Death and the Resurrected Orc

"Ok then, Grish dies".

I totally and purposefully killed a character of a player that wasn't at my session last night. Granted, I feel the monsters were doing what they should have been doing, but I went into the session with the mindset of being ok with killing one of them.

The fight itself was tough and positioning was a real ordeal, and many other things. As a result, the half-orc was dead, in the corner, molested by poltergeists and yuan-ti boneshard skeletons. He got up, two rounds later. He was feeling much better.

Yes, the death resulted in furthering a part of the story. Was I really gunning for him? Maybe more than I should have been. Though, for the most part, I think the monsters stayed acting how they should act. However, this is the second occasion in which I have injured or killed a player and it results in a plot point. Perhaps this is the wrong way to go about things. I hope that the story and options that result from it will be fun, and offer interesting choices to the players.

I might be making a mistake, though. Regardless, something like this I probably won't do again, at least, certainly not soon.

Making players cry without actually harming them or verbally abusing them

Last night I ran the conclusion of a dungeon in my bi-weekly (every other week, not twice weekly) Chessenta campaign. There were a total of three opponent factions in the final battle, some cultists, a blue dragon, and a brass dragon. The blue and the brass dragon were tangling atop a pile of treasure, crushing the treasure each time they moved or missed with an attack. After that was resolved, I had a list of randomly generated treasure that was being crossed out as the dragons fought and stumbled around.

It was pretty awesome. One of the players ran in and grabbed the dragon in order to forcibly remove him from the room to stop the treasure from getting entirely destroyed, and when the dragon eventually got back in the room, the party rushed him to at least stop him from moving.

The fight featured some neat monsters that were fun and challenging, but not frustrating. Proving once again that ongoing damage is a good mechanic.

Overall it was a fun session that ended up being more lucrative for the party based on the party's tactics and actions, a fine thing if you ask me. We also learned that dragons HATE blowguns.

Sometimes the DM makes bad decisions

Such was the case last night, when faced with some monsters on an adventure that we had never seen before, collectively. The first encounter of the night went well, and the group had a difficult time but won and got to look cool doing it. Everyone had a moment to shine in the fight, which was good.

However, I was apparently trying to murder people all night as I rolled a collective 14 20's on the evening. It was absurd. For such instances of ridiculousness I have given all players the following power.

Oh Crit

At-Will

Immediate Reaction Personal

Trigger: You are hit with a critical hit or take your bloodied value in damage in a single hit

Effect: You are able to make a skill check to describe how you are increasing your defenses. Some examples include making an insight check to get a bead on how they are attacking, using bluff or intimidate to show you have thrown off the effects of a mighty blow, stealth to use their own attacks as cover now that you know them, arcana to weave a quick cantrip that is easily diffused, but protects you, etc. The possibilities are up to the player and it is considered a success by meeting or exceeding DC 10 + CL. If successful, you gain a +2 skill bonus to all defenses until the end of your opponent's next turn.

No one decided to use it, maybe because they think it might be a crutch I am giving them. Really though, all this does is let you add some mid-fight roleplay and improv to temporarily give yourself a hand after a bad round. I think it's cool.

The second fight of the night was the bad decision fight on my part. I saw two things that might possible need to be changed. To my credit, I feel, I did say that they might possibly need to be changed and we'd see how this went. The thing I changed was the phase spiders having the attack "first failed save: stunned, save ends". At third level. Third level! Ridiculous! The thing I did not change, but in hindsight should have changed, as it frustrated everyone it seems, was the spiders had an ability that allowed them to teleport people away if they moved near as an immediate interrupt. There were 13 phase spiders in the fight, 10 minions, 3 regular, and a higher level controller that caused some havoc and damage but they dispatched of him pretty easily.

One of the melee decided to be the combat medic for the fight because he couldn't get near the monsters really, not going for the controller because he assumed the controller was even more horrible. This was pretty awesome and he saved a lot of people, but he was still frustrated. This is entirely my fault. Always running the chance of not being able to attack the monster you are trying to attack is not that fun. Even though I said we might need to drop it, I didn't for the fight, and I should have. Especially since the spiders could teleport as movement, never provoking opportunity attacks.

The water was a big obstacle for the group as well, and the water dealt 2d6 damage and slowed you if you were a non-aberrant and started your turn there. The spiders kept trying to web and drop the people in the water. Even though this, I believe, is what they spiders would want to do, it was frustrating to the party. Again, I understand why.

Though it was tough, the party did eventually win and were rewarded nicely for it. The first combat was a ton of fun for everyone involved, and the second one was cool at times and frustrating at others. The set up was awesome and it felt nice to really utilize the entire map. It was a good change.

So what did I learn?

1) Interrupt teleports should not be on every creature.

2) Trust my gut when I see something like that in the future.

3) Swapping stunned save ends for ongoing damage is the right call at this level.

4) Monsters behaving as monsters is a good thing.

5) Soldiers are still mostly bullshit.

That snake hit you so hard that the you in a parallel universe just lost a healing surge

Last night was the first session of a hopefully regular game set in Chessenta, a nation in the Conan the Barbarian Forgotten Realms setting. As promised, there were snakes. Two of them actually, with foulspawn riding them. Before the players for to that though, they murdered the shit out of some goblins and hobgoblins. The half-orc rogue braved a potential bath and even tackled the one who was running for it's life. The poor hobbo almost made it to the river too.

The black crown on purple is the sign of the Nothing-King. The strange and enigmatic figure ruling over the Chasm of the Nothing-King, where the Adder Hills used to be. The Adder Hills, of course, are now floating over head, being the problem to shit that can fly. The goblin fight was not without perils though, as deadly, deadly, bees swarmed all over two of the players and made an official Bad Time for them.

Eventually the group gets to their launching point, the town of Maerchlin, where they discover that the item they need to recover is an axe that was, at one point supposedly, wielded by the Red Dragon God-King in the execution of those that had personally betrayed him. The town, though it has numerous other problems, citizens being kidnapped, the town being attacked by strange shadow creatures, and the occasional murder by beings made out of the night sky, was saddened by the loss of this object, which was apparently perpetrated by two large crystalline spiders.

This task was decided upon from 6-8 possible avenues for adventure the group could have chosen. They decided they wanted to kill some goblins to start off with and chose the area in which they knew they could find goblins. To be fair, that is the first thing they did. So, mission accomplished!

Shortly there after, the party found itself in a strange chasm, filled with giant mushrooms, strange faintly glowing fungi, twisted and blackened trees, being overlooked far in the distance by an exceedingly large and strange guard tower. The group made some stealth checks and nature rolls to remain hidden. They tracked their strange quarry to a spring which had been redirected to make a small lake. They found some boats and began to cross the lake, about half way across, the horror struck.

OH SHIT! SNAKES!

So, this was the first time in any 4e game in which water combat was a concern. It was an eye opener for all of us. The combat, which consisted of two large serpents, two foulspawn, and one water dervish, was eventually won by the PCs, but it was ugly. The foulspawn did not have cowboy hats. I wanted them to, though.

There are several lessons I learned from this combat as a DM, and that the players learned as players.

1) If you have water creatures that never leave the water, advantage water creature. The players and I both learned this lesson simultaneously.

2) When you have a water creature that only deals damage in water, and it's a flat out, that creature can be devastating if not immediately handled in some fashion.

3) Clumping is still bad, even in water.

4) 2d8 is a lot of damage at 3rd-4th. Those snakes were awful. Their bite did 2d8 damage and then had a chance of 2d4 and 5 ongoing after that. They had a tail swipe that did 2d8, only once but wow. Now, they were easy to hit, and their hit ratings weren't great, but damn. That's a lot of damage at 3rd-4th.

5) Consider giving players a way to increase their defenses after a particularly devastating round of combat with a skill check of some sort. This is something I was thinking about after the session. Yes there is total defense, but that's your action. Encouraging situation appropriate RP and tactics should give some sort of bonus. If you got snake slapped, attempting to use the snakes own tail as cover the next round isn't a bad thing to allow. Using athletics or acrobatics to latch on to the snake as it flails to increase your defenses would be cool. Allowing a bluff or intimidate check after being critically hit to shake the morale of the enemy would be cool. I am pretty sure I am going to incorporate this, I just need to fully think of how.

6) Snake Rape might replace Drake Rape as the most common reptilian sex crime.