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danzibr
2014-01-19, 11:26 AM
Hey all,

I'm going to run a session in a few hours (2:00 central time). They're going to travel from a city to a village, and I have a not plot-related encounter planned.

There's a 30' river running north-south, their path is going from the east to the west, and there's a 15' wooden bridge which spans the river. There's a big fallen tree which they can push down and overruns anything in its path. I plan on including an old watch tower (also made of wood), and they can go up in there, and there's a risk of it falling over when they're in. This'll be on the east side. Lastly, there are bushes on either side of the road just east of the river.

There's a Halfling on a goat guarding the bridge (modeled after Barefoot Bill). The goat has the stats for a wolf, but bull rushes instead of trips and has a ram attack instead of a bite attack. He demands their money, and says he has twenty dudes hiding in the bushes who'll trounce 'em if they don't give up their money. There are two Kobolds moving around spears poking out of the bushes.

The party is level 5 (gestalt), and there are 5 of them. The Halfling and Kobolds are only level 1. The Halfling attacks on his goat when the party declines, the Kobolds throw souped up Alchemist's Fire, and they presumably go down in like 2 rounds.

THEN the real encounter starts. There's some grumbling from beneath the bridge, a really weird Troll comes out from under the bridge (maybe with a large goat animal companion). He wants to teach them a lesson for disturbing his slumber. He's a Troll Totemist 2/Warblade 1. Totemist is for cool Totemist stuff, Warblade is for IHS (don't want him to go down like a sack of bricks, since it'll be just him, or maybe plus his goat companion). He'll use a greatsword for his primary attack, then a bite, two claws (Girallon Arms) and two tentacles (Deepspawn) for his secondaries.

Seems good for a 1 v. 5 tank n' spank. Any thoughts to spruce it up?

Feint's End
2014-01-19, 01:04 PM
Maybe you could let us know how your group setup is? I think that would help a lot in evaluating how challenging this encounter really is.

In general I am not a big fan of having one big strong meatsack simply because it runs into the ubercharger problem. Namely to be challenging it has to be really really strong to the point where it can almost oneshot one character per round (or it probably should be able to do that) or it will just die a horrible death.
To put it simple ... single meatsacks often run into the problem of being either too strong or useles ... finding something in the middle which is challenging too is extremely hard if not impossible (just saying ... action economy screws you).

If you want to use a troll I'd rather use more than one with their own shticks and tactics. You can tone each of them down a bit while keeping the encounter on a good challenging level.

Also I'd be very careful as a DM to IHS certain spells and/or effect because you can sure as hell count on players using it in the future to counter the same things and if only then you realize it was a bad idea to allow IHS to do that you will have a big consistency problem (not to mention you'll probably piss off your players for vetoing something you used before).

danzibr
2014-01-19, 02:43 PM
Thanks for the response. We do have a Warblade, and IHS is available. When I do big meatshields, I usually lower the AC and up the HP to make it feel more epic.

Anyway, session in 17 minutes.

Feint's End
2014-01-19, 03:49 PM
If you still got some time you could consider adding adds. Doesn't have to be anything strong ... just something that adds some tactics. Like 2-4 Kobolds with oversized Crossbows who stay back at the bridge. They are easy to kill but do dmg if the group just decides to ignore it.

The problem if you do those things (lower ac and up hp) it makes the fight all the more grindy (mmos say hello). There is nothing wrong with a meatbag from time to time (actually it is quite nice to have) but remember that they are hardly the encounters which are memorable.

As long as your group enjoys it though there is nothing wrong with it so I hope you guys have a good session!

danzibr
2014-01-19, 04:52 PM
Thanks!

Finished the session (only go until 3:30 for schedule reasons). The felled Bill and his cohorts with ease. Then the troll came out with a cool intro (armored? With tentacles? And a greatsword?) and we stopped.

It's looking up! I try for all my encounters to be different. This is one of the rare meat bags they fight. In general I try to keep the number of opponents down, for otherwise I feel it takes away from the player time.

Next week (if I remember) I'll post the conclusion.

Sir Chuckles
2014-01-19, 09:22 PM
And it's not plot-related?

You could build a plot with ease right then and there. Be wary of the players wanting to investigate ("Why was a platoon of clearly organized combatants of races that would normally murder each other fighting for a clearly terrifying and powerful creature that is also normally marked for death by said races? How is something so powerful not a landmark? Why were there no guards in this area, somewhere that could have a bridge large enough to house a great sword wielding Troll? Ect.), as it could throw things off track.
Not a bad thing, but if there was an armored, tentacle'd, four-armed, great sword wielding Troll just there, I'd be pretty darn intrigued.

danzibr
2014-01-19, 10:06 PM
I'm actually going to tie it into the plot a little, but it was just meant to be a fun side encounter. For the murderous stuff, Kobolds are a lot less evil in my campaigns. The troll is quite mysterious (other than the obvious reference).