Malevolence
2011-03-18, 09:43 AM
Yes, I am aware there are several journals for this campaign already. We're going through it, so I'm posting to see if anyone is interested in another.
Some background information here and meta discussion to set the stage:
The entire party is Strongheart Halflings, hailing from the Talenta Plains. As you might guess from the place names, the campaign is set in Eberron. However given its location in a rather isolated area of the world I don't think this will make too much of an impact. Even so, I like Eberron, the other players like Eberron, the DM likes Eberron, so that was that.
There are only 3 PCs. I do not think this is a problem at all.
The entire party is related to each other. All it took is one comment from me to ask if it would be cool if we were all family to get that idea train going. Naturally this resulted in shared backgrounds, and preexisting party relationships and synergy.
RHoD says that it starts at level 6 and goes to 12 in one place, and starts at 5 and goes to 10 in another. There's a lot more support for the former outcome than the latter, both in terms of what other people are doing with their campaigns, and in terms of what actually happens when you play through it. The DM went the former route for these and other reasons.
There are a number of house rules in effect for balance reasons. Due to what we are playing, they help the enemy a lot more than they help us. They will need it though. The only ones that have any real impact on our performance will be listed at the end.
Speaking of which... despite the smaller than usual party, I was very insistent that encounters not be scaled down at all, explaining that RHoD was a very easy module as is for a number of reasons, and that it does not need to be made even easier. As such, a party of 3 would have only some trouble with it. There was originally only going to be 2 of us, which might have actually been somewhat difficult, but a friend of mine expressed frustration at being unable to find a game he was interested in at about the same time we were discussing the game, so I asked if it could be 3 and everyone was fine with that, I invited him, and there was 3. Everyone was also fine with the no scaling down. Someone brought up scaling up. The universal response was something to the effect of "Bring it, that way they can put up an actual fight."
So the party looks like this:
Attec: Druid (me).
Cade: Savage Bard.
Leim: Spell to Power Erudite.
Atena: Artificer cohort of the Druid.
There are also three Fleshraker dinosaurs. One is the Druid's animal companion, and has a two seater saddle for Attec and Cade, who are brothers. The two cousins, Atena and Leim have their own mounts who are also Fleshrakers, but that do not benefit from being an animal companion of course. They're also all Warbeasts, because it's something that can be done with training and as such is exactly the sort of thing I'd expect a Talenta halfling to do to his dino mounts, and are also all Magebred because it's another obvious decision both fluff and crunch wise. And stealth errata makes this legal for animal companions.
Everyone's pure classed, and straightforward enough. Straightforward awesome, that is.
What I expect to happen here is for the first part of the campaign to be really easy, and it to start stepping up later. Particularly since two out of three of the dinos essentially can't scale, so they are liable to quickly become non presences despite being good now. Still the best 800 gold you could possibly spend though. Though I've implied it a few times, I might as well get it out of the way now. I'm somewhat familiar with the module, having played or ran it a few times before. Never all the way through, the campaign always died after the first or second part, but I do have at least a general idea of how things go. It is very hack and slash oriented, which is the most likely reason why interest waned over time. I am curious to see what our DM has in mind for this, to make things more in depth and interesting and less blatantly obvious.
This isn't a problem at all because:
1: I am not the metagaming type.
2: Even if I were the metagaming type, this campaign is impossible to metagame for a number of reasons.
3: The campaign is easy enough, due in some part to the same reasons it is unmetagamable that even if the previous points were not true, there isn't anything to trivialize.
Now you might see me mocking the campaign's difficulty so much and wonder why I'm playing in it. Well, I'm expecting things to be stepped up to make the RHoD into actual credible threats. The concept of the adventure isn't a bad one, it just suffers from the same problem all published modules do - terrible statblocks. The prevalence of a large number of low level humanoid NPC beatsticks does not help with the lack of difficulty - in fact, it is one of the biggest contributing factors to such. It's also why I expect things to get harder later, as there are more actual threats there in the form of casters, monsters, etc. Even the abundance of mooks is something potentially redeemable. But more on that later.
Here are those relevant house rules to our party. Any instance of everyone means everyone. That includes the enemy. There are many more houserules than this, but most of them only benefit the enemy as none of us are using the things they help. Again, we're all completely fine with this.
WBL has been increased by 50%. For everyone.
Everyone has maximum HP.
Blasting spells are slightly improved. Because they need it.
Spells that grant an AC bonus grant an improved effect. There are also Mass versions of all of them, 3 levels higher than the original spell. There is also a Mass GMW, also 3 levels higher.
Mundane defensive items, aka AC boosting items have their cost reduced by half. This also applies to special properties, so for example a +1 Animated shield is 4,500 + base cost, not 9,000 + base cost. They can also go up to +8, so enemies might actually miss once in a while and vice versa.
The +4 enhancement to stat line of spells last 10 minutes per level.
Everyone has all skills as class skills, and a minimum skill points per level of 4 + Int. In other words, 2 + Int skill classes don't exist anymore.
A number of similar skills have been combined together.
Non magical crafting can actually be completed in a reasonable time frame.
Weapon Focus, and Dragonmark feats automatically scale with HD. Additionally, WF applies to a damage category, not a single weapon and dragonmark spells use HD = CL like other SLAs.
Craft feats no longer give you items for half cost. Since the only point of them was to get items for half cost, they are now given out for free.
The Bane weapon enchantment ignores all DR... all of it. Provided the target is affected by the bane type.
When using a finessable weapon, you can choose to use Dexterity instead of Strength for attack and damage. There is no feat tax for doing this.
Action Points can also be used to reroll 1s on attacks and saves.
Full attacks are a Standard action.
The following feats are automatically granted with BAB, instead of being a feat tax:
1: Power Attack, with any weapon you are proficient in. Any weapon. Yes that includes ranged.
1: Point Blank Shot, with any ranged weapon you are proficient in.
4: Precise Shot, with any ranged weapon you are proficient in.
Speaking of proficiencies, gaining new proficiencies has been changed in such a way so as to better reflect their value. Which means it's a lot easier to do, because proficiencies are near worthless 99% of the time, and only mildly useful the rest. And they only get that far because of Spiked Chains.
Lastly, everyone gets one weak feat for free. What qualifies as such is hard to quantify in advance, but is one of those things you know when you see it.
For what it's worth, both my character and cohort took the Mark of Hospitality, the Bard took Quick Draw, and the Erudite took Wild Talent.
Everyone does mean everyone though. So all three of the war dinos took Track with it.
So who's in?
Some background information here and meta discussion to set the stage:
The entire party is Strongheart Halflings, hailing from the Talenta Plains. As you might guess from the place names, the campaign is set in Eberron. However given its location in a rather isolated area of the world I don't think this will make too much of an impact. Even so, I like Eberron, the other players like Eberron, the DM likes Eberron, so that was that.
There are only 3 PCs. I do not think this is a problem at all.
The entire party is related to each other. All it took is one comment from me to ask if it would be cool if we were all family to get that idea train going. Naturally this resulted in shared backgrounds, and preexisting party relationships and synergy.
RHoD says that it starts at level 6 and goes to 12 in one place, and starts at 5 and goes to 10 in another. There's a lot more support for the former outcome than the latter, both in terms of what other people are doing with their campaigns, and in terms of what actually happens when you play through it. The DM went the former route for these and other reasons.
There are a number of house rules in effect for balance reasons. Due to what we are playing, they help the enemy a lot more than they help us. They will need it though. The only ones that have any real impact on our performance will be listed at the end.
Speaking of which... despite the smaller than usual party, I was very insistent that encounters not be scaled down at all, explaining that RHoD was a very easy module as is for a number of reasons, and that it does not need to be made even easier. As such, a party of 3 would have only some trouble with it. There was originally only going to be 2 of us, which might have actually been somewhat difficult, but a friend of mine expressed frustration at being unable to find a game he was interested in at about the same time we were discussing the game, so I asked if it could be 3 and everyone was fine with that, I invited him, and there was 3. Everyone was also fine with the no scaling down. Someone brought up scaling up. The universal response was something to the effect of "Bring it, that way they can put up an actual fight."
So the party looks like this:
Attec: Druid (me).
Cade: Savage Bard.
Leim: Spell to Power Erudite.
Atena: Artificer cohort of the Druid.
There are also three Fleshraker dinosaurs. One is the Druid's animal companion, and has a two seater saddle for Attec and Cade, who are brothers. The two cousins, Atena and Leim have their own mounts who are also Fleshrakers, but that do not benefit from being an animal companion of course. They're also all Warbeasts, because it's something that can be done with training and as such is exactly the sort of thing I'd expect a Talenta halfling to do to his dino mounts, and are also all Magebred because it's another obvious decision both fluff and crunch wise. And stealth errata makes this legal for animal companions.
Everyone's pure classed, and straightforward enough. Straightforward awesome, that is.
What I expect to happen here is for the first part of the campaign to be really easy, and it to start stepping up later. Particularly since two out of three of the dinos essentially can't scale, so they are liable to quickly become non presences despite being good now. Still the best 800 gold you could possibly spend though. Though I've implied it a few times, I might as well get it out of the way now. I'm somewhat familiar with the module, having played or ran it a few times before. Never all the way through, the campaign always died after the first or second part, but I do have at least a general idea of how things go. It is very hack and slash oriented, which is the most likely reason why interest waned over time. I am curious to see what our DM has in mind for this, to make things more in depth and interesting and less blatantly obvious.
This isn't a problem at all because:
1: I am not the metagaming type.
2: Even if I were the metagaming type, this campaign is impossible to metagame for a number of reasons.
3: The campaign is easy enough, due in some part to the same reasons it is unmetagamable that even if the previous points were not true, there isn't anything to trivialize.
Now you might see me mocking the campaign's difficulty so much and wonder why I'm playing in it. Well, I'm expecting things to be stepped up to make the RHoD into actual credible threats. The concept of the adventure isn't a bad one, it just suffers from the same problem all published modules do - terrible statblocks. The prevalence of a large number of low level humanoid NPC beatsticks does not help with the lack of difficulty - in fact, it is one of the biggest contributing factors to such. It's also why I expect things to get harder later, as there are more actual threats there in the form of casters, monsters, etc. Even the abundance of mooks is something potentially redeemable. But more on that later.
Here are those relevant house rules to our party. Any instance of everyone means everyone. That includes the enemy. There are many more houserules than this, but most of them only benefit the enemy as none of us are using the things they help. Again, we're all completely fine with this.
WBL has been increased by 50%. For everyone.
Everyone has maximum HP.
Blasting spells are slightly improved. Because they need it.
Spells that grant an AC bonus grant an improved effect. There are also Mass versions of all of them, 3 levels higher than the original spell. There is also a Mass GMW, also 3 levels higher.
Mundane defensive items, aka AC boosting items have their cost reduced by half. This also applies to special properties, so for example a +1 Animated shield is 4,500 + base cost, not 9,000 + base cost. They can also go up to +8, so enemies might actually miss once in a while and vice versa.
The +4 enhancement to stat line of spells last 10 minutes per level.
Everyone has all skills as class skills, and a minimum skill points per level of 4 + Int. In other words, 2 + Int skill classes don't exist anymore.
A number of similar skills have been combined together.
Non magical crafting can actually be completed in a reasonable time frame.
Weapon Focus, and Dragonmark feats automatically scale with HD. Additionally, WF applies to a damage category, not a single weapon and dragonmark spells use HD = CL like other SLAs.
Craft feats no longer give you items for half cost. Since the only point of them was to get items for half cost, they are now given out for free.
The Bane weapon enchantment ignores all DR... all of it. Provided the target is affected by the bane type.
When using a finessable weapon, you can choose to use Dexterity instead of Strength for attack and damage. There is no feat tax for doing this.
Action Points can also be used to reroll 1s on attacks and saves.
Full attacks are a Standard action.
The following feats are automatically granted with BAB, instead of being a feat tax:
1: Power Attack, with any weapon you are proficient in. Any weapon. Yes that includes ranged.
1: Point Blank Shot, with any ranged weapon you are proficient in.
4: Precise Shot, with any ranged weapon you are proficient in.
Speaking of proficiencies, gaining new proficiencies has been changed in such a way so as to better reflect their value. Which means it's a lot easier to do, because proficiencies are near worthless 99% of the time, and only mildly useful the rest. And they only get that far because of Spiked Chains.
Lastly, everyone gets one weak feat for free. What qualifies as such is hard to quantify in advance, but is one of those things you know when you see it.
For what it's worth, both my character and cohort took the Mark of Hospitality, the Bard took Quick Draw, and the Erudite took Wild Talent.
Everyone does mean everyone though. So all three of the war dinos took Track with it.
So who's in?