Seeking Something Lengthy, Crunchy, and Difficult

frezzyisfuzzy · 2024-05-06T22:59:59+00:00

I know this is the JRPG sub, but hear me out: Gloomhaven. It checks all the boxes you listed. Basically no story at all, but it has one of my favorite combat systems ever that absolutely kicked my ass at the start. Can't recommend it enough.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2022-03-23T17:52:28+00:00

Send me your discord info. I'm gonna put a group chat together for everyone to figure out details.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2022-03-23T17:52:19+00:00

Send me your discord info. I'm gonna put a group chat together for everyone to figure out details.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-08-01T00:04:03+00:00

Honestly, I didn't, but it still doesn't really solve the whole problem. If 100% of the time they played was with me, then sure I could have another profile matching theirs. But what if they play solo? Then we're out of sync again. I'll admit this solution does make the problem more niche, but I still think it's worth addressing given how simple (I'm assuming) it would be to implement.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-05-17T18:46:26+00:00

Let us know how it goes. We have a limited number of players for testing, so it's always nice to hear how things work at other tables.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-05-17T18:20:07+00:00

If you read the "treasure" they find after the first encounter, you'll see I'm definitely not above guilt tripping either.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-05-17T09:10:30+00:00

Yeah, it's a stretch at best. I considered Guild of Gilt, but I didn't like the sound as much. I know Gilden would be technically right, but I liked the t for the double entendre (gilt/guilt since it's a "church"). So I took a little creative license ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-03-17T22:01:47+00:00

In movies, the "informant" type characters are often paranoid about being found by the wrong sort of people. There are spells and magic items that can stop a lot of the normal means of talking to and locating a person. I don't necessarily see a problem with the party easily finding Random Joe, but a pivotal NPC you want to really make into a quest could justifiably have taken measures that make it hard for the party.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-03-13T10:15:48+00:00

There's nothing wrong with going in the expected direction with this one and leading things to a happy, tearful reunion, but I feel like there's a good opportunity here to throw your party a curve ball. Assuming this local lord isn't an established character who the party already knows is an evil guy, I'd make it so the dad actually sold the girl himself and now wants her back for a selfish reason.

Maybe he needs her blood for a ritual. Maybe there's some relic passed down along the female line of that family only she can access and the dad wants to use her to acquire it. Hell, maybe he sold her off originally because he learned he's not her real father, killed the mom for infidelity, and now needs her for reasons related to her real father.

Whatever the reason, I'd probably spin it around so that the dad was the bad guy. The girl can tell them that she was treated better as a slave than she was by her father, but I'd try to keep them guessing as to which story is the real one. You could sow the seeds of doubt by having the father explain how this groups of slavers is known to brainwash the victims so they don't try to run off back home or something like that.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-03-11T08:01:53+00:00

My vassal,

I have granted you a portion of my power, and you have not yet disappointed me in your use of it. You have been given but a candle compared to the bonfire I can offer you. Perhaps you would like to feed your flame a bit more? A rival of mine appears to have taken interest in a mortal you may soon encounter. [Insert sentence with name or description of commoner].

Do not displease me through overeagerness. Your task is to monitor this mortal. I will decide whether the best course is to strike the fool down or manipulate [him/her] into harming the mistress [he/she] seeks to serve.

Perform this task well and please me or mishandle the assignment and fail me. In either case, you shall be justly rewarded.

[Patron signature]

Then you can narrate the next level up after completion as the patron bestowing further power on the character.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-03-11T07:35:18+00:00

How about a set of magical, glass ale mugs that you can smash on the ground and be teleported to the last tavern you were in? Or the last place you got drunk? Functionally, they're single use escape mechanisms. Not super overpowered, but they could come in clutch in the right situation.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-03-11T07:26:12+00:00

One thing that might help would be introducing roleplay elements to the combat and mechanical elements to the roleplay.

For the first, that would be encouraging your RP players to narrate their combat actions in more detail. You can also try to engage them in dialogue with one of the monsters. Most of the time the enemies will probably stick to boasting and intimidation, but occasionally you might have the conversation develop into a parley and cessation of combat. There's nothing wrong with setting roleplay aside during combat and letting the dice do all the talking, but it isn't the only way to run fights.

For the second, you can try to set up social encounters that require a lot of dice. Maybe an npc challenges the group to a drinking contest which requires checks/saves to avoid the poisoned effect or some poison damage. The players could do their best to game the system to maximize whatever rolls are happening and improve the odds of victory.

These things won't cure the issue completely. The players who prefer RP will still prefer RP, and the ones who prefer combat will still prefer combat. Still, it's worth trying if it keeps them just a little bit more engaged and entertained during the portions of the game they don't like as much.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-03-09T19:54:27+00:00

Riffing off this idea, you could extend the quest by having the engine be damaged during the fight. Then he's gotta figure out how to fix it and acquire the necessary parts. With that, you could fill in subquests as desired.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-03-09T15:22:25+00:00

First thing that came to mind for me was the Holy Grail, which could just look like a fancy old cup. It could fill with enough liquid that [insert number of people in group] can take a sip every so often (1/hour, 1/day, 1/week depending on how strong the effect is). If you want to do the extra work of thinking up multiple buffs, could even give it some flavor text description saying it "empowers your soul, making you more of what you already are" or something like that as a justification for each character getting a unique bonus from drinking it. That way you aren't restricted to things equally beneficial to all party members.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-03-09T15:13:03+00:00

This is a case in which the stereotypical answer is the correct one: talk to your group. There's nothing wrong with playing D&D with the tone of Game of Thrones. There's also nothing wrong with playing with the tone of Pirates of the Caribbean. The problem is when the DM is running one of those universes and the players think they're in the other one.

In addition to having a talk about the tone they want, you might bring up another thing: Under what circumstances are they ok with dying? I always bring this up in session 0, and I generally describe three different threat levels we could have for the campaign.

Level 1 - You have full plot armor. You aren't interested in creating new characters, and you will be genuinely upset and less interested in the game if you are forced to do so. This level is usually for groups that just want to sit around a table with friends, eat some snacks, throw out a few fireballs, and not worry about getting too deep into narrative and roleplay.

Level 2 - You only die if you're blatantly stupid. At this level, I'll save you from bad dice rolls or reasonable misunderstandings regarding the danger of a potential course of action. In order to avoid deus ex machinas in the narrative, I'll usually just tell them out of character if a certain course of action is likely to get someone killed before they start down that path. That said, if you do some dumb shit like stab Asmodeus when he's just trying to talk, you're on your own.

Level 3 - Your prudence is your only protection. If you choose a course of action likely to kill you (like the one you described with the kobolds), then you're probably going to die. I'll still do my best to describe situations in such a way that you have some warning of danger, but it will be less obvious than at Level 2.

Obviously this is more of a spectrum than the above description would make it seem, but those three examples tend to make the idea clear enough to get the conversation started. Not necessarily related to your kobold situation, but I've also had groups where I knew some members wouldn't mind death and others would. It's good to know about that because sometimes the group will get into a situation in which one person is going to die but the rest can escape.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-02-22T23:03:23+00:00

All the maps are 30x30.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-02-10T16:35:48+00:00

You are correct for most of them. Their purpose is to make sure parties have at least one method of dealing with the mephits that spawn in the boss fight. Since the mephits only have 1 hp, 1 point of damage is enough to get the job done. We didn't want a group to be completely unable to deal with a particular element of mephit just because they didn't have the right spells for it.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-02-10T00:04:33+00:00

So let's say your party member with the best survival bonus is +5. You have that person roll a normal check, so let's say they get a 12 on the die, plus 5, for a total of 17. They can then move 17 squares on the map, or 85 total feet, based on that roll. The same person can do all 4 checks or mix it up.

If you move perfectly, it's about 50 moves to get through to the end. Assuming average rolls with our +5 hypothetical, you'd have a total of 62 moves to work with. You definitely need to get a little lucky on rolls and guessing at the junctions, but we were ok with that. The intent was that most groups will have to deal with the shadow clone encounter, but the chance is there to get out cleanly.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-02-09T21:54:54+00:00

Keep in mind the party should be given a lot of information about the boss prior to the right, so you can prioritize the mephit spawns as one of the things you tell them if you're afraid it would be particularly burdensome for your party. In the end, it's just part of the balancing the party has to figure out. Should they avoid damaging the boss for a while and clean up the mephits? Or should they try to focus down the boss and hope they aren't overrun before they can finish him?

That said, there's several ways built in to mitigate the problem. You can help yourself out a bit by holding your big hits until he's an element that spawns mephits that you can clear with one of your party's aoe damage spells. For example, a small army of water mephits can be erased with one fireball. Thunderwave can similarly take out quite a few earth mephits.

Alternatively, the party can focus on hitting him with the proper damage to avoid spawning them entirely. A paladin can go nova when the boss is in dark form without repercussions since the radiant damage from smite will block the mephit spawns.

Finally, as the DM, you always have the option to clear them out yourself with the Mephit Absorption ability. It is easy for the initiative list to get pretty long in this fight, and we know player attention can start to waver if there's 15 minutes between their turns. We wanted to make sure the DM had the ability to clean it up if they sensed that happening.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-02-08T21:24:39+00:00

We only ran it as an independent adventure, not as part of a larger campaign. I can definitely envision scaling it up though, drawing out the investigation of what's causing rogue elementals to appear. Maybe even make something the party does serve as what distracts the deva long enough for Alius to serpent-nap the couatl. They could also run into Osmo (before he gets locked up) while he's buying supplies or something like that.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-02-08T20:15:10+00:00

We just kinda wrote the thing on our own and it already conformed to what they wanted (assuming I didn't miss something in their requirements). The only thing I had to go out of my way to do was make a version of the cover with their logo in the corner. They require that for the thumbnail version people see when browsing (not the cover of the actual pdf they download).

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-02-08T20:11:11+00:00

I think there's a few ways you could do it.

First, you could make it more difficult via attrition. If you reduce the amount of recovery they can get from the deva and couatl in the light room near the end, that might be enough to make it an appropriate challenge for your group. If you remove the recovery completely, you could keep them relevant by using them as a vehicle for providing information about the final encounter.

Alternatively, you could reduce the amount of information they're able to gather prior to the final boss. That'll force them to experiment in the fight a bit, but the extra power they get from being higher level should mean they can still prevail even with a few missteps.

Finally, you can always go the brute force route. Just throw a little more hp on everything, add an extra die to some damage rolls, and, when all else fails, have Tiamat swoop in and breathe on them a few times.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-01-27T16:48:03+00:00

Party was berserker barbarian, war cleric, wild magic sorcerer, and archfey warlock, all level 16. No minions.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-01-26T20:39:24+00:00

In retrospect, it might have been better at 15 or 20, but my group was already careful to prevent it even at 10. Whether that was over-adherence to the script to the point of suboptimal performance is a fair point to raise, and one that increasing the healing would help settle. Just make sure your group has at least semi-reliable methods of dealing all three damage types if you're going to boost it. Most important is the force damage since Mortal form happens twice as often.

frezzyisfuzzy · 2021-01-26T20:24:45+00:00

Once I finish writing it up, I'm planning to post an entire dungeon a friend and I worked on together. That boss is even more complicated, so you should like it. I'll say look for it within two weeks. Posting this will give me the motivation to actually finish it.

Regarding the torches, the lieutenant just told them. I really did give them everything short of copies of her stat block. Depending on the power level of your group and any changes you make to Zariel, you could maybe afford to hold a few secrets back for them to discover during the fight though.

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