has been great thus far, but I want to connect with you and take it further.

It started innocently enough.  I had an idea in my head.  Someone else had an idea in their head.  ChattyDM leapt into the fray, and with a heroic series of tweets, a TwitterRPG was born.  And then yours truly came along. 

And then there were two. 

If all this talk of twitters and tweets sounds bird-brained to you, then let me explain it to you.  Twitter is a micro-blogging format — basically , a way to say “what’s up? what am I doing” that can be done via computer or your phone (via the magic of SMS), making it available to you all the time.  In 140 character increments.

You may doubt, but ChattyDM is doing a great job on his RPG, and my project is showing promise as well. 

If you’re here, you are either a member of Season One’s cast, or you are a member of Season One’s audience.  You will both have parts to play. 

As a cast member, it’s your job to amuse the director and the audience, and to survive the challenges and obstacles the director (that is me) puts before you.

As an audience member, your prime directive is to enjoy the show.  The director and the cast are going to make each “episode” as enjoyable for you to watch as possible (no pressure cast members!).  But you have a second responsibility.  At various points in the plot, you will be asked to vote on things.  Simple things, like who was the current’s episode’s best character, and your favorite episode.  But you’ll also be able to vote on more complex, game-evolving fair –what do the players run into in the next episode?  What do the characters find around the bend?  You are just as important to the process as the cast and the directors, so keep up with your tweets!

If you’re on twitter and curious what I’m up to, join and follow the user StrangeIsland.  While you’re at it, you should follow me (gamefiend) and ChattyDM.  Game starts Friday, and there is plenty of room in the cast and the audience!  

Lastly, if you are feeling similarly motivated to run your own, let me know.  I’ll be happy to discuss what I’m doing and share experiences and links with you!

must dance twirling both of them around in the air, then stab.  That’s what Bill Slaviscek would do.

Of course we have to wait for the Martial Powers sourcebook to get all the goodies, but this is a nice taste of what’s to come.  For those complaining about lack of options in 4e, I think the next six months will reverse your opinion to “too much stuff out there, can’t keep up!”  Just wait.