Rax
Dicemaster
Posts: 2,263
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Post by Rax on Mar 10, 2019 6:24:41 GMT -8
[OOC: This campaign is cursed. That's what. At least four fumbles and three crits on their end in like 3 rounds?] What's particularly frustrating for me, is I designed this first encounter as a test to gather data so I can properly calibrate the death match. I want the death match to be tough, but not impossible. Wiping out the party in the first chapter would be pretty pointless. Since 2E has no CR system at all, you just have to sort of eyeball it. But the rolls are so weird in this battle, I think they might skew the data. I can't be sure how much of the party's difficulty with these sligs is based on bad luck. Having eyeballed the stats for sligs in Tales of the Lance, I honestly think this would have been a tough fight even if the party was rolling better and the sligs worse. They're hard to hit and they have good enough THAC0 to have at least as good odds of hitting most of us as we have of hitting them - not least when they also have spears, which are ideal for hitting leather armour. Their spit attacks is also very dangerous. The upside for us is basically that we have Teakettle's taunt, some magic, and more HP. But since there are more of them, a battle of attrition is not a done thing in our favour either.
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Post by Daos on Mar 10, 2019 13:36:17 GMT -8
And that's what I was going for, something tough enough to give me some useful battle data. I was originally going to go with kobolds but figured the party would just steamroll them and I'd get nothing useful out of it.
EDIT: Also, I just realized I have been rolling 1d6s against Runt instead of 1d8s as he is a L sized creature. Ah, well.
EDIT 2: Crap, I also just realized I haven't been including the +2 to all the sligs damage rolls. Geez, I am really goofing this up.
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Post by Ezeze on Mar 11, 2019 6:29:44 GMT -8
Snacs asks to roll higher than a 7. Rolls a 7. Thank you, dice
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Post by Ezeze on Mar 12, 2019 6:44:20 GMT -8
What are the rules in the arena for going "yeah, okay, obviously the other side won."
What do we have to do to get the sligs to surrender? I'm assuming there is some sort of contingency for that in place, given that they want to avoid unnecessary deaths.
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Post by Daos on Mar 12, 2019 15:04:44 GMT -8
There are morale rules for normal circumstances, but they don't really apply here. Audiences hate when people just give up, because it means the fight ends earlier. So I guess for the sligs to surrender, they would need to see it as being worth the audience backlash somehow.
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Rax
Dicemaster
Posts: 2,263
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Post by Rax on Mar 12, 2019 15:16:07 GMT -8
Considering we've killed at least one of their number in a supposedly non-lethal fight, they might conceivably also be angry enough to go down fighting...
Edit: In other news, the die roller now apparently loves Dorias. That's four unnecessarily high attack rolls in a row.
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Post by Daos on Mar 17, 2019 12:36:04 GMT -8
So I'd like some feedback from you all, if you don't mind.
As I said before, that encounter was meant as a test to give me an idea of how much of a challenge the party can handle, so I can properly calibrate the death match. The combined XP total of the seven sligs was just under 2,000 XP. The ultimate result of the battle was that the party won without a single casualty, but it took 9 rounds. Everyone missed a lot, which was more due to just bad luck than anything else.
I'm thinking I'll throw in another non-lethal encounter next, and pump up the difficulty to ~4,000 XP. I'm not sure if I should go with a single powerful enemy, a small group of middling enemies, or a large group of weaker enemies. There will most likely be spellcasters among their ranks, regardless, though.
What do you all think?
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Post by GravityEmblem on Mar 17, 2019 13:54:23 GMT -8
I've always been fond of video game bosses single powerful enemies. Switching from target to target can get annoying, and I feel like there's a bit more risk involved with sole high-powered bosses.
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Rax
Dicemaster
Posts: 2,263
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Post by Rax on Mar 17, 2019 14:35:44 GMT -8
A single high-powered target is likely to be overwhelmed by the party just by dint of us being able to act more often and focus fire on it. OTOH, if it's high-powered, it may well take down one or two of us before it goes down. Dorias, being a frontliner with low HP and a code that insists he mustn't retreat before the "women and children" (Ravarie and Teakettle) are safely away, is a prime candidate for that. Still, as long it's nonlethal I can live with that.
Fighting multiple foes is more likely to test our ability to work together as a team, which I honestly think we could use after the last fight. Everyone pretty much just did what they wanted after the initial rush and we ended up getting split up instead of standing together. I think we were actually quite lucky not to have had anyone dropped in that fight.
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Post by Snacs on Mar 17, 2019 18:52:59 GMT -8
A single high-powered target is likely to be overwhelmed by the party just by dint of us being able to act more often and focus fire on it. OTOH, if it's high-powered, it may well take down one or two of us before it goes down. Dorias, being a frontliner with low HP and a code that insists he mustn't retreat before the "women and children" (Ravarie and Teakettle) are safely away, is a prime candidate for that. Still, as long it's nonlethal I can live with that. Fighting multiple foes is more likely to test our ability to work together as a team, which I honestly think we could use after the last fight. Everyone pretty much just did what they wanted after the initial rush and we ended up getting split up instead of standing together. I think we were actually quite lucky not to have had anyone dropped in that fight.
TBF, Runt stood in front of Ravarie until the ones in front of him went down, then went to cover Teakettle getting mobbed. Which was most of the plan barring like, at least 4 fumbles all in a row. So I'd like some feedback from you all, if you don't mind. I'm thinking I'll throw in another non-lethal encounter next, and pump up the difficulty to ~4,000 XP. I'm not sure if I should go with a single powerful enemy, a small group of middling enemies, or a large group of weaker enemies. There will most likely be spellcasters among their ranks, regardless, though.
What do you all think?
The most terrifying opponents in tabletop are lots of weak opponents, but Rax is right. One big boss has the downside of being swarmed by the party, or it munches a party member every turn. The sligs weren't impossibly hard or anything, they just got good turns of the dice and we got really poor rolls in return. It really depends on what you'd want both story-wise and power-wise. IMO, instead of just throwing a huge group of enemies, you could just keep throwing waves of them until we get worn out and dragged down and see how we do:p
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Post by Ezeze on Mar 17, 2019 18:54:45 GMT -8
Teakettle did exactly what she was instructed to do.
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Post by Daos on Mar 18, 2019 11:55:05 GMT -8
Maybe the small group of middling enemies then? Make them smarter and use better tactics than the sligs, and add a spellcaster and archers, as well. That's where I'm leaning at the moment, anyway.
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Rax
Dicemaster
Posts: 2,263
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Post by Rax on Mar 18, 2019 12:04:48 GMT -8
Aargh, one wrong press of a button and there went my longish reply. All right, trying again. Hmm, sorry if I came across as confrontational, the wasn't my intent. Runt took the hits and dished them out, and Teakettle's taunting worked great, there's no disputing that. I'm definitely not looking to apportion any sort of blame (which would be silly, since the fight swung in our favour after a couple of rounds), I was just making an observation. For reference, this is the plan I proposed: The plan went slightly awry from the start because Daos ended up placing Teakettle one hex further back than I had imagined in my mind's eye, but that wasn't a deal breaker. I had wanted Teakettle to be in the same hex as slig 01 in this map. This would have made it so that only one of the four taunted sligs could have attacked Teakettle each round, while also allowing the three of us to concentrate our attacks against it. That would have maximized our chances of taking down a slig per round, levelling our numbers as quickly as possible. What I wasn't expecting was for Teakettle to lead the sligs off on a merry chase, which had two effects: it isolated her in a 3 vs. 1 fight while the rest of us were trying to deal with the rest of the sligs, and it opened a gap in our lines through which any untaunted slig could have charged Ravarie. Again, this didn't end up causing any lasting harm, but I really didn't fancy Teakettle's chances alone against three sligs, and it also forced the rest of us (or at least Dorias, thanks to his pesky code) to choose between protecting Ravarie and trying to help Teakettle. So, yeah, that was my battle plan. I recognize that it's everyone's choice whether to follow any suggestion I make, but I honestly believe it would have been an easier fight if we had at least given the plan another round or two to see if it worked (our terrible rolls notwithstanding).
With all that said, I gather that you've all been playing together for some time, so if I'm imposing on your preferred play styles by tossing out ideas like this, then please say so and I'll stick to only planning what Dorias will do.
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Post by Daos on Mar 19, 2019 12:09:15 GMT -8
Do you all want to do some roleplaying with each other, or just skip forward to the next scene?
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Rax
Dicemaster
Posts: 2,263
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Post by Rax on Mar 19, 2019 14:14:58 GMT -8
Threw in a little conversation starter if anyone is interested. If not, roll on the next scene.
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