Round 4 expectations

[Jacob W. Michaels]

Now that they've submitted, I thought it'd be interesting to guess what monsters the Top 8 will be using for their Round 4 submissions.

I'll go out on a limb and say I'm expecting a variant Egelsee Cocktail, which is actually part of the required trap.

[Curaigh]

Bloodroot and caliban.
Smart money is on the least favorite critter 'made' into something interesting. I could not say what the least favorite critter is though.

[Maurice de Mare]

Curaigh wrote:

Bloodroot and caliban.

Smart money is on the least favorite critter 'made' into something interesting. I could not say what the least favorite critter is though.

Actually, I'd advise against that. It is a bold choice to do that, but overcoming previous bias is very hard to do. Do you want to risk your top 4 spot by relying on peoples ability to change their opinion? Because the monster you select comes with baggage and some baggage will weigh you down.

[Jacob W. Michaels]

It's worked in the past, though. I think the most memorable villain from a couple years ago was Rosiline, who used the sleeping summoner archetype, which was pretty roundly panned (that wasn't the exact name, but I'm still too tired to find it).

It's definitely risky, but if you can do it right, it can really pay off. Now you definitely need to be careful about which one you pick but you can potentially use that baggage in your favor.

[Mike Welham]

Neil Spicer "reformed" Sharina Legend-Singer in his encounter entry, so it can be done. I think the trick is not to choose an outlier just for the sake of choosing something no one else has. Of course, I can't imagine that anyone who's made it this far would do such a thing. :)

[Steven Helt]

I thought the treatment of the dreaming summoner was genius. I thought that archetype had big flaws but was a fantastic concept, redeemed by its use in the villain round. So we know it can be done.

[Neil Spicer]

The trick to that lies in:

1) Picking something that was still popular in an earlier round (i.e., had a fair amount of active voters supporting it). For example, Sharina Legendsinger was one of the top vote-getters in the exit polls on concept. She just didn't get through during the stat-block execution.

2) Being confident you can earn extra credit with everyone by redeeming it (i.e., no one else would attempt it and you're confident others will recognize that, your ingenuity in doing so, and be impressed by the risk you took).

3) Picking something that actually motivates you because you see something awesome, and innovative, and worth redeeming in it (i.e., you have confidence in yourself and what you can do with that idea so it'll appeal to a lot of people/voters...including the judges, because their recommendations go a long way, too).

If you can line up all those things, that's when it can pay off. But, if you can't line up those things in your next submission, that's when it becomes a poor enough design choice that others will hold you accountable for it and vote you out.

But that's just my two cents,
--Neil

[Curaigh]

Thanks for the insight Neil.

So checking the exit polls/posts of support... Argopelter, Abandoned one or even Miremane?

I think the two mentioned (legend-singer & sleep-summoner) suffered in contest for not being what the round called for (villain & archetype). They were strongly in 'plot' territory, so IMHO, in the later round when plot becomes necessary they become redeemable. :)

FWIW I don't think any of the monster entries fell into that this year, the bar keeps getting higher and higher.

[R D Ramsey]

I hope someone did some sort of lost vrock temple overgrown with Bloodvines!

Setting aside questions of popularity, I think The Quiet Ones might be the most challenging to work with. I'd like to see it, though.

[Landon Cole]

I had an idea to do a zoo - I was going to call it 'the Blakros Menagerie' and give it a crazed zookeeper releasing enraged animals.

[Eric Morton]

I'm curious to see if anyone used the river dolphin monster.

If you can make a cool encounter with those guys, you've got design chops.

[Steven Helt]

I'm assuming the safest route is to not comment on what we did or didn't use, but this will be a really interesting conversation after voting is over. I wonder how many of us tried to "save" a concept that didn't advance, or thought we had a space that really brightened one.

[Maurice de Mare]

Curaigh wrote:

Thanks for the insight Neil.

So checking the exit polls/posts of support... Argopelter, Abandoned one or even Miremane?

One of the picks was the argopelter, the other monsters were all of the top 8. So this seems to be this year's bold move.

Kind of bummed that nobody stepped up and took the leechlorn for a spin ;-)

[Oceanshieldwolf]

Here's a LINK to the post from SKR giving the CR and monster breakdowns for round 4.

[Maurice de Mare]

Here's the CR-and-Round-3-monster breakdown of the entries:

CR 05, caliban
CR 07, blackwood drake
CR 08, egelsee cocktail
CR 08, egelsee cocktail
CR 08, thoughtstealer ooze
CR 09, leechroot
CR 10, argopelter
CR 11, egelsee cocktail

Looking at the list I think several people went for the big swing, but ended up picking the same monster - lot's of ooze love this round, but there is only so much love to go around.

[Jacob W. Michaels]

And interesting no one took the vrock-bloodroot vine path, which granted would probably have been a bit too obvious.

It's funny, usually my favorite part of this round is seeing the locations they come up with (which I think tends to be underplayed in terms of importance) but I am excited to see the monsters they use with the Round 3 critters and the traps.

[Anthony Adam]

Jacob W. Michaels wrote:

...It's funny, usually my favorite part of this round is seeing the locations they come up with (which I think tends to be underplayed in terms of importance) but I am excited to see the monsters they use with the Round 3 critters and the traps.

I definitely agree - this is one of the rounds I look forward too most.

Have the contestants come up with interesting environments and encounter mechanics that take the "drop monster here" concept into the "wow, that was a memorable exciting encounter" for both players and GM?

This is the real test - taking the components of an adventure, the treasure, the villains, the location and making them all gel in the best way.

This round is one of the biggest influences on who I choose to be the one I want to win and write the next superstar adventure.

No pressure now contestants :P

[Oceanshieldwolf]

No love for the yellowtongue froggyhulk? Wow. I guess it's definitely visually arresting and cinematic, but hard to engage beyond big dumb niche beast. Sadface.

I really hope somebody created a woodsy stockade in the mist being threatened by a blackwood drake in the early morning hours of a hot hot late sub-tropical spring morning. Nothing too specific mind... ;p

[Steven Helt]

This doesn't remark in my entry at all, so I think it's a safe comment. I loved the yellowtongue hulk and was using it in my encounter until I questioned what is and isn't a trap. Then I started over in a panic and completely wrote a new encounter and monster.

So there was some love for the hulk out there. And I bet most people thought the vrock/vine combo would look too easy or have too much competition.

[Effie Schwartz-Craighill]

I definitely thought there'd be hulkspawn swarming through multiple entries. Very surprised to see the cocktail so prominent.

[R D Ramsey]

It'll be interesting to see if someone was able to make the Argopelter fun.

But the other one with a lot of potential is the Thoughtstealer Ooze. There's some real challenges there to make that one fun, but if they did the payoff could be huge.

[Steven Helt]

I briefly considered a 3-D combat with brachiating pelters around an abandoned lookout. I thought that might be fun but it didn't fit my location as well.

Juat goes to show, it was a tough round. Even the less popular ones were easily useful.

[Clark Peterson]

Neil Spicer wrote:

The trick to that lies in:

1) Picking something that was still popular in an earlier round (i.e., had a fair amount of active voters supporting it). For example, Sharina Legendsinger was one of the top vote-getters in the exit polls on concept. She just didn't get through during the stat-block execution.

2) Being confident you can earn extra credit with everyone by redeeming it (i.e., no one else would attempt it and you're confident others will recognize that, your ingenuity in doing so, and be impressed by the risk you took).

3) Picking something that actually motivates you because you see something awesome, and innovative, and worth redeeming in it (i.e., you have confidence in yourself and what you can do with that idea so it'll appeal to a lot of people/voters...including the judges, because their recommendations go a long way, too).

If you can line up all those things, that's when it can pay off. But, if you can't line up those things in your next submission, that's when it becomes a poor enough design choice that others will hold you accountable for it and vote you out.

But that's just my two cents,
--Neil

Neil is, as always, right.

But I wanted to add something.

Be careful not to overthink it and to outsmart yourself. We had, I think, a couple examples of that this round as you will see.

Sometimes a contestant can get so caught up in the "cool idea" of redeeming a prior monster or trying to show something cool that they become slaves to that idea and forget their main task--to make the best possible submission they can.

Don't outsmart yourself.

[Scott Fernandez]

I definitely thought about tackling the Bloodroot Vine as my encounter. I mean I am the King of Vrock! But when you look at the math of combining a CR 5 monster with a weaker BAB and the CR 9 Vrock the Bloodroot Vine doesn't really shine as the center piece of an encounter I'd target for an APL 7 party. It becomes a mook that doesn't hit very well and that's not really Superstar design.

--Vrock Garden

[Clay Blankenship]

Steven Helt wrote:

I briefly considered a 3-D combat with brachiating pelters around an abandoned lookout. I thought that might be fun but it didn't fit my location as well.

Juat goes to show, it was a tough round. Even the less popular ones were easily useful.

I started out with a similar idea. There was a multilevel treehouse built by a druid (now missing) with argopelters defending it. I couldn't figure out how it would play out in practice, it seemed like they could just hide anywhere in the canopy, so I ended up going with a different concept. I kept second-guessing myself though. Now I am wondering if the first idea would have worked better. (The map was definitely more interesting.)

[Clark Peterson]

Careful guys. Wait till the end of the voting period.

[frank gori]

I was surprised by the lack of some of the more obvious combos to me:

Blackwood drake in a meadow with say fangberries (which have thorns) and twigjacks. Give a single twigjack a level of druid and you have a nasty encounter at a fairly middling CR. Throw in a back story that they help a blodeuwed guard a fairy circle and you got yourself a nice little encounter/location combo.

Yellowtongue Hulk in a cave rumored to contain a treasure stolen by goblins, Hulk ate the gobos and mini huks with young template are running around along with goblin dogs which aren't food. MAybe some goblin ghosts for a twist.

Calibans and mites working together. One can debuff enemies the other brings vermin allies. They decide to run a protection racket on a small town with too weak a militia.

Egelsee cocktail could have been cool if it had a almost "venom" like relationship with a Troll. Snacks on troll who can take it and is addicted to it, troll uses rock throw with ooze flowing onto rock as ranged weapon. maybe multiple oozes.