Delve Night: Cairn of the Winter King

Not really a delve, but the adventure taken from Monster Vault. I wanted to try something really weird, and ended up with a shardmind shaper psion. Shardminds are an annoying race in that I can’t really think of a working character concept outside of, “you’re in the natural world, trying to kill aberrants.” Great if you’re running a campaign frought with aberrant baddies, but…not so good in any other circumstance. Also, they’re very alien looking, falling outside what the arbitrary acceptable non-human traits of other races (glowing eyes, horns, tails, and/or fur).

Since it was a delve I wasn’t surprised that the party and townsfolk never questioned my existence or purpose. I’d elected to go with the shaper class feature, because I enjoyed forging astral constructs in 3rd Edition, and while I knew I couldn’t do it so easily in 4th Edition wanted to see if it was still enjoyable creating more bizarre, temporary things as even at level 4, none of the at-will Conjurations were humanoid in shape. Instead, I could create shards of force, static motes, and…whatever the hell a psychic anomaly is.

The first encounter in the adventure consists of a cliched viking boat dropping out of the sky and unloading more undead that what could fit into it. Thankfully, a lot are minions, but since our DM wouldn’t indicate which I decided to reserve power points and throw out a static mote. Initially, it only slows things that start their turns next to it, and on the following round explodes into a Close burst 3 attack. Anything next to it has to basically double move (or teleport) to get far enough away to avoid it. This, combined with the fact that it targets creatures, made it somewhat annoying to use.

The Most Useful Power award went to psychic anomaly. This thing is awesome, and aside from the occasional force shard I used it exclusively throughout the session. You drop it on your turn, and anything that starts next to it gets hammered by an attack. The best part is, that if you burn a power point then allies can flank with it, but if you spend two it also dazes them. This, coupled with our skirmishing warlord’s knock-back attacks, helped us keep the heat off of our gnome paladin, who unfortunately still got dropped about five or so times throughout the session.

After we dispatched the undead, we talked with the boat, which allowed anyone on that affirmed having the ice scepter, whether or not they actually did. Figuring we’d need it later, we bothered to dig around and found someone that happened to have just the scepter we were looking for. After that we got on the boat, and were subjected to a lengthy and annoying skill challenge. There weren’t a lot of skills that we were allowed to use, and thankfully the DM was kind enough to ignore the fact that we’d accrued a good deal more than three failures by its conclusion (though we were a healing surge worse for wear).

The entrance to the dungeon is indicated by a massive pile of skulls encased in ice. We didn’t spend time checking it out after the DM mentioned as an aside that it had some form of attack. On the other hand, the first room was warm and inviting, with an old man claiming to be the Winter King and swearing that he’d drop the curse if we handed over the ice scepter. Beth’s gnome, being fey and all, outright refuses any kind of “free gift”. Good advice. None of us trusted this guy, especially since the NPC that nabbed the scepter in the first place described an ice-filled cavern with people frozen inside.

So combat starts, everything’s revealed to be an illusion, and we get our asses handed to us a second time. Now, the DM claimed to have yanked a dire wolf from the mix, but the fact that we had to go through Action Points, healing potions, two inspiring words, one lay on hands, and multiple daily powers tells me that either this encounter is not balanced at all, or that we were doing something very wrong. On one hand, Beth and I were playing classes that we weren’t familiar with, but on the other hand we were pretty damned optimized.

Many rounds and healing surges later, we decided to make camp for the night in a storeroom, and were awoken when someone heard a patrol outside. The patrol consisted of a bunch of tiefling minions, some guards, and a gnome. Things went easier because we propped the gnome in front of the door and just blasted them from the safety of the room while our halfling assassin zipped about outside murdering stragglers. The gnome got away, and we came out having used our dailies only under the pretense that A) this was a one-shot, and B) we were calling it for the night.

Did I like the adventure? Well, when I read it, it looked really cool. Not sure if I’d fault the DM, luck, or the encounter composition, but something was definitely awry.

Did I like the psion? Yes. I think I’d swap out static mote for something a little more direct. Perhaps something with forced movement so that I could use an action point to drop a psychic anomaly next to more critters (or to just have something that doesn’t require monsters to start next to it). I’d certainly try it again, but probably not as a shardmind unless its something more central to the plot.

Delve Night: Psion Playtest

Josh came over at random today, and so it was declared after much Taco Bell that he run a delve for one of our neighbors (since apparently my neighbors are a collective of like-minded geeks) and myself. We ran Orc Fortress, the level 3 delve out of Dungeon Delve. The party consisted of a dwarf great weapon fighter, tiefling psion, and longtooth shifter beastmaster ranger, all level 4.

The first encounter was kind of shaky, and served as a portent of things to come. I’d taken an artificer multiclass feat since no one was a leader, and that barely saw us through the delve. Honestly, we only won because Josh was juggling stats and shit around to account for the fact that we had a smaller party than normal, new people, and no leader. That, and the ranger kept forgetting basic ranger-stuff like designating quarry, using encounter attacks, and sometimes attacking period. Even by removing monsters to adjust the XP value there was simply no fucking way we stood a chance without some hardcore fudging and outright removal of monster powers.

But, thats really not the overall point of this. I want to talk about my brief experience with the psion. I really like the psion. Before, the power point system was really just a more flexible spontaneous spellcaster that required more bookwork and headaches for the DM that didnt have a shitload of time to prep/didnt own the book. Plenty of potential for abuse, and also if you made it so that magic and psionics were “different”, well, that was just another thing you had to worry about accounting for in your adventures. Bleh.

Not any more. Power points give it a different feel, as well as a nifty resource management mechanic that doesnt require a lot of paperwork to manage. It adds flexibility, but not all the abuse that could come with it.
Its a lot of fun having a huge bundle of at-wills that I can boost in power as the situation calls for it. Against one critter, I could just roll out mind thrust or memory hole. Oh, a bunch of minions clusterd up? Fine then, lets boost up memory hole with a couple points and explode all their heads. Big bad brute has a pretty powerful attack, so I’ll roll a few more points on to betrayal and let him maul his own commander to death. Shit like that. I love it. I normally hate complicated subsystems, but this really isnt. Its simple, easy to figure out, and pretty damned easy to use.

Josh is going to run another delve on Monday. I’m going to give the monk a shot and see how it works. That, or a tiefling avenger. We’ll see.

Monk Playtest

I decided to whip up a basic three-encounter delve to play through myself, just to see how well the monk holds up. Initially, it was just going to be a dwarf monk with a couple of healing potions. The name of the game wasnt survival so much as seeing how well he performed. Then, I decided that maybe I should pair him up with a kenku rogue and attach a kind of tenuous plot to the mix.

What I ended up with was that a hive of kruthik had tunneled into a dwarf monastery, or something. I just cracked open a Caves of Carnage tileset that I apparently forgot about and just made something at random. Anywho, here’s the party rundown:

Fyst Ironfist (dwarf monk)
Snake (fire snake sorcerer)
Sir Frog (bullywug ranger)
Darkwing (kenku rogue)

To keep things simple I gave Frog and Darkwing feats to boost their striker damage, while Fyst and Snake got a +1 to attack. This allowed for very minor character management since I had to control four characters at once. I’m positive that I forgot to include some kicker effects on many attacks, but in the end I dont think it mattered much. I wanted to do a fire serpent writeup, but said fuck-all and just reskinned a dragonborn.

So, yeeep. All strikers. Each is armed with 2 potions of healing so that in a pinch they can heal themselves (except for Snake). How do they know eachother? Well, I assume that Snake is some kind of forge spirit that shows up when shit hits the fan, and that maybe there is a flock of kenku also living there? And, the bullywug–

You know what? Fuck it. It doesnt have to make sense!

I planned out three encounters geared mostly for a party of four. I made the first encounter a little easy just to test the waters. I was sad that I didnt get to properly use the deathcap mushrooms: I had intended to set them up as terrain hazards that players could push kruthik into to cause them to explode (which might harm allies as well), but unfortunately things didnt go according to plan.

Encounters
Encounter 1: 2 Kruthik Young, 1 Kruthik Hatchling
Encounter 2: 3 Kruthik Young, 2 Kruthik Hatchlings
Encounter 3: 1 Kruthik Adult, 2 Kruthik Young

Each encounter had kruthik burrowed beneath some rubble, and only Frog had a high enough Perception to act in the surprise rounds when they occured. Frog ended up being the bitch of the party, and I just kept mauling him since it always seemed to make the most sense, though at most he was one point shy of bloodied. None of the encounters ever made it past three rounds, and Darkwing never used his encounter attack since sly flourish did a shitload of damage every time.

In defense of the monsters, they tended to roll fairly badly and were all brutes, so they had a hard enough time hitting as-is. The kenku and fire snake were very ideal for their classes, having +4 to their attacks and +4 for secondary stats (which worked great for the sorcerer striker damage and Darkwing’s sly flourish attack). In retrospect I’m sure I could have added at least another kruthik young to each encounter. Hell, I might have been able to get away with another kruthik hatchling on top of it.

Mostly this was done to playtest the monk, and it worked out extremely well. In any instance that there was a kruthik hatchling nearby Fyst was able to drunken monkey a young into the hatchling, taking it out of the fight. If there was more than one young next to an ally, then a crane’s wings was great for kicking them away. Against the kruthik adult I used a combination of dragon’s tail to prone it, followed up by a drunken monkey to knock its ass into a young for some added damage.

The last battle was a major letdown. I forgot to use action points until then, so each character got to unload their daily and encounter in sequence. You didnt get to see it, but at one point Frog and Darkwing used driving the prey and trick strike to paddle a young back and forth between eachother for a shitload of damage. Couple this with Snake’s AoEs and encounter attack, and basically by the end of round one everything was bloodied. I plan to upload pics that I took on an almost entirely round-by-round basis, so you can see how fast things went.

In the end, I learned that not only is the monk a blast, but that a bunch of strikers is bloody-fucking-murder.

Delve Night At Knightfall Games

Red Jason, Adrian, and myself are heading down to Knightfall Games in a few hours to run a couple of low-level delves (1, 2 and mebbe 3). If you’re interested and happen to live anywhere close, feel free to stop by to play or just observe (we’re easy like Sunday). Otherwise, we’ll let you know how it went when we get back at the toll of midnight. Or sooner. I mean, I have to open tomorrow so, you know…

Delve: Coppernight Hold

Since Red Jason was out sick and our DM for the night, Adrian decided to run a level 1 delve out of Dungeon Delve, which allowed us to give the PH2 classes a spin. There were only three players, and as in many cases I was called upon to perform double duty with two classes I hadn’t played before: the warden and shaman. Delves are simple three-encounter endeavors, and Adrian was happy to be able to run something with the sole intent to kill as opposed to entertain a prolonged story.

The party consisted of a minotaur warden, dwarf shaman, dragonborn sorcerer, elf druid, and goblin barbarian. We didnt try to do much social role-playing, as the notion of a village hiring up such an unlikely and bizarre band of heroes didnt do much in the way of immersion.

The first encounter was kind of confusing with the way Adrian mapped it out. This makes sense since he didnt map it out in accordance with the actual map, so various terrain features ended up perplexing the lot of us. In hindsight Dungeon Tiles would have made things a lot clearer with a minimum of setup time. Even still, we prevailed without much difficult and with all of our daily powers, something I use as a barometer for when its time to leg it.

Encounter two was far more frustrating, especially since Adrian let the kobolds drop a statue on us as a minor action. I cant blame him: the first encounter went by pretty easily, and I think he just wanted to make us sweat…a lot. He also misinterpreted the save ends effect to include both prone and immobilization, which would have been really bad if my warden wasnt able to make a save at the start of his turn.

The last encounter went by a lot quicker despite the overflow of minions, throwing an extra slyblade into the mix, and an elite dragon: Josh burned his daily, action-pointed an encounter, and wrapped things up with dragon breath to bloody the wyrmling on the second round. On the flipside, it recharged the dragon’s breath weapon, but that only really affected the goblin barbarian.

In the end we succeeded despite Adrian adding more things to the mix. Knowing that it was only three encounters long I hoarded my action points and daily powers, rolling them out on the wyrmling. I had a lot of fun with the shaman, and had more fun with the warden that I thought I would have.
The shaman, as I’d expected, plays a lot like a Final Fantasy XI summoner in that you mostly move it around and trigger attacks with it. You can use a few ranged attacks, but you’re a soft target (I had an AC of 13 I think). The leader-benefits doled out by the spirit companion are very nice, and I found myself teleporting the spirit about and using it as a kind of “ground zero” for formations and setups.
I dont think that the warden is a better defender than the fighter, despite the free marking ability. I never actually got to make any attacks with it, and I didnt get to mark a whole lot of monsters since they didnt try to clump around him. His attacks are thematic and useful: I used one to effectively prevent a kobold from running away, but otherwise was able to ramp up my AC to 20 with the other one. The daily-form power is also really cool, similar to a barbarian rage but still different mechanically and thematically.

We all had a lot of fun tonight, and it makes me feel a lot better about purchasing Dungeon Delve. Adrian and myself are strongly considering pitching this as a monthly event at Knightfall Games, once we are sure we can make even that commitment. I think its an excellent way to introduce new people to the mechanics and get a feel for new characters.