Skybreaker session 3: Rocks and Hard Places

When we last left our motley band, they were trapped between a barricaded bunch of kobolds with crossbows (and who knows what else) and the shuffling approach of things as yet unseen, but likely to strongly resemble zombies or some other such undead threat.

That’s where our session began, and it put us in a rather interesting place.  There were only two obvious options:  if we went in one direction, we would need to either overcome the kobolds or negotiate with them.  If we went in the other, we would encounter whatever it was that was approaching us.  We knew there were no side passages to escape along.

Negotiation with the kobolds would seem to be the strongest hand.  If all went well, we would gain cover and some temporary allies in the fight.  Of course, if all went poorly, we could end up in a pitched battle, having forfeited any chance of surprise, with another encounter certain to follow before we had time to rest.  And there was, after all, some reason to believe that the kobolds had killed the miners in the first place, even if they weren’t responsible for their corpses’ reanimation.  There was no guarantee they wouldn’t attack us on sight.

Fighting the kobolds might gain us surprise, but it would cost us any hope of an alliance, and we’d still be dealing with the approaching undead.

Fighting the undead meant going into a battle without any real grasp of the forces arrayed against us.  Rarely a good idea.  On the other hand, it might mean only having to fight one battle… unless the kobolds got curious.  It was a fair bet they’d hear the sounds of the fight.

Rodrik supported that third option.  Both the Raven Queen’s hatred of undead and his own pragmatic approach seemed to push him in that direction — take care of the undead, then, if necessary, take care of the kobolds.  There was always the chance that the kobolds wouldn’t become a problem.  I as a player wouldn’t have considered it the best choice, but he would, and did.

I think it might have worked out okay, too.  Needless to say, though, it’s not what we did.

We went instead with a modified version of plan A, wherein Cat and Tomal (who was trained in Stealth) would hide, to help conceal our numbers and hopefully give us an advantage if things went south.  Meanwhile, Rodrik would attempt to parley with the kobolds, with Matias along to provide some support if he got swarmed.  Zaz would be somewhere in the middle, playing lookout against the zombies while also being ready to step in and throw a spell if we needed him against the kobolds.

I’m really not sure how Zaz’s role was supposed to work.

That was the plan.

What actually happened was that the kobolds almost uniformly broke and ran as soon as they spotted Rodrik.  A couple of crossbow bolts came our way, but by the time we’d reached the barricades, those had begun to withdraw, too.  We wondered about this, but we let them go; they were scattering, and there was no hope of the two of us catching up to all of them in time.  I’m sure something evil is going to come of this in a future session.

That did give us the barricade, along with a couple of abandoned crossbows.

After a moment of discussion, we almost unanimously decided that we didn’t wish to see what had driven off all those kobolds, who a minute ago had seemed ready to fight.  (Rodrik was again overruled here, and I still think we’ll regret it.)  We proceeded down the corridor, making a few turns, until we could no longer hear the creatures behind us.

We came across some more bodies, mostly kobolds; none of them were rising as undead yet.  They burned nicely.  We also had a few combat encounters, with a nest of giant rats and a rather nasty giant spider, and we found two more traps, a classic pit and an arrow trap.  We never saw a trace of a kobold.  Occasionally we would hear distant echoes of metal on metal, which I took to mean a battle somewhere.  The entire thing was getting a bit eerie, actually.

That’s when the zombies attacked.

I say zombies, but these weren’t typical zombies.  Typical zombies shamble along, possibly making noises much like the ones we’d heard earlier, near the barricade.  These zombies were walking corpses, but that’s where the resemblance ended.  They were fast, mean, and hungry for flesh.  And did I mention inhumanly strong and almost impossible to put down?  And to top it all off, utterly silent.  They actually surprised us.  Zombies managed to get a high enough stealth score to overcome our ranger’s passive perception.

They were also reptilian.  We thought.  We couldn’t identify them, but we did know they were nothing we’d seen or heard of before.

This was the toughest fight we’d been in yet.  Despite the best efforts of both Tomal and Rodrik, Matias went down beneath a small swarm of velociraptor-troll-zombies.  (At least, that’s what they seemed like, and I have to say Ron did an excellent job of describing the confusion of the fight, with weird quasi-reptilian zombie-things flashing in and out of sight, attacking from every direction, and all that good stuff.)  It took a very lucky turn undead, several daily powers, and at least three action points from different characters to turn that fight around, and at the end we were all bloody and battered and standing over a pile of dismembered reptile-zombie corpses.

(“Zombie corpses” might be somewhat redundant, but hey — what else do you call them?)

This was a victory we, the players, actually celebrated.  It was a hard fight, and we could have come out on the losing side at any time, but we managed to pull it together and win.  Our groups don’t fudge die rolls.  We play fair — no instant-death traps, or anything — but defeat and death are both real options in our campaigns.  It leads to some loved characters being lost, yes.  But it also leads to situations like this one, where the entire table was happily recounting the fight for upwards of fifteen minutes.  This is the main reason I discourage fudging rolls — it takes away from the thrill of a skin-of-the-teeth victory like this one.

We all thought that was going to be the end of the session, in fact.  But Ron had one more surprise up his sleeve for us.

As our battered, weary, and in one case unconscious heroes started to rest after the long, bloody fight, the kobolds showed up.

Looking forward to seeing what develops next week.

4e Monk project update

I updated my 4e Monk class somewhat.  Many of the powers were balanced around the assumption that a monk would be using a 1d6 attack and would not have access to striker bonus damage.

The first assumption was untrue because of their proficiencies, although its impact would be fairly minor.

The second assumption was untrue because of multiclassing, and was not so easily fixed.

Damage from powers has generally declined across the board, but the monk now has access to a 1d6/2d6/3d6 bonus damage effect.  He can apply this damage once per round when striking an enemy who is already under the effect of Quivering Palm.  The base Quivering Palm effect, in turn, is no longer limited to one target at a time; I’ll see whether that needs to change as I continue to test.

Aside from the damage, certain effects were changed or removed for balance purposes.

I haven’t yet gotten around to revising the paragon paths or epic destinies to match.  That’ll be my next step.  Some of those are pretty overpowered.

Skybreaker session 2: Deep as a…

After a week’s break thanks to some real-life issues, we got back to our Skybreaker campaign yesterday.

Having learned about the kobold incursions, our party’s next step was fairly obvious:  visit the mine and see what we could discover about the kobolds’ motive.  After an overnight rest, we set off early in the morning, to give ourselves plenty of time to get back to town before dark.  None of us liked the idea of trekking through mountain territory full of hostile kobolds at night.

Despite our worries, we didn’t come across any more of the little monsters on the way to the mine.  The entrance, too, was clear of guards — a strange detail.  We took some time to search for traps, bearing the kobolds’ reputation in mind, but we turned up nothing there, either.  Finally, we went in.

Outside the dungeon, Cat had led, scouting ahead of the party.  Inside, Matias and Tomal were our vanguard.  Cat, with her bow, and Zaz stayed in the center, where they could still strike freely at range.  Rodrik was at the back, since he’s less squishy than the center two in case of a rear attack, and more capable of attacking at range than Tomal.  Rodrik, being a fairly easygoing type, didn’t object; I figured he’d be pretty pragmatic when it came to survival, and it seemed like a decent plan.

The first passage proceeded into the mountain, downward along a slope.  We soon came to an open area, used to store some of the miners’ equipment, judging by the picks, lanterns, and other paraphernalia scattered along the outer wall.  It also featured a number of bodies — humans and dwarves we figured for the miners, and kobolds.  It seemed the miners had tried to make a stand.

Then, after a cursory investigation, as we prepared to head deeper into the mine, the corpses began to stand up.

This was a rather creepy moment, actually, and I tip my imaginary hat to Ron for it.  It also presented us with quite a challenge:  over a dozen kobold, human, and dwarf zombies, all of them now standing between us and the mine entrance.

Rodrik was now in “front,” but I rolled poorly on initiative, and would be acting last.  Cat started out, sticking one with a few arrows; down it went.  Zaz scorched a couple.  Matias moved to the front and tossed a throwing hammer; it missed, but it allowed him to mark the enemy.  Zombies started to swarm us.  Tomal moved up to support Matias.  And Rodrik, naturally, turned undead.

It turns out that turn undead is a pretty impressive power when you’re surrounded by zombies.  Most of the uncoming horde got seared by brilliant white light and driven back, and a couple crumbled to dust.  Since the ones I’d hit couldn’t move for a turn, we had a chance to clean up, and we turned the tide pretty quickly after that, especially once Zaz pulled out a Force Orb on the enemies I’d pushed into a nice clump.  Zombies, unsurprisingly, have a low Reflex defense.

This turned out to be an easier fight than Ron had expected, he said afterwards.  There was some lucky rolling involved, but he hadn’t counted on the power of turn undead’s “push + immobilize” effect to set up further area-effect.

We took a short rest to recharge our encounter powers, while in-character we talked over what this meant.  Was there a necromancer among the kobolds?  If so, he was sufficiently ruthless to animate the kobold dead, too.  If not, then we had corpses rising as zombies for some other reason.  We didn’t have any real information to go on, yet, so we chalked it up to another mystery and pressed on.

We carefully explored the branching passages of the mine, occasionally coming across another body.  We burned them, just to be sure.  We didn’t see a single live kobold, although we did trip a dart trap at one point that poisoned Rodrik.  Fortunately, dwarves have a strong resistance to poison, and he shook it off quickly.

We fought a couple of fire beetles that had turned aggressive, and later a smaller group of zombies that was shambling about a room, but on the whole we were surprised by how quiet and empty the mine seemed.  Darstan, the reeve, had led us to believe that the mine had been suddenly flooded by kobolds.  Where had they gone, then?

Cat signaled a halt, telling us she’d heard something.  She crept ahead into the darkness, returning five minutes later and silently gesturing us back.  She’d found the kobolds — some of them, anyway.  They’d barricaded the passage up ahead and were huddling behind the makeshift barrier with readied crossbows.  They were definitely expecting trouble, and soon.  And it would have to be coming from our direction, because there were no other branches between us and the barricade.

One Perception check later, we became aware of a soft shuffling sound from back the way we’d come, growing louder as it progressed toward us…

And there the session ended.

Out of the Bargain Bin: Sly Cooper

I used to play a lot of video games.  Back in the 80s, I collected pretty much every Apple-compatible computer RPG I could.  Ultima, Bard’s Tale, Might and Magic, the works.  Infocom’s old text adventures were favorites, too.  When Nintendo ruled the consoles, I got those, too, and a fair selection of puzzle and action games while I was at it.

I don’t play so much any more, although this is a factor of lack of time, and not lack of interest.  When I do, it’s mostly Warcraft, Guild Wars, or one of the Civilization games — all of which I know I’ll like, and all of which offer a great deal to do.  Rarely any more do I buy a new game.  Assassin’s Creed was the last.  (It was worth the price.)  Mostly, I just don’t feel the urge to play something right when it comes out.  I’ve got games to play.  I can wait a while to try whatever it is.

I do buy used games somewhat more regularly, though.

Right now, in the dying days of the last console generation and the dawn of the new one, is a good time to buy used games for those old consoles.  So I’ve been searching out those games that I’d put off.  I’m still looking for Psychonauts and Okami, but today I picked up one of the few PS2 RPGs that I haven’t yet played:  Final Fantasy X-2.  I wasn’t impressed by X, and I don’t expect the sequel to blow my mind.  But for under $10, it’s hard to go wrong with an RPG.  I could practically use the disc as a coaster and still come out okay.

Lying next to Final Fantasy X-2 in the bargain bin was Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racoonus.  I remembered hearing the name; it’d been a popular enough game to spawn two sequels, and I had a vague impression that it’d received favorable reviews.  I knew it was a platformer, too.  I’m not a huge fan of platformers; my precision with a joystick has never been all that good.  That’s one reason I gravitated to RPGs and turn-based strategy in the first place.  I can select from a menu with the best of ‘em.

I knew the name Sucker Punch from the upcoming Infamous, though.  And it cost less than my lunch would, so what the hell, right?  Maybe it’d turn out to be playable despite my joystick incompetence, the way Assassins’ Creed had been.  And if it turned out to be more along the agonizing lines of a Prince of Persia, no big loss.

I’m happy to say it’s closer to the former case.  The game itself is kind of unforgiving — there’s no health bar.  It’s the old-school “get hit and you die” approach.  Collecting coins in the levels or running across a rare item will give you an extra hit or two, and you’ve got 5 lives (with the possibility of collecting an extra), but for the most part, you get hit and you die.

Mitigating this is the general absence of enemies.  There are a couple, but the game focuses on figuring out a way through the obstacles.  As opposed to, for instance, figuring out a way through the obstacles while constantly swordfighting with three monsters, all while fireballs are being lobbed at you from the background.  Platforming is not my forte, but this is laid-back enough for me to deal with.  At the same time, actually executing the plan remains fairly challenging, relying a great deal on timing.  I’ve had mixed results so far, but I’ve managed to get through the early stages without too much grief, and I’ve had a lot of fun doing it.

If the gameplay were all there were to it, though, this game wouldn’t have grabbed me the way it has.

Mainly, it’s just charming.  The animated style of the graphics and the cartoon-like cut scenes might seem a bit childish at first, but they suit Sly’s over-the-top exploits very well.  The graphics are dated now, of course, but they hold up reasonably; the characters are a little blocky, but the game still looks pretty good.  The music is likewise a good fit.  The voice acting, especially Sly’s, is surprisingly good.  The writing is downright artful; the characters really spring to life.  That they’re archetypal, even cliche, no doubt helps — but this is still an achievement.  Many games try to do “the rogue with a heart of gold” and still manage to fail, for instance.  Sly Cooper pulls it off with flair.

The story is pretty basic:  Sly, a raccoon thief (with a heart of gold), and his band of merry accomplices are master thieves, who steal only from other criminals.  Convenient, yes, but like Sly says, where’s the challenge in stealing from normal people?  The five particular criminals he’s after in this game have stolen the Thievius Raccoonus, a codex of secret thievery techniques belonging to Sly’s family.  He’s out to get it back, and to take them down while he’s at it.

Simple plot, simple characters, even relatively simple gameplay, but there’s something brilliant about the way all of it comes together.

It’s a very pleasant surprise.  I just might be adding the sequels to my list.

Class Design for 4th Edition

Working up an entirely new class for 4th edition is an interesting experience.  In some respects, it’s a more complicated process than 3rd edition; in other ways, it’s simpler.  A couple of thoughts on what my ongoing work on a 4e monk class has told me…

First, complexity.  In third edition, creating a new class — either base or prestige, though I’m dealing mostly with base classes here — would involve a few easy steps.  First, you’d choose a base attack bonus progression.  Second, one or more “good” saves, among the three.  Then, class skills and number of skill points per level.  Weapon and armor proficiencies.  For a prestige class, prerequisites and number of class levels.  And finally, you’d try to work out a list of class abilities.  In most cases, this step took the longest, but even for a base class, it would be no more than 20 levels’ worth of abilities, often working out to no more than one ability per level (although not necessarily evenly distributed).

In fourth edition, things are much the same.  There’s no more BAB to worry about, but now you have a base number of healing surges and a base amount healed per surge.  Most classes get either a +2 to one defense (Fortitude, Reflex, Will) or a +1 to two; one, the paladin, has a +1 to all three, so that’s still a valid option too.  There are still class skills, although the sheer number of skills has decreased and there are no more skill points.  There are still proficiencies.  Then there are class features — the four or so powers that both embody the essence of the class and allow it to (better) do what it’s meant to do.  The cleric’s healing word.  The warlock’s eldritch blast.  The fighter’s bonus to hit with either one-handed or two-handed weapons.  In the monk’s case, it’s ability with unarmed strikes and an armor bonus when unarmored.

The one exception in 3e was a spellcaster.  Creating a new spellcaster class which had its own unique spell list (and not merely use of other classes’ spells) was a long undertaking, because each spell needed to be written up separately.  That’s why so many new caster classes used old classes’ spell lists entirely, or filched most or all of their spells from a patchwork of other classes’.

That’s kind of what it’s like for every class in 4e.  Every class in the PHB offers a choice from among at least three powers at every level at which the character gains a new power.  Often there are four choices; occasionally, five or even six.  Over 30 levels, even though not every level offers a new power, that’s still a lot of powers to write up.

An analysis of the powers in the PHB will show that, when the descriptive fluff is removed, some powers of one class are remarkably similar in nature to those of another class.  So one option is to take existing powers, file off the serial numbers, add some fluff, and serve.  This works, although the particular mix of powers may still need balancing.

The other option is to come up with unique powers, at least to the extent that you can.  Obviously, quite a few possible powers for a weapon-using class are going to involve a combination of attacking the target and moving.  But there are different ways of doing this:

* You move, then attack.

* You attack, then step back a space.

* You make a full move, and make an attack against an enemy you’re adjacent to at any time during that move.  That enemy doesn’t get an opportunity attack against you.

* You attack, then move a few steps, then attack again.

* You charge, attack, and push the enemy with you for the rest of your move.

All of these are powers that appear in the PHB at least once, but they all feel like very different powers, even though their effect boils down to “a combination of moving and an attack.”  A class that offers each of these options feels diverse.  A class that offers 5 powers that do option 1 and 3 that do option 2… well, that starts to feel a little repetitious.  So it’s important to shake things up.  This is true even if you’re filing off serial numbers rather than baking from scratch.  (Way to mix metaphors, eh?)

The one thing that’s absolutely essential in my view is to give the new class a niche of its own.  If your concept for the class is “be sneaky and hit things,” then your creation is directly competing with the rogue, and likely to be found either redundant or overpowering.  If it’s “control the battlefield through the use of summoned monsters,” then you’re doing something no other class is.  Even if your spells are mechanically similar to the wizard’s — the PHB’s only controller — you still feel different in play.

This is one reason my monk is focused more on “disabling the enemy through martial arts expertise” and less on “doing damage with my fists.”  The rogue and ranger both do damage with weapons, stealth, and mobility; another class that does that isn’t needed.  In fact, Wizards of the Coast has published some guidelines for playing “missing” classes using 4e, and their suggestion for the monk is to use a two-weapon-style ranger with a few changes.  It’s a good stopgap, but it doesn’t satisfy me, so my work on my version of the class continues.