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TPK |  |
I ran another proto-4E game yesterday. The adventure was something simple and (I thought) relatively short at only three encounters. It was based loosely on the Rose Quarry section of Shadows of the Last War, with some straight-up monsters, some re-purposed monsters, and one heavily modified and scaled down monster with its description and type completely changed. Unfortunately, my players didn’t even get through the first encounter.
There were four PCs: a fighter, a paladin, a ranger, and a warlock. They were approaching an enemy encampment at night time, from the cover of the shadows, effectively attacking from ambush. However, they were outnumbered in a fairly significant way. On the enemy side were two soldiers with halberds and crossbows, four skirmishers with maces, a pair of skeleton warriors, and Keltis Doran, an evil cleric of sorts (statistically, he was a hybrid of the hobgoblin warcaster and the kobold wyrmpriest, a controller-leader).
At first, the PCs seemed to be doing really well. The two defenders were drawing most of the attacks and weathering them pretty well, while the two strikers were attacking from range and dealing decent damage. However, things started to go against the players when the paladin fell, after being flanked and cornered by a pair of skirmishers and a skeleton (lots of sneak attack damage, and those skeletons have ridiculous attack bonuses; I actually wonder if those bonuses are correct). Shortly after the paladin fell, the warlock was taken down by a soldier and a skirmisher, even though the warlock had brought a lot of abilities to bear on them in an attempt to survive. That soldier simply did too much damage, and the warlock also got dazed for a round by the skirmisher, which didn’t help.
While all this had been happening, the ranger had been engaging in a ranged duel-cum-game of cat-and-mouse with Keltis Doran, while the fighter was soaking up attacks from a pair of skirmishers, a soldier, and a skeleton. The fighter actually managed to kill all of his opponents eventually, and the ranger bloodied Doran after a few rounds. The fighter ran to assist the ranger, but unfortunately all the bad guys who had taken out the paladin and warlock were new rounding on the remaining heroes. They took a few more out in the process (including Doran), but eventually the fighter fell, leaving the poor ranger to contend with a halberd-wielding soldier and his skirmisher ally–the only two enemies remaining. If the ranger hadn’t used Split the Tree earlier in the fight, he might have actually been able to take them out (assuming he stayed relatively mobile) and rescue his companions. As it was, though, a single strike of the halberd was all that was needed to sap his remaining hit points, and the party perished.
I learned some things from this game. One is that you have to be very careful when designing an encounter. There’s a fine line between “exciting and deadly” and “too damn deadly”, and as the DM you have to be careful not to cross it. I suspect that having experience point values for all of the monsters and experience point budgets for your encounters will help this considerably, though.
Another thing I learned is that, if the party leaves out a single role, it’s not a huge deal. If they leave out two, though, things can get hairy. Every character used his or her second wind, and the paladin burned through all of his Lay on Hands uses just trying to keep himself alive. If a cleric had been present, he might have survived longer, which would have helped everyone. Similarly, a well-placed Turn Undead, Force Orb, Acid Arrow, or Sleep would have done wonders for the heroes. When all you have is defenders and strikers, you have to be extra careful.
My last thought was that I maybe started the PCs a little too far away from where I wanted the fight to happen. The battlefield was pretty big, and I had included a lot of usable terrain. There was a field of crumbling columns that could be used for cover at the cost of movement. There were crumbling walls everywhere that could have been pushed over onto enemies. There was even a big fire that enemies could have been pushed into by the fighter, or by the warlock’s Curse of the Dark Dream, or even the paladin or ranger using a bull rush. Most of this stuff didn’t get used, though, because the players let the bad guys come to them, and most of this terrain was in their camp rather than where the players were.
So, in the end, I think this TPK–my first TPK, incidentally–came about as a result of some mistakes on my part in designing the encounter and some party design mistakes as well. Most of these things could probably have been avoided if a.) I knew the rules for designing a good encounter; and b.) I had known which of the six PCs were going to be in the party, and could have designed it with them in mind.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
You forgot to mention cold dice. I had very cold dice, and couldn’t manage to hit ANYTHING. Meanwhile, baddies attacking at +8 or +10 against AC 15? Definitely not going to last long that way. The Pally’s slightly more stout AC 20 held up better for a while….. And on the other side of the coin, I don’t know exactly what the baddies AC numbers were, but we had +4 or +5 to hit. Not conducive to surviving, especially when outnumbered. I do agree that crowd control may have helped a lot, but at the same time, would it have? Don’t know how well the “area effect” spells work, especially when they have the same low attack bonuses that the others have.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Cold dice were, indeed, an issue for you unfortunately. Mike was a little bit luckier with his rolls, which could account for the fact that the fighter and ranger were the longest-surviving party members. As far as the bad guys’ numbers went, most of their defenses were in the same range as yours. The soldiers and skirmishers both had AC 16, with their other defenses lower than that. Keltis Doran had a 17, again with everything else lower. The toughest enemies by far were those skeletons, with AC 18, Fort 15, Reflex 16, and Will 15, and 45 hit points (50 after Doran had worked is inspiring mojo). Combine that with their +10 to attack, and they were pretty nasty; easily the biggest threat in the battle.
Part of the problem, also, was that I got some lucky recharge rolls. Those soldiers had a Powerful Strike ability that had to recharge after they used it: 1d10+6 damage, plus you get knocked prone. Pretty nasty, and they kept on getting their recharges. Doran also had some nasty ones that kept on recharging; he kept on missing, though, because of the ranger’s use of cover.
I kind of wonder about those skeletons. Their attack bonus seems pretty darned high for 3rd level, and I can’t figure out where it comes from. Assuming they use Dexterity (their best stat) for their attack rolls, that’s a +4, +1 because of their level, and maybe a +2 from the longsword, itself. That’s +7. Where did the last +3 come from? Is it some sort of arbitrary bonus? I guess I won’t know until I crack open the Monster Manual and see the methodology behind monster design.