[3.5] Encounter Planning - Could use some input!

[DragonSinged]

Hey there, dudes and ladies. How's it goin? It's goin pretty ok with me.

Anyways, I am currently planning an encounter for a 3.5 evil campaign I am running, and could use a bit of help planning the technical side of things for said encounter, as it requires a bit of tinkering, rules-wise.

Anyways, the party members are all at 3rd level, and consist of a human rogue, a gnome wizard, a Neraphim ranger, a half-elf (drow) Warlock, a drow Crusader, and a human artificer. They ended the last session entering a dwarf city set inside a mountain.

The city is sitting right beside an expansive lake of magma, and makes liberal use of a modified version of "Tenser's Floating Disc", which they call "Tenser's Floating Lift". Basically, permanencied Tenser's Floating Discs, which follow a set route when activated. The players rode these, elevator-style to enter the city, and these lifts are used to lift magma out of the lake and pour it into channels which run throughout the city, which the dwarfs use in their daily life/work. The channels are maintained with, you know, magic.
Oh, and when the characters entered the city, they were required to each hire a guide for the duration of their stay (as first time visitors to the city), for 25 gold a piece, for their own safety (you know, with all the magma and everything.) Of course, the players are all evil, and the Neraphim (working towards becoming a mortal hunter) eats people, so there's no guarantee those guides will last very long. We'll see.

Anyways, the players are here to find a certain dwarf (a 13th level sorcerer), who used to be a human, to find out how he achieved his transformation (the necrotic cradle from the PHII).
However, he's too powerful for them to force the info out of. He will, however, agree to an exchange... He's very grateful to the dwarfs of this city for taking him in and giving him a clan name, after becoming a dwarf himself, and is devoted to the good of the clan. He has recently discovered that there are some duergar stirring up trouble in the caves surrounding the city (have yet to determine what exactly the duergar are doing), and he would like the characters to wipe out the nest of duergar.

Now what I'm hoping this will lead to is the duergar running from the characters, and hopping onto some transport Floating Lifts that fly around over the lake of magma, leading to a crazy battle on floating force disks over a lake of magma. Sounds pretty epic, yeah?

Now, the part that I really could use help on is the control mechanics of the discs themselves. I've been trying to think about things like how fast they move, and how they're controlled - Do they follow a set route? Can the players use, say, a balance check or a ride check or a spellcraft check or something to take control and direct the disc, a failed roll leaving them stranded for that round?

One issue that I'm also anticipating is that the Warlock has a modification (whatever they're called) for his Eldritch Blast that gives it a range of 250 feet, and I would really like everyone to get involved flying around on the Discs.. But I also don't want to be all, "Ha ha you can't use your powers that you earned." or anything... but at the same time, he'd be able to attack from much further away than anyone else, even on the discs, so... Yeah.

Anyways, any help/ideas/input/constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated! And feel free to let me know if I haven't been clear enough anywhere in here, or if you need more data or whatever.

Yeah!

[Torvon]

warlock problem: you could try to tie him up in another action - e.g. you could ask the player's to choose a "driver" for their disk, and choose the skills so that the warlock qualifies best for "driving around".

[DragonSinged]

@Torvon - Well, the main thing I try to strive for when running my games is to make sure that all of my players are having fun, and I gotta say, if my GM stuck me in a situation where I was basically just rolling "Drive everyone else around" checks while everyone else got to do epic battle, I don't know how happy I'd be.

Also, I was thinking, in this situation, of trying to get each character onto their own personal Floating Lift, so as to get a bunch of people whizzing around all over the place on invisible discs over a lake of magma, basically playing bumpercars with swords.

Is it stretching imagination too far to allow for a few different skills to be able to control these things, so that everyone's at least got a chance? If that's all good, what kind of DC would you make it for level 3 characters, so that they pass frequently, but not always? Also, how do I prevent insta-character death-by-falling-in-magma?

Input! Need Input!

[Torvon]

You could make them devices to steer the thingies - say, as a move action. Like a remote? No DC for boring slo-mo stuff (so everybody can use it), but maybe some kind of check to do loops and other interesting thingies?


Make the things as mobile as possible, so that the melee characters can close in quickly and jump over to other pads ... or something.


And seriously ... 250ft range on a spell? What the heck ...

ta-ta
Torvon

[CaptnB]

For the Warlock, let the Duergars have a spell resistance. Make sure you don't set the SR too high, especially knowing that they have a natural +2 save vs spell and spell-like. The Warlock might succeed his ranged touch attack everytime but the SR will add an extra layer of defense. Alternatively, give everyone a penalty on ranged attack due to moving platforms.

For the platforms themselves, I would simply use a move action to control them. Any roll check would mean the players could fall and die. If you want to increase the difficulty, I would send the Duergar fight in close combat. They have pretty stable little feet when it comes to bullrush and trip, so they could use this to their advantage.

[Grelna the Blue]

I like CaptnB's idea about range penalties, esp. with heat shimmer involved.

Another thing you could try is allowing one or more of the enemy to also have an extreme ranged attack. It would be natural for them to try to stay away from the rest of the party and to target the warlock who is plinking away at their buddies, as they'd be the only ones who could. That could set up a range duel that is going on concurrently with the main action.

[Ailurus]

I like the SR idea the best.

Range penalties aren't going to do that much, if the warlock has decent dex, to help their touch AC. (He'll be shooting at probably at least +4, and the default Duergar warrior in the MM has touch AC 10) The text on Eldritch Spear specifically says 'no range increments' so targeting that specifically will only end badly, and any movement penalties or so you throw in will also affect any ranged attacks from the dwarves, and anything else the rest of the party wants to use while closing.

Also, keep in mind that there are a couple extreme range spells your wizard could have (not saying its optimal, but he could be throwing acid arrows...) and he's getting to launch magic missiles at 130 ft, or casting daze monster at the same range (if he dazes a dwarf platform driver, does the platform crash?). Or what about glitterdusting the driver at 130 ft? And the Artificier can probably consistently hit em with spells at 100+ ft too. Giving the dwarves some SR will cut down on the effectiveness of both those as well, while range penalties will pretty much ignore the 'real' casters and hurt the warlock and fighter-types.




And seriously ... 250ft range on a spell? What the heck ...


Fireball's range is 400+40/level, and the gnome can have that in 2 levels. Acid arrow has range 400+40/level, and wizards can have it at level 3. Glitterdust and Web both have 130ft range at level 3, and do a lot more than a 2d6-damage-to-one-target Eldritch Spear. It really is nothing to complain about.

[DragonSinged]

First of all, yeah, whatever method they end up using to control the discs, I was planning on having be a move action at most, possibly a free action, so that the players can both move and attack. And a failed check wouldn't cause the disc to disappear or whatever, or dump them in the magma, it would just mean that that person couldn't move that round. I would like to make it some sort of check, probably giving options from a few different skills, so as to reward the skillful folks a bit, but still not leave anyone high and dry.. I'm more looking at what sort of numbers would be appropriate, so that it's passable for people who don't have ranks in the appropriate skill - Does the 15 range seem fair? Let's see, they're 3rd level, so that means that they could have 5 ranks max, plus the relevant stat, plus any bonuses.. so that means rolling probably between a 6-10 to pass, if they have ranks.. but if they don't that would probably mean a fair amount of failures. I'll have to ask people about what ranks they have in balance, ride, and arcana..

As for the warlock, I don't really see him as too much of a problem, or anything, I was just sort of hoping for a way to get him out on a disc as well, so he's not just standing on the shore sniping - I'd like to get everyone out there whizzing around. The SR thing might work, but then again, that doesn't address the range, so much as just making sure he doesn't handle the whole thing by himself. Still, I'll think about that one, for sure. The heat-wave shimmer DC upper might work, or possibly the movement thing... but I might end up just having to leave it and give the Duergar some equal range abilities or something. Just glad the warlock doesn't have the ability for his eldritch blast that lets him push people around with it yet, or this encounter wouldn't work at all. = P

[DragonSinged]

Alright, well I've been checking people's character sheets and whatnot, and it looks like their total score after all is totaled in these skills is somewhere between 7-10.

With that in mind, I'm thinking of making it somewhere in the DC range of 15-17 to pass, with their choice of one of these skills:

Balance, Ride, Spellcraft, Use Magic Device.

The concept being that the discs are designed to be controlled through shifts in balance (think Wii Balance board style), but magic users can tap directly into the power flows of the spell to control it, as well.

I'm thinking maybe a +2 synergy bonus for having more than 5 ranks in either balance and ride, or spellcraft and use magic device?


Anyways, what do you guys think of that?

Also, any recommendations for music that you think would be fitting for a battle with Duergar whilst riding a magic disc over a lake of magma? Youtube or whatever links appreciated. :smallbiggrin:


Thanks for the help!

[hewhosaysfish]

Thought: if the warlock is significantly below the area where all the other discs are zipping about then he won't actually be able to hit any of the duergar: all his blasts will impact harmlessly on the underside of the disc they're riding.
The only option is for the warlock to jump on a disc himself and ride it up to the level where all the action is taking place.

[Salanmander]

You could prevent "you fall, insta-death" by having players fall at some rate (I think a rate of falling when you stall out while flying is given in the DMG, you could use that), and allowing other players to dive down to pick them up. Everyone's familiar with the heroic swoop-to-save, so it could make for good cinematics.

[DragonSinged]

@hewhosaysfish & Salanmander - Oh man, I totally didn't think of having the discs whizzing around a ways up above the lava - That actually makes things a lot easier! And then if anyone actually falls off their disc, I'll give the other characters til the falling characters next turn to roll say a DC 20 to force the disc to swoop down to do the rescue thing..

Although that brings up another point - How fast do you guys think these things should move, as a move action? I'm thinking a bit faster than the standard 30 feet thing, but haven't really settled on how much faster.

Also, I was thinking of possibly, say, making whatever the base speed of these things move at be say DC 16, but if they manage to roll higher, say, tack on X amount of speed for every 5 they beat that check by?

What do you guys think? And again, any music suggestions to set the mood?

Running the session tomorrow evening - Any suggestions/help is appreciated!

Thanks!

[DragonSinged]

Just an update, the game was tonight, and everything went great. The players all said they had an awesome time, and thought it was an awesome battle.

One particularly epic moment that stood out - Drow crusader used some minotaur strike or something to bull-rush one of the Duergar, beat him in the strength check (dwarven stability included), and so basically came flying at him top speed, lept from her Disc, smashing him in the face with her shield, knocking him off his Disc, which she landed on, while he plummeted 75 feet into a lake of magma.

Good times.