Age of Worms Playtest. Level 14


Playtest Reports

The Exchange

My home group got a game going today. 1st game for the boys using Beta but we've played all the alphas to date.

In terms of the actual AP they've just reached Alhaster. Todays game had lots of roleplay stuff, sorting out some previous things with Manzorian and Co. before moving to Alhaster proper. Two fights only this session.
Spoiler for those playing this AP

Spoiler:
Against the brood of black dragons (I added an extra dragon to up the ante somewhat) and then against the acid wrath

The party were Cleric, Wizard, Ranger/Blackguard, Fighter (co-hort of cleric)

Both the fighter and Ranger are dual wield specialists. They've also got gear that gives them extra mobility (boots of flying and boots of teleport - these ones from magic item compemdium). The cleric has nothing overly dramatic in terms of gear. The Wizard built his guy with gear to max saves as he really hates losing out on saves and getting stuck (gaze attacked him once too many times I guess)

What we found - Both fighter types are enjoying the new power level they have. The Beta change over meant a few feat changes to maximise their dual wield attack power but they like it. The Fighter gets six attacks at full attack option with his feats now.

Diplomacy and intimdate working well for all the roleplay stuff. Nothing seems to have changed in this realm at least.

Two times the mobility feat came in to play. Both times the guy moving got hit, but they were both near things. The guys missed the automatic miss option from Alpha 3 but felt it was better balanced this way (they certainly didn't like having it work against them in the last game we played).

Some comments passed between fighters and casters - You do obscene damage (fighter to wizard in first fight)

You did how much damage? That's ridiculus! (Wizard to the two fighters in second fight)

Discussing this afterwords the guys really don't feel the classes are overmatched. Wizard is built for versatility not specialty though.

Wizard used his metamagic ability from the arcane school to maximise and empower his last spell and end the second fight. Was a force orb from complete arcane. Doing it this way used up all but one of his available points for this feat but he felt it was worth it for the Free metamagic he got.

OK gotta cook dinner for my young fella. Will post some questions I'd like some answers to later.

Cheers

The Exchange

Ok, my boy's all fed.

One thing I forgot to throw into the first post. Our cleric used channel negative energy for the first time today. The guys are playing evil characters if you havn't worked it out yet.

Up until the point he bought himself selective channelling this was fairly useless to him as it dealt too much damage to his friends. He dropped it today in our first fight and thought it was just damned sexy (his words, not mine)

However we felt that having to spend a feat to make a power useful to you is not really appealing. We've suggested making it heal characters of similar alignment to you (not our preferred option), or perhaps followers of the same religion (our preferred).If not heal them, at least not hurt them.

This at least means evil clerics on a mission with their faithful servants can heal them and damage opponents. It does limit things greatly though and would probably hurt the effectiveness of channel positive energy. So maybe positive energy can heal living creatures and does a slight bonus to followers of same religion.

Any way the selective channeling feat is still useful so you can use the postive and not heal your enemies, and is good atm to use the negative and not hurt your mates.

The Exchange

Ok some questions on spells. If any of the guys I game with are reading this, please stop now.

Next game the fighters of my group (Ranger/blackguard; Fighter, Swashbuckler and Barbarian) are going into an Arena fight to build up kudos so they get an invite to a big party.

They're going to fight a group that's been hunting them for some evil things they did back in Sharn (playing in Eberron). This group will be some melee types and a wizard. I was going to try out LogicNinja's wizard build concept and see how it played out (albeit a slightly higher level as my guys are level 14)

The spell combinations he suggested have some errors as I read the descriptions but I want some clarification in case I'm wrong (It's happened, and recently too damnit).

1) Invisibilty- The way it reads now is intrinsically linked to stealth. Stealth says it can't be used while attacking. I read this as the moment the wizard casts anything slightly in the offense category his position will be known. Still has 50% miss chance but can be targeted as no stealth roll available. Wizard may stealth and move half distance if he wants after casting, but that puts him about 15 ft from his location. Is this correct?

2) Can you stealth whilst flying? This is an Arena so he'll be flying if he can. Hell, he'll use everything legal he can if possible.

3) Would wall of stone contain a cloudkill - I understand that if you can shape it with a roof then yes, but given the distances my characters will spread when they realise a mage is coming then not sure if this is possible. Cloudkill has a driving force moving it forward 20 feet per round forever. Having watched water vapour condense and boil over the sides of containers in my science classes when dry ice is added to water. This demonstrates that even slight force will push even dense gases out of containers. My take is the cloud kill will just move up and over the edge of the wall. What are other peoples takes on this?

4) Solid Fog and Cloudkill - My understanding of gas laws is that gases of different densities do not mix (this is the basis of atmospheric layering and storm front movement if you want to know). Therefore casting a cloudkill into an area where a group is trapped by solid fog would be impossible. The cloudkill would just float on top and then move off as it is obviously less dense than a solid fog. I know the science is correct but the wording of the spells don't preclude each other so I'm asking for some guidance here.

5) Force wall - the spell description says its a perfectly smooth wall and will fail if anyhting breaks its fomration. Will broken ground (rocky stuff or deadfall timber etc) break it? Won't be an issue in an arena but the wizard in my group read this one during the week and wants to know how versatile it's going to be.

Cheers

Dark Archive

Wrath wrote:
Stealth says it can't be used while attacking. I read this as the moment the wizard casts anything slightly in the offense category his position will be known.

But this works as usual. Attacking while invisible reveals your position (origin of the atack), because you see the spell and hear verbal component. Which gives me a new question. Can a wizard use sniping to hide his position?

The Exchange

sniping might be possible if silent casting. I figured sniping was more about using a bow, which is inherintly quieter than a spell. But thanks.

With greater invisibilty you stay invisible and in the old rules people had to spot you with rolls not based on stealth.

The new rules base it on stealth so now everyone knows where you are when you attack without having to roll, as your stealth is now gone.

I'm not sure that's the intent or if I'm reading it wrong is all.

Dark Archive

But, as far as I can read you need only to use stealth while moving invisible, like you had to do before with move silently.
Invisibility section (page 395) is almost the same a SRD one.
Where did you read that invisibility relies more in stealth?

The Exchange

elnopintan wrote:

But, as far as I can read you need only to use stealth while moving invisible, like you had to do before with move silently.

Invisibility section (page 395) is almost the same a SRD one.
Where did you read that invisibility relies more in stealth?

Thanks elnopintan, that cleared up a few issues. Didn't see the invis bit in the glossary ( a useful section I now need to read more thoroughly). You're right of course, its pretty much the same as previously.

It was the concealment section of the book that confused me (page 146 -147). It says here that an invisible character gains +20 stealth when moving and +40 when standing still. Since I hadn't found that glossary I assumed that invisibilty just provided concealment which just provides bonuses to stealth and miss chances.

You've helped
Cheers


Wrath wrote:

Ok some questions on spells. If any of the guys I game with are reading this, please stop now.

2) Can you stealth whilst flying? This is an Arena so he'll be flying if he can. Hell, he'll use everything legal he can if possible.

Yes, but I think you figured this one out already lol.

Wrath wrote:


3) Would wall of stone contain a cloudkill - I understand that if you can shape it with a roof then yes, but given the distances my characters will spread when they realise a mage is coming then not sure if this is possible. Cloudkill has a driving force moving it forward 20 feet per round forever. Having watched water vapour condense and boil over the sides of containers in my science classes when dry ice is added to water. This demonstrates that even slight force will push even dense gases out of containers. My take is the cloud kill will just move up and over the edge of the wall. What are other peoples takes on this?

Actually I was just looking at the spell in Beta and SRD and it says the radius expands 10 feet per round not 20. And while I completely agree about the example you gave, I don't think the magic spell works that way. Like a lightning bolt won't destroy a wall it hits, it just stops the line of effect for the spell or an enlarge not working because the creature would be too big to fit in the space after it was enlarged. I would have to say if there is a 10' wall that the fog bank would go over it and continue on expanding (as it is 20' high from the start). If there was a 20' wall then the spell would stop expanding in that direction. The fog bank doesn't get any higher it just expands outward staying at the 20' height. I would however say that if the wall wasn't long enough to completely block the fog along a certain length (i.e. it didn't meet another wall and create a corner or two) that the fog would continue to grow past and behind the wall until it was engulfed completely or ended. Also it says that it cannot penetrate liquids, so if water stops the spell I'd have to say a wall should do just as good a job (for different reasons of course). If they meant for it to go over things I imagine they would have given a volume for the spell to affect, like you could direct the spell to go in X amount of 10' cubes and stack them until you could go in a window or balcony etc.


The post monster ate my last post!!

Wrath wrote:

4) Solid Fog and Cloudkill - My understanding of gas laws is that gases of different densities do not mix (this is the basis of atmospheric layering and storm front movement if you want to know). Therefore casting a cloudkill into an area where a group is trapped by solid fog would be impossible. The cloudkill would just float on top and then move off as it is obviously less dense than a solid fog. I know the science is correct but the wording of the spells don't preclude each other so I'm asking for some guidance here.

There was an official answer on one of the forums (might have been WotC site as I didn't find it as a quick search here) about magic stacking and they used wall of fire and prismatic wall. The walls were put in the same 5' x X' line overlapping. The wall of fire did damage if you approached from the one side and then if you went through past the 5' squares the walls were in the wall of fire did nothing and you were affected by the prismatic wall. The reason being, the walls only overlapped in that 5' x X' length, the 20' in front of the wall of fire wasn't influenced by the prismatic wall. Basically only the most powerful effect took effect in the overlapped area.

Now apply that to cloudkill and solid fog (5th vs 4th). Solid fog exists and you cast cloudkill right above it. Cloudkill falls/settles (as that spell specifically states) down, overrides solid fog (its penalties no longer effect anyone in the area - they are now taking damage instead) and is a wasted spell for all intents and purposes. HOWEVER, if you heighten solid fog to 6th, the characters will be trapped inside the solid fog as the cloudkill settles down again (and doesn't effect those in the solid fog area this time) and expands around the solid fog. This means the characters fight the solid fog for several rounds just to end up in bigger cloudkill (unless they went straight up). Also if you want to be particularly realistic once they get out of the solid fog you could enforce the hampered movement (Page 125 Beta; Tactical Movement - "Hampered Movement: Difficult terrain, obstacles, or poor visibility can hamper movement. When movement is hampered, each square moved into usually counts as two squares, effectively reducing the distance that a character can cover in a move..." Considering something further than 5' away has total concealment in these fogs I'd say that would hamper moving around. Also if you don't mind doing a little book keeping you could have them do survival checks to avoid getting lost as well (Page 314 Beta; Wilderness - Getting lost - "Chance to get lost: If conditions exist that make getting lost a possibility; the character leading the way must succeed on a Survival check or become lost. The difficulty of this check varies based on the terrain, the visibility conditions, and whether or not the character has a map of the area being traveled through...." Poor Visibility is DC 12. Now normally getting lost is every hour, but how often have you seen a "party" get separated in a movie in the dark woods or dense fog? In this case I'd make each character roll when they start moving (don't tell them what it is for, maybe take a look at each of the character sheets before gaming to get their survival check total) and if they fail you figure out which way they are actually going. As each character goes on a different initiative they will likely be further than 5' away and have a possibility to lose whoever they were looking at unless they are reading actions to follow someone at the exact same time as that person moves. You might want to avoid using a battle mat for this or at least keep track yourself on a piece of graph paper so you know exactly where they are as opposed to where they think they are right from the start. Possibly drop hints if someone got lost like, if they are talking to each other instead of using telepathy (our groups always did at that level lol) "Make a perception check.... It sounds like XXXXXX is to your left" when XXXXX should be in front of them. It'll make the combat that much more interesting.

Wrath wrote:


5) Force wall - the spell description says its a perfectly smooth wall and will fail if anyhting breaks its fomration. Will broken ground (rocky stuff or deadfall timber etc) break it? Won't be an issue in an arena but the wizard in my group read this one during the week and wants to know how versatile it's going to be.

Cheers

This one is really up to the DM, it is a judgement call every time. I would say as a rule of thumb if there is physical difficult terrain or obstacles (logs, large rocks, chairs, discarded/dropped weapons, trees, stalagmites, invisible creatures, dead bodies - yes dead bodies are difficult terrain in our games, etc) then it will fail. However you don't want to be too picky as then the spell is useless. Think about a natural cave that is roughly 10'x10' with a relatively clean floor. It might be a little wet and slippery, maybe a few pebbles. Someone is chasing the party and they want to slow them down. I'd allow the use of wall of force to block the path assuming there was nothing like what I listed above, even though the exact wording of the spell wouldn't allow it to happen. The cave would have rounded corners or might be circular so the perfect 10x10 square wouldn't fit as the corners would be blocked. I would however say that you cannot put a wall of force between 2 melee combatants. Reason being that there will be limbs or weapons constantly going back between the two and that would ruin the spell. Even though you tried to time it where there wasn't something there, who is to say there wasn't a surprise move or readied action you weren't expecting them to make and then the spell is ruined and wasted. I think the sentence about it be continuous and unbroken is to make sure people don't make little holes that they can fire through but can't be hit back from, or "windows" or "doors" in the wall of force that the caster knows about but no one else can see or breaking a rope that was entangling someone or causing a creature to get tangles up because there arms were through the wall when it was cast. Basically if there was something significant in the way it does not work. Whatever you decide just try to be consistent with the decision.

The Exchange

Thanks skylancer, some good responses there for me to look at. I'd like to see the official ruling of everlapping similar effects in the pathfinder rules myself, it would clear up just such issues.

I agree with your wall example. If the wall itself is higher than the spell effect, then it effectively traps it (was what I was thinking of ruling at any rate).

I'm not too sure about the gas effect thing. More powerful spell subdues weaker spell - yeah I can live with that. Casting solid fog at higher level through metamagic, I would rule it then completely subdues the cloudkill. Although from what I'm reading of your interpretation, it no longer moves, but expands at 10' staying in the same point of origin? Haven't got the book on me atm so will check this one when I get home. If this is true then I agree fully with your account of it.

Thanks for reading my post and responding though, I've got a few weeks to build this one up and want to providesome serious feedback for the developers.

Cheers


Wrath wrote:

I agree with your wall example. If the wall itself is higher than the spell effect, then it effectively traps it (was what I was thinking of ruling at any rate).

I'm not too sure about the gas effect thing. More powerful spell subdues weaker spell - yeah I can live with that. Casting solid fog at higher level through metamagic, I would rule it then completely subdues the cloudkill. Although from what I'm reading of your interpretation, it no longer moves, but expands at 10' staying in the same point of origin? Haven't got the book on me atm so will check this one when I get home. If this is true then I agree fully with your account of it.

Keep in mind I'm away from books and about to pass out as I try to explain this. I think from what I read the other day the only "fog" spell that actually moves or expands on its own is cloudkill, all the others pretty much sit where you summon them until pushed around by wind or some such. As similar spell effects they have no effect on each other(they are separate entities sharing the same space indifferent to each other), they continue on doing whatever they were doing when they came into being (cloudkill billows away trying to destroy things while solid fog sits there being stubborn and causing difficulty to things moving through it).

The catch is only the most powerful of them influences creature(s) occupying the squares with them. You can't target one of the spells in another as once they are going you lose line of sight to the original point of effect. As cloudkill states that it is "heavy" and will sink if it was cast directly over the solid fog it will fall down through the solid fog and then continue to move like normal. If you cast solid fog in the air, it will just sit there as it doesn't have the clause saying it will settle to the lowest level ground. However I think I just found out where the confusion was, when I was at work I was reading quickly back and forth in the srd online and thought that cloudkill grew in size not that it actually moved (basically that the radius grew) - Which is wrong. Sorry for the confusion on that!

However, the same principles apply, only it wouldn't be as nasty because the cloudkill would eventually roll away on its own (unless it hit a barrier like a wall that kept it from moving). Then again a 40' long/wide wall right behind the solid fog and an enlarged cloudkill might get at least something similar to work I guess lol. But my suggestion would be to research a cloudkill like spell that worked like I thought it did. Maybe 7th level, 20'x20' starts stationary and expanded out to 5'/level of the caster at 20' per round with shorter duration (1 round/level?). It would cover a significant area. If your players meta game a lot or are just particularly evil, it would be a nasty surprise. Then again it might be one of those things that would be hell if the players got a hold of it too so you wouldn't want to tell them lol.

We did an evil campaign and I felt bad for our DM, and depending on how your group is I would fully advocate slapping them around a bit to keep it interesting. Just a reminder that there is always someone bigger and more vicious out there. Obviously not trying to out right kill them, but its good to make them sweat some and when some of the rules aren't exactly how they expect them to be - it throws them off balance (which is why I love the Pathfinder APs, new monsters the players/PC's don't have any clue on make my day).

Anyways got to get some shut eye!

The Exchange

We played again last night. The boys levelled to 15 in this one.

They're in Alhaster trying to get enough Kudos up to get an invite into the big party so they can meet Lashonna. In ordewr to do so they booked a fight in the Arena and ended up being mathced up with a group of Breland Inquisitors who have been chasing them for some time.

The fights here don't allow magic users so the arena had - Dual wileding fighter, Dual wielding ranger/blackguard, swashbuckler, barbarian (used new rage from Jasons focus Thread as the player was a novice)

The cleric and the wizard were both confined to seating but were ambushed by assassins and a recurring mage villain during the fight (I really didn't want them sitting out a fight that took an hour of Realt time to play).

The fighters handled their end easily, we had flying characters everywhere (the ony one who can't fly is the barabarain). SOme with boots and capes, and th dual wileder made sure the wizard had cast fly on him before hand. Their enemies had invisibilty and flying as well as a Warforged juggernaught. The two magic users had prebuffed the fighters with blindsight so the invis was not a problem. Obvioulsy the flying opponents was no problem either. The barabarian held up the two invisible fighters plus the Juggernaught while the others took out the paladin and his dwarven artificer/fighter companion. Fight took 5 rounds in total. Note I (as DM) rolled abysmally all night which made some of these encounters much less painfull than they should have been.

The Wizard and cleric survived the initial assassination attempt (cleric had all but used up his spells buffing the group, the wizard was fairly close to full lock and load though). They took out all four assassins and the wizard in under a round but wiped out a bunch of spectators to do so (Evil party, they didn't care). The wizard fled with two of the assassins after being repelled by the cleric. The last two assassins were prismatic sprayed into other dimensions.

They had to pay a big fine to escape punishment for killing the civillians (Alhaster is run by an evil dictator so the authorites accepted the cash rather than puniish completely. Plus the party could prove they were attacked first as some of the "Blessed Angels" from town had witnessed the attack).

Then I ran a skill challenge (an idea I stole from 4th edition). The skill point system is nice for this. My fighting types have mostly taken at least one knowledge skill as the cross class doesn't punish them any more. They got through this one easy (6 passes only one fail for those of you who know how the concept works).

This led to a fight in the Final shrine of the Ebon Triad. I imported the Harbinger from the previous game for this one (Level 17 undead spellweaver), and she fought with the hangman golem (level 15 critter apparently) to defend the room. First round the cleric got mazed and was out of the game from that point (needed 19+ to get out). He didn't try anthing fancy to escape though so I never had to make a judgement call on an escape plan. He was probably too distracted by running his Co-hort fighter.

A confusion was dropped early which took out the ranger, co-hort and barbarian. The barbarian usedone of his rage poweres (clear mind) to reroll the failed save though and he got out of it. Barbarian also used his surprise strike abilty to good use as damage out put was essential in this fight as all opponents had high DR that most people couldn't beat.

Wizard tried some summons whihc were twarted by protective barriers from the spellweaver. Then he polymorphed into a troll then a dragon. Both forms were very ineffective but mostly through poor timeing. Note, the spellweaver had a Ioun stone that ate up spells cast at her, so the wizard wasn't about to waste slots casting on her. The golem was also immune to most of his magic.

When these two were finally dropped the Overgod Arose and erupted through the floor (I wanted to keep the pressure up).

Wizard dispelled one of the confusions which allowed more people to engage this behemmoth. It split attacks and used awsome blow to keep pushing opponents away and get AoO's as they moved to engage. Nice tough fight as a really good BBEG should be. They finally took him down. Three rounds later the cleric popped back in :)

This entire set of encounters took place without the cleric there and with the wizard being mostly inneffective in terms of big damage or control. I mazed the Swashbuckler as well but he managed to escape on the first go (intelligent fighter though so it was easier for him).

Barbarian was powerful enough to overcome DR and be the most effective damage machine. Swashbuckler was a using a magic holy sowrd (he's chaotic neautral so the only one able to use good aligned weapons). Polymorph spells are much less confusing now, but the wizard was disapointed in the overall effect. In huge black dragon form, he was still innefective in this combat against the Overgod. I think it was a matter of timing though, that form against some lower mook types would be ok. It did mean he was able to attack effectively though as his spells were being heavily negated. This isn't going to be the case in the next few games so hopefully he'll have a chance to shine there.

Two wepon rend is great as it helps to beat high DR. The fact it can only be used once per set of attacks is a much better balance IMO. It allowed our fight to go longer and be much more challenging.

Barabrian rage system (the new one in Jasons thread) was very simepl and effective for a newbie playing a level 15 character.

Overall a great game, the fighters really had to perform well as both their magic users were effectively out for both big fights. They handled it well, mostly due to gear and good pre battle buffing. Everyon'e enjoying the pathfinder ruleset. Has reinvigorated my playing group.

Cheers

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