D&D The way it was meant to be played

[JaronK]

I decided a while back to play D&D EXACTLY as the rules dictated, including things like the distribution of encounters that the DMG calls for. With a friend we've worked out encounter and scroll generators that actually use all monsters and all spells in the game... yehaw.

The first thing I noticed is that the encounters as described are devastating. There's a 5% chance of any given encounter being CR+5 or more... yowch. Of course, there's a tiny chance of fighting something with a CR WELL below your own, which is pretty amusing too. But the average encounter is CR equivalent or higher, and the ability to retreat is actually quite important. A level 6 party could easily walk into a CR 13 encounter.

The second thing I noticed is that the game is a lot more downright fun when you know the DM's not tailoring things specifically to your party. The players build with more fervor knowing that if they forget to know how to deal with swarms, incorporeals, and so on they could be doomed.

Anyway, in the quest to create D&D exactly as described, my players have put together a level 6 party, with the only requirement being that they must be lawful good heroic champion types. They'll be fighting through a randomly generated dungeon with random traps, a random map, random encounters, and random treasure. Some of these fights seem downright unfair. We'll see how they do. I may update this after our next game session, which will be in a week. Fun stuff.

JaronK

[Stegyre]

You should post your map/encounter/treasure generators (or links thereto). I'll bet a lot of people would be interested.

[JaronK]

The map generator is just a random one online. The encounter generator is not ready for public consumption yet.

But to show how the encounter generator works, you just get this:

python encounter_generator.py -c 6 -p 6 6 6 6

The CR for this encounter is 6

Oh joy! Your players are fighting:
4 Undying Soldier; see Eberron Campaign Setting, page 302
May the dice be ever in your favor.

And should they succeed:
Characters with level 6 gain 450xp

-----

python encounter_generator.py -c 6 -p 6 6 6 5

The CR for this encounter is 4

Oh joy! Your players are fighting:
Skin Kite; see Libris Mortis: The Book of the Dead, page 119
3 Rat, Dire; see Monster Manual v.3.5, page 64
May the dice be ever in your favor.

And should they succeed:
Characters with level 5 gain 262xp
Characters with level 6 gain 225xp

JaronK

[Emperor Tippy]

Yes, join the dark side. It's fun.

Play the enemies straight without pulling your punches and the players learn real fast to think, or they quit. One of the two.

It's amazing how many PC's don't get that retreating is often a viable (and the better) choice.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I so look toward to seeing the results of this that I intend to subscribe with e-mail notification once the initial surge of expressed interest subsides.

[AlltheBooks]

The second thing I noticed is that the game is a lot more downright fun when you know the DM's not tailoring things specifically to your party. The players build with more fervor knowing that if they forget to know how to deal with swarms, incorporeals, and so on they could be doomed.

JaronK

Yup. We have totally strayed from status quo style play to a sandbox style and the players love it. Super dangerous. They can go anywhere and do anything but the dangers are very real. Very fun.

Keep having fun man!

[Greenish]

Oh joy! Your players are fighting:
4 Undying Soldier; see Eberron Campaign Setting, page 302Hmm, Good clerics can rebuke Deathless.

[Sith_Happens]

The encounter generator is not ready for public consumption yet.

Once it is ready (along with the treasure generator), you would be doing the world a great service by making it available.

On a related note, I've been wondering for a while now, is there anywhere that someone's made a "highest-level locals" table that includes every base class?

[JaronK]

Right now we're just going to use the NPC base classes of a given level, and generated PC classes always have their favored class with the stock standard NPC build. That only does core base classes though.

JaronK

[Spuddles]

I tried this once, right down to randomly generated towns, NPCs, everything. IF it had a table, there was rolling. Coming up with the tables was hard and I ultimately gave up.

[Fates]

I've done this before, but it was core-only, and only for a single session. I also had my players roll their alignments, classes, and races randomly using the NPC generation tables from the DMG. Lots of fun.

[Metahuman1]

When those generators are ready, I'd love to see them. Who knows, I might get a group together and try to run a game again.

[ericgrau]

Subscribed.

[Norin]

Hah, in because i want to try something like this too.

[Andezzar]

It's amazing how many PC's don't get that retreating is often a viable (and the better) choice.Unless you retreat before being threatened, how do you retreat without having vastly higher speed than the opponent? An AoO might kill you or keep you from getting away and the subsequent turn of the attacker might. Anything other than a 5ft step or complete withdrawal will provoke one. And I#m not even taling about all the encounter ending spells the opposition could have.

[Drachasor]

As a side note, 3.X was definitely meant to be played with house rules. The Designers have expressed shock at how much RAW mattered and how few house rules there were.

On the other hand, I think they forgot regular people aren't game designers. Most sets of house rules I've seen have several horrible, horrible ideas in them.

On retreating, I've seen my fellow players be very odd about it. We were pretty low on strength at 3rd level and ran into 3 Shadows. I told everyone we had to run (my character is good with knowledge skills so he knows about shadows). And I had to convince them it was a good idea. (The shadows had been waiting in a room for maybe 10k years, so I figured they were bound to it somehow).

Similarly, I have See Invisibility up and we opened a super-magical door. I get taken into the next room. I come back and say that we need to back the heck up and close the door. Of course I need to explain in detail what I'm seeing before anyone is interested. Just glad that creature was apparently magically locked up (though I couldn't see what was holding him, so no idea how good a containment it was or what would upset it).

On the other hand, they can be pretty defeatist. We have a few tough fights and suddenly anything can kill us and we better be scared of fighting everything.

It's a weird thing where either they think it should be easy or we're dead. And I am not sure how they figure which is which. Or maybe it is just that a couple people don't want to agree with me. Hmm.


Unless you retreat before being threatened, how do you retreat without having vastly higher speed than the opponent? An AoO might kill you or keep you from getting away and the subsequent turn of the attacker might. Anything other than a 5ft step or complete withdrawal will provoke one. And I#m not even taling about all the encounter ending spells the opposition could have.

It CAN be a viable option in some cases. With random encounters it is harder, but with set encounters there can often be elements that are stuck to a particular area.

Of course, at higher level Teleport or the like can get everyone away really quick.

Outside horses will move faster than most enemies.

I do agree that D&D does make retreating seem bad though. On the other hand, players can be really stupid even about doing something as simple as a tactical withdrawal to a more advantageous position. Or maybe that's just the people I play with. (Our Ninja in a PF game will go into a 3x3 room to fight someone in it, rather than trying to lure them out. Because..."what if they don't come out?" Imho, that's a bridge to cross after the person who's just sworn to rip you apart decides to stay hiding in their little room).

Anyhow, with random encounters, especially at low levels, you could easily get screwed here without the DM throwing you a bone.

[Keneth]

A level 6 party could easily walk into a CR 13 encounter.

That's doable. :smalltongue:

[Yawgmoth]

I am also interested in seeing these generators, but I would probably never use them in an actual game. Me and mine like having combats to have meaning; there needs to be actual answers to "why does this thing live here?", "what are its motivations?" and "what is there to be gained from fighting it?"

But I guess I'll never understand the mindset of seeing "the DM doesn't take into account the PCs at all" as a feature, rather than a profound failure of the primary function of the DM. Guess I'm just too much of a dirty dirty storygamer to properly enjoy randomized everything as anything but a thought exercise.

[Elriconan]

3.5s prescribed encounter levels are easy mode compared to older D&D where overland and urban encounters weren't supposed to match PC power levels (because thats metagame nonsense) and even leveled dungeons and modules weren't supposed to be fair fights, as the PCs were expected to have five or ten hirelings with them and, well, sometimes you're the lion and sometimes you're the antelope. I find the idea of the world matching levels with the players ridiculous enough in Oblivion, in a tabletop game its so bad I totally ignore it. When I run 3.5 you encounter whatever I think should be there, hill giants, like most people, prefer to start fights with weaker people, and will not oblige your level grinding before trying to eat the party.

[Andezzar]

It is about as ridiculous as the majority of people being level 1 NPCs. By the time anyone reaches middle-age he should have more than enough encounters to be level 20. Remember not only combat is an encounter, anything that poses a challenge to the character is an encounter.

If however the peak of the bell curve is near level 6 or 10 you get a lot closer to tippyverse.

[Blackhawk748]

And this is why parties need help sometimes, as i just had a thread about this the other day. The helpful NPC that can save them. Is it cliche? yes. Is said NPC very powerful? yes. Will the party get annoyed? maybe.

Ive found though that if you give them control over when the backup comes they feel better. I just give them a small gem or something and tell them to break it when the really need help. Ive only done this twice but they didnt need it until like 4 months in game later, and boy were they happy they had it.


It is about as ridiculous as the majority of people being level 1 NPCs. By the time anyone reaches middle-age he should have more than enough encounters to be level 20. Remember not only combat is an encounter, anything that poses a challenge to the character is an encounter.

If however the peak of the bell curve is near level 6 or 10 you get a lot closer to tippyverse.

Someone figured out how much XP doing a profession is worth, its not alot. Though they did say that the average commoner should be like lv 6-8

[Elriconan]

It is about as ridiculous as the majority of people being level 1 NPCs. By the time anyone reaches middle-age he should have more than enough encounters to be level 20. Remember not only combat is an encounter, anything that poses a challenge to the character is an encounter.

If however the peak of the bell curve is near level 6 or 10 you get a lot closer to tippyverse.

That's why 3.5s XP award system is stupid...subjective to the point of uselesness. Only gaining wealth and power should net XP, that's simply the definition of advancing as an adventurer. Any other "experience" is irrelevant. Normal humans and monsters do not have levels at all, nor should tbey be treated as classed. Classes and levels are types and degrees of power as an adventurer. There is no such thing as an Fing 'commoner' adventurer, contradictio adjectio. In trying to standardize statisti s they made monzters pointlessly complex and showed they didn't understand what the fack levels and claases were about in the first place.A class isnt a job or profession, itz your categorization as an adventurer; analogous to a social class or caste.

[Tanuki Tales]

The Withdraw action doesn't provoke attack of opportunities when leaving the square you're currently in (as long as the enemy isn't invisible) and it lets you move twice your base speed. So...unless you're hip deep in enemies, fighting something invisible or it's literally 2.5x times faster than you, retreating is viable.

[Andezzar]

The Withdraw action doesn't provoke attack of opportunities when leaving the square you're currently in (as long as the enemy isn't invisible) and it lets you move twice your base speed. So...unless you're hip deep in enemies, fighting something invisible or it's literally 2.5x times faster than you, retreating is viable.My bad, I thought that withdrawal only allowed you to move your speed. But still, a charge also lets you move twice your speed. So if an opponent was in attack range before you started your withdrawal he will be in attack range the next round as well unless his speed is lower than yours.

[Tanuki Tales]

My bad, I thought that withdrawal only allowed you to move your speed. But still, a charge also lets you move twice your speed. So if an opponent was in attack range before you started your withdrawal he will be in attack range the next round as well unless his speed is lower than yours.

Well, the terrain really matters here. If you're in a room with a regular door way and where you are is less distance than leaving the room, just leaving the room and hiding next to the door a few feet prevents any charge actions.

[JaronK]

I am also interested in seeing these generators, but I would probably never use them in an actual game. Me and mine like having combats to have meaning; there needs to be actual answers to "why does this thing live here?", "what are its motivations?" and "what is there to be gained from fighting it?"

But I guess I'll never understand the mindset of seeing "the DM doesn't take into account the PCs at all" as a feature, rather than a profound failure of the primary function of the DM. Guess I'm just too much of a dirty dirty storygamer to properly enjoy randomized everything as anything but a thought exercise.

Actually, the fun in creating the scenario is piecing together why these monsters are there and why the PCs fight them, until I can actually create a coherent storyline.

And the mindset is simple. A lot of DMs tailor everything to the PCs, so that who the PCs are doesn't matter at all. You've got a Rogue with +6 to Search? Well, then the traps require a DC 17 to find. Except that one the DM decided you shouldn't find, that's DC 27. Wait, your Rogue changed his build and now has a +14 to search? Yeah, the regular traps are now DC 25, and that hard one is now DC 35. Now the Rogue can't make the game? Fine, there are no traps. Traps were just a minigame for the Rogue anyway.

But then why was the Rogue there at all? He didn't really matter, because the universe metagamed away his purpose.

When you randomly generate everything, suddenly PC abilities actually matter. Now my party is scrambling to cover their bases... they looked at some of the swarms that could be generated, and suddenly started making sure they had torches knowing that they might actually have to fight them. Now having a Rogue who can actually handle traps matters, because the traps are randomly generated too and they could be trivial or devastating. You don't know. It adds excitement. Your hand will not be held. You will survive or die on your abilities. The game is better.

The trick of the DM, then, is to make the story work. I know a week in advance what I generated. So now which encounter is the boss before the big reveal of why this is happening? Which encounters are the random encounters? A few of the encounters have the note that it should be easier if the party figures out a trick to it, so what's the trick they should be able to figure out?

DMs who tailor everything to their players and their story are storytellers only... the game aspect is easy to lose. The randomizing brings back the game, but need not sacrifice the story.

JaronK

[Elriconan]

And the mindset is simple. A lot of DMs tailor everything to the PCs, so that who the PCs are doesn't matter at all. You've got a Rogue with +6 to Search? Well, then the traps require a DC 17 to find. Except that one the DM decided you shouldn't find, that's DC 27. Wait, your Rogue changed his build and now has a +14 to search? Yeah, the regular traps are now DC 25, and that hard one is now DC 35. Now the Rogue can't make the game? Fine, there are no traps. Traps were just a minigame for the Rogue anyway.

But then why was the Rogue there at all? He didn't really matter, because the universe metagamed away his purpose This is one of many reasons I despise the idea of adjusting the world to match PCs. Entitled players make for crap gams.

In my game everyone can play a rogue. Or no one. What they do, and whether they survive the attempt, is up too them. Too many DMs to impos e some dumb storyline. The PCs are the story, and the challenge is to progress aganst a world that doesn't give out free candy and baby weaklings. And what is the point of gaining wealth ornpower if costs and foes unheard of in history suddenly appear to neutralize it? That's not just nonsensical, it's bad DMing.

There is a lot of built in fail in the game's reward system, but even more when it's treated like a video ga lme where nobody really has to worry because the world is scaling, and no real progress is possible for the same reason. Unmodded Oblivion is one of the worst rpgs I've ever played for thst reason. Low level characters should fear everything and high level characters should dominate most things. Balance is for ballet dancers, heroes live in death's shadow until they become it.

[Andezzar]

I agree that tailoring the world to the PCs does not make a very interesting game, but randomizing everything does not make the game interesting either. Is it particularly interesting if the level 1 party gets roasted by a great wyrm on the way to town just because some random roll said so? I think not.

A game world comes to life once the DM thinks about the motives and resources of the NPCs he wants to have in his world and then lets them act accordingly to the PCs.

So the average village cottage would not be secured with intricate locks, traps and spells, just because the PCs can deal with those. The hideout of a mid to high level wizard however would, and that wizard most likely will not be a blaster.

It is my impression that the problem with leveled games and some levelless ones as well is that offensive as well as defensive capabilities vary vastly between beginner levels and end levels. A high level creature simply has (nearly) nothing to fear from low level ones. And low level creatures have (nearly) no chance of prevailing against high level ones. IRL the difference is much smaller.

[AstralFire]

I'd think everyone would already be familiar with the pros and cons of different styles of DMing...

[Andezzar]

I'd think everyone would already be familiar with the pros and cons of different styles of DMing...Aren't they right there in the DMG? Or was it DMG II?

[Morph Bark]

It is about as ridiculous as the majority of people being level 1 NPCs. By the time anyone reaches middle-age he should have more than enough encounters to be level 20. Remember not only combat is an encounter, anything that poses a challenge to the character is an encounter.

If however the peak of the bell curve is near level 6 or 10 you get a lot closer to tippyverse.

That is if they reach middle age. In a dangerous world like DnD, with all the monsters and wars and poisonous plants and magical experimentation, life expectancy may well be low enough that most people don't come very far.


Someone figured out how much XP doing a profession is worth, its not alot. Though they did say that the average commoner should be like lv 6-8

Got a link? I know you don't get much XP from Profession, but I wonder what an average Commoner is like (especially age-wise).

[Elriconan]

I agree that tailoring the world to the PCs does not make a very interesting game, but randomizing everything does not make the game interesting either. Is it particularly interesting if the level 1 party gets roasted by a great wyrm on the way to town just because some random roll said so? I think not.
.

It is my impression that the problem with leveled games and some levelless ones as well is that offensive as well as defensive capabilities vary vastly between beginner levels and end levels. A high level creature simply has (nearly) nothing to fear from low level ones. And low level creatures have (nearly) no chance of prevailing against high level ones. IRL the difference is much smaller.
In D&D it's supposed to be that way. Sword and Sorcery becomes outright mythology at high levels, and like Elric you can fight an army by yourself if you brought all your magic items. That's not a flaw, it's a genre convention. PCs should have some life goals aside from fighting **** for entertainment.Domain management, spell research, planar travel. Regular people are nobodies compared to mythic heroes, always have been and should be. If you want more IRLness play GURPS or BRP where anything remotsly human will die from a headshot and a child has a non trivial chance to hit with a firearm.

And why would a great wyrm attack low level pcs? That's more a problem of video game trained people who think monsters always attack. I wonder if many of today's players have ever heard of the word 'parley'. Not a month ago I rolled a red dragon wderness encounter on two 1st level PCs, and I certainly didn't alter it. I had already determined there was a certain frequency of red dragons in the area, and they don't stah inside just because all the adventurers around are sissies. However, the red dragon just flew over because two random dudes with no obvious wealth arent even soth slowing down to eat.

The wild is dangerous. That's what hirelings are for.

[Tanuki Tales]

High level DnD outstrips conventional mythology actually. Only Samson ever fought an entire army single handed and won the day.

[Elriconan]

High level DnD outstrips conventional mythology actually. Only Samson ever fought an entire army single handed and won the day.

Um, no. Gilgamesh killed the enforcer of the gods like a punk and bodyslammed an ogre the size of a mountain to death. Hercules tore down the walls of Troy and razed the city in a day, something it took two armies ten years to do. I wont even get into Finnish heroes. You should read more mythology, you are severely mistaken.

[Tanuki Tales]

Um, no. Gilgamesh killed the enforcer of the gods like a punk and bodyslammed an ogre the size of a mountain to death. Hercules tore down the walls of Troy and raised the city in a day, something it took two armies ten years to do. You should read more mythology.

Yeah, love how none of that is a rebuttal to my whole, "No mythological hero ever beat an army one v. X by themselves except Samson".

And let me add the rider that I'm talking about non-deities. I'm aware about Hanuman and possibly that one Aztec War God.

Maybe you should read more mythology.

[Elriconan]

{{scrubbed}}

[Tanuki Tales]

{{scrubbed}}

[Logic]

Yes, join the dark side. It's fun.

Play the enemies straight without pulling your punches and the players learn real fast to think, or they quit. One of the two.

It's amazing how many PC's don't get that retreating is often a viable (and the better) choice.

Part of that problem is that far too many DMs forget that option is also available for enemies. I am guilty of this myself, and that every DM I have ever played with (save one) has had 99% of our combat encounters as a fight to the death, when clearly the opponents should cut-and-run when the first few guys go down. The only time the foes flee is when they were scripted to in a prepublished adventure.

[Tanuki Tales]

Part of that problem is that far too many DMs forget that option is also available for enemies. I am guilty of this myself, and that every DM I have ever played with (save one) has had 99% of our combat encounters as a fight to the death, when clearly the opponents should cut-and-run when the first few guys go down. The only time the foes flee is when they were scripted to in a prepublished adventure.

I think it stems from the fact that people tend to forget that killing something isn't the only way to get EXP. A monster choosing to cut and run because it realizes it has a snowball's chance in the Nine Hells at beating the PCs awards the exact same EXP as if the party killed it.

[Logic]

I think it stems from the fact that people tend to forget that killing something isn't the only way to get EXP. A monster choosing to cut and run because it realizes it has a snowball's chance in the Nine Hells at beating the PCs awards the exact same EXP as if the party killed it.

But what about the loot!? :smalltongue:
(I know, some monsters don't carry all of their treasure on them.)

[Tanuki Tales]

But what about the loot! :smalltongue:

You think that thing is going to bother carrying around 300 pounds of gold coins when it's trying to not become someone's Nemean Lion? :smallwink:

[Brookshw]

Yeah, but they still want to murder hobo it for its "shinies"

[Andezzar]

That is if they reach middle age. In a dangerous world like DnD, with all the monsters and wars and poisonous plants and magical experimentation, life expectancy may well be low enough that most people don't come very far.I'm not talking about monsters. Just haggling the price with another NPC is an encounter, convincing the guard that you are allowed to enter the city is an encounter, going to a bar is an encounter, in a japanese setting meeting a nobleman as commoner is a potentially deadly encounter and so on. So NPCs will not stay level 1 very long. This however holds true for every other NPC as well. So once they meet again they will most likely still be considered encounters within the range that provides XP.


In D&D it's supposed to be that way. Sword and Sorcery becomes outright mythology at high levels, and like Elric you can fight an army by yourself if you brought all your magic items. That's not a flaw, it's a genre convention. If yiu want more IRLness play GURPS or BRP where anything remotsly human will die from o e headshot and a child has a non trivial chance to hit with a firearm.Yes, the PCs are supposed to become mythical figures. The problem is that when they do, they only find very extreme situations challenging. To make it more interesting for the players you must either have world ending threats every tuesday or give a lot more people the same potential. If those threats come up regularly around the PCs, why do such threats seek out the areas of the PCs and not other less dangerous areas?


And why would a great wyrm attack low level pcs? Because it needs a snack :smallbiggrin:
More seriously though, if the dragon has no intention of interacting wth the PCs and the PCs don't either, is it really an encounter? Where is the challenge. I'm not saying that the dragon would always attack them, but IMHO for an encounter there should be the potential for danger and gain for the PCs.


That's more a problem of video game trained people who think monsters always attack.Of course it needn't attack. The dragon could simply land, scare the puny humans half to death and extort money and/or information from them. Again you could ask, why would the dragon do that? There may be reasons for it, but a random encounter table won't tell you. And if there is no reason fort the dragon to interact with the puny PCs then there shouldn't be an encounter. That's basically my general point. Give your NPCs reasons to do the things they do just like the PCs hopefully have reasons for what they do.

[Blackhawk748]

Well if the PCs are invading the monsters lair i tend to have them fight to the death, i mean after all their home is being invaded, but for running into a roving band of orcs? they run when about half of them go down.

And as for the Dragon, it may just want to scare the pants off of people, seriously red dragons are *****. and ill be honest if i was a dragon the size of a warehouse i would drop in on two unsuspecting people taking a walk through my turf to scare the crap out of them, and then fly off having a good laugh.

[Tanuki Tales]

Because it needs a snack :smallbiggrin:



What dragon in its right mind would eat a human? Pigs taste exactly the same, weigh more and don't generally try to steal your hoard or have relatives, organizations or kingdoms that come looking for revenge. :smallwink:

[Particle_Man]

When those generators are ready, I'd love to see them. Who knows, I might get a group together and try to run a game again.

+1! If it includes encounters with NPCs that would be cool too!

[Particle_Man]

What dragon in its right mind would eat a human? Pigs taste exactly the same, weigh more and don't generally try to steal your hoard or have relatives, organizations or kingdoms that come looking for revenge. :smallwink:

Apparently there are subtle differences that only the Red Dragon palate can discriminate, as they prefer the taste of human and elven youths. (draconomicon)

[Blackhawk748]

"because they are crunchy and taste good with ketchup" - Unkown

Its like eating a pretzel wrapped in bacon lol

[Tanuki Tales]

Apparently there are subtle differences that only the Red Dragon palate can discriminate, as they prefer the taste of human and elven youths. (draconomicon)

With Red Dragons it makes sense though. They're like hipsters of cruelty.

[Logic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andezzar


Because it needs a snack

What dragon in its right mind would eat a human? Pigs taste exactly the same, weigh more and don't generally try to steal your hoard or have relatives, organizations or kingdoms that come looking for revenge.

Your second to last point is exactly why a dragon should eat humans. Eat the thieves before you eat the dumb beasts.


Posted from Giantitp.com App for Android

[Tanuki Tales]

*sigh*

Guys, it was a joke. It's already be ruined, so let's move on, shall we?

[Blackhawk748]

Why not do both? have a pig-human-elf kabob

omg i just pictured a red dragon eating that with a bib at a huge table lol

[JaronK]

I agree that tailoring the world to the PCs does not make a very interesting game, but randomizing everything does not make the game interesting either. Is it particularly interesting if the level 1 party gets roasted by a great wyrm on the way to town just because some random roll said so? I think not.

Won't happen. The DMG doesn't allow experience for CRs more than 7 levels above the party, so that isn't going to happen. But yes, the DMG does say that some encounters should be that high, and that they should run.


It is my impression that the problem with leveled games and some levelless ones as well is that offensive as well as defensive capabilities vary vastly between beginner levels and end levels. A high level creature simply has (nearly) nothing to fear from low level ones. And low level creatures have (nearly) no chance of prevailing against high level ones. IRL the difference is much smaller.

Note that with randomizing the world still levels, because the DMG says that. You just don't know what sort of encounters you'll deal with, and some will be much lower while some will be much higher.

JaronK

[Andezzar]

Won't happen. The DMG doesn't allow experience for CRs more than 7 levels above the party, so that isn't going to happen. But yes, the DMG does say that some encounters should be that high, and that they should run.I thought the CR system was also a form of tailoring the game world to the PCs. Even if such an encounter does not provide XPs, it could still inconvenience the PCs. If there is no inconvenience, there is no encounter.




Note that with randomizing the world still levels, because the DMG says that. You just don't know what sort of encounters you'll deal with, and some will be much lower while some will be much higher.
Besides a couple of exceptions (dragons, monsters with class levels) the potential for improvement is much smaller for monsters than PCs. For NPCs with class levels it makes little sense not to level up which the DMG fiats in the random generated game world.

[Sam K]

Completely randomized encounters are a great tactical challenge, and provides a good balance between optimizing for a single role (since you can end up facing things above your level, you need to be good at what you do to stand a chance), and maintaining some flexibility (because you can end up facing an ecounter where your speciality is useless). From the role playing perspective, I feel it can be taken too far, though. Even dungeons should make some sense.

I always felt the best way to design encounters and scenarios is to design something that makes sense for the world and the setting, and then give the players a decent chance to prepare for it. If the players are preparing to cross the giant hills (so named because they are known to be inhibited by... hill giants!) they should be able to figure out what they may encounter, and make suitable preparations. If they cant beat a bunch of hill giants, maybe they should change their travel plans.

At the same time, if the party is exploring a temple ruin known to have been taken over by mindflayers, they should face mostly mind-flayer related enemies. It just feels wrong if they encounter wraiths, drow, flesh golems, demons and kua-toa in the ilithid hive. Ofcourse, mindflayers can dominate various creatures, and are smart enough to have defenders that can compensate for their weaknesses, but too much randomness can distract from the game. If you end up thinking "I cant imagine how all these creatures ended up here", it might be taken a bit too far, imo.

[Morph Bark]

I'm not talking about monsters. Just haggling the price with another NPC is an encounter, convincing the guard that you are allowed to enter the city is an encounter, going to a bar is an encounter, in a japanese setting meeting a nobleman as commoner is a potentially deadly encounter and so on. So NPCs will not stay level 1 very long. This however holds true for every other NPC as well. So once they meet again they will most likely still be considered encounters within the range that provides XP.

This reminds me that I've never seen roleplay encounters be deemed as encounters in the "grants XP" sense in any official DnD book, though I do use that rule as a DM myself. Is it, anywhere?

[JaronK]

Besides a couple of exceptions (dragons, monsters with class levels) the potential for improvement is much smaller for monsters than PCs. For NPCs with class levels it makes little sense not to level up which the DMG fiats in the random generated game world.

The monsters don't improve, you just get nastier monsters. You can't randomly generate a single Wolf when they're level 20.

Note that part of the reason this generator isn't ready for public use is we haven't implemented all the features. New features will include alignment and type choosing, so you can have a dungeon full of demons or something.

JaronK

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Drachasor
On the other hand, they can be pretty defeatist. We have a few tough fights and suddenly anything can kill us and we better be scared of fighting everything.

It's a weird thing where either they think it should be easy or we're dead.

It's not just your group. I've seen this attitude come up with several different sets of players.

It can be more than a little frustrating, when you know the encounter is winnable if they just hunker down and get it done. And then sometimes they rabbit because things veered off in a direction no one was expecting.

Sometimes a party just channels Mal Reynolds.

:smalltongue:

[Blackhawk748]

Honestly it would make sense that you couldnt roll, say a wolf pack when your level 12, i mean the party would probably scare them off considering how powerful they are.

[Urpriest]

Oh joy! Your players are fighting:
Skin Kite; see Libris Mortis: The Book of the Dead, page 119
3 Rat, Dire; see Monster Manual v.3.5, page 64
May the dice be ever in your favor.

And should they succeed:
Characters with level 5 gain 262xp
Characters with level 6 gain 225xp

JaronK

Huh. If I were doing this, I'd stick with published Organization entries.

[JaronK]

Honestly it would make sense that you couldnt roll, say a wolf pack when your level 12, i mean the party would probably scare them off considering how powerful they are.

It's randomly rolled using the DMG charts, but they weren't clear about how easy some encounters should be, so there's an exponential falloff of the odds of getting an extremely low encounter. You can get a CR -5 .2% of the time.

JaronK

[Emperor Tippy]

The monsters don't improve, you just get nastier monsters. You can't randomly generate a single Wolf when they're level 20.

Note that part of the reason this generator isn't ready for public use is we haven't implemented all the features. New features will include alignment and type choosing, so you can have a dungeon full of demons or something.

JaronK

The real fun begins when you combine it with a program that dynamically changes and optimizes monsters and NPC's based on such factors as Int and Wis score, environment, allies, location, faction, age, and archtype by re-selecting feats, level up points, skill points, spells, class levels, and magic items.

Oh, word of advice. Split the database into OGL content and non OGL content and make sure that you use your own code, because if you don't do that they you will run into legal issues if you try to release it (and especially if you try to sell it).

And I do recommend trying to sell it, because most of the publicly available encounter generators seriously suck.

[prufock]

The second thing I noticed is that the game is a lot more downright fun when you know the DM's not tailoring things specifically to your party. The players build with more fervor knowing that if they forget to know how to deal with swarms, incorporeals, and so on they could be doomed.

Personal preference, I suppose, but I've found that games with randomly generated encounters tend to be kind of boring. I prefer encounters to be tailored as part of the story arc.

[JaronK]

The whole point was to use non OGL content, but luckily we're not actually stating out the monsters... the generator just gives you the monster name and a page reference (which we got from the official site).

It's all strictly our own code.

We can't release the spell database though, because that has full descriptions of spells, totally searchable, which we created so our Archivists could find truly random scrolls and so that Shadowcraft mages could quickly look up viable spells to duplicate.

JaronK

[Emperor Tippy]

The whole point was to use non OGL content, but luckily we're not actually stating out the monsters... the generator just gives you the monster name and a page reference (which we got from the official site).

It's all strictly our own code.
Then I advise against a free public release because a lot of the community would be willing to pay a few bucks for such a tool. It won't make you any great amount of money but selling between one and five thousand copies is about what we figured as a reasonable conservative estimate at a $5 price point.

One reason that we haven't gone and coded up a random monster/encounter/dungeon/NPC generator is that the ROI isn't really good enough (as we would have to pretty much recode the whole thing from scratch because our current set up is a mash up of about 12 separate proprietary programs that are mostly under contracts that prevent us from selling them to anyone but a specific client).


We can't release the spell database though, because that has full descriptions of spells, totally searchable, which we created so our Archivists could find truly random scrolls and so that Shadowcraft mages could quickly look up viable spells to duplicate.

JaronK

Yeah, stupid copyright laws interfering with gaming

[TuggyNE]

As a side note, 3.X was definitely meant to be played with house rules. The Designers have expressed shock at how much RAW mattered and how few house rules there were.

On the other hand, I think they forgot regular people aren't game designers. Most sets of house rules I've seen have several horrible, horrible ideas in them.

Let's be fair: most game designers are not game designers either*, as we can determine in precisely the same way. Those that are should band together and work out a set of rules that don't have horrible ideas in them for the benefit of everyone else.


*At least in 3.x.

[tadkins]

This is an interesting thread.

Random encounters can be a good thing I think. I mean, that dragon or vampire isn't just going to stay away because the party is a low level. Building them in such a way that the encounter involves just surviving or talking their way out of the fight is a good way to get players to think outside of the "slash slash slash" mentality.

At the same time though, I think a good DM should be mindful somewhat of the party they're creating the game for. For instance, if I decided to play an Enchanter and end up fighting nothing but undead and constructs, with no social situations in between, I'd probably be begging to reroll my character. Of course, if the group of players decides that it can do without something, then there's nothing wrong with throwing a speedbump in their way. As an example, no one's investing in Survival? Make them regret it a little when they have to trek through a forest.

It's a tough balance.

[JaronK]

The nice thing about the randomization is an enchanter might fight some undead, but only an appropriate proportion of undead. Most of the time, they'll fight other stuff. This pushes players to build characters that are strong but not complete one trick ponies, yet your one trick (if generalized) should work well a reasonable amount of the time.

In other news, here's a random encounter generated for a level 6 party:

python encounter_generator.py -c 6 -p 6 6 6 6

The CR for this encounter is 9

Oh joy! Your players are fighting:
Crab, Huge Monstrous; see Stormwrack, page 141
Lolth-Touched Drow Ranger; see Monster Manual IV, page 92
May the dice be ever in your favor.

And should they succeed:
Characters with level 6 gain 1350xp

Dear lord. Run away, if you can! The crab elf will slaughter all!

JaronK

[fishyfishyfishy]

Subscribed.

This looks very interesting. Please keep us updated!

[tadkins]

Now I am curious as to how a Drow Ranger managed to wind up with a crab.

But yep, this is good stuff. :)

[Drachasor]

It's not just your group. I've seen this attitude come up with several different sets of players.

It can be more than a little frustrating, when you know the encounter is winnable if they just hunker down and get it done. And then sometimes they rabbit because things veered off in a direction no one was expecting.

Sometimes a party just channels Mal Reynolds.

:smalltongue:

Glad to know I'm not the only one that has to deal with this.


Let's be fair: most game designers are not game designers either*, as we can determine in precisely the same way. Those that are should band together and work out a set of rules that don't have horrible ideas in them for the benefit of everyone else.


*At least in 3.x.

Well, if you want to be harsh, it is hardly confined to 3E. Actually, 3E had more talent than I think any of the other D&D variations. On the whole it is better than Pathfinder, 4E, and probably 5E. Not that each one hasn't had some good ideas.

Part of the problem with D&D is that it tries to cater to EVERYONE. Frankly, there are lots of different things to want out of gaming. A lot of them are incompatible with each other. So it's no surprise that D&D ends up being a mish-mash of various ideas that don't play nice with each other.


Now I am curious as to how a Drow Ranger managed to wind up with a crab.

But yep, this is good stuff. :)

Captured by Aboleth

[TuggyNE]

Dear lord. Run away, if you can! The crab elf will slaughter all!

Crab elf (in the style of driders and scorrows) should totally be a thing. I guess it'd need to be a different setting, in which drow for some reason all lived near the sea and were, I dunno, LG or something. You could call the conglomerations "crows". Wait, no. I'm actually kind of serious about the rest of it though!

[Andezzar]

Of course, if the group of players decides that it can do without something, then there's nothing wrong with throwing a speedbump in their way. As an example, no one's investing in Survival? Make them regret it a little when they have to trek through a forest.
If the group neglected or forwent to invest in survival, they probably know it. Why would they trek through the dangerous forest? there is a line between bravery and stupidity.


The nice thing about the randomization is an enchanter might fight some undead, but only an appropriate proportion of undead. Most of the time, they'll fight other stuff.You may be surprised how many monsters in MM and other sources are undead or otherwise immune to mind-affecting abilities.

[Drachasor]

If the group neglected or forwent to invest in survival, they probably know it. Why would they trek through the dangerous forest? there is a line between bravery and stupidity.

Eh, it isn't that hard to be able to go without it. Though that requires investment of other resources.


You may be surprised how many monsters in MM and other sources are undead or otherwise immune to mind-affecting abilities.

Indeed. Playing Enchanters is pretty tough in this regard.

[tadkins]

If the group neglected or forwent to invest in survival, they probably know it. Why would they trek through the dangerous forest? there is a line between bravery and stupidity.



The BBEG they're chasing just ran into the forest. I dunno, there'd be plenty of ways the party could be forced to go through a forest. And that's just one example. I have an encounter in mind that'd become a lot tougher if the party lacked sufficient Knowledge: Nobility, for instance.




Indeed. Playing Enchanters is pretty tough in this regard.

Would figure the best way for an Enchanter to fight the undead is to coerce an undead-slaying specialist to do it for them. xD

[Andezzar]

The BBEG they're chasing just ran into the forest. I dunno, there'd be plenty of ways the party could be forced to go through a forest.They are never forced to do anything. Going through the forest might be the easiest course of action if they know how to navigate it. If they don't it's a different story. They could either abandon chasing the BBEG or get to him via other means (e.g. scry + teleport). If walking through the forest is not a viable option it is just smart not to use that option.


And that's just one example. I have an encounter in mind that'd become a lot tougher if the party lacked sufficient Knowledge: Nobility, for instance.I never said that not having certain abilities would not have an impact on the difficulty of the encounter, it's just that the party does not have to rely on abilities it does not have and thus fail.


Would figure the best way for an Enchanter to fight the undead is to coerce an undead-slaying specialist to do it for them. xDThis would however require the fiat that such a specialist is available. That does not fit with total randomization of the game world.

[JaronK]

So! Without giving too much away yet, here's the story so far, which I put together to continue off the last DM's story and after having generated my random encounters. Note this is a variant of E6.

Note: if you're in my game, stay the heck out!

In our last story, the heroes rescued the Succubus Paladin (see online on the WotC site, but she's a Succubus Paladin 6), but she was badly wounded. She has a ring that makes it so she can never die but heals very slowly, an has lost all her gear. The heroes then went into White Plume Mountain... and all ended up permanently insane in a TPK situation. They're now in prison. Oops.

So now we have a new band of heroes. I've told them they must all be Lawful Good Paladinesc characters (not the class, but the mindset). I know we've got a Crusader 6 and a VoP Monk 6, and I believe on Cleric 6. Not sure what the 4th character will be. The Monk is optimizing a good bit more than the others, so he should be okay... we'll see. Anyway, the Succubus Paladin will try to recruit these four to save the first four, but on the way they'll find out that an Artificer tried to take apart an ancient portal for the exp and failed horribly causing rifts in the fabric between worlds. The rifts are expanding and dangerous creatures are getting out, so the new heroes must divert to save the day.

They'll then go along with the Paladin towards the dome which once contained the ancient portal. It's now radiating magic and elemental forces from random tears around the area... vents of steam shoot out of the sky, fire gouts burst forth, and so on. And the first encounter, a CR 9 (with the special note that this should be easy if done right) is forced out of a nearby portal. With the paladin to help, it's an easy fight... but there's a trick to this.

More when the players start actually playing, as we know that no plan survives contact with the PCs.

And since I wanted to leave everyone with a random level 6 encounter with each post in this thread:

python encounter_generator.py -c 6 -p 6 6 6 6

The CR for this encounter is 2

Oh joy! Your players are fighting:
Tomb Spider Broodswarm; see Monster Manual IV, page 164
May the dice be ever in your favor.

And should they succeed:
Characters with level 6 gain 112xp

Neat, an easy one. There's an insanely low chance of getting an encounter this low, but it can indeed happen.

JaronK

[Andezzar]

Hmm this sound like a heavily scripted storyline. How does that fit with randomizing?

[JaronK]

Simple. I generated the encounters first, 13 of them (enough to level). Then I looked at the monsters to fight and the party, and chose a dungeon scheme I thought was appropriate. The dungeon generator I used created a few core encounters, so those are the wandering monsters if they wait too long. Then I built the story around this concept.

For example, one of the generated encounters was a CR 9 with a note that it should be easier. That's going to be what they have to fight at the start of the quest, with the assistance of the paladin (it'll be easy either way, but how they deal with it will effect things down the line).

Basically, the idea is to generate the encounters first and build a story around it.

JaronK

[Spuddles]

I think it stems from the fact that people tend to forget that killing something isn't the only way to get EXP. A monster choosing to cut and run because it realizes it has a snowball's chance in the Nine Hells at beating the PCs awards the exact same EXP as if the party killed it.

I wish my DM would follow that rule....


Honestly it would make sense that you couldnt roll, say a wolf pack when your level 12, i mean the party would probably scare them off considering how powerful they are.

How does that work? Does the parties names show up in red to the wolf or something?


The real fun begins when you combine it with a program that dynamically changes and optimizes monsters and NPC's based on such factors as Int and Wis score, environment, allies, location, faction, age, and archtype by re-selecting feats, level up points, skill points, spells, class levels, and magic items.

Oh, word of advice. Split the database into OGL content and non OGL content and make sure that you use your own code, because if you don't do that they you will run into legal issues if you try to release it (and especially if you try to sell it).

And I do recommend trying to sell it, because most of the publicly available encounter generators seriously suck.

They're not bad for what they are- free. I suck at map making, and rolling treasure is tedious, so I'm a big fan of donjon. Good place to start.


Crab elf (in the style of driders and scorrows) should totally be a thing. I guess it'd need to be a different setting, in which drow for some reason all lived near the sea and were, I dunno, LG or something. You could call the conglomerations "crows". Wait, no. I'm actually kind of serious about the rest of it though!

Doesnt the god of kinky sex have those as his minions in 40k?

[Sith_Happens]

We can't release the spell database though, because that has full descriptions of spells, totally searchable, which we created so our Archivists could find truly random scrolls and so that Shadowcraft mages could quickly look up viable spells to duplicate.

Could you not write a version of that with the descriptions replaced with page references?:smallconfused:

[Drachasor]

Could you not write a version of that with the descriptions replaced with page references?:smallconfused:

If the source isn't indicated in their database, then that would be a lot of work.

[Urpriest]

snip

Ok, again, if the point is to use WotC's concept of a RAW appropriate adventure, why aren't you using the RAW organization entries for the monsters? Introducing all these silly combinations seems to be counter to the idea that creatures typically appear as listed in their organization entries.



How does that work? Does the parties names show up in red to the wolf or something?

Remember, not everything happens onscreen. If the party casually mows down a couple wolves before the pack flees and it takes no meaningful part of their resources, then you can just say "the forest is full of animals, many of them hungry" and otherwise not mention it. Similarly, if a great wyrm red dragon flies overhead and doesn't interact with the party at all, that's not an encounter, that's "this forest is patrolled by a red dragon, who you occasionally catch glimpses of through the treetops".

[JaronK]

Ok, again, if the point is to use WotC's concept of a RAW appropriate adventure, why aren't you using the RAW organization entries for the monsters? Introducing all these silly combinations seems to be counter to the idea that creatures typically appear as listed in their organization entries.

We don't have that information in the database. However, we're setting it up so you can at least do things like generating random cold subtype creatures, or random animals, or similar. Also, it biases towards similar creatures, so you're more likely to random find a pack of wolves than to find a wolf, a donkey, and a bloodmist swarm.

We're working this out as we go but it does take time.

@Sith: We actually do have books, but not page numbers, for all the spells. We could release a simplified version that would coincidentally allow you to then search on Zook's all spells database that we might or might not have used as a seed for our DB.

We may yet do it, but we're perfectionists.

EDIT: Nearly forgot, here's another fun random encounter:

python encounter_generator.py -c 6 -p 6 6 6 6

The CR for this encounter is 6

Oh joy! Your players are fighting:
3 Azer; see Monster Manual v.3.5, page 21
Lolth-Touched Monstrous Hunting Spider; see Monster Manual IV, page 93
May the dice be ever in your favor.

And should they succeed:
Characters with level 6 gain 487xp

Evidently it's an Azer hunting party with their own tracking spider!

JaronK

[Urpriest]

We don't have that information in the database. However, we're setting it up so you can at least do things like generating random cold subtype creatures, or random animals, or similar. Also, it biases towards similar creatures, so you're more likely to random find a pack of wolves than to find a wolf, a donkey, and a bloodmist swarm.


Ah, a technical issue rather than a philosophical one, gotcha.

[JaronK]

Yes, if we had a complete database we'd do it by environments too, but we can't. Best we can do is have the DM keep rolling random ones until they get one that fits.

If anyone actually wants to go through WotC's official list of all creatures and add in environments, and give that back to as a csv, I'd happily use it.

Here's an encounter, whee!

python encounter_generator.py -c 6 -p 6 6 6 6

The CR for this encounter is 11

Oh joy! Your players are fighting:
Pureblood Slayer; see Monster Manual IV, page 184
Bearded Devil (Barbazu); see Monster Manual v.3.5, page 52
Scorpionfolk; see Monster Manual II, page 221
May the dice be ever in your favor.

And should they succeed:
Characters with level 6 gain 2775xp

...That one was a bit random.

JaronK

[DeltaEmil]

Don't forget the power to refluff a monster as being something completely different. A manticore for example could be refluffed as a master wuxia swordsman who airwalks and throws shurikens at people and has a mighty stance that allows him to have a greater reach than normal and makes it harder to pass through his space. The reason why the master wuxia swordsman cannot be affected by effects that target humanoids (like the charm person and dominate person spell) is that the master wuxia swordsman has a visible magic tattoo that grants him immunity to such spells and effects.

The three randomly rolled worgs and the two Large monstrous centipedes could also become the master wuxia swordsman's humanoid minions and helpers (all with visible magic tattoos to explain why they cannot be affected by charm person).

The stats are absolutely the same, it's just that instead of a bunch of malevolent man-eating beasts, the group is now fighting a bunch of robbers with a kung fu master leading them.

[Augmental]

Don't forget the power to refluff a monster as being something completely different. A manticore for example could be refluffed as a master wuxia swordsman who airwalks and throws shurikens at people and has a mighty stance that allows him to have a greater reach than normal and makes it harder to pass through his space. The reason why the master wuxia swordsman cannot be affected by effects that target humanoids (like the charm person and dominate person spell) is that the master wuxia swordsman has a visible magic tattoo that grants him immunity to such spells and effects.

The three randomly rolled worgs and the two Large monstrous centipedes could also become the master wuxia swordsman's humanoid minions and helpers (all with visible magic tattoos to explain why they cannot be affected by charm person).

The stats are absolutely the same, it's just that instead of a bunch of malevolent man-eating beasts, the group is now fighting a bunch of robbers with a kung fu master leading them.

What if the players try to dispel the magic tattoos?

[Randomguy]

Question: Do you have good aligned creatures in there too, if you want to use the generator on an evil party, or if you want it possible to meet some allies in the dungeon?

[DeltaEmil]

What if the players try to dispel the magic tattoos?They're alchemical, which as a side-effect reduces the Intelligence of its wearer permanently because of weird mushrooms and the dung of several icky animals that have been used for the creation of the tattoo, and is the reason why the totally-not-a-Manticore-but-a-swordsman has only 7 Intelligence.

Or these tattoos are actually completely useless symbols and the totally-not-a-Manticore-but-a-swordsman has them because he's superstitious and believes that having these tattoos that tell everyone not to bother with charm person on him protects him totally from charm person, and weirdly enough, it really does, but because of other reasons.

Simply refluff it until it's good enough, as long as it doesn't interfere with the mechanical side.

[JaronK]

Question: Do you have good aligned creatures in there too, if you want to use the generator on an evil party, or if you want it possible to meet some allies in the dungeon?

All creatures will eventually be in there. Right now we're missing PC races, but they're going to go in, always using their favored class. So Gnome Bard 3 will be in there eventually.

Currently, good creatures are indeed in there. I use them as entrapped people to be rescued, or similar.

And here's a random encounter!

python encounter_generator.py -c 6 -p 6 6 6 6

The CR for this encounter is 6

Oh joy! Your players are fighting:
Kuo-Toa Harpooner; see Monster Manual V, page 96
4 Viper, Fiendish; see Magic of Faerûn, page 131
May the dice be ever in your favor.

And should they succeed:
Characters with level 6 gain 525xp

JaronK

[Pickford]

I decided a while back to play D&D EXACTLY as the rules dictated, including things like the distribution of encounters that the DMG calls for. With a friend we've worked out encounter and scroll generators that actually use all monsters and all spells in the game... yehaw.

The first thing I noticed is that the encounters as described are devastating. There's a 5% chance of any given encounter being CR+5 or more... yowch. Of course, there's a tiny chance of fighting something with a CR WELL below your own, which is pretty amusing too. But the average encounter is CR equivalent or higher, and the ability to retreat is actually quite important. A level 6 party could easily walk into a CR 13 encounter.

The second thing I noticed is that the game is a lot more downright fun when you know the DM's not tailoring things specifically to your party. The players build with more fervor knowing that if they forget to know how to deal with swarms, incorporeals, and so on they could be doomed.

Anyway, in the quest to create D&D exactly as described, my players have put together a level 6 party, with the only requirement being that they must be lawful good heroic champion types. They'll be fighting through a randomly generated dungeon with random traps, a random map, random encounters, and random treasure. Some of these fights seem downright unfair. We'll see how they do. I may update this after our next game session, which will be in a week. Fun stuff.

JaronK

When you say lawful good, are you actually excluding any barbarians/bards, or is that just a turn of phrase to indicate 'any goodish guys'?

edit: nm found the answer on page 3.

I noticed the ...interesting mix of the random encounters...is it possible to encounter both a demon and a devil in the same encounter? Do you just spice it that they are actually fighting each other in that case?

[JaronK]

When you say lawful good, are you actually excluding any barbarians/bards, or is that just a turn of phrase to indicate 'any goodish guys'?

edit: nm found the answer on page 3.

They all have to be lawful good. We regularly theme our parties... the last party of heroes all had to be stereotypical types, so there was a Dragonwrought Dragonborn Kobold Sorcerer whose spells were all dragon themed and who constantly talked about how awesome dragons were, a drunken Dwarf with a Dwarvencraft Dwarven War Axe (a Crusader/Dwarf Paragon) and heavy armor, a Half Elf Bard who just wanted everyone to get along, and so on.

If the current team dies, we'll make a new one... my players are starting to think they want to try team evil next.


I noticed the ...interesting mix of the random encounters...is it possible to encounter both a demon and a devil in the same encounter? Do you just spice it that they are actually fighting each other in that case?

It's possible because we don't have the types totally handled at this point. What I do depends on the encounter, because if you check the DMG you'll find that one of the possibilities is that the encounter should be easier than expected if the players do things right. In that situation, I might have the demon and devil both ambush the players at the same time, but if they retreat the demon and devil will fight each other and they can mop up the loser. If it doesn't have that "should be easier" thing I mostly remove the "let's you and him fight" aspect... in one encounter I rolled three undead creatures and a living creature of another faction, so the PCs will walk in on the last of a battle between two sides and the three undead will attack, but it turns out one of the living guys had faked his death and will jump up to attack them from behind once the undead engage, having been driven insane by the loss of his friends (and he's not on the PC's side in general anyway).

I find there's an art to making these encounters make sense, but it is doable and kinda fun. Certainly the PCs get to enjoy that there's lots of possibilities for what's going on.

And here is your random encounter:

python encounter_generator.py -c 6 -p 6 6 6 6

The CR for this encounter is 6

Oh joy! Your players are fighting:
3 Dragon, Wyrmling Brass; see Monster Manual v.3.5, page 79
May the dice be ever in your favor.

And should they succeed:
Characters with level 6 gain 450xp

Well, if you're good you won't have to fight them, and if you're evil, you just walked into a clutch of baby dragons. Ouch.

JaronK

[Scow2]

All creatures will eventually be in there. Right now we're missing PC races, but they're going to go in, always using their favored class. So Gnome Bard 3 will be in there eventually.
Eww... why not have them be able to be any class, but have a weighted preference for their favored class?

[JaronK]

Eww... why not have them be able to be any class, but have a weighted preference for their favored class?

We might do that in the end, due to the fact that a swarm of angry Gnome Barbarians would be funny. We're still busy working on templates, though.

Also, consider that most favored classes are from core, which means we have the sample NPCs from the DMG to work with when spawning these creatures. We don't have that for, say Beguilers, so it's a lot of work to generate NPC Beguilers. We may stick to only spawning core classes for that reason. Or we could go all out, making a base template of gear for these guys. We'll see. We're also working out how to generate spell lists for Wizards and such. Right now the plan is to make it so that they randomly generate half their spells from lists of good spells from guide around the internet, and the other half of spells come from our full list of spells. That way they always have good and useful spells, and they have crazy spell lists in general. But that's going to take time.

encounter_generator.py -c 6 -p 6 6 6 6

The CR for this encounter is 6

Oh joy! Your players are fighting:
Ant Lion, Giant; see Sandstorm, page 196
3 Homunculus; see Monster Manual v.3.5, page 154
May the dice be ever in your favor.

And should they succeed:
Characters with level 6 gain 525xp

...I think you just disturbed a Wizard's zoo.

JaronK

[JaronK]

Continuing with the "hey guys, did you notice this?" thread here...

Page 110 of the DMG has alignment tables. Evidently 50% of the population is evil, and only 20% is good. Interesting, that.

Anyway, we're now building in town and NPC generation into this thing, which can be fun.

JaronK

[Urpriest]

Continuing with the "hey guys, did you notice this?" thread here...

Page 110 of the DMG has alignment tables. Evidently 50% of the population is evil, and only 20% is good. Interesting, that.

Anyway, we're now building in town and NPC generation into this thing, which can be fun.

JaronK

If that's the NPC table, note that you can't (IIRC) roll NPC classes on that table, so it's not just for random commoners. I think the idea is that that's an encounter table, so just like there are fewer good monsters on the published encounter tables, there are fewer good NPCs because you're less likely to fight them.

[sjeshin]

I am also interested in seeing these generators, but I would probably never use them in an actual game. Me and mine like having combats to have meaning; there needs to be actual answers to "why does this thing live here?", "what are its motivations?" and "what is there to be gained from fighting it?"

But I guess I'll never understand the mindset of seeing "the DM doesn't take into account the PCs at all" as a feature, rather than a profound failure of the primary function of the DM. Guess I'm just too much of a dirty dirty storygamer to properly enjoy randomized everything as anything but a thought exercise.

I just want to say that my DM, and when I DM, prefer this line of thinking as well. The players in my first *big* (read as 2 sessions, "fully prepared" for more) adventure, the players found ways around every single combat without combat, including legit diplomacy and bluff to get the local highest npc to deal with the evil guy at the end. Dirty, dirty, storygamer is not how i'd describe this gameplay.

I think what DM's who like to really delve into the story and role play can use this for is much more than a thought excercise. Use the generator to come up with the CR level randomly for each possible encounter. Still use your appropriate NPC's / monsters for that particular area / encounter / random encounter. The only change, is you get to challenge yourself as a DM to adjust the fight, through statistics of the enemy, traps, difficult fighting area for the PC's, in order to meet the CR generated randomly.

For example:You have a lvl 1 party of four. The encounter you have planned is an animal attack in the woods. Wolves on their own are CR 1 (I believe, so for the example roll with me). The generator says to make it a CR 2 encounter. You could approach this a number of ways to adjust it, and without even adding an extra wolf or two.

Have the party be attacked at night, without sleep, waking up fatigued(again would need my books to be sure this one would work) to a battle as player x gets chomped on. You could also have berries introduced prior somehow through spot checks that are poison and do a small amount of damage to a stat or hp, a minute after eating.

If the players do not detect poison on the berries, do not bother / fail a knowledge nature check to see if they are edible, they "fail" that part of the encounter, thus making it more difficult.

If they do either refuse to eat them, or somehow find out they shouldn't eat them, they passed, and overcame the added difficulty. Now, without adding random skeletons to your animal attack, in a forest the party was sent to investigate, you have adjusted the CR to the random generator, added "real danger" and maintained your plot line that animals in the area are being abnormally hostile, and the PC's need to find out why. (But the berry example won't work on all parties, some players just don't care about the berries they spot, and couldn't care what they taste like, no matter how hungry their character is.)

[Suddo]

I know there could be copyright concerns but this is a fun dungeon generator: And you should totally check out the game. (http://tinykeep.com/dungen/)

[nedz]

Yes, if we had a complete database we'd do it by environments too, but we can't. Best we can do is have the DM keep rolling random ones until they get one that fits.

If anyone actually wants to go through WotC's official list of all creatures and add in environments, and give that back to as a csv, I'd happily use it.


I normally just go through the Monsters by Environment from the Crystal Keep lists and choose encounters which will be fun. I usually ignore encounters which are too low level since they can become tedious, though flora and fauna are important for verisimilitude, and such encounters are fine for flavour — just don't bother actually running them. A random generator which didn't take environment into account would be of no interest to me: From a player's perspective it is impossible to tell whether an encounter is generated randomly or arbitrarily.

[JaronK]

Actually we decided to make things interesting, and using some interesting techniques we're working on getting all the information out, including environment, hit dice, and everything necessary to generate fully fleshed out NPCs (complete with useful randomized spell lists!).

That'll increase the time on this, but it's even cooler in the end.

...Figuring out associated class levels is going to be a pain, though. Here's our current way of figuring it out... if anyone has a good idea for how to define a melee creature in such a way that an algorithm can determine it, by all means let me know.

Associated classes list

melee, Fighter, Knight, Warblade, Crusader, Swordsage, Swashbuckler, Monk, Binder, Duskblade, Psionic Warrior, Barbarian, Hexblade, Rokugan Ninja, OA Samurai, CW Samurai, Ranger, Dungeoncrasher Fighter
stealth, Rogue, Ranger, Monk, Wilderness Rogue, Spellthief, Scout, Factotum, Wildshape Ranger, Binder, Warlock, CA Ninja, Rokugan Ninja, Wildshape Ranger
archer, Ranger, Fighter, Targeteer Fighter, Rogue, CA Ninja, Monk, Binder
intcaster, Wizard, Archivist, Artificer, Psion
chacaster, Sorcerer, Artificer, Favored Soul, Spellthief, Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, Warmage, Hexblade
wiscaster, Cleric, Druid, Favored Soul, Archivist, Paladin, Paladin of Freedom, Paladin of Tyranny, Paladin of Slaughter, Healer

restrictions:
lawful, Knight, Paladin, Monk, OA Samurai, Paladin of Tyranny
good, Paladin, Paladin of Freedom
chaotic, Paladin of Freedom, Paladin of Slaughter, Bard, Barbarian
evil, Paladin of Slaughter, Paladin of Tyranny
neutral, Druid
intelligence, Wizard, Swashbuckler, Factotum, Psion, Duskblade, Rokugan Ninja
dexterity, Swashbuckler
charisma, Sorcerer, Favored Soul, Paladin, Paladin of Freedom, Paladin of Tyranny, Paladin of Slaughter, Spellthief, Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, Warmage, Hexblade, CW Samurai
wisdom, Druid, Cleric, Paladin, Paladin of Freedom, Paladin of Tyranny, Paladin of Slaughter, Favored Soul, Psionic Warrior, Monk, Adept, CA Ninja, Healer, Ranger, Wildshape Ranger
constitution, Rokugan Ninja
strength, Dungeoncrasher Fighter

definitions:
melee:
stealth: has Hide and Move Silently ranks
archery: has attack entry with "ranged"
intcaster: has Intelligence 10+1/2CR, has Sp abilities or "Spells" as a special attack
chacaster: has Charisma 10+1/2CR, has Sp abilities or "Spells" as a special attack
wiscaster: has Wisdom 10+1/2CR, has Sp abilities or "Spells" as a special attack

lawful: Not Alignment usually or always chaotic or neutral, unless lawful neutral
good: Not Alignment usually or always evil or neutral, unless neutral good
chaotic: Not Alignment usually or always lawful or neutral, unless chaotic neutral
evil: Not Alignment usually or always good or neutral, unless neutral evil
neutral: Alignment includes Neutral
intelligence: Int 10+1/2CR
dexterity: Dex 10+1/2CR
charisma: Cha 10+1/2CR
wisdom: Wis 10+1/2CR
constitution: Con 10+1/2CR
strength: Str 10+CR

JaronK

[Urpriest]

Actually we decided to make things interesting, and using some interesting techniques we're working on getting all the information out, including environment, hit dice, and everything necessary to generate fully fleshed out NPCs (complete with useful randomized spell lists!).

That'll increase the time on this, but it's even cooler in the end.

...Figuring out associated class levels is going to be a pain, though. Here's our current way of figuring it out... if anyone has a good idea for how to define a melee creature in such a way that an algorithm can determine it, by all means let me know.

Associated classes list

melee, Fighter, Knight, Warblade, Crusader, Swordsage, Swashbuckler, Monk, Binder, Duskblade, Psionic Warrior, Barbarian, Hexblade, Rokugan Ninja, OA Samurai, CW Samurai, Ranger, Dungeoncrasher Fighter
stealth, Rogue, Ranger, Monk, Wilderness Rogue, Spellthief, Scout, Factotum, Wildshape Ranger, Binder, Warlock, CA Ninja, Rokugan Ninja, Wildshape Ranger
archer, Ranger, Fighter, Targeteer Fighter, Rogue, CA Ninja, Monk, Binder
intcaster, Wizard, Archivist, Artificer, Psion
chacaster, Sorcerer, Artificer, Favored Soul, Spellthief, Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, Warmage, Hexblade
wiscaster, Cleric, Druid, Favored Soul, Archivist, Paladin, Paladin of Freedom, Paladin of Tyranny, Paladin of Slaughter, Healer

restrictions:
lawful, Knight, Paladin, Monk, OA Samurai, Paladin of Tyranny
good, Paladin, Paladin of Freedom
chaotic, Paladin of Freedom, Paladin of Slaughter, Bard, Barbarian
evil, Paladin of Slaughter, Paladin of Tyranny
neutral, Druid
intelligence, Wizard, Swashbuckler, Factotum, Psion, Duskblade, Rokugan Ninja
dexterity, Swashbuckler
charisma, Sorcerer, Favored Soul, Paladin, Paladin of Freedom, Paladin of Tyranny, Paladin of Slaughter, Spellthief, Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, Warmage, Hexblade, CW Samurai
wisdom, Druid, Cleric, Paladin, Paladin of Freedom, Paladin of Tyranny, Paladin of Slaughter, Favored Soul, Psionic Warrior, Monk, Adept, CA Ninja, Healer, Ranger, Wildshape Ranger
constitution, Rokugan Ninja
strength, Dungeoncrasher Fighter

definitions:
melee:
stealth: has Hide and Move Silently ranks
archery: has attack entry with "ranged"
intcaster: has Intelligence 10+1/2CR, has Sp abilities or "Spells" as a special attack
chacaster: has Charisma 10+1/2CR, has Sp abilities or "Spells" as a special attack
wiscaster: has Wisdom 10+1/2CR, has Sp abilities or "Spells" as a special attack

lawful: Not Alignment usually or always chaotic or neutral, unless lawful neutral
good: Not Alignment usually or always evil or neutral, unless neutral good
chaotic: Not Alignment usually or always lawful or neutral, unless chaotic neutral
evil: Not Alignment usually or always good or neutral, unless neutral evil
neutral: Alignment includes Neutral
intelligence: Int 10+1/2CR
dexterity: Dex 10+1/2CR
charisma: Cha 10+1/2CR
wisdom: Wis 10+1/2CR
constitution: Con 10+1/2CR
strength: Str 10+CR

JaronK

You probably shouldn't let a caster class be associated unless the monster has actual casting. Thou Shalt Not Lose Caster Levels and so forth.

[Melayl]

Actually, the fun in creating the scenario is piecing together why these monsters are there and why the PCs fight them, until I can actually create a coherent storyline.

And the mindset is simple. A lot of DMs tailor everything to the PCs, so that who the PCs are doesn't matter at all. You've got a Rogue with +6 to Search? Well, then the traps require a DC 17 to find. Except that one the DM decided you shouldn't find, that's DC 27. Wait, your Rogue changed his build and now has a +14 to search? Yeah, the regular traps are now DC 25, and that hard one is now DC 35. Now the Rogue can't make the game? Fine, there are no traps. Traps were just a minigame for the Rogue anyway.

But then why was the Rogue there at all? He didn't really matter, because the universe metagamed away his purpose.

When you randomly generate everything, suddenly PC abilities actually matter. Now my party is scrambling to cover their bases... they looked at some of the swarms that could be generated, and suddenly started making sure they had torches knowing that they might actually have to fight them. Now having a Rogue who can actually handle traps matters, because the traps are randomly generated too and they could be trivial or devastating. You don't know. It adds excitement. Your hand will not be held. You will survive or die on your abilities. The game is better.

The trick of the DM, then, is to make the story work. I know a week in advance what I generated. So now which encounter is the boss before the big reveal of why this is happening? Which encounters are the random encounters? A few of the encounters have the note that it should be easier if the party figures out a trick to it, so what's the trick they should be able to figure out?

DMs who tailor everything to their players and their story are storytellers only... the game aspect is easy to lose. The randomizing brings back the game, but need not sacrifice the story.

JaronK

This sounds like so many kinds of fun! It also sounds a great deal like the way we used to play 2E back in the day...

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Urpriest
You probably shouldn't let a caster class be associated unless the monster has actual casting. Thou Shalt Not Loose Caster Levels and so forth.

Is loosing caster levels like letting slip the dogs of war?

:smalltongue:

[Urpriest]

Is loosing caster levels like letting slip the dogs of war?

:smalltongue:

Probably. Also, fixed.

[JaronK]

You probably shouldn't let a caster class be associated unless the monster has actual casting. Thou Shalt Not Lose Caster Levels and so forth.

Possibly, but remember that Associated just means the CR is increased. I imagine a Ogre Mage Sorcerer 6 should probably have a pretty high CR.

I'll think about that one though.

JaronK

[Kamai]

First off, this looks like it could be amazing. Second off, on the higher level creatures, wouldn't it make sense to look at their feats for ranged/melee respectively? If you have Power Attack or Weapon Finesse, that probably hints melee monster, while having Point Blank shot should hint ranged monster. If you have Improved Natural Attack or Weapon Focus on an attack form, that's likely the preferred attack form. In this theory, most caster primary monsters shouldn't have investment into these attack forms.

I'm not sure how that's going to extend to the CR 1/2 progress by class monsters (at least in MM1, stated with both melee and ranged weapons), but that might be a start?

[JaronK]

If it has any ranged attack form, that means adding a ranged weapon class will definitely be in theme and should be associated, so we went with that.

For melee, looking at feats may help (Power Attack is an obvious one), but there are plenty of melee monsters that don't have Power Attack, and I don't want to miss anything. But PA is definitely a good start.

JaronK

[Svata]

How does that work? Does the parties names show up in red to the wolf or something?


I know they're wolves, but the flaming swords, semitransparency of the wizard, and being able to smell but not see or hear one or two other people might warn them off.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Actually we decided to make things interesting, and using some interesting techniques we're working on getting all the information out, including environment, hit dice, and everything necessary to generate fully fleshed out NPCs (complete with useful randomized spell lists!).

Might I ask what sorts of "interesting techniques" you're using? I've been working on a similar compile-all-the-monsters project off and on, and if your extraction techniques are more efficient than mine, hearing about your approach would be helpful.

[Shining Wrath]

Yes, join the dark side. It's fun.

Play the enemies straight without pulling your punches and the players learn real fast to think, or they quit. One of the two.

It's amazing how many PC's don't get that retreating is often a viable (and the better) choice.

Or, alternatively, negotiating.

[JaronK]

Might I ask what sorts of "interesting techniques" you're using? I've been working on a similar compile-all-the-monsters project off and on, and if your extraction techniques are more efficient than mine, hearing about your approach would be helpful.

Eh, the development guy is keeping the exact techniques a little close to the chest.

JaronK

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Eh, the development guy is keeping the exact techniques a little close to the chest.

I see. Well, if he changes his mind, let me know.

[Shining Wrath]

Part of that problem is that far too many DMs forget that option is also available for enemies. I am guilty of this myself, and that every DM I have ever played with (save one) has had 99% of our combat encounters as a fight to the death, when clearly the opponents should cut-and-run when the first few guys go down. The only time the foes flee is when they were scripted to in a prepublished adventure.

Our DM is good at this - opponents flee, or step backwards and take defensive stances. It's a perfectly reasonable reaction, especially for unintelligent monsters (pack of wolves) or minions with no reason to fight to the death.

[Aegis013]

Any further updates on the progress on this? I'm certainly very interested in it. And I would be willing to pay a little money for a finished product. Or contribute a little money if I thought there was a high likelihood of me getting access to a finished product.

[koboldish]

This sounds like a wonderful idea! I would be more than happy to pay for the generator when it comes out. I wish I had some things to add on algorithms and things, but I'm pretty bad at python scripting and it looks like all of the good ideas are taken already. Personally, I would love to be able to test the code that you have, but I'm sure that would violate some copyrights and stuff. Anyways, this seems like it will be really cool. Personally, I don't care if it has any graphics or anything, plain text is fine for the purpose it serves. If there's anything a python noobie can do to help, please let me know!

[Scow2]

An ancient red dragon flying overhead and ignoring a low-level party is still an 'encounter' (Albeit not one that gives XP if they ignore it... and this is why I hate XP-based systems) - The party still has the option to try to shoot it down/draw it attention/take it on like a chmp for a shot at XP and the loot buried in its hide.

[Raven777]

The party still has the option to try to shoot it down/draw it attention/take it on like a chmp for a shot at XP and the loot buried in its hide.

This gives a whole new meaning to "loot pinata". XD

[SiuiS]

Once it is ready (along with the treasure generator), you would be doing the world a great service by making it available.

On a related note, I've been wondering for a while now, is there anywhere that someone's made a "highest-level locals" table that includes every base class?

Naw, by RAW there are no NPCs of non-core classes who are not monsters.


Unless you retreat before being threatened, how do you retreat without having vastly higher speed than the opponent? An AoO might kill you or keep you from getting away and the subsequent turn of the attacker might. Anything other than a 5ft step or complete withdrawal will provoke one. And I#m not even taling about all the encounter ending spells the opposition could have.

Two misunderstandings here. First, encounter distance is a thing, and if you see a lumbering monster hulk and you're a level 1 mook until you scrape together another 50 XP, you leave before you get into sluggin, shooting distance. Maybe make some hide checks or toss the diplomacy bones or something.

Second, encounter != fight. It's perfectly possible for an encounter with a Classed Giant might end up being shaken down for protection money instead of being clobbered. Unless you can convince him to be nice and share his favorite cigar, or something.

[Gemini476]

Also, consider that most favored classes are from core, which means we have the sample NPCs from the DMG to work with when spawning these creatures. We don't have that for, say Beguilers, so it's a lot of work to generate NPC Beguilers. We may stick to only spawning core classes for that reason. Or we could go all out, making a base template of gear for these guys. We'll see. We're also working out how to generate spell lists for Wizards and such. Right now the plan is to make it so that they randomly generate half their spells from lists of good spells from guide around the internet, and the other half of spells come from our full list of spells. That way they always have good and useful spells, and they have crazy spell lists in general. But that's going to take time.


Isn't there a Quick PC Generation thing in the back of the PHBII? Because that one has Beguilers and Dragon Shamans and Knights at least.

I don't know how useful it would be, but it is worth looking at.

[Talakeal]

It's not just your group. I've seen this attitude come up with several different sets of players.

It can be more than a little frustrating, when you know the encounter is winnable if they just hunker down and get it done. And then sometimes they rabbit because things veered off in a direction no one was expecting.

Sometimes a party just channels Mal Reynolds.

:smalltongue:

I haven't had many sessions where this doesn't happen. Every group i have played in gives up and starts whining the moment things start to look bad, regardless of the actual odds.

[Endarire]

This randomization reminds me of the card game Munchkin.

Having played a lot of games, I like to cover my bases. I assume every danger is possible until proven otherwise.

I'm also working on a DnD 3.5 overhaul which makes the rules more balanced and cohesive and interesting.

[Sith_Happens]

Naw, by RAW there are no NPCs of non-core classes who are not monsters.

Obviously the hypothetical table I'm asking about would be homebrew, that's kind of the point.

[Plerumque]

I wonder if there would be a way to weight a random feat generator so it comes up somewhat close. Or I guess you could just assign each class a series of feats.

[JaronK]

Naw, by RAW there are no NPCs of non-core classes who are not monsters.

Current plan is to have a setting for core only, but an option for the others. In that case, we divide the non core classes up among the base classes in ways that seem related, and the result is you get the same proportion of "religion based divine primary casters" that way (Archivists, Clerics, Healers, Cloistered Clerics) as you would have gotten Clerics in the normal distribution. I'm still working out that table.

It's the same as how our current system lets you roll completely random scrolls from all spells in the game, not just core, despite there being no table to let you do that.

Sadly, it doesn't look like we can scrape all the monster data, so unless we fill in the table ourselves or can crowd source it, we're stuck with a lookup by page number.

As for feats, we'd have to create a table of feats by monster type and create value weights and feat chains from there.

JaronK

[JaronK]

Whew, we finally got this thing started! I made everybody make a "paladin like" character to get things going. That got me a Cleric of Kord, a VoP Monk, a Ranger/Scout sworn to protect travelers on the road, and a Crusader. And this is all level 6.

So, I put together a basic world (it's E6, so this is the Age of Mortals, taking place 1000 years after the Age of Heroes when 9th level mortals ran around having a good time). There's a bunch of fun little plot points... faceless statues found all over the world, each doing useful stuff like leaking out pure water or curing diseases nearby, chapels built in strange places, and other world data that keeps things interesting.

I got things started with an overly simplistic start... "you all got a vision of a chapel on top of a mountain to the north. Get going guys!" They were pushed to work together by the first of the randomly generated encounters... 5 Dire Hawks. It wasn't much of a fight really, as the Monk tripped them constantly while the Crusader hammered everyone and the Ranger/Scout demolished them with arrows. It was a good learning experience for the newer players. I've got one more animal based encounter to hit them with before the main plot begins.

They then headed up to the city of Windswept, a fortified city that's essentially the capital of this northern area. They learned a bit about the chapel they're going to, but not why... it's an old observation post run by the priests of Heironeous that seems to serve no further purpose. So far, so good.

JaronK

[Red Rubber Band]

Very cool. I'm interested to hear how it progresses