Tag Archives: D&D4e

D&D Encounters – Dark Legacy of Evard Week 12

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A bittersweet night, as this was the last session of Dark Legacy of Evard that I’ll be running. Of course, that’s because I’ll be in Indianapolis next week for Gen Con, so I guess I’ll survive!

At our 5:00 table we had a bit of a problem; only three players showed up. We’ve had as many as 14 in the past, and the last two weeks had 8 and 7. I waited until 5:10, and when no more players showed up I decided to run with just the three players. We had a defender and two strikers.

Scaling is a little tricky when you have so few characters and their levels are a bit uneven (one at level 1, one at 2 and one at 3). The encounter originally called for an evil wizard, a shadow bolter and four dusk beasts. I decided to take it down to 2 dusk beasts and go from there.

The encounter began with the party trying to figure out how to get into the spooky library where the wizard Nathaire (possessed by the spirit of the evil wizard Vontarin) was apparently holed up. They decided to try to sneak close to the front door and then quietly pick the lock. They failed. They made noise. And eventually they got the door open, whereupon I granted a surprise round to the two-headed shadowy dusk beast that had been sent to the door to investigate. Chomp.

Evard Session 12 Library Map - Gridded

Evard Session 12 Library Map - No Grid

The knight charged bravely into the library and started handling the dusk beast. The vampire and the assassin tiptoed in as well. Nathaire taunted them from upstairs, telling them that he had no desire to destroy them, but when they kept fighting his minions the evil wizard started blasting them with shadowy tendrils.

Eventually the shadow bolter made his presence known. The vampire and assassin stayed downstairs to deal with him while the knight climbed the stairs to go after the wizard… only to find that the wizard had another dusk beast standing guard upstairs.

The vampire was knocked unconscious by the bolter, but luckily got a 20 on his second death save. The knight, meanwhile, was in deep trouble with the wizard after taking out the second dusk beast. He started dying, taking ongoing enervation damage.

At this point it seemed quite likely that I would kill off the party, so I took the knight’s player up on his earlier suggestion of letting him run a second PC – a healer. The reinforcements arrived, and the party got back on its feet and finished off the dark mage, trapping his soul in a purple orb.

At 7:00 I had a table of four. Two were regulars from the 7:00 group from the past couple of weeks (including a fellow player in my Pathfinder group). One was my lovely wife (yay!). And the fourth was a brand-new D&D player who I’d met via EN World when he reached out to ask some general questions about the game and mentioned in his post that he lived near a store called Enchanted Grounds. I exchanged some messages with him, and he showed up to play!

This group had two defenders and two controllers – once again, no healer. They were a pair of 3rd level characters and a pair of 1st level characters. I decided to use the same scaling as I had for the earlier game (two dusk beasts instead of four).

The encounter began when the vryloka paladin walked up to the library and knocked on the door. When the voice on the other side (a shadow bolter) asked who was there, the paladin lied and said he was one of the people Vontarin had commanded to create undead in the crypts and he needed to talk to the wizard. With a great Bluff check, the shadow bolter opened the door and I allowed the paladin a free surprise round attack.

My wife’s binder opened the combat by dropping a zone of difficult terrain right inside the door – a mixed blessing that worked out okay. The paladins led the way into the library, and the new player’s paladin was knocked to the ground by a readied bite from a dusk beast. Nathaire/Vontarin exchanged taunts with the binder and the mage, which was a ton of fun; I loved role-playing the evil wizard.

The party took care of the dusk beast and shadow bolter downstairs without getting beat up too badly, and the binder and mage started zapping Vontarin from afar. The paladins started fighting through the upstairs dusk beast on the way to the dark mage. When the party’s eladrin mage teleported into the balcony behind Vontarin, the evil wizard closed to melee with the paladins.

The new player’s paladin was low on hit points when the bloodied dark wizard reached out to touch him with despair. He hit. The attack brought the paladin to dangerously negative hit points… and the slide effect took him off the balcony, whereupon the falling damage finished him off. In the very next round, the surviving PCs killed off the evil mage.

The new player’s character died heroically and rather cinematically (tossed off a balcony by a big bad guy), and he had an absolute blast with the experience. I stayed afterward to talk to him about D&D4e and how to get into the game. He ended up buying a copy of Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms (he loved the idea of the dual-weapon wielding Scout ranger) and I suggested D&D Insider if he decides he’s going to stick with the game. He’s a really great guy, and I hope to see him again at future games.

Thus ends my experience with Dark Legacy of Evard. I’m bummed that I won’t get to run the final session, but that’s okay. I’ll be jumping into the next season of Encounters for a few weeks before my Wednesday night bowling league begins at the end of August, and I’m looking forward to it. I love the way Encounters lets me bring new players into the game. It’s been a lot of fun.

MapTool campaign file: Cairn of the Winter King

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Since I’m running my family campaign through the Cairn of the Winter King adventure from the Monster Vault, I prepared everything in MapTool (my wife and I are in Colorado; her brother and his wife are in Texas, so we play online). I figured I might as well put the adventure out there to share.

This campaign file was created in version 1.3.b66 of MapTool. If you’re looking for the maps independently of the campaign file, you can find them here. Enjoy!

Download the campaign file here.

Pathfinder session #2: Fun but fiddly

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Last night was the second session in the ongoing Pathfinder campaign I was fortunate enough to be invited to join. As a player who knows D&D 4th Edition well but who’s still learning Pathfinder, it continues to be an enlightening experience.

The GM for the game is awesome, and he’s the reason I jumped at the chance to play (it’s not like I have an overabundance of free time – I’m running a lot of games right now!). We’re playing the Rise of the Runelords campaign path, which everyone tells me is a great adventure (and I agree so far). My character is definitely a real character – Father Beren, a gypsy cleric of Desna (goddess of luck and travel). Kind of a grim hippie. He’s developed in part because of my thinking and writing about a back story and in part because of awesome work by the GM to mention how various things in the game affect him (seeing horrible creatures and places devoted to the god opposed to Desna is repulsive to Beren).

The other players are fun, too – two of them in particular. One is a pensive traveler from afar (a druid with a cat companion) and another is a dwarf with terrible luck who decided to toss his crossbow in the fire at the inn because he was so frustrated with it. Our awesome GM played out a scene the next day where the dwarf went to a weapon merchant to buy a new crossbow. He first swapped a magic dagger for a magical repeating crossbow, but he does not yet have the right feat to use such a crossbow. So, the dwarf asked if the merchant had any regular crossbows for sale. Sure enough, the merchant had just gotten one in the night before… and he pulls out this fire-blackened crossbow that the innkeeper had apparently rescued from the fire after some crazed dwarf had tried to burn it. Classic.

I’m obviously having lots of fun, but it’s due to the other people around the table. What about the system itself so far?

Well, Pathfinder is way more fiddly than 4th Edition. It’s more simulationist while 4e is more gamist. And so far, I think I like my games to be more gamist. The crossbow-wielding dwarf has had such a hard time hitting monsters in part because he’s always shooting into melee, which imposes a steep penalty on the attack until he can take a feat to get around that problem.

Another PC grappled an enemy at one point, which led to a lot of rule lookups. Making and sustaining the grapple wasn’t too complicated (the PC made an attack using her Combat Maneuver Bonus – CMB – against the target’s Combat Maneuver Defense – CMD), but once the monster was grappled we had to do a bunch of searching for the changes to the monster’s attacks and defenses, and oh yeah, there’s a dexterity penalty, so that’s an extra penalty to defenses… or wait, was that already included? Sigh.

I also miss power cards from 4e. I’m not used to using books at the table, but in Pathfinder you have to constantly refer to various books to look up your spells. I suppose you could print them all out on a few pages, but you have a lot more spell choices in Pathfinder. It’s a good thing and a bad thing.

I’ll admit that I’m kind of digging Vancian magic in certain ways. My cleric currently gets:

  • Three first-level spells per day
  • A domain spell
  • Four different orisons (minor at-will spells in 4e parlance)
  • The ability to channel positive energy seven times a day (minor healing or undead fighting)
  • The ability to call on the luck of Desna five times a day (a great ability)

It’s kind of cool to be able to choose those three spells and the domain spell each day, plus occasionally tweaking my orisons. For instance, we encountered a temple to an evil god in which was a small basin of horribly unholy water. Beren wanted to destroy it, but he didn’t have Make Holy Water prepared. So, the next day he prayed to Desna for that spell and came back to start destroying the water. That’s some nice flexibility to have.

I’m also getting used to the fact that I don’t have at-will powers like a 4e cleric exactly. On his turn Beren will either attack something with my starknife or he’ll cast a spell to make his team more effective; not both. I don’t mind playing a support class, because Beren is a pretty great supporter.

I do think that the change to Fortitude, Reflex and Will as defenses in 4e rather than saving throws makes things easier to follow (it’s fiddly to figure out the DC of a saving throw against various abilities), though it leads to interesting situation where ongoing poison, for instance, requires a Fortitude saving throw each turn until you fight it off. Honestly, the 4e saving throw (get a 10 or better on a d20) is a lot simpler and easier to use, though less simulationist. I’m okay with that.

I’m looking forward to continuing to learn Pathfinder and playing with my awesome fellow players and GM. I’m having fun, and I’m reserving judgment on the game until I’ve been playing it for many months and feel like I have some measure of system mastery as I do with 4e. But so far, I think I’m learning that I’m fine with more abstract game mechanics if they make the game go smoothly, and I think 4e does a pretty good job with that.

Maps: Cairn of the Winter King

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I’m excited that my brother-in-law is done with a multi-month training course he had to finish for work and we can now get back to our online D&D game starting this afternoon. The players in the game are my wife, her brother, and his wife. We play via MapTool and Skype. This is the group that I originally ran through Reavers of Harkenwold.

So, next up is Cairn of the Winter King, the adventure from the Monster Vault. I had prepared part of the adventure a few months ago before my brother-in-law had to leave for training, and I spent time yesterday putting the rest of the maps together. I’m still finishing up the monsters, but I thought I’d go ahead and share the maps since they’re ready to go.

As always, I’ve provided versions both with and without the grid, all sized to a 50-pixel per square scale. For the Cairn itself I’ve provided an overview map (not appropriately scaled – just for reference) and then one map for the southern half of the Cairn and a second map for the northern half (they can be stuck together in MapTool).

Frozen Riverside map - Gridded

Frozen Riverside map - No Grid

Cairn of the Winter King - Overview Map

Cairn of the Winter King - Southern half map - Gridded

Cairn of the Winter King - Southern half map - No Grid

Cairn of the Winter King - Northern half map - Gridded

Cairn of the Winter King - Northern half map - No Grid

 

My players are awesome

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I don’t spend enough time writing about my Friday night game. I’m OnlineDM after all, and this is my long-running online game. We’ve just passed our one-year anniversary of playing together. How cool is that?

Anyway, we weren’t able to play for the past two weeks (it felt like forever) because I had other plans on a Friday night and then I had to work late the next week. So this week we got the band back together – six of the seven players were able to make it (though one had to drop out about 40 minutes before the end of the session).

I had done a fair amount of prep work for this session over the past couple of weeks, and then realized in the 30 minutes before we started that there was a whole aspect of tonight’s session that I hadn’t prepared for. I threw that stuff together partly in the few minutes before game time and partly on the fly during the game, and it worked out just fine.

We’re running the War of the Burning Sky campaign saga from EN World. We’re currently in the fourth adventure (spoilers follow). The party had recently helped a noble win a war against his own king who was trying to destroy him. Tonight, the party traveled with the noble to the king’s capitol to talk about peace. They were wary but went along to protect the noble against any funny business.

The peace accords were celebrated with festivities – jousting, food, games, spelldueling, fireworks, etc. These would ultimately be followed by some treachery and combat. I had prepared the treachery and combat. I hadn’t prepared the jousting and spelldueling, so I threw those together quickly.

For the jousting, I drew a quick jousting ring (wood for the border, dirt for the center of an ellipse) and used an existing knight monster with a lance as the opponent. For the spelldueling, I took advantage of my new quick monster creation tool (what a lifesaver!) and whipped up an opponent. While the party talked amongst themselves later, I whipped up a second opponent, based on the first. It worked out great.

The party began with the fighter entering the joust. I ran the first round as an event that started on horseback and finished on foot. That was a mistake – the on-foot part was boring and dragged way too long. When I ran a second round later, I changed the rules so that becoming unhorsed would end the joust (which I ruled would happen when someone took a total of 25 or more damage). That worked much better (even though the fighter lost that round). I think the adventure is supposed to include detailed rules for jousting, but I couldn’t find them.

After the first round of the joust, the party explored the festival. They ran into a halfling cook arguing with a man who clearly didn’t appreciate how special the halfling’s food was. They calmed the halfling down, and he revealed that he was Randas, head cook in the king’s castle, and he was royally pissed at being told to clear out of the castle and cook outside at the festival. Rylos the cleric calmed him down and enjoyed an absolutely amazing bowl of soup. Randas became a favorite, at least of Rylos.

A shell game in an alley followed, in which our sharp-eyed elf seeker was able to follow the coin quite easily. Then we moved on to spelldueling in which the wizard/swordmage and the warlock in the party both vanquished their first-round foes. The other PCs cheered them on.

The good-natured thief in the party joined a game of horseshoes and taught the old man running the game how it was done, earning a round of beers for his skill.

Coming back by the halfling cook’s stall, the party found it empty with some guards clearing it out. The guards didn’t know where the cook was, so the party went on a mission to find him. They tried to talk their way into the castle to talk to the guard captain about the missing halfling, but utterly failed, insulting the head gate guard (Merrick) in the process. They tried again later, with the plan being that the thief would sneak in if necessary, and a better bribe got them the access they wanted. The guard captain told them that the cook had been disturbing the peace and had been locked up for the night to make sure he didn’t cause trouble. The PCs were satisfied with this and left.

Back at the spelldueling area, the warlock and wizard/swordmage had faced off against one another with the hybrid coming out on top. She then faced another spellduelist for the championship and lost in awesome fashion. The hybrid opened up an Arcane Gate leading out of the arena and tried to push the spellduelist through it with Thunderwave. She missed, spent an action point, cast another Thunderwave… and missed again. Whereupon the spellduelist walked around her (opportunity attack missed) and cast a spell that pushed the hybrid through her own Arcane Gate and out of the arena, thus costing her the duel. I felt a little bad that she lost in that way, but it was actually a really cool finish to a cool battle.

Some fireworks soon distracted the PCs; the alchemist who was setting them off asked for help in getting more supplies, as his normal alchemy supply houses had been shut down for a special project for the king for the past three days.

A “test your strength” hammer game proved irresistable for the dwarf fighter, who completely missed the target with his first swing (a natural 1) but shoved the cleric out of the way to take another turn, winning a stuffed polar bear toy that he soon gave to a small child (too sweet!).

While the party watched the action at the hammer event, a dwarf emerged from the crowd to surreptitiously pass on information about some fishy goings-on at the castle. They shared the information with their noble patron, who asked them to investigate. He was on his way to a royal banquet.

Here’s where things went off the rails. Rather than investigating by following the suspicious trail into the castle via the sewers, the party decided to go investigate the closed-up alchemist shops. Improvising completely, I had them go to the alchemy district where the shops were all closed up. They broke into a shop and ultimately found some ledgers that documented big deliveries to the king… for ingredients that could be combined to make a poison that would cause insane, murderous rage.

Uh oh. Time to run back to the castle, where the banquet was in progress. They debated whether to fight through the front gate guards or sneak in through the sewers before finally realizing that they were invited guests and just needed to talk their way in. Easy enough.

The dwarf fighter had grabbed some powder back at the alchemy shop that he believed was flash-bang powder, but knowing nothing about Arcana he wasn’t really sure. He was so excited to burst into the banquet hall and throw down the powder that I just ignored any possible resistance from the guards in the hallway and had him toss down the powder…

Which turned out to be stink powder, enveloping the group in a nasty stink bomb. Feeling that there was no way I could top this with a mere combat, I decided to call it a night at this point.

So, in the end, we had no real fights (just some jousts and spellduels) but all kinds of fun adventures and some advancement of the plot. My players were awesome and creative, getting into the role playing and character interaction and… well, I just can’t say enough good things about them. They clearly had a good time, and I had a blast. I’m really excited about next week’s game!

D&D Encounters – Dark Legacy of Evard Week 11

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As with last week, I ran both a 5:00 and a 7:00 table for D&D Encounters this week.

The 5:00 table had seven players. Two of them were third level, one was second level, and four were first level. The first level players included the father and son pair who first showed up two weeks ago and who’ve been coming ever since (yay!) and the other two were brand new players (one of whom had played 1st Edition long ago and nothing since). Ah, I love teaching new players about the game!

The 7:00 table had five players – my quartet of third-level folks from last week, and a first-level binder played by my lovely wife!

Setup

The party had emptied the crypts beneath Saint Avarthil Abbey last week, destroying some skeletons and some shadowy hoofed humanoids. Now they came out into the late afternoon sun and headed up the hill to the monastery grounds.

A skill challenge ensued, with the adventurers trying to find traces of Nathaire and his foul denizens. The 5:00 table didn’t have much luck and stumbled into an ambush; the 7:00 table aced the challenge with no difficulty and got the jump on the bad guys.

Evard Session 11 Map - Gridded

Evard Session 11 Map - No Grid

The battle

I’ll admit that I wasn’t crazy about the presentation of this encounter. The monsters were fine – a pair of nasty tar devils, a pair of shadow bolters (dark ones) and a pair of leeching shadow minions. For both groups (seven lower-level PCs at 5:00 and five upper-level PCs at 7:00) I used a total of four minions but otherwise left the monsters as written.

The problem was the terrain. There’s a 20-foot wall that can be walked on, and there are windows in the wall, but it was unclear how that was supposed to work. The wall is 10 feet thick; can characters on the inside see all the way through? It sounded like characters were supposed to be IN the wall, but that didn’t make sense. Ultimately I think they meant for the windows to be arrow slits in the battlements along the top of the wall, but none of the bad guys were stationed up there. It was all quite confusing.

The 5:00 table got in trouble quickly as the tar devils started burning people up in the surprise round and the bolters added to the pain. The lone healer in the group kept folks patched up, though, and they ultimately prevailed.

The 7:00 group had no trouble. They got the surprise round instead of the bad guys, and three of the five PCs had necrotic resistance, which made the bolters’ combat advantage power almost irrelevant.

Only one PC had any trouble at 7:00, and I felt really bad about it… because it was my wife! She had played once all the way back in week 1 and hadn’t been back since. I was so happy that she came to play, and then felt like a jerk when a tar devil immobilized her with flaming pitch in the first full round and she never got to move again. She was still effective, intentionally provoking some opportunity attacks from monsters in the paladin’s aura (and getting them zapped by divine vengeance), but it was a little frustrating for her. Her saving throw dice just hated her.

Aftermath

My favorite part of the encounter was the aftermath. As the party is resting after the battle, the land shifts into the Shadowfell. A nearby building, in ruins during the daytime, is now fully intact in the Shadowfell… and a light is burning in an upper window.

Ooh! Can’t wait for next week. I think I’ll just be running the 7:00 table, but it’s going to be a fun one.

Previous weeks

No week 6 – I was out of town

 

MapTool geek-out update: Flexible monster creation

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Update: The new campaign file now has a cool Edit Monster macro that lets you tweak things on the fly, including Solo/Elite/Minion status. Thank you to JonathanTheBlack over on the MapTool forums!

After I put my initial pass at new damage tables and MapTool monster templates out there for the world to see, I saw some niggling problems that I wanted to correct.

First, my original damage tables had a couple of flat spots where the damage expression stayed the same from one level to the next. Since average damage is supposed to increase by 1 per level, this bugged me and I wanted to fix it.

Second, I knew I should be able to make monsters tweakable more easily with some additional properties.

Third, I wanted to handle limited damage expressions more elegantly.

Updated damage tables

My damage table now increases at every level. It also has a slightly wider range than the official tables, even at low level, but I’m okay with that. My crits will hurt a little more and my lousy damage rolls will hurt a little less than with official monsters. At the lowest levels, my expressions still have less overall variance because I’m rolling two dice right from the start (the official expressions only roll one for level 1-3). And at the highest levels I have some more variance because I’m only rolling two dice instead of four; that’s a good feature in my opinion.

I also fleshed out the table to include damage expressions for multi-target attacks (about 25% less than standard attacks) as well as limited damage expressions (25% more and 50% more than standard attacks). These took some fiddling to get right, but I’m pretty happy with where they ended up.

Tweakable monsters

I added a property for the attack bonus versus non-AC defenses (NADs); it’s just the normal attack bonus minus 2, but it makes it easier to tweak attack macros en masse. If you want a particular monster to have an easier time hitting NADs (as Soldiers do), just tweak the one property rather than editing every attack macro.

The same goes for having the 125% and 150% damage expressions; it’s easier to do something like tweak the Brute by changing the normal damage to the 125% numbers and the 125% numbers to the 150% numbers in the monster’s properties rather than in each individual attack macro.

Limited damage expressions

High-damage attacks are not perfectly formulaic; the official guidelines say to increase the damage for encounter or recharge powers by 25 to 50 percent.

I decided to add a formula. My generic monsters’ recharge powers do 25% extra damage, while their encounter powers do 50% extra damage. If it’s a multi-target recharge attack I use the standard single-target damage expressions; a multi-target encounter attack gets the 125% damage expressions.

A word on artillery monsters

The official guidelines say that artillery monsters should have +1 or +2 to hit for ranged or area attacks. This is entirely too vague for me, and messy to implement. So, I just gave them +2 to hit versus both AC and NADs. Sure, maybe they’re a little more accurate than they “should” be; I can live with that.

Putting it all together

If you want to download a template campaign file with the sample monsters and properties, you can download it here. The file was created in version 1.3.b66 of MapTool. The properties themselves have been pasted below.

#---StatsToSetManually-----
#Level:1
#Role:Skirmisher
#HPModifier:8
#Spd:6
#NativeSize:Medium
#ActPts:0
#SaveBonus:0
#HeShe:It
#ArmorClassRoleMod:0
#InitiativeRoleMod:0
#Leader:0
#MinionHP:0
#SubType:Standard
#SubTypeHPMod:1
#----StatsThatCanBeDefaulted---------
#MaxHP:{((HPModifier + Constitution + (Level * HPModifier)) * SubTypeHPMod) + MinionHP}
#ArmorClass:{Level+14+ArmorClassRoleMod+ACAdj}
#Fortitude:{Level+12+FortAdj}
#Reflex:{Level+12+RefAdj}
#Will:{Level+12+WillAdj}
#Init:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+InitAdj}
#Strength:{10+HalfLevel+StrAdj}
#Constitution:{10+HalfLevel+ConAdj}
#Dexterity:{10+HalfLevel+DexAdj}
#Intelligence:{10+HalfLevel+IntAdj}
#Wisdom:{10+HalfLevel+WisAdj}
#Charisma:{10+HalfLevel+ChaAdj}
#DefaultAttackBonusVsAC:{Level+5}
#DefaultAttackBonusVsNAD:{Level+3}
#SingleTargetDamageBonus:{DamageBonus100}
#SingleTargetDamageDie:{DamageDie100}
#MultiTargetDamageDie:{DamageDie75}
#MultiTargetDamageBonus:{DamageBonus75}
#DamageBonus100:{1+CEILING(Level*2/3)}
#DamageDie100:{6+FLOOR(Level/3)}
#DamageDie75:{SingleTargetDamageDie-2-FLOOR((Level+3)/9)}
#DamageBonus75:{SingleTargetDamageBonus-1-FLOOR((Level+1)/9)}
#DamageDie125:{8+FLOOR(Level/3)}
#DamageBonus125:{1+CEILING(Level*2/3)+FLOOR((Level+1)/4)}
#DamageDie150:{9+FLOOR(Level/3)+FLOOR((Level+3)/6)}
#DamageBonus150:{2+CEILING(Level*2/3)+FLOOR((Level+1)/3)}
#MinionDamage:{4+FLOOR(Level/2)}
#-----CalculatedOrStaticStats-----
#HitPoints:{MaxHP}
#TempHP:0
#BloodiedHP:{FLOOR(MaxHP/2)}
#DeathFails:0
*#HP:{Hitpoints}/{MaxHP} + {TempHP}
*#AC/Fort/Ref/Will:{ArmorClass} / {Fortitude} / {Reflex} / {Will}
*#Type:Level {Level} {Role}
*#Speed:{Spd}
*#Initiative:{Init}
*#ActionPoints:{ActPts}
*#Str/Con/Dex:{Strength} / {Constitution} / {Dexterity}
*#Int/Wis/Cha:{Intelligence} / {Wisdom} / {Charisma}
#E1:1
#E2:1
#E3:1
#E4:1
#E5:1
#R1:1
#R2:1
#R3:1
#R4:1
#R5:1
#PowerCharged:1
---------------------------Skills-------------------------------------
#ArmorPenalty:0
#Acrobatics:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+5*AcrTrained}
#Arcana:{HalfLevel+IntMod+5*ArcTrained}
#Athletics:{HalfLevel+StrMod-ArmorPenalty+5*AthTrained}
#Bluff:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+5*BlfTrained}
#Diplomacy:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+5*DipTrained}
#Dungeoneering:{HalfLevel+WisMod+5*DunTrained}
#Endurance:{HalfLevel+ConMod-ArmorPenalty+5*EndTrained}
#Heal:{HalfLevel+WisMod+5*HeaTrained}
#History:{HalfLevel+IntMod+5*HisTrained}
#Insight:{HalfLevel+WisMod+5*InsTrained}
#Intimidate:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+5*IntTrained}
#Nature:{HalfLevel+WisMod+5*NatTrained}
#Perception:{HalfLevel+WisMod+5*PerTrained}
#Religion:{HalfLevel+IntMod+5*RelTrained}
#Stealth:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+5*StlTrained}
#Streetwise:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+5*StrTrained}
#Thievery:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+5*ThvTrained}
#AcrTrained:0
#ArcTrained:0
#AthTrained:0
#BlfTrained:0
#DipTrained:0
#DunTrained:0
#EndTrained:0
#HeaTrained:0
#HisTrained:0
#InsTrained:0
#IntTrained:0
#NatTrained:0
#PerTrained:0
#RelTrained:0
#StlTrained:0
#StrTrained:0
#ThvTrained:0
------------------AbilityMods-------------------------------
#StrMod:{FLOOR((Strength-10)/2)}
#ConMod:{FLOOR((Constitution-10)/2)}
#DexMod:{FLOOR((Dexterity-10)/2)}
#IntMod:{FLOOR((Intelligence-10)/2)}
#WisMod:{FLOOR((Wisdom-10)/2)}
#ChaMod:{FLOOR((Charisma-10)/2)}
#HalfLevel:{FLOOR(Level/2)}
-----------------Adjustments-------------------
#StrAdj:0
#ConAdj:0
#DexAdj:0
#IntAdj:0
#WisAdj:0
#ChaAdj:0
#ACAdj:0
#FortAdj:0
#RefAdj:0
#WillAdj:0
#InitAdj:0
---------------Other-----------------------------------------
Elevation:0
AttackState:0
DefenseState:0

MapTool geek-out: Creating flexible monsters FAST

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Edit 7/15/2011: I put up a revised version of this post with a better set of damage tables and everything a day after the original went live. I’ve left the original below for posterity.

I run all of my D&D games using MapTool, whether online in the traditional MapTool way or in-person using my projector rig. I don’t use a pre-made campaign framework for my games, since I enjoy learning new things and I enjoy computer programming (as a hobbyist, not a professional). More of my posts about my learnings with MapTool can be found in my MapTool Education Central.

Today I spent a fair part of the afternoon creating flexible monster templates. This came about because I’m working on finishing up the third adventure in my Staff of Suha trilogy (part 1 is here, and part 2 is here), and I want to use custom monsters and to make it as easy as possible to run the adventure at multiple levels (adventure level 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10). I’m already updating older monsters to use the most current monster math, so I thought, why not create flexible templates for each monster role?

My goal was to make it so that I could create a new monster in very little time. All I wanted to have to do was pick a role, pick a level, and then write down any special abilities. All of the math should be baked in based on the level and role. This meant that I needed to change around my monster properties.

I’ll paste the full properties at the end of the post, but what follows is a discussion of the math you’ll see there.

The math

HP modifier is either 6, 8 or 10. Artillery and Lurkers get 6 hit points per level; Skirmishers, Soldiers and Controllers get 8; Brutes get 10. MaxHP follows the formula laid out by Wizards of the Coast post-MM3 (HP modifier times Level+1, plus Constitution).

Defenses are tied to level and role. By default, Armor Class is Level+14 and the non-AC defenses (NADs) are Level+12. Soldiers have AC of Level+16; Brutes and Artillery have AC of Level+12.

The AttackBonus is Level+5. Versus NADs it’s Level+3, but I handle that in the attack macros instead of here in the properties (maybe I should do the latter).

Ability scores default to 10+Half Level each. I tweak these based on monster flavor, of course. I haven’t seen this explicitly spelled out anywhere, but glancing through recent monsters, it appears to be about right.

Initiative is basically a Dexterity check – Dex mod plus half level. Brutes reduce this by 2, Skirmishers increase it by 2 and Soldiers increase it by 4.

The most interesting part comes with damage. The table laid out by Wizards of the Coast is nice in that it scales pretty steadily in terms of average damage (Level+8 on average for a single target attack). It’s a bit tricky, though, in that it uses varying numbers of d6s and d8s at different levels. I wanted an easy-to-program solution to this problem that would give me similar average damage and a similar-shaped damage distribution to the official numbers.

What I ultimately came up with was to always roll two damage dice and add a bonus. The size of the die varies with level. It starts as a d6 and increases by 1 every fourth level. No, that doesn’t mean it goes to a d8 at level 5 – it goes to a d7! I’m leveraging the power of MapTool here; it’s happy to roll a d7 or d17 or whatever you like, just as easily as a d6 or d8.

Thus, every attack rolls a pair of damage dice, ranging from d6s at 1st-4th level to d13s at 29th-20th level.

The static damage bonus goes up every level or every other level, starting at 2 and ending at 23. Thus, a first-level monster deals 2d6+2 damage on a normal attack and a 30th-level monster deals 2d13+23.

The distribution of results is going to be a bit different from the official results, especially at higher levels, but I like it. My damage expressions have a slightly narrower range (at 30th level, WotC’s minimum damage is 24 and maximum 52 while mine ranges from 25 to 49). However, my distributions have more variability within that range (if you roll four dice instead of two, it’s much less likely that you’ll get extreme results). Honestly, I think the shape of my damage distribution curve at higher levels is more fun; higher variance in a slightly narrower range.

Also, due to rounding I have a couple of spots on my table where the damage from one level to the next is actually the same; I’m not overly concerned, honestly.

Multi-target attacks deal a bit less damage; I won’t go into the details.

Recharge and encounter powers (and Brute attacks) also deal extra damage, which I handle in either the token properties for the Brute (altering the static damage) or in the individual attack macros for recharge and encounter powers.

The templates in action

Once I had finished putting these new properties together and creating token templates for each role, I started putting an encounter together.

Wow, was it fast! I knew I wanted a level 7 skirmisher, a level 8 soldier and a level 8 artillery. I copied the appropriate token templates, set the levels, tweaked a few stats (a bit more Reflex and a bit less Fortitude on the artillery; low Intelligence on the beast skirmisher, etc.) and then got to the meat of monster building – abilities.

I was able to focus all of my attention on what would be a cool ability for a monster to have. For instance, my Skirmisher is a beast called a Digger. It can grab an enemy with its Pincers. It can use a special move action to drag the enemy up to half its speed without requiring a check. It has a recharge power that lets it burrow under an enemy, trying to make the enemy fall into the newly created channel.

It literally took about five minutes. I gave no thought to math. I just thought about flavor and abilities.

I built this Digger with an eye on the level 8 version of the adventure, but when it comes time to run it at Adventure Level 2, all I need to do is change the level. One stat; that’s all.

The download

I figure that the best way to share this is in a campaign file that has all of the necessary properties and a set of the tokens. You can download that template file here. Note that this file was created in MapTool version 1.33.b66.

The properties

#---StatsToSetManually-----
#Level:1
#Role:Skirmisher
#HPModifier:8
#Spd:6
#NativeSize:Medium
#ActPts:0
#SaveBonus:0
#HeShe:It
#----StatsThatCanBeDefaulted---------
#MaxHP:{HPModifier+Constitution+(Level*HPModifier)}
#ArmorClass:{Level+14}
#Fortitude:{Level+12}
#Reflex:{Level+12}
#Will:{Level+12}
#AttackBonus:{Level+5}
#DamageBonus:{1+Level-FLOOR((Level+2)/4)}
#DamageDie:{5+FLOOR((Level+3)/4)}
#MultiTargetDamageBonus:{1+Level-FLOOR((Level+2)/4)-(1+FLOOR(Level/4))}
#MultiTargetDamageDie:{4+FLOOR((Level+3)/4)}
#Init:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+0}
#Strength:{10+HalfLevel}
#Constitution:{10+HalfLevel}
#Dexterity:{10+HalfLevel}
#Intelligence:{10+HalfLevel}
#Wisdom:{10+HalfLevel}
#Charisma:{10+HalfLevel}
#-----CalculatedOrStaticStats-----
#HitPoints:{MaxHP}
#TempHP:0
#BloodiedHP:{FLOOR(MaxHP/2)}
#DeathFails:0
*#HP:{Hitpoints}/{MaxHP} + {TempHP}
*#AC/Fort/Ref/Will:{ArmorClass} / {Fortitude} / {Reflex} / {Will}
*#Type:Level {Level} {Role}
*#Speed:{Spd}
*#Initiative:{Init}
*#ActionPoints:{ActPts}
*#Str/Con/Dex:{Strength} / {Constitution} / {Dexterity}
*#Int/Wis/Cha:{Intelligence} / {Wisdom} / {Charisma}
#E1:1
#E2:1
#E3:1
#E4:1
#E5:1
#R1:1
#R2:1
#R3:1
#R4:1
#R5:1
#PowerCharged:1
---------------------------Skills-------------------------------------
#ArmorPenalty:0
#Acrobatics:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+0}
#Arcana:{HalfLevel+IntMod+0}
#Athletics:{HalfLevel+StrMod-ArmorPenalty+0}
#Bluff:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+0}
#Diplomacy:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+0}
#Dungeoneering:{HalfLevel+WisMod+0}
#Endurance:{HalfLevel+ConMod-ArmorPenalty+0}
#Heal:{HalfLevel+WisMod+0}
#History:{HalfLevel+IntMod+0}
#Insight:{HalfLevel+WisMod+0}
#Intimidate:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+0}
#Nature:{HalfLevel+WisMod+0}
#Perception:{HalfLevel+WisMod+0}
#Religion:{HalfLevel+IntMod+0}
#Stealth:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+0}
#Streetwise:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+0}
#Thievery:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+0}
------------------AbilityMods-------------------------------
#StrMod:{FLOOR((Strength-10)/2)}
#ConMod:{FLOOR((Constitution-10)/2)}
#DexMod:{FLOOR((Dexterity-10)/2)}
#IntMod:{FLOOR((Intelligence-10)/2)}
#WisMod:{FLOOR((Wisdom-10)/2)}
#ChaMod:{FLOOR((Charisma-10)/2)}
#HalfLevel:{FLOOR(Level/2)}
---------------Other-----------------------------------------
Elevation:0

D&D Encounters – Dark Legacy of Evard Week 10

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The third and final chapter of this season of Encounters began tonight. I was running my usual 5:00 table, but I’d also been asked to run a second table at 7:00 (I guess there’s been some kind of DM shortage).

For the 5:00 table I had lots of my regulars – the first timer from week 1 along with the friend he’s been bringing, the father and son new players from last week, another father and son pair, and two other guys who’ve been coming pretty regularly.

Yes, if you’re counting, that’s eight players. We’d normally split up into two groups of four each, but we didn’t have another dungeon master, so I bit the bullet and ran with eight.

No one was at third level yet – I believe there were three people at level 2 and five at level 1. The encounter as written assumes a party of five characters of level 2-3, so scaling was interesting.

The party had the chance to take an extended rest back at the Old Owl Inn after dawn. In the afternoon, Grimbold (the captain of the Duponde town guard) came to the players to ask them to investigate a monastery a few hours’ walk to the west of town. The skeletons that had menaced the town the previous night were dressed in cassocks consistent with the long-abandoned Saint Avarthil Monastery. It seemed that someone had been reanimating the dead monks’ bones and turning them into monsters. Sure sounds like the evil wizard who’s on the loose!

Off they went to Saint Avarthil’s. The door to the crypt was open, and the adventurers trooped on in. The inside was well-lit by magical braziers, and lots of niches in the walls that once held buried monks had been broken open and stood empty. Soon enough, a couple of cassocked skeletons were found, and the battle began.

Saint Avarthil Crypt Map - Gridded

Saint Avarthil Crypt Map - No Grid

The 5:00 table of eight players ended up facing off against about 12 skeleton minions, a blazing skeleton (hello old friend from last week!) and a trio of dark ones – little shadowy guys with hooves and nasty short swords. We had a bit of a bottleneck at the top of the stairs until the minions were finished off, and then the dark ones started wrecking PCs with their double sword attacks. One of them kept getting knocked into the crevasse, though, which made for fun times. The player characters took a pretty good beating (a first-level thief foolishly rushed into the middle of melee and paid for it) but prevailed.

The 7:00 table had four players (one of whom was a fellow player from my Monday night Pathfinder game), and they were all third level (now that’s dedication!). Since they were a little higher level than expected for the encounter and there were only four of them instead of five, I decided to run it as written with eight skeletal minions, one blazing skeleton and two dark ones. This table rocked the encounter with little difficulty, despite a long series of failed saving throws against ongoing fire damage from the party’s vampire.

I had fun running this encounter, especially getting to do it a second time when I was a little better at making it interesting. I had one of the dark ones sneak around behind the party as they went into the main crypt, which was fun for me at least. I also really like the map. It was fun to re-create in MapTool, and I think it turned out quite nicely.

I’m also happy to report that I’m done putting the adventure together in MapTool. I’ve been trying to work a week or two ahead throughout the season, and I’m finally finished with all thirteen encounters. The map for week 12 is also awesome and I’m looking forward to showing off my version of it here on the blog.

I’ll be running next week twice, and possibly week 12 (Andy will be back to run a table that week, but it seems clear that we might need a second DM). Week 13 I won’t be here – I’ll be at GenCon! I’m a little sad that I won’t be able to finish the adventure with my awesome players, but let’s face it – I’m not going to be too broken up about the fact that I’ll be stuck at the greatest four days in gaming for the first time ever. I’m excited!

Previous weeks:

No week 6 – I was out of town

My first Pathfinder game

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Well, it’s official – I’m a Pathfinder player!

No, I haven’t abandoned Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition; that’s still my main game. But I was invited to join an ongoing Pathfinder campaign run by a guy who I know to be a fantastic game master, so I took it as an opportunity to learn a new game.

I’m playing Beren, a human cleric of Desna, the goddess of luck and travel. The way the character came together was sort of funny. I was invited to join a game in a campaign world I knew nothing about. I read through the Pathfinder Core Rulebook and thought that cleric would be a good class for me to play. In looking at the various domains, I liked the luck and travel features of Desna and thought one of her clerics would provide some fun role playing opportunities (she’s very free spirited), so I rolled one up.

Then the GM provided the campaign guide (Rise of the Runelords) and it turns out that there’s a race of humans called the Varisians who are basically gypsies and who commonly worship Desna. Well, that’s an easy fit! So, Beren is a gypsy (although he’s somewhat adrift from his people and has been assimilating into non-Varisian society for several years).

It also turned out that the first session started with a dedication of a new temple of Desna in the town of Sandpoint, so my cleric was very well received. Hey, go with the flow.

The game itself was fun. We fought off a bunch of goblins attacking the town, became known as heroes, went on a boar hunt, got appointed as temporary town guards, and are currently investigating a glassworks that’s been invaded by goblins.

The role playing has been great. We’re all still getting to know our own characters, let alone one another’s, so it’s a slow process, but coming along nicely. The GM continues to be awesome, really bringing the NPCs to life. We made a lot of progress in the adventure itself, with four separate combat encounters already down and the plot beginning to unfold.

Combat is similar in a lot of ways to D&D4e, though there are certainly differences I need to keep in mind. I’ve accidentally cheated at least a couple of times by forgetting that every other diagonal square that you move in Pathfinder costs an extra square of movement. I’ve had to get used to the fact that the cleric’s most useful activities typically replace an attack (doing some healing, making someone’s next attack better) whereas in 4th Edition those things tend to be in addition to making an attack. I’ve gotten the feeling that I’ve probably screwed something up in making the character (he only has 8 hit points at first level, and the other characters seem to have a lot more), but I’m still having fun with him.

So far, I think I’d say I enjoy 4e as a game a bit better, but playing with a great GM is worth it for any system. Pathfinder is kind of fiddly compared to 4e, but it’s more “realistic”. I’ll definitely give it a nice, long try and I’ll have fun doing it. But so far if I had to pick just one game to play, I’d lean toward 4e. We’ll see how my opinion evolves as I get a better understanding of the Pathfinder system and more games under my belt.