[The Jianghu setting material is again put on temporary
hold.]
Same basic premise as the last time for the adventure, but
with a more vigorous defense of the dungeon this time. The fight/resting and heal cycle was much
sane this time. Encounters were more of
a swarming type, instead of creatures waiting for the raid, along with
reinforcements being brought up immediately.
So the start/stop problem was fixed by better, more intense
encounters. The big set piece encounter
worked the way I’d hoped: Evan and Victor were forced to actually use some
strategy in order to attack it.
There were three deaths in the party, but they got
better. I know Old Schoolers would be
horrified by that statement since it was involving First Level characters, but
I’m okay with it. Two of the characters
were brought back via Paladin healing.
The other one was out of luck, as the Paladin had used up all of his healing
for the day, and failed his Stabilizing roll.
Since the characters had earned XP from the last adventure,
I gave Victor the option of using it to allow his Barbarian to survive, which
he took. This system would seem ripe for
abuse, but I’ve ruled that changing fate will bring consequences. Story consequences would be the best option,
but in this case it involved a permanent loss of an ability bonus. With penalties like that, after a couple of
near-deaths, your character may be rendered virtually unplayable.
I like the way the Paladin is working out as a Cleric
replacement. Smite isn’t as good as
Turing in a game sense, but it’s a lot more satisfying to score maximum damage
on undead with a melee hit, even if you have to do it one at a time. However, the class is pretty ordinary against
non-undead monsters, so it evens out.
There should not be any complaints from players about having to play one
for party balance sake. Given the fairly
generous healing rules, I think you could get by without one.
Barbarian Rage and Thief Sneak Attack abilities were used to
good effect, if not more than, as I forgot my own rules and the Barbarian
scored a couple of max damage hits after a couple of True Strike spells. (You still have to roll a Natural number to
get the Rage trigger even at +20 to hit.)
The Thief also got to pick a lock.
I’m hopeful that a non-combat Stealth check will be rolled at some
point.
A Half-Elf Arcane Ranger was added to the party as a
replacement character when the Wizard was abducted. (Thankfully, he wasn’t killed out of hand
when he attempted to talk to the party at their first meeting. Parley has not been a strong party skill to
this point.) That Crack Shot ability
works well, along with the lesser spellcasting ability. The Wizard proved more useful (after an
extremely delayed rescue) when some more spells were mixed into the routine.
This was a fun session, but I’m going to have to make some
changes. The Paladin’s Divine Light
ability needs to be an Encounter ability that has to be rolled for to
work. I figured this out when Evan
off-handedly thought about doing it every round against a horde of undead. It’s buried in the description that it only
works against a creature once per encounter, but it needs to be made more
clear, and it's too powerful to not involve a die roll.
The Wizard is going to have to be changed. He’s too weak in relation to the other
characters. I’m okay to this point with
how the Barbarian’s Rage works on a Natural roll (though I suspect it’ll be a
problem at higher levels) and with the Paladin Smite (since it only works
against certain foes). So, I don’t want
those abilities reduced. (Especially
since they speed up encounters tremendously.)
I’m also trying to avoid the common problem (in my mind at least) of the
Wizard being the “Nuke” or “The Win Button.”
The spellcasting mechanic seems to work, along with allowing
a Saving Throw for just about every spell.
What doesn’t work is the damage, which isn’t commiserate with the
trouble, especially compared to Rage and Smite.
I really don’t want to re-edit every spell.
How about this? For
certain combat spells, if the Wizard makes a successful Spellcasting roll, they
can roll again on the same spell. They
can continue to roll for times equal to their Int Bonus, as long as they keep
making the rolls. A failed rolled still
counts against the spell limit (though the successful rolls still go off), so
the Wizard can choose not to not to try multiple rolls. The effect can then either be multiplied by
successes against one target, or spread out against multiple targets. Also, failure at casting Magic Missile no
longer counts as a spell failure, unless it’s a multiplier roll.
I kinda hate to add another potential big hitter to an
adventuring group, since that means the foes have to be escalated too. This kind of problem shouldn’t be cropping up
at First Level. This was one of the
reasons why this game is limited to ten levels, so it wouldn’t get out of hand
with damage and Hit Point inflation. On
the other hand, I wanted First Level characters to not be helpless. That’s worked out in spades.
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