The Dresden Files

So, what do I mean by making your fey “more fey”? Traditionally, fey have a number of traits that aren’t really translated into D&D to my satisfaction. First, fey are often portrayed as being vulnerable to iron (or cold iron), and resistant to the magic of mortals. Second, there’s the whole idea of the fey bargain. Some of this is captured in the fey pact warlock, but what about fey bargains that don’t involve pledging your eternal servitude in exchange for power? I like the idea of fey bargains that are binding to both parties. Further, fey are often portrayed as being tricky, duplicitous, and deceptive but, paradoxically, there is often a prohibition on lying placed on these creatures. The idea is that a fey creature cannot actually lie to you, but that doesn’t mean you should take what he, she, or it says at face value. Lies of omission are, of course, fair game, as are misleading turns of phrase.

So, since I like to follow the mantra of “show, don’t tell”, here’s something I whipped up. A note to players in my game: this is an NPC that you have met. The fact that I statted her up as a monster doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll fight her (I frequently stat up major NPCs, even if I don’t plan on any encounters with them any time soon). Also, if you do wind up fighting her, you shouldn’t necessarily expect her to have these stats. They’re subject to change. So, if you want to read it, go ahead. If you want to remain spoiler-free, stop reading now.

Further, I had the thought that the two assassins becoming bloodied would change the state of the encounter, effectively killing one of the twins but making the survivor considerably more dangerous by sending her into a rage. After dinner, I sat down at the monster builder for a while and came up with Khala and Shari, a pair of twin eladrin assassins with a psychic bond that allows them to work perfectly together.

Note that this is a pretty long and complicated stat block. If you’re going to run Khala and Shari, I’d run them as a solo, or maybe with some minions. There’s a lot to keep track of, though, and I’d appreciate any thoughts on this encounter.

One of the things you have to remember is that, if all you’re stuck with is basic attacks, your turn is likely to be a little on the boring side. In addition, if you happen to be one of the many classes that do not rely overmuch on Strength (for melee basic attacks) or Dexterity (for ranged basic attacks), your basic attacks are not going to be very effective. Overusing an effect like this could make an encounter both longer and less fun if not employed carefully.

As an alternative, I’d put rather use a Wild Magic Zone, and I might even key it to a particular power source. This way, rather than simply nerfing a character in the zone, you give them a choice: go with the basic attack that reliable but not that effective, or gamble a bit with a power that might be a lot more effective than normal, a lot less effective, or possibly even harmful to the party. A zone that, for example, randomly either increases or decreases the size of bursts and blasts, or causes attacks to occasionally target random creatures within the zone rather than their intended target, might be considerably more fun than a zone that simply shuts down your options.

I actually used something similar to this effect in my most recent session. The first encounter took place in a room in which there was a conduit to the Far Realm, which was bending time and space in strange ways. It had two effects. First, any burst or blast in the area had a 25% chance of increasing its size by 1d4 squares, as well as a 25% chance of decreasing its size by 1d4 squares. Second, any ranged attack had a 50% chance of targeting a random creature in the room. In this particular case, the roll results favored the PCs more than the monsters, but it added the element of unpredictability that I wanted.

However, I don’t like the idea of changing the way the stunned condition (or the dominated condition) works. I think these conditions work well in the PCs’ hands, and I don’t like the idea of applying conditions differently to PCs than I do to monsters. I feel it would undermine the PCs’ victories somewhat, to know that they were not really playing on a level playing field. Instead, I thought I’d give the PCs a power that is similar to what I often give my solo monsters.

Grit
You summon your inner reserves of sheer determination to shake off a debilitating condition, lessening its effect on you.
At-Will
Immediate Interrupt * Personal
Trigger: You are affected by the stunned or dominated condition.
Effect: You take damage equal to your healing surge value. This damage cannot be reduced in any way. In addition, if you are stunned, you are instead dazed for the same duration. If you are dominated, you are dazed for the same duration and must attack an ally of your choice on your next turn; you are marked by that ally for the duration of the daze.

Aptitudes
It’s fairly well known that the D&D skill list, while it covers most things you’d want to do in most encounters, doesn’t cover everything. There are a number of mundane skills not covered, as well as a number of very nitch or situational skills that are absent. This is fine most of the time; most of the time you will not need these skills, so it doesn’t make sense for your players to have to spend their precious skill training on skills that are unlikely to be used more than once or twice.

But what happens when you do need those skills? What happens when the PCs are trying to land a rapidly descending airship after the pilot has been thrown overboard? What happens when the PCs run out of arrows in the wilderness, and they must make their own? There is no Pilot skill, nor is there a Fletcher skill, so what do you do? You could just hand-wave these things, or you could try to shoe-horn a somewhat related skill into that role. Perhaps Athletics is used to turn the wheel of the ship, or Nature is used to find the right kind of wood and form it into the shaft of an arrow. But neither of these solutions is completely satisfying.

That’s where aptitudes come in. Aptitudes function much like skills: you are either trained or untrained in an aptitude (gaining the +5 bonus or not), you get a bonus from a relevant ability score, and you get a bonus equal to half your level. They are used the same way, as well: when an aptitude check is called for, you roll a d20, add your aptitude bonus, and compare the result to a DC. Aptitudes can be used in combat encounters, and they can be used in skill challenges.

There are a few differences, however, between aptitudes and skills. First, there is not a limited number of aptitudes. Aptitudes are very specific, and may apply only to a single encounter during an entire campaign. There is not a set list of aptitudes as there is with skills; the DM (or players) create an aptitude when the situation warrants it. Most importantly, you do not spend skill training slots to train in aptitudes. Instead, you are considered to be trained in an aptitude when it makes sense for you to be so.

Let’s look at our two examples above, the crashing airship and the arrows in the wilderness. The players ask you, “What skill should I roll to try to pilot this ship?” You think for a moment and say, “Roll a Pilot check.” They look back at you, confused. That’s not on their character sheets. How do they know whether or not they’re trained? Take a look at your players. The artificer is well versed in creating all manner of magical things, and may have knowledge of airships and how to use them. He doesn’t have anything on his character sheet or in his backstory that contradicts this, so you ask him if he’d like to be trained in Pilot. He says, vehemently, “Yes”, and you ask him to explain why he’s trained. Maybe the two of you do a little flashback sequence to explain it. Now he can contribute to the skill challenge to land the ship in a meaningful way, and you’ve created a little bit of background for him together. The wizard, on the other hand, established in his backstory that she grew up as a hand on an airship, and even apprenticed to the captain for a time. It would make perfect sense for her to be trained in Pilot, so you simply tell her that she is. You tell them that Pilot is Wisdom-based, and ask them to calculate their bonuses.

While tromping through the woods, the party needs to make more arrows. It would make sense for a Nature or Perception check to allow players to find the base materials: good, supple but strong wood, stone or metal for the arrowheads, feathers for the fletching. But to assemble the arrows, neither skill makes perfect sense. Instead, you call for a Fletcher skill. The ranger in the party is an archer, so it would make quite a bit of sense for her to be trained in Fletcher. The fighter, on the other hand, knows a lot about weapons, carries a bow as a backup weapon, and spends a good deal of time whittling during short rests. You ask him if it would make sense for his character to know how to make arrows, and he says, “Sure. My character is a master with wood-carving.” He’s trained, too. You tell them that Fletcher is Dexterity-based, and let them make rolls.

The beauty of this system is that it allows you to call for non-standard, very specific skill checks, does not require your players to spend mechanical effort on being trained in these very specific skills, and it can even generate some background or flavor on the fly.

The conclusion that I came to was simply this: sometimes, you have to let your players say no to you. Sometimes, you even have to actively encourage it. There’s an instinct, I think, that tells you to do what is tactically sound with your monsters. If the fighter has marked you, you should attack him because otherwise he’s going to open up a world of hurt on you, right? And to an extent, this is true. In the case of an ability like a defender’s mark, its purpose is to draw the monsters’ attention away from the defender’s allies. However, if the only thing that marking monsters accomplishes is getting those monsters to attack the defender, then you’re cheating that defender out of something very cool: the ability to say “no” to that monster. Sometimes, you have to defy the mark so that the fighter gets his free attack, or the paladin gets to lay down some damage, or the swordmage gets to teleport in and whack the beastie. Doing those kinds of things is a lot of fun for players, and it’s kind of a bummer when it doesn’t happen in an encounter.

This doesn’t apply just to marks. Opportunity attacks are a great way for players to get a chance to say “no”, and sometimes (especially with solos, elites, and brutes, all of whom have plenty of hit points to go around), you just want to provoke those opportunity attacks so that the players can have some fun.

You can carry this mentality into encounter design, too. Brutes a great for this: they’re easy to hit, but have lots of hit points, so you can feel free to use them to soak up a lot of damage, but there’s a low chance that your players will miss all the time. Brutes are awesome for provoking opportunity attacks and defying marks, particularly because many brutes are, thematically, not that bright.

Minions, too, work well. In my games, I tend to use minions for two purposes. The first is to create minions that are dangerous to kill–exploding minions, if you will–in order to challenge the players tactically. More frequently, though, they’re there simply to make the players feel like badasses. Sometimes minions should just be there to be wiped out in the first round of combat. I know, for example, that the dragonborn fighter in my game likes getting good mileage out of his dragon breath; heck, he’s spent two or three feats on making it better, and he’s only level 8! For this reason, I’ll sometimes group two or three minions together near him, so he can lay waste to them with some dragon fire. Similarly, sometimes you want to group a bunch of monsters so that the wizard can lay down a well-placed fireball.

Now, this is not to say that your fights should be pushovers, or that you should always arrange things so that the players are always using all of their powers to their best effect. Challenge is fun, and you should challenge your players. However, every once in a while, you’re going to want to throw them a bone and let them feel like they’ve got things well in hand. They are the heroes, after all; let them feel like it from time to time.

Last-Ditch Efforts
Whenever a player character is reduced to 0 hit points or fewer, he or she has a choice. The player can choose to have his or her character fall unconscious and start making saving throws, as usual. If the player wants higher risk for potentially higher reward, however, that player can choose to make a last-ditch effort.

When you make a last-ditch effort, you remain conscious and standing until the end of your next turn, even if your hit point total is currently negative. However, you are dazed. On your turn, you can take one standard, move, or minor action. This action can include using an encounter or daily power; if you choose to use an encounter or daily power during a last-ditch effort, that power is not considered expended. Note that you can only use a single power during a last-ditch effort, even if you have powers that are free actions to use. You can, however, activate extra damage from class features such as Hunter’s Quarry or Sneak Attack, if they apply.

There is, however, a serious consequence associated with pushing yourself so hard when you’re at your most vulnerable. At the end of your turn during a last-ditch effort, you automatically fail a death save and fall unconscious. In addition, you take a -1 penalty to death saves for the rest of the encounter. This penalty is cumulative if you make multiple last-ditch efforts in the same encounter.

This rule interacts with two races in ways that should be called out specifically.

Revenants have a trait called unnatural vitality, which allows them to choose to remain conscious until they would make their first death save. A revenant may still do this; at the point that the revenant would normally fall unconscious, he or she may choose to make a last-ditch effort (effectively remaining conscious for two rounds after dropping below 0).

Warforged have a trait called warforged resilience, which allows them to take the better result of either a die roll or 10, effectively allowing them to never fail a death save. If a warforged character chooses to make a last-ditch effort, he or she incurs the automatic failed save as normal. Further, the -1 penalty applies to the warforged character’s lowest possible result of 10, meaning that the warforged may roll (at a -1 penalty) or take a 9. Once a warforged character has made a last-ditch effort, he or she can no longer rely on pure warforged vitality to keep him or her from dying.

There’s an encounter in the upcoming session that is, technically, a fight but is also, technically, a series of skill challenges. What I’ve done is I’ve built an encounter using actual monsters and terrain and everything, but I’ve used the framework of skill challenges to create a fight that takes place over a series of phases. The skill challenges are a pacing mechanic for the fight, and the fight creates tension within the skill challenges.

Now, if you think this sounds like a cool idea (and I’d totally agree with you if you did), I feel I should point out some things about using this technique.

First, you probably don’t want to use this in every fight. Most fights have a way of pacing themselves just fine, as they involve a number of monsters and a variety of different terrain effects, and a dynamic that changes as the PCs slowly (or quickly, as the case may be) gain the upper hand. I think that a mechanic like this works best in an encounter with fewer creatures and less automatic change throughout, such as a solo encounter or–as is the case with my encounter–an encounter with a pair of elites.

Second, it’s probably best to use multiple, low-complexity skill challenges rather than one big one. You could conceivably build a complexity five skill challenge that simulates multiple distinct phases, granting access to different skills or new ways to use the same skills as the challenge progresses. I think, though, that using a bunch of complexity one, two, and even three skill challenges gives much clearer delineations between encounter phases, besides which it’s just plain easier to do.

Now, one key difference between using a single skill challenge and using more than one is that failure is more gradual. In a complexity five skill challenge, you’re still going to fail when you hit that third failure. If you’ve got five complexity one skill challenges, you need fifteen total failures to totally botch the job. This does not, however, mean that your encounter is a pushover. What it does mean is that you can award partial credit easily. What it also means is that you can do what I did: give earlier challenges consequences that carry over into later challenges. If the PCs fail the first skill challenge, all is not lost; the next one, will, however, be a little bit harder. Similarly, if they succeed on that first one, you can give them a little edge in the next one.

But it doesn’t stop there. Because you’re running these skill challenges alongside a combat, succeeding in that first skill challenge might carry benefits in the fight (as would failure, with drawbacks). The combat, too, could carry over into the skill challenges. Granting the PCs successes when they bloody a monster, or even when they just hit it, in some cases, is an idea I’ve toyed with. Similarly, if a PC gets bloodied or dropped to zero, that could cause the party to incur a failure in the current challenge.

Now, I want to be completely upfront about this: this is likely going to be a very complex encounter for me to run. In my case, I’ve got five distinct phases to the combat, each represented by a skill challenge (the complexities of which vary). In addition, I’ve got to fairly robust elites to worry about, not to mention some other fiddly rules that I won’t get into (no major spoilers here; sorry). If I can pull it off, though, I think it’ll be a cool and memorable encounter. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The idea is simple: elements of the environment can be used to kill creatures. In some ways, this has always been around. Since there have been hundred-foot chasms and pools of lava, there’s been the opportunity to push your enemies into them. What I’m talking about, though, is the idea of explicitly calling out a terrain kill effect and allowing the players to try to use it. There are some things you should think about when you’re doing so, though.

It Should Require Effort
A terrain kill effect shouldn’t just be a win button for the PCs, a way to bypass the challenge of the encounter. An ideal environmental kill should require some positioning and planning to get it to work just right. Think about Luke Skywalker fighting the rancor in Return of the Jedi. He was fighting against a creature, unarmed, that he couldn’t hope to beat head-on, so he used the environment to kill it. This required him to assess the environment (perhaps a Perception check, as a minor action). It required him to move to a specific area, and hope that his enemy followed him. It also required him to do something difficult (throwing that rock at the control panel), with perfect timing. A little too soon, and he traps himself. A little too late, and he’s rancor lunch. That’s what I’m talking about. An ideal terrain kill should require multiple actions, if not multiple rounds, to set up, but it should be worth it. And that brings me to the next point.

It Should be Lethal
An environmental kill is more than just a damaging terrain effect. You can put lava, or a pit, in an encounter and say it does a lot of damage, and that damage may well kill someone outright. That’s fine. If you’re putting a piece of terrain in the encounter specifically to be used to kill a creature, though, it should do just that. That is, don’t bother with damage; an environmental kill reduces its target to 0 hit points, period. There’s precedent for this kind of effect amongst monsters; bodaks, for example, have a death gaze (which, like a terrain kill, requires multiple successful actions to pull off). Why not give such power to the PCs?

It Should be Limited
Again with the win button. You don’t want your PCs using this effect to kill every monster in the fight; that’s just boring. Ideally, each terrain kill kills a single monster, then it’s used up. This may be because the other monsters now know about it, and avoid it. It may be because the effect can only occur once during the fight (such as Luke’s terrain kill on the rancor). In any case, don’t allow your PCs to over-use your environmental kills; they’re there to be dramatic and cool, and if they happen too often, you’re not achieving that effect. Which brings me to . . .

It Should be Dramatic
Environmental kills are at their most effective when using one swings the direction of the fight in the PCs’ favor. This means that the fight should be a tough one, and the monster that gets killed should be a significant part of what makes that fight tough. You might consider using terrain kills to kill off minions or standard monsters, but if they do, they should kill off more than one. A group of exploding casks of potent dwarven spirits could blow a whole group of orcs up, for example. However, if the effect is going to target a single enemy, that enemy should be an elite, a solo, or a monster three or four levels above that of the party. Don’t waste these effects on your run-of-the-mill goblin archer, unless that archer is doing a lot of damage and is difficult to get to. These effects should give the PCs an edge in the battle when they didn’t have one before.

The PCs Should Know About It
This may seem obvious, but it’s worth stating. Like any good terrain effect, your PCs are only going to use it if they know about it. If you’ve got an awesome terrain kill set up in an encounter that’s otherwise really tough and potentially a TPK, you’d better give the PCs a chance to learn about it (if you don’t simply tell them outright), or they’re not going to think of using it. There’s a tendency amongst PCs to rely solely on their own powers, skills, and items, with environmental powers and effects often not being fully utilized. This is why it’s important to make sure they’re informed. If the environmental kill is out in the open and obvious, just tell the PCs. If it requires some thinking and detection, have them make a check, but make sure the DC is low (or use a technique that I sometimes use: call for a check, but let them succeed regardless of the result). This is one of the reasons that it should take some effort to get one of these effects to work. You don’t want it to be too easy for them, but you do want to make sure they try it, and to try it they have to know about it.

I want to be clear that this is an untested mechanic. I think it would be fun, but I wouldn’t want to overuse it; I’d use it only in climactic and very difficult or unique encounters. I’m thinking I might incorporate one of these into my next session, actually. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Find a Tough Monster
Say you’re DMing for a group of heroic-tier PCs; I’ll use my own PCs by way of example, who are currently level 8. The trick is to find a monster that would normally be a little bit out of their level range. This works best with standard or elite monsters, though you could do it with a solo, too. We’ll use an umber hulk, a level 12 elite soldier, as an example.

Modify It
You want to bring the monster down nearer the party’s level (say, level 9 or 10 for the umber hulk), but still make it seem really difficult. You want it to be level-appropriate for three reasons: attack bonuses, damage, and defenses. You want the attack bonuses and defenses to be pretty standard for a monster of its new level because it’s not much fun to fight a monster that hits you every time, but that you keep whiffing against. The damage should be closer to the party’s level, but should still be on the high side, so that the monster feels powerful when it connects.

Next, you want to make it a solo. More hit points and more attacks is what you want. You want this thing to be attacking as many party members as it can during a round (without angling for a TPK), and you want it to be tough. If your creature is already a solo, give it resist all 10, to make it seem that much tougher.

In the case of the umber hulk, we’ll make it a level 9 solo. Its hit points, attack bonuses, and defenses should be appropriate for such a creature, but its damage should only be decreased slightly, if at all. I’d also think about giving it a recharge power in a close burst 1 or 2 that deals claw damage and pushes opponents or knocks them prone (or both).

Build in Vulnerabilities
This is the important part. These are not your standard vulnerabilities, like vulnerable 10 radiant or psychic. These are more like powers that are built into the monster, only they’re powers that the players can use against the monster, instead of powers that the monster uses. Each power should be discoverable with an appropriate knowledge, Perception, or Insight check, and when a power is discovered, you should make sure that the players know that this is a serious vulnerability in the monster’s defenses. You can go as far as handing out power cards for these vulnerabilities, or you can just describe them in the narrative and hope the players catch on.

The trick to these vulnerabilities is that they should require risk, but for a big reward. Requiring the players to ready an action for when they get attacked, or to make skill checks to remain on a monster’s back, or to avoid being trampled while underneath it, are all good. Also note that, if the monster was originally a solo and you gave it resist 10 all, make sure that your monster’s vulnerability attacks bypass that resistance.

By way of example, I’d give the umber hulk the following two vulnerabilities:

Chink in the Armor (move action, at-will) * Weapon, Vulnerability
As part of a move action, you make an Acrobatics or Athletics (DC 20) check to jump on the umber hulk’s back. This provokes an opportunity attack from the umber hulk. While on its back, you can make a weapon attack with any one-handed or light weapon at a +3 bonus with combat advantage (total attack bonus +5); a successful attack deals +10 damage, and the umber hulk is dazed until the start of your next turn. At the beginning of your turn, if you are still on the umber hulk’s back, you must make an Acrobatics or Athletics (DC 20) check to remain on the umber hulk. If you fail, you are thrown off of the umber hulk’s back; you slide 3 squares, are knocked prone, and take appropriate falling damage for the number of squares you slide.

Reflected Gaze (readied standard action, at-will) * Vulnerability
Any character can ready a standard action to use a reflective surface (such as a polished shield or a mirror) to reflect the umber hulk’s gaze back at it; you must be a target of the gaze for this vulnerability to take effect. Doing so is a Dexterity, Intelligence, or Wisdom attack versus the umber hulk’s Will. If you succeed, you negate the effect of the umber hulk’s gaze against you. In addition, the umber hulk takes 2d6+5 and ongoing 10 psychic damage (save ends). If you fail, the umber hulk makes its attack roll against you as normal, with combat advantage.

Play it Up
Remember that this is a level-appropriate version of a very difficult monster. Play up the fact that the monster is shrugging off the players’ blows, and that it’s dealing massive amounts of damage. When they discover and use a vulnerability, play up how effective it is against the monster. Make sure they know that using it is a winning strategy. Hopefully, they’ll be sorely taxed, but they’ll feel like serious bad-asses when they take down something really tough.

Why did he shine? It was a combination of a couple of different things. First, the encounter took place in a canyon of sorts, surrounded on most sides by twenty-foot-tall bluffs covered in thorny brambles. The enemies could fly from bluff to bluff, and attacked from atop them. Because only a few of the pre-generated PCs have ranged attacks, we had to get a little creative in order to take the fight to the bad guys.

The second reason was the DM. I played with a DM I had never played with, a guy named Andrew (I think; DM, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry if I’ve gotten your name wrong), and Andrew is my kind of DM. The DMGs talk about saying “yes” to your players, and Andrew really takes that advice to heart: if something has the potential to be awesome, he’ll let you try it. And in most cases, it was, indeed, awesome.

We were ambushed by some goblins (I think they were goblins; they were dressed in bone armor that disguised their features, and they may have been some Dark Sun equivalent to goblins, if goblins don’t exist in Dark Sun. I’ll just call them goblins.) and their pet drake. The goblins had flying contraptions strapped to their backs that allowed them to glide from bluff to bluff and the drake could, of course, fly. The combat started with the drake flying overhead, dropping a rope on our supplies, and landing on a nearby bluff. One of the goblins had the other end of the rope, and it was clear that they were going to try to steal our stuff.

The party quickly set out trying to attack the goblins, but I took a slightly different tactic: I picked up the rope and gave it a good, hard yank. The DM liked this idea, gave me an Athletics check (which I succeeded, what with my +9 to Athletics and all), and the goblin was pulled off the bluff and to his death (he was a minion). I then proceeded to use my move action to climb the bluff with the drake at the top, taking an opportunity attack and some damage from the brambles. The drake, however, flew away, back to one of the goblins, so I couldn’t attack it.

However, the goblin passed the drake another rope, so it was clear that they were going to make another attempt on our supplies. As such, I decided to prepare a trap for the drake. I backed up, to give myself a running start, and readied an action. My plan was to wait until the drake was over our supplies, about ten feet from the edge of the bluff, then charge forward, jump, and grab onto the drake. Andrew thought that was awesome, so he let me give it a try. And you know what? I succeeded. I grabbed the startled drake in mid-air, then twisted us as we fell so that I landed on top of the drake, minimizing my damage and maximizing its.

On its turn, the drake tried (and failed) to escape my grab. On my turn, I stood up, got a good hold on the drake, and then spun it around and slammed it into the bramble-covered wall of the nearby bluff. An ally then quickly finished it off.

Later, I spotted an archer on top of a bluff. I climbed a nearby bluff (failing my Athletics roll slightly, my first failed roll so far), and it cost me more movement than I had anticipated. No big deal. I traded my standard for a move to get into position, then spent my action point to charge, jump, and perform a flying tackle on the goblin archer. Andrew liked it and, once again, I pulled it off, knocking him prone, grabbing him, and landing on top of him. On his turn, he tried (and failed) to escape. On my turn, I picked him up, hurled him off the cliff, into the brambles on the side of an adjacent bluff, and that, combined with the falling damage he took when he hit the ground, killed him. Awesome.

At this point there were only two goblins left, both of them curse-chanters of some sort. They were both on the largest bluff, and there was a ten-foot gap between me and them. No problem. I leaped over the gap and, finally, drew my weapon and charged. And missed. Go figure, I finally make a normal weapon attack and I miss. The goblin tried to escape, though, provoking opportunity attacks while flying from both me and the party’s thri-kreen battlemind. We both hit, and because Yuka has Combat Agility, my hit knocked the goblin prone, causing him to fall out of the air and onto the ground below. The fall didn’t kill him, but our ardent did shortly afterward.

The DM, and the party, responded really well to all of my improvised actions. It helps that I only made two bad rolls the entire encounter; trying crazy things and pulling them off definitely encourages you to try crazy things in the future. And you know what? It encourages others to try crazy things, too. At one point, the ardent tried to make a lasso out of the rope and yank one of the goblins off the ledge. She didn’t quite make it, but at least she tried. At another point, the other fighter (also Yuka; we had seven at our table last night), knocked a guy off the cliff with Combat Agility, then used his shift to drop down on top of the enemy. The DM liked it, and ruled that all of Yuka number two’s falling damage would be transferred to the goblin that broke his fall.

It was a great session, and it really highlighted the fact that the system is capable of handling a wide variety of off-the-wall actions, not just what’s contained in your power cards. It also highlighted that, when the DM is inclined to say “yes” to awesome improvised actions, the game becomes more awesome for everybody.

At the end of the night, another player told me that one of his goals as a DM is to become better at handling improvised actions like that. I let him in on a dirty little secret: sometimes, you just let things happen and don’t worry about the rules. If one of my players wants to do something really, really cool, I’ll say, “give it a try, here’s the skill you need to roll.” The secret? Sometimes I don’t care what the result is. With these kinds of actions, sometimes I don’t bother setting a DC beforehand. I wait, I see what the PC rolled, and if it seems high enough, I go with it. Sometimes “high enough” doesn’t need to be all that high, if the action is cool enough. Because really, there’s nothing that takes the wind out of your sails more than trying something really cool and botching the roll. That kind of failure discourages future improvisation, and I’d rather there be more improvisation at the table than less. So, sometimes I hand-wave it.

Knowledge checks are any check made to determine something that the character may already know. Do I know what a beholder is? Do I recognize the runes on the floor? Am I aware of the history of this place? These kinds of checks require minimal effort during combat, because the character either already knows the answer, or doesn’t. As such, they’re free actions.

Information gathering checks are basically one step up from knowledge checks, and don’t actually always involve a check. Insight and Perception are the common ones here, but cases can be made for skills like Religion, Arcana, or History, too. Can I try to decipher the magic circle, to determine its purpose? Arcana check. Can I try to suss out my opponent, and see if I can spot a weakness? Insight, or possibly an appropriate knowledge skill, like Nature for a natural beast. These are almost always minor actions, costing the player very little, and possibly giving the player critical information or an edge over the opponent. I like to encourage the use of these kinds of checks, as they spice up combat, drive the story forward, and so forth.

Action checks are checks that you make to actually do something. The type of action varies, from minor to standard, depending on what the player is trying to do. Swing on a chandelier? Acrobatics check, move action. Want to try to say a litany to weaken the demon? Religion check, standard action. My rule of thumb is this: if it’s alternate movement, it’s a move action. If it’s an attack on another creature, it’s standard, unless the effect you’re going for is fairly small (such as a -1 or -2 penalty). If it creates a terrain effect, such as difficult terrain or damaging terrain, it could be any type of action, depending on its scope and power. Difficult terrain over one square would be a minor action, while a blast 3 of difficult terrain would probably be a move action and a blast 5 would be a standard action.

A special note on unusual attacks: I try to reward these whenever they occur, and encourage their use. If someone is going to forgo using one of his powers to try something he’s not sure of, I’m damn sure going to make sure that, if he pulls it off, he’s glad he did. By way of example, in a previous session, my players were fighting off some snaketongue cultists on the roof of the lightning rail, and two of them were archers riding atop wyverns. At one point, the fighter (who has a thing for collecting the teeth of his enemies), wanted to try and rip one of the wyverns’ teeth out while it was still alive, since last one that had died had fallen behind the train (thus making its teeth inaccessible). He was unsure, though, and had almost decided to use one of his at-wills instead, because it was the safe and certain thing to do. I told him: “Do it. I’ll make it worth your while.”

So he did. I handled it as a standard action, Strength attack against the wyvern’s Fortitude. I allowed the hit to deal his normal amount of damage (1d10+Str), and told him that the wyvern was dazed until the end of his next turn from the pain, and that it would be marked by him for the rest of the encounter, and that no mark would be able to supersede his mark. Because he gambled on an uncertain attack, I made sure that a successful attack with an improvised (but very cool and thematically appropriate) technique was better than the at-will he would have used instead, probably more on par with an encounter power. And you know what? It was a great moment.

Also, a note on terrain powers. It’s great to include terrain powers in your encounter, but if your players don’t know they’re there, they’re not going to use them. Initially, you’re probably going to have to hit them over the head with your terrain powers, to some extent. What I do is I print up cards for the terrain powers that I’m including, and I include them in the monsters’ stat blocks where it makes sense. That way, the players see the monsters using them, so they start looking for terrain powers to use against the monsters. Once they discover them, I give them the cards so they know exactly what the power will do. I find that players are more likely to use the environment when it’s more of a known quantity.

I’ve heard about people encouraging the use of terrain powers by making them all minor actions, even the attacks. That works for some people, and that’s great; it just doesn’t sit well with me, for some reason. Instead, I make sure that the terrain powers that are standard actions are potent enough that they’re worth using, and I make sure the players know that. What I’ve found, and what you may find if you do the same thing, is that players start coming up with their own terrain powers and alternate actions. And really, that’s the goal.

I also want to talk about monsters of high levels living in the world by saying simply this: levels are an abstraction. Nobody in the world knows what level a beholder should be; they just know that it’s an incredibly powerful creature that only the bravest and most capable adventurers would dare go up against. If your players want to go off and fight that beholder in the cave over there–-you know, the one you warned them about and tried to tell them, subtly, not to fight–-and you have the opportunity to design the encounter, then ask yourself this question: do I want a TPK here, just to teach my players a lesson? If they answer is yes, then fine. It’s not what I would do, personally, but to each their own. If you don’t want to derail your game to teach your players a lesson, then make the encounter winnable. It doesn’t need to be easy, and it should be scary. Maybe the players will have to discover some trick of the environment before they really have a fighting chance, but at least give them that fighting chance.

Failing that, give them an out. Allow them to fight the thing, allow them to see that they’re out-gunned, and show them how they can escape with their hides. Maybe there’s some cost associated with this escape: they have to sacrifice a beloved NPC or mount or pet or piece of gear.

My point is: use too-powerful monsters in the world if you want, to add verisimilitude. Tell the players about them, and tell them they’re not quite powerful enough to fight them yet. But do so at your own risk. Levels are a game construct, and mean nothing within the narrative. Without breaking immersion, how do you tell your players that they’re simply not high enough level yet? How do they know? They may decide, after a series of decisive wins, that they’re feeling powerful enough to take that dragon or beholder on. You’ve warned them, but they want to anyway. The thing to remember is that this is just as much their game as it is yours, and if they’re telling you what’s interesting and fun for them, it’s your responsibility as a DM to pick up their cues and make it fun for everyone, even if they wind up taking a thumping. Because really, a TPK isn’t much fun for anyone.

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The question seems to be: do you include encounters in your game that are designed to be more powerful than the PCs can handle.

The answer is: it’s funny you should mention that.

To any of my players reading this post: stop it. Unless you want some spoilers.

In an upcoming session, I have some encounters planned that are, in fact, designed to be too difficult for the players to take head-on. That is, even if the PCs succeed in what they’re supposed to be succeeding at, the bad guys aren’t going to get beaten, and it’ll probably feel a bit like a loss. Specific story spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned, guys.

My players have an airship. Soon, they’re going to be flying that airship into a land that is rough, unforgiving, and very much a frontier territory. There’s lots of nasty monsters in this area, and they’re going to get a first-hand look at this. First, the airship is going to get attacked by a mated pair of young blue dragons, intent on taking the airship and all valuables from the PCs. My PCs are level 8, and while these dragons are only level 6, there’s two of them, and they’re both solos. It’s a hard encounter, made harder by the fact that the dragons are going to be trying to throw people off the ship and, eventually, damage the ship out of spite when they decide that the PCs are more trouble than they’re worth. I’m pretty sure that the PCs won’t kill even one of these dragons, and at best they’re going to fend them off before the airship is completely torn to pieces.

Once they crash land, they’ll get a little bit of a breather before an enraged dire bullette attacks the group. As I’ve said, these are level 8 PCs, and this bullette is level 15, way above their pay grade. It’s got an AC around 35, which is pretty high for players of that level. This is not a fight they’re supposed to win. Instead, they’re supposed to draw the bullette’s attention away from the wreck and their less powerful allies so that their allies can escape, get to town, get medical attention, and get supplies to come back and fix the ship. Once they have the bullette’s attention, they’re going to have to lead it away from the ship and lose it.

So, yes, I guess I do have fights that cannot be won through combat alone. But that doesn’t mean I’m setting my players up for failure. I have a secret, you see: these fights, while they have real monsters with real statistics making real attacks and with real hit points and defenses, aren’t really fights. Both of these ‘combats’ are structured as skill challenges, and neither has the goal of the enemy’s defeat. In the fight against the dragons, the goal is simply to drive them away and survive their attacks. With the bullette, they have to get its attention, then lose its attention.

This is an idea I’ve started experimenting with: fights that aren’t really fights. I think that this is probably a really good way to handle fights that are too difficult for the PCs. It gives the PCs something to do besides whiffing against defenses that are too high and taking massive amounts of damage. It gives the PCs a definite goal. Best of all, even though the PCs may not feel like they’re ‘winning’ the fights, they’ll likely still feel a sense of accomplishment at the end, even if they just barely got away by the skin of their teeth.

So, how do you handle fights like this? Do you even include them?

Other posts in this blog carnival:
never fear! sandbox vs. safety rails.
Phelanar’s Den
The Daily Encounter
Dkarr
Adam Dray
Sarah Darkmagic

The Tyrant, when it came to the world, was an unexceptional beholder, somewhat weaker than many of its counterparts. It found the ruins of Ashurta’s Tomb beneath Bastion, though, and it saw an opportunity to gain power. Within Ashurta’s Tomb was a dimensional seal, a great magic artifact placed there by the Gatekeeper druids in order to prevent a fissure to the Far Realm from leaking into the world. That fissure, though weak, had drawn the Tyrant to this place with its siren call. When the Tyrant arrived, he saw that, if the seal could be weakened, the power that came through from its own home realm could be absorbed, converted into personal power. The Tyrant set to work.

It used ancient processes to grow crystals within the tomb, crystals linked to the Far Realm. These crystals amplified the power of the fissure, degrading the magic that held the dimensional seal together, weakening it, and allowing the fissure to grow. As the Far Realm’s sickening power leaked through, the Tyrant consumed it, growing to prodigious size and terrible power, becoming a thing to be feared.

Re-awakening the fissure had a few side effects, both of which the Tyrant used to its advantage. The first was that creatures already living around the tomb–insects, stirges, and the like–became warped abominations, fearsome monsters capable of killing quickly and brutally. They gained sentience enough to be commanded by the Tyrant, and it used these creatures as lackeys and guard dogs.

The second side effect was that a number of truly disturbed people were drawn to the fissure. Rather than destroy these individuals outright, the Tyrant offered them a bargain: stay, worship the Tyrant and keep it safe, and it would allow them to live in its domain, and give them the secrets needed to open more conduits to the Far Realm. They readily agreed, and became a cult devoted to the worship of the Tyrant, and to spreading the taint of the Far Realm.

The Tyrant, though formidable in its own right, has arranged its lair to make use of its abilities. The crystals, in addition to wearing away at the power of the dimensional seal, amplify the Tyrant’s power when they are targeted by one of its eye rays. In addition, the Tyrant has constructed four floating platforms within its lair. A creature standing on one of these platforms can give it a mental command to move, allowing it to engage the Tyrant in melee; this is a trap, however. The Tyrant often stays out of reach, firing eye rays down at its foes, waiting for its foes to use the platforms to come to it. Once a few of the platforms are full, it unleashes its telekinetic fury, knocking them off of the platforms and hurling the platforms, themselves, using them as weapons against those on the ground.

In my game, the Tyrant was two things. First, it served as the climactic fight of the dungeon, the fight that forced the PCs to use everything they had just to survive. Second, it served as a way to tie all of the Far Realm-related creatures in the dungeon together, and give them someone to serve.

This session was, in my opinion, a whole lot of fun. The encounters really clicked, and forced the players to really work together and use all of their resources.

The first encounter was actually meant to be two encounters but, as it turned out, the players split the party and were forced to play through two encounters simultaneously. The trap was great, and the beholder gauth complimented it extremely well. The puzzle in the other room was also good, though I had to allow the players to make some Insight checks to realize that they already had a clue for solving it (the cryptic piece of leather). The fact that the piece of leather and the only person in the party who spoke Goblin was trapped in a different room made things more interesting. I did allow the players to make Insight checks on their turns to get to look at the translation of the runes and the leather clue for five seconds apiece, which helped.

In the end, I decided to end the encounter once the puzzle was solved rather than playing it out to its conclusion. If I had played it out, the puzzle would not have deactivated the trap or gotten rid of any of the monsters, the encounter would have lasted for an hour or two more (it had already been about an hour and a half), and I don’t think it would have been as satisfying for the players. I saw an opportunity to allow them to feel like they’d really accomplished something, so I went with the Rule of Cool and let it happen.

The fight with the Tyrant was really hard for them, and was pretty brutal, which is just as a solo encounter should be, in my opinion. A beholder is something to be feared, and I think my players were pretty worried toward the end. Kryagin had gotten reduced below 0 twice, Chance had been downed once, and Sredni had been downed once (by Kragyin, actually, under the command of the Tyrant and with a damage bonus that Sredni, himself, had granted to Kraygin. Seriously. You can’t make this shit up.), and the party was pretty low on healing. I think they were glad that they had been storing up healing potions for so long. At 7th level, healing potions become sort of a last resort because you don’t get as much bang for your healing surge as most other healing powers will give you. However, when you’ve blown your second wind, your warlord and paladin and multiclass bard are all out of healing abilities, and you’re close to 0, you can’t afford to be that picky and you start drinking those potions and getting the hit points that you can out of them.

I ended this encounter early, too, because the players had already done 300 points of damage to the Tyrant and I saw the writing on the wall. However, I’m a little dissatisfied with the way I ended it. My reasoning was that the beholder would retreat because staying would mean certain death even if the PCs were killed (it was taking ongoing 20 damage at this point, that it couldn’t save against, because of the dimensional seal), and because self preservation is important to intelligent creatures like beholders. Also, I like recurring villains. However, I think the Tyrant’s retreat at a time when the players were not certain in their victory seemed a little artificial, a little bit like a deus ex machina. In retrospect, I wish I had simply had the beholder die the next time it took damage. It would have been a less obvious early end to the encounter and probably would have been more satisfying to the players.

I do, however, think that the players are going to have to get used to villains that don’t fight to the death, and who flee to fight another day.

For those who are interested, I will be posting the stats for the Tyrant and some guidelines for the encounter within the next couple of days.

The thing that this encounter really served to highlight was how important a factor terrain can be in a fight when the monsters and the environment are built to go together. The environment was a cave with a rushing, icy river running down the middle of it. There were two main ways across the river: jumping across (which would be difficult for those not trained in Athletics), and navigating a slippery bridge that required an Acrobatics check if you wanted to move more than two squares on your turn. Most of the monsters were on the far side of the river (and there were a few that seemed placed specifically to block the party from the BBEG), which meant that the river was always going to be a factor that you had to consider.

What made it even more interesting was that more than one of the creatures had abilities that capitalized on the environment in some way or another. In fact, all of them did. The choker and the spider could both crawl around on the ceiling, dropping on unsuspecting PCs and avoiding the river entirely. The archers were placed well, far away and with multiple obstacles between them and the PCs, forcing the PCs to endure their attacks for a while before they could close the gap. The BBEG had multiple abilities that pushed and pulled, and he used them to knock us all into the water as frequently as he possibly could.

What this really reminded me of is that, when you create an interesting environment, you want to select your monsters carefully to make sure they fight well in that environment. Similarly, if you have a bunch of monsters with similar abilities, the right environmental effect can make those abilities a lot more effective in combat. Pushes and pulls on their own are more a nuisance than a threat, but as soon as damaging terrain enters the equation–particularly if said damaging terrain is difficult to navigate around in the first place–those pushes and pulls become a true threat.

I feel that creating encounters such that your monsters and your environment harmonize without being too difficult or annoying is a subtle art, and one I have yet to master. I think I occasionally pull off some good combinations, but I think I have a lot to learn about how best to implement this kind of combat.

When Frederick was thirty, only a few years out of his apprenticeship, Kharazh was attacked by a force of drow in quantities rarely seen in the shallows. The drow made quick work of most of the patrolling shieldmains and either killed or enslaved the bulk of the population of Kharazh. Frederick survived because he was patrolling on the opposite side of the town from the attack, and was unable to make it home to defend Kharazh in time; by the time he arrived at the walls, the battle was already over.

Frederick is no expert tracker, and the drow had covered their tracks well. Only a few shieldmains and warmains remained after the battle, as well as a handful of citizens. Rather than hunt the drow down and fight them in their city, possibly losing the rest of the population in the process, Frederick led the remaining dwarves to the surface dwarven city of Hammerfast. Once he was sure they were safe, he left them.

Frederick blames himself for what happened, and longs for vengeance against the drow, whom he hates more than anything now. He knows that he is not strong enough to fight them, so he seeks out those who are, in the hopes of gaining allies in his quest.

Frederick is accustomed to protecting people, but doesn’t trust his own skills. Because of this, it will be some time before he has the confidence to lead; as such, he makes an excellent follower for the PCs (see the ally card above). Frederick can also be a good source of quests, as he will likely try to convince the PCs to go to the Underdark and confront the drow, hopefully saving his people int he process.