| Trekkie90909 |
Basic Details:
Sadly I did not see that Round 2 rule-set was released yesterday until after my play-testing session was already over. Probably for the best anyways; I don’t think this particular game would not have changed much.
Character Creation Guidelines were as follows:
Level 5
10,500 gp spending limit (standard wbl)
2 traits
Paizo Material Ok; no third party/homebrew.
They received max hp at first level, and had the option of rolling or taking 5 at subsequent levels. Most chose 5; Alemnar rolled, and rolled well above average (~6/lvl).
I run crit-fail houserules, but they only came up on some Kobolds who subsequently fell to their deaths.
This was a continuance from last week’s level 1-2 playtest. The Stalker from last week couldn’t make it due to real world issues, and the warlock player decided he didn’t like that specialization (he cited arcane spell failure coupled with poor spells/day as the reason) so the warlock changed into a stalker. The remaining three players made some minor tweaks but remained happy playing Avengers!
It is worth mentioning that in a game where casters are considered hugely overpowered 4/4 players (5/5 if you include the original stalker) did not like either of the magical specializations.
The traitor (warlock) from the first session decided to *mostly* play nice on his new stalker and was *mostly* actively helping the party this week, so I did not get to playtest how effectively the class could be used to subvert the party from within.
Our Heroes:
Avenger 1: Alla/Rhialla Aasimar (Dex build, archer - longbow) [Environment Weapon (urban)][Combat Skill]
Avenger 2: Charlemagne/Charles Human (Dex build, rapier) [Combat Skill][Close the Gap]
Avenger 3: Kiku/Kalishi Tengu (Str build, bastard sword) [Armor Silence][Armor Skin] (she was wearing light mithril armor so she was getting literally no bonus from this, but liked the idea thematically)
Stalker: Alemnar (str build, greataxe/glaive) Aasimar [rogue talent: weapon focus greataxe][Case the Joint]
Scenarios, Encounters, and Fight Scenes:
I ran 2 simple scenarios with difficult fights. The first a rescue mission to find the mayor’s missing daughter; the second a mission to defend a small town of ~2-5k inhabitants from a very young red dragon.
Scenario 1: Trouble in Paradise (~3.5 hours)
A group of hunters discovered a rare albino 3 tailed wolf north of the village of Pawtucket. A week of festivities commenced, with many travelers and bards coming from the surrounding area to party and bask in the joy of a most auspicious omen! Alas at the end of the week, after everyone has had a chance to dry out it is discovered that the Mayor’s daughter Chrissa has disappeared! A great alarm goes through town and a group of local vigilantes muster to figure out what has happened.
At first they suspect foul play – a mysterious stranger in the midst of the festivities, but after talking to some people and learning that the girl has an undue fascination with the wild they decide she has run off to try and capture the omen-wolf. Rhialla decided to do some follow up investigating which took an extra 2 hours, while the rest of the party set off in the direction she was last seen headed (with a full contingent of her father’s guards). After a mere 8 hours travel into the woods these three come across the destroyed remnants of a wagon flipped on its side in the path.
Strewn haphazardly around the area are chunks of horse and bits of human, almost indistinguishable from another. Small fragments of armor emblazoned with the Mayoral Coat of Arms engraved inside the Crest of the Town Guard are the only indication that this may be Chrissa’s Convoy. After initial shock, and some scrounging around Charlemagne noticed tracks leading off into the woods and Kiku followed these; leading the party to a small break in the woods surrounding a low hill. There they saw a large goblinoid creature digging at a small opening in the hill; the shrill shriek of a girl, and the haggard cry of her final defender issue forth, egging the party onward.
The party got a surprise round on the Troll which was quite occupied digging into the hill, and peppered it full of arrows from afar. The battle was on! The Troll rolled a 1 on initiative, so it went last and the party loosed a second volley of arrows, dropping it just shy of half hp. With a roar (and some regeneration) it turned around and charged the party, just barely coming within reach of Charlemagne whom it gnawed on with its bite attack. At this point a second troll woke up nearby (it was hidden in a bush, and the party failed their perception checks to notice it upon entering the area), and joined the initiative tracker (nat 20, went first at the top of the round). It walked over and also bit at Charlemagne, missing. The party focused on the first troll, and dropped it in 2 more rounds; Kiku by chance had a flaming bastard sword, which sped the process along greatly. In this time Alemnar was full attacked by the second Troll which hit with everything and dealt 38/41 damage to him in one round (average party hp was around 33). The party then turned to focus the other Troll; it dropped Kiku and Alemnar into the negatives, but Charlemagne managed to finish it off thanks largely to the two alchemist’s fires Alemnar hit the Troll with before going down.
The troll encounter was CR 5 for 1 round ignoring the surprise round, CR 7 for 2 rounds while they were both up, and CR 5 again for 4 rounds after the first Troll went down (experience and gold set for a CR 7 encounter).
Rhialla joined up with them after they rescued the girl; Stuart, her chief steward and final defender gave a short speech exhorting the party to take her back into town safely before collapsing and dying of a mortal gut-wound. Rhialla had invested considerably more into curative potions than the rest of the party, and handed out potions like candy allowing everyone to approach a semblance of full health. The party discussed travelling back to the city, and 3 of them decided to make camp for the evening. Alemnar however decided to try pushing on, taking the girl with him (on his watch) and made it an extra 4 hours through forced march before his exhaustion eventually overcame him and he fell asleep. Bandits; alerted to the girl’s disappearance, and last known direction of travel came across him as he slept. They stripped him of all his valuables, and bound him tightly with rope. After he awoke they questioned him, learned the girl was the one they were after and sent her into town with a guardian to collect the Mayor’s reward.
The rest of the party discovered Alemnar’s treachery the next morning, hurriedly setting off in pursuit. They came across the location where he and the girl were bound and dragged off into the woods and Kiku again lead the way towards the Bandit’s camp. They encountered 3 bandits up in tree stands when two arrows soared narrowly past their face. The party traded blows with these three for ~4 rounds, but easily defeated them.
CR ~4 encounter; 3 human fighter 1/rogue 1 – heroic gear/stats. The goons had the high ground, but I didn’t give them a mechanical advantage due to this; also ignored the partial cover they should have received.
The party had ranged options so they were not at a particular disadvantage in this fight, but with one exception were not specialized for it. That said they all hit consistently and did good damage.
They then continued on into the bandit camp; Kiku disguised herself as rich prisoner, Charlemagne disguised himself as a bandit, and Rhialla disguised herself as a captured guard. They bound themselves loosely with ropes, and rolled sleight of hand to make it appear that they were tightly bound and tied up. Rhialla rolled low, and the Bandit Captain made a decent perception check low enough he did not notice the deceit until he was surrounded by the party but high enough the party did not get a surprise round. The encounter consisted of the Captain (level 6, 8k gp, melee heroic array) and 3 more goons (same as from the previous encounter) resulting in a CR 7 encounter.
The fight was fairly straightforward and lasted 5-10 rounds. Charlemagne first tried fighting the big guy, but was chunked down quickly and decided to instead kill the goons then free Alemnar. The Bandit got off one full round attack right at the start, hitting Charlemagne on his first attack and rolling max damage (16 ~1/2 charles’s hp) but missed on the iterative and shield slam. He spent most of the rest of the fight charging at people, and rolled a lot of 8s, which skewed combat against the party. I forgot he had Vital Punishment, which would have come up once when someone provoked, and possibly 2 times when he moved then did a standard action attack instead of charging. He rolled max damage on his longsword more than 50% of the time however, so in all this probably balances out and if he’d been using it consistently he’d have been one-shotting people the way the dice were going. Rhialla split her time between helping Charlemagne kill of the minions and force-feeding Kiku healing potions. She was moderately successful killing the minions, but Kiku kept dropping due to low AC/high rolls from the bandit captain (~17 AC, which was average for the party; bandit captain never rolled lower than a 10). Kiku missed the Bandit Captain by a narrow margin a few times at the start of combat, and after that spent 3-4 rounds getting dropped, and then healed and standing back up before the party ran out of potions.
The end result was a TPK; Alemnar ran away (naked, and clutching a stolen longbow) after Charlemagne cut him free. The party killed all the goons, but the Captain was left with a little over 15 hp. I think if Charlemagne had stood and fought the Bandit Captain the party would have won, as he did the most damage and had the highest to hit bonus. Even if he hadn’t hit providing flanking would have helped tremendously. As it was Rhialla couldn’t provide flanking for Kiku, which would have about a 30 point difference in damage and ended the fight in at most 5 rounds. Alternatively if Alemnar hadn’t snuck off with the girl in the middle of the night only to be captured by bandits the party would have been much better off.
CR ~7; Boss had a little extra gp thrown his way, goons were a little short changed – boss was separated to start giving him an initial disadvantage.
Obviously these are above average difficulty combats, but well within reason for boss battles. The stalker performed poorly in both combats he participated, due largely to the player – testing the specialization as a GM in a few scenarios I’m convinced this is not the Stalker’s fault. In the CR 4 fight the three Avengers comported themselves extremely well; if they had invested in medium or heavy armor they likely would have taken no damage here – as it was they were only hit a couple times, and utterly decimated the goons. The three Avengers could maybe have won the final encounter; it would have helped to have either a dedicated healer or at least an off healer. Maybe one of them will try out the Zealot now that it’s been touched up *fingers crossed.*
Scenario 2: Dragon Issues (~4 hours)
I let them recharge their consumables at this point.
A couple days ago a travelling Bard staggered into town, smoking and dusty; out of breath from running. The distraught Halfling trotted up to the Mayor’s house and hoarsely coughed out a single word: “Dragons,” Before collapsing in a rumpled heap. Over the past few days rumors have spread far and wide throughout town; reaching all the City’s Vigilantes. They shone their batsignal, and met up at their favorite tavern in social guise to discuss the mysterious Dragon issue approaching town. They talked for a while before deciding to get more information from around town.
Alla(Rhialla) approached the Mayor in social guise and utilizing some knowledge local & nobility checks made her way past his guards to talk to the Mayor and the now recovering Halfling Bard. The Bard was suffering PTSD but Alla calmed him down successfully with a diplomacy check and some reassuring words and he explained that a clutch of red dragon eggs had hatched a couple months ride south of town. One of the hatchlings was slowly making its way towards town, and should arrive within the next 5-6 days. With wild eyes he shouted they had better prepare to weather the coming fire-storm (points to his blackened and shriveled left arm) or leave, abandoning the town.
The Mayor was more helpful, referring Alla to an old map of the city from when it belonged to the Dwarves. The Dwarves ran a siege engine workshop hidden out in the nearby (2 days travel) woods centuries ago. The Mayor explained that the area had been overrun with Troglodytes as a result of the political turmoils of the time and no one had bothered to dislodge them since. The workshop might however retain finely crafted gears and special blueprints detailing the construction of an auto-loading system. He exhorted them to hurry, as he had little faith in the city’s chief engineer (a gnome bent on constructing a giant wooden steam powered flamethrower).
Alemnar spent this time Casing the Joint on the richer portions of town (failures), and then the Inn where they met (success), and an upscale Inn catering to the minor nobility of the region (success). This never resulted in anything. The rest of the party focused their time on spreading their renown. They met back up in the evening and Alla told what she had learned. The party decided to ask the Mayor for horses in the morning (he loaned them).
They proceeded towards the supposed location of the workshop, arriving at the edge of a very densely overgrown forest after 8 hours of travel. Learning from their previous failure in the last scenario decided to set up camp for the night instead of pressing on in a forced march. Nothing found them in the night, but the set up and kept a watch schedule.
The next day they started exploring the woods looking for the workshop; after a few hours doing so they were ambushed by a small Troglodyte hunting party (2 trogs and 8 slave kobolds). The party quickly decimated them, but the trogs got in a couple hits dealing 3-4 damage to each of Rhialla and Alemnar.
CR 4; 8 Kobolds, 2 Troglodytes.
They proceeded to then find the abandoned workshop which was now quite overgrown with trees, moss, and vines covering its once majestic stone walls. They entered and since the session was going long anyways I condensed some exploration encounters into one big boss fight where the boss was scheduled to appear 2 rounds after the start of combat (it was initially sleeping in a shadowy back corner, and is generally lazy). The party of course rolled insanely high on their perception checks right off the bat and the ranged avenger sees it curled up around an old decrepit stone ballista. >.< No surprise round for either side; boss ended up coming in after the first round, the ranged avenger having of course shot it as soon as they could. The party dropped 3 kobolds its first round, a trog and a couple more kobolds the second and then they had to focus more on the boss. The boss (a large Troglodyte Paragon) was hitting pretty hard (swinging around a bone scythe) and downed Kiku with its first attack (she’d taken some damage mixed lethal/nonlethal from the Kobolds in the room), dropping her to below non-lethal but above 0. It then alternated its attacks between Charlemagne (main agro in the room), and Alemnar (who was more convenient to hit much of the time) missing several attacks (it rarely rolled above a 5 to hit). The party eventually downed the trogs in the room; the paragon knocked out everyone except Rhialla, who managed to just barely finish it off with a well placed arrow. This caused the remaining 6 Kobolds to flee in terror. The party then had no trouble locating some gears etc, and even a set of blueprints (yay high perception rolls!) from the workshop before leaving to return to town.
CR 7-8; 1 Troglodyte Paragon (CR 5), 4 Troglodytes (CR 1), and 12 Kobolds (CR ¼)
The final encounter of the evening was the red dragon wyrmling (CR 6). The party had a few days of rest, and the Mayor replenished some of their curative potions. Due to their success at the abandoned warehouse the Ballista was completed a day ahead of schedule at the top of a 15’ high dais in the center of town (the gnomish wooden flamethrower had caught fire and exploded while they were away – go figure). Ballista stats: 80 hp, auto reload (holds 8 bolts), 3d8 dmg; requires 1 full round action of cranking to reset the tension in the string. Can be operated singly (full round reload, standard to fire), doubly (one reload, one fire), or triply (crank operator, fire control, commander [negates exotic weapon penalty]). Party went with a 2 person team on the ballista, Charlemagne set up a sniping post on the tallest building in town (Mayor’s residence), and Kiku ran around with burning chunks of lizard meat stuck to her flaming sword trying to attract her scaly new flying pet. The ballista hit with 2 of its 8 attacks, Charlemagne managed about the same with his longbow, but the second ballista hit was a crit (double 20s, whoo!) which dropped the dragon to near death, and was followed up by an accurate arrow which dropped the beast. It survived for several rounds; got off 3 strafing runs on the ballista, nearly killing Alemnir and heavily damaging both the ballista and Rhialla (it failed to carry him off with a fly-by grapple however :P).
Kiku decided she wanted it as a pet, so she fed it a health potion (she was right under it when it fell). It woke up and she fed it her burnt lizard meat (forgot to mention she got 210 lbs of meat off the paragon trog/associated henchlings). The Dragon stuffed itself and went to sleep. When it awoke Alemnar aced a diplomacy check and convinced it to go off towards the abandoned dwarven workshop, where it would find more food like that. All in all a job well done, and I get to save a Dragon for a reappearance later! Again the stars of the show were the Avengers; Alemnir spent all his time furiously cranking to reset the Ballista.
CR 6; Small Red Dragon Wyrmling
The party was rewarded with food and xp, and a huge town-wide celebration involving the consumption of many rare and exotic alcohols by all. And there was much rejoicing.
Player Feedback:
After First Scenario: They were understandably down after wiping; I hurried things along so they wouldn’t get too far into moping. Generally they were mad at Alemnar more than anything else, they felt they could have beaten the scenario as a team.
After Second Scenario: Lots of High-Fives all around; people really enjoyed the session.
Personal Thoughts:
Warlock and Zealot need love; many of these scenarios were trivial with an arcane caster along, and a divine caster would have filled the ‘baggage’ slot Alemnar was in much of the time with the added benefit of heals.
First Session:
The party got more out of the social personas this time; they didn’t get to benefit much from startling appearance (I forgot about it, should have applied to the first troll in the first scenario). The Stalker never got off a hidden strike (lack of flanking cooperation, poor stealth, and too far long range attacks). My impression is that full bab is very strong, but that the Avengers are weak on both the hp and AC departments. This could be shored up with either free heavy armor proficiency, or free finesse training to encourage dex builds. Next session (level 10) Kiku is going the heavy armor route; she could have done so at this juncture – I feel she would have had less fun with the class as she did a lot of sleuthing and acrobatics in her mithril chainshirt but mechanically she’d have been stronger combat oriented talents.
Second Session: Again The Stalker didn’t get any benefit out of his kit. The Avengers carried things pretty well however.
I’ll be running a 10th level session with them next week; was planning to run a 15th level session on the following Thursday but unfortunately the playtest ends that Monday :P.