Heroes of Undarin and the easy way to auto-win the adventure

[Colette Brunel]

Is it just me, or does the party automatically win Heroes of Undarin simply by hiding in a corner and doing absolutely nothing?

Quote:

FAILING AN EVENT

It is likely that the characters may fail one or more event, allowing the demons or undead to gain access to the chambers below while some of the characters still live. Assuming the PCs are not all killed and can recover, the next event can proceed as normal, with the assumption that the heroes down below managed to destroy the fiends before the ritual could be disrupted. Note that the characters failed this event for reporting purposes. If they fail a second event, proceed with the conclusion of the chapter, modifying the language to match the circumstances.

Maybe it is just me, but it seems completely and utterly bizarre that the winning move is to not play at all, and by triggering the happy ending by letting the demons reach the stairs.

[Alyran]

I mean, that's great except that they are then all dead according to the conclusion of the scenario. You only get the good ending by defeating all 10 events (which it specifies in the conclusion).

So while it is the fastest way to complete the scenario and move on, it certainly doesn't seem likely to happen that way if your players role-play as anything other than death-happy suicide cultists.

[The Once and Future Kai]

Where's the fun in that?

[DerNils]

It is also completely counterintuitive, so I wouldn't see how any group of adventurers would even get the idea to "Hide and let the guys downstairs do it". It's just a typical safety Option for how to continue the campaign if the heroes fail, with the added spice that nobody expects these guys to survive.
As you mentioned in your Report, the scenario is sometimes a bit confusing between parts, with "The demons want to reach the stairs" and "They kill everything in between". But I think from the stated intent of the module (Test how many waves a group with limited resources can take) it's quite clear that the enemies should play to kill.

[Ediwir]

Uh... Am I the only one that reads this as "if they fail two events, game over?"

[pauljathome]

DerNils wrote:

It's just a typical safety Option for how to continue the campaign if the heroes fail,

Dead Suns and Starship combat:

One of the reasons that my Starfinder Group (going through Dead Suns) gave totally up on Starship Combat is because it NEVER mattered at all. You win, you fight the bad guys on THEIR ship as you board for <reasons>. You lose, the bad guys board your ship for <reasons>. Or somebody saves you. Or whatever.

That "typical safety option" can be WAY over done.

Colette is right. What the PCs do in this chapter is utterly irrelevant. The NPCs get the ritual done regardless of how quickly the PCs die. Their actions don't actually matter at all.

At least for me it does kind of spoil the drama and story when I realize this as a player.

I'd have preferred it if it had been set up as a diversion type mission. The PCs succeed just by drawing some demons to their location, they know up front that it doesn't matter at all if they succeed in their "objective"

[Lyee]

If all the players decapitate themselves immediately, RAW the 'main' group succeeds right then and it's the same as surviving 8 waves.

This module is about challenging yourselves and seeing how well you do, and making the story of a good last stand. The story of Doomsday Dawn's overall plot is background to it, and not affected by PC actions.

[Thebazilly]

pauljathome wrote:

What the PCs do in this chapter is utterly irrelevant. The NPCs get the ritual done regardless of how quickly the PCs die. Their actions don't actually matter at all.

At least for me it does kind of spoil the drama and story when I realize this as a player.

Well... that's not really the point of this scenario. The point is to get data on how much it takes to kill a group of PCs.

[DM_Blake]

It seems that some of us are forgetting that this is a playtest.

They linked 7 chapters together into a very loose campaign, but story is not the point of the playtest. If this were a real campaign like Rise of the Runelords, it would be expected that a TPK in chapter 3 means the campaign is over - you wouldn't play chapters 4, 5 or 6 after that TPK. Time to start a new campaign.

That doesn't work in a playtest.

The paragraph quoted by the OP is there to basically say "Hey, this chapter is intended to try to TPK the PCs. If there is a TPK, proceed to the next chapter - do NOT abandon the playtest campaign because the PCs are dead."

That's sort of obvious since the characters for this chapter were not needed in any future chapter anyway, but they felt the need to make the point more clear so playtesters would realize that the campaign, here, does not depend on these PCs winning ten events.

Bad story writing? Sure. But story is not the point of this playtest. Rather than calling it bad writing, I call it good test design: this particular test is insulated from the whole test plan in such a way that a fail here doesn't prevent future testing.

[Matthew Downie]

DM_Blake wrote:

If this were a real campaign like Rise of the Runelords, it would be expected that a TPK in chapter 3 means the campaign is over - you wouldn't play chapters 4, 5 or 6 after that TPK. Time to start a new campaign.

Or, if you'd already paid for books 4-6 and wanted to get your money's worth, a new group of mid-level PCs show up and stumble upon the plot.

[DM_Blake]

Matthew Downie wrote:

DM_Blake wrote:

If this were a real campaign like Rise of the Runelords, it would be expected that a TPK in chapter 3 means the campaign is over - you wouldn't play chapters 4, 5 or 6 after that TPK. Time to start a new campaign.

Or, if you'd already paid for books 4-6 and wanted to get your money's worth, a new group of mid-level PCs show up and stumble upon the plot.

Yeah, there's always that.

We can do it in any chapter of Doomsday Dawn. Heck, even more appropriate since more than half of the chapters use disposable characters anyway, including the chapter we're talking about.

But, sometimes continuity is weird. Like in this chapter where the heroes are fighting waves of invaders close together. Having one group TPK and another one walk right in before the next wave (e.g. immediately) is pretty weird.

But this is a test, not a campaign, so anything goes.

For my playtest group, we've decided that if we have a TPK, we'll report it that way in the surveys, but we'll continue forward with the same chapter, going on to the next encounter as if we had actually survived the previous one. Perhaps with some on the spot adjudication as to how much of our resources are still available. That way we can keep testing later encounters of a failed chapter. We'll do that in this chapter as well. No point missing event 4-10 because we TPK on event 3 and skip right to the Deus ex Machina ending.

[pauljathome]

Thebazilly wrote:

pauljathome wrote:

What the PCs do in this chapter is utterly irrelevant. The NPCs get the ritual done regardless of how quickly the PCs die. Their actions don't actually matter at all.

At least for me it does kind of spoil the drama and story when I realize this as a player.

Well... that's not really the point of this scenario. The point is to get data on how much it takes to kill a group of PCs.

I'm not a professional game designer and with seconds of intensive thought I came up with a story that would have been much more satisfactory, at least to me.

That would still have gotten exactly the same data (I wouldn't change a single encounter, just the story behind them).

"Please don't notice that your actions are utterly irrelevant" just seems like bad story design to me.

[Franz Lunzer]

pauljathome wrote:

I'm not a professional game designer and with seconds of intensive thought I came up with a story that would have been much more satisfactory, at least to me.

That would still have gotten exactly the same data (I wouldn't change a single encounter, just the story behind them).
...

Now I'm curious. Care to share?

[Matthew Downie]

DM_Blake wrote:

But, sometimes continuity is weird. Like in this chapter where the heroes are fighting waves of invaders close together. Having one group TPK and another one walk right in before the next wave (e.g. immediately) is pretty weird.

Try thinking of the party as a group of orc guard mooks in an ordinary dungeon. If they are defeated and wiped out, that doesn't mean their boss, the necromancer, is automatically going to be defeated and fail to complete the sinister ritual. It just means the heroes have defeated one group of evil monsters and now they have to fight the next encounter.

[hyphz]

It’s possible and actually happened in our game! I had the monsters preferentially target the stairs when available (I’m not sure if I was supposed to do that, but the fact that failing to defend the stairs while PCs are alive is described as “likely” clearly implies that the monsters do not wait to do so until all PCs are dead)

The result was that demons went down the stairs on the first two waves and the adventure ended with the guys downstairs using the White Axiom to defeat the demons while all the PCs were still alive (albeit one unconscious). So they all went home together alive and happy and the players started embarrassed laughing. Even more ironic was the implication that because of that failure, the Axiom had been translated more quickly than it otherwise would have been!

[Edge93]

hyphz wrote:

It’s possible and actually happened in our game! I had the monsters preferentially target the stairs when available (I’m not sure if I was supposed to do that, but the fact that failing to defend the stairs while PCs are alive is described as “likely” clearly implies that the monsters do not wait to do so until all PCs are dead)

The result was that demons went down the stairs on the first two waves and the adventure ended with the guys downstairs using the White Axiom to defeat the demons while all the PCs were still alive (albeit one unconscious). So they all went home together alive and happy and the players started embarrassed laughing. Even more ironic was the implication that because of that failure, the Axiom had been translated more quickly than it otherwise would have been!

I never considered it going this way. I assumed that if two waves infiltrated then the players below died, which I wasn't sure how to adjucate.

What I was gonna do actually was have it be to where if the players let two waves by (I'm not having the fiends blitz the stairs but if enough players go down that they can spare the forces they'll try, a la Sombrefell Hall and the Professor) then the characters below "die" and use up their Pharasman blessing from Part 1 (Since it's these characters) and give the current PCs one more chance.

[pauljathome]

Franz Lunzer wrote:

pauljathome wrote:

I'm not a professional game designer and with seconds of intensive thought I came up with a story that would have been much more satisfactory, at least to me.

That would still have gotten exactly the same data (I wouldn't change a single encounter, just the story behind them).
...

Now I'm curious. Care to share?

Sorry, I mentioned it above.

Just change the PC mission a little. They are now a diversion, intended to draw the demons attention away from where the REAL ritual is occurring. Their job is to hold the demons attention as long as possible. Every minute may count so Don't run, don't retreat, keep fighting.

If they go down early, tell them that they're pretty sure that the huge number of demons they fought indicates that the enemies attention WAS drawn to them, their mission was a success.

If they actually manage to survive the whole thing, they get sent a message TELLING them the ritual succeeded and they should withdraw no

[Edge93]

pauljathome wrote:

Franz Lunzer wrote:

pauljathome wrote:

I'm not a professional game designer and with seconds of intensive thought I came up with a story that would have been much more satisfactory, at least to me.

That would still have gotten exactly the same data (I wouldn't change a single encounter, just the story behind them).
...

Now I'm curious. Care to share?

Sorry, I mentioned it above.

Just change the PC mission a little. They are now a diversion, intended to draw the demons attention away from where the REAL ritual is occurring. Their job is to hold the demons attention as long as possible. Every minute may count so Don't run, don't retreat, keep fighting.

If they go down early, tell them that they're pretty sure that the huge number of demons they fought indicates that the enemies attention WAS drawn to them, their mission was a success.

If they actually manage to survive the whole thing, they get sent a message TELLING them the ritual succeeded and they should withdraw no

Huh, that's actually really clever! I guess the PCs would have some kind of magic item or something to generate an aura to draw the fiends there rather than to what the Order heroes are doing?

[DM Livgin]

• The character creation instructs the PCs to make crusaders that are willing to lay down their life for the mission. Are you surprised that not following the character creation guideline is leading to unsatisfactory results?
  
• It is really cool to be in the very church Ramlock was imprisoned and cared for at, the place he lost his mind. I'd be unhappy if even the church we were defending was offscreen.
  
• The intent of the encounters, the stairs, and the two strikes until their out seemed fairly clear: if the PCs try hit and run tactics the demons will go downstairs. Do you really want material written like a spec book with every possible judgement dictated?

[pauljathome]

DM Livgin wrote:

• The character creation instructs the PCs to make crusaders that are willing to lay down their life for the mission. Are you surprised that not following the character creation guideline is leading to unsatisfactory results?
  
• It is really cool to be in the very church Ramlock was imprisoned and cared for at, the place he lost his mind. I'd be unhappy if even the church we were defending was offscreen.
  
• The intent of the encounters, the stairs, and the two strikes until their out seemed fairly clear: if the PCs try hit and run tactics the demons will go downstairs. Do you really want material written like a spec book with every possible judgement dictated?

My issue isn't with the players having their characters act inappropriately. Most players are pretty well trained to follow the railroad tracks.

My issue is if the PCs fail early. Which seems quite possible to me. A bit of bad luck could easily lead to an early character death which could rapidly escalate into a TPK. Or the players make colossal mistakes like not bringing Clerics and bringing Alchemists instead (only 1/2 a smiley on that one. The classes and builds within classes are NOT well balanced, especially for this kind of combat slog, right now).

So, the players find out that having held out for 1 WHOLE minute was enough to succeed. I think they're going to smell the rat and realize that they literally could NOT have failed.

[PsychicPixel]

The TPK is the point of this part of the Playtest. Paizo wants to see what can TPK the party and how long it takes, or how long the party can survive.

The players are told to create characters that will fight to the last to defend. The GM is also told to not tell the players they have a 99% chance of all dying. The designers want to see how the players react and how they handle the situation how the PCs react and handle the situation as well.

Does your group survive 5 encounters or just 2 and why? This is the information Paizo wants.

[Fuzzypaws]

When we get here, I'm actually considering whether or not to just rezz the party after every encounter where they TPK, just to playtest the various fights. Not sure yet whether I should do that, or just have them build characters for adventure 6 at the same time they build for adventure 5, and move directly into 6 when they TPK rather than ending for the night.

[CyberMephit]

I would say you should fill the adventure survey after the first TPK but then you could keep playing on if you want to get more material for class/bestiary/other surveys.

[Franz Lunzer]

Also: inform the players after the first TPK that this was the intention of the chapter. It is written to find out when the TPK happens, not if it happens.

Yes, verisimilitude is at a strech, if they all fall in the first or second event. It will be, no matter if the charakters defend the real church-basement or a distraction.

[Sam Phelan]

Removed some posts.

Avoid the use of personal attacks to refute points with which you do not agree. Using any characteristic of the person, and not their contributed ideas or experience, to invalidate a person is a personal attack. Insulting intelligence or other personal traits is also not acceptable. You can always disagree without attacking the individual behind the concept.

[hyphz]

DM Livgin wrote:

The intent of the encounters, the stairs, and the two strikes until their out seemed fairly clear: if the PCs try hit and run tactics the demons will go downstairs. Do you really want material written like a spec book with every possible judgement dictated?

I don't see this intent at all, and the need to defend the stairs makes a massive difference to the adventure. Amongst other things, plenty of the demons have area effect spells. If the PCs are forced to group together to block the stairs, they are much less capable of avoiding them than if they do not.