The Valley #13

I keep trying to think of ways to improve 4E.

In other words, I think 4E can be saved from itself.

What I would like to do is remove certain aspects of 4E that waste time, seem pointless, or are needlessly complicated.

First: temporary effects that target anyone but the creator of the effect. This is on top of the list for good reason; I’ve seen it waste so much time for so little gain. One or two of these don’t mean much, but once you add in multiple such effects and effects that change from round to round, it gets old fast. Computers can easily and near instantaneously deal with things like this, we cannot.

Example I’ve seen: The first young black dragon fight I ran in this campaign.
Every round everyone had to determine what attack modifiers were in effect. And I’m not kidding when I say every person, every round.
The dragon had multiple penalties to its defenses, but only if the cleric or rogue had hit with their attack and the dragon had multiple penalties to its attacks depending on whether it had been marked by the paladin or the cleric had hit with a different power. Oh and don’t forget concealment from an ally, second wind defense bonuses, darkness effects, and so on.

Solution: There is no simple solution as each power would have to be looked at individually, but a simple attack or defense bonus for the user of the effect would be fast and simple, maybe with a further bonus to make up for any meta-changes to the power (like reducing your target’s AC).

Example: Griffon’s Wrath (level 7 fighter encounter power); it’s a standard strength attack for 2 dice of damage + str mod (and others) and the target takes -2 to AC until the end of your next turn.
How about we change it to a strength attack + 3 and no penalty to AC?

Exception: Powers that last the entire combat. Since they are not conditional and they are persistent, remembering your +1 to attack from Bless is much easier.

Second: Marking.
First off, the DM is the brain of the monsters. He should be able to decide what a monster would do based off of its experience, intelligence, and role-playing qualities and not be forced to attack the “defender” or be faced with a ton of penalties.
This is a tabletop RPG, not an MMO.

Solution: Marking has to go. It causes way too many slow downs and conditional effects.
Unfortunately marking is incredible ingrained into the system that pulling it out may not be so easy.

My current thought is to take every class with marking built into it and replace the marking with something flavored to the class but gives an all-combat-long effect.
A paladin would lose his ability to mark and all powers associated with it, but would gain an encounter power (maybe daily) that would give his allies a +2 to defenses (not himself) for the combat while the paladin gained vulnerability 2 (or 5). This would make the other targets less appealing, and make him more appealing to monsters. To me, this fits in with the classical flavor of the paladin sacrificing himself for others.

Third: Ongoing damage and “beginning of your turn” damage.
I don’t hate ongoing damage, but I’m not a fan of it. I have had way too many BBEG’s get totally slaughtered thanks to standing next to something or someone (a fighter using Reign of Steel, or a Flaming Sphere) and then getting pounded with ongoing damage attacks. These are all from daily powers that the party saves until needed for a big fight, which is what they were meant for, but it goes over the top (IMO). The issues swings against the party as well when they’re taking ongoing damage that will drop them unless they save, which they fail over and over again.

Solution: Give a bonus to the initial damage, but only have it affect one time and without ongoing damage. This, like all the others, may have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis as to make sure a simple little at-will power doesn’t turn into something more powerful than a level 10 daily.
A side-effect of this may be that leaders may be giving more temporary hp rather than free saves, but kind of means the same thing.

Example #1: Flaming Sphere (level 1 wizard daily power); anyone starting their turn next to it takes 1d4 + int mod damage.
Wouldn’t it be easier just to say 2 + int mod damage?

Will changes like this be worth it?
I certainly think so and so long as we’re only changing the constant and pointless interruptive powers, we’re still rolling plenty of dice for our attacks and healing.
They make take some of the glory out of the combats, but level 1 combats should not take 2 hours, even against the BBEG.

Has someone already done this work?
If so, let me know.

If you have anything to add, let me know.
I love to read the comments I get.
Knowing that people read this blog helps to keep me writing.

Now the session was a special one.

‘Twas the night before Halloween and I felt that such a night needed something a bit more than my usual setup.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 6 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 6 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 6 Silverhome dwarven rogue

We had jumped ahead a few days and wrote Ander out of the story for this session with a reasonable excuse of him having gone back to the Valley to let Polaris and the others know what happened in the Shadowfell.

The party had stayed behind a few days in the town of Two River’s Rest, and Pehr’All had not shown his bony white visage,

The party was chatting with some friends they had made recently who were also adventurers:
Bjorn, a typical headstrong dwarf warrior who prefers to fight first and ask questions later
Norris, an elven archer, whose skill with a bow is overpowered by the yellow streak going down his back
Valance, a brave human warrior whose heroic nature will some day lead him to greatness or death
Norbert, a halfling who loves money almost as much as Troy McClure loves fish, and would gladly sell out his mother for a gold piece
Grinder, a wild and crazy human whose giant muscles draw much needed oxygen away from his brain
Jaycee, the group’s wizard and brain trust, and a bit of gold opportunist herself

Now we have the cast of a bad zombie movie, and all we need are zombies.

The two groups are exchanging war stories before heading on their separate ways on the porch of the Tavern of the Dancing Wyvern when they screams coming from multiple places.

The next thing they know zombies begin charging down the street attacking every living humanoid in sight.

That is how this one and a half hour long combat began.

Every round for the entire combat 20 zombie rotters and 2 zombies would come in from the multiple entry points on the map. On the third round and all subsequent rounds a modified flaming skeleton would enter as well (modified = replace all fire effect with disease/poison).

For several rounds the party tore through the zombies, killing the zombies almost as fast as they were entering.

But like all zombie movies, that wouldn’t last.

At first they were cocky and were using encounter and daily powers in a near wasteful manner, but they had no expectation that this horde had infinite numbers at the time.

The NPC combatants did as their personalities dictated.

Bjorn and Grinder charged in and started hacking away. Bjorn chose his targets a bit more carefully while Grinder just mowed down whatever was in front of him.

Soon Grinder was surrounded and had to begin hacking his way back to the porch of the inn while Bjorn was able to maintain a position near Edward.

Norris shot at everything that was closest to him. But he was quickly surrounded and unable to get back to the group.

Valance chose to protect Duncan, who ran off to fight off one side of the zombies almost alone.

Norbert quickly saw where this was going and he fled into the Inn with the rest of the staff and then upstairs to safety.

Jaycee had stayed close to the door of the inn and ran inside when the zombies started getting too close for comfort, but unlike Norbert, she still attacked targets. When the situation got worse, she was going to run upstairs, but found that Norbert had nailed the door shut.

Kergan was having a rough time with this combat as his talents went to a lot of waste with the number of minions present. But he did serve a valuable purpose in blocking off an alley that was rapidly filling with undead.

And the star of the session was Admon, the not-so-controlling wizard with multiple burst and blast spells and could only miss a zombie on a roll of a natural 1. His job didn’t really change much for this combat, which was kill as many zombies as possible, as fast as possible, and occasionally make room for the rest of the party to maneuver.

Now the zombies had other things going for them, and none of them would become apparent until someone was bloodied.

This was guaranteed to happen once you were bloodied and you had taken any damage from an undead. At the end of your round make a saving throw or you lose a healing surge, or take a healing surge in damage if you have no surges left. Repeat this until dead.

The only way to save someone is 3 DC30 healing checks in succession.

When someone dies, they immediately join the initiative of whatever creature type they are part of (zombie rotters for NPC’s, and zombies for PC’s).

So when Norris and Valance dropped and Edward and Duncan healed them, the damage continued.

When the party noticed this happening (specifically, Norris healing above bloodied, and then inexplicably dropping back to bloodied at the end of his turn) and still see no end to the undead supply, they went from a casual “let’s get back to the inn” to an “everyone back to the inn now!”

Over the next couple of rounds the party made back to the inn, facing up to 5 opportunity attacks each. And this includes picking up their fallen allies Norris, Grinder, and Valance.

Unfortunately those allies are about dead and Norris and Grinder eventually turn, and are then “put down”.

But Duncan is able to save Valance by making the three healing checks and using his clerical healing spells to keep him up when failed (he couldn’t help but like a guy who refused to leave before him when faced impossible odds).

Justin: “He’s like Lt. Dan from Forrest Gump. He did everything he could to die in this combat and he still couldn’t do it.”

So we fast-forwarded to the next bit as the fight ended up taking a lot longer than I expected.

The party boarded up the windows and doors, helped or killed their friends and then made it upstairs where we glossed over whether or not they got revenge against Norbert.

They got on the roof and looked out at the devastation from undead horde, which was still going on.

They saw what appeared to be a ring of death spreading out from a central point; a Temple of Thirus (god of adventurers) that was flying a new flag. The flag was white with red blood dripping from it, the symbol of Nazuel (god of undeath).

Unlike in the movies, the party could not wait this out as ghouls were batting clean up. Ghouls are not mindless zombies and they can climb. So the party had to act then and there.

They gathered what material they could and traveled from rooftop to rooftop as fast as they could.

This was a skill challenge of sorts, where each poor roll or failure added more zombies to their next fight. And for each natural 1 they rolled, a ghoul was added.

Edward, who has no athletics or stealth training, was pretty bad at this.

But as they fell off the last roof (a build in bad need of repair), the pair of ghouls and handful of zombie rotters were only a minor impediment.

Soon they were inside the incredibly dark and quiet temple, now defiled to Nazuel.

They find absolutely nothing in the entire place until they reach the chapel, where they find a very dark and barren room with lone man standing in the center.

“Thank you for coming. I was afraid we were going to be left alone all day. I was hoping to have company for dinner.”

His barely seen fangs and pale skin gave his origins away.

The party is not interested in playing verbal games at this point, so they attack. And so do the dozen vampire spawn that have been clinging to the walls above.

This combat went pretty fast in comparison to the others during the night.

There was also a special mechanism in the place that involved a series of mirrors to focus light and move it about the room, but the party didn’t get that far. The fight was easier on the party then the DM expected.

Vampire Lords are dangerous when they have combat advantage, and their healing abilities are powerful (regeneration, second wind, blood drain).

For several rounds this guy kept bouncing back and forth from being bloodied to not.

The party was not as lucky as he was able to dominate Edward for a round (who beat on Duncan) and he dominated Kergan a few rounds later (who later apologized to Admon for the welt).

But thanks to Admon’s minion sweeping powers, the vampire was soon out of flanking partners and the party wore him down slowly until Admon critted the vampire to exactly 0hp.

At which point it looked at Admon and laughed as it turned to dust.

Then Admon woke up with the sound of the Pehr’All’s laughing still in his ears.

But it was ok. He was safe and in his bed and it all was just a nightmare.

The Valley #11-12

I just realized that I haven’t given WotC a penny since the MM2 came out.

Out of the 8 books I have of this edition, I’ve bought 5 (core 3, PHB2, MM2), and the others are presents.

I have zero reason or interest in buying anything else, which is sad since I was voraciously buying books when 3E came out.

Other players in the group have bought a small variety of books, but nothing much recently. For some of us the reason is that we have no spare money. For others the reason is lack of interest in paying $35 for a book that might have a dozen pages of information we’ll use.

The cruel irony – WotC sold out to Hasbro, but we’re paying the price.

I’m not 100% sure, but I believe the last person in the group to buy a book was Mike. It was the Complete Divine, and I think Justin gets more use out of that book than Mike has.

(Several powers in that book, specifically the cleric powers, look like porn titles too. Hello…Stream of Life, Astral Seal, Moment of Glory, etc.)

For our sessions, I continue doing my best to take the good bits of 4E and use them as best as I can.

Examples:
I use minions as often as I reasonably can.
I try to hand out magic items that have passive abilities or work without interrupting combat flow.
I use monster templates and other modifications to make the standard ones more interesting rather than to use the same base creatures over and over.
I use skill challenges, but not always as written. Sometimes I alter skill challenges to be less of an encounter, but to rather modify an upcoming encounter. This makes sure that all skills will be useful at some point but doesn’t guarantee a giant fail if the party is missing one.
I make sure that I hand out the right amount of treasure without being blatantly predictable on how the party gets it (as in “kill a monster, take its treasure, rinse, repeat”). This vaguely follows the treasure suggestions the core rules give (though I use monster levels instead of party level).

Ok, on to the sessions before I start with the 4E hate yet again.

Session #11

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Ander (Dale); level 4 halfling storm sorcerer (slacker XP gain)
Duncan (Justin); level 6 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 6 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 6 Silverhome dwarven rogue

The party returned to town with the Annesius children safely with them, to much fanfare (and some rewards of course).

Several people actually went out of town to grab the dragons’ bodies, threw them on a cart, and paraded them through town.

This made the party a bit uncomfortable, but it certainly helped spread the word of their deeds. Not to mention it may have swayed a couple of the council members to see Duncan and his cause in a better light.

We jumped to 9pm the next night when a robed man showed up at the Silverblade compound, asking to see Admon.
“Admon Silverblade?”
“Yes”
“Come with me”
“Who are you?”
“I am an assistant of Polaris.”

So Admon quickly gathered his gear and followed the robed man while Duncan, Edward, and Kergan joined.

An hour or so later and they’ve all gathered at Silver Lake, plus nearly a dozen sorcerers, including Ander.

While gathering up members for the cabal, Ander unknowingly added a silver dragon to their ranks, specifically, Polaris’s mate. That led him and the rest of the cabal to the current situation.

She explained to the party and cabal that the reasons the dragons attacked last night was because there was an active portal into the Shadowfell and it needed to be closed before anything really dangerous snuck on to this plane.

She and Polaris had scouted out the area of the portal and gathered what information they could, surmising that the Herollus family was possibly behind this.

The dragons and sorcerers were going to distract and destroy the black dragon defenses while the party had their own special job of destroying the defenses directly at the portal and to “calm” the portal with a ritual (skill challenge) to prevent any other creatures from entering this plane from the Shadowfell.

After the battle, the party was to enter the Shadowfell to permanently destroy the portal from that side while the dragons did the same from this side (also using a skill challenge ritual).

“How do we get back?”
At that point Polaris walks out of the water and hands the party several polished black stones with silver streaks.
“When you are calm, hold a stone in your hand and concentrate on me. The stone will bring you to me.”

For the record, “calm” means not in combat or other peril.

Five minutes later and the entire group were landing on the treacherous and rocky area that makes up the walls of the Valley.

Shortly after that the two silver dragons attacked the flight of black dragons, followed up by attacks from nearly a dozen sorcerers who concentrated their fire on one dragon at a time.

This gave the party to sneak into an exposed half-cave where a thin violet film shimmered in the background guarded by a floating and flaming skull and giant zombie that was swarming with rats.

As combat began, all the rats poured out of the zombie, making two swarms that the party just loves to deal with.

The party was doing quite well when a specter walked out of the portal and began harassing them.

When Admon was finally able to begin the ritual, the portal appeared to become more frantic in its shimmering, and another specter appeared.

In the end, 3 specters had appeared before the ritual was complete and the portal became calm.

At that point several of the party went to help the rest of their combatants (read as I allowed good-aligned party members to sacrifice up to two healing surges for 25XP each).

Once the dust settled and the party rested up, it was time for them to enter the portal.

They entered into a very dark room where they could barely half as well as usual (half normal vision, and everything had normal concealment), and walking around felt like they were swimming through mud.

Unfortunately, the change in the portal was seen on both sides, so several shadar-kai were ready for the party and attacked them upon entry. They also recognized Admon Silverblade immediately, and occasionally paid special attention to him.

But as usual, the party dealt with them and continued about their business.

As Admon was going about permanently closing the portal, the rest of the party could hear fighting going on somewhere else in the building they were in.

Moments after the ritual had been finished, several humans rushed into the room.

They wanted to know what happened to portal, and were very upset about it being closed as it was the only way they were going to be able to get back home to the real world.

These humans were at one time employed by the Herollus family and quit after a time, but were refused access to the main portal the family had. This left them stranded in the Shadowfell, and they were forced into hiding and banditry when they could (not everything is dark and evil in the Shadowfell, just most of it), eventually taking on aspects of the realm (the shadowborn stalker template).

They had heard that this small fort had a new portal opened and they intended upon using it, only to find the party had just destroyed it.

Since the silver stones only transfer one person, the party could not in good conscious (well some of the party) leave these people stranded.

So after much role-playing, and an opportunity to hurt the Herollus family added to the till for Admon, the party came up with a plan.

Session #12

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Ander (NPC); around for appearances only
Duncan (Justin); level 6 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 6 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 6 Silverhome dwarven rogue

Using uniforms from other, now deceased, ex-employees of the family, the party dressed up as those ex-employees (even Ander).

Except for Ander, he was “captured” and would be turned over to the Herollus family and be allowed to return home.

But the real plan was for the party to distract the household and the “guardian of the portal” long enough for their new allies and themselves to escape through the portal in the basement of the mansion.

The walk from the fort to the mansion was short, not even a quarter-mile, but they couldn’t clearly see the place until they were almost upon it.

It was your standard gothic-style mansion, with a dim, stationary blue bubble surrounding it.

This “bubble” was to keep the Shadowfell and it’s effects out, allowing the mansion and its residents to continue on with business as normal.

The leader of the exiles chatted with the lead guard on duty. Once Admon’s face was shown, the guard went to immediately get his boss, Pehr’All Herollus.

Pehr’All gave an evil smile, and agreed to let the exiles return to their home plane when morning came, while a pair of guards followed Pehr’All back to his study with Admon in tow.

The exiled guards and the employed guards began chatting with one another, several of them still friendly with each other apparently. Ander and a couple of other exiles snuck off to scout around. And the rest of the party began discussing potential strategies.

First was the idea that the center of the protective bubble surrounding the mansion could be destroyed and the ensuing chaos would be a good distraction to escape under.

Then we jumped to Admon and Pehr’All having a nice chat in the study.
Pehr’All makes it known that he knows the party’s intent, but that’s okay, he’s willing to let them go if Admon is willing to cooperate.

He gives the standard spiel of the quick and painless death or the long slow death, but then adds another deal – no death.

But that particular plan is unpalatable as it requires Admon to give Pehr’All every last detail of his family, and to not intervene as the Herollus family destroys every shred of the Silverblade family.

Admon declines and says, “Don’t underestimate me, my friends, or my family.”

So in disgust, Pehr’All tells his guards to take Admon back to his friends; presumably to wait for their execution.

About that time Ander came back with some scouting news and confirmed some things the party had speculated on. He had found the room where he believes the shield is being emitted from (but it’s locked), and the news from the around the house is that the guardian of the portal is being held prisoner by that same shield and the shield gets some of its energy from the guardian. So if the shield is destroyed, chaos will erupt as the Shadowfell will no longer be held at bay, and the guardian may want to get some revenge for its captivity.

Thus several of the guards, exiles, and Ander created a diversion while the party snuck off to the shield room.

On their way they ran into the guards and Admon, and were able to get him away from them (not a combat, just a convenient and fast way to get Admon back with the main group for a fight).

First the party had to get the door to the room unlocked, requiring 3 successful skill checks to get it open, with each fail giving the guardians of the shield room a round to prepare.

The room was large with a bridge in the center. Under the bridge was dark blackness the oozed evil and the party just knew that falling into that meant instant death. On the bridge was a pedestal, and on the pedestal was a brightly glowing gem.

Floating about the room was three more flaming skulls.

What the party didn’t know was that each round, one of the skulls had to spend an action to maintain the shield by blasting it with some of its own energy. If this didn’t happen, the shield would become unstable and if this happened five times, the shield would collapse.

Also, a skull could spend an action and turn on the shield’s other defenses, specifically a ray that struck two random enemy targets every round (merely +6 vs. Reflex, but for 2d8+3 damage), and some runes that appeared on the floor (that the party avoided). And when I say random, I mean that Admon and Kergan took 75% of those attacks (my d4’s kept rolling 2’s and 3’)s.

In spite of all that, the party did most of the damage to themselves. If someone attacked the gem on the pedestal in any way, they would be automatically hit by 1d8+10 necrotic damage and 10 more ongoing necrotic damage (save ends).

As each flaming skull died, the remaining ones would get more defensive.

But eventually the skulls were destroyed and the shield became obviously unstable, appearing as though it were going to explode.

So the party fled the room before that happened, and closed the door, only to hear a barely audible pop and the sound of stone cracking.

They returned to the room to find the bridge and everything on it had collapsed into the blackness below.

And, of course, all hell began to break loose, initiate by a loud growl from beneath the mansion, followed by panic spreading throughout the place.

The party rushed to the basement hoping to get as many people out of the place as fast as possible.

But the basement was crowded:
- All four PC’s, plus 1 exile that each player controlled and acted right after the PC
- Pehr’All Herollus and shield guardian
- Pehr’All two sons (no names, and it doesn’t matter – they die) – both human mages
- 4 human guards
- 12 flunkies (minions)
- and 12 humans that sought to escape, with more coming each round. One third of these human were helpful to the party (offering flanking and could be moved through), one third was hurtful to the party (accounts as flanking against the party, and can not be moved through), and one third that were neutral (cannot be moved through)
- The guardian, a Thief of Life, a.k.a. a vampiric dragon

Each time an escaping human made it through the portal, the party got 10XP, even a hurtful one.

Pehr’All was quite aware of the party’s presence but he was preoccupied by the guardian.

“All life will pay for the pain you’ve inflicted upon me.”

That comment didn’t settle well with the party, so they did what they could to clear a path to the portal while steering clear of the two titans fighting one another.

The party was tearing through their main focus of enemies and the dragon was putting a hurt on the shield guardian.

Pehr’All could not hurt the dragon, and the dragon could barely hurt Pehr’All as they both had very good regeneration. So Pehr’All occasionally tossed one of his powers to hurt the party (such as a 5x5 field that does 10 damage a round and slows movement).

Once the shield guardian dropped the dragon attacked Pehr’All directly and in spite of his regeneration, it became obvious to all that he was a lich and he couldn’t take on the dragon directly. Sor Pehr’All searched on the ground for his phylactery (the gem in the shield room), and fled through the portal.

Now the party did take a couple of shots at the dragon and the lich, but when a rolled 18 missed they decided not to push their luck and fled through the portal as soon as everyone else was out of the room.

In moments they were all back on the Prime Material Plane and finding themselves surrounded by a multitude of people that would be best described as friendly, with Pehr’All nowhere in sight.