4E Road of Chain's Campaign


4th Edition

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Medriev wrote:

This is a great thread so please keep it up.

Not on the current topic of PC death but relevant to the (possibly much) earlier discussion of conversion of older modules, my preferred method is combining encounter areas into single 4E encounters. A case in point, I revisited the Dungeon of the Fire Opal from Dungeon 84 over the weekend and managed to distil the 41 room dungeon into 6 encounters in 4E. Rather than remove single creature encounters I include them in the wider encounter area and build a bigger encounter.

Just a quick thought and as I said at the start, please keep this thread going, it is brilliant.

Absolutely a good idea in conversion. I’m sure I comment on it in some of my posts about my own conversions because I’ve done this exact thing in my adventures as well where appropriate. 4E, in my experience, plays best when the adventure has fewer larger encounters and is really not that good for any adventure that features repeated combats against 6 Orcs. Not at all uncommon for me to distill what was originally a whole bunch of fights down into a single more epic battle. This works especially well in that you can turn lots of weaker enemies into minions and you can also go fairly heavily beyond the recommended XP level suggestions if the battle has a lot of ‘Adds’ by which I mean enemies that show up in later rounds after the battle has been going on for X number of rounds. As some of the posts make clear ts not unheard of for my players to be in 30 round combats that stretch over entire complexs. Really pushes the PCs to the limits of their endurance – especially as some of my PCs are real fans of the 4E optimization boards which very much emphasize ‘Nova’ builds where the PCS just go nuts on the bad guys for a couple of rounds.

Throwing in long fights with Adds every so often encourages my players not to go overboard with such builds.

The Exchange

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:
Bit of a quandary really.

Well, not really - if killing them keeps them on their toes, they should be pretty alert right now.

I have found in my own games that the PCs are not normally mortally challenged very often. I think I had maybe one of two bona fide deaths (under the standard rules, not the variant you use, which increases potential lethality) but I have also found that being reduced to 0hp (a not-infrequent happenstance) and rolling death saving throws has a similar salutory effect.


Combat Compare and Contrast
There have been a few more combats since the ever so lethal combat above and they do help to contrast some of what is going on in this campaign. The next two fights are also level +4 ‘use all your daily’s’ type combats and yet there are some significant differences in the design. For starters the bad guys don’t start with an inherent advantage in positioning…which at this level means starting quite spread out.

The encounters are also dominated by monster groups with fairly little customization done to their stat blocks. One is a Sauhugin encounter where the main change is giving the Saugin Priests a potent area control power and giving the Sauhugin Baron a crazy good triggered power when first bloodied. Despite the fact that the encounter also includes a really large number of roughly on level standard Sauhugin warrior types its pretty clear that the only thing that scares my players early on is the specialized priest power I gave the priests and the PCs focus on them early on. Later on the only time I manage to really get my players attention is when they trigger the Sahugin Baron’s when first bloodied power and he goes completely nuts on them.

I face a similar and situation in the next combat where the players take on a group of Dark Elves. I think of the Dark Elves as being pretty worthy opponents for my PCs but the combat is really a pretty impressive blow out. At one point I realize that the 15th level Drider Battlelords are dealing a mere 1d12+9 or some such for their main attack which is just pathetic at this level – my players literally start meandering by them and just drawing the opportunity attacks they have such contempt for their damage output.

This brings me to a couple of issues. The first one of which is that I have a problem with my theory of mortality reduction outlined a few posts above. There I indicated that I should try just giving my players some fairly easy fights mixed in with the odd tough one and rely on the fact that they won’t loose characters in the easy fights and not usually in the hard fights so I should get reduced mortality among the PCs overall. The problem with this is that my players don’t seem to like it. My players enjoy big minion slaughters from time to time but simply easy fights have them all falling asleep on me. This was really contrasted in the Sahugin fight when it seemed to be going completely their way and they where all looking sleepy and getting distracted by their phones and such and then – blammo – they bloody the Saugin Baron and he gets this free action that pretty much says ‘use every power you have with big bonuses to hit and damage’ and he, out of the blue just beats the snot out of half the party…and the moment that happens every player is in the game and they are clearly engaged.

So my issue #1 is I can’t really go the route of ‘here is an easy fight’ to try and reduce mortality…its making the game too boring for my players. I have to make the fights hard and I suppose that will mean that I have to accept that character deaths are just going to be that much more common going forward.

The other issue that really stuck out for me is that the monsters themselves have a serious tendency to be really underwhelming at this level unless I really beef them up. I mean even above and beyond the ‘use enhanced stats house rule mod’ that I have been giving all the creatures. Its becoming increasingly clear that I need to be paying attention to the powers I give the monsters and make sure that they deal real damage and also generally just pump them up with some extra powers or enhance some of the powers the monsters already have. The Dark Elf encounter really stood out in this regard because my players just stomped that encounter and I really did not do much to upgrade it.

This is not actually that big a deal. I don’t find it all that hard to enhance the monsters to make them challenging. 4E’s monster design model pretty much means I just have to come up with a few good powers or enhance the ones the monster already has and I can give the monster anything I want so this is not actually that big a deal though I have to make sure I do this. I’ve also decided that I need to add something for Lurker’s in my basic enhanced monster house rule mod as it turns out that their really is no place for a weak monster class role. I invariably just change the creatures role to something that is not a Lurker. I think what I’ll do is give all non minion Lurker’s an extra action point. That fits what this monster role wants to do in any case – get in there and cause as much mayhem as possible and then get out. Giving them a bonus action point should do that nicely.


Aubrey the Malformed wrote:
Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:
Bit of a quandary really.

Well, not really - if killing them keeps them on their toes, they should be pretty alert right now.

I have found in my own games that the PCs are not normally mortally challenged very often. I think I had maybe one of two bona fide deaths (under the standard rules, not the variant you use, which increases potential lethality) but I have also found that being reduced to 0hp (a not-infrequent happenstance) and rolling death saving throws has a similar salutory effect.

What we eventually found was that going down and making the death saves just did not seem all that big a deal unless half the party was dropping and there was going to be some problem with getting healing before a 3rd death save would have to be made. As that circumstance is pretty extreme going down itself started to seem pretty minor - its more or less the same as being knocked prone. In fact we got to the point where there where times when the guy that was lowish on HPs was the one being picked to stand in front of the monster - it can save on hps since being in negatives is not an issue unless your getting on toward negative bloodied and any healing brings you back to 0 first and then gives you the hps. So it can make sense to take the big hit go to -20 and then get the healing.


Its been a while since I last ran my 4E Scales of War campaign, and the numbers may be off slightly, but your comment about the Drider Battlelord did bring something to mind. At the late-Heroic tier onwards I did see the damage output drop off. Using the monster generation rules, with a rule of thumb of level+8 average damage for a standard attack, did reign things in... so in the case of the L15 DB instead of D12+8 (average 14.5) I would be going with 2D12+15 (average 28, including a 25% bump for being a Brute). This really began to make foes dangerous, made the attack denial powers that characters had feel like a real benefit and try to match the increased healing capability that is available. A quick eyeball of defences and modification to level+12 (with +2/-2 if a strong or weak defence) means most creatures can be effective with minimal modification... as you get used to it you can do it on the fly, to reduce preparation.

Solos however, as I am sure you know, tend to be major overhauls.... ;-)


Ylissa wrote:

Its been a while since I last ran my 4E Scales of War campaign, and the numbers may be off slightly, but your comment about the Drider Battlelord did bring something to mind. At the late-Heroic tier onwards I did see the damage output drop off. Using the monster generation rules, with a rule of thumb of level+8 average damage for a standard attack, did reign things in... so in the case of the L15 DB instead of D12+8 (average 14.5) I would be going with 2D12+15 (average 28, including a 25% bump for being a Brute). This really began to make foes dangerous, made the attack denial powers that characters had feel like a real benefit and try to match the increased healing capability that is available. A quick eyeball of defences and modification to level+12 (with +2/-2 if a strong or weak defence) means most creatures can be effective with minimal modification... as you get used to it you can do it on the fly, to reduce preparation.

Solos however, as I am sure you know, tend to be major overhauls.... ;-)

Well this was a bit of an outlier - usually if you stick to monsters done from Darksun on you don't get this kind of an extreme. One does have to keep an eye out for this sort of thing.

That said 2d12+15 sounds about right for a standard type attack. Though level +12 for defenses is actually a tad on the low side. Always tricky of course because I don't really think a baseline bonus is really always the answer here. Level +12 might be great for an 8th level party and a joke for a 28th level party.

All that said I'm not really looking for a method to make it so I can eyeball my monsters and run them without prep...as a rule I've found that I get memorable encounters when I have good monsters and adding some enhancements to a monster in 4E is pretty darn easy so I'll probably just go through the effort of trying to remember to beef them up myself.


I would definitely use the new monster maths for monster damage and defences. It makes a huge difference. Players definitely don't slack off!

Anyway, I build all my own monsters so this isn't so much of a problem for me.


Tinker Tailor Soldier Spider

Well my Players have finished up my adventure Tinker Tailor Soldier Spider. As this was an investigative adventure I provided them a write up at the end of every session in order to help keep everyone up to speed when we played the next session.

Happily the majority of my players seem to like these write ups - well they like them more then doing whatever it is they are supposed to be doing at their jobs anyway, so they read them and as this adventure got pretty complex there was a tendency for the group to review the email at the start of the next session so I certianly felt like the effort I put into the write up was well spent time.

In any case I now have a whole write up of what my players did in this adventure which I'll post here, with a spoiler tag due to length.

Spoiler:
Chapter 12: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spider

Day 1:

Wojtek’s Investigators return to Telhran and decide to check with the Cavalier mail service to see if they received anything of note. While heading into the Cavalier Lodge they notice an individual is taking particular interest in them. When the individual realizes that Wojtek’s Investigators have recognized that he was paying particular attention to them he starts to try and walk away. When Wojtek’s Investigators start to give chase he tries to run but being a rather out of shape portly individual he is quickly nabbed. At this point he begins to start sputtering and pleading for his life. With a little effort Wojtek’s Investigators manage to get out of him that he was being paid by some non-nondescript well armed fellows to keep an eye on the Cavalier Lodge but that he had special instructions to keep an eye out for some of the members of Wojtek’s Investigators. In particular Gladness, Slick Rick and Daneel. Blubbering for what he seems to believe is his life the low life also tells Wojtek’s Investigators that he has some information’s to trade for his life. It turns out that he had paid off a waif to follow the nondescript individuals back to their base which turns out to be an old (and hence technologically advanced) Fish Processing Plant in the South Docks.

Wojtek’s Investigators check their mail at the Cavalier Lodge but find nothing for them or for the mail boxes of Spider’s Henchmen that they know of. At this point they decide to go to the Fish Processing Plant to investigate.

At the Fish Processing Plant they end up in a fight with a powerful cell of Spiders Operatives and during a gruelling battle...

End Session #1

The PCs are forced to retreat with Krystrid and Bane both dieing in the bloodbath. However during the combat they are joined by Izzera who is an associate of Eligos the Sage and had in fact gone to look for Wojtek’s Investigators at the Cavalier Lodge and learned that they had gone to the Fish Processing Plant. He tells Wojtek’s Investigators that Eligos the Sage would like to meet with them. However brutally depleted from the battle in the Fish Processing Plant Wojtek’s Investigators decide to return to their secret base below the old Chariot Arena and spend the night recovering.

End Session #2

Day 2:

Wojtek’s Investigators go to meet Eligos the Sage and their they encounter Eligos and his manservant Pollard but also two other associates of Eligos, Celeste and Gillian Smoke of Tymora’s Hand.

Eligos, along with Celeste and Gillian Smoke tell Wojtek’s Investigators an elaborate story. The highlights of which are as follows:

Eligos has been hearing rumours of some kind of Secret Nobles Intelligence Cabal from his contacts in the Seat of the Western Throne. What makes the information of particular interest is apparently this Secret Nobles Cabal has access to a source of information so good that the nobles where not willing to give it up to the Military Intelligence Branch – which would be official intelligence organ in Old Haddath.

A Male of noble birth or at least with an expensive education wrote Eligos an unsigned letter informing him that he had a leak in his organization. Supposedly there was a Wizard in the lands of the Chin-Tuo that, while pretending to report to Eligos was actually a member of the Clergy of the Lord of Hate.

Eligos knows that there is no such member in his organization but thinking that their might be a leak in some ally’s organization sent Celeste to investigate. What Celeste found was that there was no such wizard but in fact a Chosen on a Black Dragon. Celeste made her escape and reported that this was a set up to Eligos.

Eligos believes that only Spider would both be targeting him or his organization and also be able to arrange for a Chosen with a Dragon to lay in wait to ambush him or whoever he sent to investigate. The obvious answer is that either he was being set up by the writer of the letter that claimed their was a leak in his organization or that the letter writer believed the information he was passing on to Eligos but the information was in fact planted in his ear. Eligos believes that it may be the latter because the letter writer claimed to have some kind of an inside source of information. This claim has some semblance of similarity to the rumours of a secret Nobles Intelligence Cabal. Eligos believes that whoever wrote him the letter might be a member of this Secret Nobles Intelligence Cabal or be getting information fed to him from that organization.

Gillian Smoke has a separate but somewhat similar story to tell. Some weeks ago she was approached by Lord Commandent Amelia Firedancer of the Imperial Scouts. Amelia Firedancer told her a story about a Chin-Tuo Merchant.

It seems that a Chin-Tuo Merchant had believed he was supplying a secret camp of Clan Crane when he learned that it was actually a camp for training what sounds very much like Spider’s Operatives.

The Merchant carried this information to a detachment of the Imperial Scouts led by one Jelik Sandstorm. The Merchant convinced Jelik Sandstorm that he had vital information containing the location of this secret base and wanted it passed on to the Old Haddath Military. He gave Jelik Sandstorm a sealed letter which contained directions on where the merchant was hiding. Apparently the Merchant wanted the Old Haddath Military to contact him (presumably to escort him back to Telhran) and in return he would tell the powers that be where the secret base was.

Jelik Sandstorm brought this sealed letter to Amelia Firedancer, she reported its contents to the Military Intelligence Branch.

She was told that, by direct order of the Seat of the Western Throne (i.e. the Emperor) itself there where to be no distractions and the letter was not going to be investigated and no one from the Old Haddath Military would try and contact the merchant or get the information he apparently had on a secret base for training Spider’s Operatives.

Amelia Firedancer apparently did not agree with this order but her hands where tied. So she approached Gillian Smoke who she pruivately knew was a Member of Tymora’s Hand. Amelia Firedancer Told Gillian Smoke the above story about the merchant and asked if Tymora’s Hand would investigate. Amelia Firedancer verbally gave Gillian Smoke the secret directions to the hiding place of the merchant.

Gillian Smoke agreed but told Amelia Firedancer not to tell anyone that Tymora’s Hand was looking into this merchant.

Gillain Smoke and several agents of Tymora’s Hand traveled to the lands of the Chin-Tuo to meet the merchant. When they arrived and followed the rather Byzantine directions to the hiding place of the merchant they found that the merchant had been killed. This was an isolated rural location the those that had done the killing had not cleaned up their mess. Gillain Smoke is convinced that this was a killing by Spiders Operatives – and that Spider’s Operatives believed that the murder would never be discovered by anyone who would recognize their work. They where sloppy and did not take any counter measures to throw off that they where the perpetuators. Of course only someone familiar with Spiders Operatives would recognize their work.

Gillian Smoke believes that only someone that was aware of the contents of the sealed letter that was brought to Amelia Firedancer could have found the merchants hiding place. The contents of this letter went to someone who reported it to Spider.

That person was presumably not Amelia Firedancer because Amelia Firedancer would not tell Gillian Smoke about the merchant unless it was a trap to attack agents of Tymora’s Hand but Tymora’s Hand was never attacked.

Hence someone got the letter or a detailed rendition of its contents either before or after Amelia Firedancer had the letter in her possession but did not know that Tymora’s Hand was looking into this.

Eligos wants the PCs to investigate, as there is clearly a leak or maybe two in the upper hierarchy that lead back to Spider. Eligos believes that the silver lining with this leak is that it might lead the PCs back to Spider herself. If Spider has an asset able get information from the highest intelligence organization in the land then that asset has some way to communicate with Spider – almost certainly can get to Spider with very short notice night and day to pass on critical new information and therefore there is a chance that one could follow this asset right back to Spider’s Lair.

The PCs take this information and go and visit Lord Commandent Amelia Firedancer of the Imperial Scouts. She informs them that the ship they are associated with, The Ocean Empress, has been seen with monstrous amphibians at night and that it has the military very nervous and they are going to commandeer the ship if they are not satisfied that it is safe.

The PCs decide to ask Amelia Firedancer some questions before they go and investigate the Ocean Empress. They tell her they believe that there is a leak in high places. Amelia Firedancer says that the only people she told about the letter are Gillain Smoke and the other members of the Military Intelligence Branch – of course her subordinate Jelik Sandstorm also knew about the letter as he brought it to her.

Amelia Firedancer tells the PCs that the other members of the Military Intellegence Branch are:

1. Granny Zith – Office of Internal Control. She reports directly to Ferik Earth Commander of The Watch.

2. Admiral Poucom Zentali – Office of Supply and Logistics (Note the surname Zentali is an old noble house, now defunct). He does not directly report to anyone but is also the admiral of the navy and has contacts among the nobles, bureaucrats and merchants.

3. Lord Commandent Vindelve Blizzard – Office of Aliens. He reports to Lord Commander Ezrik Hightide, Commander in Chief of the Old Haddath Military but would also work closely with Ferik Earth Commander of The Watch until such time as Telhran is no longer under Martial Law.

4. Amelia Firedancer is also a member of the Military Intelligence Branch – Office of External Threats. She would report directly to Lord Commander Ezrik Hightide – though mainly in her role as Lord Commandent of the Imperial Scouts.

You guys know from Blessed of Hern that Ferik Earth at least is not the source of the leak. They know that Ferik Earth is secretly a member of the Worlds Temple and that the World’s Temple is trying to cover up that this whole mess was somehow started by the Church of Kezeus. The World’s Temple’s objective is to either somehow use their inside information to come out of this whole invasion mess looking like the hero’s of the Haddath Empire – or at a minimum cover up the fact that the Church of Kezeus is in some manner responsible. However the fact that you guys know that the Church of Kezeus is somehow responsible means that you have a big Bullseye painted on your backs as far as Ferik Earth is concerned – however the common Watchmen thinks your hero's. One of, heck maybe the greatest group of investigators in Telhran.

After Talking with Amelia Firedancer the PCs decide to investigate the Ocean Empress and hide on the ship waiting for night. When night falls a bunch of Sahuagin board the ship and get into a combat with the PCs…

End of Session #3

The PCs continue to battle the Sahuagin finishing of their priests and generally having the upper hand...

End of Session #4

The Battle on the Ocean Empress comes to a climax when the Sahuagin Baron finally manages to succsessfully engage the PCs and goes into a frenzy of destruction but the PCs overcome and manage to catch and kill him when he tries to make his escape...

End of Session #5

The PCs remain on the Ocean Empress and take turns standing watch waiting to see if their are any other attacks on the Ocean Empress but the night is quite.

Day 3:

In the morning the PCs speak to the workers and find that the workers believe that the ship is haunted as work has been plagued by minor acts of sabotage. Tools that will be needed go missing. Part of a days work here and there is ruined etc. Minor stuff that is slowing down the outfitting of the Ocean Empress but nothing dramatic that is going to stop her from being fit to sail in the reasonably near future. Why Sahuagin might engage in such micky mouse stuff remains unclear.

The PCs return to the problem of trying to figure out where the leak is. They decide to set up a sting and deliver information to the three members of the Military Intelligence Branch besides Amelia Firedancer. They devise plans indicating that if one shows up at a certain location then one can get information regarding Heldane Crafter, Blessed of Hern and Mordev Zugmatov. The name dropping is intended to be such that only someone who knows who these people are and rates them as important would pass that information on to Spider. The PCs know that Spiders knows these names – or at least some of them – as she has in the past attempted to have Blessed of Hern killed – presumably because he knew about Heldance Crafter and Heldane Crafters search for Mordev Zugmatov. They use various measures to get this information into the hands of a waif known to report to Granny Zith – Office of Internal Control as well as getting this into the hands of a Watchman that would report to Vindelve Blizzard – Office of Aliens and finally a ship captain who would take the message to Admiral Poucom Zentali – Office of Economics and Logistics. Then they wait to see which one of these members would recognize the names and report it to Spider. However Spider’s Operatives never show up.

Day 4 and 5

With that plan dead in the water the PCs decide to see if they can go at this from another direction. The rumours of a Nobles Intelligence Cabal. If there is such a Cabal it might include one of the heads of the Noble Houses and maybe this head of a Noble House is also working for Spider and maybe he knows knows enough about who Blessed of Hern, Heldane Crafter and Mordev Zugmatov are that he would carry such information back to Spider and she would investigate. The PCs devise a scheme to get someone in the guise of a servant of a nobles house to pass on letter to each Noble House dropping the names of Blessed of Hern etc. and purporting to have information regarding them at a specific location – one for each noble house but again no one ever shows up.

With this plan too dead in the water the PCs decide to return to Amelia Firedancer – head of the Imperial Scouts and a member of the Military Intelligence Branch and tell her that Sahuagin where on the ship but that they have been dealt with. Amelia Firedancer is surprised at the news. There have never been reports of Sahuagin in the vicinity of Telhran to her knowledge. There is a powerful tribe of the things just inside the Darkwood around the Ruins of Saltmarsh and they do engage in on again off again war with the Lizard Folk near Blackwall Keep but those locations are far inland.

Knowing that both Vindelve Blizzard and Amelia Firedancer report to Ezerik Hightide and that he therefor might be the leak the PCs ask Amelia Firedancer to pass a message dropping the names of Blessed of Hern etc. to him and see if he can be entrapped in their sting but no Spiders Operatives ever show up and when the PCs again talk with Amelia Firedancer she says that Ezerik Hightide was very confused by her message and did not seem to have any clue why she was passing on information regarding the names of some random people.

With this sting also seeming to lead to a dead end the PCs decide to go and talk with some of the people that might have been involved with this themselves. The choose to visit Granny Zith first as her role as Office of Internal Control means she is the Official Head of Counter Intelligence in Telhran – Spider would be right down her bullywack.

The PCs tell her that their is a leak in the Military Intelligence Branch and test her reaction. She expresses serious doubt that there is such a leak and seems to be telling the truth as she understands it. Granny Zith does know about the Letter containing the secret location of the Chin-Tuo Merchant – stating that she remembers that Amelia Firedancer brought such a letter to the attention of the Military Intelligence Branch. She in fact discuss the contents of the letter and the possibility that there were operatives of the enemy being trained and coming to Telhran with Ferak Earth – the Head of the Watch. It is an interesting possibility that the idea that the enemy is sending operatives to cause trouble in Telhran rings true for Granny Zith. Ferak Earth was interested and their was some discussion on how one might stop such individuals from entering Telhran but with the refugee problem so large it was felt that this probably would not work. At the next meeting of the Military Intelligence Branch Amelia Firedancer and Vindelve Blizzard both stated that they had direct orders indicating that nothing would be done regarding this merchant and there where to be no distractions from the defence of Telhran. Vindelve Blizzard seemed to feel that this was a good order while Amelia Firedancer felt that it was mistaken.

The PCs then asked Granny Zith if she knew of Spider and Granny Zith expressed that she had heard the name whispered here and there but believes that there is no actual Spider per se but instead just a series of small groups of operatives of the enemy causing trouble.

The PCs decide then to go and talk with Vindelve Blizzard. They manage to talk their way past his military secretaries and meet with him. When they tell him that there is a leak in the Military Intelligence Branch he explodes into a diatribe noting that their is obviously a leak as the PCs are here and threatening to have arrested whoever leaked this information to the PCs (which would be Amelia Firedancer via Gilian Smoke via Eligos the Sage). After slightly calming him down the PCs opine that they mean a leak besides themselves. Vindelve Blizzard states that it is excessive to assume that their are all these leaks and that it stands to reason that whoever leaked the information to them is probably the source of all leaks...or maybe its the Chin-Tuo because they have shifty eyes.

Having asked their questions the PCs are about to leave when Daneel notices that something seems to have just occurred to Vindelve Blizzard that is making him nervous. Stopping to further question him he fesses up that the Letter containing the secret location of the Chin-Tuo merchant was handed over to the Seat of the Western Throne...well sort of...he took it back to his home and a Royal Guardsmen showed up at his door demanding the letter in the name of the Emperor. So he gave the Royal Guardsman the letter. However the PCs soon discern that all Vindelve really knew about this ‘Royal Guardsman’ was that he wore the correct livery and was of good Bakluni stock. It might not really have been a Royal Guardsman or if it really was there are 300 of them and they’d carry out such a pickup order at the request of any noble.

Vindelve Blizzard might be the leak for how to find the Chin-Tuo Merchants hiding place...but who knew that Vindelve Blizzard had the letter and what its contents were? [Points to Dave for excellent deductive reasoning]

The PCs take their leave of Vindelve Blizzard and decide to talk to Admiral Poucom Zentali, when they arrive they find him in a highly excited state as he has just received a report that Challi Assam, the PCs choice to captain the Ocean Empress was picked up by the Watch led by Ferak Earth – Head of the Watch on charges of smuggling. The charges are obviously bogus but Ferak Earth does have a bone to pick with the PCs. He however is nearly certainly not the leak because the PCs know that he is secretly a member of the World’s Temple a secret over church of Kezeus who are trying to cover up that the Haddathian Church of Kezeus somehow caused this invasion to take place – or better yet to orchistrate it so that their involvement in starting this is never found out but that they can use their inside knowledge of these events to stop the invasion and become the hero’s of the Empire. The invaders are mostly goblinoids and such and the Church of Kezeus is very humanocentric – they don’t want the Empire destroyed – they want to become the official religion of the Empire.

Even more exciting apparently the Watch Group that picked up Challi Assam was then attacked by Drow and she escaped with them. The PCs go to the location of the Drow attack and find out that the Drow emerged suddenly from the sewers when they where taking Challi Assam back to Watch Headquarters and that she along with a bunch of the Watch where knocked out by poisoned Drow crossbows. The Drow grabbed her and took her back into the sewers. Ferak Earth has stormed off to get the actual army in order to go after her. The PCs follow the trail of the Drow through the sewers deep down into the upper reaches of the Underdark where they hear Drow voices up ahead...

End of Session #6

The PCs engage the Drow in a short sharp engagement, eventually coming out on top not to much the worse for wear. Partway through the conflict they spy Challi Assam’s unconscious form and once the Drow are dealt with retrieve her unconscious body. However the Drow Poison while not apparently dangerous will render her unconscious for hours yet. In the meantime there is still the problem of the Imperial Army that Ferak Earth is presumably leading this way to ‘defeat the Drow and recover the smuggler’.

End of Session #7

After retrieving the unconscious Captain Challi Assam Daneel manages to wake her using a vial of anti poison he has been wandering around with for a long time. However when the PCs question her about why she was captured all she can tell them is she believed that Ferak Earth seized her on the trumped up smuggling charges probably as leverage against them and has no idea whatsoever why the Dark Elves grabbed her.

With Ferak Earth and the Imperial Army already searching for the kidnapped Captain Challi Assam the PCs realize that they might be in something of a bind. While the Watch respects them as famous investigators the army, especially the regiments pulled in from neighboring cities does not know them so well. If Ferak Earth where to order the soldiers to attack the PCs down here the soldiers would likely do so and that would serve Ferak Earth no matter the outcome. Should the soldiers overwhelm the PCs well then Ferak Earth has eliminated them and if the PCs, as is likely considering their power, kill all the soldiers they would be the perpetrators of a massacre of the Haddathian military – all backs would be turned to them in Telhran. The PCs must make their escape from the fringes of the Underdark without the military catching them. Once they are back topside in the city itself Ferak Earth's hands are much more tied in what he can get away with.

With that in mind the PCs race for the surface managing to make the key bottleneck in the entrance to the sewers just ahead of the Imperial military and from there back topside.

They return to their secret base under the old Chariot Stadium with Challi Assam where upon they rest as well as plan out how they will get Challi Assam to and from the Ocean Empress so that she can oversee work on the ship without the danger of being randomly grabbed in the streets.

Day 6

With the Dark Elf business behind them and a brand new day dawning the PCs head for Tasty Tillies to get some breakfast.

On their way to breakfast they hear talk in the streets and being announced by criers and such about the war effort. For the first time in this war things are finally looking up. The Slave Army the PCs led to the Battle of Kuzots and the resulting victory spurred some of the other factions in the Empire to make some moves of their own and the Goblinoid Armies in the south beginning to lay siege to Xak Merrith have suffered a defeat at the hands of the Realist Faction of the Cavaliers and the War Mages of Xak Merrith. No doubt the Goblinoids will regroup and return but the people of the capital are ecstatic at finally hearing about victories instead of the constant stream of defeats that had been all the news they have heard for more then a year know. Somewhat conspicuously however there has been no news from the North of the Empire among the lands of the Chin Tuo.

During their meal they are approached by a butler type who introduces himself as the Butler for House Zanyir. His Mistress, Lady Lura Zanyir would like a word with Wojtek’s Investigators. The PCs agree to go and see her right after they finish breakfast.

Once at the Zanyir compound they are taken to the tea room where Lady Lura Zanyir proceeds to interrogate Wojtek’s Investigators as to the whereabouts of her step son and the groups namesake Wojtek. When informed that he met an unfortunate end she flies into a rage demanding to know why any of them are still alive if her step son is dead. Surely it is their continued existence is clear evidence that they failed in their, implicit, duty to protect her noble step son with their lives. Angered Gladness counters Lady Lura Zanyir's rage with implied threats to her personal safety at this moment if she does not shut up. At this Lady Lura Zanyir ends the audience but as her butler leads them from the residence he tells the PCs that, should something unfortunate befall them, they should think of House Zanyir as their life fades away. He also implies that the PCs could resolve this unfortunate state of affairs with reasonable compensation to House Zanyir for their failings.

This leads the PCs to debate a number of possibilities – attack House Zanyir before they have a chance to hire assassins or some such, pay the compensation demanded or just deal with any assassination attempts when they come up. Its decided that slaughtering a noble family is probably not a good idea – would surely anger the other noble family’s and its difficult to do any business in Telhran with all the nobles aligned against you. They decide to consider paying the blood money but not at this time.

With all this business behind them it is finally time to return to the business at hand…figuring out where the leak is. They now know that Vindelve Blizzard had the letter and gave it to some mysterious Royal Guardsman but they don’t know who it was that told the Guardsman that he had the letter.

The PCs decide to go an talk with Eligos the Sage who asks them why he is hearing rumours that all the nobles are getting weird letters dropping names unknown to them but names that Eligos himself has heard from the PCs themselves. The PCs describe the gist of their idea of ferreting out the mole by dropping names that only Spider would likely find of interest and Eligos comments that it’s a good plan but one they should consider using not so much to find the mole but instead they might consider using it to follow the mole back to Spider once they have figured out who the mole is.

Going back over their list of suspects the PCs decide that maybe now is the time to pay Ezerik Hightide a visit. As commander in chief of the Imperial Military both Amelia Firedancer and Vindelve Blizzard reported to him and he might have be the leak.

After paying him a visit they learn that he knew of the existence of the letter but never actually saw it. The PCs also learn that he did in fact give the orders that the military not move on this information though Ezrik Hightide did so in the knowledge that the Emperor would not have condoned any distractions from the defence of Telhran, at least not until the threat of Minitours invading Telhran from the sea is dealt with.

While they have Ezrik Hightides attention the PCs also convince him to send an order to Ferak Earth telling him to cease with his intrigues against them. It may not actually put a stop to such intrigues but it certainly ties Ferak Earth’s hands in terms of using the Imperial Military to perform them.

As the PCs are reasonably convinced that Ezerik Hightide is not the source of their leak they decide to go back and see the Admiral Poucom Zentali as they are running out of viable suspects and, in any case they never really had a chance to talk with him before they went racing off to save Challi Assam from Dark Elves.

Admiral Poucom Zentali turns out to be a font of information…if rather on the dim side. When the PCs interrogate him he gives up that he had mentioned the letter to some noble acquaintances and after further pressing they learned that Admiral Poucom Zentali was not just a member of the Military Intelligence Branch but that he was part of another organization which he calls the Nobles Intelligence Cabal. This piques the PCs interest. This Nobles Intelligence Cabal sounds a lot like the rumour Eligos the Sage mentioned. Maybe one of these nobles wrote the letter to Eligos that turned out to be a trap.

The PCs learn that there are four members of the Nobles Intelligence Cabal. Apparently the Nobles Intelligence Cabal came into existence because some nobles came upon an intelligence source so good that they wanted to exploit it. The intelligence source was one Grelmar Cloud who was apparently an ex ,member of the Lord of Hates Clergy. The other members where Admiral Poucom Zentali himself who’s main function on the Nobles Intelligence Cabal is to pass on any information of military value to the Military Intelligence Branch. There is also Adonis Silistine, nephew of the Emperor, and Adell Delani of the House Delani. Poucom Zentali states that it was Adonis Silistine and Adell Delani who are the movers and shakers in the Nobles Intelligence Cabal.

The PCs decide that they suspect that this Grelmar Cloud may not really be a double agent so much as a triple agent but its unlikely that he wrote the letter that was sent to Eligos the Sage. They choose to start their further investigations with Adell Delani. For one he is easier to get in contact with then Adonis Silistine. They pay a visit to the Delani compound, the Delani are a well known noble family in Telhran in large part because of their philanthropy but also because they alone of the nobles are more then just Bloodlined Haddathians, they also have angelic blood in them, they are Aasimar as well as Bloodlined Haddathians.

When the PCs announce to the doorman of the Delani Compound that they are Wojtek’s Investigators and are here regarding an investigation they find that, as usual, that opens doors to them and Adell Delani agrees to an immediate audience.

From Adell Delani the PCs learn that it was in fact him that wrote Eligos the Sage the anonymous letter that turned out to have been an ambush. Adell states that he Grelmar Cloud related to the Nobles Intelligence Cabal that he had heard from his sources that their was a leak in Eligos organization. Adonis Silsitine did not seem to feel that Eligos mattered and did not really plan to do anything with the information of he (Adell Delani) knew of Eligos the Sage and knew that he was more then just the well learned socialite that Adonis believed him to be so he decided to write a letter warning Eligos. Of course he did not expect the information to lead to an ambush.

The fact that this information was apparently faulty seems to bring fourth a series of doubts in Adell Delani's mind regarding Grelmar Cloud. He relates to the PCs about how, when they first started getting information from Grelmar Cloud it was a real bonanza. Grelmarr Cloud warned them about a Minitour attack on the City of Metho near to Telhran. It was a huge victory – the first time the minitours had been thrown back into the sea. It was a big deal for Adell Delani as it cemented Grelmar Cloud's claims to being a double agent. However from that point forward the information started to get less and less useful. It was always accurate but just not as important as anything that had come before. The warnings about other cities that where going to be attacked by the minitours came to late to save the cities, where the goblinoid horde was headed turned out to be true but something the Imperial Scouts already knew or would soon know in any case, counter intelligence that, instead of grabbing actual operatives tended to just lead to the apprehension of elements of Telhran's criminal underground.

Adell has been growing ever more concerned and even suspicious himself and well, with the PCs in the room, he know fears that Grelmar Cloud has been feeding them chicken feed while gaining valuable information from them.

Adell Delani agrees to participate in dropping the names Heldane Crafter and Blessed of Hern to Grelmar Cloud to see if Grelmar Cloud will lead them to Spider. But first the PCs want to check on Adonis Silistine to insure that he is not the actual leak.

Day 7 and 8

They get Adell Delani to have Adonis give them an invite for a meeting which takes a few days and then the PCs are off to the very heart of Old Haddath...the Citadel of the West, AKA the Seat of the Western Throne. Located in the most westerly part of all the Isle of Haddath on an island attached to Telhran by a Causeway stands the ancient Citadel. The PCs travel across this causeway and a Royal Guardsmen guides them to their meeting with Adonis Silistine in the inner keep. Along the way they encounter several interesting sights including getting a reasonably up close look at The Nelphia – the last airship as well as the Dauntless lying on its side below it. Originally the second last airship but know salvaged for parts to keep The Nelphia aloft. The PCs also encounter Moon's Light, the Silver Dragon who is the personal ally and mount of the hero Kerak Forager, who held the Haddath Pass open single handedly for a day and a night when Xak Channrath experience the Curse of Night and descended into darkness being overrun by undead. Kerak Forager is credited with saving 10,000s of refugees from that doomed city as the fled through the Haddath Pass. Though none of the stories regarding that fateful day mention a Dragon. In any case apparently Kerak Forager is a friend of the Emperor and staying in the Citadel of the West and his Dragon has just taken over one of the towers much to the dismay of the servants – who nonetheless have decided not to take it up with the Dragon.

The PCs meeting with Adonis Silisitine is not as civil as their meeting with Adell Delani, Adonis seems far less willing to believe that Grelmar Cloud could be betraying them. Still the PCs do learn one last piece of new information here – apparently it was Adonis himself who sent the Royal Guardsman to retrieve the letter from Vindelve Blizzard. When Admiral Poucom Zentali brought the news of the existence of the letter it had somehow been decided by the Nobles Intelligence Cabal that maybe the letter was worth a look. So he had a Royal Guardsman retireve it, Admiral Poucom Zentali new who had it.

Adonis noted that the letter just seemed like so much gibberish to him however and suggested that really it was Adell Delani who seemed to recognize what it was about. So far as Adonis was concerned it just had turned out not to be really worth the effort of acquiring in the first place and he lost interest in it. When questioned about what ultimately happened to the letter he notes that he is not actually sure. Was not paying that close attention to it after it became clear that it was of no interest to the Nobles Intelligence Cabal. He suspects that since Adell seemed to grasp its meaning more clearly maybe he took it.

The PCs do however get Adonis Silistine to arrange a meeting of the Nobles Intelligence Cabal where Adell will mention Heldane Crafter and Blessed of Hern. The actual meetings of the Nobles Intelligence Cabal take place in Telhran itself not in the Citadel of the West (so as not to endanger Grelmar Cloud – who claims to have to sneak away from his underground flock of worshipers of the Lord of Hate). The PCs wait hidden outside while the meeting takes place and then follow Grelmar Cloud who in fact leads them to a remote area of the Imperial Docks in the Temple District where there is a large manor house called Blackwolf Manor.

The manor house has a small lookout tower in the compound and on it the PCs can see what are, to their experienced eyes, clearly Spiders Operatives. Now the PCs know they have the place and Grelmar Cloud has raced inside. Time might now be of the essence and the PCs decide that they will break into the compound...

End of Session #8

The PCs decide to use a teleport power to enter the main manor house through the second floor. They do so and end up in a bedroom that has been used fairly recently. On the desk is a mold with led balls in it but the PCs are unclear what the mold is for. They proceed out of the bedroom and find themselves in the middle of the manor house looking down on the main floor as this area is open from the floor to the ceiling with just a walkway and a banister hugging the walls. There is a stair case heading down and the PCs use it and then head toward the back of the building. When they get to a hall that looks in on the kitchen they encounter a large very muscular Pandari covered in Clan Tattoos. He raises his spear and its on to combat. As the fight progresses the PCs find themselves initially somewhat hard pressed as a a Clan Scorpion Samurai and a Dwarven Cleric of Smitor open other doors leading to the main foyer where the parties squishies are located and if that was not enough A Zenitian packing firearms enters the second floor of the Foyer from the back of the Manor. Nonetheless even though things are somewhat touch and go for a bit there and the players find that they dip into their dailies more then they would like (as there are clearly going to be more combats today) the PCs finally begin to get the upper hand. At some point in the fight Grelmar Cloud emerges from the study carrying some kind of sphere and tries to flee out the back doors into the Manors rear courtyard. He does not get far though not being a combatant he is easily cut down. With the Clan Scorpion Samurai and the Cleric of Smitor Dead and the Zenitian fleeing the complex badly wounded the PCs offer the South Pandari Clan Warrior the option to withdraw from the hopeless combat and he takes them up on that.

End of Session #9

The PCs discern that the sphere they recovered from Grelmar Cloud is some kind of a key to a planar gate. Slick Rick uses his arcane ability and the fact that he is small and stealthy to fly around the courtyard behind the Manor trying to locate where the gate is and eventually he determines that the fireplace in the barracks is not really a fireplace but a gate. Slick Rick Returns to the rest of the party and tells them. The group then charges out the back of the Manor and begins to fight their way toward the gate. This combat seems to be just as nasty as the last one. Spiders Operatives are always challenging and their is a Psychic Sentinel capable of laying down some significant hurt along with major debuff conditions. Not to mention having interrupt powers that can really mess with the group. At one point the Daneel, the PCs Cleric tries to lay down a brutal debuff on the Psionic Sentinel only to have it redirected onto Vale, the groups defender. With the full effects of the debuff applying to Vale the normally exceptionally durable Sword Mage is suddenly easy meat and quickly shredded, though Daneel is able to eventually heal him back into the fight. Not so for Isera who gets hit by the Psionic Sentinel and eventually finished off by one of the Spiders Operatives. RIP Isera. Nonetheless, despite the difficulty of the combat eventually the PCs overcome and win.

End of Session #10

The PCs use the Planar Gate which they learn will take them to the First World, The Feywilde. Once they step through the gate they end up in a circle of large stones and sitting atop one of the stones is the person they have been chasing since the beginning. Spider to her enemies, Sigil to her Allies and too Gladness just the Lady in the Blue Dress. After Spider delivers her Evil Speech™ combat begins with Gladness expressing his undying lover for her, he then turns on his former companions and attacks, unfortunately this climatic event is marred by Gladness messing up his surprise attack and missing Daneel. For the first couple of rounds the combat seems like it might be one that is extremely difficult for the PCs. Gladness is an extremely difficult target to hit and his next attack does not miss and in fact practically guts Daneel who goes from near maximum hps to just about down in one blow. However the rest of the PCs finally get their act together and do what they do best – nerf their enemies to the point where they are inconsequential and this is Gladness’ fate. Within a few rounds he has essentially no chance to hit and is rapidly being stripped of hps. Soon Gladness is on the ground bleeding out and while it takes him a long time to die his fate is sealed. As is Spiders. While she has all the powers of a Spiders Operative and the very dangerous Psionic Sentinels it would seem that the powers alone are not what made even the Psionic Sentinels dangerous. What made them brutal was their potent abilities combined with the accurate, hard to pin down and hard hitting Spiders Operatives. Without anyone to take advantage of her powerful debuffing powers the PCs manage to simply weather the storm and slowly drag her down. Finally she dies crying out for Gladness with her last breath.

End of Session #11

End of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spider


A Steady diet of Sycophants and Ego Boosts make the Long Hard Days of Investigating Bearable
In one of my posts above I went over my vision of how the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spider adventure was supposed to work when I wrote it and here I'll look back on how it actually did play. Of course there is an adventure write up as well that gives details of what happened but here I'm more considering my expectations and how my Players actually acted when faced with the adventure.

One of the things that stuck out was that the adventure was designed so that the PCs were just meant to talk with the NPCs. This has been pretty much the one and only way they have handled all the investigative adventures the entire campaign...and yet here they suddenly decide to go and be creative just when I thought I could depend on them to do what they have always done before.

I'm not 100% sure why my Players deviated though I have a couple of ideas. The main thing for them at the beginning of this adventure was that they where tying to ferret out a mole and anyone could be the mole. They did not want to give away what they where doing for fear of tipping off the mole while failing to identify him or her themselves. The other big factor is I have a new player at the table who is unfamiliar with the groups normal tried and true routine of always talking with the NPCs to the exclusion of everything else. When he suggests a different course that won't tip off the NPCs who might be the mole the rest of my players love this idea. Nothing wrong with some innovation but they then proceed to flog this idea to death.

Hence the PCs do start by talking with the first important NPC which they think they can trust and from her get some idea of most of the people she talked too about the critical information that was leaked.

After this though they hit upon the idea of feeding the NPCs information, essentially name dropping, but they have names that they know Spider would know as these individuals are connected to whatever her master plan is in various ways but the individuals involved are not well known names. Smartly the PCs have it set up so that the names are dropped along with a specific location where more info regarding these individuals could be found, different location for each NPC that could be the mole - then the PCs lay in wait and if some one shows up they know who the mole is.

Their problem is that my adventure is such that their are two counter intelligence organizations, The Official one, The Military Intelligence Branch and a second one were the mole is located called the Nobel's Intelligence Cabal and there is a single, none to bright, common member between the two organizations. My PCs only know of the existence of the Military Intelligence Branch so they drop their info but get no bites.

Then they decide to do a broad band attempt to see if its just some how some one connected to the Nobility and hit all of them up with this planted info. But the big players in the Nobility are not the mole and again no luck...then they figure out who the people in the Military Intelligence Branch report too and they drop the information to these people and no bites...then they whine that the DM is stonewalling them and nothing is working.

Exasperated at this point I suggest they should try talking with some NPCs, or they could instead try and get the names of everyone living in the Metropolis and go door to door.

Not my favorite thing when I have to tell my PCs what to do to progress the adventure but they had some how managed to get themselves fixated on one failing idea and not deviate.

NPC conversations were not bad but not great for my Players either. The problem here was that my Players seemed to hit on the rather basic idea, pretty much off the bat, of telling every major NPC linked to this investigation that there was a leak in the Counter Intelligence Organization with the subtext being 'are you the leak? and then just making an Insight check to see if the NPC was lying. Of course the only NPC that would be lying would be the Mole himself, every other NPC believes the Counter Intelligence Organization is solid save one NPC who they get to near the end of the adventure who is having his doubts.

This means the NPCs are always found not to be lying and the players can't move forward on the basis of this skill check. What they really need to do is figure out what is going on and that means asking the right questions but here is where they pretty much never quite seem to get their act together. Over and over again when the NPC passes the 'are you the mole' insight test the players are at a loss for what they should then ask the NPC. The truth is there where only a couple of pieces of information they needed from each NPC. The big one was 'Did you know about a letter that contained the critical piece of information that was betrayed? If so where did you find out about this letter? Who have you told about this letter'?

They knew their was such a letter right at the beginning and knew that it was the contents of this letter that were key. However my players never quite seemed to grasp this element or the idea of working out some kind of systematic list of important questions. They kind of fumbled from one NPC to the next asking each a different set of questions and moving on.

Now this could have gone much worse and two elements saved this adventure. The first was blind luck. Their method of asking questions was terrible - but they got lucky at a couple of key points when they just happened to ask the right NPCs the right questions. Since they seemed to be acting randomly in this regard I think it is perfectly possible that they could have straight out messed this up. I'm certain that if it had been other NPCs that had the critical answers this would have gone sideways when they simply failed to ask the important questions of the right NPC.

The other saving grace was that my PCs were the right status and level to get through the frustrations of this adventure...

They where essentially running on ego boosts - that was what was saving this adventure. My PCs Investigation Company, Wojtek's Investigators, is, by this point in the campaign, considered the premier investigating outfit in the city. They have caught a serial killer, solved a murder spree, been instrumental in returning the city to peace from a covert shadow war and even led a Slave Army to win the first great victory in the current war. They are major heros and in various ways the NPCs are constantly acknowledging that. They'll want to talk to a noble about their investigation and the Butler will say something like "Oh just a minute while my master cancels his lunch date with Lady Macbeth in order to speak with you". In another scene there is a stick in the butt Military Commander who 'does not have time to speak to any investigators' and his secretary suggests that he will just put an appointment in his date book and Stick in the Butt will show up and the PCs will be there and he'll have to answer their questions then. The Watch and the rest of the plebeians fawn over them etc, etc.

Hence my players are frustrated in making progress in the adventure but they sure like the ego boosts they have been getting every 10 minutes.

This was pretty critical in this adventure because, while I interspersed some sizable combats, there where three sessions that where just nothing but this clue hunting and no combats so this adventure had a lot of long non combat periods in it - endless ego boosts allowed the players to get through that without getting really unhappy...and by the third of these sessions they where making steady progress and had learned enough to finally start asking the right questions.

In this way the Players solved the mystery and caught the Mole and when that was finally wrapped up they felt pretty pleased with themselves. The adventure worked but I kind of doubt it would have without the endless ego message. Guess I was lucky that I ran this one at higher levels.


So Long to...What was your name?
NAME OF PC: Izera
CLASS AND LEVEL: 14th Deva Psion/Wizard
Catalyst: Your just friggen unlucky – OK and the bad guys are pretty nasty
Long Version: My PCs engage another group of Spiders Operatives along with a Psychic Sentinel and it’s the usual fairly tough combat however I’m a tad surprised at this death. The combat was difficult but this player just has bad luck. Psychic Sentinel opens up with a couple of its signature potent powers and its enough to drag down two of the PCs but this is not really a panic button combat for my group. The Cleric will get the guys back up without to much difficulty. If anything my players are not so much scared of this combat but scared that they are using to much of their limited daily resources while being pretty certain that the biggest fight is yet to come. They are near certain that they are just about to meet the fabled Spider they have been on the tail of for most of the campaign and expect that to be the real fight of their lives. Nonetheless several PCs do drop and the cleric is in no position to react to their dropping. By our house rules its an immediate death save and on a 1 perma death. Well one of the players rolls the fated 1 and dies. What’s most unique is this is the replacement character for one of the PCs that bought the farm in the battle at the start of the adventure and that PC had not really been around all that long. Essentially I’ve got one player that has now lost 4 characters. Going over the rest of my group about ½ of them have lost a character and ½ have not lost one with one interesting exception of a ‘Plot Death’ which I’ll do a write up of shortly but the basic idea with a ‘plot death’ is its one where the Player and I work out that a character is going to die as opposed to the death being the result of bad luck on the battlefield. The bad luck aspect is unfortunate less because of the death itself, though the lethality of my campaign is surprisingly high currently, but more because all the bad luck is focused on one player. No one really wants that – its better if the punishment gets spread around a bit. As it stands this player is loosing characters so fast that no one can remember their names.


The Poor Lone Solo
The last combat of my Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy adventure had a couple of interesting elements. One of which I’ve probably touched on before but maybe bears repeating. I’ve been having my PCs fight a series of conflicts with groups of specially designed bad guys called either Spider’s Operatives or Psychic Sentinels and they tend to show up together. The brutally lethal combat that took place at the start of this adventure that killed 2 PCs was made up of such a group and this combo takes out another PC (described above) near the end of the adventure.

I had kind of thought that the killing effectiveness was simply that Psychic Sentinels have seriously potent powers but in retrospect its not that, or not just that. The Players go through the final encounter with the Big Bad Solo – Spider. Thing is she is a Solo with high hps that that is a combination of Spiders Operatives and Psychic Sentinels. She has all of their powers combined. The interesting thing is she turns out not to be that tough of an encounter. Looking back over all these lethal fights I think its really less the potent powers of the Psychic Sentinels that are killing the PCs but the weaker, though still good, Spiders Operatives that are really getting the PCs. Essentially it’s a case of the Psychic Sentinels showing off their potent powers and the PCs focusing everything on them but that often leaves the Spiders Operatives to whittle at the PCs with little disturbance and get in the face of the PCs squishies and such. The PCs having to deal with both is difficult for them and it leads to deaths.

Looking back over my posts I note that the reverse of this kind of happened as well. When I first introduced my PCs to the Spiders Operatives, who are 14th level Standard Soldiers with an awesome suite of defence powers and fantastic accuracy my players are very impressed but when one actually looks at the combats even at 10th level my players would come out on top – they might be swearing a blue streak because the Spider's Operatives always seemed to have an counter to their tricks but they did not have a counter that would save them from just taking a big hit. They'd meet Spider's Operatives from 10th through to 14th Level and at one point it came up that I never leveled the Spiders Operatives and yet they still seemed potent at 14th. If anything they seemed more potent, The actual kills the Spiders Operatives got all took place against 14th level PCs not against the 10th or 12th level PCs. The difference was that at lower levels the Spiders Operatives where the encounter while at higher levels they had support from Psychic Sentinels and it was only when I mixed these two together that I had a truly brutal combination.

When all the powers are wrapped up in a single individual, as was the case with Spider as a Solo the PCs really don’t have that much trouble despite Spiders high hps allowing her to use signature Psychic Sentinel Powers over and over again. My PCs could handle that and without support to tip things over the edge they could handle it without that much trouble.

None of this was really shocking – its really just another example of Solo’s proving not to be as potent as one would think but it did draw attention to the fact that it was not just the potency of the Psychic Sentinels Powers that where slaughtering my PCs – but really the support of the Spiders Operatives that where pushing this over the top.


And Now For a Gimmick
So I wanted to put together something special for my PCs final encounter for this adventure. Not only was it the final encounter where I try and pull out all the stops but this was to be the final confrontation with the elusive Spider who had been the main villain of the campaign up until this point. This was to be a watershed moment in the campaign. Now one of the Players Characters, Gladness had had as his background that he had once been part of her organization but all he remembered was an image of her and the rest of his life was fogged by Amnesia. With this being the big scene where this PC would finally once again meet her I decided to talk with that player and descuss what we might do for a big finale. I had a suspicion that the Player was ready to move on with a new PC and I was angling toward that myself as this would pretty much be the final scene in this PCs major subplot with the campaign. After this his backstory would seriously fade out. I came up with a reason a few sessions before the final encounter to stay behind and talk with this player and discussed options about how this scene might go down.

I pretty much put three options on the table. A) This runs as a pretty standard combat. You meet your nemesis – probably kill her and continue adventuring. B) She has some secret mental control over the PC – uses some potent embedded psionic command to take over Gladness (Spider and all her operatives have always been essentially psionically based). In this case the PC plays along as kind of super dominated until he goes down, assuming he survives that (statistically likely) he shakes off the domination, gets brought back up by the groups cleric and participates in what will in all likelihood be putting her down. Then Gladness continues adventuring but this time there is a bit of danger that he dies instead. C) Gladness is not dominated at all – he straight out betrays the party and runs his character on my team and tries to kill the PCs.

Seems my player was keen to play a new character and liked the idea of getting to betray the rest of the group – Option C it was. Of course I was clear to the player that the rest of the party would nearly surely kill him. In fact I’ve run a slew of monsters against my group – I know how they operate and I was clear that I’d give the player a surprise round to take it to his fellow party members and then we’d be in normal initiative and I was basically sure that they would nerf him so far through the floor that he’d never get another chance to do anything cool.

I tried to give him some resources to work with. I made the battlefield have these Psychic Stones that Gladness could use as a free action if he was within 5 spaces of them to recharge a power, get a save or some healing.

Interestingly my players where pretty much on to me even before the betrayal. The players had been hypothesizing that Gladness was going to betray them in the final fight for some time. Not sure how it is that they figured this out. Admittedly I had been dropping subtle hints throughout the campaign that various significant NPCs did not trust Gladness so maybe they had picked up on this. I had figured that because I had never pulled such a gimmick before it would be a complete surprise but I guess they saw beyond this.

The Actual encounter here started off pretty well but the Player who had Gladness as a PC seemed to not fully grasp just how badly he was going to be nerfed despite my coaching that he needed to expect this. The encounter went off, I gave Gladness a surprise round after Spider made her ‘Evil Speech’, some of the players protested that they had always suspected Gladness and he should not get a surprise round on the party – I over ruled this – I’m the DM and they had not specified any particular focus on Gladness in this encounter.

Gladness makes an ‘Evil Speech’ of his own, turns around and attempts to gut the Cleric…and misses. That’s a bit anticlimactic. Still as initiative starts Spider gets a high initiative and Gladness has a Casque of Tactics so he takes her initiative and finally manages to land one of a couple of blows on the party’s cleric. Here we finally get a chance to see his striker heritage because he lays out 70 some odd damage in one blow and the Cleric immediately drops to single digits for hps.

I had though that this would be it for the Gladness but his natural defences have always been good and the round goes by with the PCs pretty much being unable to really land a solid nerf on Gladness. At this stage in the combat things are getting pretty exciting and tense. The rest of the group is pretty freaked that Gladness is going to come up again and finish off the Cleric and there is a reasonable chance that he could do so. When the second round rolls through Gladness strikes…and again misses. I actually think that the player controlling Gladness might have pulled his punches here thinking he’d wipe the floor with the rest of the group. As a DM it has taken some practice to get to the point where I’m mostly nonchalant about just trying to obliterate the party because they have a phenomenal ability to survive even brutal beats. This would be the last chance Gladness had to effect the combat and I got the impression later that the Player running Gladness regretted some of his choices in this combat in terms of laying on the hurt. Right after this the Cleric connected with a major nerf bringing Gladness' defences down and the entire rest of the party pretty much layered on the pain and penalties. Gladness was still barely standing when his next turn came up but was unable to move to get the Psychic Stones to help him and needed insanely high rolls to have a chance of even connecting with an attack. After that the Players brought him down and then started to go to town on Spider who was dangerous so long as she had had Gladness' support but was unable to really deliver killing blows just on her own. Took the PCs the whole session to finally bring her down with Gladness making death saves through most of the combat (he had a bonus on saves so there had always been a bit of a chance he’d come back).

All in all I’d say the combat started very exciting but petered out once Gladness was completely removed. Not a bad little gimmick for excitement but would probably have run better if my traitor PC had been more willing to try harder for the kills. I strongly suspect the rest of the group could have taken the heat and still come out on top and I think the traitorous Player realized that as well once it became clear that he was down and that Spider alone had no real chance of even bringing a PC down never mind that the cleric could bring them back up.

I wondered how my players might react to the betrayal and they did fine in this department. Taking it as just part of the game and asking him about what his new character was going to be as the life seeped out of the traitor Gladness. Maybe they'd have been less nonchalant if he had managed to permakill a PC himself but I doubt it. It is a mature group.


Tapping Into the Long 4E Combats
So I’ve been forced to do something I’m not a big fan of in terms of running my adventures. As I wrapped up Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I told my players what I usually do at the end of an adventure “No D&D for a couple of weeks as I need time to prep, lets play board games or Magic the Gathering”. Not normally a big deal as everyone often likes to take a bit of a break from D&D if we have been playing a lot. However it was more of an issue this time. We had been through a sizable bout of not making qorem or having other issues with being able to play D&D for a couple of months and had reverted to a bunch of board game nights. My players were itching to do some D&D and only reluctantly agreed to the two week hiatus. The real problem then came up as I started to work on the next adventure A Bubble in the Sea of Time. Pretty much real life intervened and I found that by the time my two weeks had been used up I had done nothing more then read E. Gary Gygax’s adventure Isle of the Ape which is going to serve as the setting (but not the plot) for A Bubble in the Sea of Time. I had not really had a chance to do almost anything in terms of actually writing the adventure out due to it being the beginning of December and Work and School suddenly going into crazy overdrive.

I seriously thought about telling my players that I needed an extension and that I was sorry but they would just have to wait longer for D&D because I was too busy to provide them an adventure. However thinking about it I decided against that – my players really wanted to do some D&D and I felt that between the long combats in 4E and luck of the draw in terms of the plot of the adventure I could just manage to give them a game.

The adventure starts off with a long sea voyage to get to the remote island upon which most of the adventure will take place. One of my players had put some time and effort into turning the ship the PCs would use for the voyage into a playable model. In other words there was a pretty cool ship model and there were squares on its deck so we could use it to play on. With a model of the ship and the knowledge that I was going to destroy the ship when they got to the island to strand them on it I really had no choice but to come up with a number of combats on the actual voyage so that the ship could be used in play.

In this case that would be a bonus because ‘attacked on a sea voyage’ is, in reality, a style of adventure design known as a ‘Road Adventure’ where the PCs simply go through a set sequence of encounters devised by the DM while they are on a journey from point A to point B. When I’m running these types of encounters I’m generally choosing large single daily encounters since the PCs will have had a full rest before the encounter and will have taken a full rest before they start the next one as it will take place days later along their journey. This is a good thing in this case because these big daily encounters tend to take a long time to run as the opposition needs to be able to withstand the party just unloading with all their daily powers.

Hence it dawned on me that I could skip actually designing my adventure and just design a single encounter of some creatures that will attack the ship during their voyage. I mean this did not completely get out of designing the adventure of course – eventually I’d need the whole setting but worked out that their would be three encounters before that was absolutely necessary. Two attacks during the voyage and the encounter that destroyed the ship. Though the last one might well not really count as a full encounter. The ship gets destroyed and they are in a bad situation might take much less time to resolve then a normal encounter still if I can put together two good encounters I should be able to buy myself enough time to actually write this adventure.


Very Late Era 4E Monsters and 5E
So as I’m designing one of the encounters to keep my players busy it just so happens that I find myself looking at a bunch of monsters from Revenge of the Giants which would be one of the very last 4E supplements created and noticed a pattern in their monster design different from what had come before. I’ve noted before that the evolution of 4E Monster Design went through a number of stages over the course of the edition. The Monster Manual 1 had monsters with small stat blocks meant to be simple to run. Its evocative of a belief that 4E would somehow be a fast combat edition. It soon turned out that these simple monsters provided pretty much no challenge to the PCs causing DMs to use tons of them or a bunch of Solo’s or various ideas meant to make the combats actually challenging. This worked but the result was essentially grind. Boring and weak monsters but with lots of hps threaten the PCs only through the fact that it takes the PCs a ton of time to drag them down.

Monster Manual II and the many supplements that came out at around the same time partly resolved the situation by simply upping the monster powers. This made the monsters somewhat more interesting but did not do to much to really resolve the situation. This was continued with even more powers added to the monsters of Monster Manual III and its about here that I’ll even consider using monsters from official supplements. The Monsters are usually still crap but some of them have a fair number of interesting powers and I can sometimes take them and turn them into halfway decent monsters.

After this the Darksun Monster book came out and we finally get the first of the good monsters as the combat damage formula is reworked to make the monsters real threats to the PCs and the monsters get offensive powers that can be pretty brutal. I like the Darksun book for Monsters but feel that WotC only really got it right when they got to the Monster Compendium and Threats to Nentir Vale. Here WotC finally, at least in part, dealt with the lone Solo issue and the fact that the PCs can layer on conditions and such

I had thought this was the end of the line in terms of monster development until I started looking at the monsters of Revenge of the Giants and some of the Dungeon adventures right near the very end of the edition. Suddenly we are right back to the really simple small stat blocks similar to Monster Manual 1. In fact at first glance I thought that maybe WotC had suffered some kind of trauma in reverting to broken design but I can read a 4E statblock by this point and soon realized that these monsters where balanced but very simple compared to Threats to Nentir Vale and really simple compared to my own designs which usually involve taking Threats to Nentir Vale et al. Monsters and adding even more powers – especially defensive powers.

Now I still need to really evaluate these monsters as I have not yet really used them in combats but they appear designed to work through simplicity coupled with extremely high damage output. The Monsters need few powers because they are not really hindering the PCs so much as just doing 40% of their hps in damage with a hit. It dawns on me that I think this was actually something of a test run for 5E which more or less goes with the same formula. Simple hard hitting monsters make for fast combats. Of course in 4E the combats won’t be that fast because the players will still take a long time to resolve their part of the turn but the DMs monsters should run fast. Be interesting to see how this plays out when contrasted to the ‘loads of powers’ monsters I mostly run. I’ve decided to make one of the two sea voyage encounters use pretty much monsters designed along the lines of these very late era 4E monsters just to test the idea out. Now its worth pointing out that I don’t really have a desire to make this design a standard in my campaign. I’m perfectly happy with my ‘loads of powers’ monsters and the kinds of fights that creates. Its not fast or anything – I mean not only do the PCs have a load of interrupts but most of my monsters do as well but it sure makes for complex interesting tactical combats. Still variety is everything in running a successful campaign, variety in adventures and variety in encounters. So simple hard hitting monsters seems interesting as simply another tool in the DMs toolbox.


Developing Themes with my Dragon Fights
If you happen to have read much of this thread in terms of some of the things I do while DMing my 4E campaign it should have become clear at this point that I go nuts on giving Dragons awesome boosts even for their level. They are always designed as Solo’s and I go pretty crazy in terms of giving them extra boosts to hps for their level and extra defences for their level as well as granting them potent breath weapons and a completely sick physical attack suite.

In any case my players find themselves up against a kind of iconic fight in this campaign, a Chosen on a Dragon which is a kind of encounter they have had repeatedly before and will have repeatedly again. A Chosen in my campaign is a kind of Death Knight but they are all unique and so, of course, are the Dragons they ride. I choose the fight because it’s easy to slot it into the plot line and, as I covered above, time constraints meant I was looking for a way of designing an easy encounter. In this case I choose to have the Death Knight riding a Dragon Turtle – a pretty unique monster and one I don’t really recall seeing much of in the modern era of Dungeons and Dragons. More of a 1st edition monster though I’m sure that 2nd had them as well. Looking around it turns out that 4E has no official Dragon Turtle so it comes down to building one from scratch. As I don’t consider a Dragon Turtle a ‘true dragon’ its not quiet as nasty as some of my designs in this regard but I need it to be a good challenge in a fight that will be the only combat of the day and hence one where my players will pull out all the stops so I make sure to pull out the stops on powers.

Nonetheless this encounter turned into a pretty interesting one. My players figured out some of the basics, something they have grasped before in these fights, you take out the Death Knight first as its far easier then taking out the Dragon. Makes sense as I make the Death Knights elites which means they are pretty nasty and all but nothing compared to a Dragon.

However my players did make a few errors along the way, the main one was using some of the clerics excellent nerfing powers on the Death Knight. Big mistake as the players have fought Death Knights before and should know by now that the Death Knights have a God in their back pocket that they can call on to remove all effects of a power with the Divine Keyword on them. Hence we have wasted good cleric powers and their ones that make the bad guys easier to hit. This would have been good against the Dragon Turtle because its got great defences, especially AC, as it has that turtle shell which is practically impervious – power wise the Dragon Turtle has an immediate interrupt that allows it to raise its already very high AC practically into the stratosphere.

The PCs take down the Death Knight after a number of rounds, he hurts them and all but is no match and then they turn on the Dragon. For a bit the players are doing pretty well, they daze the dragon they get it under Iron to Glass, they blind it…and then they run out of powers…Its still loaded with hps and its got pretty good physical attacks including a bite that comes with a minor ‘Chomp’ power that requires no to hit roll so long as the PC is grabbed and does lots of damage plus the Dragon has a brutal fire breath weapon that does good damage but its real potency is that it puts ongoing 20 fire damage with an after effect of ongoing 15 fire and then ongoing 10 fire etc.

The defender in the party is doing his job but he’s really just being mauled all to hell and the cleric is having a hellish time keeping him going. At one point the Defenders player says something along the lines of ‘Dammit – I’m its friggen chew toy’, Another good scene is one of the PCs puts down a zone that grants 5 hps at the start of the turn and the cleric, out of self healing and on fire, crawls into the zone just before he gets to the stage where the onging damage will bring him down. The idea is that if he goes down out of the zone the ongoing damage will kill him by taking him past negative bloodied but if he gets 5 hps every round he can reset the clock by taking the healing after the damage. So at the start of every round the cleric is ‘Going Down’ but then recovering with 5 hps. Its dangerous in my campaign because there is always the chance of a 1 on each death save.

For me however the most interesting element was one of my players observations about my Dragons that I had not really clued into before. The player commented that Dragon Fights are always marathons. It was true of this fight and, as the player noted, its been true every time they have fought a Dragon. Every other baddie is always dead before the Dragon and usually before the Dragon is even bloodied. After that it generally is the case that the Players lay on some hurt before they actually run out of juice in terms of really shutting the Dragon down. Then the hard part comes up in terms of the PCs trying to position themselves so that they don’t get to maimed by the breath weapon, by surrounding the Dragon so it can’t breath on more then a couple of them and trying to get it so that the group can manage to shift the members in contact with the Dragon out when sucking up the awesome physical suite of attacks is no longer possible for the PC in question.

The idea that this is a marathon fight is pretty stark in this fight as the ongoing fire damage has been really making it clear that its kind of a race to the bottom but it dawns on me that the players observations are actually spot on and that I had never exactly realized this before. Every Dragon Fight has been a marathon in a way that few other enemies are. My guess is that this is pretty much the combination of fantastic defences and super high hps that I give Dragons. Of course that turns things into a marathon. The fact that I usually defend other Solo’s with powers is significant as well. With Dragons its mainly about their durability – they just take it until the PCs run out of powers while the Super Ninja or the Lich has a bunch of counter powers that force the players to find is weak points and exploit that – which they do – but there are no real weak points on a Dragon – it simply sucks up whatever is thrown at it.

Thinking on it I have no issue with this. I mean I don’t want to get into a situation where every Solo is dangerous because it outlasts all the parties powers or anything but having that be true specifically of Dragons…well that is pretty neat.

In the end my PCs do take down the Dragon Turtle and no one quite dies though they make a hell of a lot of death saves. A fun if long fight.

Paizo Employee

Have you had a chance to use your simple monsters yet? How'd they turn out?

I run very tactical Pathfinder and, personally, like to swing around a quarter of monsters as straight-up bruisers. It lets players show off a bit and disengage, especially after gimmicky fights.

Cheers!
Landon


Landon Winkler wrote:

Have you had a chance to use your simple monsters yet? How'd they turn out?

I run very tactical Pathfinder and, personally, like to swing around a quarter of monsters as straight-up bruisers. It lets players show off a bit and disengage, especially after gimmicky fights.

Cheers!
Landon

The PCs are in the middle of that fight so I'll not have a real take home message until next week. That said its not really feeling like a 'thing'. The combat is dominated by minions and by unusual special circumstances where the PCs have to protect their ships captain because only she is skilled enough to close the distance between their ship and the horror inspired one they are fighting. Hence I can't really say that the 'simple monsters' has really jumped out at anyone - not even me the DM. The PCs have certainly noticed that some of the monsters are hard hitting...but in terms of PC focus tactical considerations has dominated, after that they are focused on trying to figure out how to actually win the fight (they have discerned that the haunted evil ship produces limitless enemies but not what it will take to turn this effect off) and then there are just swarms of minions so the simple monsters theme is simply being drowned out by everything else that is going on. Great fight though...when the host said we would all have to leave 45 minutes earlier then normal in the session their was widespread complaining at cutting things short.

Nonetheless it would seem I choose the wrong encounter as a test bed - to many other interesting things going on in this fight.

Paizo Employee

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:
Nonetheless it would seem I choose the wrong encounter as a test bed - to many other interesting things going on in this fight.

Sounds like a great fight, though! And a good place to use some simple monsters. I always save my simplest designs for summoned creatures, just because it's so easy to bog things down.

Cheers!
Landon


The New Party Make Up
Would not surprise me if this was my 2nd or 3rd post on this topic. Its always interesting to watch how the dynamics of a group changes as characters change. I mean I noticed this in 3rd but somehow it seems more extreme in 4E. I think I need to add a big caveat to this in the sense that if you went with the extremes in 3rd and made a party that was all mages or all martial characters or all rogues that would be even more extreme then having all arcane or all divine characters in 4E. However when we start talking about balanced parties, one that had a fighter, mage, cleric and rogue versus a leader, controller, striker and defender 4E seems to undergo significantly more changes in how the combats play out. This is more extreme as the levels go up, especially in 4E.

My gut feeling is that this has a lot to do with the fact that in 3rd the Cleric and the Druid tend to have roughly the same role in terms of their job in the party as does the rogue and the Ninja and combat is more mapped out as something with more of a 4 round baseline. In 4E the monsters high hps tends to mean that there are more rounds and more chance for variation to appear. Particularly because character classes tend to be specialists not just in their own schtick but their schtick tends to break down into either ‘minion killers’, Standard Monster specialists and solo specialists. These are distinctions that are less clear with 3rd edition characters. The result if 4E characters get switched out one might go from having a 2nd defender specializing in holding down a single threat to a striker focused on taking out standard monsters. Even switching one controller for another controller might see a change in focus from a minion focused controller to a solo focused controller and leaders are extremely varied in terms of being either healing specialist to healing+combat to healing and party mobility and saves. When what the group can do and how it does it changes the strengths and the weaknesses of the party change right along with it.

In fact my players seem very aware of this when they build their characters. These are mid Paragon characters and my players have been at this for a while so when they talk to each other about what their character can do – what it is bringing to the table they tend to talk in this kind of terminology. They know if the character is a Solo Specialist or a Minion Killer and roughly where they stand in terms of damage output. Different kinds of 4E characters get to these kinds of roles in different ways but they do generally all seem to be better or worse at dealing with these three basic kinds of threats.

So at some point back I had a party that was focused on mobility denial and just brutal against solos but at this stage my group has switched to being best at handling standards and mobility imposers (through the use of lots of forced movement powers) while actually being somewhat weak in terms of solo control and damage output. They are down to one defender as well who specializes in forcing attackers to hurt themselves and each other, excellent at dealing with singular threats but weaker at stopping large numbers of enemies. Hence my group dynamic has shifted from a situation where my placing a Solo on the table would result in the Solo being pretty screwed to a situation where I’ve noticed that my Solo’s often do fairly well because it tends to live longer and the party as a whole is less capable of putting out enough damage to kill the solo. On the other hand I’ve found that when I place half a dozen standards on the table all of them are taking heavy damage and suffering penalties which tends to see them all dropping quickly.

I’ve claimed that Elites equal to 1 less then the party is the most powerful encounter combination in 4E. I still suspect that this is true but my group is better positioned to handle this threat at this stage then I've ever seen before while their anti-solo capabilities. Still reasonable are no longer overwhelming. Minion killing is probably a little up as well though they are often frustrated that the things they can do to groups of minions are complete overkill since what they really want to do is blast 5 standards – do some damage and then have all the standards undergo the control effects that come with their powers – the minions all die once they take the damage.

Not sure if they are more or less powerful at this stage. The group is heavy on the controllers and light on other roles, especially strikers. That said they seem reasonably good at making their controllers have reasonable but not great damage output. Still there is only a single true striker in a group of 6 and I suspect that a group of 6 would, ideally, be 1 controller, 1 leader, 1 defender and 3 strikers as opposed to 3 controllers, 1 leader, 1 defender and 1 striker. Still this is mitigated when their controllers are specialists at harming groups of standards and elites. This allows them to put down enough action denial to keep them on top while they try and put out enough damage to start dropping enemies. Just seems less clean or efficient as simply having strikers move in and 'control' the standards through making them dead but it appears to work.

All that said this is a new formation of the group with 3 of the 6 players having made recent changes so it will be a bit before either myself or them have a real handle on how this group really functions.


Stop Telling Me How to Run My Adventure – Oh this is First Edition
So I’ve recently reread Isle of the Ape as it serves as the setting for my adventure Island in the Sea of Time. One element that sticks out having reread this adventure is the tendency for the written material, in this case specifically E. Gary Gygax, to tell me how to run the game. There are a couple of instances in this case but what particularly stood out was a whole section in the adventure which tells the DMing reading the adventure how to handle Bags of Holding or Portable Holes by having the DM get a pillow case and fill it with random knick knacks and then have the PCs try and fish things out of it in order to demonstrate how difficult it is to retrieve specific objects from such locations. Another example was right at the start of the adventure where the DM is told that if the players are not very specific about dragging their boat ashore then they did not do any such thing and it will be taken away by the next high tide. Another example is the directive, after Tenser demands the PCs go to the Isle of the Ape that if the Players balk then the DM had best stop the game and inform the players that they are not role playing their characters properly.

The thing is I actually kind of felt offended by the whole thing. It rankled of having some one tell me how to run my game. Not sure I felt that when I first read the module so I can guess that this was not how I was ever supposed to take the section. In fact I’m guessing that I’m only offended because I have been a DM for so many years that, at this stage, I’m offended by anyone presuming to tell me how to run my game. I’ll run it as I think best thank you very much.

Certainly telling me how I should run a Bag of Holding is irritating but I found the directive that the players loose their boat if they fail to be specific in that they take reasonable precautions rankles even more. I mean if a DM runs his or her game like that well that is any DMs prerogative but its also perfectly reasonable for the DM and players to assume that their characters now enough not to be stupid in obvious situations. For me personally I’d either assume that the PCs take reasonable steps, or for something like this I’d actually bring it up – “so what are you guys doing with the boat?” I don’t really think its reasonable to try and trick them out of the boat here. Just because the players sitting around the table drinking Cola and eating pretzels don’t necessarily recognize the obvious that does not mean that their characters, actually landing on this unexplored island don’t understand that they have this boat and need to make a decision regarding it. It seems blatantly obvious that they would recognize such a thing – being adventurers and all as opposed to a bunch of people that play D&D for 3 or 4 hours once a week.

The most outrageous directive however was the part where the DM is supposed to stop the game and tell the players that they are not role playing their characters properly…really?!? Admittedly this is an old product from way back in the day. From a reread of the 1st edition DMG a few years ago it seems this sort of thing was not all that unusual during this era. It is kind of part and parcel of the way that Mr. Gygax believed the game should be run.

It dawns on me that you’d never see this in a modern product. You might see something similar to this – a sidebar or some such in which he idea was suggested as a way of viewing the issue. Lots of that sort of thing in DMing products but the phrasing would always be much more conditional – sort of one DM offering ideas and tips to another – not a command from on high, a directive about how you as a DM must run your game.

Personally I’d say this just kind of focuses my attention on just how much the game has evolved from 1st edition and once I get over being all hot under the collar there is some interesting information here on adventure styles and how they have changed. All of these examples are pretty much elements of a view of the game which sees it as being a kind of mental challenge for the players much more then their characters. In essence 1st edition D&D is a kind of puzzle game in which the players have certain resources in terms of the abilities of their characters and they are supposed to use those resources to defeat the adventure. This contrasts, maybe a little subtly but importantly, with the modern idea of taking on the role of the character as an adventurer. Maybe the single most significant difference between the historical version of the game and the modern version would be in terms of personality – especially personality flaws. One gets the impression that 1st edition D&D – at least in the manner that Mr. Gygax ran it, had characters that did not really have personalities. They where game pieces and the players ran their characters to the very best of their ability or loose the game. I mean the module this is from, Isle of the Ape, is clearly meant to be a brutal challenge to the players. Its an unending war of attrition and maximizing resource management is paramount. Impossible to know but the background of the adventure makes me suspect that when Mr. Gygax originally ran it his group was defeated by the island and that this is supposed to be a very real possibility. Hence the idea that the PCs are playing pieces meant to be used optimally to overcome challenges.

In the modern game characters are, ideally at least, supposed to have some kind of a personality to them. This personality might lead the player to choose to have their character make less then optimal actions, even actions that the player might not make themselves under the same circumstance. They are taking on the role of their character and it is understood that their character has a personality including strengths and weaknesses that are different from the player.


Conversion Conundrums
So for my most recent opus I’ve got an adventure that partly incorporates the 1st Edition Adventure Isle of the Ape. Essentially the background for my Adventure is that there are Minotaurs raiding the coastline of the PCs homeland and the Minotaurs are from seafaring Minotaur Civilization from an island quite far from their homeland. Because of the distance the Minotaurs have set up a forward base on an island still quite distant from the PCs homeland but only 13 or so days sailing. In the last campaign I ran the hero’s found a Minotaur Journal when they captured one of their ships and the journal has made it into the hands of the current campaigns PCs. Using magic to decipher it they got their hands on a pretty detailed ships log which gave up three critical pieces of information. The coordinates of this forward base, the fact that the leader of all the Minotaurs is located there and the fact that the Minotaurs believe that if the leader of an expedition dies then it is no longer in favor with their God, Sarkatha. Boiling this down to brass tacks essentially the PCs know where the Minotaur Base is and know that if they kill the leader of the Minotaurs then the Minotaurs will return to their far off homeland and bother the Haddath Empire, the PCs homeland, no more.

I’ve chosen to place this Minotaur forward base on the far side of the Isle of the Ape and when the PCs approach the island I’m going to destroy their ship with a legendary Kraken in a rigged encounter, one they can’t beat. The sort of encounter where the Kraken does not even really have hps, just tentacles and every round their ship will undergo structural damage until, after 10 rounds or so its destroyed. The plot goal of the encounter is to strand the PCs on the island while the encounter determines such things as what the PCs manage to get off the ship, including crew, before it is dragged beneath the waves.

OK so now my PCs will crawl ashore at the starting hex where it was assumed that the PCs would land in the original Isle of the Ape and the adventure will begin, except that in the original the goal was for the PCs to find the Crook of Rao while here the PCs need to find the Minotaur Base, destroy it, and then get a piece of a ritual from the Shaman’s of three tribes on the island that are essentially friendly (which does not include the super hostile tribe that is initially encountered). When they get the ritual they will have the ability to open a gate to 1st Layer of the Abyss – the Plane of Many Portals – where it turns out that there is a portal to their homeland near to the one from the Island of the Ape. However they will first need to retrieve a magical portal opener from somewhere on the Isle of the Ape to open that portal. This all sounds highly contrived but I’ve got it set up so it makes sense within the Cosmology of my Campaign World.

So this has my PCs running all over the Isle of the Ape which is all well and good but I quickly run up against a number of issues within the conversion. Essentially the design of the original Isle of the Ape does not really work with 4E. The original Isle of the Ape was designed to be a kind of war of attrition. The PCs show up and after that the PCs get attacked constantly by random encounters. Furthermore their equipment gets damaged by the islands environment and the PCs are all susceptible to catching the nasty islands wasting disease.

It is really the first element – the endless random encounters leading to slow attrition of the PCs resources that can’t be emulated in 4E. Once the PCs take a long rest they get all their strength back. I can emulate damaging the PCs equipment and I can make them susceptible to disease but I can’t hit them with true attrition.

The thing is I don’t actually believe the Isle of the Ape ever worked, not as intended anyway. I started searching forums where gamers talked about the adventure and some of them had run it. Thing is every story I read about PCs going through the island pretty much indicated that the whole basic premise was mostly flawed. Looking at the chart that covers damaging equipment and its clear that for the most part the PCs vital equipment is really pretty safe. Most PCs in 1st edition would keep their excess stuff in extra dimensional portals like Bags of Holding. Wizards and Clerics of 16th level are insane powerful. They can head off to inter dimensional resting places where the creatures of the island can’t get at them. Their clerics can heal phenomenal amounts of damage and cure any non magical disease.

In fact none of the stories I read on the forums indicated that the adventure never ran anything that appeared even close to the way the module seemed to intend. PCs of this kind of level are just so powerful they can circumvent most of the dangers of the island. Attrition does not actually work on them, especially not from what is usually a bunch of very weak encounters.

It dawns on me that my poor 4E PCs are likely to be forced to experience the island in a way that a high level 1st edition party never would – because my PCs don’t have anything like the kind of powerful magic that a 16th level cleric or wizard has in 1E. Every example I read on the forums was one in which the PCs simply circumvented the island using magic but my PCs can’t do that in most cases. I’ve never given out an extra dimensional space for a magic item, they have no permanent magical means of transport. My PCs can only teleport very limited distances enter extra dimensional spaces using powers for a 6 or 12 seconds and don’t have cure disease spells. They are going to have to traverse the island by walking; they have no alternative means of transport for anything but the shortest distances.

All that said their key equipment is mostly safe. A close look at the attrition charts in the actual adventure indicates that magic items take 10 times as long to have to make damage checks and for the most vulnerable items, magic cloth, that is 50 days. For my conversion I’ll simply inform the PCs, after a week, that all their mundane equipment has been destroyed unless its glass or a mineral. It won’t seriously discomfit them. The loss of rope and some items they use to get +2 to various skill checks is all they will actually loose. I’m not going to worry about destroying their magic at all. I don’t expect them to stay on the island for 50 days and have no intention of giving them a crap load of new magic at the end of the adventure – they’ll find wealth by level.

The disease I have designed is nasty and should significantly discomfit the party but the Cleric should eventually be able to see everyone through it with heal checks.

This leaves the war of attrition aspect of the Island. As it seems clear that it won’t work I guess I’m just going to drop it. I think what I’ll do is have the PCs go through a ‘random’ encounter every day they are on the island. What I’ll do is design 12 or so encounters inspired by the Lost World theme of the island. I’ll just plop the encounter down when it seems appropriate but these encounters will essentially just be flavour since the PCs will likely stop and take a long rest after each one (as they will be designed to be tough).
Though thinking on this further I think I'll slowly taper off the number of encounters. Something like 1 each day for the first 6 days, then one every 2 days for the next 12 days and then 1 every 3 days for the next 18 days or some such. The idea here is essentially to let the adventure progress as the 'random' encounters will begin to wear in terms of entertainment as time goes on. I'll want to give my PCs the ability to slowly accelerate their way through the adventure so that they always seem to be making more progress. I think this will help with the pacing of the adventure - and I'll explain it off as the PCs getting better at moving around the island without drawing as much attention the longer they are on it.

Considering that the adventure also has a number of encounters on the sea voyage over plus various set encounters on the island itself plus a Minotaur Base which will be a kind of mini-dungeon with a string of encounters (which will be the only time in the whole adventure my PCs will face true attrition) and finally a fight with Demons when they get to the Abyss they are going to be on this adventure for quite some time. That is OK I think however. I’m going to have them gain a level when they cross beyond the Wall into the wild part of the island, they’ll get another level when they first locate the Minotaur Base and they gain a 3rd level when they defeat the Demons at the end of the adventure. So they’ll be here for a good bit but they’ll get lots of levels so it should work out reasonably well.

That said I’m sure they will be well sick of the Island and glad to be home when they finally complete the adventure.


Are you running the Kraken as a combat or as a SC? I would be tempted to run it as a SC, with the goal of keeping the ship afloat as long as possible. More successes would lead to more supplies and/or crew making it to shore.
As for the attrition - denying extended rests may be they way to go. Either as an effect of the island (though heavy handed) or due to the curses of normal travellers - insects, vermin, jungle sounds. An outdoor survival SC may be appropiate here - the number of successes determining the amount of rest gained (and the resoures restored).

Paizo Employee

Ylissa's survival skill challenge for rests is solid.

I've also seen 4e groups track supplies for long rests (so you need to mark off a rations for each person that's actually resting). You could hook that into a skill challenge with the kraken to get more supplies to the island.

Or the disease itself could prevent long rests. That could tie into a sort of skill challenge setup, where successful heal checks (maybe requiring local herbs or techniques) let people get rests.

If you really feel like turning up the pressure, you could combine all of those. They need supplies, a safe place to rest away from the elements (remember tents will disintegrate), and to be at a decent place on the disease track to get the benefits of rest.

Cheers!
Landon


I choose to do it as a combat but your right that it could be done as a skill challenge as well. Not certain that the skill challenge angle would work as well here for my PCs. I think they would always be convinced that I 'cheated' (not that a DM can cheat) and that they could win this fight if only it was a fight (some one of the PCs has dominate abilities for example that he would be sure would win the fight for example) and I could see my players being angry at the way this played out in a skill challenge because they don't buy into the results. With a combat they will buy into the results and it is easier, though slower, to get them to really clue into the effects of the ship being destroyed.

Doing the island as attrition can't be 'no long rests'. Then it becomes impossible because there are far to many combats for them not to need their long rests eventually. It is just too big an island.

I could see something along the lines of having it so the PCs can only manage long rests at various 'safe havens' on the island and that might get something akin to such an effect - kind of, maybe.

I suppose one could have the PCs make an endurance check after each long rest with failure slowly reducing the number of healing surges they have. The problem here is that I need them to have their healing surges all available when they do finally get to the Minotaur base as that is really more of a traditional five encounter heavy resource management type part of the adventure.


Landon Winkler wrote:

Ylissa's survival skill challenge for rests is solid.

I've also seen 4e groups track supplies for long rests (so you need to mark off a rations for each person that's actually resting). You could hook that into a skill challenge with the kraken to get more supplies to the island.

Or the disease itself could prevent long rests. That could tie into a sort of skill challenge setup, where successful heal checks (maybe requiring local herbs or techniques) let people get rests.

If you really feel like turning up the pressure, you could combine all of those. They need supplies, a safe place to rest away from the elements (remember tents will disintegrate), and to be at a decent place on the disease track to get the benefits of rest.

Cheers!
Landon

Well the disease does deny the players effected long rests but my PCs will eventually get through the disease. I don't even really expect most of them to be suffering it at the same time - though we will see how that goes.

Skill Challenge to get a rest would not work here - I think they will be on this island traveling around for about 30 days. Its big and it takes days of moving through Jurassic park wilderness to get from one significant location to another. A skill check could be used to reduce the amount of rest a player got after every day but not a full on skill challenge as that would get boring the 20th time they had to go through the skill challenge (well it would get boring the 4th time - but there would be a 20th time).

As I mentioned above the attrition is pretty good until they finally get to where they are going and then I kind of don't want them to attritioned to be able to handle the adventure.

That said I might go with something that slightly reduces their overall effectiveness. I could see reducing their effectiveness via endurance checks so long as they tried to rest outside of one of the safe havens. That way they might find their objective and then choose to return to a base only to come back when they are closer to full strength. I will have them track supplies ala Darksun for the adventure. This mainly applies to their crew who are not really in a great position to feed themselves (the PCs can eat brontosaurus steak once they get past the disease - the disease will likely slowly kill their whole crew - if the hazards of the island don't get them first).


Adding the Attrition

I mentioned in a post above that I felt that the attrition that kind of served as the core concept of Isle of the Ape was simply impossible to adapt to 4E (and in fact had never actually existed in the original whatever Mr. Gygaxs intentions). However Ylissa and Landon Winkler have convinced me to reconsider my original plan in this regard.

I was going to go with just a large number of pseudo random encounters meant to provide a kind of Lost Dinosaur Island feel. Still thinking about it I can add some elements of attrition to the adventure. Its not the same kind of attrition that, even hypothetically, existed in the original Island of the Ape but it is a kind of attrition and the more I think about it the more I think that having something akin to attrition is better for the adventure overall. Random encounters meant to provide Lost Island feel does not really feel like much of a means to an end. It does not really drive a story about the adventure on the island because there are no player choices based around it. My PCs fight the dinosaurs – then take long rests and move on. It is all kind of, well almost pointless. It pretty much does not matter if they fight the Dinosaurs at all except for the chance that a PC dies fighting the encounter.

It is this pointless aspect that I’m trying to deal with by adding an attrition element. Hence what I have decided to do is introduce two elements to give the island more of an attrition based feel while still, hopefully, allowing the adventure to progress. The first addition is that I’ll require PCs to make fairly difficult endurance checks when they take long rests – fail the check and the harsh environment (The wet, the bugs, the mold the smaller wildlife etc.) means that the PC has their max surges reduced by 1 and this is cumulative – every time the PC takes a long rest and fails the endurance check their max surge level falls until it reaches 0. However there are places on the island where the PCs can take long rests that will restore their healing surges to its maximum value – safe zones that the PCs can discover. All of the friendly native tribes on the island offer such a safe zone as well as a couple of magical locations near the magical portals on the island and the the Minotaur bases (once cleared out) – plus any encampment that the PCs and the surviving crew set up that has been in place for a week or more. The idea is that all of these locations provide the PCs a chance to rest without having to deal with the wet, mold, insects, small wildlife etc. At least no on a scale that is any worse then camping outside during any other wilderness adventure. These places are designed to keep the worst of the Island of the Apes hazardous natural environment at bay (The two magical gates are not designed for this – but their unnatural nature means that the creatures of the island – even the insects – avoid them and they have installations around them that would allow the PCs to make camp and be warm and dry).

The second element is a series of Skill Checks (sort of psuedo skill challenges - but simpler and faster without any chance of ending in failure) that allow the PCs to slowly adapt to the island so that the number of ‘Random’ encounters falls off. The PCs start off having an encounter once per day but as they pass these checks the chance of an encounter decreases to once every two days then every three days etc. Basically the idea is that the PCs learn to do what the rest of the natives of the island are fairly adept at – move about without attracting the attention of the Dinosaurs and therefore avoiding violent confrontations.

Combine these two events and now instead of having almost pointless flavour encounters I hope to get some kind of a story about the exploration of the island. Now my PCs need to find safe havens where they can stop and rest – stray to far from the safe havens and they slowly run out of surges. At the same time they will get better at avoiding encounters and therefore will be able to travel further from the safe havens without actually having any encounters. In this way we get a kind of classic ‘environment’ adventure. An adventure where the PCs have objectives – in this case Find the Minotaur Base – kill its Commander, find the magic gates and the key to using them so they can get home. But they can go about these tasks however they want. The island itself is kind of a big sandbox and even I don’t know how they will handle it.

I have to admit that this element excites me more then the ‘flavour’ encounters ever did – but it also does concern me a little. I’m essentially concerned that this addition will really extend the length of time my PCs need to spend on the island and result in far more encounters being required. This is a concern as I’m pretty sure as the number of Dinosaur encounters gets beyond 12 or so my PCs will start to really grumble – the adventure will start to drag. After all this is reasonably high level 4E and these are daily encounters – they are big and they are hard…and they take a long time to play out…like a full session long time. For this reason I’ll also have winning an encounter with the Dinosaurs count as successful skill checks in reducing the number of subsequent ‘random’ encounters – that way as the number of encounters goes up the chance of having more of them goes down – hopefully this balances out so that the PCs progress in the adventure itself nicely accelerates at about the same rate as their patience with having yet another Dinosaur encounter begins to really fray. That is the hope anyway and my attempt to balance the need to have the environment have attrition and therefore drive some kind of a story based on PC choices with the need, in 4E, to try and keep encounters down to a smaller number of meaningful encounters.

Paizo Employee

One thing to consider with restricting the number of random encounters is having some of them be permanently defeatable (or avoidable).

Once they beat the T-rex, maybe they don't have to face it again. Or if they can befriend a native tribe, encounters with that tribe won't be hostile any longer. Or, as you're thinking, if they figure out how to avoid a certain type of enemy, it might just never show up again.

If you keep rolling on the same table once a day, discarding those results, you should see about what you're looking for. Encounters will become more sparse as the island "clears" and you won't get a ton of repetitive encounters.

It all depends on your encounter table, but I've found it can work pretty well.

Cheers!
Landon


Landon Winkler wrote:

One thing to consider with restricting the number of random encounters is having some of them be permanently defeatable (or avoidable).

Once they beat the T-rex, maybe they don't have to face it again. Or if they can befriend a native tribe, encounters with that tribe won't be hostile any longer. Or, as you're thinking, if they figure out how to avoid a certain type of enemy, it might just never show up again.

If you keep rolling on the same table once a day, discarding those results, you should see about what you're looking for. Encounters will become more sparse as the island "clears" and you won't get a ton of repetitive encounters.

It all depends on your encounter table, but I've found it can work pretty well.

Cheers!
Landon

This would be good on a smaller island where one could reasonably defeat monster X and then there where no more of Monster X (or at least the population was seriously dented) but this island really is very big and there are likely nine or ten adult T-Rex's on it. In fact there are these gargantuan Apes on the island (hence Island of the Ape) that represent the apex predator (though they are actually omnivores with more of a taste for fruits then meat) that really do have limited numbers but even here there are 6 of them.

In essence I don't really want to give off the impression that the players are killing everything big and dangerous on the island. All that said when I commented on 'Random' encounters I did not really mean use the same encounters again and again. I've been sticking random in air quotes as it where because I'll avoid having the same encounter happen more then once (the random table just gets smaller instead of having repeats). I think I've already put in enough to reduce the number of encounters however if my PCs are getting up to the 12th 'random' encounter then all bets really are off in terms of the design of this adventure - its coming to an end.

At that point I'm going to be doing DM fiat type stuff to see to it that my players are progressing their way off this damn island if I have to come up with ways that the natives lead them to the exits or whatever Dues Ex Machina crap I need to pull to get this thing rapidly moving to an end game and wrapped up. If I don't I'm essentially certain that my players frustration levels with this adventure will start to really seriously boil over and I'll start to get into player revolt type territory.

So I'm hoping that the design, as it currently stands, is enough to move things along. I'm actually hoping that it never quite reaches the 12th Dinosaur Encounter but its just not getting beyond that - it can't be allowed to.

Hence this is already being done in effect - encounters that have occurred can't occur again not so much because there are no more dinosaurs of this type but because I need to provide variety and some kind of a check list that insures that this adventure does not too badly stray beyond its best before date. Important because the 'Random' encounters are not the only possible ones on the island. There are set encounters in this adventure as well...roughly twelve including the ones they encountered on their trip to the island, the Minotaur Base and the final encounter with Demons while passing through the Abyss on their way home. In short a ton of encounters in this adventure. Now not completely insane because they will gain a number of levels on the adventure but more then enough that my players will be sick of this island when its finally done.


4E Ritual Issues

So I’ve on many occasions lauded 4E for the fact that the system generally does not get in the way of the DM creating interesting stories. In particular 4E does not provide the PCs much in the way of plot breaking magic – specifically it is difficult for the PCs to get access to magic that will solve the mystery (thus making mystery type adventures difficult to create) or provide them with mass transit that allows the PCs to easily get from point A to point B (and thus eliminate the chance to make traveling from point A to Point B the adventure.

However Rituals are sometimes a way for PCs to circumvent this and get their hands on plot breaking magic. For me I face two particular issues in this regard. One of them is simply the original 4E conceits while the other is the profusion of 4E rituals that subvert the original 4E conceits.

Starting with the original 4E conceits and how they are being problematic. 4E originally was designed with some pretty clear conceits about what kind of adventures where appropriate for which levels. Generally speaking the original design of the 4E presumed that PCs in the Heroic Tier (1st – 10th level) had access only to mundane means of travel unless the adventure or DM actually gave them something better and gave them almost no means to gather information that might make designing mystery type adventures harder. In the Paragon Tier (11th – 20th level) PCs would generally fight in more exotic locations like the Underdark and would have access to some flying capabilities and some other means of mass transit. They might also get access to very limited forms of information gathering magic. Finally in the Epic Tier (21st – 30th level) the PCs would generally be adventuring in other Planes and would have access to extremely powerful means of transport like Plane Shift rituals and phenomenal means of information gathering magic like Oracle which allows the PCs to essentially play 20 questions with a God.

As originally conceived this might well be a perfectly valid way to play D&D. Their valid conceits. The problem is my campaign and my own conceits associated with this type of adventuring and magic. Essentially I’ve never been all that much of a fan of Plane hoping adventuring. In general I prefer to keep the majority of the adventuring based in the main campaign world. More often then not if I have an adventure that might normally be conceived of as being on the Plane of Fire I’ll often instead simply place it in a volcano on my campaign world. That does not mean that other Planes of existence don’t exist in my campaign world. They do but my campaign worlds conceits say that is is very difficult to travel between the Planes and I don’t really want my PCs dancing from Plane to Plane. Something similar is true with regards to information gathering magic. I really like my mystery type adventures and don’t really want my PCs getting access to magic that makes these types of adventures impossible until very high levels when I no longer expect the PCs to be dealing much with normal human interactions in any case.

Therefore my own campaigns conceits are more along the lines of 1st -20th level I want my PCs to be more or less ground bound. By 21st level the PCs are so potent that it no longer seems possible to keep them off of mass transit magic but I certainly don’t want them going from Plane to Plane – that kind of magic I’d like to save for only the highest levels of play. Say 28th - 30th level. I might have issues regarding the kinds of information the PCs can get as well though I have to say that unlike the transportation magic I have not actually had my players threaten to break my adventures using the information gathering rituals. I’m not sure if this is simply because my PCs never really bothered to try and use rituals to crack a mystery style adventure wide open or if its because they did look into it and concluded that it would not work. All I can really say in this regard is that it has not come up.

However I noticed that one of my players had taken rituals recently that would make at least my next two adventures problematic. Basically one of the players took a ritual that would summon giant eagles and the PCs could then fly about the Isle of the Ape – you can’t really kill the eagles either as according to the ritual if the Eagle is harmed it takes the PCs down and then can just be re-summoned after the combat is over. This would not just wreck this adventure but would also be a problem with the next adventure I have planed which is essentially a road adventure.

This actually brings up the second issue I raised at the start of this post. 4E Rituals that subvert the original 4E conceits. I’ve seen this issue crop up a number of times and it started pretty early. My personal opinion is that Rob Heinsoo worked out these conceits and did so with a reasonable amount of thought but these conceits are contrary to other editions of D&D. That is it is really only in 4E that flying is restricted to 11th plus in levels or that mass transit magic is difficult to get ones hands on. When Rob Heinsoo was let go from WOTC, Mike Mearls took control of the development of 4E and seemed to attempt to push 4E in a more traditional direction. I recall, as a player in the Scales of War campaign, having the DM have to step in and forbid us from using some flying type power because one of the adventures broke when WOTC introduced powers with party flight prior to 10th level while the Scales of War was designed under the conceit that PCs below 10th level would not have access to mass flight.

I’m bumping into this issue yet again currently when I looked at this Summon Magical flying Eagles for the whole party ritual…The ritual is not one of the original ones but one introduced in a later supplement – after the point when 4E seemed to be moving back in a more traditional direction.

Considering all the above it seems clear that I’d always have to do something about the rituals, even those designed under the original conceits. However it is pretty clear that my issues became more extreme due to the increased plot breaking potential of some of the rituals introduced later in 4E.

With this in mind what I should really do would be to go over every ritual in 4E and provide updated guide lines on their use – eliminate the real problem rituals or reword them to make them not a problem – most likely by changing the levels the rituals are allowed. Reality is I knew that from the beginning of the campaign – but I have adventures to write and have not found time to go through all the rituals. What I did do was put in the House Rules handout that I anticipated that their might be trouble with rituals in the campaign and I had the right to veto problematic rituals – which is exactly what I have done with this irritating Eagle Summoning Ritual. That said if I ever do decide to run another 4E campaign I’ll put it on the list of things to modify for next time.


Maybe that was a Skill Challenge After all
So in a post above I mentioned that I had planned to run an encounter with a Legendary Kraken – a fight that was completely rigged and in which my players never stood a chance of winning since my ultimate goal was to strand the PCs on the jungle island in which most of the adventure would take place.

So I ran that encounter last session and got somewhat mixed results. Needless to say it was just as impossible as I expected it to be. It ran four rounds though the encounter was designed to go 7+ rounds Technically the timeline of the encounter would have the PCs ship, The Ocean Empress, broken in half on round 7 of the attack but there where a couple of ways for the PCs to delay this a few rounds though ultimately the demise of the Ocean Empress was inevitable. Pretty much my PCs spent the first round getting the idea that fighting the Kraken’s tentacles was pretty ineffective. On round two the PCs began to leap off the ship so they could get at the Kraken’s main body and one of the PCs got very lucky with an attack that dominated the Kraken but the Kraken had a trait that said that if it was dominated then it was just stunned for a round. This is one way the PCs could slightly delay the inevitable. This resulted in the PCs trying harder for round three to kill the main body of the Kraken but its defenses where all 45 and it was practically impossible to hit. The PCs pretty much gave up on killing the body of the Kraken by the end of this round as they just could not hit it. For round 4 the PCs reverted to a plan of killing all the tentacles and even managed to destroy a single tentacle but in doing so it became pretty clear that the tentacles where really hard to destroy for the PCs and by the end of the round they had pretty much decided that killing all 16 tentacles was impossible and the PCs decided to flee the encounter. At this point I pretty much just described the destruction of the Ocean Empress as the PCs flee the scene with the surviving crew.

The real question I came away with after I finished the encounter is if it would have been better to have run it as a Skill Challenge. Reality is I don’t know. I mean I would not really call this a fun encounter – my players where exceptionally frustrated and this could not really be called a ‘fun’ encounter. That strongly argues in favour of saying the encounter should have just been run as a skill challenge. On the other hand my players where also pretty certain they could win until rounds 3 or 4 and I am also basically convinced that if I had run it as a skill challenge the would have felt cheated – like I was just not letting them use their powers to win a fight that they could beat if only I was not denying them that opportunity.

In effect I kind of felt that this encounter had to exist in order to have access to this kind of Skill Challenge. Pretty much a catch 22 – at this point, after running this encounter I have no doubt that I could run any future encounters for the rest of the campaign as a Skill Challenge and just indicate that their was no chance of the PCs beating the creature and my PCs would buy into this idea that there are things out there that are simply so much bigger and badder then they are that victory is impossible but I don’t think I could have gotten that sort of buy into this as an idea without first running an encounter like this. Admittedly my PCs have been in combats they had to run from but those where always encounters that where designed to be ones where managing to escape was the encounter and they always involved lots of enemies that where slowly overwhelming the PCs.

Thus I could view this as time well spent in the campaign. Here we have a session that was not fun but it establishes a precedent that needed to be established for the future. Ok that is one way of looking at it – I mean I’ve done exactly this before…but the last time I did so was running 3.5 and it was pretty much the opposite scene. My power whoring players (and one of them in particular) had – in that scene, exploited the magic item rules to use a broken item to kill a very large Dragon with no challenge at all. I thought for a minute before letting the PCs pull their garbage off and then totally let it fly and was super gratified with the result – half the players in the group complaining that using pure bullcrap rule exploits to turn epic fights into utter crap hour long gold fishing against a dragon was about the worst D&D experience ever. From that point on – even in later campaigns and under whoever happens to be DMing this group has never again had to deal with true pure broken again. Exploits that are deemed to be pure broken are voluntarily changed by the players themselves as no one wants to spend two hours goldfishing epic fights. OK so that precedent was clearly worth it but was this one? That is a heck of a lot harder to justify. I mean maybe…but I don’t think that this fight really establishes anything beyond this particular campaign. In effect I’ve found that the PCs in every campaign we play have to be convinced that their PCs are not invulnerable and sometimes that has to be re-established every six or seven levels with the group thinking that earlier defeats where just the result of them being lower level and that can’t happen any more because now they are so much more powerful. I’m not really worried that this would occur in this campaign because my PCs have already gotten to this level of very high power – they already think of themselves as very big fish indeed and now they know that the math can always be done in such a way that no matter how awesome they are they can still be beaten – but its not a life lesson. Next campaign whoever runs it would likely still have to establish this once again. OK but that still leaves this campaign – now I have established this precedent and can use it whenever I want…except I can’t think of a scene I expect to come up again in this campaign where I plan to use this element ever again. I mean the impossible to beat fight really is more of a low level plot device. As my players become very high level it just does not come up all that often – they go to extreme places and beat extreme odds and that is much more the theme of high level play as opposed to what had been the case at lower levels where being one step ahead of the evil armies and such is much more likely to be the plot.

So now I have a pretty lousy session with a not fun encounter to establish a precedent that does not really feel like it needed to be established except for this particular adventure. I’m sure there is supposed to be some kind of lesson here…but at the end of it all I’m damned if I know what the lesson is. I would have unhappy PCs if I had forced a Skill Challenge and left my players believing that they would have won if only I had not forced them to loose with a Skill Challenge so instead I played it out and got frustrated players who did not have a fun session instead but, at the end of the day I did need to strand the PCs on the island to run the adventure. I could have side stepped the issue and destroyed the ship in a storm or some such but I don’t think my players would have been happy with such an arbitrary event either.

Sovereign Court

It's always difficult to enact a scripted conflict in any game, let alone one so empowering as 4th edition D&D. I can't claim to know your players well enough to know what approach would work best, as it has been difficult to skew their agency in such a way that they feel as though they were not willing participants in these events.

That having been said, setting goals and directives may be the better way to go. Present the boat's destruction as a forgone conclusion, perhaps by having a tentacle sunder the mast or something equally irreversible, then give the players a means of feeling as though they can make a difference in the following rounds, such as saving rations, or securing life boats, or maybe just fighting off the kraken so that it leaves them alone, albeit with a broken ship.

I don't know if this advice helps, especially after the fact, but my hopes are that it may provide insight into future encounters. I know that I have struggled with my own players on such endeavors, and an especially zealous player can derail the best laid attempts, but trial and error are really all that we have at our disposal...


Heading for Dissolution
Sigh. It is looking like my campaign will, in the not to distant future, be coming to a close. Not a really uncommon occurrence – few campaigns are completed and that would seem to be the situation that is going to take place with this one as well. I’m not really shocked by this turn of events. Looking at when this campaign began it was a little over three years ago and my experience is that eventually people just burn out on any campaign. I’ve been noticing a certain amount of this ennui for at least the last six months. The players are increasingly disconnected with their characters while simultaneously experimenting with ever more extreme builds. When half the party pretty much had their characters die and/or retire during the course of the last adventure I think this was a sign of things to come though I had noticed for about a year or so that my players had gone from being highly drawn to the campaign and the story line to ever less hooked in by what was going on.

In fact I had, at one point around nine months ago, suggested to my players that maybe it would be a good idea to put the campaign on hiatus for a bit and let some one else run something for a while. At the time the players nixed the idea but the disconnect with the campaign itself seemed to remain and just got stronger. I made some effort to draw them back into the campaign by trying to regain some of the feeling of attachment that I had had with the PCs at earlier stages in the campaign in terms of the world and their PCs place in it. There had been a time when my players had been completely hooked on the game and everything seemed powerful and exciting but somewhere along the line that seemed to dissipate.

Thinking back on it I can, pretty much, put my finger on when things began to shift from complete player buy in to a period when the players became ever less connected. Pretty much I totally had my players before the adventure Re-Creation and I did not really have them after that adventure completed.

That said I’m not sure if I can blame the adventure exactly. I mean it did have issues – it was a long adventure in a dungeon. My players took something like 3 long rests during the course of it and it was designed so that they had long rests but only a limited number before they would loose the adventure and they knew that. In other words it was a dungeon that expected them to take 3 long rests which tends to tell one that it was a very big adventure and it took many months to resolve. Prior to this the players where attached to their characters but by the time it was completed they where exploring alternate builds. I’ve noticed this issue before with large adventures – especially dungeons before. There is very little character development that takes place in a dungeon. The result seems to be that my players just became less attached to their characters and therefore began looking at new builds to rekindle excitement.

I did notice this effect and worked really, really, hard to try and counter it in subsequent adventures and I think I did make some progress in the next few adventures. These are actually some of my favorite adventures of the campaign and I think exemplify some of my best work – the results where mixed but indicative of the problem. I think I, more often then previously, managed to get my players interested in the adventures but I never seemed to really get them interested in their characters and their characters place in the campaign again.

Unfortunately this really puts the pressure on the DM in my experience. Essentially if the players are attached to their characters that alone is going to cover up a lot of DM sins…they are excited to be at the table for that reason alone but if the DM is trying to keep them interested in the adventure when they are not really attached to their character the DM has to really work extra hard to put on a show and tends to loose the players every time the adventure flags for any reason.

All that said I think the length the campaign had been running was the significant factor in my difficulties. Up until the large dungeon crawl I seemed to be able to get the players hooked back into their characters while after this dungeon crawl I simply was never able to get them really interested into their PCs again. This seemed to extend to the players co-operation in terms of their backgrounds and such. Up to this point the players would do write ups of their backgrounds and I would then hook the background into the campaign. After this point the players spent much less time on their backgrounds and tended to not really respond to my emails making suggestions that hooked their backgrounds into the campaign.

While I kind of suspect that the length in real life of the campaign was maybe the biggest factor I am forced to admit that I think 4E and 5E played a role in how this campaign got to the point where it is now in the process of being wrapped up. Basically the issue with 4E was partly just the fact that it more or less works into higher levels. If one plays a Pathfinder Campaign it is meant to wrap up between 13th and 15th level. 4E is not completely broken even into much higher levels. The problem is that the length of time to run Pathfinder to 15th level and the length of time to run 4E to 15th level is about the same (Assuming that Pathfinder moves about the same speed as 3.5 which is the set of rules I’m more familiar with). In the case of my groups games that is roughly 3 years of real life play of about 3 to 4 hours a week, 4 weeks in 5 (I’m guesstimating that roughly every 5th week the group plays something not D&D for various reasons). In essence I don’t think I could, or ever should, have tried to design a campaign meant to take more then 3 real world years. The fact that it felt like 4E could handle higher level play made it so that I designed a real 30 level campaign even though, in retrospect, I’d never manage to keep my players attention for this length of time.

I was also drawn to the idea because 4E seemed uniquely capable of handling higher-level play from a balance perspective. I was honestly excited to be able to finally use the most powerful Dragons as well as Beholders and all of the super powerful iconic D&D monsters – though if I am honest with myself that element excited me but in reality I think it just seems easier to design a campaign that has a whole slew of adventures compared to one that effectively wraps up with less adventures. I mean my outline of the campaign actually felt hard to write up – just to fit it into 30 levels I felt like I had to cut adventures…getting the campaign to fit into 15 levels would have felt that much more difficult. I think this is actually worth considering in a whole post on its own but suffice to say I had trouble in this regard.

These are the issues I had with design but I also found that 4E’s increasing length of combats where becoming an ever-increasing issue. This was an element that seemed to be compounded by other issues with the campaign. In effect 4E started to take longer for the players to do their turns with their increasingly complex characters. However this element was not just the complexity of the characters or how long 4E combats can take. Part of the problem here is that the players started to switch characters more often and it really became significant after the last adventure when ½ the party switched characters. In effect there is certainly some truth that 4E combats can get long and be complex in general, but this is exacerbated when ½ the party simply does not know their character because its new. It takes players some time to assimilate their characters in general and it is more of an issue with higher level characters. Furthermore my players seemed to try and fight the ennui that was developing by designing ever more complex characters – at this point in the campaign I have a party that is a Leader a Defender, a Striker and 3 Controllers. All those Controllers are pretty complex and, while the power level of the group is probably about the same as if it had instead had 3 Strikers how long combats run is likely longer – my group does various forms of action denial and a little hp damage to win their fights while a group with 3 strikers would win the fight 3 rounds earlier by doing much less action denial and just dishing out loads of hp damage.

This means that I have players not familiar with their new characters and running complex characters in combats that take extra long to run result in long rounds. Where previously rounds went around the table in 20-30 minutes now we are up to around an hour and even that tends to be more like 1 ½ hours for the first two rounds and then things start to speed up so that rounds 7+ are now only 30 minutes long. Of course the problem is if it is not going to be your turn again for an hour your focus on the game drops off dramatically. I kind of think if my players stuck with their PCs and got used to each others characters combat would speed up somewhat but I don’t think that alone would keep the campaign alive.

The other issue I mentioned was 5E – this is a pretty simple issue. Pretty much about half my group is very interested in 5E with the rest of them are on the fence. I’m pretty much the only hold out with a true love for 4E and one player, even the DM, cannot defy the will of a long running group. My players want to play 5E and they have become bored with this campaign so that is what is going to happen. When it does I’ll be giving up the DMs chair and making a 5E character.

In truth I’m unhappy to see my campaign coming to a premature close but I was beginning to suffer burn out myself. 3 years is a long time to run any campaign, it was and is hard work to be the DM at least to DM in the kind of campaign I like to run doing the kind of prep I like to do. There is a certain sense of relief in giving up the DMs chair and the responsibilities that go along with it for a while. Furthermore – and this bit is maybe pure egotism – I’m a very good DM who puts in a heck of a lot of work in running the campaign and after 3 years my players have forgotten that. I have every faith that they will have another chance to recognize and appreciate this when I’m not in the DMs chair for a while. Finally 5E does have one significant benefit for me in terms of playing a campaign – It runs fast. And I can expect that the next campaign will not be one that takes three years to run. I expect that I’ll have my chance at the DMs chair again in the future – hopefully right about the time I’m chomping at the bit for another shot at being DM.

Note that this won't be my last post on this thread. The 4E campaign won't wrap up until the current, very large, adventure is wrapped up so I'll keep putting up posts for some time. Some of the posts will be on stuff that gets raised in the current adventure and I expect to do a number of posts on wrapping up the campaign.

Sovereign Court

I am truly sorry to hear about your campaign. Campaign fatigue has affected me more than once, and it never feels good, especially if you are still excited about finishing, but no one else is. I would love to know if you happen to have any opinions on 4e and it's ability to handle long dungeons, or if it is better suited for parsed dungeons (I believe there was some sort of thread recently about how a smaller dungeon could be something like 3 encounters then a boss monster). Somehow, I feel that 4e has somewhat of a short attention span for prolonged forays (such as large dungeons), but I can't speak with any authority as I have yet to run a significant number of 4e encounters.

I have been very eager to hear about your experiences with 4th edition as I was considering having my children start on a 4th edition campaign (for reasons not clear, they gravitated towards that edition). I am also hoping to hear what your impressions of 5th edition may be, especially given the contrast.

I wish you luck.


Lorathorn wrote:

I am truly sorry to hear about your campaign. Campaign fatigue has affected me more than once, and it never feels good, especially if you are still excited about finishing, but no one else is. I would love to know if you happen to have any opinions on 4e and it's ability to handle long dungeons, or if it is better suited for parsed dungeons (I believe there was some sort of thread recently about how a smaller dungeon could be something like 3 encounters then a boss monster). Somehow, I feel that 4e has somewhat of a short attention span for prolonged forays (such as large dungeons), but I can't speak with any authority as I have yet to run a significant number of 4e encounters.

I have been very eager to hear about your experiences with 4th edition as I was considering having my children start on a 4th edition campaign (for reasons not clear, they gravitated towards that edition). I am also hoping to hear what your impressions of 5th edition may be, especially given the contrast.

I wish you luck.

I've commented before on this thread I'm pretty sure that I tend to feel that long dungeons are generally not the best option. That said I think that this is more a case of lack of character development and such in the long or large dungeon and a tendency for them to start to feel like they are dragging. I remember putting my players through the Maure Castle adventure in 3.5 which I really thought was a fantastic dungeon and finding that even though it was a really well done dungeon the fact that it just went on and on meant that it seemed to drag for them. I've had players have fun with some bigger dungeons at low level - maybe its the faster pace or something or maybe kobolds lend themselves to larger dungeons or some such but as a rule I think they should probably be avoided. I'm not really sure that 4E per se addresses this issue, I don't particularly see anything specific to 4E that would make it better or worse for larger dungeons - I suppose the longer combats at high levels might be a factor but I think its as bad or as good as most other editions which mostly means as bad.

That said I don't think you have to streamline things down to 4 encounters total...6 encounters is probably a fine number as well its just 10+ that should probably be avoided.

Sovereign Court

Noted. I want to eventually run Rappan Athuk, but that will have to be for a group that wants a dungeon crawl.


Reconsidering Endings (how I need to change the current adventure now that it will be the last)
With Isle in the Sea of Time about to unexpectedly take the role as the last adventure in my campaign I’ve got to come up with a way of making this feel like it is a conclusion when it was never originally designed to be that. In pursuit of that goal this adventure has some elements that are useful and some elements that are not. Starting with the problem part is the fact that the adventure really does not wrap up the major theme in the campaign itself which would be the major war with Goblinoids invading the Empire and the role the PCs have been spending in digging up the causes of that war slowly closing in on the force behind it. There is simply no way to wrap that element in this adventure so I can’t have this adventure resolve the main theme of the campaign itself.

This actually puts me in exactly the same position I was in at the end of my last campaign which was on the exact same theme. In effect this whole campaign was meant to resolve this epic war because it was never resolved in the last campaign due to my players getting to too high a level for 3.5 to be a fun system prior to my players uncovering the main themes of the campaign. Here I was much more focused in making sure that the PCs could not go off track in this campaign but was not prepared for the campaign to run out of steam when it was half over.

Thus I’m stuck with wrapping this campaign up much the way I wrapped the last one up. In effect I have to try and get the PCs to buy into the idea that their characters made a significant contribution in the ongoing war while leaving the actual resolution to the war itself for my next campaign.

With this in mind I do think that this adventure does at least offer a reasonable story element in terms of having my PCs make significant contributions. The PCs are on this island to finally put an end to the Minotaur menace that has been a significant danger to the Empire. Having the PCs end that menace is something that can leave the PCs thinking that their PCs managed to get somewhere in this campaign. This element really does not require much in the way of changing the adventure but at this stage I’m wracking my brain to try and add to it to make this all feel more significant. This is the part where I’m thinking of trying to find a way to add to the adventure. I’ve established that the gate off this island will lead the PCs to the lands of the gnomes and that there are friendly tribes on this island. That might actually kind of work out. The gnomish lands in my campaign world are kind of semi-isolated from the heart of the campaign and yet if they joined the Empire against the goblinoids and such that would be significant. This could kind of work maybe – I could have the PCs not just find the gate home but maybe the friendly tribes on the lost island are much bigger then I originally planned and one of them is Gnomish and maybe they have been cut off – trapped on this jungle island and the PCs can rescue them and lead them back to the Haddath Island and into the arms of their brother gnomes. This would provide the Empire with a force that is indebted to the PCs and one which the PCs could lead into the war against the Empires enemies Furthermore the fact that the Gnomish lands are far from the heartland of the Empire actually turns out to be a bit of a boon. It can serve to explain why the PCs don’t return to the main plotline – they are just too far away. Thus I can start the next campaign with characters of a little higher level and finish off the main plotline by having this new group take over when the current PCs failed to return from their sea journey (at least failed to return to the capital of the Empire).

It also dawns on me that I should shove in some big iconic monsters into the adventure. I still have to design the Minotaur Base. I had not really thought to much about exactly what was in the base except that it had to have the Minotaur Commander and presumably their where Minotaur foot soldiers in some significant numbers. If this was not the final adventure that we are likely to play I’d probably try and focus the remaining encounters on something Minotaur themed. It makes the most sense all things considered and there is enough in the Minotaur lore to make 5 encounters. Now however I think I’ll look to build something that includes a Beholder and maybe some other big time D&D monster if possible just because I look forward to having my PCs get into it with these types of monsters and I don’t really expect the opportunity to come up again any time soon.

In the end I think I can make this adventure work as an ending for the campaign – which is to say I can wrap this up and put a bow on it and call it a reasonable chapter in what is turning out to be a campaign trilogy. Honestly that is something of a relief – past this point in the campaign and the players would be on final approach to the climax and it would be hard to put a halt to the campaign so in some sense I got lucky in that regard.

The downside here is that this is pretty much a sub plot and, worse yet, it ends with the Gnomes. My PCs never interacted with the Gnomes prior to this adventure and experience with campaign endings tells me that if the ending is focused on a group the PCs did not interact with then this hurts the story as far as my players are concerned. Nonetheless there is no help for it here but I might try and add some final roleplay type stuff to this adventure in the homeland of the Gnomes after the PCs rescue the 'Lost Tribes' to give this more of a 'closed out' feel. Normally this would have been part of the opener for the next adventure but since there is never going to be a next adventure I should try and work this element into the end of this adventure.

Sovereign Court

It sounds like perhaps you would benefit from a simplification of your campaign style.

I am reminded of advice I read in a column written by the late Erick Wujcik. I wish I could link it, but I've only seen it in print, so I will try to paraphrase what I remember. In it, he described how his dungeons would be intricate, byzantine, and contain all kinds of fun things to discover if the players worked hard enough. It became an exercise in frustration as so much was passed up, and the players grew bored with the sprawling hallways and secret rooms. His solution was to simplify. There was no reason to place the fun secrets behind such obstacles, so he put the fun stuff where it could be found, and truncated his dungeons.

Now, I know that we are talking about a campaign here, and not a dungeon, but I think that the same approach can apply. Instead of putting a whole campaign between your players and the plot, you could cut things much thinner and let them discover the deeper seeds to the plot.

I think this may even be exacerbated by 4th edition being so encounter driven, in that it might be harder to expose the story without dozens of encounters needing to take place. I don't know this for sure,as I have little experience with the system, but I've seen evidence of this.

I think the argument could also be made that experience could stand to be abstracted so that your players level up when you think that it is appropriate, but again that is conjecture. Still though, I remember having campaigns that ran too long in the past, and while it was painful, I learned much from the experience.


Lorathorn wrote:

It sounds like perhaps you would benefit from a simplification of your campaign style.

I am reminded of advice I read in a column written by the late Erick Wujcik. I wish I could link it, but I've only seen it in print, so I will try to paraphrase what I remember. In it, he described how his dungeons would be intricate, byzantine, and contain all kinds of fun things to discover if the players worked hard enough. It became an exercise in frustration as so much was passed up, and the players grew bored with the sprawling hallways and secret rooms. His solution was to simplify. There was no reason to place the fun secrets behind such obstacles, so he put the fun stuff where it could be found, and truncated his dungeons.

Now, I know that we are talking about a campaign here, and not a dungeon, but I think that the same approach can apply. Instead of putting a whole campaign between your players and the plot, you could cut things much thinner and let them discover the deeper seeds to the plot.

I think this may even be exacerbated by 4th edition being so encounter driven, in that it might be harder to expose the story without dozens of encounters needing to take place. I don't know this for sure,as I have little experience with the system, but I've seen evidence of this.

I think the argument could also be made that experience could stand to be abstracted so that your players level up when you think that it is appropriate, but again that is conjecture. Still though, I remember having campaigns that ran too long in the past, and while it was painful, I learned much from the experience.

Yeah I'm a couple of posts ahead and in one of the ones coming up I go into more depth on what I think I learned in running this and explore how I might avoid having this problem again in the future.


Power Level or Monster Group?
Well my players have run through a number of encounters in my Bubble in the Sea of Time Adventure and I sort of feel as if they have really jumped up in power level…or maybe it is more the kind of encounters they have been facing all of a sudden.

After facing some rough fights during the sea voyage everything they have come face to face with on the island itself has seemed rather underwhelming. Their first encounter was with the Kawabuses natives. I had built an encounter with 75 native minions as well as a fairly powerful shaman and their war chief. Now 75 minions is a whole heck of a lot of minions but the two controllers in the party pretty much just had a field day. I went into this feeling pretty concerned that I might have made an encounter that was too powerful and came out recognizing that my PCs had not really even broke a sweat in wiping the encounter out. OK maybe it was just the Minions. Next encounter was with a slew of standard Dinosaur types. Pretty good ones with the ability to bludgeon the PCs with their club like tails and also spit poison. Once again I was surprised at just how quickly my players seemed to overcome the encounter. My players keep holding onto significant amounts of their dailies and action points always convinced that these weak encounters can’t be the only one they will face.

Finally My PCs have engaged a pack of elite Horned Dinosaurs with some really brutal attacks…once again though my PCs seem to quickly take over. The Dinosaurs have phenomenal attacks but don’t really get to use them as my players lay down control effects on most of them before they can really engage and the party can handle a couple of these guys getting in a few hits before going down.

This could be a result of increasing player power – 16th level is a big jump in power though they handles the natives at 15th and its not THAT big a jump in power – it’s the addition of 1 really good new power for each PC. There is also a multiplying player effect that I think is always potent. Basically an old player rejoined the group recently and that puts the number of players in the party up to 7. Seven is a lot of PCs and I’ve noticed this element before in all versions of D&D really. If there are more PCs then there is this multiplying effect in terms of what the party can handle. Sure more monsters have been added but the party still seems to be that more capable of handling the monsters even with their increased numbers. The two controllers lay out their powers on the increased numbers of monster, the extra strikers bring any given down monster faster etc.

On the other hand maybe it really is more of a monster ‘type’ issue. Sure its been minions then standard and then elite monsters but none of them have had much in the way of defences against what the PCs can do – they tend to have more hps but that often does not seem that big a deal. Especially with the PCs controllers both unloading with a Slumber of the Winter Court power that puts creatures that fail saves to sleep for literally hours. With Dinosaurs my players don’t bother killing them – not needed – in hours they will be long gone and the Dinosaurs can go back to whatever it is that Dinosaurs do on their island. This is the most extreme example of a situation where the Dino’s big hps but little in terms of other defences don’t help them. In other encounters things like resistances to domination or traits that give the monsters extra ways to get out of conditions or avoid being hit help the monsters out but Dino’s pretty much don’t have anything like that and simply being big with lots of hps does not really compensate.

Of course none of this really tells me if the issue is the rising power level of the PCs or the nature of the kind of opposition my PCs have been facing. Might get a better feel with some of the later encounters – especially as some of them are not with Dinosaur type monsters. There are some Dragons, Demons, Beholder and the like in the adventure which come with more potent magical defences so that might give me a better idea if the issue is more one of increased party power or if its more a case of monster design issues. All that said I also think I need to go through another round of boosting monster powers. I’ve faced that issue repeatedly – my players tend to go up in their power a little faster then my monsters as I tend to not boost monster potency until my players prove to me that they can really dish it out and receive it. I tend to see the monster powers and think that they are over the top only to realize after a few encounters that this is not actually the case.

Though thinking about it some more and with another couple of encounters under my belt after the ones mentioned above (swarms of snakes, a plethora of invisible standards with a reasonable bite attack) I'm also of the opinion that a big part of the issue is simply the power Slumber of the Winter Court. Why this power was never nerfed I'll never know. It really should have been. My large group with two wizards that both lay it down is particularly brutal.

Sovereign Court

Perhaps some dinosaur skeletons, or even dinosaur spirits summoned by the shaman?


In theory even undead can be knocked magically unconscious. In reality of course I can make monsters immune to sleep or unconscious whenever I want to but both of these answers are not really the best ones. Undead X's that the DM has made immune to sleep is OK for one or two encounters but using X is never the solution to a problem like this because it amounts to essentially - OK so for the entire rest of the campaign Monsters of type X are the only ones the PCs can ever encounter. Sure I can - with reasonable ease design an encounter where their cool powers don't work and they will be more challenging but I can't make that every single encounter for the rest of the campaign.


Lessons for Adventure Path Design
There are pretty much two elements to considering what it was that brought my campaign to a premature close and what elements I should keep in mind building this sort of campaign in the future. As I commented above when considering why the campaign is coming to a close I think that its length in real life is the core issue with the campaign. In effect I very much doubt that any campaign can really survive for much more then three years and really my players where beginning to fade out after the two year mark so ideally I think campaigns should be designed to run for two real world years or less. I don’t think this is really limited to my group but is something that is more fundamental to human nature.

Interestingly I think Paizo has actually done a reasonably good job of hitting that sweet spot with their adventure paths though I don’t think they necessarily did so because they recognized the sweet spot itself but more because the 6 large module format was ideal for their release schedule and because it worked well with Pathfinder in terms of getting the PCs to 13th – 15th level and ending the campaign. The reality is that Pathfinder increasingly starts to breakdown as a game system beyond twelfth level and really starts to fall apart from 16th level and beyond. In fact when we consider the original three Adventure Paths that ran to 20th level we sometimes read of groups that finished the campaign and they are usually elated to have finished the campaign but it took them five years and they are utterly exhausted. In any case whether or not Paizo just kind of lucked out into roughly the right length for an adventure path is kind of irrelevant – the fact is that they hit the sweet spot and because of that they have enjoyed strong sales for a long time in their flagship product. No doubt that if they had chosen poorly they would have modified their offerings in order to get to this sweet spot.

Two of the elements that I think are worth considering in this regards are length of sessions and game system chosen. I think length of the sessions can impact this two year ideal a little bit but certainly it is not a one for one exchange. I don’t think the factor is about total hours played but really about how long they have simply been playing in real life. So smaller sessions might allow a group to run a little longer and be content. Our sessions where around 3-4 hours long. If sessions are more like 2 hours maybe the campaign can be pushed a bit but I suspect that despite the much shorter sessions the group is still going to start loosing interest after 2 ½ years or so. Very long sessions like 8 hours might result in the group burning out a little faster but again I think we are talking about only a shift of around six months so for these really long sessions maybe a year and half is closer to ideal (though its worth noting that if one runs such long sessions the group might be able to get through a pretty sizable campaign).

In the same vein I don’t really think the system chosen impacts this very much. In effect a fast system like 1st edition or 5th edition probably allows longer campaigns to be run then say a system like 4E or Pathfinder because players cover more ground in any given session but I suspect that we are still talking about a situation where burnout starts to occur after about two years and whatever the system chosen it should be designed so that its over by the time the two year mark is being reached. In a faster system that can mean that the campaign can run for more levels then a slower system and could have more adventures but whatever the system chosen the length in real life of the campaign remains roughly the same.

The Exchange

Interestingly, our 4e campaign took about five years, maybe more, going from level 1 to level 30. We completed it, but were totally burnt out. We haven't really met up much since. Again, I don't think 4e was the problem - we all quite liked the system - but the sheer slog was maybe more than we really wanted to deal with in retrospect. Unfortunately, we've pretty much lost the discipline of getting together on a regular basis and I can see the group dissolving.

Sovereign Court

I find that group dynamics have a large part to play in the success of a long running campaign, and that includes the unfortunate problems of people moving away, scheduling issues, and the like. But even when everyone is able to make it and is committed to being there, it can be a challenge to maintain interests. The unfortunate part is that it sometimes take years to understand your players well enough to know what they want, how to deliver it, and what will keep them wanting more.

That a system can change or become overshadowed by newer editions in that time does not help. This is perhaps why I sometimes go to older houseruled systems, but that's just personal taste.

But the ultimate question as it relates to your experience is thus: Are your players interested in the destination, or the journey? Do they like leveling up, adventuring and learning about the story, or do they play to get to the juicy bits where they fight monsters and get reveals. Most of these game systems assume the former, and if you don't just enjoy the fight itself in 4th edition (and really, Pathfinder too), then it becomes difficult when these encounters encompass entire sessions (or dare I say, more than one).

The key is to know your players, and you may have the best opportunity to do so by being a player yourself. I can't stress how important it is to take a turn in the player's seat, even if only to remind yourself what it's like on the other side of the table.


Lorathorn wrote:

I find that group dynamics have a large part to play in the success of a long running campaign, and that includes the unfortunate problems of people moving away, scheduling issues, and the like. But even when everyone is able to make it and is committed to being there, it can be a challenge to maintain interests. The unfortunate part is that it sometimes take years to understand your players well enough to know what they want, how to deliver it, and what will keep them wanting more.

That a system can change or become overshadowed by newer editions in that time does not help. This is perhaps why I sometimes go to older houseruled systems, but that's just personal taste.

But the ultimate question as it relates to your experience is thus: Are your players interested in the destination, or the journey? Do they like leveling up, adventuring and learning about the story, or do they play to get to the juicy bits where they fight monsters and get reveals. Most of these game systems assume the former, and if you don't just enjoy the fight itself in 4th edition (and really, Pathfinder too), then it becomes difficult when these encounters encompass entire sessions (or dare I say, more than one).

The key is to know your players, and you may have the best opportunity to do so by being a player yourself. I can't stress how important it is to take a turn in the player's seat, even if only to remind yourself what it's like on the other side of the table.

I simply question the idea that making really long running campaigns work is a function of knowing ones players. I'll admit that I have heard of and read about some truly long running campaigns but my take is that these are pretty much rare as hen's teeth. I have heard or read about campaigns that burn out far, far, more often. Groups that would actually finish the first three APs where exceptionally rare and those that did invariably reported being very pleased with themselves for pulling it off but also almost invariably reported being completely exhausted by the whole experience. WotC originally planned to have a series of books devoted to the Heroic Tier followed by books devoted to the Paragon Tier and finally books devoted to the Epic Tier. The Epic stuff was all eventually cancelled and the development refocused on the Heroic and Paragon Tier when it became clear that very few groups ever managed to get a campaign that ran to Epic levels and keep going.

There is a post on this thread, I'm guessing it is around the year and a half mark of the campaign, where I comment that I wish I knew how to bottle whatever I was doing right because at that stage in the campaign I had player buy in like I had never seen it before. My players where unbelievably stoked to play in the campaign. When I would tell them that we needed to play board games for a few weeks so I could write the next adventure they would whine about the delay and each week we would play board games they would be pestering me to know if I would be ready to continue the campaign next week and this had been going on for about a year. By the following year I was well on my way to loosing them. They had now grown tired of their formerly beloved characters and where increasingly less focused. There was no dramatic change in the style of gaming I was delivering - in fact I think my work was actually improving. Hence I don't think knowing ones players is sufficient - knowing them simply can't, after a point, over come the ennui that seems to build up in a long running campaign. Eventually everyone just seems to burn out and that seems to be true for just about every campaign run by the vast majority of groups - which is why finishing an AP or Campaign that takes 5 years to run is both so rare and so exhausting to those that accomplish it.

My bottom line here is that this is not about knowing your players - important as that is - but about knowing that campaigns come with a best before date and if you really want to run exceptional campaigns it is best to design them so that they wrap up before they hit that best before date.

Sovereign Court

This is true. I could attribute this to a narrative shift in fantasy gaming in the last... say 20-25 years.

Campaigns are about a story arc and not the characters. They are merely secondary, so it does become difficult to feel compelled when your characters aren't running the narrative themselves, but that also calls to the fact that many players aren't as, shall we say, self-initializing about pursuing goals or story hooks.

I don't blame the AP culture, as it existed beforehand (though it may have added to it), but there is an expectation from players that the story will come to them, and that it will delight them and speak to them personally without much of their actual input into what they want to see or experience.

That having been said, it helped me in being a player to understand what it was that might have otherwise evoked a story. If it were not for my time as a player, I would be lost behind the screen, trying like a TV executive in throwing things at a wall and waiting for something to stick, as it were. Indeed, I felt myself doing just this many times without much success before renewing my perspective. It also helps to show others what a GM turned player can do to push a story forward, possibly shifting attitudes around as well.

That having been said, it might simply be as you say, and that D20 fantasy roleplaying at large is simply not meant for long term campaigns. Whatever magic allowed that to happen previous to 3rd edition might be something that an old schooler could illuminate for us.


Lorathorn wrote:


That having been said, it helped me in being a player to understand what it was that might have otherwise evoked a story. If it were not for my time as a player, I would be lost behind the screen, trying like a TV executive in throwing things at a wall and waiting for something to stick, as it were. Indeed, I felt myself doing just this many times without much success before renewing my perspective. It also helps to show others what a GM turned player can do to push a story forward, possibly shifting attitudes around as well.

Lots of points worth considering in this post - I'll split it up over several posts.

I'll note that I have been a player - I talk about events in this campaign and how they relate to a previous campaign that I ran quite a bit but there was an intervening campaign as well. In effect there was a 3.5 campaign that I ran that was the first part of this story.

That campaign dies when the group was 14th level. At the time I attributed it to the fact that 3.5 becomes broken at higher levels. I know think that this is true but not the whole story - that campaign was also at about the three year mark and the players where just becoming unfocused despite the fact that I felt the final adventure - a slightly adapted Maure Castle, was fantastic.

Then another DM took the DMs chair and ran us through the first 18 levels of Scales of War. I'm guessing we where at it almost 3 years. At that point the DM faced a Players Revolt and I took the DMs chair again. At the time we attributed the problem to the DM. Partly true mainly because there was no player at that table that wanted to play D&D less then the DM. Don't get me wrong if we were going to be playing D&D then he wanted to be the DM but he would just rather that we not be playing RPGs and would instead play boardgames and Magic. He would try and convince the group that next week we could not play D&D every week - we mostly forced him to keep running the campaign but every 3rd or 4th week he would refuse to DM and we would play board games. In retrospect I would say that the DMs behavior contributed to the problem but there was also the difficulty with the issue that we had been in a long standing campaign for too long now.

Finally we get to my current campaign which - as we got past the two year mark began to have problems and it came to a head at about the 3 year mark that I needed to wrap the campaign up...or I might have my ego deflated by a Players Revolt...they where getting close to one.


Lorathorn wrote:


That having been said, it helped me in being a player to understand what it was that might have otherwise evoked a story. If it were not for my time as a player, I would be lost behind the screen, trying like a TV executive in throwing things at a wall and waiting for something to stick, as it were. Indeed, I felt myself doing just this many times without much success before renewing my perspective. It also helps to show others what a GM turned player can do to push a story forward, possibly shifting attitudes around as well.

While I think being a player is a very good experience for any DM I would also note that it can be deceptive. On the upside I would say that my experience as a player definitely reinforced my feeling that for almost all players if they love their character your going to have an easy time DMing because your players will overlook a lot of DM sins if they love their character. That said I noted that I apparently have a particularly high attachment to my characters compared to most of the players around my table. When I was a player I played my Death Cleric through to 12th level and when he died I played my new Merci nary with a bizarre mechanical Crossbow Ranger (Ranger/Alchemist Hybrid - use all the Alchemist weapon improving powers on your crossbow) until the Campaign ended. I loved them both but I was one of only a couple of players at that table that did not decide at some point in the campaign to retire their character in order to play a new build. So here I might have taken the lesson that players that love their characters are easier to please a trad too far because I apparently become more attached to my characters more then most of my players.

Furthermore I would have argued - and I believed at the time - that part of this DMs problem was absolutely zero interest in the campaign world itself. We where told we were in a fantasy world that included anything and everything in the character builder except Darksun stuff. All the Gods could be chosen and all of them worked - but of course they exist only to provide the PCs with 4E powers or feats otherwise they pretty much did not exist.

To me this campaign world sucked - I hated it. I wanted my character to be part of a world where there were NPCs that had beliefs and values and Gods and such. The DM had no interest in that sort of thing and I suspect that many of the players where fine with that - they certainly had no issue with all the builder being open. You could do some powerful stuff by combing worshiping Forgotten Realms Gods with Ebberon Runemarks. So I believed lack of a coherent campaign world was a big problem with the DMs campaign...but is that something I learned as a player that I could apply to make myself a better DM or is it just a facet of me as a player and not a reflection of the other players at all? This is of course the problem with being a player - you bring your own interests with you when you become a player - and importantly there are probably traits that a player that wants to also DM has that may not be the norm among the majority of players that don't want the responsibility of being the DM.


Lorathorn wrote:


That having been said, it might simply be as you say, and that D20 fantasy roleplaying at large is simply not meant for long term campaigns. Whatever magic allowed that to happen previous to 3rd edition might be something that an old schooler could illuminate for us.

I doubt it...I played and ran BECMI right through 2nd edition before I moved to 3.5.

The problem is most of the players playing these games are young and the campaigns die all the time. People change schools or they discover girls (or sometimes boys) or they get new friends or discover booze and/or drugs or they have crazy schedules etc. etc. Life changes a lot when your young and the discipline needed to have a long running campaign just is not there. I ran 4 campaigns during these years and had 3 others fizzle and die after only a handful of sessions during these years and the longest one was a little more then 2 years. Most where about a year.

The most obvious example of this can be found in Dungeon Magazine (though the module offerings are indicative of this as well). Check your Dungeon Magazine collection or go find an index on the web. Note how rarely a high level adventure is written? I mean maybe there was one every six months and I suspect that it is not even that high. There was no demand for high level adventures even then. Sure there are stories of groups that run campaigns for a really long time but these are exceptional and by no means the norm.

The Exchange

I wonder if the issue is a bit simpler than that. With my guys, the game stretched for years. And they forgot stuff. Details I'd been putting in as foreshadowing just passed them by. Important clues got forgotten. Key turning points became fuzzy. As a DM this stuff is in your mind but a lot of it the players will forget, and they get detached gradually from the game. Then it gradually becomes a series of encounters, which they don't necessarily easily comprehend. It's hard to care about it then as it just gets confusing.

In the end, we stopped just shy of the final encounter - the rebirth and (hopefully) defeat of Nerull - because they were surprised when he showed up. So the whole multiplanar conspiracy angle they'd been playing through for years simply didn't register. Since they had reached level 30 at this point, they were just burnt out and didn't fancy the final encounter, so we folded. I think it is an understatement to say I was somewhat annoyed at the time, but in retrospect it's an important lesson. I think one of the reasons the PbPs can last longer (eight years for my longest running here) is you can at least go back and read what the hell happened four years ago.

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