| Trekkie90909 |
The Setting:
I decided to run 2 very basic low level
Level 1 Scenario (Previous avg time to completion – ~1.15 hours :: Actual run time – ~2.5 hours): Kobold Cavern
I ran my Dungeon Delving campaign’s basic level 1 scenario to get a baseline for the group/class. I’ve run this a couple times in the past for parties of 4, and it has taken 45 min and 1.5 hours respectively for parties consisting of existing classes. I selected the scenario because it takes effort to fail, and despite being very easy is both non-linear and can be solved diplomatically or through force of arms.
The scenario involves tracking a group of Kobolds from the site of a caravan ambush where they’ve stolen a merchant’s supplies and taken them back to their hideout. The hideout is a small cave complex dug out of the side of a hill which is normally well hidden, but when the party comes to it still has drag marks pointing clearly to a large entrance hidden by brush.
For this scenario the supplies were medicine needed in a nearby town to stop a blossoming plague epidemic. After explaining the scenario, and upon noticing that none of them put ranks in survival I completely bypassed the tracking stage of the mission and skipped to dungeon delving.
Level 2 Scenario: Merchant Issues Continue (run time ~3 hours):
The merchant from 1 is very happy with the party’s performance, and gives them a letter introducing them to his daughter who is poised to take over the family business. When the party arrives she is in a state of distress, and tells them that she has been receiving threats from an unknown source since her position as heir to the family business was announced.
The scenario branches at this point. If the party wants to follow up on the source of the complaints she tells them that her older brother, a notorious drunk, has been heard swearing he’ll get his inheritance one way or the other at his favorite watering hole; The Drunken Seagull. They then have the opportunity to track him down and solve things diplomatically or ‘diplomatically.’
If they don’t follow up on the source of the threats the scenario skips to a couple hours before the attack, and the party’s given some time to come up with a strategy and make any last minute preparations they feel they need.
I meant to run this earlier in the week for one of my other groups, but they arrived early in the day, convinced the brother they were a threat before he was drunk, and received a payoff not to interfere (~1 hour of game time) so I don’t have a good point of reference for how difficult this scenario is or how long it should take. The other time I’ve run it was under a different premise and the group just decided it wasn’t worth the gold after they had run around town for ~2.5 hours talking to people.
Sample Fight: From Merchant Issues Continue (~15 min)
For reasons which will be detailed later I left the 3 CR2 boss npcs (reach build Elven Stalker, Human TWF Stalker, Human Estoc Wielding Stealth Guy Stalker) out of the second scenario. I ran dumbed down versions of the TWF and estoc guy as level 1 rangers, but left the reach build out. After the second scenario I ran the reach boss as a stand-alone encounter against the party at full hp just to see how she/they would fare and she almost downed half of them (Low level AoOs are strong o.O).
Characters (they’ve probably updated these for next week’s session – Kiku joined late and didn’t use a publicly available sheet):
Our Heroes:
Avenger 1: Naomi.
Avenger 2: Charlemagne.
Avenger 3: Kiku/Kalishi Tengu (18/15/10/10/10/10) [Armor Silence] Feats: weapon Focus Bastard Sword
Warlock: Alemnir.
Stalker: Kelrah.
Since none of them had healing I gave each 2 potions of CLW gratis for the first session.
For the second session they rolled some knowledge checks while investigating the warehouse and discovered a stack of pallets which went floor to ceiling and contained 250 CLW potions/pallet.
Encounters and Fight Scenes:
Scenario 1: Kobold Caverns
The Party entered the mouth of the cave with the Naomi and Alemnir in front. They quickly came across a large stone Column stretching floor to ceiling; rolled perception and discovered a set of glyphs carved into the rock. No one spoke Draconic, and despite my best efforts at spelling out that this was a Kobold cave none of them figured out that it was a message (says the name of the tribe, and advises the reader to turn back; it further reads: Plague!). The Warlock thought it was some magic inscription but bungled his spellcraft check and seemed disappointed when I told him they didn’t seem magical. They continued bungling around making a lot of noise, so the archer hidden in the pillar opened his arrow slits (expertly carved into the glyphs), and shot at them! In the process of running away from the archer they discovered a hidden door around the back of the pillar leading into to his little shooting gallery. They forced it open, but the tight crawlspace and cover prevented them from killing him for about 5 rounds, giving the boss plenty of time to use a wand of invisibility and send out a rogue underling to scout the commotion.
It yarked and yapped at a couple other Kobolds, and lined up some archers in the passageway leading to the boss’s chamber, then set itself up to flank anyone trying to reach the archers. This resulted in a merry little fight; the rogue critically failed its sneak attack from invisibility, throwing its dagger down the corridor ineffectually before running away. The archers held out, trying to keep the adventurers away from their sick young. About halfway through the fight a few spear Kobolds came around to flank the party from the direction of the entrance (there were a lot of side passages the party ignored), and the fight lasted a few more rounds. The party ended up killing about half the Kobolds in the entire dungeon complex (~5), they then split apart and explored the caverns by 1’s and 2’s. They came across a few more groups of kobolds which were less well armed, and through some intimidation managed to subjugate most without further violence. One of these was particularly smart and could half-speak common. It conveyed that the Kobolds stole the supplies for their own sick.
The party talked that over for a bit, and asked the kobold where the supplies were. It told them about the ones they had already found; they again intimidated it, and it revealed that there was a secret chamber where the ‘good’ stuff was kept behind the boss’s room.
They then reformed for battle in the entryway and pushed forward in a defensive formation towards the boss’s room. Most of them had agreed not to attack, and to try to work out a compromise with the leader. The Warlock had other ideas, and chucked an alchemist’s fire into the room in front of everyone. The Battle commenced. The party basically hung back while the Kobolds destroyed the Warlock (he lasted 2 rounds), then set the talking Kobold in front of them to act as a liason, and held their hands up in supplication. They ended up having a fairly long social encounter (still in vigilante mode) with the Kobolds and the Warlock bled out on the ground while everyone ignored him (they still had all their CLW potions).
All in all I was impressed with the party; they accomplished their objective with minimal bloodshed. They performed much less well in combat compared to conventional parties I have run the scenario for. They focused much more heavily on roleplay, and while the vigilante class added nothing to this mechanically (maybe a few skill points) their mindset (other than the warlock) was focused more towards helping people, and that really added a special feel to things.
Scenario 2: Merchant Issues Continued
This began with a social scenario between the group (mixed between social and vigilante aspects) and the merchant’s daughter. The female Tengu Avenger, in her gentlemanly social aspect ended up wooing the daughter while trying to negotiate higher wages; I looked at her sheet later and she had forgotten to add the social grace bonus to one of her skills so sadly I can’t attribute the diplomacy roll successes that led to some truly beautiful roleplay to the class. The presence of a second identity was critical however as she was quite convincingly male even to the merchant’s daughter’s most rigorous inspections.
The daughter’s tale of an angry older brother lead to an investigation into his activities. They found him without difficulty at his favorite bar; The Drunken Seagull. He was quite drunk, loud, and rude so it took them a while to figure out how to approach him. Eventually they decided the easiest way to do so would be to order him another of his favorite bottle of wine (some obscure vintage costing 100 gp a bottle).
They did not have this much gold, and were at a bit of a loss until Charlemagne (in his social guise of Charles) noticed that the label on the brother’s bottle was peeling a bit and a much cheaper label was beneath. After some haggling with the innkeeper they bought an expensive looking label for 20 gold, and a bottle of “Grandma’s piss ale,” (so named for its neon yellow color) his cheapest wine (1 cp a bottle). Charlemagne combined these two items and proffered the finished product to the brother, who accepted it with exuberance figuring he had found a social equal.
He spouted on drunkenly about how nice it was to have a best friend, and Charles eventually weaseled out that the brother was in fact behind the attack and that he’d hired the thieves’ guild to hit the warehouse later that evening. They tried removing him from the ‘gull when the brother shortly after passed out drunk, but the barmaids shooed them away and tugged him into a backroom.
They relayed the information to the daughter, who rewarded them handsomely and began to seduce Kiku’s male persona. With some drama they convinced her to wait until after the thieves were dealt with.
The party changed back to vigilante mode, and split apart to guard the entire warehouse, hid stealthily in the shadows between crates, and waited for the thieves to show. It took a couple hours past sundown, but the thieves quickly arrived; announcing their presence with a pitter-patter on the roof (couple high perception rolls) before crashing in through the windows with flair and panache. The baddies consisted of 6 level 1 human rangers; their favored enemies were undead so as not to screw our low level party. The rangers had basic ranged NPC stats with their con and str scores swapped and their human bonus in dex. They had masterwork longbows, leather armor, and a dagger each. Their feats were PBS and Precise Shot.
Combat began in the southwest corner, Kelrah got off a chakrum throw at his archer, rolled really well for his base damage, but poorly on his hidden strike leaving his target at 0 hp. It then turned around and loosed an arrow at him, crit (successfully but for little damage) and they both dropped to -1 hp. He failed to stabilize for several rounds; eventually Charlemagne made his way over and fed him a health pot when he reached -6.
Combat proceeded to Charlemagne’s corner (SE), and his ranger started moving towards the center of the room (evidently searching for something, but it missed him hiding in the shadows). He followed along behind it stealthfully. The next round he got off a surprise attack with his dagger (miss), but drawing the baddie’s attention. He ran around a bend and hid between two piles of crates. The baddie tried to jump on top of the crate piles around him, but rolled poorly and landed on his face on the ground in front of Charlemagne (who wasted no time finishing off the wounded and dazed opponent with a nice crit from his rapier).
Kiku (NE corner) accelerated climbed her way on top of some crates towards one of the rangers, but took several arrows in the process. She managed to get right in front of one of them before going down (but stabilized). The two rangers in her corner ignored her as soon as she dropped in favor of looting the warehouse.
Naomi and Alemnir 2 started in the NW corner and ended up moving quite a lot around the map. Alemnir betrayed Naomi; his vigilante mode was secretly the villain in charge of the plot (this was revealed to me mid fight, and I rolled with it)! Naomi put up a good fight against his 2 rangers; downing one, and getting the other low despite Alemnir’s many attempts to put him to sleep (all failures). This is especially impressive since I reflavored the two rangers to level 1 versions of their ‘boss’ selves (see “Sample Fight” below for explanation). He very quickly dispatche the TWF, the stealth guy kept throwing out smoke sticks, and Naomi would just run away to a different part of the map, so that lasted quite a while until Naomi provoked an AoO from the estoc guy and was dropped to negatives from a max damage hit.
After realizing he wasn’t accomplishing anything casting sleep on Naomi Alemnir started chucking Alchemist fires around trying to set the warehouse on fire (and failing). The two undamaged rangers in the NE corner decided they had enough plunder and didn’t want to deal with the fire so ran away. Charlemagne came down around this time from the SW corner and dispatched the last ranger. He then faced off against Alemnir, who ran away quickly, managing to climb a wall and out the window to safety.
Ironically since the fires didn't catch and led to the rangers leaving earlier than planned Alemnir ended up being MVP. The party still got most of the reward gold since the warehouse was mostly intact.
Sample Fight
So originally the scenario was supposed to revolve around 3 demi-bosses who would enter after the rangers, and set up little kill-zones around the warehouse to cover the rangers as they stole things (basically the rangers would cover their entrance with fighter, and then drop from initiative after they arrived). Given how scattered the party was I decided to wait until after the rangers were dealt with instead; I did not think they would survive contact with the bosses. Then Alemnir made his big villain debut and I just dropped them. I reflavored the TWF and the smoke screen guy to be in line with level 1 characters and Naomi ended up facing both; he downed the TWF without much trouble, but misjudged one of his travel lines and provoked from the estoc wielder and went down to a max damage AoO. The reach build I just left out of the previous encounter, so I ran it here as a stand alone encounter.
The fight was pretty straightforward; the reach stalker started in the middle of the group (healed to full), and they were told to defeat her. She rolled absolutely dead last on initiative (RPed this up as her being condescending) and combat started. She got off all her AoOs from the first round as people closed on her, and nearly killed two even without hidden strike damage or crits. Second round not much happened; she got off one more AoO and downed Kiku pretty far into the negatives, but the rest of the party converged and killed her then saved their avian friend.
Player Feedback:
After First Scenario: That was great! We rock, this class is a lot of fun.
After Second Scenario: Darn you Alemnir!
After Sample Fight: Fun session!
Personal Thoughts
Combats in the Caverns were pretty typical, everyone would crowd around one tiny hole down which a Kobold was hiding and try to mash on him, usually to little success (squeezing/cover). This also led to them getting flanked a few times. Once that happened they spread out a little more and payed more attention to their surroundings. I think the generally cramped tunnels prevented them from playing their mobile/stealth characters as effectively as they would have liked so dungeon environments are bad for the vigilante.
Social Encounters: We had one in vigilante guise, and one in social guise. Kiku wooed the merchant’s daughter in her social disguise (a gentlemanly fellow in a top-hat) with her lustrous feathers, charming banter, and a VERY high diplomacy roll. Looking over her sheet it doesn’t look like she remembered to put the bonus from social grace into anything, so overall I don’t think the class did much there. What the class did do is provide her with an escape; when the merchant to be’s affection grew to be too much the rest of the party distracted her for a while and Kiku changed into combat mode, allowing her a moment’s peace. Similarly the party did not benefit much from the vigilante class abilities when talking to her brother (unless you count the extra skill points).
Combats were hugely mobile in the warehouse; the same combatants rarely spent more than 2 rounds in the same quarter of the place (25x25 squares total map size). Even the more heavily armored members of the party were sneaking around (with varying degrees of success) and getting the drop on people. They also spent a lot of time climbing over crates (again to varying degrees of success), and jumping between crate piles following the rangers. It was pretty interesting and not something I’d really experienced before.
The Betrayal: This was really the only use I saw for the vigilante’s abilities which could not be done by other classes. Alemnir’s alternate identity as the villain really threw the party for a loop and almost resulted in a TPK. They still don’t know it was him, and I will need to factor that into further playtests (we have one scheduled for level 5 at the end of next week).
| Trekkie90909 |
Fights now with CRs!:
From Scenario One (party level 1, 200 gp each) :
Initial encounter CR 1/3
Fight in the tunnels CR 1/2 initially; 3 waves of reinforcements came in CR 1/2 (and one CR 1/4) increments over the course of 5 rounds. CR never exceeded 1.25.
Side Chambers fight: Party split in half for this, each encountered a CR 1/2 threat -- these both surrendered with a little 'motivation.' (intimidate check DC 15)
Boss Room: CR 1.33 (caster kobold, cavalier kobold (no mount), 2 rogues) most of them invisible from a wand at first, which gives them a strong initial round (all rolled terribly) and after that they don't work together much so the CR remains low (rogues don't get flanking for example).
Scenario Two (party level 2, 1000 gp each):
Each of the 6 rangers was a CR 1/2 opponent, the traitor Alemnir was a CR 1 opponent. Hard to say what the exact CR was here given the party was so split up. 2 corners of the room were CR 1/2, 1 was CR 1, and the one with Alemnir was CR 2. The rangers lacked line of fire between the corners of the room due to all the crates in the warehouse so I was expecting closer fights than actually occurred.
| Trekkie90909 |
Just played a level 2 Stalker in a friend's home-game. Social Graces Sense Motive bonus gave me a surprise round against BBEG (level 7 wizard) and his two henchment (2 level 2 fighters). Reduced the caster to 3 hp by turning on him just before he betrayed us then winning initiative and getting an AoO (from movement when he retreated). The fighter bodyguards killed me, but I enjoyed forcing the BBEG to DDoor out, and my party managed to escape once the spellcaster ran away. Huzzah!
| Trekkie90909 |
Closing thoughts based on play-test from the same home game:
Levels 1-3: I'm a rogue, but with lower sneak attack, no finesse training (u-chained), no trap finding, no evasion, and no trap sense. To offset this I have better weapon proficiencies, a better will save (this was useful when our blinded sorc accidentally color sprayed me), and access to a roughly equal utility talent which will eventually scale (starting around level 10).
I've been in social mode the entire time; partly just because my social persona has been more appropriate for the encounters so far (even the combat ones), and partly because a +4 bonus to perception has been considerably more useful than blindfight would have been.
Level 4: I finally got Up close and personal; fights are a lot of fun, I'm contributing and able to do things on my own without outshining anyone. Finally had a reason to go into vigilante mode. I do miss the +4 to perception. My vigilante prefers to go about unarmored and barely armed; part of their stealth training background. This causes some issues in combat with my AC, but I'm ok with that and knew about it going in. It has a complication however concerning transformation time.
Future problems: My alter-ego fights unarmored; my social persona goes around in light-armor. Does the transformation time already include changing armors? I suppose it would have to since it already involves changing the clothing the Vigilante has on under the armor, but this is not explicitly stated anywhere and I could see GMs having different rulings/opinions on the subject. Following this train of thought - when I get the quick change social talents does this let me change armors (strip, and for other characters also re-equip - possibly a different armor) as a full round or move action?
Regarding Avengers Specifically: This is not a problem for my Stalker, but if I were playing an Avenger with the Heavy armor talent; does wearing heavy armor automatically provoke checks from people to determine that my social persona is a vigilante? The proficiency is a vigilante talent, so it should yet I don't understand how such an act would be logical.
And how would such a check be resolved? Would everyone around the avenger get one check; would they keep making checks as long as he was within sight? Would then get a new check every time they met him?
In general: The class is pretty bland. I like the stalker as a rogue analogue, but it lacks theme or purpose past about level 5. I'm looking at the next 15 levels after that and going: why do I want to play this class?