Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
> SPOILERS for _Age of Worms_ module #2.
This looks like a very good idea. I'm not worried about the spoilers.
>
> We did the next bit of _Age of Worms_, which I'd predicted to be
> a TPK.
>
> It wasn't. It didn't look much like either of us had expected,
> either.
The unexpected can be good. When you expect a TPK, the unexpected can
be great.
>
> Part I (Temple of Hextor):
>
> We'd agreed without much discussion to use the v3.0 version of the
> Darkness spell (which makes things pitch dark) and not the v3.5
> (which makes them gloomy with 20% concealment, and actually
> illuminates a naturally dark area). One of the PCs is of a strange
> class (warlock) from one of the expansion books and sees in
> magical darkness like a demon. When an NPC cast Darkness on
> a coin and threw it on her, she picked it up and carried it
> around. For the next ten minutes she effectively had a
> better-than-Improved-Invisibility advantage, and she used it
> ruthlessly. This screwed up the rest of the PCs nearly
> as badly as the enemies; the warlock essentially won singlehanded
> except for the final fight against the High Priest, which came
> down to a two-on-one fight between him and two PCs. One of the
> PCs was badly hurt but not killed. All other foes were killed
> singlehandedly by the warlock with ranged magical damage. No
> enemy was ever able to target her.
This version of Darkness is, in my opinion, much too powerful. It looks
as if the other PCs should have just hung back and let the Warlock do
her thing. When that looks like the best tactic it means that the RPG
convention of "the party" is in trouble. I have played in campaigns
where this didn't bother anyone and we DID sometimes let someone solo
while we waited to cover her or his escape. Most of the time it wasn't
that good.
> Much *****ing from the player about armor class; his PCs had an
> inordinately hard time hitting. The warlock hits touch
> AC and even without the darkness she would have been doing most
> of the damage.
Sounds unbalanced. As before, this attacks the concept of the
adventuring party. Some people can play with this concept broken; most
of the people I play with can but many cannot.
> The Darkness advantage was so great that I think the best approach
> to this scenario would have been for the warlock to do it by
> herself once the first three rooms were finished. It was somewhat
> interesting watching her do it, but the player started to become
> snappy (I would call one of the other PCs on the initiative
> chart, and he would snap "Does nothing, just like last round" at
> me). With multiple players I think this would have been a severe
> problem.
Usually, it would have been. Very few people can enjoy playing an
observer. If it only happens on occasion and, especially, if the focal
character changes from session to session, it can be tolerable.
This was no spoiler for the Temple but it brings up some very
interesting points about play balance, a concept I don't usually
consider much, and adventure design. Your warlock, probly less so with
the newer version of the spell, sounds like the "solution" to the
seeming terrible danger of this part of the module. The temple looks
much harder than it turns out to be. Maybe it was supposed to.
> Part II (Grimlock caves):
>
> The PCs questioned the Hextorites, got high rolls and were able to
> get a fair idea how the grimlocks were situated. They killed
> five by impersonating the Hextorites and pretending to have a food
> ****pment. Then they went in, and fought through all the rest.
Reminds me of the guy who said he was "The door mechanic" when he was
overheard when he was checking for traps, etc. I don't know Hextorites
or grimlocks but I get the picture.
> The two boss fights at the end were solved with Silence, looking
> exactly the same, oddly, as the Darkness effect earlier: grimlocks
> "see" with sound, so are totally blind in Silence, and this is
> catastrophic.
Another situation with a perfect solution. So it isn't nearly as hard
as it looks.
> The earlier fights (grimlocks with levels of fighter or barbarian,
> krenshars, chokers) gave the PCs considerable trouble and one was
> taken to -8 but lived.
At least everyone got to fight. When I am in character, of course, I
usually PREFER letting someone else dismiss our problems with a wave of
her hand.
> The thing I really noticed about this scenario was that, even though
> we had agreed to play it as it was written, and I had told the
> player that I thought it was too hard, he was continually offended
> by how hard it was.
It doesn't sound like it is as hard as one would expect.
>I had to keep looking up rules for him.
> We found one clear rules violation: the module author beefed up
> the grimlocks by giving them ****elds (making them AC20 and very
> hard for the PCs to hit) but left their damage at the two-handed
> weapon level. The player also felt that grimlocks should not be
> CR1 (I tend to agree).
I don't know what CR1 is. The ****elded two-handed weapon use is easily
explained. Four-armed is four-armed.
> I kept saying "You asked me to play it as written" because I
> felt so defensive. I was also bothered by lots of logic problems:
> I had to work hard to hide from the player the fact that the
> Hextorites apparently never sleep (everyone is on watch all the
> time) and that the grimlocks get their food supplies by walking
> past two hungry monsters.
This doesn't seem like much fun.
> By the end the player was snapping at me whenever I made a rules
> call against his PCs, which he usually doesn't do. It was
> a very stressful session to run. The PCs "did fine" but the player
> and GM didn't seem to be enjoying themselves.
Maybe, and maybe you couldn't do it without the player's cooperation,
more of the spotlight should have been on the characters and less on a:
the module and b: the rules
> The player's reaction was to tell me that he didn't think his
> PC party would be viable past a few more levels, due to less than
> optimal character design choices, and I ought to "do something
> about that" or he was going to have to abandon these PCs and do
> more heavily optimized ones. He also complained that he was
> not satisfied with his characterizations.
I haven't seen any evidence of characterization. I would not think he
had any time for characterization.
> Toward the end I was forcing myself, with gritted teeth, not to
> fudge.
> Despite the outcome, I'll stand by my initial evaluation: these
> are too hard for us at the stated levels. I don't care too much
> about the spell-dominated outcomes, though if it turns out to be
> standard for the warlock to win every scenario single-handed (she
> will get Darkness at will in a few levels) we're likely to be
> unhappy. But the amount of player *****ing was hard to take. I
> don't fault my player for it. I would have felt the same.
It looks tough enough to be distracting but it also looks like it is
set up for one (or possibly one of a small number) precise solution to
render each challenge less dreadful than it seems. It may read like a
tough run with lots of melee but it may be an out-of-character puzzle
for the players or partly that.
Will in New Haven
--
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail
better."
Samuel Beckett, "Worstward Ho", 1983
> Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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