I was looking through the last adventure the other day, and reading through Lashonna's stat block noticed that she is a 17th level caster but only has spells listed up to 6th level. I presume this is an error? Is an errata posted somewhere?
Creative Director
|
Should be obvious from the title of the thread, but just in case: AGE OF WORMS SPOILER AHEAD!
Honestly, this baffled me for a second too when I just looked at it, but in fact her stat block is correct.
As a very old silver dragon, Lashonna casts spells as a 13th level sorcerer. She has a feat called Practiced Spellcaster that increases her effective caster level by +4 for the purposes of determining the effects of her spells; this does not increase the number of spells she knows or can cast per day.
James--thanks and sorry for bothering you. Obviously, I didn't read closely enough!
James--thanks and sorry for bothering you. Obviously, I didn't read closely enough!No problem! Stat blocks are crazy critters... and like I said, I totally thought we'd made a huge error in her stat block myself when I just went back to check it out.
They are indeed. My magazines are now full of x-outs where I corrected what I thought was a small error in a stat bloc and then remembered size modifier to hit or something along those lines. Almost always you guys get it right, but since you can't print the breakdowns for everything it's a bit hard to double-check. I just noticed another dragon stat-bloc like this (with a magic item boosting caster level) last night, but was ready for it with your help on the Lashonna bloc.
|
Creative Director
|
They are indeed. My magazines are now full of x-outs where I corrected what I thought was a small error in a stat bloc and then remembered size modifier to hit or something along those lines. Almost always you guys get it right, but since you can't print the breakdowns for everything it's a bit hard to double-check. I just noticed another dragon stat-bloc like this (with a magic item boosting caster level) last night, but was ready for it with your help on the Lashonna bloc.
It's best to simply just take the stat blocks as they are; time spent double and triple checking them for errors once they're in print in a magazine is generally, in my opinion, a waste of time, when you could be spending that time customizing the adventure for your own campaign or building personalized player handouts or something like that. Once the game is being played, all manner of tiny errors will be introduced as people forget rules or things are misinterpreted during the heat of play as spell effects come up or are dispelled or the combat conditions or enviornment changes on a whim.
They are indeed. My magazines are now full of x-outs where I corrected what I thought was a small error in a stat bloc and then remembered size modifier to hit or something along those lines. Almost always you guys get it right, but since you can't print the breakdowns for everything it's a bit hard to double-check. I just noticed another dragon stat-bloc like this (with a magic item boosting caster level) last night, but was ready for it with your help on the Lashonna bloc.It's best to simply just take the stat blocks as they are; time spent double and triple checking them for errors once they're in print in a magazine is generally, in my opinion, a waste of time, when you could be spending that time customizing the adventure for your own campaign or building personalized player handouts or something like that. Once the game is being played, all manner of tiny errors will be introduced as people forget rules or things are misinterpreted during the heat of play as spell effects come up or are dispelled or the combat conditions or enviornment changes on a whim.
Quite right. I'm actually just going through marking stat blocs to call attention to features I plan to use but might forget in the heat of the moment. Every once in a while, something catches my eye as being out of whack, and I get sucked into checking it. My campaign also suffers from extended hiatuses interspersed with periods of intense gaming and no prep time--I'm running it with my teenage son, who lives across country and visits only on vacations. So I spend a bit more time in between visits getting familiar with module details so I can run them efficiently when he's visiting.
A lot of times I'll make arbitrary changes to the numbers just to make it match the "feel" of what the players may (or may not) expect in an encounter. I never go so far as to give all my fighters +5 damage, but I *do sometimes fudge on total modifiers for a die roll just to keep the game moving.
***SPOLIERS***
Case in point (and this is posted elsewhere), the spell weaver lich at the bottom of the Spire of Long Shadows has a +9 Concentration check in my copy of the module, which I felt was ridiculously low for a powerful caster. I upped it just a bit (I think to +15...) to match what I thought was the appropriate power level the players were at. My party's wizard was adding close to 20 for his checks at that point (I believe), so I felt like it wasn't too big a change.