Nightflier's Midnight Game Thread

Game Master nightflier

Set a lower Int limit and exclude alien minds like oozes and abberrations.

Yucale you have been transfered to Squad 2.

Doomed Hero! DOOMED HERO! You have been promoted to Squad 3, you have about 48 hours to post in the main OOC thread to show that you are still interested in playing.

In game posts will be up within 48 hours of this post depending on whether all squads have sorted themselves out.

Set a lower Int limit and exclude alien minds like oozes and abberrations.

Nice fix. I'll edit it on AtS tomorrow.

Pentor Lionsmane wrote:

Yucale you have been transfered to Squad 2.

Doomed Hero! DOOMED HERO! You have been promoted to Squad 3, you have about 48 hours to post in the main OOC thread to show that you are still interested in playing.

In game posts will be up within 48 hours of this post depending on whether all squads have sorted themselves out.

Thanks for the heads up.

Guys, please check out the file I have uploaded. My goal is to have a comprehensive collection of feats that will be used in this game. A lot of the feats are different than in core rules - more powerful - and there are a lot of feats that are result of combining two or more existing feats. You will need to use those feats to rework your characters during the break.

Also, some of you have taken feats from various 3.5 rules. Please post the sources for your feats, so that I can add them to the document.

Guys, please check out the file I have uploaded. My goal is to have a comprehensive collection of feats that will be used in this game. A lot of the feats are different than in core rules - more powerful - and there are a lot of feats that are result of combining two or more existing feats. You will need to use those feats to rework your characters during the break.

Also, some of you have taken feats from various 3.5 rules. Please post the sources for your feats, so that I can add them to the document.

Ghost Sight (Ravenloft core book) I've transcribed the entire text in my character sheet. Let me know if you want to make any changes.

One other thing - those feats are open for discussion. Take a look at them and propose any changes you want. We will talk about them.

...how the crap do *lizards* have a +6 will save. This is ridiculous.

Ragnar

Plus + from some summoner bonus I'm sure.

now 2 level 8 creatures is CR 9 but against 9 elevated CR 3/4 characters its actually within accepted parameters, It does however mean there's no chance we're not getting hit.

Granted there was the inherent warning in the phrase " the do not seem to be attacking unless advanced upon"

Honestly as I think about it, we fell victim to subconscious metagaming.

'Hmm..lizards...animals have weak will saves...heh...run little lizards'..."let'sdo this"

Where the realistic reaction to seeing a pair of dinosaurs even for badasses like us would be.

"Whoa....what the &@&#$% is that!" at which point the people with summoning spells would know that summoned creatures usually dissappear in a few minutes at most.

We got caught up in KILL EVERYTHING

Hey Nightflier, about the feats. I see a refernce to Ability focus in one of the channelling feats but I don't actually see abiloity focus as a feat.

With a group like this who posesses a wide variety of abilities dependent on saves, Ability focus would be a really valuable feat.

Hey Nightflier, about the feats. I see a refernce to Ability focus in one of the channelling feats but I don't actually see abiloity focus as a feat.

With a group like this who posesses a wide variety of abilities dependent on saves, Ability focus would be a really valuable feat.

This is v1.0 document, and I plan to include a lot of other feats. I'll look that up.

Cool, you essentially pick an ability, requiring a save and add 2 to the DC.

Here's the feat:

ABILITY FOCUS
Benefit: Choose one exceptional, spell-like, or supernatural ability you possess, whether through a feat, class, or racial feature. Add +2 to the DC for all saving throws against that ability.
Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time, choose a different ability.

Ragnar Death-Speaker wrote:

...how the crap do *lizards* have a +6 will save. This is ridiculous.

They are in fact dinosaurs summoned by the Summon Monster VI spell. And they were meant as a deterrent and a warning not to follow the Summoner. They would have disappeared soon. I think that I've made that clear in the description of their summoning. On the other hand, as a party and as individual characters you are great deal more powerful than normal. You have been breezing through the encounters designed for 10th level characters. Of course, my intention was and is to run the heroic game, so you are more than equipped to deal with those kind of challenges, but some attention to details such as "they do not seem to be attacking unless advanced upon" is required in order to survive :)

Maybe I've totally missed the truth of the situation here, but as I understand it we have two behind us, one of which has a vendetta against us, the other of which views us as invaders.

We are in a tunnel which seems to go only one direction (no descriptions of side passages or other ways have been given)

There is a summoner capable of casting summon monster 6 who has just retreated in the direction we're trying to head. There are a couple of lizards left behind to "deter" us from following. Unfortunately, that means staying in place and hoping that the armies behind us don't catch up. It seemed to me that the lizards were the things which would be easier to deal with.

This has been bugging me for a while. See, I'm all for challenging games. I'm also all for encounters that seem to be certain death. (gives incentive to run, which I have voiced many times)

What I'm getting tired of is feeling like there is just no escape or alternative. With the exception of the fight against the camp of soldiers, every single encounter we have had since the Undead Bear-Rats at first level has been against things that can (and often have) one-shotted us. You say we're breezing through, I feel like we barely survive everything we face. I never know if this is the round that a couple of the dozen attacks aimed at one character will happen to be good rolls, or if a lucky crit is going to drop solvistania or gillian in one hit.

The thing is, CR doesn't not actually equate to appropriate challenge. We might be able to dish out enough damage to drop a CR 10 creature, but that creature will never fail a save against our abilities and we will never make a save against one of it's abilities. That's just the way the Hit Dice system works. It just comes down to who can dish out the most pain the fastest, and any round we don't drop what we're facing, one of us is facing a full attack from something that is built to be a challenge for a character with three times our HP.

I feel a bit like I'm in a survival horror movie, which is fine if that's what we're going for, but if it is, I'm playing the wrong character, and if it's not then something has to change.

So when i think "Hmm. There's a couple lizards in our way and two armies behind us. Lizards can't have decent will saves, especially if they're the same kind of lizard that we just took down. That was dangerous, but didn't seem like it was a fortress of mental strength." I think that's pretty reasonable.

When a lizard has a better will save than the heroes, there's something wrong.

Well, the first part of this game is designed to be "railroady" - a lot. The second part of the game is designed to be completely open and to provide completely different set of challenges to the party. At this point, you really do not have the alternative. You need to succeed and finish the quest you started - which has the potential to change the fate of the world - or you will fail and die. If you survive this, you get to play a different game and you get the liberty to decide what game will that be.

On the other hand, Midnight is a survival horror setting. No matter how powerful you are, there is always someone who is more powerful still - and your characters are heroes called by destiny, not some regular schmucks. Therefore, the challenges they are facing are much greater and more deadly than usual, even for Midnight.

The thing is, if you want to play a character who is above the norm, you must confront the enemies who are above the norm as well. As you've mentioned, the game is designed that way. These "lizards" have 75 hp each. If the party was at full health, they wouldn't last a round against you.

Anyway, you weren't supposed to attack them. Summoner was guarding a sensitive spot in the cave system where the power of the Fungi Queen is running thin - because there is a warded entrance to the Lower Depths just a bit beyond that spot. He retreated and he will return with reinforcements, but if you manage to enter the passage, he will not be able to follow you.

By the way, I would like to hear what others think about this.

Since this fight with the lizards is very possibly TPK, I'm introducing a rule that could help you survive it. The rule is that 1 fp equals 1 sp. That would allow you to heal up somewhat before the fight. Also, I'll give you two rounds time to heal up - not do anything else - before the first round of combat. I'll make changes to my profile later.

It might be just a bit too much for us, crippled as we currently are, but it also gives an special kind of atmosphere of darkness and constant danger. I tend to to the same with my players, but the fact is, we were very lucky, and the monsters were a bit too strong for us. If Sorok hadn't scored those criticals I think the lizard and bulette might have finished us, especially since Duncan (one of the supposed damage dealers) no longer has a way of dealing any significant damage.
But, again in my games I rarely have a serious encounter in which half the players don't end up in knock down, but the problem we are facing here is that we truly stand no chance against DC the abilities of these things have, and we are not likely to overcome their saves, while every hit we take might the end of the line. Not just falling down below zero hit points, but massive damage that could kill any single of us in one round even if we are full of hit points. So in my games I go with more enemies, that can damage the party severely but not kill anybody in one attack, since it all boils down on one dice roll, and we have only slim chances that it is a very bad one for the monster.
And Ragnar's action was too rash, especially since the last half-decision we have reached, when Duncan asked Solvi what to do, was not to attack (we could've at least regrouped properly). So I just half agree with Ragnar, but I don't think that he should have engaged the whole party in a fight without first asking. You almost pulled a Leeroy Jenkins on us. That is how parties die.

Now all we have left is to hope for some intervention at least a small one (like Dracarys flying from the darkness towards Duncan's hand, and that is not one bit likely to happen)or we could start using up fate points for various stuff. I also have an idea that might help, but is still grasping at straws.

Oh, and another thing I failed to mention - you do have a scroll with Reincarnation and Great Restoration on it.

Doesn't really help a TPK. With the damage they deal and the fact they'll essentially never miss, odds are we lose 2 people per round. They on the other hand are probably damn near impossible to hit and have enough hp to last 5-7 rounds barring a flurry of crits.

The main mismatch is that the stuff that can face us for more than a round when we're having a good day, can one shot any one of us with insane attack bonuses and damage levels.

Compared to stuff like this we're essentially glass cannons except for Sorok

And Gilian could summon the elemental if push comes to shove.

Doesn't really help a TPK. With the damage they deal and the fact they'll essentially never miss, odds are we lose 2 people per round. They on the other hand are probably damn near impossible to hit and have enough hp to last 5-7 rounds barring a flurry of crits.

The main mismatch is that the stuff that can face us for more than a round when we're having a good day, can one shot any one of us with insane attack bonuses and damage levels.

Compared to stuff like this we're essentially glass cannons except for Sorok

They are a lot weaker than triceraptoses. AC 20, 75 hp and 2d8 plus Str mod.

And Gilian could summon the elemental if push comes to shove.

Good to remember for later. I think if we hit and run we can pull this off. We just need Duncan to quit breaking magic swords and use them to deal damage instead.

;)

In order to heal everyone, I need to know who is injured and for how much.

I've also still go lots of constitution points and 13 points to burn.

I admit to feeling abit blindsided by all this. How the heck were we supposed to know that the summoner retreated down some special warded hallway, or that there was even another way to go. There was no description of this.

Hell, I just went back through the entire fight since we entered the tunnel. I don't even know how wide the tunnel is.

Ragnar has one ability to protect himself. It's the highest possible DC for a character of our level. So far, it hasn't worked on a single creature in the entire game except Sorok.

If those lizards are protecting the summoner's retreat, why the hell are they blocking our path? Is there any other way buy? Was waiting for them to dissipate our only option? With he armies behind us, that seems a lot more suicidal than what Ragnar just did.

You said the beginning of the game was supposed to feel railroady. Honestly, I never felt railroaded before this dungeon, but from the moment the Librarian showed up on, I've felt like we've had no say, and have basically been bounced from one potential TPK to another.

At this point I'm angry about it. I'm sure it will pass, but I feel like I've been put into a situation where I banked on my character's strongest ability in a situation that was desperate, and found out that I'm so far below the power curve that I had less than a 50% chance of success. The thing my character is literally built to do best, and it doesn't even get a coin toss of a chance because we can't face anything with Saves appropriate to our level. Not even anywhere close. +6 is huge, especially considering that lizards don't have an above average wisdom or good will saves. All of that comes from Hit Dice. I don't even want to know what these thing's Fort saves are. When I said it was ridiculous, that's what i meant. There's a problem here.

I've got an idea that no one will like. In order to make the encounter CR's match our party levels better we could just scale back our PC's power levels to more "ordinary" heroic player characters. I really don't want to do that, but I also don't want to have Chops die to a summoned mook. If he is to die, it is to something like The Herald.

I've got an idea that no one will like. In order to make the encounter CR's match our party levels better we could just scale back our PC's power levels to more "ordinary" heroic player characters. I really don't want to do that, but I also don't want to have Chops die to a summoned mook. If he is to die, it is to something like The Herald.

Seconded. Wholeheartedly. It's hard to feel like a hero when the enemy's temporary lackeys can sneeze an rip you in half.

Honestly, we aren't even that powerful for 3rd level. We're scaled to about 4th (maybe 5th in the case of Sorok and Solvistania). It's not even that we are stronger than we should be. It's that there are twice as many of us as the CR system is built to handle.

Nightflier, I'd bet that if you just took all your monsters, gave them twice max HP and left all their other values alone, you'd find that level-appropriate challenges would still be a challenge, and then when CR10 challenges showed up, we'd be appropriately frightened instead of thinking "Oh wonderful. This again."

Duncan Bloodforged wrote:

And Gilian could summon the elemental if push comes to shove.

Good to remember for later. I think if we hit and run we can pull this off. We just need Duncan to quit breaking magic swords and use them to deal damage instead.

;)

Technically, the bulette broke Sorrow. :D Duncan's plan is simple now. Sorok should be healed to full and take the pounding since he has the least chances of dying. Chops also has high AC due to shield, so he should once again take the pounding. Duncan will stand in front of Solvistania and Gilian. I will see if I can find a feat that can be useful to fill in my saved feat slot, and help somehow. My two weapon fighting plan failed (and it would've been an awesome scene with Duncan fighting with two broken blades) :D

Oh, and Duncan is 10 hp down at the moment.

Ragnar, you just try and stay alive.

If these things are like the last lizard, their lowest attack bonus is higher than my armor class.

I'm at max hit points (24, because i'm down 4 con from casting). They deal 2d8+Str damage. The last one's strength was +13. I don't know if they need more than one hit to drop me, but i'd bet they have enough attacks to get the job done.

I was just thinking that. Everything's adjusted for the fact that as a group we can deal out massive amounts of damage. But with thee CR system anything that survives it deals even more damage, which we aren't built to take.

The other thing is that when you consider saves, most opponents should have a decent chance of failing more often than not. That way when th one guy looks Ragnar in the eye and laughs, everybody has the same reaction.

oh $#!+

With a large number of casters and Midnight not being very heavy on the flash-bang, being able to beat a save is twice as important an element of play for characters not to feel useless.

Technically, the bulette broke Sorrow. :D Duncan's plan is simple now. Sorok should be healed to full and take the pounding since he has the least chances of dying. Chops also has high AC due to shield, so he should once again take the pounding. Duncan will stand in front of Solvistania and Gilian. I will see if I can find a feat that can be useful to fill in my saved feat slot, and help somehow. My two weapon fighting plan failed (and it would've been an awesome scene with Duncan fighting with two broken blades) :D
Ragnar, you just try and stay alive.

Oh, and Duncan is 10 hp down at the moment.

Except Chops hasn't cast Shield yet. I was hoping to get to the summoner early in combat, and I didn't figure this would be as tough a fight as it seems to have turned out to be. I was saving it for The herald.

A cool feat would be:

Two-Broken-Weapon-Fighting - A character can use broken weapons as light weapons which deal 1d6 damage with crits normal to the weapon. In addition, through his internal personal strength, he is able to make full use of any magic properties inherent in the weapon. Intelligent weapons are still considered dead.

I just made that up, but when you mentioned fighting with two broken weapons, I got a cool image in my head.

Edit: Chops is down 12 hps.

Chops activates the Shield ability, bring his AC to 26. He is also observing the herald.

Two-Broken-Weapon-Fighting is a splendid idea :D

Chops the Defender Dworg wrote:

Chops activates the Shield ability, bring his AC to 26. He is also observing the herald.

Reading that, I still don't remember doing it. I do remember casting Shield Other on Solvistania. I guess I am at full hit points then. Thanks for the reminder.

There is another way for you to get out of this - simply retreat. The lizards are much slower than any of you and they will disappear after some time. The fight between undead and the fungi is far and you will not be noticed.

I should have suggested this last night, but I was to sleepy. Not every encounter needs to be handled by combat. Running away in Midnight is pretty much legitimate option.

I didn't think that was an option, since Sorok's movement should be 15feet, mine 20feet, and most beasts and monsters have at least 30feet movement.
But what we can do is just withdraw a bit to the back. That shouldn't be too hard, since Sorok, Solvistania, Gilian and Duncan are a bit to the back (we were healing, and both Sorok and Duncan are a bit slower then the rest of the people), around 30 feet behind Sorok, Ilona, Chops, (I don't think Lyj would be in the first lines) according to my movement calculations. So the front line should just try to fall back. Take a full round of retreat. If they pursue, we engage and hope for the best. We will take one attack for sure, and who is left standing on the front lines should drag away those who might not be. Then they don't chase us, great, we just wait it out.

various comments deleted

For what it's worth, Ragnar, your concerns echo some of the reasons why I chose not to continue with the game after Pete died. There's nothing wrong with the type of game Nightflier is running, but it wasn't for me.

Just my unsolicited two cents...

Ragnar Death-Speaker wrote:

various comments deleted

For what it's worth, Ragnar, your concerns echo some of the reasons why I chose not to continue with the game after Pete died. There's nothing wrong with the type of game Nightflier is running, but it wasn't for me.

Just my unsolicited two cents...

You noticed this as an issue all the way back then? Wow. I'm really impressed. I noticed that there were some hints by the time we were in the cave with the demon, but before that i just thought the game was designed to be deadly, not that the deadliness was a byproduct of having to over CR the enemies to give them enough HP.

I appreciate the vote of confidence. I was worried I've been coming across as "angry on the internet" which generally translates to "annoying and stupid"

There is another way for you to get out of this - simply retreat. The lizards are much slower than any of you and they will disappear after some time. The fight between undead and the fungi is far and you will not be noticed.

So, retreat back toward the two armies that want to kill us? I thought they were basically right behind us. I didn't think we'd gone very far. Anyone else?

I seriously had the impression that the fight between the two armies was "right outside" and that our primary goal was to get past the people we're fighting to run farther away. If that's not the case, then it changes everything.

Sorok's movement should be 15feet

Dwarves movement is never reduced by encumbrance or armor. It's one of their racials. (unless there's another effect that would reduce his movement that I'm forgetting about)

Here is how it is:

You have following options:

1) Game continues as is.

2) Game gets taken down a notch. This means:

There are no traits from Iron Heroes.

There are no bonus feats.

There are no heroic paths not in Midnight books already. And that means they have to be nonmodified.

There are no prestige classes or feats from the sources not Midnight and Paizo.

You have 2000 xp coming each. That is more than enough to take you to 4th level. If you wish to continue to play in a less dangerous/deadly/challenging/whatever game, I will give you a week to restructure your characters according to Option 2.

If not, I'll forget about these dinosaurs and move the game forward to the point where you can rest and recover.

I would now like to hear from the whole party before I continue.

Nightflier, I think you're missing the point. I know I'm getting a little pushy at this point, but i think it's important that the real issues be discussed.

The options you're giving us are a) keep things the way they are where every encounter is essentially a slugfest because spells and abilities are nearly useless. or b) gut most of the characters and try to build something out of the remnants.

These are not good options.

There are two issues at the root of this, and both can be dealt with.

The first is that the party is large. I'm serious when i say that doubling or tripling the HP of the bad guys will compensate for that. It's an easy, effective fix. They don't need to be 5-7 steps more powerful than the party. They just need to be tougher to compensate for our numbers.

The second is that the descriptions of our surroundings (which tells us what our movement and tactical options are) has always been fairly ambiguous. That's easily fixed by a paragraph at the start of a fight that establishes the immediate area. Not just a basic description of the surroundings, but a more spatially aware description, like the ones you'd find in an older edition module, so that we know exactly where we are in relation to things like walls, ceilings and the bad guys. Normally we'd have a map, but in this medium descriptions are all we have.

If i'm off base or out of line, say so. I can take it. Just don't give us two options to choose from, neither of which address the reasons for the discussion.

I'd have to say I agree that the fix is the hp of the monsters. Having been in a situation where I dm'ed a group with a massive damage output, I did the exact same thing making them face a much higher CR. When it worked they felt awesome but before long they were being butchered wholesale, by things they almost never hit, ignored everything with a save, and dealt enough damage to one-shot any character.

So I adapted, slightly more work but essentially making them face CR appropriate, which in our case would be maybe CR 7 max, then either maximized everything's hp or in some cases doubled the listed value.

Fights were longer and felt more epic, abilities that lasted rounds felt more useful, and overall everyone was happy. Instead of every round dropping or killing a character, the fights ended with everyone alive but pretty beat up.

Another thing that I think we as a party should be using is that sense motive can be used to gain a grasp of the CR differnce between the individual and the subject of the check.

Might tell us when to run.

Although I am not personally a fan of the Iron Heroes traits, I think scaling that far back is a little drastic since we do have established characters. I put it forth earlier just to lay that on the table. I think the idea of increasing monster hit points is a good one. Also, increasing the number of baddies sounds fun too. Facing fifteen opponents that each drop in a round or two sounds fun.

Being a frontline melee fighter, I never noticed that the monsters were making every saving throw. Now that I think of it, not one of my Stunning Fists have worked. Also, I noticed Solvistania rolled something like a 30+ Arcana check to ID that staff, and she found out nothing.
I can see how that would be frustrating when your strongest abilities rely on saving throws. I think it should be possible to build encounters that don't boost the monsters hit, damage, and saves through the roof. Hell, we could give them all max hps and toughness bonus feats.

Although I am not personally a fan of the Iron Heroes traits, I think scaling that far back is a little drastic since we do have established characters. I put it forth earlier just to lay that on the table. I think the idea of increasing monster hit points is a good one. Also, increasing the number of baddies sounds fun too. Facing fifteen opponents that each drop in a round or two sounds fun.

Being a frontline melee fighter, I never noticed that the monsters were making every saving throw. Now that I think of it, not one of my Stunning Fists have worked. Also, I noticed Solvistania rolled something like a 30+ Arcana check to ID that staff, and she found out nothing.
I can see how that would be frustrating when your strongest abilities rely on saving throws. I think it should be possible to build encounters that don't boost the monsters hit, damage, and saves through the roof. Hell, we could give them all max hps and toughness bonus feats.

Solvistania rolled wrong skill. She should have rolled Spellcraft.

Solvistania rolled wrong skill. She should have rolled Spellcraft.

I think that's a matter of the player knowing less about how to identify items than the character would.

Her intent was clearly to identify the staff. The player rolled the dice he thought appropriate, but the character would have known better. Why not keep the dice result but add the appropriate skill modifier. With Solvistania the difference between a spellcraft and a knowledge arcana check isn't likely to be a big one.

Player knowledge vs character knowledge is always an interesting one. It's funny that it goes both ways too, there are things I didn't even bother rolling because there's no reason Ilona would know that even if I personally figured it out.

By contrast for somone playing a character with an insanely high Int or Wis, there's sometimes call for flexibility in not limiting the character to the abilities of the player.

We are after all playing inhumanly epic characters.

Solvistania rolled wrong skill. She should have rolled Spellcraft.

Ok my bad. Spellcraft is +14, while Arcana is +16, so just subtract 2 from her total. Problem solved.

I agree. Butchering current characters would destroy the game, so for me it is not an option to consider.
And like I said before, in my games I either give bad guys more hp, or put more of them. It is effective, dangerous, potentially deadly, but at no point do they kill characters in one or two attacks (depending on the character). Our numbers against any one stronger opponent difficult, since we easily gank the foe, but just make him not drastically powerful, but more... durable. More HD take care of that, or just more weaker enemies to keep us occupied.

More HD take care of that, or just more weaker enemies to keep us occupied.

Actually, that's the beginning of the current problem. It has to do with wording and how the HD system works.

I don't think that this is how you meant it, but it's a great opportunity to point out one of the details of the issue we're facing, so i'm going to run with it.

A lot of spells and abilities have HD caps. Others are based on a monster's HD. If the monsters all have double HD, a lot of spells that should work on them don't, and some of thier abilities get way more powerful.

So it's not the HD that needs to increase. it's just the HP. The monsters, for all mechanical purposes, need to be identical to the normal versions, just (as you said) more durable.

This isn't accomplished by adding HD. It's accomplished by making each individual HD worth more.

So esentially a 5 HD monster would become a 5 HD monster with 5 maximized d12's instead of d10's or d8's.

Is that what you're getting at?

So esentially a 5 HD monster would become a 5 HD monster with 5 maximized d12's instead of d10's or d8's.

Is that what you're getting at?

That would probably do it, yeah.

nightflier wrote:

Solvistania rolled wrong skill. She should have rolled Spellcraft.

Ok my bad. Spellcraft is +14, while Arcana is +16, so just subtract 2 from her total. Problem solved.

Well, strictly speaking it was not your bad. If there was any time, I would simply rule that you used Spellcraft, but you need three rounds to identify objects using that skill and you had only one round to do so. Therefore I gave you what limited knowledge you could glimpse in that time.