Starbelly
2014-08-13, 01:48 PM
Hello all!
Apologies for the length of the post.
Longtime lurker here, so before I jump into the topic I'd first like to give a huge thanks to everyone on this forum over the years - my campaigns and characters are vastly improved thanks to the advice in these threads.
Normally I browse the threads here and apply the general optimisation information to my group, but I'm making this thread because now I could use some personalised advice! In particular, I need help giving my players interesting choices in combat. I'll explain below, as I outline their party composition. In essence, though, I'm looking to better understand the PCs' strengths/weaknesses, because there is a bit of a power gap that I'm having trouble balancing. Having proper (fun, fair) counters to some of the PCs' typical strategies would be cool - but I'm looking to frame encounters in such a way that they have to reach creative objectives, rather than blast through HP.
I'm also in need of help vis-à-vis Kaorti lore/fluff. They are the main antagonists of this dungeon, and I think these guys have such amazing story potential - they are master arcanists, they are terrifying fiends from the Far Realm, they are so alien, incomprehensible, *vile*! But I don't know what to do with them. How would they design their cyst - what precautions would they take? What would each room's purpose serve in the Kaorti society?
(I'm already familiar with "The Kaorti Ubercyst" Wizard articles, as well as the Dragon Magazine 358 write-up. It's good stuff! Sorta. I just felt it fell a little flat. I'd like to take full advantage of the Kaorti's fluff, because even though they are not the BBEG, they will make a re-appearance nearer the end of the campaign, when the game becomes consistently extraplanar.)
Lastly, I started this thread with the intent of collectively brainstorming some creative, optimised encounters, that might mix puzzle/logic elements to combat, and hopefully using my Kaorti dungeon as a base. Encounters in my campaign are elaborate affairs - the group is able to circumvent most, if not all, pointless encounters. When they fight it's important.
I have 6 players in my group, but due to scheduling I run the game whenever we have 4. That means that it's harder to plan encounters, since I'm not always sure what the PCs are bringing to the table. However, they've told me they appreciate that I don't "custom-fit" the encounters specifically to the players at the table, and they've enjoyed having to think outside-the-box if they're lacking a certain skill at the time.
Everyone has just reached their 13th level.
In the party we have:
- Alistar, a human druid focused on summoning and wildshape - he's building towards Frozen Wild Shape and Dragon Wild Shape. His animal companion, a gorilla named Coco, has often been MVP in terms of tanking, grappling, and generally getting in the way. Also, Alistar is very good at using Wildshape appropriately - giant squid, giant croc, giant eagle + summons, a tiny sparrow to cast spells undetected... He is the party's "playmaker", and usually the primary agent in the encounter, due to the druid's inherent versatility. This is not a problem, but he does tend to enjoy the spotlight a little more than I'd like. Also, see the artificer.
- "Mitch", a human child Artificer (homebrew: traded out human feat for small-size bonuses). Mitch joined the party last session, and with his genius intellect helped the party enter the dungeon. He is proving to be the Ultimate Arcane Swiss Army Knife - he has 4 answers to every problem. Wonderful, but I'm worried that he'll soon be the superstar of the group, with everyone stuck in his shadow.
- Solomon, a bog-standard buff/heal/support cleric with DMM Persist. Though the character is newly-introduced, the player has been with the group since the beginning. He plans on doing minimal damage, but the introduction of a cleric has *vastly* improved the group's staying power in combat, and are able to take much more interesting risks when he is around :)
- Darnath, a Dragonborn knight riding a drakensteed. A flying ubercharger is nothing to scoff at, and his lance hits hard - being able to auto-crit x/day has been used to great effect. Though he is a mundane, his use of tactics and Knight's Challenge makes him a very real threat, and most enemies find themselves taking precautions not to be one-shot. Also, did I mention he flies. Very annoying :amused:
- Astraea, an Elven ranger/fighter/deepwood sniper/skylord, with a Celestial Giant Owl. A sniping build with arrows that bypass DR (force bow?), and a high base damage for critting, with the Collision enchantment and the dex-to-damage feat (...fighter variant?). She is a DPS machine, dealing about 80 damage if all her attacks hit. Still, it's obvious she finds it dull to full-attack each round. I want to emphasize her mobility and sniping features, setting up perfect shots from impossible locations, etc.
- And lastly, Gerard "Awesomelaser", part of the Awesomelaser clan (a direct reference to Penny Arcade's first podcast D&D session with Chris Perkins). He is a rich spoiled brat who decided to adventure for the sake of it - he wants to flaunt his wealth, and does so with "disposable crossbows". Basically, he's got an arbitrarily-large number of crossbows in his bag of holding, quick-drawing, firing, and dropping them, in lieu of reloading. The rules don't exactly support this kind of gameplay, so I've gently houseruled around it - please try to be accomodating! :)
In short, though mechanically the build is vague and undefined, the flavour is strong - he wants to be a filthy rich rogue, constantly drawing and discarding crossbows with impunity, staying within 30 ft for sneak, and killing enemies "execution-style".
I've given out a flying carpet due to the group's predisposition to flight, and he's used it to good effect.
I'll also briefly describe the dungeon: It is a massive inverted ziggurat in a chasm in the desert; an extraplanar castle that crash-landed on the Material Plane. It radiates absurd amounts of arcane energy, and as such attracted a group of Kaorti who began to convert parts of the castle into a cyst. They've taken over 3 rooms in the castle. There are 10 rooms total.
Four of the rooms each contain a shrine to a classical element. These shrines "sap essence" from the Elements, using them to create the physical manifestation of the Castle here on the Material Plane. Removing the sacred shrine McGuffin severs the magical tethers to each Elemental Plane, sending the castle further into limbo... or perhaps into the Far Realm.
However, removing the shrine-artifacts will *also* remove each elemental shield from the castle's boss. The PCs will have some decisions to make.
There are three more empty rooms, which can be used to explain plot-points, flesh out the dungeon's factions, etc.
tl;dr: I'm looking for advice towards optimising a Kaorti-themed dungeon (including Kaorti fluff), with combat focused around interesting objectives and puzzle themes. Ideally this would be tailored for my specific party. Lastly, I'm hoping to springboard the discussion from this particular dungeon to brainstorming encounter design, interweaving high-optimisation challenge with the roleplaying opportunities offered by: [creative objectives, puzzles, meaningful moral choices, flavourful monsters with motives, etc]
Apologies for the length of the post.
Longtime lurker here, so before I jump into the topic I'd first like to give a huge thanks to everyone on this forum over the years - my campaigns and characters are vastly improved thanks to the advice in these threads.
Normally I browse the threads here and apply the general optimisation information to my group, but I'm making this thread because now I could use some personalised advice! In particular, I need help giving my players interesting choices in combat. I'll explain below, as I outline their party composition. In essence, though, I'm looking to better understand the PCs' strengths/weaknesses, because there is a bit of a power gap that I'm having trouble balancing. Having proper (fun, fair) counters to some of the PCs' typical strategies would be cool - but I'm looking to frame encounters in such a way that they have to reach creative objectives, rather than blast through HP.
I'm also in need of help vis-à-vis Kaorti lore/fluff. They are the main antagonists of this dungeon, and I think these guys have such amazing story potential - they are master arcanists, they are terrifying fiends from the Far Realm, they are so alien, incomprehensible, *vile*! But I don't know what to do with them. How would they design their cyst - what precautions would they take? What would each room's purpose serve in the Kaorti society?
(I'm already familiar with "The Kaorti Ubercyst" Wizard articles, as well as the Dragon Magazine 358 write-up. It's good stuff! Sorta. I just felt it fell a little flat. I'd like to take full advantage of the Kaorti's fluff, because even though they are not the BBEG, they will make a re-appearance nearer the end of the campaign, when the game becomes consistently extraplanar.)
Lastly, I started this thread with the intent of collectively brainstorming some creative, optimised encounters, that might mix puzzle/logic elements to combat, and hopefully using my Kaorti dungeon as a base. Encounters in my campaign are elaborate affairs - the group is able to circumvent most, if not all, pointless encounters. When they fight it's important.
I have 6 players in my group, but due to scheduling I run the game whenever we have 4. That means that it's harder to plan encounters, since I'm not always sure what the PCs are bringing to the table. However, they've told me they appreciate that I don't "custom-fit" the encounters specifically to the players at the table, and they've enjoyed having to think outside-the-box if they're lacking a certain skill at the time.
Everyone has just reached their 13th level.
In the party we have:
- Alistar, a human druid focused on summoning and wildshape - he's building towards Frozen Wild Shape and Dragon Wild Shape. His animal companion, a gorilla named Coco, has often been MVP in terms of tanking, grappling, and generally getting in the way. Also, Alistar is very good at using Wildshape appropriately - giant squid, giant croc, giant eagle + summons, a tiny sparrow to cast spells undetected... He is the party's "playmaker", and usually the primary agent in the encounter, due to the druid's inherent versatility. This is not a problem, but he does tend to enjoy the spotlight a little more than I'd like. Also, see the artificer.
- "Mitch", a human child Artificer (homebrew: traded out human feat for small-size bonuses). Mitch joined the party last session, and with his genius intellect helped the party enter the dungeon. He is proving to be the Ultimate Arcane Swiss Army Knife - he has 4 answers to every problem. Wonderful, but I'm worried that he'll soon be the superstar of the group, with everyone stuck in his shadow.
- Solomon, a bog-standard buff/heal/support cleric with DMM Persist. Though the character is newly-introduced, the player has been with the group since the beginning. He plans on doing minimal damage, but the introduction of a cleric has *vastly* improved the group's staying power in combat, and are able to take much more interesting risks when he is around :)
- Darnath, a Dragonborn knight riding a drakensteed. A flying ubercharger is nothing to scoff at, and his lance hits hard - being able to auto-crit x/day has been used to great effect. Though he is a mundane, his use of tactics and Knight's Challenge makes him a very real threat, and most enemies find themselves taking precautions not to be one-shot. Also, did I mention he flies. Very annoying :amused:
- Astraea, an Elven ranger/fighter/deepwood sniper/skylord, with a Celestial Giant Owl. A sniping build with arrows that bypass DR (force bow?), and a high base damage for critting, with the Collision enchantment and the dex-to-damage feat (...fighter variant?). She is a DPS machine, dealing about 80 damage if all her attacks hit. Still, it's obvious she finds it dull to full-attack each round. I want to emphasize her mobility and sniping features, setting up perfect shots from impossible locations, etc.
- And lastly, Gerard "Awesomelaser", part of the Awesomelaser clan (a direct reference to Penny Arcade's first podcast D&D session with Chris Perkins). He is a rich spoiled brat who decided to adventure for the sake of it - he wants to flaunt his wealth, and does so with "disposable crossbows". Basically, he's got an arbitrarily-large number of crossbows in his bag of holding, quick-drawing, firing, and dropping them, in lieu of reloading. The rules don't exactly support this kind of gameplay, so I've gently houseruled around it - please try to be accomodating! :)
In short, though mechanically the build is vague and undefined, the flavour is strong - he wants to be a filthy rich rogue, constantly drawing and discarding crossbows with impunity, staying within 30 ft for sneak, and killing enemies "execution-style".
I've given out a flying carpet due to the group's predisposition to flight, and he's used it to good effect.
I'll also briefly describe the dungeon: It is a massive inverted ziggurat in a chasm in the desert; an extraplanar castle that crash-landed on the Material Plane. It radiates absurd amounts of arcane energy, and as such attracted a group of Kaorti who began to convert parts of the castle into a cyst. They've taken over 3 rooms in the castle. There are 10 rooms total.
Four of the rooms each contain a shrine to a classical element. These shrines "sap essence" from the Elements, using them to create the physical manifestation of the Castle here on the Material Plane. Removing the sacred shrine McGuffin severs the magical tethers to each Elemental Plane, sending the castle further into limbo... or perhaps into the Far Realm.
However, removing the shrine-artifacts will *also* remove each elemental shield from the castle's boss. The PCs will have some decisions to make.
There are three more empty rooms, which can be used to explain plot-points, flesh out the dungeon's factions, etc.
tl;dr: I'm looking for advice towards optimising a Kaorti-themed dungeon (including Kaorti fluff), with combat focused around interesting objectives and puzzle themes. Ideally this would be tailored for my specific party. Lastly, I'm hoping to springboard the discussion from this particular dungeon to brainstorming encounter design, interweaving high-optimisation challenge with the roleplaying opportunities offered by: [creative objectives, puzzles, meaningful moral choices, flavourful monsters with motives, etc]