Tag: old school

I wished for a TPK…

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I don’t normally wish for it, or plan for it, but a TPK would just have been great for the story. Let me try and explain why…

We were playing our sixth session of Temple of Elemental Evil, this time with only 4 players with 3rd level characters and the paladin was the only healer. At first they accidentally ventured down a sloped hallway to level 2, and saw the chained hydra and chained owl bear. They engaged the owl bear, and killed the troll keeper that came after with some trouble. They explored a bit, and established that there was at least one more troll in the area. Wisely, they went back to level 1, and found their way into one of the two ghoul lairs. This is where things got really interesting.

Ghouls, and more ghouls

Ghoul
The ghouls in 5th edition are nasty, as when you hit paralyzed characters it is automatically a critical hit. This illustration is from the 3rd edition of the D&D Monster Manual.

It was one of the many encounters in the temple that quickly turns into several waves of enemies. In this case, one of the ghouls from the first room will run into the adjoining rooms and get help from its buddies. Furthermore, two cowardly ghasts will be watching from a third room, and join the combat if they are winning, but I decided to add the mechanic that if more than half of the four ghouls were alive after a couple of rounds the two ghasts would flee.

Fortunately for the characters they killed the third ghoul by the end of round two, making the two ghasts flee. However, they flee through the room of the two boss ghasts, and these two will not back down from a fight (as described in the module).

So severely depleted, with the barbarian at 1 hp, the monk had been down once already and with no more healing power or potions, they had to face two ghasts with extra hit points. It was clear it could turn ugly quickly. With the damage output of the ghasts, any of the players would go down with one hit, which would reduce their damage output, and further increasing the odds of more players going down. My first internal reaction was ‘crap! what do I do if I kill them?’ But then it dawned on me that it would be great if I wiped them out.
Because, as you may have read here previously, I have a pool of around 12-14 players for this campaign, and I play with the group that shows up that evening (max 7 players). The area around the temple attracts a lot of adventurers, so it works out really well. It is very dynamic, and we get to see different group combos. Each session ends with the party returning to the surface. The rest of the adventurers stay at their base camp or in Hommlett, resting and planning their next raid on the dungeon.

Great flavor and motivation
Had they TPK’ed, I would have sworn the players to silence, and their party would have been yet another group of adventurers disappearing without much trace in the dangerous catacombs beneath the Temple of Elemental Evil.

It would have created a fantastic motivation for the other players (and the TPK’ed players with new characters) to go and find out what happened, and perhaps find surviving captives, or avenge them, if they weren’t (I would probably have rolled randomly who survived). I could have them as sacrifices in the deeper temples, I could have them charmed or dominated, they could be torture victims of the cult leaders. And their magic loot would turn up in new places, adding a new dimension of investigation and interrogation, such as: ‘Where did you get this cloak? This was worn by our friend Ishmael the last time we saw him…?!’ The extra sense of danger in exploring the dungeons, when the players know a TPK can happen, would also add to the tension of the game.
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As it turned out, I rolled very poorly for the two ghasts, hitting the players zero times, and the players managed to win the day with very high damage output. Great for them…

But I think it is fair to say that I don’t fear having a TPK in the future. I may even wish for it, a little bit.

Weapon materials in D&D 5ed

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I am trying to avoid adding complexity and sub-systems to my game, but for my campaign world to be thematically coherent I did decide to make a system for weapon materials, so there is a difference between bronze and steel. As the group is in  a remote land, as part of the first settlement in this “undiscovered” realm, I try to enhance the need to be self-sufficient, add incentive to explore and find new things, and that when exploring you need to be selective in what you bring with you on your travels (I know, that consideration disappears when they get a big bag of holding…)

6-krigsscene-farve-stor (1)
Imagined scene from the early Iron Age, done in connection with the bog body of the Danish Tollund Man. Image by Niels Bach. Read more at: http://www.tollundman.dk

I’ve tried not to make it too punitive to the characters, but it should push them to carry alternate weapons, rest after encounters and take down-time to craft their own items and so on.

As magic weapons and armour slowly will become available, I don’t foresee this to still be a very relevant rule-set after level 10. But as mentioned, the rules are meant to create mood and atmosphere.

Weapon quality and material
As not all cultures have the same level of technology within manufacturing of arms and armour, different enemies will have weapons and armours made from various materials with various properties, strengths and weaknesses. As to not skew the combat rules overly, most of the materials have their most significant impact on weight, price and production time, which can be important far from civilization.

Damaging and breaking weapons and armour
Whenever a combatant rolls a natural 1 in combat with a weapon, not made from steel, he has to roll a DC 10 DEX ability check to avoid the weapon breaking. If he succeeds using the weapon still confers disadvantage until it has been serviced during a short rest.

Whenever a combatant is hit with a natural 20, his non-steel armour gets damaged and he loses 1 point of AC, until he spends a short rest mending the damage.

Steel
Steel can in the old world (almost) only be crafted by dwarves, who knows its secrets and can create the temperatures necessary to forge it. Their arms and armours are highly prized, also among its enemies, and can easily fetch several times the price of regular iron forged weapons.

Steel weapons don’t need to roll for damage or breakage, unless fighting against a foe with magical weapons or armour.
Medium and heavy steel armour weighs 10% less than iron armour, as it needs less material for the same level of protection.

Rapiers are a new type of weapon used by the wealthy in the City-States, and it can only be made from steel.
Steel weapons and armor costs around 5 times the listed price in the Player’s Handbook.

Half-Plate and Full Plate are always made from steel and cost the price listed in the PHB.

Bronze spear heads

Iron
Iron weapons are the default weapons in the Player’s Handbook. They comply with the breaking and damaging rules above.
Half-Plate and Full plates cannot be made from iron.

Copper & Bronze

Both materials are weaker than iron, and when fighting against steel weapons they automatically suffer the effects of damage on a roll of a natural 1 or natural 20 (for armor). If fighting against iron weapons the normal rules for breaking apply.

Stone & bone
Stone weapons suffer a -1 damage penalty against iron and steel armour. However, some cultures have processes that make the stone hard as iron or steel. The weight is still greater than comparable iron or steel weapons.

flint arrows

Bone breast plate: Made from mighty beasts, these breastplates function as regular breastplates, due to the high level of craftsmanship and density of the bone used. They would be highly prized in their culture.

Scale Armour: scale made from regular scales of beasts or from thick bone chips work as a hide armour, but scales or bones from truly dangerous beasts or magically treated can work as a scale mail or splint mail, depending on the construction. The scales of these beasts are equivalent of iron, but can be broken by steel.

Magical weapons:
Magical weapons or armour cannot be broken through regular combat. Special significant events have to occur to endanger them, such as Elder Dragon fire, volcanos and epic level magic.

Temple of Elemental Evil as a casual campaign

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We’ve decided to play a casual campaign using the AD&D 1ed. Temple of Elemental Evil (TOEE) mega-adventure. I’ve grown to become fascinated with the ‘old school’ style of play. And the great thing about TOEE is that it takes place in a geographically small area where many adventurers gather, which makes it easy to have characters come and go, which enables me to set up the campaign in a more casual format.

I’ve set up the conditions for the campaign differently from what I normally do:

  • I have a pool of 12-14 players who would like to participate when they have the time or is in town.
  • The adventuring group consists of whoever can attend that game day.
  • Each sessions ends with the group retreating to a town or campsite outside of the dungeon (unless hindered completely in-game). This enables a more ‘episodic approach.
  • The players can make maps and learn things inside the game, which can be shared between the games to create a working meta-level to the campaign, where the real-life talks about what happened in the game, can be useful to people when they gather to play next time.

So why have I set the game up this way?
When I was younger, I scoffed at the mega-dungeons, and thought them to be almost unplayable, and that my players would become bored with one single dungeon they need to map and go through (oh! Another 5 gnolls in a 20×20 foot room…).

I still think that constant dungeon-crawl will get boring, but there are a few reasons, why I think this will work better than I used to think:

  • First of all, we’ve come to appreciate the more ‘old school’ play style. We enjoy just sitting down, killing some gnolls, gain some xp and drinking a couple of beers.
  • The emergent game-play and how the dungeon should react to intrusion make exploration more fun.
  • We don’t play as often and players will rotate to some extent, so it will stay fresh.
  • I can better see how the module intends for the DM to create a lot of extra material in addition to the published material.
  • Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition is better suited to this type of module. It can resolve combat quicker than previous editions, which makes this kind of combat heavy game run more smoothly.

We will have our first session April 12, with 6 players. I hope to play 5-8 times per year, but we will see how much time we have, and how popular it is (I respond to popular demand).

Steading of the Hill Giant Chief

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As a one afternoon/evening adventure, we played Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. It was converted from the AD&D module into 5th edition.

There were 5 characters – all of them 12th level. There was a Dwarf Fighter with plenty of feats and maneuvers, a Dwarf Fighter/Barbarian, a Tiefling Warlock/Sorcerer, a Cleric of Light (damage dealing & suppoer) and a Cleric of Life (Healing). I gave them two uncommon items each, like +1 shield, wand of detect magic and cloak of protection +1.

We had great fun with the adventure. The group chose a wise path through the steading, found the secret stair down to the dungeon and located the treasure, explored parts of the dungeon, and fought the keeper and his pets as well as the stone giants and went back to the main hall to fight the chief and his giants as the final encounter of the evening.

Conversion notes:
Fundamentally the conversion worked well. It is easy to convert the two systems between each other. I did however make a number of changes to make it more fun.

First of all, the original module is very much made up of creatures which can only fundamental make a regular melee or ranged attack. To make it more interesting and varied I inserted an Ogre magi with a couple of bodyguards, and I change the manticores guarding the treasure to Chimeras to make it a greater challenge and to add the breath weapons, which required Dex saving throws. I also made the wife of the chief into a 9th level Cleric.

I also pulled a few giants from the main hall to the dire wolves and courtyard area.
Instead of just having two fire giants, I also added a young red dragon to the mix. The encounter was never played, but I think it would work well.

The keeper I gave a higher AC with armour and made his pets into Giant Apes.

I also changed the troglodytes to trolls, but the group did not go near them either.

The map of the steading is one of the greatest problems, if you are using miniatures. In D&D 5th hill giants are size huge, and they simply don’t fit the current map. Furthermore, as was mentioned in the original reviews of the module, some of the dungeon areas are way too small to house 30+ escaped orc slaves. As we didn’t use minis I didn’t bother converting the map, but I guess it needs to be at least double size, to fit all the giants in the main hall.

Game Play notes:
The challenge fit quite well against a group that didn’t go leave the steading and get a long rest. We were under some time pressure, so they opted to go full steam ahead. It was clear that the first couple of encounters wouldn’t kill any characters, but they did drain resources. The combat was also quite quick and smooth.
The upper level was a chance to sneak and gain information and kill a couple of groups of monsters.

The bugbears posed no challenge at all – which was fine, as they gave the group a chance to shine. The Keeper, with his giant apes really packed a punch, and I thought it was a fine encounter when the bugbears also came charging and were annihilated with fireballs.

At their challenge rating it was my impression that hill giants work well against a high level party, as a party of level 12 will most often hit CR 5 monsters no matter what, but the giants could really take some damage and deal some back. They only had 15-20 % chance of hitting the fighters, but with two attacks from each, the damage did begin to mount.

The final battle with the chief was fun, albeit a bit chaotic, and some of the players would have liked a proper battle map with minis. I forgot to include the cloud giant and stone giants (it was late), but the outcome was good, as they would have stacked the battle too much in the favour of the giants, due to their higher to hit bonus and damage output. As it were the giants put up a great fight, but had trouble getting to all the characters, which meant they were split up to try and circle the characters. At least one character was down, but the life cleric kept them alive.