| Trekkie90909 |
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Basic Details:
The biggest complaint I received from my players in previous playtests (Last Week’s level 5 test (round 1), and the previous week’s Levels 1-2 (Round 1)) was that the sessions lacked a dedicated Social Encounter; the players felt they hadn’t had enough chances to explore the bonuses from being in their Social Aspect.
Enter Scenario 1: Covert Rescue; the King’s Brother has been kidnapped and is believed to be held prisoner in the neighboring Country of Tien.
The Scenario starts in a lavish ball thrown in the Vigilante’s honor. At the end of which they are tasked with retrieving the brother; they’re told it will be a 3 month journey to the Tiennese Capitol of Chiaotzu and that the brother is likely being held somewhere there.
Once in Chiaotzu they’re to meet with a local agent by sitting at a certain table in The Wandering Abbot Inn and ordering a “Crazy Ivan,” the signature drink of that establishment on the second Thursday of the month they arrive. It turns out “Crazy Ivan” is a Tiennese Dwarf, who is in the know about many of the goings-on in Chiaotzu. He points them in the direction of a local bar, The Rusty Bucket, which the guards and their overseers are known to frequent.
The guards are there, with the day-part overseer Schnell Longbottom. The party engages with them covertly for several hours, gradually extracting some useful information, before heading off to the Prison itself. They initially try to infiltrate the prison at dawn during a shift change using their many guises ability, and managed to bluff their way inside but there are only 10 guards per shift, and when the day guards arrived combat ensued!
The party quickly won, and explored the prison, eventually finding and releasing the king’s brother. They then returned home to much praise and adulation.
Scenario 2: A traitor in our Midst; The Viscount du Mal, a minor noble introduced during the ball in Scenario 1 turns out to be a traitor to the crown and is the reason the Crown-brother was kidnapped. Of course our beloved Vigilante’s felt the need to bring him to justice!
As a result of the many balls thrown in their honor from succeeding at the Covert Rescue the party has gained much renown throughout the Nobility (and the Nobility’s staffs) in the area. As a result they still get to benefit from many of their Social Abilities when infiltrating the Viscount’s home.
As a result of talking with the Viscount in Scenario 1 the party knows that he has a man cave hidden under a giant defensive clockwork staircase in the middle of his ostentatious mock-Chateau. They slip into the mansion quietly, and proceed to its center unseen and unheard by any of the serving staff.
They then proceeded to make their way past the Viscount’s many defenses to arrest him (they accidentally killed him instead).
Character Creation Guidelines:
Level 10
62,000 gp spending limit (standard wbl)
2 Traits
Paizo Material OK; no third party/homebrew
Core or featured races only (no alternate bloodlines for things like Aasimar)
Option of Max hp at first level and 5 at subsequent levels or rolling.
I run Crit Failure houserules; these came up heavily in one fight (scenario two in the first golem fight) to Alemnar's disadvantage (he broke his axe before the fight). In the fights themselves everyone managed to not confirm the crit failure (meaning it was treated as a miss, same as in a CORE rules setting).
I lost one player (an avenger) due to a scheduling conflict (unfortunately the one who really wanted to try out the Social Aspect), and another joined late (another Avenger), missing the first scenario entirely. Many thanks to forum-goers Lyzin Locrian, and Zwordsman; the real Vigilantes of this board who came to my rescue with their timely character submissions!
Our Heroes:
Avenger 1: Kiku (22/15/14/10/10/10) [Armor Skin][Close the Gap][Heavy Training][Unexpected Strike][Fist of the Avenger], Social {Renown}{Social Grace (Bluff, Diplomay, Sense Motive)}{Feign Innocence}{Many Guises}{Subjective Truth} HP 81, AC 21
Avenger 2: Charlemagne 4 [Combat Skill][Close the Gap], Social {Social Grace}{Renown}{?}{?}{?} HP 61, AC 22
Stalker 1: Alemnir (18/16/12/18/10/14) [Case the Joint][Rogue Talent: Weapon Focus Greataxe][Hide in Plain Sight][Perfect Fall][Perfect Vulnerability], Social {Renown}{?}{Many Guises}{?}{Great Renown} HP: 80, AC 19
Stalker 2: Janna [Leave an Opening][Up Close and Personal][Evasive][Hide in Plain Sight][Mighty Ambush] Social {Social Grace (Diplomacy, Knowledge: Local, Perform: Dance}{Renown}{Many Guises}{Quick Change}{Great Renown} HP 83, AC 27
Warlock: Zellos [Tattoo Chamber][Arcane Training 2][Mystic Bolt (Ice)][Arcane Training 3][Caster’s Defense], Social {Renown}{Social Graces (Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Bluff)}{Many Guises}{Quick Change}{Safe House} HP 73, AC 25
Scenarios, Encounters, and Fight Scenes:
I ran two scenarios; scenario 1 was a pretty simple social mission with a couple fights tacked on the end aimed primarily at
Scenario 1: Covert Rescue (~4 hours):
The mission begins with everyone at an exquisite ball thrown by the Marquis Ashford, thanking the party for their defeat of the evil dragon worshiping cult bent on destroying the kingdom. Many minor nobles were in attendance, and the King even dropped by for a little while as a courtesy. The party was allowed to mingle, and learn a little bit about the country, catching up on the gossip talking to the Viscount du Mal about the problems he’s having with the gnomish workers building his man-cave (and exhorting him to kill them), and learning of some potential upcoming missions (The Dwarven Ambassador for example kept talking about driving a dragon out of some very rich mines).
At the end of the night the Marquis brings them all into his private chambers, where they find one of the King’s advisors waiting for them. He tells them that the King’s Brother has disappeared, and while the rumors say he’s defected to the neighboring country of Tien, the King believes he’s instead been kidnapped and is being held prisoner there. The aide answers any questions the party asks of him, and agrees to provide them with some basic travel supplies; a potion of CSW, 2 CMW, and 3 CLW travel rations and documents, and anything they need to build a believable cover to infiltrate Tien. The party decides they will pose as merchants, and ask for horses and a basic caravan to help sell their cover during the 3 month journey to the Tiennese Capitol of Chiaotzu (where the brother is believed to be). Alemnir gained renown by killing people in the streets of a certain district, leading to rumors of a ripper on the spree.
After the Aide leaves Janna remembers that as a level 10 Fetchling she has the ability to Shadow-walk once per day; transporting herself and up to 9 other individuals to the border with the plane of shadow. This will allow the party to make the 3 month journey in a mere (rolls 1 on a d4) hour! So instead of taking the caravan etc the party leaves with their documents and arrives 100 feet southwest of Chiaotzu’s western gate. Everyone except Janna decides to use “many guises” to look like a local peasant, and manage to get into the city without problem; the guards don’t even look at them. Janna decides to try getting into the city in her social persona and has significant troubles talking her way through because the guards don’t believe a single person constitutes a caravan (what the paperwork says) nor that a single person could possibly survive the 3 month trip along bandit infested roads. After some arguing she decides to just roll a bluff check (rolls high) and flirts her way through saying she was part of the ‘cargo’ and she’d wandered off by herself due to an inattentive caravan driver.
They’re about a week early to meet their contact, and decide to spend the week exploring the city and spreading their renown. Chiotzu is a large city of 500,000 inhabitants, so they all have to pick a specific district. Janna focuses on skeezy bars, dancing around in the day and picking off trouble-makers at night. Kiku focuses on a small Tengu population which ends up having no mechanical benefit, but I think she enjoyed exploring her people’s culture in the city. I think Zellos focused on a middle-class merchant area, particularly proprietors of magic shops.
At the end of a week they followed the Aide’s instructions to sit at a certain table in The Wandering Abbot Inn and order a “Crazy Ivan,” the signature drink of that establishment. It turns out “Crazy Ivan” is a Tiennese Dwarf, who is in the know about many of the goings-on in Chiaotzu. He meets with them, and they all go up to Zellos’s room, which he has made into his Safehouse. Ivan tells them he’s identified which prison the brother is in, and points the party in the direction of a local bar, The Rusty Bucket, which the guards and their overseers are known to frequent while off duty.
Some guards are there along with the day-part overseer Schnell Longbottom. The party engages with them covertly for several hours while Zellos sits in a corner using detect thoughts to try and snag useful information. He writes this information down in a journal, and eventually figures out the overseer’s password, although he’s not sure to what.
After many shenanigans, they head off to the Prison itself. Initially they infiltrate it by posing as guards during the morning shift change using their many guises ability and some uniforms that Alemnir ‘found’ on the dead bodies of some city watchmen. They managed to bluff their way inside past the departing night shift, but the day shift discovered the deception when they rounded a corner to find Janna picking a lock, trying to enter the prison proper!
One short combat later (10 x level 1 humans, 1x level 3 barbarian overseer), and the party had killed all but one regular guard, who had the good sense to surrender and one of the gate guards, who ran away right at the start of combat to find reinforcements. They all did considerable damage; Zellos was the only one who had to hit the guards more than once to kill them. Janna got off a nice Up Close and Personal tumble on the Overseer (barbarian), downing him in a single shot before he could do anything. Of the rest of the guards only one even got in a hit (against Janna’s Flat Footed AC) dealing 3 non-lethal damage with its Sap.
CR 0; level 3 human barbarian, 10 human guards.
The party quickly explored the prison, finding a hidden compartment under a false wall of the prison. After many attempts they managed to collaboratively move the wall, revealing a trapdoor inset into the floor and magically locked. The Warlock repeated the Overseer’s password “Pineapple,” while thinking about pears and the door opened! The narrow doorway revealed a 10 foot deep pit, with the king’s brother at the bottom covered in his own filth. They rescued him with some rope, and left the building only to discover that the captain of the city guard had arrived. Syn Thunderfoot, an unarmed and unarmored opponent, at first seemed unthreatening and she led off by trying to convince the party that she knew nothing of the brother and was in fact searching for him asking them to transfer the brother into her care. The party thought this was odd considering all the dead bodies around and so rolled a Sense Motive check, which informed almost all of them that she was lying. On to Combat!
Syn rolled low, allowing the rest of the party to get off some initial attacks, none of which hit her. She then unleashed a Flurry of Blows at Zellos, correctly identifying the spellcaster as her largest threat. The party saw 5 attacks and for some reason assumed she was a 20th level unarmed fighter with haste (I thought between the eastern theme of the city and a lengthy description of her monk robes and holy symbol it would be obvious she was not; oh well). So instead of fighting they decided to run away using Janna (the Fetchling’s) Shadow Walk ability.
CR 12; Syn Thunderfoot.
They arrived back at the capitol city, having successfully bypassed the Thunderfoot, as well as the planned pursuit of the city’s Black Ops squadron Earl and Pearl. I was hoping to test out Loyal Aid and mobile Safe Houses to see how effective they were at deterring pursuit, but no one took Loyal Aid and magical travel trivialized the necessity of the mobile Safehouse. I’m generally worry about magic trivializing all of the social aspects at higher levels as many spells can circumvent issues which would take a Vigilante a lot of effort (and class feature investiture) to overcome.
CR 12; :P.
In all I was happy with the scenario; Many guises is definitely useful but not overpowered. Quick-change helped speed along the disguises, but wasn’t necessary for anything. Renown didn’t come up much but ensured the party had a Safehouse free of scrying to converse with the Dwarf (there would have been consequences otherwise). Safehouse would potentially have been useful a second time to smuggle the brother out of the city, but magic trivialized this. Social Graces helped Janna bluff her way into the city, and Alemnar (who was fighting in his Social Aspect in the Prison) to make his Sense Motive check. Intimidate didn’t come up, so no direct benefit from Renown – greater renown let Janna have the Rusty-Bucket in her list of renown locations which aided the party in extracting information from the guards/overseer. Janna tried using Innocence to gain additional bluff against the guards once they discovered her picking the lock, but unfortunately she had no renown with them so didn’t get to use it. Subjective Truth never came up.
Scenario 2: A Traitor in our Midst (~5 hours):
The Viscount du Mal, a minor noble introduced during the ball in Scenario 1 turns out to be a traitor to the crown and is the reason the Crown-brother was kidnapped. Of course our beloved Vigilante’s felt the need to bring him to justice!
As a result of the many balls thrown in their honor from succeeding at their Covert Rescue of the Crown-brother the party has gained much renown throughout the Nobility (and with their staffs) in the area. As a result they still get to benefit from many of their Social Abilities when infiltrating the Viscount’s home.
From talking with the Viscount in Scenario 1 the party knows that he has a man cave hidden under a giant defensive clockwork staircase in the middle of his ostentatious mock-Chateau in the middle of town. They slip into the mansion quietly, and proceed to its center unseen and unheard by any of the serving staff. Alemnir Cases the Joint; rolling a 30 on his knowledge Engineering check, allowing him 2 free re-rolls on skill checks made to get around any defenses the place may have. The rest of the party tried to find the gnomes who worked on the Viscount’s defenses, but unfortunately the Viscount heeded Kiku’s advice from the previous scenario to kill off all the gnomes.
The first defense is a marvelous steam-punk inspired moving Staircase which appeared to be a large column set in the middle of a room full of pipes, whirring gears, levers, buttons, and switches with control panels everywhere. Alemnir rolled a Knowledge Engineering check to figure out how it worked, and rolled very low; he burnt his first re-roll from case the joint and as a result of the time he spent tracing the different pipes in the room figured out that most of the contraption was a water fueled cooling mechanism for a power source high up off the floor and buried deep within the central column. He did not roll high enough to figure out what any of the switches, levers, or buttons did although he did manage to figure out that many of them were tied into this cooling system.
He decided the best way to disable the system was to sunder some pipes; attempted to do so with his greataxe and rolled a 1 then confirmed a critical failure on my table causing him to sunder both the pipe (destroyed) and his Axe (broken). Which unfortunately was not enough to disable the cooling system (did affect it slightly), but did trigger the first encounter! A deep mechanical voice intoned “Intruders Detected; Security Response Armed.” And a large pile of whirring gears and pumping pistons detached itself from the piston before moving over and attacking the party!
It rolled middling initiative, so several people got in solid hits before it went dropping it to about half HP despite its DR 10/Bludgeoning and Adamantine. As an aside: Janna and I both forgot about her “Leave an Opening” AoO, so she did a lot less damage to it than she should have overall (she had flanking much of the time), but still did over half the Automaton’s HP by herself. Automaton landed a couple hits on Janna, identifying her as the highest threat target and dropped her to half HP. The rest of the party wailed on it, but most missed, and the rest failed to get through its DR. Zellos attempted to hit it with a Glitterdust, but it seemed unaffected (Actually due to Magic Immunity; he thought it was just immune to blindness).
Round two came and Janna again got in a few good attacks, but didn’t roll so well for hidden strike damage (which basically just offset the DR). Everyone Else Piled on and did some damage as well, eventually dropping it. Zellos Decided to try a lightning bolt from his staff (using 5/10 charges), which hit the construct fully, but fizzled on impact (again magic immunity; this time he thought it was immune to electricity).
CR 10 Clay Golem; I decided to ignore the cursed wounds part of its attacks as the party already lacked healing options and there were several more fights ahead.
The party did some more fiddling, discovering how to open the blast-doors protecting the inner reactor core of the structure. Janna looked around the cubby the machine came out of and discovered a key hole. She tried picking it and the mechanical voice again spoke: “Unauthorized Use Detected; Annihilate!”
This time two whirring masses of gears (Clay golems) Sprung to life from opposite sides of the room. Most of the party (Janna, Charlemagne, and Kiku) focused on the western golem, while the eastern golem moved over to attack Alemnir. Zellos hung back and cast web at the eastern golem only to see the webbing disintegrate upon contact with the automaton.
The golems’ high CMD led Janna to fail all her acrobatics checks to move through its space using UC&P, but the reduced hidden strike damage combined with flanking on her standard attack dealt considerable damage over the 2 rounds the western golem lived. Kiku smashed on it with her bastard sword, dealing little damage with it but more with the weapon’s flaming enchantment. Charlemagne’s rapier was bouncing off the Golem’s tough skin more often than not. The West Golem lived long enough to do its haste ability, getting off a few attacks on Janna before falling.
In the meantime the Eastern golem practically killed both Zellos and Alemnir, who barely managed to flee back to the rest of the party alive (Alemnir did a little damage with his glaive and Zellos did ~12 damage with his Mystic Bolts). The rest of the party moved over and at this point Janna remembered she had Leave an Opening (but missed on her UC&P attack and didn’t have flanking on her standard attack). A couple more rounds went by; The Golem first smashed Kiku down causing her to run away, then Janna who likewise retreated. Charlemagne tried to tank it, and was lucky for a couple rounds but died permanently at the end of his third round of combat with the monstrosity. Zellos then finished it off with a couple more mystic bolts.
In all the fight was nearly a TPK; Charles would not have died if Zellos had used his mystoc bolts a round earlier instead of stabilizing Janna so I ret-conned the scenario as occurring that that way. They burned all their potions and ~1.2 wands of CLW healing up after the fight.
CR 12; 2 Clay Golems, again I ignored the cursed wounds part of its description.
Back at full the party finished picking the lock and the staircase opened up with a dramatic transformation sequence revealing a spiral staircase heading down into the thick stone floor. At the bottom of the stairs was a bare stone room with a scummy pool of water at the end. A round of perception checks later and everyone realized there were two oozes in the room (one on the ceiling not far from them, and one in the water).
The oozes (init of -5) both went last. Charles got off a surprise round and went first shooting the one on the ceiling 3 times with his bow, causing it to split into 4 smaller pieces. Janna delayed her action until after the ooze on the ceiling went. Kiku shot one of the pieces with her crossbow causing it to split in half, alemnir threw a dagger at another causing it to split and Zellos full round attacked it with his mystic bolts dealing damage to the monster for the first time (he lowered two of the 13 HP blobs to below 10). The now split ooze’s turn came, and it schlorped across the ceiling towards them, then released its suction falling on everyone’s heads and dealing its acid damage. On average people made the reflex saves against their armor taking damage from this. Kiku’s full plate took some damage, and Alemnir’s armor took some damage. Janna now came off delay and did a UC&P against one of the blobs Zellos damaged with his bolt, killing it; she then used her standard action to kill the other one he had damaged. Now the undamaged ooze left the water and charged towards them, failing to slam against Alemnir.
Top of the round and Charlemagne split a couple small blobs with his rapier (making his saves). Kiku then destroyed these with her sword. Alemnir hit a small blob with his battleaxe, failed his save and had it destroyed. Zellos repositioned himself and shot off a lightning bolt from his staff (reducing his charges to 0/10), which killed the big blob and a smaller blob both of which failed their reflex save (in the big blob’s case only because of the negative dex mod) and were instantly vaporized. A couple more rounds of the same (Alemnir almost broke his glaive next) and the party finished off the encounter. In all they took almost no damage, but their equipment was a little the worse for wear. Zellos lamented aloud not preparing the Make Whole or Mending Spells at this point (both of which he knew).
CR 9: 2x Black Pudding Ooze
Finally the party was left with a dreaded realization. The only way forward was underwater. Half the party was willing to quit at this, but the rest (barely) managed to convince them to try it anyways. This debate took about an hour and a half, at the end of which Charlemagne ran into town utilizing his boots of striding and springing to quickly buy 10 potions of air bubble CL 1 (2 potions per person). I suggested using Loyal Aid on the mansion staff, but no one had it (it wouldn’t have had a high enough spending limit for everyone anyways). Zellos buffed them with communal Darkvision, and they all downed their potions of Airbubble before proceeding.
The waterway led down into a long unlit hallway full of columns (the hallway was 300 feet long, 40 feet wide, and 100 feet deep). A number of the columns were originally going to be Caryatid Columns (CR 3) but because the party was having so much trouble I changed things a bit; the columns used the Caryatid attack and damage rolls but instead of being active sentries they simply passively made one AoO whenever the first person swum by them; striking out with a column of decorative fish that wound its way all along their lengths. The fish continued sticking out after the attack, meaning that movement through the columns created a maze which later swimmers had to navigate to reach the other side.
The Swim DC to move at half speed was 10 through most of the hallway, but very few people managed to beat this consistently. Poor swim modifiers mean that this encounter ran 23 rounds for the weaker swimmers; enough that these weaker swimmers almost drowned after their first air bubble ran out (they could have downed the second potion, so that’s really not so important). It would have helped immensely if more than one person had a swim modifier higher than 2 (I let them activate their celestial Armor’s flight property for a +4 bonus, which still left them struggling). A couple of them might have drowned except that Zellos used his high (9 with the flight buff) swim modifier and all the rope in his robe of infinite twine to lay down a safety line from one end of the corridor to the other.
When they reached the other end of the sunken hallway a swift current threatened to suck them down into the depths (there was a hole in the floor which would have lead to an underwater cell trap, designed to drown any intruders) unless they grabbed onto a conveniently placed ladder. The swim DC for this portion of the tunnel was 20 to resist the current. The current dragged anyone who didn’t make the DC 30 feet toward the ladder, and then down into the depths if they failed their reflex save to grab the stair. For those climbing the rope the current allowed them to make an accelerated climb towards the stair at no penalty to the check and they automatically succeeded on the reflex save. Everyone made their saves, although at one point Janna lost her grip on the ladder (nat 1) and barely made the save DC (20) to re-grab it, failure of which would likely have ended with her death given her poor (+2) swim modifier.
CR ? (originally 12): 16x Caryatid Columns (re-structured to block movement instead of fight)
Finally they climbed the ladder, emerging into a spacious well lit corridor with oak paneling which led to a strange checkered floor. Before the floor, on their side of the board was a control panel, and on the far side of the floor behind a similar floor panel stood the Viscount du Mal; sipping daintily from a glass of wine.
On the Board stood a large automaton that looked much like the ones they had fought earlier (Same stats, but 80 hp - no special abilities DR or magic immunity), a human gunslinger (30 hp), and a human alchemist (40 hp) all of whom were standing oddly motionless. While the rest of the party engaged in witty banter with the villain Zellos cast detect magic discovering the checkered board to be full of different magics (abjuration strongest amongst them). He rolled a spellcraft check, and found that the strongest magics it was enchanted with were a dimensional anchor, force wall, and dominate monster mass. Finally the witty banter subsided and the villain challenged the party to a game of his own devising; exhorting all but one of the party to walk onto the game-floor in front of them. Alemnir stood in front of the control panel, which consisted of two halves; on the left half were three buttons labeled A/B/C, and an up, down, right, left joystick – on the right side was a diagonal joystick which went ur, ul, lr, ll and contained three buttons labeled 1/2/3. The rest of the party stepped onto the floor and were immediately dominated by the game board. Alemnir asked the Viscount what the rules were, and the villain replied that he’d have to figure them out as they played (but condescendingly offered Alemnir to go first). Alemnir then rolled a Knowledge Engineering check to get a hint about what it did and failed, so he blew both of his re-rolls (from Case the Joint) eventually getting a 35. I started to tell him what he could figure out by examining the panel but he told me to ‘shush,’ he wanted to figure it out himself. He figured out how to select an ally (using the A/B/C buttons) and moved Zellos two squares to the right (using the u/d/l/r joystick); at this point the board froze up on him. He complained, and the Viscount laughed at him, and said “and now I’ll show you how it’s really done.”
The Viscount selected the large automaton, moved it forward one square, then hit a button causing it to attack Janna (buffed to ~100 hp by bear’s endurace). The attack automatically hit for close to max damage and the turn again went to Alemnir. He continued fiddling with the controls, moving Kiku up to attack the big thing with her sword (moderate damage). Play continued back and forth for a few rounds using standard attacks until the Viscount started losing at which point he started using his special attacks (alchemist threw a bomb) and severely damaged a couple members of the party. Alemnir responded in kind – causing Zellos to hit the big guy with magic missiles (eventually destroying it). Play continued in like manner with pieces on both sides dropping like flies until it was just the gunslinger and Charlemagne left. The 'slinger (19 HP - Zellos hit her with a Mystic Bolt before going down) got off several shots at Charles as he made his way slowly across the board towards her leaving him at 1 hp just as he closed to range. He rolled well, dealing 17 damage. At his point I decided to throw in a GM fiat to help the party and ruled that they won. It would not have been necessary if Alemnir had simply listened to my explanation regarding the control panel, as he wasted nearly half his in game actions trying out illegal moves (resulting in a lot of character near-deaths). The Viscount did kill one of the game piece party members (Zellos?), but the party earned enough money for a resurrection (and still profited).
CR ?: Puzzle Fight (probably not a good choice for a play-test) Enemy Pieces: ‘Clay Golem’ (80 HP, no DR/magic immunity), ‘Gunslinger’ (30 HP), ‘Alchemist’ (40 HP) so overall the enemy had 150 hp to the party’s ~370 (Alemnir had some Bear’s Endurance potions he passed around).
They then healed up and chased the viscount through a door into his room. He fell to his knees and begged them not to kill him promising riches and fame if they’d just defect to Tien. They party was having none of this however (he made them SWIM, The Bastard!), and moved around to hit him. He cowered down, screaming “Not the Face!” Alemnir hit him for non-lethal damage with his glaive, critting and killing him anyways. :P yay low healthbars.
CR 0: The Viscount du Mal.
The Fetchling used its shadow walk ability to bring them all outside; negating a retun trip through the hallway of doom.
Player Feedback:
After Scenario 1:
They were disappointed with the ease of the session – particularly the lack of combat. They would also have liked a sub-dungeon to explore under the main prison which to that end. I told them that there were several more encounters planned outside the city on the journey there (true), that I had considered a sub-dungeon and decided against it because I wanted to playtest the social aspects in the city (also true), and that by shadow walking directly back to the starting city they had evaded the difficult half of the trip (spot on true). This seemed to mollify them. I apologized for the boring session (which I was beginning to think it was), but they corrected me! Apparently they really enjoyed running around the city talking to people and playing up the social aspect of their Vigilantes; they just would have liked to get more of a combat benefit out of it.
After Scenario 2:
They seemed relieved more than anything. High fives all around; a few of them said they were keeping their sheets for commemorative purposes, so I think you’ve sold Ultimate Intrigue to at least a couple players.
Personal Thoughts:
Thoughts on the Social Aspects:
Round 2 definitely started moving the Social Aspect in the right direction. Many guises and Quick change make the class feel intriguing and open up player agency, allowing them access to all manner of things that would otherwise require magics. As it is magics are still a better option, and can easily circumvent issues which require a lot of effort for the Vigilante to overcome. Something needs to be done to address that gap. The renown line was somewhat useful, but only because it allowed access to abilities like Safe House otherwise it was a resounding dud.
Overall Social Grace was probably the most used/best portion of the social Aspect. I think if more utility options like that or certain Specialization abilities like Case the Joint were moved to the Social Talent list the class would have a lot more options and playability.
Another point is that currently the Social and Specialization options are completely disparate (other than the intimidate bonus on the Renown line). To make the class feel less disjointed it would really help if the two halves of the class complemented each other instead of each trying to do their own thing.
Thoughts based on the fights:
Janna (Stalker) got to use her Mighty Ambush ability on the Gunslinger, who failed by a mile; the DC on this is maybe a touch high to use against PCs/NPCs, but given the immunities from everything else is still balanced. Hidden Strike is supremely powerful, even though she didn’t get to use the d8s ever she was outperforming the rest of the party in combat.
Zellos’ (Warlock) mystic bolts were hitting individually for around 6 damage, so on a full round attack he did ~12 damage. This was actually very strong against the Clay Golem because it bypassed the DR and it was immune to his other magics. Against everything else it was pathetic, failing to kill even parts of the oozes which had less than 10 hp. Nothing they fought even had resistances and it was barely contributing. His magic missiles were much more useful, hitting for ~20 damage with each cast, and his Staff’s lightning bolt did around 30 damage to each of two targets (60’ line) when he used it against the ooze. He lacked the spells prepared to adapt to the challenges presented to him and lacked the high level spell slots to use his own third level spells against the ooze (could have used fireball), making his items the star of the show.
Charlemagne (Avenger) was surprisingly having the worst time in the party. In previous sessions (levels 1&2, especially 5) he was the star of the show; this time around he could barely damage the golems, and the ooze split more than anything else when he attacked (he did eventually kill a few of the smaller pieces). He couldn’t swim at all well, was in fact the last person out of the sunken hallway and nearly drowned despite his air-bubble. He sunk all his class abilities into feats, which basically made him a bad fighter. The Avenger desperately needs some scaling damage for dex builds – something like the Swashbuckler’s precise strike would have really helped. Unexpected Strike is great, don’t get me wrong, and I think Charles would have been better off with it, but an extra d6 doesn’t go a long way against resistance.
Alemnir got a lot of benefit this time around from his utility abilities. Unfortunately his player didn’t follow up well on the hints I provided. In combat Perfect Vulnerability gave him one good if unimpressive strike against everything he attacked. His follow up was poor though, which was further accentuated by Janna’s stellar combat performance.
Kiku was second in combat to Janna. She played a lot like a fighter in heavy armor; lack of gold investment in defense made her a bit of a sitting target but she did benefit from her armor skin this session in the first scenario. She never used Fist of the Avenger, but at least she had a fall back in case the Ooze (or something else) had damaged her weapons. She also never used unexpected strike (I suspect she just forgot it), which may have significantly improved her damage output.
Closing Thoughts
I really enjoyed this play-test. I'm glad I spent round 1 more focused on the specializations, because the social aspect was terrible in it. In round 2 things opened up a little more, allowing for a fun level 10. Most games don't make it even to 10, so in my opinion there's still a lot of work to be done there.
The Warlock is underpowered. The star of the Magical Show was the Fetchling. While the Fetchling inarguably has the most powerful innate SLAs of any playable race, SLAs should never outclass an equal level casting class.
My only regret is that I didn't get to playtest this at higher levels; I'd have liked to do a level 15 playtest as well, but won't have time before Monday.
| Zwordsman |
Very nicely summed up.
It took me longer than usual to figure out the golem (not sure why. I think I was too busy enjoying how the other specializations played out. They looked fun, the stalker in particular; even if I usually do not enjoy the type (I tend to favor Alchemists, and Warlock (my perception of what they should be) style gameplay). Also this group was a great group to play with.
If I had realized the golem bit earlier, mystic bolt would have felt considerably more useful, but that was pretty my fault not mystic bolts.It was painfully weak though, whenever I hit things it really felt sad. If the damage isn't increased somehow (scaling damage, or adding INT on top of everythign currently on it), then really should either allow changing the element as I please or add debuffs.
I suppose it would have been much more diffrent had I went for TWF, and rapid shot and went with the DBZ style rapid fire. but I'm just not that into that idea.
I wish it added Int to daamge, with it's current scaling or more D6. If it had, it would have at least killed the level 1 guys without needing a double shot. It was.. pretty depressing. I hit easily enough, I don't think I did any of the damage in error.
I took weapon finesse instead of rapid shot, because of how short range the bolts are. They are easily within face smashing range. 5ft steps dont' always cut it (such as vs bigger fellows. But I didn't take hits well enough so I ended up withdrawing instead of full-attacking).
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On a personal note, in the end the items really did become the big show. I honestly wish I had had the choice to specialize in them more.
Like the ability to replenish wands, or to charge staves easier. Or using my caster level and casting stat whenever using any wand. Or double activate generic wands (not to be combined with the wand mastery like thing)
That does get the issue of "saving " past spell casting days to use in later days, and possibly upsetting cost functions. But I think it would be neat. Had I the ability to use my CL and Stat in wands, I would have filled my tattoo with the staff, and wands of burning hands, and either magic missle or burning ray. Oh, it would also be an issue with having scaling cure wands maybe?
(In a long lasting game, I would get spells in my book and craft them. Having a variet in my tattoo made me so very prepared in a wonderful way) If they gain some way to focus on usimg UMD or wand or staves better, then please be sure to include a note in the nonlethal talent to allow you to change the wands or staves into nonlethal.
I already felt like I was a weird caster.. I would love to be able to "fake it till i make it" that way.
I actually didn't know about this item (my fault) but I suppose I could have gotten more spells if I had snagged the spellslot recharging item. Pearls of power dont' work for this, but that sorcerer one would right? They seem like a almost needed investment with the current spells per day. Almost wish I had bought a ton of them, so I could use spells freely in social time and combat time.
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I dearly wish that I had, had more vigilante talents. The other Warlock talents are so very useful. I really wish I had the hidden casting, the anti spell talent (although not useful in this one I think), or especially the nonlethal casting. I would have loved to have been able to knock out the guards who were simply doing their job (and honestly didn't seem that horrible of people--though the guy I mind read was a bit excitable), In character I would have wasted my fireball to knock them all out instead. When they first entered, my thoughts were to the two others who weren't with me, and it would be hard to situate our stories ADHOC well enough to bluff all these fellows. Had I had non lethal I actually might have just nonlethal fireballed the group-hoping to knock them out.
I felt like not having those caster levels would make me pretty useless as mystic bolt wasn't enough (and I was right).
In retrospect, I would have skipped mystic bolt and probably the armour casting(Innately having light casting, and the talent giving combat casting and later mediium seems more right), snagged sneak casting and nonlethal instead. Snagged a crossbow or multiclassed to get a pistol. with conductive, if i had the space for mystic bolt still.
Personally, I don't mind "buying" my casting, but the price is far too high; combining them into 3 talents over the course of level 1-16 would be doable for me, it would have netted me another talent (silent casting).
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I REALLY enjoyed the social side personally. Renown was pretty much a bust for me, as I don't intimidate, and Loyal aid, while neat wasn't really something I see extremely useful for my character.
I love hide out, even if its much better via magic. I preferred it.
Many guises and social grace is pretty wonderful too. In a long running game I would use social grace for my profession skill as well.
Quick change sort of seems like it should be an innate choice after a while; but I will always buy it anyway and that doesn't bother me. Its just too useful for changing persona with the 3 choices (and later the specific character one).
I really wish I could have used more magic in social form without being given away. I saw several moments in conversations (particularly in the first session) that I DEARLY wish I had had enough talents to take the sneaky casting and nonlethal. As I mentioned before, knocking out the guards. But in the first scenario during the party. I really wanted to use mind reading on most of the guests. Particularly this drunken bard who Kiku got along with, and amusingly... the fellow who was talking about gnomes. I really wonder if I would have gotten any sort of useful information had I done that?
Now that I played my warlock. I almost wish I had built him forgoing combat to more of an extent. With the sneaky casting I could have done a lot of information gathering in social and manyguises. But as it stands, it looks so very hard to build one that can do that, while retaining combat ability. Without investing a ton of money into Wands or staves (but these take weeks to charge) Honestly I was already pretty shoddy at combat, having focused in the social stuff I might have saved the group some troublesome combats, or at least got us some amusing stories.
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I'm hoping to make a Warlock one of my main go to classes once it comes out. Along with Alchemist, and Mesmer. as it is I think it isn't able to fully do what I feel like it should. Or a suck at building them maybe. I imagined them having decent combat ability, and enough magic to either be decent casting, or decent ability to use it for small utilit issues. It sorta does the casting, but the cost of that rips out a lot. Combat wise. I wasn't the worst I've seen but I have doubts of my ability to win an approriate solo CR fight, that is remotely smartly done.
Right now though, in most of the groups I see, it simply can't hold its own as a DPS-Not enough damage, and I'm sooo very close without the solid ability to wear more defenses without hampering casting (either ACF or using spells up to buff), or a Caster. In my usual group I'm rather certain a specific player would complain to no end about having to pick up the slack for having the extra CR of a player, but the player not being strong enough. Usually none of us care, but in this case I did feel like a useless member quite often. Except when I was getting my face pounded by the 2nd robot; as that kept it chasing me and not the people who were more useful in that fight. So do take my thoughts with a grain of salt,
level 15 would be pretty interesting.
| Trekkie90909 |
As an aside the Anti-Casting Talent (Educated Defense) would have helped here; when you stepped onto the puzzle-fight floor you could have eaten the dominate monster mass enchantment and gotten a free round to act as you wanted before the game started (admittedly this would have been more powerful if your other abilities did more damage, but you could have used your fireball on the 3 of them (and yourself), which would have been devastating).
I'm glad you enjoyed the social situations, and YES you would have gotten some juicy hints, which would have made you very useful to the group; possibly even negating the need for a second scenario. I'll probably need to start statting out more scrying-related defenses for my random NPCs after U-Intrigue comes out.
The Viscount was originally going to be a Warlock, but I didn't feel like converting him from his round 1 build to round 2 which might have negated the scrying. Also you guys really didn't need another fight in that scenario :P.
I really enjoyed having you, and the group as a whole has been really good to GM for - pretty much everyone stays in character and there's next to no Metagaming (Other than Alemnir "Clockworks don't get magic resistance, 'HOMEBREW, HAX!' " :P), which surprises me (my normal group's terrible about that). If you want to play a Vigilante in the 20th level reward session (I'll post a proposed date on Roll20 later this evening) that's 100% ok with me. It won't be a play-testing session though, so be warned that other classes might outshine you.
| Zwordsman |
Hum I'll put more here (cause why not) when I play that level 20 warlock but a note while building one
The whole time.. I felt like I should cut the class off at 16 or 18, and take a different class (I saw a few good choices, gunslinger, or eldritch knight, few other prestige classes too). The last few feel very dead. After the last Arcane Training I have no need for more levels for casting ability (Only for more talents) and not much else..
I would be building him differently, but I very much want to try that level 20 ability out at some point sometime. But I can tell, that if I switched out 2-4 levels that the ability would be considerably better.
Granted I had built this one (unlike the last version) as a weapon user, with some neat magic abilities. Though I would have had a very very difficult time doing that without firearms.
A dip in Gunmage (arcane gunner? That wizard archetype) keeping necromancy or evocation transmuation (disintigrate) and then into some sort of full bab (gunslinger. OR far far morelikly. Gunslinger 1, and Inspiried swashbuckler 1) with the trait for caster level would be far far more effective than my current build. Honestly its kind of painful not doing that.
| Trekkie90909 |
<you're free to post this here> but I would highly recommend posting on the final thoughts thread when you're ready to (note: limited to one post).
ErisAcolyte-Chaos jester
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This is going to be interesting though. With the viscount dead, the party just took out one of the governing nobles of the city, which might make their legal situation even more tenuous. And traitor or not, he did have allies in high places...allies that probably want the parties heads delivered to them on ornate silver platters. I hope this story continues, because this sort of thing is what make me interested in when ultimate intrigue comes out.
| Trekkie90909 |
Glad you enjoyed the read ^.^; unfortunately the 'campaign' was just 3 different stand alone sessions with a -mostly- identical player group. I too am looking forward to Ultimate Intrigue, and might resurrect this particular plot-line when it is released but more than likely won't; feel free to steal it ;)