Im running the Age of Worms campaign. So far I am very impressed. Just starting to read through the Kings of the Rift adventure, when I read the following encounter:
Hill Giants(12)
Fire Giants (6)
Gargantuan Red Dragon
5 Adult Green Dragons
There is also another encounter with 12 black dragons and 10 green dragons and 6 blue dragons.
Now, I dont have a problem with the encounters, except for one. I uses miniatures in my games. How do I play out these massive encounters without the miniatures to represent them. Its just no fun to say "u see 6 blue dragons begain a strafing run on your fighter" then put down 6 pennys. Any ideas on how I can solve this problem. How are you others DMs going to play out this massive adventure?
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I've done what Sebastian describes, and it works really well. Before the D&D minis came out I used this method almost exclusively. It's also nice for creating PC and NPC "tokens," since you can essentially just create a close-up of the character's face and throw it on the map; makes managing large battles (such as the one in Kings of the Rift) much easier to manage (without having to have 30-40 specific miniatures).
In the beginning of the plastic D&D minis made by Wizards of the cost. I would just use what ever. Now Im beginning to be a snob about what I use. Theres enough different varieties to have just about everything you need.
In the first encounter I plan on having a pack of hill giants, 6 fire giants (regular, King Snurre, and repainted Aspects of Kord and Moradin to represent them). I just hope they create a Huge green dragon before then. For the gargantuan reds I may find something that will work. Either a repainted Gargantuan Black, or just use the huge red. There making a Collassal red but Im saving that for Dragotha.
The second encounter, theres no real way to have all the dragons on the board at once. I plan on roleplaying most of it.
Still Im about a year away from Kings at the earliest. Who knows what all the neat figs we will have available by then. :D
While I have no doubt that this adventure is going to be a blast (note that I haven't even read it yet), I can already see the curve getting cranked up on me.
When adventurers start to hit 13th level (give or take a few), they start to encounter either difficult foes, many foes, or both. What a pain in the butt to DM. I already see myself short-changing the enemies because I forgot to include their Uber-Protective-Aura during a battle at 02:00 AM real-time.
Sometimes I just wish I were a robot. Or the million-dollar man. That would be cool.....
Before D&D Minis I was a big fan of Fiery Dragon Productions' Counter Collections. They have a $30 CD with digital versions of all their counters: http://www.fierydragon.com/products/prod-ccdigital.htm
You can easily print out a lot of dragons and giants that way. I might go that route once I get to Kings.
I hear the previous poster's frustration regarding 13th level combats. I'm running Secrets of the Soul Pillars in the Shackled City Adventure Path currently, and the opening battle of the Wee Jas temple took almost three hours (with 6 players and additional enemies). Certainly nothing like the 2-3 encounters per hour that Monte Cook suggests in his latest Dungeoncraft.
A small part of me wonders if I could instrument modules like these in Neverwinter Nights. Then all the combat would be fast and furious, while I could focus on the roleplaying components.
I just finished reading this adventure last night, & now I have a question.
Why does the Raam have a type of "Giant" instead of "Undead"? A number of times in the adventure & monster text they're referred to as undead, yet their type is Giant. Plus, they have a Con score. So are they (un)dead or not?
Creative Director
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I just finished reading this adventure last night, & now I have a question.
Why does the Raam have a type of "Giant" instead of "Undead"? A number of times in the adventure & monster text they're referred to as undead, yet their type is Giant. Plus, they have a Con score. So are they (un)dead or not?
That's an unfortunate combo of errors. Raams are undead, and they should not have a Constituition score.
In the beginning of the plastic D&D minis made by Wizards of the cost. I would just use what ever. Now Im beginning to be a snob about what I use. Theres enough different varieties to have just about everything you need.
In the first encounter I plan on having a pack of hill giants, 6 fire giants (regular, King Snurre, and repainted Aspects of Kord and Moradin to represent them). I just hope they create a Huge green dragon before then. For the gargantuan reds I may find something that will work. Either a repainted Gargantuan Black, or just use the huge red. There making a Collassal red but Im saving that for Dragotha.
The second encounter, theres no real way to have all the dragons on the board at once. I plan on roleplaying most of it.
Still Im about a year away from Kings at the earliest. Who knows what all the neat figs we will have available by then. :D
The shortage of minis for anything above Large has been a pain already ad will be down the road. What have people used for the Urlgurstasta(sp?). Whatever it was, I'm guessing that'll also be my Mother Worm. Yes, the shortage of dragons that we have in our gaming room will also be an annoyance.
End of grumbling...
Yes. Minis are an amazing idea, but I will avoid them with the current marketing strategy. I hate buying a set to get a million commons of something I dont want. Also where are the larges, huges, and why is there cost so unreasonable. Tokens sound like a good idea to me. Going to buy them right now.
Somebody posted pix of his Ulgurstasta earlier. Made it with some kind of frame covered with an old sock, or some such. I do my battles with counters rather than minis, and I collected counters for a bundle of dragons out of a Dragon magazine 3 years or so ago. Counters are a bit easier to haul around than minis.
Since the battles in KOTR have an aerial component, and those big dragons will need the space of a 747 runway to turn around, it'll be pretty hard to physically represent it all on a conventional battlemat or even tactiles--unless you have a large set and your whole garage floor to spread them out on. I'd recommend keeping a smaller scale tactical map on graph paper to track the positions of the flyers, and use your battlemat for the relatively stationary non-flying participants in the battle. Big battles take hours to run at this level, even if everyone is really on the ball. If you have someone who can come in and co-DM, running the key monsters while you run the mooks and keep track of initiative and hit points, that helps too. And if the party has an "offensive coordinator" who keeps track of which party member is up next and helps the players state and resolve their actions quickly that also helps.
I have been prepping for this battle for a long time now. I have bought nearly every large and huge regular fig that I could get my hands on, buying them solo off of Ebay and from a few stores in the Eugene, Or, area. I recommend the following figs for the giants:
Hill Giant Chieftain (large)
Hill Giant Barbarian (large)
King Snurre (Large)
Mountain Troll (Huge)
Eldritch Giant (Huge)
For the dragons, I ran in to the problem that individual figs for the dragons are prohibitively expensive, when bought in large and huge sizes. So I instead have bought 1-2 large/huge dragons, 1 gargantuan (blue) dragon, and a whole bunch of small black dragons and medium copper/bronze dragons. I figure the big figs I will use when a dragon closes in for close quarters fighting, while the smaller ones I will use for when the dragons are farther afield, and using magic of breath weapons to attack.
Kinda a pain, but it will hopefully work. Conversely there are cool dragon figures being produced by McFarland and mage knight. They run about $15-25 each. The red dragon emerging from a pool of magma, would be pretty awesome for that fire dragon from Shackled City perhaps.
Somebody posted pix of his Ulgurstasta earlier. Made it with some kind of frame covered with an old sock, or some such.
You'd be amazed at what you can find lying around the house that, with a little imagination, can be converted to whatever you need. Haunt (sic) the toy stores around Halloween and get a bunch of rubber bats and some spray paint. Instant flight of dragons.
The cutout counters are a good idea as well, if you can find the ones you need. If you print them out on heavy cardstock, then glue pennies or cheap poker chips to the bottom, they're easier to move around.
I've found the whole problem with having enough minis of the appropriate type rather frustrating myself. Here's how I handle it these days:
First, I peruse my various rulebooks and magazines for illustrations of the monsters I want to use.
Then, I select the illustrations I like and edit them with photo-editing software, cropping them to the right size and removing any surrounding text or other details I don't want. (Microsoft photo editor works fine for this, but other software does better.)
Next I paste the edited illustrations into a Microsoft Word document and use the various formatting tools to crop each illustration to the proper size (1" for medium, 2" for large, etc.).
After that I print out the Word document onto sticker-type project paper (available at any office supply store or Wal-Mart).
I stick the sheet of illustration stickers onto a sheet of 3/16" architect's foamboard (also available at any office supply store or Wal-Mart) and cut them apart with an x-acto knife.
The resulting minis are thick enough to be picked up easily, unlike paper counters. They don't have the "drama" of plastic or metal minis, but they're quick, cheap, and versatile. I can make minis of any monster I like, and I can use various different illustrations to differentiate between individuals of the same type. I can also use them over and over without worrying about them getting damaged.
That's an unfortunate combo of errors. Raams are undead, and they should not have a Constituition score.
I just took it that they were giants, with undead traits. A nasty foe if there ever was one, thus the desire to appease them by not busting into their guarded vault.
I've found the whole problem with having enough minis of the appropriate type rather frustrating myself.
Same here. While I loved the last two adventures, I had to improvise with several encounters calling for many gargantuan or colossal figures. *growl* Fortunately, these were not overwhelmingly crucial tactical encounters, so no harm/no foul.
One idea would be to run the encounters calling for several large creatures at 1/4 scale and use the dragon wyrmling miniatures that are cheaper and easier to obtain.
I'm running in Eberron, so I switched out all the blue dragons for a bunch of copper dragons (the Medium Copper mini is plenty big enough to be a Large, and I've got a bunch). I also considered using the blue stormlizards (or whatever they were called).
For other dragons throughout that adventure, I used McFarlane dragons, or just an assortment of dragons that were the right size, and pointed at one and said, "All these look like this one."
For other adventures: For the Ulgurstasta, I found a dancing, singing caterpillar at Valentines last year that served the purpose. I found a ceramic caterpillar (the kind you'd set out in your garden as decoration) at a Walgreens, and used it for the Mother Worm. For the overworms, I got lots of the Purple Worm minis, and I've reserved those minis strictly for that purpose (they're a bit small, but they work just fine). In Into the Wormcrawl Fissure, I eliminated the frost- and purple-worm options from the Wyrmdrake and instead had it Gate in a pair of Balors.
For Mahuudril and the avolakias, I did what several others suggested above - I got the picture of the Avolakia from the Art Gallery on Wizards.com and made it the right size, and printed out a bunch. (Actually, I used the "standard" avolakia picture from the art gallery for all the other avolakias, and the "Mahuudril-as-Avolakia" picture from the magazine for Mahuudril so they'd recognize her as something different.)
Before D&D Minis I was a big fan of Fiery Dragon Productions' Counter Collections. They have a $30 CD with digital versions of all their counters: http://www.fierydragon.com/products/prod-ccdigital.htm
You can easily print out a lot of dragons and giants that way. I might go that route once I get to Kings.
I use the Counter Collections for tons of stuff. I have lots of minis too, but you just can't beat the convenience of printing the exact number of creatures you need and have the ability to number them to boot!
I created some token templates that let you make Medium, Large, Huge, etc. creatures that fit like you'd want in the squares. They can be found on my web page. Do a Google search for Black Falcon Aerie, go to Role-Playing Games, DM Tips, Tip 2.
I'm running in Eberron, so I switched out all the blue dragons for a bunch of copper dragons (
Why that?
I'm a huge fan of using Crayola Model Magic. It's cheap, it air-dries, and when dry it's very light and easy to paint.