The Valley #16
Aaron pointed out some flaws in my ideas to remove the speed bumps in 4E combat.
Unfortunately, his logic was solid.
If a clerical attack gives a penalty to a monsters defenses, then my idea of giving the cleric a bonus to the attack with the power rather than a penalty “until the end of the cleric’s next turn” will actually penalize the other PC’s attacking the target by denying the “bonuses” their leader usually supplies them.
So my new idea; set aside my previous idea, and replace it with something that is a little more and less powerful. Instead of giving a round-long penalty to a target’s defenses (which is really a bonus to the PC’s) that is -2, give the cleric a new special ability.
Whenever a cleric hits with a power that would penalize a target for a round, instead the cleric and his allies get one-half that penalty (rounded up to the PC’s favor) as an unnamed attack bonus that lasts until the end of the combat. If a stronger power increases it later, then the bonus increases.
This change almost guarantees a reworking of most of the clerical powers, but I’m ok with that. Now that I think about it, this could probably affect the other leader classes too. The downside is that some of the powers would become obsolete, and the classes could lose some of their “flavor”.
One day I’m going to have to sit down and look at all the powers and post something a bit more in-depth.
I would also like to reduce the chess level thinking that combat movement can become, though that may be more a player thing more than a rules thing.
Overall I like the ideas I’ve come up with, and the responses I’ve gotten back about them.
My actual biggest concern is WotC. While they’ve not quite entered T$R territory, their reigning-in of the SRD-type content, and the destruction of their PDF sales concerns me that they make take some issue with anything I post here that is a retyping of their rules.
Of course that could also just be my paranoia acting up again.
This session only had 3 players.
Not to worry though, we knew it was going to be that way, so I had planned for it.
Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 7 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 7 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 7 human paladin of Brekaneth
We started back up just after the fey-crocodile and fey-choker fight.
(We also wrote off Ander and Kergan as having to go back to the Valley for an undisclosed reason.)
The party returned the silver chalice to the satyrs and thanked them for it. They also answered as many of the party’s questions as they could.
Several months back, many elves came through this area and their leader, Ivellios Galanodil, paid the toll required for the lot of them.
The satyrs helped the elves on their journey to a place called the Forest of Shadows.
The party asked for directions to the Forest of Shadows, and they were given three paths.
Path #1 – Hell’s Hand Swamp
The party wrote that one off immediately.
Path #2 –Short Mountain
That one didn’t sound all that lovely to the party either.
Path #3 – The Flittering Fields
The party liked the sound of that, but the satyrs warned them that the grass in the fields grows six feet tall and hides the numerous predators there (mainly large felines and canines).
Before the party left, the satyrs warned them that when the elves came, chaos followed them.
Rumor was that Ivellios had killed a green dragon that had controlled the nearby countryside, but the aftereffects were making life harder on the inhabitants of the land.
Their first encounter was when they attempted to cross the river at a bridge. It was guarded by a troll (I think I may be watching too much Dora with my kids).
The troll, in his gruff Eeyore-esque voice, offered to allow the party to pass for either a bucket of their blood (each), 100gp (each), or to fight him.
“No acid or fire! Them’s for keeps.”
In the end he settled for 50gp each.
By nightfall they made it to the edge of the Flittering Fields and they were almost too paranoid to rest.
They did rest, though they had the ever-present feeling that they were being watched. But they had that feeling the moment they entered this realm.
As they continued their travels through the fields, they heard tiny screams for help. After getting over their fear that this was a trap, they searched for the source of the screams as they grew more desperate and quieter.
They found a small clearing with four lizards with butterfly wings laying on the ground with a harpy to a trio of dire wolves ready to eat them.
The party started by beating the harpy senseless while getting chewed on by the wolves.
Now the wolves don’t move no more.
After being healed a bit, the fairy dragons became fast friends of the party and assisted them on their way to the Forest of Shadows.
The little dragons explained that a dragon, Greenfang, the son of the last dragon, had been trying to take over his father’s area, but wasn’t strong enough to maintain control.
This had resulted in no order in the lands, and old rivalries no longer being kept in check, and instead of helping, Greenfang only made things worse.
The party pretty much ignored every hook the DM threw at them, so the dragons led them to the edge of the Forest of Shadows.
The best part of the whole thing is that Dale, a big lover of fairy dragons, was not present this week. He most assuredly would have tried to befriend one and have loads of fun.
Denied!
Now this next bit was me having to rapidly throw stuff together as the party had totally ignored my hooks. The resulting story that came out of it was a mixing of things I had planned, and thinking on the fly. I believe the resulting story was better than one I would have made up with planning.
They enter the forest and feel even more eyes watching them.
Luckily the eyes belong to elves that do the usual shoot-in-front-of-the-party-to-get-their-attention.
Duncan did most of the talking and soon he was led to meet Ivellios Galanodil.
Where last he had seen Ivellios he was an elf that appeared to him as a human of maybe 60 years old, now he saw a feeble old elf who appeared to be on his death bed.
Duncan offered him any kind of aid to help him, but Ivellios told him there was nothing that could be done. This was simply time catching up to him.
Ivellios was there when the Valley was created. To him it was obvious early on that the dark tendencies of people would destroy any chance of survival in a land where resources were few.
So he used his magic to make every human, dwarf, and elf a little more accepting of others to make it easier for all to survive against the odds.
But it was dark magic, and it came with a price. Every elf in the Valley had his soul cursed and if he were to die of old age, he would rise again as a creature of darkness.
At the time he considered it a wise decision, but he expected only a few decades of imprisonment, not three centuries.
No elf could commit suicide, and elves could be sent off to fight in a hopeless battle and killed before his natural end.
But every decade or so an elf would die suddenly, for no obvious reason. That once-elf would be contained in an area where he could hurt nothing. Whether they could not be re-killed or were too powerful for that was not made clear.
Look three-hundred fifty years later in the future and you’ve got yourself a problem.
And this is the problem that Thlyria Isara has.
She told Duncan to relay to Ivellios, “Tell him that we are at the precipice of the abyss.”
And Ivellios has responded, there is nothing more he can do. Every middle-aged and older elf in the Valley has come to the Fey-realm to live out their lives where the curse does not seem to apply as it did on the prime plane. But now they age rapidly.
As the party thought about it, they looked around and saw no young elves here, and so few elves have been born in the Valley.
Ivellios made it clear that this was the best he could do. He desperately searched for a solution, and “re-finding” the Fey-realm was the best option he could attain.
Aaron: “So we need to gather up all the elves in the Valley, bring them here, and then…kill them.”
In the end Ivellios can only give them several of his books (quite precious really) so they can perform their own research and perhaps find something he could not.
They had one last question: what about the souls of the elves that died? To that Ivellios has no answer. Whether they are freed or trapped is beyond his knowledge.
The party has to return to the Valley, so they leave and on the way they kill Greenfang and his kobold underlings.
Not bad for a leader, defender, and controller.
Unfortunately, his logic was solid.
If a clerical attack gives a penalty to a monsters defenses, then my idea of giving the cleric a bonus to the attack with the power rather than a penalty “until the end of the cleric’s next turn” will actually penalize the other PC’s attacking the target by denying the “bonuses” their leader usually supplies them.
So my new idea; set aside my previous idea, and replace it with something that is a little more and less powerful. Instead of giving a round-long penalty to a target’s defenses (which is really a bonus to the PC’s) that is -2, give the cleric a new special ability.
Whenever a cleric hits with a power that would penalize a target for a round, instead the cleric and his allies get one-half that penalty (rounded up to the PC’s favor) as an unnamed attack bonus that lasts until the end of the combat. If a stronger power increases it later, then the bonus increases.
This change almost guarantees a reworking of most of the clerical powers, but I’m ok with that. Now that I think about it, this could probably affect the other leader classes too. The downside is that some of the powers would become obsolete, and the classes could lose some of their “flavor”.
One day I’m going to have to sit down and look at all the powers and post something a bit more in-depth.
I would also like to reduce the chess level thinking that combat movement can become, though that may be more a player thing more than a rules thing.
Overall I like the ideas I’ve come up with, and the responses I’ve gotten back about them.
My actual biggest concern is WotC. While they’ve not quite entered T$R territory, their reigning-in of the SRD-type content, and the destruction of their PDF sales concerns me that they make take some issue with anything I post here that is a retyping of their rules.
Of course that could also just be my paranoia acting up again.
This session only had 3 players.
Not to worry though, we knew it was going to be that way, so I had planned for it.
Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 7 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 7 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 7 human paladin of Brekaneth
We started back up just after the fey-crocodile and fey-choker fight.
(We also wrote off Ander and Kergan as having to go back to the Valley for an undisclosed reason.)
The party returned the silver chalice to the satyrs and thanked them for it. They also answered as many of the party’s questions as they could.
Several months back, many elves came through this area and their leader, Ivellios Galanodil, paid the toll required for the lot of them.
The satyrs helped the elves on their journey to a place called the Forest of Shadows.
The party asked for directions to the Forest of Shadows, and they were given three paths.
Path #1 – Hell’s Hand Swamp
The party wrote that one off immediately.
Path #2 –Short Mountain
That one didn’t sound all that lovely to the party either.
Path #3 – The Flittering Fields
The party liked the sound of that, but the satyrs warned them that the grass in the fields grows six feet tall and hides the numerous predators there (mainly large felines and canines).
Before the party left, the satyrs warned them that when the elves came, chaos followed them.
Rumor was that Ivellios had killed a green dragon that had controlled the nearby countryside, but the aftereffects were making life harder on the inhabitants of the land.
Their first encounter was when they attempted to cross the river at a bridge. It was guarded by a troll (I think I may be watching too much Dora with my kids).
The troll, in his gruff Eeyore-esque voice, offered to allow the party to pass for either a bucket of their blood (each), 100gp (each), or to fight him.
“No acid or fire! Them’s for keeps.”
In the end he settled for 50gp each.
By nightfall they made it to the edge of the Flittering Fields and they were almost too paranoid to rest.
They did rest, though they had the ever-present feeling that they were being watched. But they had that feeling the moment they entered this realm.
As they continued their travels through the fields, they heard tiny screams for help. After getting over their fear that this was a trap, they searched for the source of the screams as they grew more desperate and quieter.
They found a small clearing with four lizards with butterfly wings laying on the ground with a harpy to a trio of dire wolves ready to eat them.
The party started by beating the harpy senseless while getting chewed on by the wolves.
Now the wolves don’t move no more.
After being healed a bit, the fairy dragons became fast friends of the party and assisted them on their way to the Forest of Shadows.
The little dragons explained that a dragon, Greenfang, the son of the last dragon, had been trying to take over his father’s area, but wasn’t strong enough to maintain control.
This had resulted in no order in the lands, and old rivalries no longer being kept in check, and instead of helping, Greenfang only made things worse.
The party pretty much ignored every hook the DM threw at them, so the dragons led them to the edge of the Forest of Shadows.
The best part of the whole thing is that Dale, a big lover of fairy dragons, was not present this week. He most assuredly would have tried to befriend one and have loads of fun.
Denied!
Now this next bit was me having to rapidly throw stuff together as the party had totally ignored my hooks. The resulting story that came out of it was a mixing of things I had planned, and thinking on the fly. I believe the resulting story was better than one I would have made up with planning.
They enter the forest and feel even more eyes watching them.
Luckily the eyes belong to elves that do the usual shoot-in-front-of-the-party-to-get-their-attention.
Duncan did most of the talking and soon he was led to meet Ivellios Galanodil.
Where last he had seen Ivellios he was an elf that appeared to him as a human of maybe 60 years old, now he saw a feeble old elf who appeared to be on his death bed.
Duncan offered him any kind of aid to help him, but Ivellios told him there was nothing that could be done. This was simply time catching up to him.
Ivellios was there when the Valley was created. To him it was obvious early on that the dark tendencies of people would destroy any chance of survival in a land where resources were few.
So he used his magic to make every human, dwarf, and elf a little more accepting of others to make it easier for all to survive against the odds.
But it was dark magic, and it came with a price. Every elf in the Valley had his soul cursed and if he were to die of old age, he would rise again as a creature of darkness.
At the time he considered it a wise decision, but he expected only a few decades of imprisonment, not three centuries.
No elf could commit suicide, and elves could be sent off to fight in a hopeless battle and killed before his natural end.
But every decade or so an elf would die suddenly, for no obvious reason. That once-elf would be contained in an area where he could hurt nothing. Whether they could not be re-killed or were too powerful for that was not made clear.
Look three-hundred fifty years later in the future and you’ve got yourself a problem.
And this is the problem that Thlyria Isara has.
She told Duncan to relay to Ivellios, “Tell him that we are at the precipice of the abyss.”
And Ivellios has responded, there is nothing more he can do. Every middle-aged and older elf in the Valley has come to the Fey-realm to live out their lives where the curse does not seem to apply as it did on the prime plane. But now they age rapidly.
As the party thought about it, they looked around and saw no young elves here, and so few elves have been born in the Valley.
Ivellios made it clear that this was the best he could do. He desperately searched for a solution, and “re-finding” the Fey-realm was the best option he could attain.
Aaron: “So we need to gather up all the elves in the Valley, bring them here, and then…kill them.”
In the end Ivellios can only give them several of his books (quite precious really) so they can perform their own research and perhaps find something he could not.
They had one last question: what about the souls of the elves that died? To that Ivellios has no answer. Whether they are freed or trapped is beyond his knowledge.
The party has to return to the Valley, so they leave and on the way they kill Greenfang and his kobold underlings.
Not bad for a leader, defender, and controller.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 6:41 AM
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