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Jinn Master
2011-03-15, 05:06 AM
This campaign is set in Points of Light, but 100 years down the road, with the assumption that no heroes showed, and the lights began to fail.


Ok, so I'm going to be DMing my 4th 4.0 game, which begins with an orc attack on a town by some orcs who have successfully captured the only high level, good aligned cleric for hundreds of miles- an 11th level Deva Cleric of Ioun with two levels in Avenger- he managed to collect some Ayrkyshna armor, and has built up a serious amount of wealth for his church, used in sending out messages for a call for clergy to gather in his town, if they are available (the paladin in the game is responding to this). He managed to rebuild a temple to his goddess, and saved his major port town a few times, and has slowly been building up the area as a bastion against the rising dark forces in the world, preparing for a war to turn back the tide. However, everyone thinks he is dead- the players will rescue him, at which point he will become their quest hub, so to speak.
This game starts at lvl 4, no magic items, just whatever weapons and armor they want as long as it is mundane, and any gear they can justify having acquired at some point in their backstory.

Now here's where the question comes in. I'm not an experienced player, but I'm a pretty good GM, if my players are telling the truth (which I think they do, for the most part), but my games are generally pretty damn hard.

As a for instance, their first encounter will be a split party encounter- they begin with the paladin and fighter(maybe ranger) in a town that is being raided by an orcish horde during a thunderstorm. The fighter's parents die, the paladin saves the innkeeper's daughter from rape/death, hopefully. The fighter and pally will be fighting two lvl 5 orc minions each.

Simultaneously, Zachar, the cleric, will be locked in his iron box, but will not have been tortured this evening, since the 4 orc berserkers normally guarding him will have run to gather horses from the town. There will be two orc berserkers left guarding the remaining 3 party members, classes as yet unknown. There are, about 50 squares in each direction, Orc Raiders acting as scouts. The players have to manage to take out the berserkers while chained together, retrieve their weapons (in the wagon with the cleric) and fight off the raiders before the berserkers come back, who will be seen by the paladin and fighter. I'll time it so that they will get there at about the right time- they will have plenty of motivation to follow, since the paladin's charger and the fighter's horse will have been among those taken- in order to catch the berserker from both sides. After this, they will get a short rest, during which they will hopefully open the box. After that, they will have to take him to portsmouth (the port town) for healing, thinking that the cleric there can heal him, when in fact, the cleric who would be able to heal him is himself. Hopefully you followed that.

Anyway, they will not be attacked here, until a large orcish warband shows up in between them and the city. They will have to figure a way around or through, preferably not involving combat, or they will probably die.


So yea. Am I too hard on my players? I do have easy encounters, but I always feel better as a player when I know i won by the skin of my teeth through roleplaying skill, rather than anything else.

MeeposFire
2011-03-15, 05:18 AM
Wait is this 4e D&D? If it is how do you have a cleric with levels in two classes? You can have multiple classes in 4e but you don't have levels in each class in that case. Is this some sort of houserule?

Jinn Master
2011-03-15, 05:23 AM
Sort of. With the character builder, which I have all my players use, you can multiclass easier than with just the rules- that thing is awesome. You get access to class feats and spells from the other class that you choose, but you can only choose one.

Even though it works differently, it still amounts to multiclassing.

Shyftir
2011-03-15, 05:23 AM
Well finding a way to get a leader or defender (or both!) into the separate groups would probably make this work out a bit better. Maybe let the chained together group find some make-shift weapons/implements before they have to fight to get there own back. Then its tough, but fair and definitely flavorful.

Jinn Master
2011-03-15, 05:28 AM
Well, they can take them off the berserkers, and their weapons are in the wagon, which is only about 20 feet away from them. So that I'm not worried about. But by the end of this encounter, they should have used up everything- and it's the first of the game.

Kurald Galain
2011-03-15, 05:44 AM
This campaign is set in Points of Light, but 100 years down the road, with the assumption that no heroes showed, and the lights began to fail.
How is that different from "regular" points of light?


11th level Deva Cleric of Ioun with two levels in Avenger
I'm not sure what you're getting at; 4E characters can't take two levels in another class, and NPCs don't have class levels in the first place.


This game starts at lvl 4, no magic items,
Are you planning on giving them magic items later on?


So yea. Am I too hard on my players?
It's hard to tell from your description. The main problem is that the PCs start the encounter hobbled. Perhaps the players don't figure out what you expect them to do, and die as a result? Normally a group of characters should have an easy time taking down an equal amount of equal-level monsters.

MeeposFire
2011-03-15, 05:50 AM
You could give the characters the optional inherent bonus system which would make sure the do not fall far behind even though they lack magic items. That rule is awesome and is found in the DMG 2.

Jinn Master
2011-03-15, 05:54 AM
In regular points of light, the idea is that people are starting to show up and help out. There are towns, civilizations starting to rebuild- here there is nothing, just darkness. Part of the backstory is that nearly every other major town was taken out by a plague, which this cleric managed to stop. A few other clerics did the same thing, but bottom line is there are only 4 large cities on the entire continent. This is more of a "what if evil has already won" type of campaign.

For the Cleric, he is an ex adventurer, so I designed him as I would a player character of equal level. He is a VERY important NPC, and will eventually function as a companion to the party, once they reach equal level.
Using feats and powers, you can effectively take two levels in another class.


If they follow the plot, they will have magic items galore, if not, it depends on where they go. The whole plot is built around artifact and item retrieval from various powerful creatures who have stolen them from the people they have killed.


If they don't do what I expect, then there will be a rescue party for the cleric that also rescues them and get's killed as they set the PC's free, still leaving the PC's to fight it out, but I'd rather not have to bail my PC's out. They're a smart group, they can figure it out.


And I was toying with the idea of that rule, but they will all get fully decked out in magic gear by 6th level. I might do it anyway, just because it will be a brutal campaign.

Zombimode
2011-03-15, 06:08 AM
For the Cleric, he is an ex adventurer, so I designed him as I would a player character of equal level. He is a VERY important NPC, and will eventually function as a companion to the party, once they reach equal level.
Using feats and powers, you can effectively take two levels in another class.

Whatever backstory your NPCs and monsters may have, in 4e you should build them with the monster creation rules.
Keep in mind that in 4e the rules are almost completely abstract and metagame-y.
If you meet a Legion Devil at level 1? He will be a level 5 Solo.
Meet the same Devil at level 10? He will be a level 10 Elite.
Meet him at level 20? He will be an level 20 Minion (like in the MM).

Jinn Master
2011-03-15, 06:15 AM
I houserule a great deal of things- one of the things I do is make available to my players all the resources they need about the world, in common knowledge printouts I give them. They know more or less where they can go without being overwhelmed. Everything in my games has a more or less fixed rating, when it comes to anything with a name or anything that isn't a general footsoldier/grunt.

Reluctance
2011-03-15, 07:39 AM
Fighting off two minions is about the difficulty level of video game tutorial battles. The rest of the party will depend on class choices; lightly armored implement wielders can be somewhat functional. Heavily armored weapon wielders will be screwed. I'd knock a level or two off the berserkers to allow for both the tactical limitations of being in chains, and the practical limitations of being gearless. Save the actual difficult encounters until everybody at least has all their stuff.

Master_Rahl22
2011-03-17, 09:56 AM
Sort of. With the character builder, which I have all my players use, you can multiclass easier than with just the rules- that thing is awesome. You get access to class feats and spells from the other class that you choose, but you can only choose one.

Even though it works differently, it still amounts to multiclassing.

Uh, just so you know this is how the rules work. You're not somehow bypassing the rules by using the character builder. If you take a MC feat you can then choose feats and paragon paths that require either class, and if you take the power swap feats you can have powers from both classes as well. No matter how you do it though you still never take "levels" in another class, you just get a few powers/feats/features of your other class.

Kurald Galain
2011-03-17, 10:43 AM
Sort of. With the character builder, which I have all my players use, you can multiclass easier than with just the rules- that thing is awesome. You get access to class feats and spells from the other class that you choose, but you can only choose one.
That sounds like a bug, though.

You should be able to get all feats from your "target" class (except, of course, those that also have a class feature as the prerequisite), not just one; and you should not be able to get any powers at all from your "target" class, except when you use a feat like Novice Power.

Gralamin
2011-03-17, 01:01 PM
Sort of. With the character builder
Are you using the online builder, or the offline? It's pertinent information.

Erom
2011-03-17, 02:16 PM
I will say that starting at lvl4 with only mundane equiptment is a bit harsh, since the normal starting layout for a lvl4 character would be 3 magic items (a lvl3, a lvl4, and a lvl5) and 680gp (or another lvl3 items worth).

Your encounter design on the other hand source totally reasonable, maybe even on the easy side.

Mando Knight
2011-03-18, 12:37 PM
I will say that starting at lvl4 with only mundane equiptment is a bit harsh, since the normal starting layout for a lvl4 character would be 3 magic items (a lvl3, a lvl4, and a lvl5) and 680gp (or another lvl3 items worth).

The Fighter and Paladin each have horses, though, which are worth quite a bit (75 gp for a riding horse, 200 for a warhorse, according to the Adventurer's Vault). Not as much as a level 3 item, but still a significant amount of wealth for a low-level character.

Also, at this low of a level, magic items grant +1s to attack, damage, and defenses. Although it's nice to have those bonuses, it's not like missing out on your +6 Holy Avenger at level 30, where you'll literally have issues getting close to beating your opponent's defenses.

Drglenn
2011-03-18, 11:48 PM
Ok, so I'm going to be DMing my 4th 4.0 game, which begins with an orc attack on a town by some orcs who have successfully captured the only high level, good aligned cleric for hundreds of miles- an 11th level Deva Cleric of Ioun with two levels in Avenger

Quick story things I should mention:
How did he manage to get captured by low-level monsters in the first place?
How are they keeping him hostage (i.e. how has he not escaped yet?)?
How are a small group of relatively low-level adventurers going to make a difference if these guys can take down a paragon-tier guy?


This game starts at lvl 4, no magic items
This will cripple the party, even a +1 bonus really makes a difference in 4e.


Their first encounter will be a split party encounter

NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY
Especially in 4e which needs the party together to function

MeeposFire
2011-03-18, 11:56 PM
+1 to hit is not that big though missing out always feels bad (worse than it actually is).

Easy counter use inherent bonuses and you do not even have to worry about it.

Sinon
2011-03-19, 01:19 PM
How’d a cleric get avenger levels is 4e? That’s a glitch….
None of that matters. In this scenario, he’s a MacGuffin. The PCs are supposed to rescue someone. Princess or avenger/cleric or cheese golem, it doesn’t really matter. He shouldn’t have any bearing on the outcome of this encounter.

If he does, the fact that you threw a paragon N(DM)PC into the mid-heroic mix is going to matter (read suck) more than the rules you used to make him.

As described, your players should handle this pretty easily. Fighter and pally take out the minions in 3-4 rounds at the most.

If you have a controller in the chained-up group, he should be able to get them some time and space to get armed; it'll be a bit of a slug fest, but your guys will make it through well enough.

I'd resolve the fighter/pally fight first, so I can bring them in to help the others if they're gitting beat up too badly.