Thunderspire Labyrinth #9
Have I mentioned before that skill challenges in 4E suck?
Well, my opinions haven’t changed. Read more on that later.
This was a slightly shorter session thanks to me needing to leave early and the plenty of chatter we had about the election.
We discussed moving on to module H3.
Aaron was for it and everyone else was a bit apathetic.
I’m not up for running it because I don’t think I’ve done well with running this module due to several factors; including time spent reading the module and me not doing all that great with modules.
Dale shouldn’t run the module because he’s running his campaign next and doesn’t want to risk DM burnout in the midst of his own campaign (something we’re both prone to).
And for a variety of other reasons no one in the group will run it (too new to the group, unreliable schedule, etc.).
So I’m just going to throw together weekly mini-modules until the New Year, then Dale’s campaign will start.
We could start Dale’s earlier than that, but then we’d be starting a new campaign that stops and starts thanks to the holidays. Plus we can play these PC’s a little longer and try out more things.
Additionally, the H module series sucks for treasure and XP. The mini-modules I ran were tougher and gave decent treasure and XP that more closely adhered to the guidelines given in the DMG. While H1 and H2 have given so little treasure the group is grumbling about it.
Our lineup for session #9:
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 7 eladrin rogue
Scott, playing Earl, the level 6 dragonborn paladin
Mike, playing Ander, the level 6 elf cleric with some ranger multi-classing
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 5 eladrin wizard
Dale, playing Brom, the level 5 tiefling warlock
We last stopped with the party resting for the night at the Halfmoon Inn in the Seven Pillared Hall. Since they had taken care of all business in the Hall last session they immediately began the long winding trek back to the Well of Demons.
And that meant random encounter checks (which I’m having the players roll, so they can blame someone besides me).
This time, just like last time, they had two such encounters.
The first one gave the party a run for their money; 3 human berserkers, 2 spined demons (hiding), and a tiefling (hiding)
The berserkers blocked the road and demanded 100gp per person to pass them.
Brom bluffed and bluffed well. He actually had them convinced there was an army not too far behind and the group was just scouts. That’s when the hiding demons and tiefling made themselves known and the combat began.
Earl and Valenae faced off against the berserkers. Something they both took a beating for.
The tiefling and demons use the berserkers and terrain to their advantage and put a royal beat down on Ander. This prevented Ander from healing anyone but himself and constantly kept him on the defensive.
Brom probably did the most damage this combat since he constantly kept himself safe, and was not a main target. Hadarai was similar to Brom, but doesn’t have the damage output that Brom does.
Even when the berserkers were gone, the party was debating whether or not to “break out the dailies” because the demons and tiefling were still hitting the party pretty hard.
The second random encounter, the party successfully snuck up on a dwarf bossing some flunkies around in searching for some lost artifacts of his family’s ancient empire.
Long story short, he was a poser with delusions of grandeur who initiated combat when the party refused to apologize for an insult to him (“dish it, can’t take it” kind of thing).
The first round of combat Earl charged the dwarf and critted him for over half his hit points. The second round Hadarai blasted him with an Orb Force and killed him.
The barbarians agreed to stop fighting when Valenae gave them that option.
Next the party finally made it to the Well of Demons and resumed their deliberate checking of every room they found.
This first encounter in the Well involved them hearing a voice from behind a door that sounded like prayer.
It was actually a gnoll priestess finishing up a prayer to call forth a barlgura to aid her in sacrificing a pair of tieflings that had conveniently wandered in to her parlor. The barlgura would soon have different targets.
Earl fought her face to face while the rest of the party alternated going after her in her room or facing off against the barlgura, who came at them from a hallway.
Brom helped hinder the barlgura with his Hunger of Hadar spell, which filled the hallway with darkness and did damage to the demon each round.
Soon the gnoll and the demon were dead and the tieflings introduced themselves as Azkelak and Katal.
They offered to sell their sword arms to the party for an equal share of treasure, but since treasure has been pretty light recently, the party declined.
Sean: “You’re going to let these two leave with no molestation?”
Aaron: “How cute are they?”
(The moment I said it, I knew it was a mistake.)
Also, as part of the loot of the room the found a book on an evil altar entitled “The Book of Wrath Unveiled”. This would become important to the party soon enough.
Their next encounter was the dreaded skill challenge.
I tried to figure out a way to make the challenge more realistic in a role-playing way, but it didn’t really help. The whole situation became awkward to run.
So if you run this module, try to think of something to replace this challenge.
Three ghostly images appeared before the party, a human warrior in torn armor, a dwarven paladin in a full suit of plate mail, and an elven wizardess.
The warrior challenged their strength and prowess.
The paladin challenged their courage and wisdom.
The wizardess challenged their intent and intelligence.
The challenge required 12 successes before 6 failures with the DC for each success being 22.
Now let’s do the math. The average party level is 6, for a +3 bonus, then I suspect the average stat bonus is around +4, and then +5 for training for a total of +12 meaning a 10 or better is needed for each roll. That gives a 55% chance for 1 success.
Mix the awkwardness of half-assed role-playing in with so-so math with a pinch of poor rolling d20’s and you have yourself a failed skill challenge.
They had three successes when they made sixth failure. But luckily for them this challenge wasn’t all pass or fail.
The spirits only wished to judge the party and would give them more information the more the spirits were impressed with the party (number of successes).
They told the party that this area was known as The Proving Grounds to test the faithful of Baphomet and they needed to find a mask, a blade, a bell, and a book, each located not too far from this room. Then they had to simultaneously place each item on a runed circle in a room somewhere in the Well of Demons.
The party thanked the spirits, headed to the next room, and that is where we stopped for the evening.
Well, my opinions haven’t changed. Read more on that later.
This was a slightly shorter session thanks to me needing to leave early and the plenty of chatter we had about the election.
We discussed moving on to module H3.
Aaron was for it and everyone else was a bit apathetic.
I’m not up for running it because I don’t think I’ve done well with running this module due to several factors; including time spent reading the module and me not doing all that great with modules.
Dale shouldn’t run the module because he’s running his campaign next and doesn’t want to risk DM burnout in the midst of his own campaign (something we’re both prone to).
And for a variety of other reasons no one in the group will run it (too new to the group, unreliable schedule, etc.).
So I’m just going to throw together weekly mini-modules until the New Year, then Dale’s campaign will start.
We could start Dale’s earlier than that, but then we’d be starting a new campaign that stops and starts thanks to the holidays. Plus we can play these PC’s a little longer and try out more things.
Additionally, the H module series sucks for treasure and XP. The mini-modules I ran were tougher and gave decent treasure and XP that more closely adhered to the guidelines given in the DMG. While H1 and H2 have given so little treasure the group is grumbling about it.
Our lineup for session #9:
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 7 eladrin rogue
Scott, playing Earl, the level 6 dragonborn paladin
Mike, playing Ander, the level 6 elf cleric with some ranger multi-classing
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 5 eladrin wizard
Dale, playing Brom, the level 5 tiefling warlock
We last stopped with the party resting for the night at the Halfmoon Inn in the Seven Pillared Hall. Since they had taken care of all business in the Hall last session they immediately began the long winding trek back to the Well of Demons.
And that meant random encounter checks (which I’m having the players roll, so they can blame someone besides me).
This time, just like last time, they had two such encounters.
The first one gave the party a run for their money; 3 human berserkers, 2 spined demons (hiding), and a tiefling (hiding)
The berserkers blocked the road and demanded 100gp per person to pass them.
Brom bluffed and bluffed well. He actually had them convinced there was an army not too far behind and the group was just scouts. That’s when the hiding demons and tiefling made themselves known and the combat began.
Earl and Valenae faced off against the berserkers. Something they both took a beating for.
The tiefling and demons use the berserkers and terrain to their advantage and put a royal beat down on Ander. This prevented Ander from healing anyone but himself and constantly kept him on the defensive.
Brom probably did the most damage this combat since he constantly kept himself safe, and was not a main target. Hadarai was similar to Brom, but doesn’t have the damage output that Brom does.
Even when the berserkers were gone, the party was debating whether or not to “break out the dailies” because the demons and tiefling were still hitting the party pretty hard.
The second random encounter, the party successfully snuck up on a dwarf bossing some flunkies around in searching for some lost artifacts of his family’s ancient empire.
Long story short, he was a poser with delusions of grandeur who initiated combat when the party refused to apologize for an insult to him (“dish it, can’t take it” kind of thing).
The first round of combat Earl charged the dwarf and critted him for over half his hit points. The second round Hadarai blasted him with an Orb Force and killed him.
The barbarians agreed to stop fighting when Valenae gave them that option.
Next the party finally made it to the Well of Demons and resumed their deliberate checking of every room they found.
This first encounter in the Well involved them hearing a voice from behind a door that sounded like prayer.
It was actually a gnoll priestess finishing up a prayer to call forth a barlgura to aid her in sacrificing a pair of tieflings that had conveniently wandered in to her parlor. The barlgura would soon have different targets.
Earl fought her face to face while the rest of the party alternated going after her in her room or facing off against the barlgura, who came at them from a hallway.
Brom helped hinder the barlgura with his Hunger of Hadar spell, which filled the hallway with darkness and did damage to the demon each round.
Soon the gnoll and the demon were dead and the tieflings introduced themselves as Azkelak and Katal.
They offered to sell their sword arms to the party for an equal share of treasure, but since treasure has been pretty light recently, the party declined.
Sean: “You’re going to let these two leave with no molestation?”
Aaron: “How cute are they?”
(The moment I said it, I knew it was a mistake.)
Also, as part of the loot of the room the found a book on an evil altar entitled “The Book of Wrath Unveiled”. This would become important to the party soon enough.
Their next encounter was the dreaded skill challenge.
I tried to figure out a way to make the challenge more realistic in a role-playing way, but it didn’t really help. The whole situation became awkward to run.
So if you run this module, try to think of something to replace this challenge.
Three ghostly images appeared before the party, a human warrior in torn armor, a dwarven paladin in a full suit of plate mail, and an elven wizardess.
The warrior challenged their strength and prowess.
The paladin challenged their courage and wisdom.
The wizardess challenged their intent and intelligence.
The challenge required 12 successes before 6 failures with the DC for each success being 22.
Now let’s do the math. The average party level is 6, for a +3 bonus, then I suspect the average stat bonus is around +4, and then +5 for training for a total of +12 meaning a 10 or better is needed for each roll. That gives a 55% chance for 1 success.
Mix the awkwardness of half-assed role-playing in with so-so math with a pinch of poor rolling d20’s and you have yourself a failed skill challenge.
They had three successes when they made sixth failure. But luckily for them this challenge wasn’t all pass or fail.
The spirits only wished to judge the party and would give them more information the more the spirits were impressed with the party (number of successes).
They told the party that this area was known as The Proving Grounds to test the faithful of Baphomet and they needed to find a mask, a blade, a bell, and a book, each located not too far from this room. Then they had to simultaneously place each item on a runed circle in a room somewhere in the Well of Demons.
The party thanked the spirits, headed to the next room, and that is where we stopped for the evening.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 9:42 PM
4 Comments:
Have you experimented with any of the alternate skill challenges? I won't post links to all of them but if you search my site,
http://www.keyourcars.com/?s=skill+challenge
I've got postings about the one's I know about including two I wrote based on other's comments. I'm not saying mine are great either, other people have done the math more than me. The very last one I found at first glance without actual table time seems like a good candidate for trying:
http://www.keyourcars.com/2008/11/12/various-things/
The default one is pretty 'fail', the math is horrible on it, the original values were impossible, the errata'd values impossible to fail at etc.
The underlying mechanic in my opinion is broken to a greater or less degree where everyone goes up 15 skill levels in every skill just by staying alive till 30 etc but the idea of a mechanic for non-combat challenges is still intriguing.
On a side note, with 4e, it strikes me as your group is much more combat focused based on your blog history which I've been checking on for years now. The postings of late seem to be a lot of "we moved up the road and fought this, took another few steps and fought that." Just curious if you're glossing over the social bits or youre finding with 4th edition, with so many 'toys' for combat that you're simply doing a lot more combat than 'chatter' with NPC's?
I noticed this too. 4e does have interesting combats, but our group has spent a whole lot of time roleplaying despite this. These play sessions used to have a different feel before 4e. Maybe playing in a homebrewed world will put things back where they were.
As for the skill challenges. . .our group has not really attempted a lot of them, as our first experiences were less than satisfying. Our current DM throws mini-challenges at us under the radar, and it is working pretty well. I would like to try a granddaddy when I get a run at DMing.
I think the problem with skill challenges for me is the absolute pass/fail of them. Combats are not binary, so I don't think non-combat challenges should be. I am in favor for ditching the fail/succeed mechanic for a graduated scale of relative failure.
Jay
Well had there not been a skill challenge in the module there would not have been one.
In fact, adding a skill challenge or a trap encounter is not something I would usually add as that's not what I usually do. But you never know.
Usually for "roleplaying encounters" we'd just role play it out, roll some dice with arbitrary numbers made up by the DM, adjusted for how well the RP was.
The reason we're so combat focused recently is because the modules are not really designed for ease role play and I'm not a module type of DM. I do better RP on my home made modules and campaigns.
Dennis, I'd like to thank you for comparing the new posts to the archives because it made me click on a random archive which made me decide I am going to read through as much of them as I can. It's like every other paragraph I'm stopping to put something in my "d&d.txt" file of cool things I want to do someday.
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