I'm gonna finish TINH tonight (woohoo!) and be starting TBG in a few weeks. I am currently finishing up work on it. We play gestalt so I am changing NPC's to gestalt versions.
I have a balance question about Diamondback, the stiltwalker assassin who tries to kill the PC's during Wormfall festival. She is currently a battledancer, which is a class I'm not familiar with as I don't have the Dragon compendium, but I can figure out enough about it from her write-up in the magazine. My question is this: to make her gestalt I was considering making her a battledancer/ninja, and then making her rogues fighter/ninjas.
Battledancers apparently add their Cha to AC, and ninjas add their Wis to AC (like a monk.) Do you think this is a balanced gestalt combo? There are definitely combos in gestalt that are broken, even with how powerful gestalt is. And combos with new classes like battledancer certainly can be a problem. So whad'ya think? Is adding Cha and Wis to AC too much?
Also, on a more general note for those of you who have already run this encounter: how was it? I think it looks really cool, being in the middle of a parade/festival and with the baddies walking on stilts. Did it work ok? Did your PC's like it?
The encounter worked out alright. My only issue was that it didn't seem to me like the stiltwalkers and Diamondback were powerful enough to take out a whole party of 3rd-4th lvl characters. But, I also didn't have enough time to advance them, so that might make it work better.
My PC's were very very pissed by the end of that, mostly cause half the stiltwalkers got away and they killed Diamondback.
I'm a bit confused I thought the whole point of Gestalt characters was to give a boost to a smaller, thus the PC get Gestalt but the NPCs don't so you don't need to modify an adventure to give a relatively equal challenge to a group of less than four players.
Why would you want to modify the NPCs in the first place?
Yeux, I guess the reason they're not higher level then they are is because the adventure assumes that the PC's are gonna be taking on the bullywugs right after that and that they don't need to have used up too many resources before that.
No, in gestalt everyone with PC classes, whether PC or NPC, is made gestalt. Otherwise the PCs would be way more powerful than the NPC's. Monsters are generally treated as 1 CR lower, so you can improve them a bit and raise their CR by 1 and they should be roughly equivalent.
I have another question: the sidebar that details fighting on stilts says that a stiltwalker generally needs a reach weapon to attack medium creatures. But Diamondback's weapon is an unarmed strike. Isn't she supposed to fight from her stilts, and if so--how?
Creative Director
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I have another question: the sidebar that details fighting on stilts says that a stiltwalker generally needs a reach weapon to attack medium creatures. But Diamondback's weapon is an unarmed strike. Isn't she supposed to fight from her stilts, and if so--how?
That's an easy one to answer! Diamondback doesn't wear stilts; she wears the creepy skeleton leotard and runs around kicking PCs while the stiltwalkers throw fire and knives.
Oh, wow. I totally missed that. I guess that would explain it, wouldn't it?
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I'm gonna run this encounter with DB being being a scarred up manic that babbles verses to the characters as she is fighting them, pretty much gonna take verses out Seether's song "Pride" just alter them a bit to fit into the game. Also gonna have her using a oddball weapon, bascally a forearm sheath with a hollow rod attached to it, where her sword is kept if the PCs decide to take the weapon, they'll find it's attached to her arm somehow, thinkin may bolts or some sorta object that fuses it to her skin, I am gonna keep the skeleton leotard & such.
I think the background of her will be she has been tortured to a point that all she cares about is to kill & maim her opponents & such. If the PCs decide to unmask her, there in for a surprise (think the assassin character in Hellboy, the movie)
RM