A thread for discussing converting Chapter Five to 4E.
I'm just starting to prepare/convert Chapter Five. My first question is how to handle the mob? Has anyone given this any thought yet? Fantomas?
I've looked through the DMG and MM for inspiration but haven't really found anything suitable. My current thoughts are to make the mob a Zone (PHB, page 59) and have it count as difficult terrain (its hard to move through), cover (there are lots of people in the way) and also have an ongoing effect which does a certain amount of bludgeoning damage each round as an ongoing effect for anyone moving into or starting their turn in the area.
I'm thinking that Sergeant Krewis is going to be inside this "Mob Zone" plus surrounded by eight minions at any given time so the PCs can reasonably easily get to him and "kill" (hopefully choose to knock out) minions.
I'm not sure how much damage the Mob Zone's aura should do. Any ideas?
Have done some work on this today. Here is my first draft of Chapter Five
This is definitely a work in progress but I have completed the first brush of all the encounters.
Any comments?
Blakey
For the mob scene, I counted the crowd as terrain. I also used the mechanic of rolling randomly to determine which way that the crowd was shifting. If you tried to move against it, you took an attack vs. REF and if it hits, the PC fell prone.
I'm now thinking of using the crowd like a current in water - it moves a certain number of squares in a random direction (although I think I'll plan for it to move towards the town hall) and everyone in it goes with that flow, then anyone wanting to move against it has to spend movement squares to move against it. What do you think?
I changed things a bit, using Magma Striders from the MM as the monster. I did that because Magma Striders are cool, and when they charge, everyone adjacent takes flame damage. Seeing how I count all citizens as minions, this creates a horrific scene where all the citizens beneath the strider burst into flame.
I used a bunch of magma striders, using guards to attack the other ones. It also allowed for scenarios where friends of the party were in jeopardy across the map, and they had to get over there to save their friends.
Oooh! That's lovely. I'm snagging that idea! :)
Actually I just looked over your document and I would recommend not throwing the 18th level fire giant at them.
What I did for the fire giants, was place four 9th level giants in there (i don't have my MM handy). Two were one type, and the other two were forge callers. I believe they were all 9th level, there was probably some scaling involved. I just decided that one of the forge callers was Dugobras, and the other three were his friends/clan/family/assistants.
Can you please check out exactly which fire giants you did throw at them? I could only see an 18th level version and dont have my MM with me here. I'm very keen not to over cook this encounter!
If you come up with some good stats for Nabthatoron and Alek Tercival I'd be very interested.
I agree that the standard Glabzeru is far too tough for a party of 9th level characters. Equally though it has to be an epic fight and he should be an epic monster as he's Lord of the Demonskar.
Would it work, do you think, to make Nabthatoron a 'standard' Glabrezu but make Alek a very high level paladin. Then have Nab teleport in along with a small army of smaller more standard demons. Alek rushes to fight the main demon - who is also concentrating on killing the hero paladin and the party are left to deal with the "minions" (not in 4E sense).
The party kill all the minion demons about the same time as Nabthatoron finishes Alek off. The party then have to face the Glabrezu who is on relatively low HP and has used all his daily and encounter powers already. Perhaps something Alek did also reduced his defenses by "N" for the remainder of the encounter, making this super demon hitable by the lowly plebs who are our heroes.
They have to then brave his At-Wills (again which could be nerfed a little if needed) and finish off this bloodied and close to death Lord of Demons...
Would that be fun as a player do you think?
By the way, if my last post wasn't clear, my thoughts on the Nabthatoron/Tercival fight are that this fight goes on almost "off stage" on the fringes of the fight that the PCs are involved in.
I would play out the fight of the PCs with the demon 'minions' and each round describe Tercival and Nabthatoron exchanging epic blows and damage with each other in the background or off to the side.
Just as the PCs are finishing off the last demon minion, Nabthatoron will land the killing blow on Alek. He will then do some speach about how they are next and then the PCs will have to face off against a very battered Glabzeru demon, who has used all his action points, encounter powers and daily powers. He'll have a few HP left (to be decided), and will deffo be bloodied.
Perhaps Alakast (which I'm assuming the PCs will have found) has some power to reduce Nabthatoron's defenses significantly for one encounter? That could make him hitable by the PCs as well.
Finally, the beauty of this approach is we don't even need stats for Alek as he's just there to die.
Thoughts?
Afraid I can't help much with 4e conversions (not quite that savvy with the rules yet), but I've a couple general ideas that may help.
Firstly, I think you're doing your players a diservice by taking extra steps to make sure Tercival dies. Sure he's supposed to, but the whole quest is based on finding him and if it becomes apparent that you're going to kill him regardless of what their heroes do, they could get a bit resentful. Instead, I'd say let the encounter run normally. If Tercival gets killed, great, but if the players work together and succeed at saving his life, let them. At this point, Tercival's a babbling mess anyways, so it's not like he's going to throw off the rest of the AP by surviving. Even in Smoking eye he's likely to be more dead weight than actually helpful, and his ongoing prophecies could even make the adventure better.
Secondly, I think some of your monster conversions could benefit from just some skin changes. If the fire giant is too powerful, you could look at using the stats for a more appropriately-levelled critter and just call it a fire giant. Change its powers to do fire damage or whatever and it should play pretty seamlessly. Same for Nabthataron. If you found a demon closer to the challenge level you want, just put it in a glabrezu costume and you're good to go.
Firstly, I think you're doing your players a diservice by taking extra steps to make sure Tercival dies. Sure he's supposed to, but the whole quest is based on finding him and if it becomes apparent that you're going to kill him regardless of what their heroes do, they could get a bit resentful. Instead, I'd say let the encounter run normally. If Tercival gets killed, great, but if the players work together and succeed at saving his life, let them. At this point, Tercival's a babbling mess anyways, so it's not like he's going to throw off the rest of the AP by surviving. Even in Smoking eye he's likely to be more dead weight than actually helpful, and his ongoing prophecies could even make the adventure better.
Yes, I guess you have a good point there. But the problem I see is that I want Nabthatoron to be an extremely powerful demon. He's the Lord of the Demonskar and the demon who confronted Surabar Spellmason. He's a legenary figure. So I want him to be very dangerous. If I use a standard Glabrezu (suitably powerful creature I feel) and let Alek and the PCs fight him they will simply be squished at the level they are at. No way can they fight him.
My solution lets them have a chance against him after Alek has worn him down. Plus they are not just side issues in a fight between an Epic Alek and an Epic Nab by letting the fight run as two phases if you will.
They do get their own glory, even if in the end they can't save Alek. I think my players will be happy with this approach but I agree its a bit heavy for some people.
Secondly, I think some of your monster conversions could benefit from just some skin changes. If the fire giant is too powerful, you could look at using the stats for a more appropriately-levelled critter and just call it a fire giant. Change its powers to do fire damage or whatever and it should play pretty seamlessly. Same for Nabthataron. If you found a demon closer to the challenge level you want, just put it in a glabrezu costume and you're good to go.
Totally agree with your ideas here with the reservation that I need the fire giant to be more powerful than the 4 hill giants and 2 ettins the PCs have already faced. If the fire giant is weedy then he's not going to seem like fire giants are that much tougher than hill giants. Perhaps the solution is to take a standard hill giant and level him up to a solo or an elite (with flavour change of adding fire damage in there) - I'll have to look at that. I'm just trying to do the least amount of work possible whilst still making a fire giant a suitably dangerous foe at this level.
As for Nabthatoron, as I show above, I feel he NEEDS to be a seriously nasty demon. If I drop him to a 9th level solo (a standard challenge) or even a 12th level solo (a tough challenge) then he's suddenly not the Lord of the Demonskar anymore but just a normal sort of level demon. I want him to be as evil and nasty and dangerous as possible and yet still able for the PCs to defeat with circumstances in their favour. That's why I was thinking of the approach I outlined.
Thanks for the feedback!
Blakey
I want him to be as evil and nasty and dangerous as possible and yet still able for the PCs to defeat with circumstances in their favour.
I think you're on the right track with Alakast, then. It'll serve as a great excuse for a depowered major demon.
The timing of this thread could not have come at a better time. I've been considering how to convince the current group that I'm running to convert from 3.5E to 4E. They have just entered Vaprak's Voice, and are at the portcullis. These ideas will definitely come into use if the players want to swap gaming systems.
I'll see tonight, when we play.
Hi Richard,
Let us know what the outcome is. Fantomas is on exactly the same part of SCAP as you and has done some great work on this.
I'm actually still running Chapter Three under v3.5 but my group have agreed to move to 4E from Chapter Four so I'm driving this conversion onwards. As you can see I've done 4 and 5. I'm happy to help Fanto (and you?) convert Chapter Six onwards too as I'll obviously use it when the time comes. The more people we have on board the better feedback and the better end result.
Cheers
Blakey
I agree that the standard Glabzeru is far too tough for a party of 9th level characters.
I haven't made the switch to 4e for this campaign, and I doubt that I will. As fun as 4e is, my players are really tied to their characters after 18+ months developing them, and the class options just aren't there yet. It is possible that we will change to the Pathfinder rules.
However, I have been giving some thought to how I would convert the Shackled City to 4e, just in case my players change their minds. One of the first things I realized was that a 4e Shackled City would have to take the PCs from 1st level all the way to 30th over the course of the adventure path. Otherwise, we'd end up with PCs not powerful enough to battle a demon prince at the end.
So, Blakey, you might want to add 50% to the book's recommended average party level for each chapter.
Also, plan ahead for how your players will find the means to teleport, plane shift, etc., so they can do all the things that will be expected of them at various points in the story. After all, 4e ritual magic is (today, at least) quite limited when compared to the spells available in 3.5e.
And just for a "me, too," my players are also in the Demonskar Legacy, where they have just defeated the hags. The battle with the giants was epic, with the party paladin getting killed by the smithy, only to be raised immediately with some help from the party's first castings of lesser planar ally and raise dead. Was the most fun we've had so far in the AP.