Critical Failure: Insight

So Lair Assault happened last Monday. I had been prepared to continue The Elder Elemental Eye, but for the  first time in a long while new players showed up and they wanted to throw down against the Tyrantclaw, so against my better judgement I caved and decided to try my hand at murdering my players with a horde of orc-mounted dinosaurs.

It sucked.

First, I had not really read the booklet ahead of time. The owner at Knightfall is good at hooking me up with stuff, but I was not on the roster for running Lair Assault. Still it was just one encounter…how hard could it be? (Hint: I forgot to flip the map over on round five and to add an additional dinosaur to each wave.)

Second, a least a few of the players were cheating. A lot. In the spirit of the event I was trying to roll out in the open so that they could see what I was doing, but two were–among other things–using their dice bags and soda cans to conceal attack and damage rolls. I am not sure how a level 6 fighter frequently rolls mid-30’s on an attack roll, but after crunching the numbers all I could surmise was that he was using imaginary numbers, a weighted die, or both.

I guess that if there was a highlight, it came about when Kamon asked about the pair of huts on the map, mainly if they could shield him from a theoretical t-rex assault (we had kind of played the scenario before). I flipped the book open to the part on terrain features, and matter-of-factly read the description as follows:

“Characters in the hut gain a +5 power bonus to all defenses and have fast-healing 10. The huts are indestructible and are too small for the t-rex to enter.“

Now I have been told that I can muster up a really good dead-pan expression, even while making the most absurd of statements. Thankfully Kamon had known me long enough to pick up when I was making a bullshit statement solely off of what I was saying. He still asked, “Really?” I replied no, and that they conferred no bonuses whatsoever but were pretty darned comfy, what with the firepit and all at the center.

The battle trudged on until eventually the person they were trying to protect turned into a t-rex and started chowing down. The dinosaurs fled, they dropped the last of the orcs, and…then they started booking it for the huts, even at the cost of taking opportunity attacks. I figured that they were hoping to gain some sort of concealment bonus, or perhaps delay it for a bit while it presumably would stop to use an action or two to smash the hut open.

Until they asked me for those “bonuses” again.

On one hand, they had never played with me before. On the other I had assumed that by citing utterly absurd benefits with absolutely no pretense that they would have caught on. That and the fact that I clarified that they did nothing after Kamon asked. Oh well, after two hours of dealing with players who did not know the rules or accurately track their resources, at least I was able to walk away with a story to tell.

Lair Assault Play Report

I ran my first Lair Assault session on Thursday to the tune of a total party kill, which took all of my resolve to follow through with given a life-time of running games in which I also want to see resolution. The four-man group consisted of a kobold rogue, human paladin, tiefling hexblade, and dragonborn knight. Not optimized and leader-less? How could I expect anything less…

Entrance
Here is where things started to go south. This room is comprised one-part narrow walkways, four-parts pits filled with oil. The opposition? A fire elemental and a hell hound. The pools had fish that you can eat in order to shave off 10 points of fire damage, but the downside is that you need to burn through two minor actions in order to pick one up and eat it. I think really the only upside is that the fire elemental only deals ongoing damage, meaning that you need to spread out its attacks in order to get any major impact, so hopefully whoever it spends the most time bitch-slapping took Superior Fortitude.

So the tiefling opens up with diabolic soul for the extra damage and fire resistance, giving her a grand total of 4. Whee. For the first round or two they were stuck on the starting platform fire-spamming themselves until they realized that having a powwow around the fire elemental was a bad idea. To try and make things easier I had the elemental provoke opportunity attacks whenever it could, such as when the paladin legged it across an oil pit to take on the hell hound mano-a-mordida, getting consistently by the fire-breathing statue.

Eventually they decided to just get the hell out of the room, leaving the paladin to take on both the hound and elemental at the same time. The hall lead to another fire-breathing statue, which the rogue easily took out with a simple Thievery check (much more economical than trying to chop through 50 hit points).

Forge
Running into the Big Bad Evil Guy on the first guess? Not bad, especially considering that you are A) on a time limit, and B) cannot take a short rest. This is good for groups trying to get the glory award for winning in 5 rounds or less.

A gotta say, Mordai is pretty fucking hardcore. Mebbe it is just my home games, but this guy was able to take an entire round of beatdown without me having to whip out a Bloodied token. He managed to use his scepter to smack the kobold into some fire, which got worse seeing as we had just hit the end of round 4.

With the temple engulfed in flames, the paladin ended up falling into lava, knocking her “unconscious” (it was super effective). So with one of the defenders down Mordai was basically free to lock everyone in place and blasting them with his minor action attack, while the elemental caught up and continued to light people on fire. The group basically hit a death spiral as the kobold was slid through more fire and then into a pool of lava, the knight mauled to death by a hell hound and Mordai’s flunkies. Next round the hexblade bit it and then it was game.

Commentary
So…I think everyone lasted six rounds. I think that they would have had a chance had there been a leader, especially if it would have upped their group to five characters. Taking Superior Fortitude is great, especially because it shaves off 3 points of ongoing damage and is untyped. Better than taking a fire resist 5 item. Another good tip is for melee types to snag fish out of the pools on any turn in which they do not move: ignoring 10 points of fire damage is basically the same thing as ignoring a single hit from the fire elemental, and most if not all the damage that the hell hound would dish out.

Lair Assault Gameplay Thread

So the first play-by-post Lair Assault game is going on, and if you want you can follow along here. Props to Perico for the interactive Google doc, which is making things WAAAY easier.

Lair Assault Play By Comment?

Want to go through Lair Assault but cannot due to not having a FLGS (or scheduling issues, or whatever)? Well I am up for doing a play-by-comment type game here (or on another forum that gets recommended and everyone can agree on). Just post your characters and/or suggestions in the comments, email them to me, give me a link to a sheet, or however you want to do it. I will do a five-man group, slots go on a first-post-first-serve basis.

Requirements 

• Level 5 characters
• Three magic items (levels 6, 5, and 4)
• 840 gp
• No more than two consumables (level 5 or less), and only one rare item
• Anything goes out of Character Builder/Compendium

Lair Assault

I got a Lair Assault kit yesterday, and after looking through the 16-page, digest sized booklet have this to say: good luck.

Size matters not. Judge it by its size, do you?

The entire scenario is comprised of one mega-encounter that you have to wrap up in 20 rounds. In addition to a hard time limit, you also roll initiative once, can not take a short rest, and the DM can mix up the monsters and terrain to fuck with repeat groups. The levels of the monsters also range from level 4-10, with the BBEG statted as a level 8 elite. As if that was not enough there are also factors in effect to fuck with what would normally be some pretty damned useful abilities, as well as a few timed events that can turn up the heat (hint: the map has two sides).

The tips I will give are that fire resistance will be helpful, and to keep an eye out for an easter egg–its on the cover, actually–and some situational benefits scattered here and there. Also, be aware of the time; I would be impressed by a group that manages to take out every monster in the dungeon, especially on Nightmare difficulty. In fact, I think that glory hounds are going to have to make quite a few playthroughs to get all the awards (especially since two require you to die). Speaking of glory awards, here is the entire list sans secret ones:

GENERAL AWARDS

• Epic Win (20): Defeat the challenge on Nightmare mode.
• I’ll Be Back (10): Get a 20 or higher on a death save.
• It’s Critmas (5): Score a crit.
• Monster Slayer (20): Kill every enemy in the dungeon.
• Commando (20): Do not use magic items or consumables.
• One Shot (10): Drop a non-minion enemy from full hit points to zero in one hit.
• Racy Group (10): Win with every character as the same race.
• Tough As Nails (20): Win without spending a healing surge.
• TPK (5): Everyone dies.
• It’s a Trap! (5): Disable a trap/hazard.

CHALLENGE AWARDS

• Dungeon Mapper (10): Open every door in the dungeon.
• Give My Regards (5): Knock an enemy of a ledge/into lava.
• I Regret Nothing (5): Fall off a ledge/into lava.
• Lava Nice Day (10): Die from lava.
• Speed Demon (10): Win in five rounds or less.
• Treasure Hunter (5): ???
• Vell’s Foil (10): Win the challenge.

SECRET AWARDS
There are three of these, one with 10 points and the other two worth 5.

I’ll be running this at Knightfall Games as time and attendance warrants; it can be ran any day of the week, so fire off an email if you want to give it a shot.

Gearing up for Lair Assault

In less than a week DMs will be able to start running Lair Assault at their local stores, starting with Forge of the Dawn Titan. On the off chance you are not familiar with it, a Lair Assault event is like a sessionf of D&D Encounters cranked up to 11; a mega-encounter that does not allow for short rests, takes about 2 hours to wrap up assuming you do not die…and the mortality rate is pegged at about 80% on your first try. To make matters worse, even if you go in for another shot the DM has options to change things up, making it more dynamic and difficult to plan for. This is not for the casual crowd, but for all the power gamers/optimizers/players that love the tactical elements of combat.

Though we do not know what is in the scenario (yet), there is a lot of speculation and planning going on a few forums, mostly to expect creatures with lots of fire-based attacks and lava since, well, one of the achievements glory awards requires that you die in lava.

I have never ran D&D as a competitive game–I normally fudge stuff either way if I think it will add to the overall excitement, or to just keep things moving–so it will be interesting to see how I DM Lair Assault. My plan is to just roll all the dice in the open to “let them fall as they may”, as it were. I am curious to see what parties (and Fortune Cards, if any) people are going to bring to the table, especially for groups going for the “one race” glory award. This is definitely something I am going to cover in depth, so expect to see at least a few play reports sometime in September.