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I found this encounter to be somewhat underdeveloped.
The interior of the building was not detailed, nor was it explained how 12 10'x10' creatures (1200 sq ft of ogre) could fit inside a 50'x30' building (1500 sq ft) without being packed into immobility.
Also, the description of the building failed to indicate whether it did or did not have windows that the ogres could flee from.
I found this encounter to be somewhat underdeveloped.
** spoiler omitted **
I am looking forward to the official Paizo reply to this....
I found this encounter to be somewhat underdeveloped.
** spoiler omitted **
I'd agree, but since it is a barracks, it's designed to pack in the occupants for sleeping and assume they're not here for anything else. So, if 12 Ogres are really here, I would assume some are lazing about outside the building.
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I'd agree, but since it is a barracks, it's designed to pack in the occupants for sleeping and assume they're not here for anything else. So, if 12 Ogres are really here, I would assume some are lazing about outside the building.
I found this encounter to be somewhat underdeveloped.
** spoiler omitted **
Without being a wiseguy.. it's a mistake.
I mean, there is no good answer. Runelords, as much as I love it, was rushed at times. Bad design got through.
There is a standard policy that freelancers playtest their own encounters. The cartographer relies in the freelancing author to provide a map concept that makes sense and doesn't extend a middle finger at reality.
James has to clean everything up in a limited amount of time.
Heck, a third of the original manuscript of HMM had to be edited out because it was way over word count.
I'm not saying anything negative about anybody. Stuff happens. Processes improve. I love Paizo and demonstrate it every month with bank statement...
.... but there is no explanation for this other than it is an unfortunate mistake.
As you go through the later chapters, there will be more.
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I found this encounter to be somewhat underdeveloped.
** spoiler omitted **
When you walk somewhere, do you keep five feet of space around you at all times? An invisible bubble?
When people normally move around, they aren't in combat. They aren't spacing out to get full maneuverability, they're sometimes packed together. Just look at the sidewalk of any New York street, there's barely a foot of space around most people there.
So the ogres are a bit cramped. Of course they are. It's a barracks meant for human defenders, and there's a lot of ogres. I doubt they feel very cramped when they're relaxing, but when it comes to battle, yes, they won't be able to maneuver as well. That makes sense.
Not every encounter should give the creatures the perfect amount of space to move around in, that's just silly. Some creatures will of course demand that, and avoid fighting in small spaces. Others will not.
I see little problem with a bunch of ogres being in a small barracks, in cramped quarters, lazying around. It's not like human barracks hasn't ever put people in quarters of less than 5 feet diameter each. Nooooo. :)
Mechanically, there is an often forgotten rule called "Squeezing". Remember when the PCs attacked Thistletop in Burnt Offerings? Without going into too much spoiler detail, there was a lot of terrain outside that required the PCs (if Medium) to Squeeze. The ogres in the barracks can do the same thing. They can take up an area half their size (whether that is 10x5 or 5x5 is debatable) and take a -4 penalty to AC and attacks. Sure, it sucks for them, but it's *cramped*. It's also not meant to be very challenging since the PCs can just burn down the building.
Again, not every encounter needs to give the enemy (or PCs) the perfect amount of space, especially when it doesn't make sense to do so.
One can also argue that medium creatures shouldn't occupy 5' squares to begin with, and that 3.5 is broken in that respect.
There are dozens of ways to spin this:
1.) The ogres are dumb, and therefore the encounter is completely justified.
2.) The encounter is poorly designed.
3.) The encounter is designed to kill 12 ogres without any difficulty. Easy XP.
4.) D&D buildings are often inflated in size because of the 5' square ratio that was designed to accommodate minis- thus creating another revenue stream for WOTC and other companies. Which creates an issue sometimes where a building is disproportionately large or small, because there's a comparison being made to what size that given building might be in the context of real world dimensions.
If you're not comfortable critiquing the encounter (and therefore Paizo), then you're going to find a way to reconcile how this is an okay encounter. You will find a way to say, "Works as intended."
If it doesn't bother you to allow Paizo the "grace of not being perfect all the time", then you'll see as an encounter that might have been designed better.
Whatever gets you through the day.
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If you're not comfortable critiquing the encounter (and therefore Paizo), then you're going to find a way to reconcile how this is an okay encounter. You will find a way to say, "Works as intended."If it doesn't bother you to allow Paizo the "grace of not being perfect all the time", then you'll see as an encounter that might have been designed better.
Whatever gets you through the day.
This is a little insulting. Because I don't agree with you about this one encounter being busted, I suddenly am a "Defender of All Things Paizo", thus I will rationalize any encounter they make, no matter how broken?
I assure you, I've had plenty of critiques with things in Paizo APs. Most are around CotCT as that is the AP I've had the most experience with, but they are still critiques.
I like to look at most of these adventures as 'sense first, mechanics second'. We have here a barracks that, according to the map, is either 50x30, 60x30, or maybe even 60x40 (it's hard to tell as it's at an angle, and I didn't see a listing of its exact size). So somewhere between 1500 and 2400 square feet. Now, when I hear that, I think of the places I've lived. My current house is around 1600 square feet, and my last apartment was 900. As the house is the closest, I think about that. Could my house, if it was just one giant room (which it sounds like this barracks was) be used to house a good 20-30 soldiers?
Sure. Army barracks with wall to wall bunk beds can cram a lot of soldiers in a small space, and all things considered, this is a pretty large barracks.
So that's for humans. The encounter goes on to say that the reason the ogres use this is because the humans really didn't, thus it is clear of most of that 'man stink'. Could 12 fantasy creatures about 10 feet tall and pretty wide be ok in a space like this?
I still think sure. Even in the smallest space, 1500 square feet, that gives each ogre about 125 square feet of space, or about an 11x11 area. Height wise I'm sure they're fine, and regardless of D&D mechanics, an ogre is not 11 feet wide. Nor do ogres really seem that picky when it comes to living conditions.
So again, they're a bit cramped. When we introduce D&D mechanics, yeah, they don't have much room to fight. You could argue the 3.5 thing that giving 5x5 to a Medium creature and 10x10 to a Large is too big, or that this is just how much space a person needs to fight in without penalties. When you have less space, it gets harder to aim a better blow, or dodge something.
So, I guess we could agree to disagree. You tell me that I can spin this however I want to justify it, I could say you're going to spin it however you want to make it broken. My intention when first posting was just an opinion of someone who didn't think *this* encounter was busted, so there is no need to get personal with comments about 'whatever it takes to get me through the day'.
I regret the tone. I take your point, and don't even deny it. Were I to have the opportunity to write it all over, I would. My apologies, I could have spared you the attitude
But without grinding this out forever, to use your own words, I look for a balance between 'sense' and 'mechanics'. One doesn't trump the other. At the same time, I also recognize that there has to be some compromise between them.
I'm running Runelords twice now, so I'm got a good sense of some of the issues I've come across. A lot of them have been related to Cartography. From my point of view, I shouldn't have to "fix" a whole lot because I have been given the storytelling sense of the encounter, or because ogres don't actually occupy 5' x 5' x 10-11' rectangles. I use mini's and a battlemat (a fairly standard practice) and as much as I love role-playing, this makes for a pretty busted encounter. (Unless they spill out in the yard, whereupon they can attract more ogres. And so on and so on...) Yeah, ditch the mini's and freeform the space and positioning and this is less of a big deal. Sure. One shouldn't have to do that though, especially if you have invested in the mini's and the mat.
Again, because the adventure can't divorce itself from 3.5, the ogres really do occupy 5' x 5' x 10-11' rectangles and common sense be damned. Understand that I don't disagree with what you're saying. I'm just telling you that the rules are the common language and medium between myself and the players, and we follow it even when it contradicts the 'sense' of the encounter.
Also, the author's invitation to just burn the barracks down is questionable, because there have been a lot of threads and a lot of GM's struggling to keep PCs from not just burning down Thistletop and Foxglove Manor. It sends a bit of a mixed message about what actions are really worth an XP reward, and (12) ogres worth of XP is a lot for just torching a crowded building.. no matter how awful the ogres are.
Again, sorry I wasn't as respectful as I could have been.. I apologize.
But I don't think this encounter was great design and we'll have to agree to disagree.
Its pretty easily fixed though. The point of talking about it however is to give feedback, so that future products might be developed even better.
Ugh.. point of order.
Ogres actually occupy 10' x 10' x 10-11'. On a battlemat. I forgot that when I wrote my last post.
I like to look at most of these adventures as 'sense first, mechanics second'.
Again, this is not meant to be disrespectful to you (and I regret my earlier post), but the need to make this concession does not equate to good design by my standard.
Those should be in balance as much as possible, and when one must take precedence over the other, something is wrong with the design.
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I think this thread serves a purpose -- to warn future GMs about the need to tweak this encounter.
As someone trying to run RotRL, IWBNI there were a single go-to place where I could find notes from previous GMs about places like this (or the Xanesha encounter in Skinsaw, etc.) where adjustments/improvisations should be (or need to be) made.
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To Watcher: No worries about the attitude, it happens on message boards.
On the mechanics of the actual encounter though, I do think other things could be done to help fix this. Squeezing is the obvious choice, it would allow more than a few ogres to pile around one guy and hit them. Sure they take the -4 to AC, but they're already pretty easy to hit, the -4 to attack would hurt more. Bull rushing a guy standing in their way to get out into the yard is another option.
While I think this encounter is justified by the fluff, I do agree that there have been other encounters that could have used more space to maneuver in, I'm not going to defend all of them. And yeah, the burning down is a bit of a weird thing to encourage. Still, I would hope PCs could see the difference between burning down a haunted Manor as opposed to a barracks filled with ogres. The Manor may have lots of loot to take, the run-down barracks with ogres (none of which are wearing much of obvious worth) may not.
Anyhow, I do agree with you, mechanics and story should both play a part in the creation of something and they should be balanced overall. Still, I would think that just because it's hard for creatures to fight a battle like this doesn't mean it should never happen. Encounters where a mobile enemy surprises the PCs in a cramped space have happened before, it seems fair for the PCs to get the same of their enemies on occasion. What about the
I do wish the squeezing rules were a little less harsh, maybe -2 to each instead of -4. The -4 to each nearly killed my guys when they attacked the goblins in Thistletop Tunnels, and I know that some of them have been enlarged from time to time and wished they could squeeze better. But that's more a fault of the original rules than the adventures.
Sorry again if it seems like I'm heavily defending the encounter here. I mean, that's what I'm doing, but it's more to have an opposing viewpoint than anything else. :)
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The party I'm running burnt it down so I didn't have to worry about a fight inside. However, if the ogres are that crowded inside, and have that much trouble maneuvering inside the barracks, that really explains how they could all die in the fire before breaking out.
They also figured out to collapse the tower.
However sneaking through the tunnels nearly brought them serious trouble when they encountered Lucrecia. :)