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  1. - Top - End - #211
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    Default Re: Pacing a megadungeon

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Honestly, I think the game is going fine.

    The game is balanced around ~5 encounters per day, and so far they have cleared 35 encounters and had seven adventuring days, so they are right on track.

    They aren't really "making progress" yet as they haven't really gotten their feet under them and are just kind of wandering around the dungeon rather than committing to one direction, but at this point they are still earning XP and treasure, and have mapped ~80% of the first floor, and they certainly aren't struggling to survive.
    If they've mapped out 80% of the floor and still have no idea where they should be going in order to "commit to a direction" something in the design is too opaque for them. And whilst you say they aren't struggling to survive they've gotten pretty thoroughly walloped several times (characters downed, lasting infections, forced into one-sided deals to survive). And many of their most significant failures the only reason they're in that situation is "should have rolled better".

    The only real failure on their part was not thinking to block the doors to the ghasts or adjust their tactics in the rematch.
    The reason they failed against the ghasts the first time was that the wizard, once again, whiffed a roll and caused friendly fire whilst failing to block the rest of the horde. So why would they have changed tactics? What, in your mind, should they have done differently the second time

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    Default Re: Pacing a megadungeon

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    If they've mapped out 80% of the floor and still have no idea where they should be going in order to "commit to a direction" something in the design is too opaque for them. And whilst you say they aren't struggling to survive they've gotten pretty thoroughly walloped several times (characters downed, lasting infections, forced into one-sided deals to survive). And many of their most significant failures the only reason they're in that situation is "should have rolled better".
    This is some good critical feedback. Thank you.

    I agree, it is kind of opaque design, this is somewhat intentional as right now the whole thing is a big mystery with a lot more questions than answers.

    They aren't really going about it "wrong" per se; I just figured that they would explore and clear sections one at a time rather than drifting around and checking things out more or less on a whim, scraping the surface of the most areas without digging too deep.

    Again, its not "wrong" but it does kind of have the downside of leaving threats behind them, stirring up hornets nests without clearing them, and they haven't yet gotten to any of the big treasures.

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    The reason they failed against the ghasts the first time was that the wizard, once again, whiffed a roll and caused friendly fire whilst failing to block the rest of the horde. So why would they have changed tactics? What, in your mind, should they have done differently the second time
    Hard to describe without a map.

    Basically, the ghasts had to move through a narrow chokepoint to get to them. If they had moved forward and taken the chokepoint, they could have easily taken them down one at a time without a struggle.

    Instead, they turtled up and let the ghasts completely surround them and did nothing to stem the flow of reinforcements.
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  3. - Top - End - #213
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    Default Re: Pacing a megadungeon

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    @Lacco: sounds like you're referring to a post by Icefractal, I forgot the thread. There's been discussion on the same topic in this thread. Anyways, out of your rules, there is one that needs amending: "there are no walkie talkies in a dungeon". There are in fact several fictional conceits that could give either players or enemies a functionally equivalent, from telepathy to messenger familiar, even if you're not giving anyone a literal radio.

    A better rule would be, "keep in mind how communication is done". This cuts both ways. If player characters are given sufficient communication channels, that will go a long way to answer how they can gain intelligence of a dungeon. It allows for new tactics, like splitting to scout ahead, without it being an automatic fail on their part.
    I agree - the intent was similar although my wording was much different. The "no walkie talkies" rule originated due to my players switching from Shadowrun (where commlinks, especially the implanted ones, provide them with almost absolute communication freedom) to a low/no magic system with nothing you mentioned.

    For other tables, the rule would need to be extended to the wording you used.

    It's strange that in many games I've seen, IC communication is the thing that ceases as soon as the combat begins.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Yup. Important for the GM to actually "roleplay" the NPCs based on their actual capabilities. It's probably one of the most difficult things for GMs to learn to do though, since it almost always involves the GM actively *not* acting on information he knows, so as to lower the capabilities of the NPCs. But one of the worse things for a game is if/when the players notice the NPCs acting in ways that they should not, based on them having information they should not. If you have players regularly asking "how did that NPC know to do X?", you are probably failing at this to some degree.
    It's a good tell. And also, it serves well to create a good distinction between individual enemies - when all enemies fight as smart enemies, there is no difference. When some are just savages, some are trained and some are genius level (where you can ignore the 'how did that NPC know?" question some of the time), players are actually rewarded for their own ability to outsmart them.

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    And remember, your job isn't to beat your players it's to challenge them. Instead of working as hard as you can to make their strategy fail, make them work harder to make it succeed.
    Hope you don't mind that I will shamelessly quote this in any GM rules section that I will ever write...

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    And yes, RPing the monsters is the core of this. But this requires a long solo game, I was wondering if there is any way to do it reasonably without having an entire series of solo sessions to myself.
    ...really?

    Well, did you have a long solo game for the town shopkeeper to venture into next town to get his merchandise? Or a long solo game for the townsfolk to create the settlement? Did you roleplay the individual forces that created the dungeon?

    While there is some merit in going this deep, I think you can ignore some of the rules and eyeball it/make assumptions/make an educated guess and just wing the actual roleplay. The idea is mostly to take a look at the situation from the monsters' point of view, and judge what actually happens (the result) without going through the process.

    However, if you need, I'd suggest going the 'random but not random' way. You can put together some random monster downtime action table and use it to speed up the process (I already have some ideas in my head). And there already are some resources that you could use (take a look at How to Host a Dungeon; even the first edition is quite good even if somewhat limited).
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kol Korran View Post
    Instead of having an adventure, from which a cool unexpected story may rise, you had a story, with an adventure built and designed to enable the story, but also ensure (or close to ensure) it happens.

  4. - Top - End - #214
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    Default Re: Pacing a megadungeon

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    They aren't really going about it "wrong" per se; I just figured that they would explore and clear sections one at a time rather than drifting around and checking things out more or less on a whim, scraping the surface of the most areas without digging too deep.

    Again, its not "wrong" but it does kind of have the downside of leaving threats behind them, stirring up hornets nests without clearing them, and they haven't yet gotten to any of the big treasures.
    Which, honestly, is not an unreasaonble expectation. Your players apparently failed "dungeon clearing 101" at RPG school.

    You enter the dungeon, follow a tunnel, which opens up into a room. This room has three closed doors, one heading in a different cardinal direction. Do you:

    1. Open the first door, fully explore everything behind that door, including passageways, additional rooms, and using the same "fully explore behind each door" pattern when encountering additional rooms with doors in it, and only return to the first entrance room after every single thing behind that door is explored (or can no longer be due to locked/blocked/warded/whatever stuff that maybe requires something from behind a different dungeon area to access).

    Or...

    2. Open the first door, explore far enough to hit one encounter of opponents, and then turn around, go back to the entrance room (and perhaps out of the dungeon entirely to rest), then come back and explore a second door in the entrance room. Repeat the same process, then return and check out the third door. Then, apparently, continue to bounce back and forth, trying different doors willy nilly.

    Pssst! The answer is always "1". Your players are doing it wrong.


    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Basically, the ghasts had to move through a narrow chokepoint to get to them. If they had moved forward and taken the chokepoint, they could have easily taken them down one at a time without a struggle.

    Instead, they turtled up and let the ghasts completely surround them and did nothing to stem the flow of reinforcements.
    Yeah. Again. Your players seem to have failed to grasp some of the very basic "rules of adventuring". I actually get not pushing forward to a choke point you may not know about, but if you're going to retreat, maybe fall back to a chokepoint instead of standing in a room large enough to allow the enemies to enter and then surround you. Or, better yet, stand close enough to the entrance to that room, that the enemies have to enter one or two at a time, but you can maybe get a semi-circle of your melee types to bash on them as they come in. Lots of ways to do this.

    My players are sometimes overly capable at the whole " find the best tactical position". I actually sometimes have to contrive situations to force them to have to fight in a more open location purely because otherwise, only the front couple characters ever get to do anything. And in a game that is skill based with no experience gained unless you actually use skills successfully, that's a problem. Also a game system with strict issues using ranged weapons into melee fights *and* not a whole lot of direct magic damage effect spells either just makes the other players get bored twiddling their thumbs while their heavy hitters are sqashing stuff in the front.

    But yeah. If they're actually failing due to this sort of thing, then maybe they just need to learn a bit about how to use terrain to their advantage?

  5. - Top - End - #215
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    Default Re: Pacing a megadungeon

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    This is some good critical feedback. Thank you.

    I agree, it is kind of opaque design, this is somewhat intentional as right now the whole thing is a big mystery with a lot more questions than answers.

    They aren't really going about it "wrong" per se; I just figured that they would explore and clear sections one at a time rather than drifting around and checking things out more or less on a whim, scraping the surface of the most areas without digging too deep.
    Well yeah, because every time they try to actually clear something they get their arses kicked! That's what I'm talking about when I say it feels like they lose whenever it matters and only win when it doesn't.

    A mystery with more questions than answers needs to have the answers it does have lead to other answers (even if they also lead to some questions) so that it actually starts unfolding into understanding. If they've mapped 80% they should have started to find some of those answers and have some threads to pull on at this point.

    Hard to describe without a map.

    Basically, the ghasts had to move through a narrow chokepoint to get to them. If they had moved forward and taken the chokepoint, they could have easily taken them down one at a time without a struggle.

    Instead, they turtled up and let the ghasts completely surround them and did nothing to stem the flow of reinforcements.
    I think you've probably overestimated the value of that chokepoint if fighting near it but not directly camping it makes that much difference. Even if they only fight the ghasts one at a time they're going to eat bad rolls every now and again* and they're numerically outmatched, a bad round that puts one character down and they're swamped except now they also have no way to retreat because they're pinned against the choke themselves, and they were already in tight enough quarters that the wizard was having to do spider-man impressions on the wall to get line of sight.

    And that's all assuming the ghasts form an orderly queue and come through one at a time if they're camping the choke rather than taking cover on their side to force a stalemate unless the party come through into their killing ground or trying a mass shove to push the players back. Remembering that they're also intelligent enough to form alliances and make co-ordinated pincer attacks with them.

    *Bearing in mind the wizard has merked themselves twice already at this point with bad rolls.

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    Default Re: Pacing a megadungeon

    @Quertus: Oh, wait, are you doing that thing where you tell me how my players will see things? Whereby giving them the easy win the feel smart and good about themselves? If so, gotcha. If not, you still lost me.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lacco View Post
    ...really?

    Well, did you have a long solo game for the town shopkeeper to venture into next town to get his merchandise? Or a long solo game for the townsfolk to create the settlement? Did you roleplay the individual forces that created the dungeon?

    While there is some merit in going this deep, I think you can ignore some of the rules and eyeball it/make assumptions/make an educated guess and just wing the actual roleplay. The idea is mostly to take a look at the situation from the monsters' point of view, and judge what actually happens (the result) without going through the process.

    However, if you need, I'd suggest going the 'random but not random' way. You can put together some random monster downtime action table and use it to speed up the process (I already have some ideas in my head). And there already are some resources that you could use (take a look at How to Host a Dungeon; even the first edition is quite good even if somewhat limited).
    You have a very complex situation here.

    The elemental attacks the monsters who can't hurt it, they scatter, they then interact with several other groups of monsters, some of whom may be able to hurt the elemental or they might retreat themselves, or they might ally with or fight the initial monsters.

    You then have a chain reaction where every part of the dungeon is moving on and getting every other part of the dungeon involved. That is a lot more in depth (and interesting, and consequential) than a shop-keeper restocking.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Which, honestly, is not an unreasonable expectation. Your players apparently failed "dungeon clearing 101" at RPG school.

    You enter the dungeon, follow a tunnel, which opens up into a room. This room has three closed doors, one heading in a different cardinal direction. Do you:

    1. Open the first door, fully explore everything behind that door, including passageways, additional rooms, and using the same "fully explore behind each door" pattern when encountering additional rooms with doors in it, and only return to the first entrance room after every single thing behind that door is explored (or can no longer be due to locked/blocked/warded/whatever stuff that maybe requires something from behind a different dungeon area to access).

    Or...

    2. Open the first door, explore far enough to hit one encounter of opponents, and then turn around, go back to the entrance room (and perhaps out of the dungeon entirely to rest), then come back and explore a second door in the entrance room. Repeat the same process, then return and check out the third door. Then, apparently, continue to bounce back and forth, trying different doors willy nilly.

    Pssst! The answer is always "1". Your players are doing it wrong.
    It's funny, they actually had this conversation when they first entered the dungeon and voted 3 to 1 to do the latter.

    The route that was proposed would have actually taken them to the end boss of the level by the most direct route possible, which would have either wiped the party right away or they would have killed it and cake-walked the rest of the floor. Either way, it made me say to myself "If she'd of kept on going that way, she'd have gone straight to that castle!".



    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    My players are sometimes overly capable at the whole " find the best tactical position". I actually sometimes have to contrive situations to force them to have to fight in a more open location purely because otherwise, only the front couple characters ever get to do anything. And in a game that is skill based with no experience gained unless you actually use skills successfully, that's a problem. Also a game system with strict issues using ranged weapons into melee fights *and* not a whole lot of direct magic damage effect spells either just makes the other players get bored twiddling their thumbs while their heavy hitters are squashing stuff in the front.
    That is certainly the case with this party. They have two melee characters, both with a defensive build, and two ranged characters, which means their damage is kind of low, especially when fighting in a chokepoint.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    But yeah. If they're actually failing due to this sort of thing, then maybe they just need to learn a bit about how to use terrain to their advantage?
    That's for damn sure. Bob actually considers terrain to be cheating because it "always puts the PCs at a disadvantage."

    I mean, he is sort of right due to natural adaptations; a great white shark is more dangerous in the ocean than the desert, but it really speaks to his lack of tactical acumen.

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    Well yeah, because every time they try to actually clear something they get their arses kicked! That's what I'm talking about when I say it feels like they lose whenever it matters and only win when it doesn't.
    I don't know how you would gauge that. Is there anything which makes you think that the fights they have lost are somehow more important than the ones they won?

    I guess it also really depends on the metrics for losing a fight. They have fallen back a few times and been blackmailed once, but the fight against the kobolds is the only one they actually "lost"; and even then they probably would have been the last people standing if they were willing to fight to the end and suffer a few casualties.

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    A mystery with more questions than answers needs to have the answers it does have lead to other answers (even if they also lead to some questions) so that it actually starts unfolding into understanding. If they've mapped 80% they should have started to find some of those answers and have some threads to pull on at this point.
    They have a few answers, although fewer than they should, they are remarkably uninquisitive. It's just 80% of the first floor mind you, not the whole complex. But they do have a weird habit of turning around one room before encountering the lore heavy encounters or things they can talk to.

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    *Bearing in mind the wizard has merked themselves twice already at this point with bad rolls.
    Yep. Chaos magic is chaotic. Which is why I am saying that I don't think they are really doing particularly poorly except in their minds, most of their setbacks are just from dice rolls not going their way.

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    I think you've probably overestimated the value of that chokepoint if fighting near it but not directly camping it makes that much difference. Even if they only fight the ghasts one at a time they're going to eat bad rolls every now and again* and they're numerically outmatched, a bad round that puts one character down and they're swamped except now they also have no way to retreat because they're pinned against the choke themselves, and they were already in tight enough quarters that the wizard was having to do spider-man impressions on the wall to get line of sight.

    And that's all assuming the ghasts form an orderly queue and come through one at a time if they're camping the choke rather than taking cover on their side to force a stalemate unless the party come through into their killing ground or trying a mass shove to push the players back. Remembering that they're also intelligent enough to form alliances and make co-ordinated pincer attacks with them.
    Again, this is hard without a map.

    Basically, you have a sinkhole in the center of a 20' x 20' room. Unbeknownst to the players, there was an undead army stored below, and when they detect living creatures they dig themselves out of the sinkhole at a rate of one per turn, and a half dozen are already in the room.

    Outside the room is a T shaped hallway 5' wide, with each brance extending 10' out from the 5' square intersection.

    One branch of the T is closed off and the players didn't open it (probably best they not open combat on two fronts, although in retrospect they should have gone that way first as there is a lot of treasure down there and it is going to be a pain to clear the ghasts at this point).

    The other branch of the 2 opens out into a larger room, 20' wide and 40' long. Outside of this room is the main street, 15' wide and a hundred feet long.


    The first encounter, the players kind of used the door as a choke point, but in a way that hurt themselves more than the ghasts, with their two melee in the room and their ranged in the doorway. This allowed the ghasts to maximize attacks against them but their ranged attacks were all suffering heavy penalties. They fell back, which was a very smart tactical move as they could not have defeated the entire undead horde at this point (although maybe later when they are stronger and coming at it from below...) but they made the big mistake of not doing anything to block of the ghasts from coming after them in the future.


    Second fight, they choose to turtle up in the large 20x40 foot room. This is allowing the ghasts to surround them. If they had taken the chokepoint, they would be able to kill the ghasts one at a time, and although its slow going, a single ghast has roughly zero chance of hurting Feurlina, so they could slowly push them back through the hall and then do whatever it took to seal the breach more or less at their leisure.

    Instead they got surrounded, took a lot of damage, fell back, and then sealed the outer door. Same overall effect, but now they are going to have problems getting back to where they were, and took a lot more damage than was neccesary.
    Last edited by Talakeal; 2023-03-22 at 05:26 PM.
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  7. - Top - End - #217
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    Default Re: Pacing a megadungeon

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    That's for damn sure. Bob actually considers terrain to be cheating because it "always puts the PCs at a disadvantage."
    Maybe we should rewrite the military treatises based on this
    1) know yourself, at least as far as your character sheet goes. Don't worry about your weak spots, if the opponent targets them it's unfair.
    2) don't know the enemy. scouting is boring.
    3) ignore the terrain, exploting it is cheating anyway.
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  8. - Top - End - #218
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    Default Re: Pacing a megadungeon

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    Maybe we should rewrite the military treatises based on this
    1) know yourself, at least as far as your character sheet goes. Don't worry about your weak spots, if the opponent targets them it's unfair.
    2) don't know the enemy. scouting is boring.
    3) ignore the terrain, exploting it is cheating anyway.
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  9. - Top - End - #219
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    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    I don't know how you would gauge that. Is there anything which makes you think that the fights they have lost are somehow more important than the ones they won?

    I guess it also really depends on the metrics for losing a fight. They have fallen back a few times and been blackmailed once, but the fight against the kobolds is the only one they actually "lost"; and even then they probably would have been the last people standing if they were willing to fight to the end and suffer a few casualties.
    That, by your own admission, they haven't actually meaningfully cleared any territory and from how you phrase the descriptions in your campaign report (the fights they win are presented as being pretty trivial beyond the big bird, which didn't really get them anything), and from the fact that they lose to serious opposition every time.

    And also, if they get beaten back and the next time they have to try the same thing it will be harder, they lost. Materially, they have failed and are suffering consequences.

    They have a few answers, although fewer than they should, they are remarkably uninquisitive. It's just 80% of the first floor mind you, not the whole complex. But they do have a weird habit of turning around one room before encountering the lore heavy encounters or things they can talk to.
    Then you need to be telling them more. You need to make sure they know that the next room is important. It needs to have significant descriptions.

    This is a two way street, they don't ask questions because they want to kick the doors in and take the treasure, but you need to fill in those gaps without them having to ask otherwise they never will know things.

    Yep. Chaos magic is chaotic. Which is why I am saying that I don't think they are really doing particularly poorly except in their minds, most of their setbacks are just from dice rolls not going their way.
    It probably shouldn't be so potent on a fail a single bad roll can scuff an entire encounter though. Your players have binned two encounters on a single bad roll because it took a character out.

    Again, this is hard without a map.

    Basically, you have a sinkhole in the center of a 20' x 20' room. Unbeknownst to the players, there was an undead army stored below, and when they detect living creatures they dig themselves out of the sinkhole at a rate of one per turn, and a half dozen are already in the room.

    Outside the room is a T shaped hallway 5' wide, with each brance extending 10' out from the 5' square intersection.

    One branch of the T is closed off and the players didn't open it (probably best they not open combat on two fronts, although in retrospect they should have gone that way first as there is a lot of treasure down there and it is going to be a pain to clear the ghasts at this point).

    The other branch of the 2 opens out into a larger room, 20' wide and 40' long. Outside of this room is the main street, 15' wide and a hundred feet long.


    The first encounter, the players kind of used the door as a choke point, but in a way that hurt themselves more than the ghasts, with their two melee in the room and their ranged in the doorway. This allowed the ghasts to maximize attacks against them but their ranged attacks were all suffering heavy penalties. They fell back, which was a very smart tactical move as they could not have defeated the entire undead horde at this point (although maybe later when they are stronger and coming at it from below...) but they made the big mistake of not doing anything to block of the ghasts from coming after them in the future.


    Second fight, they choose to turtle up in the large 20x40 foot room. This is allowing the ghasts to surround them. If they had taken the chokepoint, they would be able to kill the ghasts one at a time, and although its slow going, a single ghast has roughly zero chance of hurting Feurlina, so they could slowly push them back through the hall and then do whatever it took to seal the breach more or less at their leisure.

    Instead they got surrounded, took a lot of damage, fell back, and then sealed the outer door. Same overall effect, but now they are going to have problems getting back to where they were, and took a lot more damage than was neccesary.

    No, if they'd taken the chokepoint the ghasts would have hidden until they made themselves vulnerable. Rememer you made your ghasts intelligent enough to form alliances and co-operative pincer attacks. You can't do that and have them be mindless videogame mobs at other times because that feeds into the way you've decided your players should handle the encounter.

    You set this up to have one solution, which is really boring to execute because only one character is engaging at full capability and you think they're not being threatened so it's just mechanistic now (and as noted a bad round of rolls, or even one bad roll from your wizard, and it goes south) and that one solution shouldn't have worked with the way you were otherwise playing the enemies as not mindless.

    And when the players didn't do that one solution first time they've put themselves into a position where now they don't even get to try and guess how it played out in your head until they've done something much harder, and the time they tried something to do it it backfired and they hurt themselves, and that was what forced them out.

    It sounds very much like you're balancing these encounters far too narrowly around the players doing one winning strategy, not leaving them any wiggle room to explore the possibility space and discover that strategy, and closing it off when they do something else (or take a bad roll and gib themselves).

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    Default Re: Pacing a megadungeon

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    You set this up to have one solution, which is really boring to execute because only one character is engaging at full capability and you think they're not being threatened so it's just mechanistic now (and as noted a bad round of rolls, or even one bad roll from your wizard, and it goes south) and that one solution shouldn't have worked with the way you were otherwise playing the enemies as not mindless.

    And when the players didn't do that one solution first time they've put themselves into a position where now they don't even get to try and guess how it played out in your head until they've done something much harder, and the time they tried something to do it it backfired and they hurt themselves, and that was what forced them out.

    It sounds very much like you're balancing these encounters far too narrowly around the players doing one winning strategy, not leaving them any wiggle room to explore the possibility space and discover that strategy, and closing it off when they do something else (or take a bad roll and gib themselves).
    I think you misunderstand; the ghasts are not intelligent. They are, essentially, rage zombies. They see living creature, they run at living creature and bite it until hacked to pieces.

    They had nothing to do with pincer movements or blocking off the PC's retreat later on, save for the fact that the PCs went into that fight low on HP due to the ghast fight.
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    My other criticisms stand though. You designed the encounter in such a way that the optimal strategy is the most boring strategy that involves the least number of players (because everyone is queued behind the frontline in a 1-person wide corridor until the wizard manages to drop rocks somewhere other than on the party for once) and made the numbers on it so tight that anything other than the optimal strategy would fail.

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    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    My other criticisms stand though. You designed the encounter in such a way that the optimal strategy is the most boring strategy that involves the least number of players (because everyone is queued behind the frontline in a 1-person wide corridor until the wizard manages to drop rocks somewhere other than on the party for once) and made the numbers on it so tight that anything other than the optimal strategy would fail.
    I appreciate the vote of confidence in my tuning abilities; but it really wasn't that tight. When I designed the dungeon, the PCs hadn't been created yet and I had no idea what order they would explore it in.

    The issue isn't that there was only one working strategy; its that fights with a reinforcement mechanic strongly disincentivize "turtling" strategies, which are my players go to state. They have similar problems with enemies who use AOE or ranged kiting.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

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    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    My other criticisms stand though. You designed the encounter in such a way that the optimal strategy is the most boring strategy that involves the least number of players (because everyone is queued behind the frontline in a 1-person wide corridor until the wizard manages to drop rocks somewhere other than on the party for once) and made the numbers on it so tight that anything other than the optimal strategy would fail.
    They've only got five characters (or is it four?). Two melee, two ranged, and one spellcaster?. The logical thing for them to do is fall back to the T intersection, put one melee and one missile person on each side, with the caster behind one of them. That way, both melee characters can attack against the one ghast standing in the 5' wide intersection (one from each side of the T), and both missile folks can fire (with some minuses, but still something), and the spell caster can... cast. I'm not sure what kind of healing stuff they have, but probably a good idea to make sure that each "side" has someone who can heal, just in case of bad luck or something.

    That's almost pure whack-a-mole strategy there, and allows every single character to be involved in the fight. Alternatively, if you are really concerned about splitting the party, you can fall back to the 20x40 room, set up the two melee folks to bracket the hallway entrance to that room, again with missile folks standing behind and/or to the side, and the spell caster basically anywhere else in the room. Same deal. Two on one, fast defeat of the initial ghasts in the room.

    Once that initial group is cleared, you should be able to move foward into the room with the sinkhole and then do whatever needs to be done to seal it, while only dealing with one ghast every minute (which should be easily manageable barring some terrific bad luck). This is not really a case of the GM having one and only one head cannoned idea of how they succeed, but just basic tactics that any semi-capable person should immediately grasp and implement, with a number of different options available to them. I mean, we can insist that the GM tune the encounters based on the assumption that the PCs are going to stand, all alone, out in the middle of nowhere, seeking no cover, nor using any walls or other terrain to block the advance/attack of their enemies, but still expect to succeed anyway, but that would be silly.


    Based on the description, this was a pretty standard bog simple encounter situation with some very obvious "right ways" to handle them. The players just couldn't noodle it out for some reason. And sure. Maybe they didn't know what rate the additional ghasts would appear initially. And maybe they didn't know how strong they were. But um... then you assume the worst, take the best positions you can, and go from there. But having taken a decent defensive position, and wiped out the first half dozen ghasts, then maybe seen another ghast or two show up while doing that, but then realizing that no more have arrived since then, it's not rocket science to head back, see the sinkhole, and the maybe one ghast just now coming out of it and realize "hey. they're only able to come up one at a time, and it takes them X long to do so", and then intelligently respond to that as well.

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    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Once that initial group is cleared, you should be able to move foward into the room with the sinkhole and then do whatever needs to be done to seal it, while only dealing with one ghast every minute (which should be easily manageable barring some terrific bad luck). This is not really a case of the GM having one and only one head cannoned idea of how they succeed, but just basic tactics that any semi-capable person should immediately grasp and implement, with a number of different options available to them. I mean, we can insist that the GM tune the encounters based on the assumption that the PCs are going to stand, all alone, out in the middle of nowhere, seeking no cover, nor using any walls or other terrain to block the advance/attack of their enemies, but still expect to succeed anyway, but that would be silly.
    Based on the description, they were not removing ghasts faster than they appeared. I'm assuming Takaleal is playing his own system and that means that a turn is one set of actions from everyone not ten rounds of actions. It's not one ghast every minute, it's one every five seconds.

    If they'd been clearing them faster than they spawned their first attempt would have had a few hairy turns but then they would have been clear but having taken more damage than they would if they played optimally. They need to be able to kill two ghasts a turn indefinitely in order to beat the spawn rate and it sounds like they're not.

    But because they didn't do it exactly right the first time they now can't even attempt the right solutions, because the main hall is now held against them and they can't ever get back to a defensive position much better than the one they failed with first time.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    You have a very complex situation here.

    The elemental attacks the monsters who can't hurt it, they scatter, they then interact with several other groups of monsters, some of whom may be able to hurt the elemental or they might retreat themselves, or they might ally with or fight the initial monsters.

    You then have a chain reaction where every part of the dungeon is moving on and getting every other part of the dungeon involved. That is a lot more in depth (and interesting, and consequential) than a shop-keeper restocking.
    Swinging a sword at your enemy is a very complex situation. Still, you don't model it by checking for the angle of swing (diagonal? vertical?), starting position (high forward? high backward? low backward?), stance of the attacker, position of the defender, angle of impact, velocity & acceleration imparted by the attacker, rigidity of the armor and its flexibility...

    You can model your situation using very simple methods - either deterministic or stochastic - on one side of the scale... or you can go into the system and roleplay each encounter using monster state, as the opposite extreme. Or you can pick any combination in between.

    I'd disagree about the depth, but consequence for the players would definitely be higher for the dungeon as opposed to the shopkeeping... but in one other thread, you mentioned they considered an in-game careers as tradesfolk, so maybe the interest could also be there.

    You could even ask them to each pick one group and try to stop the actual threat now, but I assume it would lead nowhere (as their skill to ignore OOC knowledge seems to be on very low level).

    What I was trying to say is: you can run the scenario in your head within few minutes. Documenting it could lead to anywhere from one to few hours (depending on how detailed your notes are).

    Still, thank you. You gave me an idea for my next future project

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    Maybe we should rewrite the military treatises based on this
    1) know yourself, at least as far as your character sheet goes. Don't worry about your weak spots, if the opponent targets them it's unfair.
    2) don't know the enemy. scouting is boring.
    3) ignore the terrain, exploting it is cheating anyway.
    I'd only add "Know your enemy so you can whine until the GM gives up".
    Last edited by Lacco; 2023-03-23 at 05:07 AM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kol Korran View Post
    Instead of having an adventure, from which a cool unexpected story may rise, you had a story, with an adventure built and designed to enable the story, but also ensure (or close to ensure) it happens.

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    Default Re: Pacing a megadungeon

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    Maybe we should rewrite the military treatises based on this
    1) know yourself, at least as far as your character sheet goes. Don't worry about your weak spots, if the opponent targets them it's unfair.
    2) don't know the enemy. scouting is boring.
    3) ignore the terrain, exploting it is cheating anyway.
    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    The Tao of Bob.
    Build and playtest your adventures to the Tao of Bob.

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    @Quertus: Oh, wait, are you doing that thing where you tell me how my players will see things? Whereby giving them the easy win the feel smart and good about themselves? If so, gotcha. If not, you still lost me.
    Depends on the reference? Some of what I've said certainly is an attempt at player perspective. I do believe that... hmmm... "do not get into an arms race with your players, because they cannot win". You have encouraged your players to be brave, and not just do a 15 MWD, but you have had the monsters use better strategy than your players, "for realism", and presented encounters that were too difficult for their "kick in the door" strategies, causing them to fail, repeatedly. Therefore, your players have engaged your arms race, and, "for realism", have upped their strategy, and summoned incorporeal creatures.

    Don't continue the arms race, let your players win.

    This is true as a general rule. Whenever your players engage in such an arms race, it's a sign you've started an arms race, so let them win. But it's especially true after you've just Tucker's'd a group with depression issues. GIVE THEM THE WIN THEIR MENTAL HEALTH NEEDS! (Or so I suspect. I am not a mental health professional, nor do I play one in an RPG.)

    As an added side bonus, this gives you the perfect opportunity to in effect create a brand new dungeon, the Dungeon of Corpses. You were complaining about having to run a solo session; instead, **** "realism", and think of it as rebuilding the dungeon with Gamist concerns of "where would all the corpses be that would give the most information to my players?".

    Whereas before you built a dungeon with intelligent monsters that would talk to the party to give them information (Talakeal, how could you? You know Bob hates it when NPCs "monologue".), you now get to build a dungeon that tells the same tale (two or 3 times over, because Rule of 3 and all that) through the corpses left behind. You get to place all the corpses in such a way as they facilitate whatever information you want the players to have.

    For example, perhaps all the goblins in area 17 seem to have run off north (towards that sentient creature's room), carrying a heavy burden (their loot, to ensure the PCs go that way); when the PCs get there, a) the sentient being killed the incorporeal creatures, and, highly wounded, sues for peace (yay monsters unconditionally surrendering for a change! Yay giving the party the win!); or b) the sentient being is also dead, but left behind notes / books / cave paintings / whatever to clue the PCs in.

    Mix and match different outcomes to give the PCs the most information possible, the most different ways possible.

    Build the dungeon that gives the PCs lots of wins (lots of dead monsters that couldn't deal with incorporeal foes) and lots of information that you can dish out as you describe the rooms filled with death that your uninquisitive PCs would otherwise never obtain. And have the occasional information dump NPC unconditionally surrender to the PCs.

    But, uh, don't have that NPC take an information dump on the PCs' win. (No, I don't have any good advice here, your players are from Bizarro World. Maybe several such NPCs, with different personalities, different levels of detail given, different timing on that info / how chatty they are? Whichever NPC / monster they keep around / come back to is a lesson for you for the future?)

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    It's funny, they actually had this conversation when they first entered the dungeon and voted 3 to 1 to do the latter.

    The route that was proposed would have actually taken them to the end boss of the level by the most direct route possible, which would have either wiped the party right away or they would have killed it and cake-walked the rest of the floor. Either way, it made me say to myself "If she'd of kept on going that way, she'd have gone straight to that castle!".
    So, in addition to designing a dungeon poorly for your players, you also designed it poorly for someone who would do it "right", but with the bad luck to choose the boss fight first? That sounds like really bad dungeon design.

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    That is certainly the case with this party. They have two melee characters, both with a defensive build, and two ranged characters, which means their damage is kind of low, especially when fighting in a chokepoint.
    Um... what? By all means, explain what "high damage" would look like in your system, especially at a choke point. Because that party composition is sounding pretty optimal to my ears.

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    That's for damn sure. Bob actually considers terrain to be cheating because it "always puts the PCs at a disadvantage."

    I mean, he is sort of right due to natural adaptations; a great white shark is more dangerous in the ocean than the desert, but it really speaks to his lack of tactical acumen.
    So build your dungeons and encounters to your players, and don't "cheat". Have monsters almost never get any advantage from the environment, and even then only trivial advantages compared to what the PCs could get from the environments you've created.

    That is, for example, in encounters 3, 7, and 10, the PCs could get +4 cover bonuses, or +4 stealth bonuses, from using the features of the environment (columns, steam, stalagmites, a cart, whatever). In encounter 9, one monster gets a +1 attack bonus from being on the ceiling. In encounter 11, the PCs can choose to fight on rock or ice; on ice, both sides eat a 4 point penalty to attack and defense (or whatever). Or they can stand at the edge of the ice, in which case the monster may delay (giving them time to prepare buffs maybe?), go around (maybe buying them time again?), or attempt to leap over their front lines (which may fail, resulting in a really bad fight for the monster). Maybe encounter 12 is in the same area, as a Xorn phases through the stone... but if the PCs push / throw the Xorn onto the ice, it becomes a trivial fight. Encounter 14 involves a dragon, a mountain, some rubble, and some caves - they can choose to fight it in the open, among the boulders, or in the caves. No answer is inherently "optimal", it's simply a question of utilizing their own strengths. Encounter 16 is ROUS's in the Fire Swamp. Encounter 17 involves meeting an NPC (or maybe just a group of goblins) that has thrown a Xorn out of the stone (or even onto a carpet) to slaughter it.

    Make the terrain something they can use to gain advantage, not something that gives them disadvantage.

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Yep. Chaos magic is chaotic. Which is why I am saying that I don't think they are really doing particularly poorly except in their minds, most of their setbacks are just from dice rolls not going their way.
    Um... they're doing poorly. Period. If "poorly" is how badly you would expect them to do, that's even worse. Give them their Conan story, not this travesty of failure that almost made them quit. Give them an adventure that lets them be BDHs. Ask yourself if someone who loved Conan stories would love the story your adventure has created, and find the PCs to be bigger heroes than Conan. Let that be your guiding light for adventure design.

    Not Tucker's kobalds.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Build and playtest your adventures to the Tao of Bob.
    In other words "write the adventure for the players you have".

    And if there are things they're not good at countering, use the easy mode versions of those things. (Including "needing to get information", if you know they won't ask don't wait for them to...)
    Last edited by GloatingSwine; 2023-03-23 at 06:57 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    They've only got five characters (or is it four?). Two melee, two ranged, and one spellcaster?. The logical thing for them to do is fall back to the T intersection, put one melee and one missile person on each side, with the caster behind one of them. That way, both melee characters can attack against the one ghast standing in the 5' wide intersection (one from each side of the T), and both missile folks can fire (with some minuses, but still something), and the spell caster can... cast. I'm not sure what kind of healing stuff they have, but probably a good idea to make sure that each "side" has someone who can heal, just in case of bad luck or something.

    That's almost pure whack-a-mole strategy there, and allows every single character to be involved in the fight. Alternatively, if you are really concerned about splitting the party, you can fall back to the 20x40 room, set up the two melee folks to bracket the hallway entrance to that room, again with missile folks standing behind and/or to the side, and the spell caster basically anywhere else in the room. Same deal. Two on one, fast defeat of the initial ghasts in the room.

    Once that initial group is cleared, you should be able to move foward into the room with the sinkhole and then do whatever needs to be done to seal it, while only dealing with one ghast every minute (which should be easily manageable barring some terrific bad luck). This is not really a case of the GM having one and only one head cannoned idea of how they succeed, but just basic tactics that any semi-capable person should immediately grasp and implement, with a number of different options available to them. I mean, we can insist that the GM tune the encounters based on the assumption that the PCs are going to stand, all alone, out in the middle of nowhere, seeking no cover, nor using any walls or other terrain to block the advance/attack of their enemies, but still expect to succeed anyway, but that would be silly.


    Based on the description, this was a pretty standard bog simple encounter situation with some very obvious "right ways" to handle them. The players just couldn't noodle it out for some reason. And sure. Maybe they didn't know what rate the additional ghasts would appear initially. And maybe they didn't know how strong they were. But um... then you assume the worst, take the best positions you can, and go from there. But having taken a decent defensive position, and wiped out the first half dozen ghasts, then maybe seen another ghast or two show up while doing that, but then realizing that no more have arrived since then, it's not rocket science to head back, see the sinkhole, and the maybe one ghast just now coming out of it and realize "hey. they're only able to come up one at a time, and it takes them X long to do so", and then intelligently respond to that as well.
    That is more or less how I see it as well. However...

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    Based on the description, they were not removing ghasts faster than they appeared. I'm assuming Takaleal is playing his own system and that means that a turn is one set of actions from everyone not ten rounds of actions. It's not one ghast every minute, it's one every five seconds.

    If they'd been clearing them faster than they spawned their first attempt would have had a few hairy turns but then they would have been clear but having taken more damage than they would if they played optimally. They need to be able to kill two ghasts a turn indefinitely in order to beat the spawn rate and it sounds like they're not.

    But because they didn't do it exactly right the first time they now can't even attempt the right solutions, because the main hall is now held against them and they can't ever get back to a defensive position much better than the one they failed with first time.
    This is correct, it is every 5 seconds not minute, however they are minions, and given average rolls and no AOE the players should kill them about half again as fast as they spawn. This means the players can (and did) wipe them out through conventional turtle tactics, but a more proactive strategy is strongly encouraged.

    I do, however, find it strange that you are saying "exactly right" when what you mean is "anything at all to slow their advance".

    Again, I find it so weird that the first half of this thread seemed to go pretty hard on how the solution to pacing is smart reactive monsters; and now it has turned into a bitchfest about how punishing smart reactive monsters are.

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    In other words "write the adventure for the players you have".

    And if there are things they're not good at countering, use the easy mode versions of those things. (Including "needing to get information", if you know they won't ask don't wait for them to...)
    That is easier said than done. For one thing, my players competence varies wildly. For example, if I catch them on a day when they weren't up all night playing video games and don't have their phones out all session, they can be downright brilliant.


    It also just seems unfair that I am always expected to play down to their level rather than trying to meet them half-way.


    As is, my players are obsessed with "balanced combat". We also had an issue back in the olden days we called the "cycle of stupidity" where they would hyper focus in one area (usually combat) and I would then balance encounters around their party, which made them feel like they were no longer special, and thus would min-max even harder, and so on. That ended with us making a standing agreement that I would now longer balance encounters around the PCs but instead around a hypothetical "average party of their level".

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Um... they're doing poorly. Period. If "poorly" is how badly you would expect them to do, that's even worse. Give them their Conan story, not this travesty of failure that almost made them quit. Give them an adventure that lets them be BDHs. Ask yourself if someone who loved Conan stories would love the story your adventure has created, and find the PCs to be bigger heroes than Conan. Let that be your guiding light for adventure design.

    Not Tucker's kobalds.
    Two things here:

    First, what is this objective definition of poorly you have? Could you please share it?

    Mathematically, the game is balanced around 4-6 encounters per adventuring day. The players have had seven adventuring days, and have cleared 35 encounters. By any objective standard, that seems exactly where they should be.

    Likewise, they haven't actually suffered any casualties yet aside from one player literally committing suicide for completely metagame reasons (see the audacious cheating thread for more info).


    Out of curiosity, do you really find being surrounded by kobolds and entering into an alliance with them whereby you split treasure to avoid deaths on both sides to be a "travesty of failure"? Because that is pretty standard in my understanding of both fiction and RPGs; every other campaign journal I read has moments like that all the time. I recently reread Kaveman's awesome journals in preperation for this game, and stuff like that happens more or less on a daily occurrence.


    Second, have you actually read Conan? IIRC most of his adventures start with him on the run and in hiding or making a plea deal with his captors, and usually ends up with him broke and his friends all dead. Even the movie had him in captivity repeatedly, to the point where he was executed on a cross, and even though he wins in the end he undergoes extreme setbacks and his party has a lot of casualties.

    I very much like Conan, in no large part because he struggles but never gives up, but he is in no way the flawless Mary Sue who always wins that Bob would enjoy.


    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    So, in addition to designing a dungeon poorly for your players, you also designed it poorly for someone who would do it "right", but with the bad luck to choose the boss fight first? That sounds like really bad dungeon design.
    Out of curiosity, what is "right"?

    The dungeon starts with five paths for them to take; how is one of them objectively better than any of the others?

    It just so happened that one player proposed always taking the leftmost turn which would have, coincidentally, taken them to the strongest monster on the level by the most direct path.

    Whether or not this is "bad luck" or "good luck" is another question that I don't have an answer to. Its certainly the "high-risk high-reward" path, but without foreknowledge of how the fight would have gone I can't say whether or not it would have been good or bad luck.

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Um... what? By all means, explain what "high damage" would look like in your system, especially at a choke point. Because that party composition is sounding pretty optimal to my ears.
    Taking high strength and dexterity over high endurance and agility. Using two handed weapons over shields. Taking offensive over defensive combat techniques. Spending money on good weapons over good armor.

    As for the back rank, both of them depend on rolls to hit for their builds, which is not optimal in tight spaces, especially when you have a giant oaf like Feurlina in the front lines, as they are taking hefty penalties for line of sight and friendly fire. In addition, Jesse didn't even bother taking proficiency in her weapon, as she figured her "lucky" dice rolls would simply always deliver the nat twenty and thus didn't need it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    As an added side bonus, this gives you the perfect opportunity to in effect create a brand new dungeon, the Dungeon of Corpses. You were complaining about having to run a solo session; instead, **** "realism", and think of it as rebuilding the dungeon with Gamist concerns of "where would all the corpses be that would give the most information to my players?".

    Whereas before you built a dungeon with intelligent monsters that would talk to the party to give them information (Talakeal, how could you? You know Bob hates it when NPCs "monologue".), you now get to build a dungeon that tells the same tale (two or 3 times over, because Rule of 3 and all that) through the corpses left behind. You get to place all the corpses in such a way as they facilitate whatever information you want the players to have.

    For example, perhaps all the goblins in area 17 seem to have run off north (towards that sentient creature's room), carrying a heavy burden (their loot, to ensure the PCs go that way); when the PCs get there, a) the sentient being killed the incorporeal creatures, and, highly wounded, sues for peace (yay monsters unconditionally surrendering for a change! Yay giving the party the win!); or b) the sentient being is also dead, but left behind notes / books / cave paintings / whatever to clue the PCs in.

    Mix and match different outcomes to give the PCs the most information possible, the most different ways possible.

    Build the dungeon that gives the PCs lots of wins (lots of dead monsters that couldn't deal with incorporeal foes) and lots of information that you can dish out as you describe the rooms filled with death that your uninquisitive PCs would otherwise never obtain. And have the occasional information dump NPC unconditionally surrender to the PCs.

    But, uh, don't have that NPC take an information dump on the PCs' win. (No, I don't have any good advice here, your players are from Bizarro World. Maybe several such NPCs, with different personalities, different levels of detail given, different timing on that info / how chatty they are? Whichever NPC / monster they keep around / come back to is a lesson for you for the future?)
    My players love combat and hate investigation.

    How on Earth do you think a forensic dungeon would be tailored to their tastes?

    They are also thicker than mud, there is no way I could actually convey lore to them through clues and dungeon dressing and implications.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

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    Default Re: Pacing a megadungeon

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    Based on the description, they were not removing ghasts faster than they appeared. I'm assuming Takaleal is playing his own system and that means that a turn is one set of actions from everyone not ten rounds of actions. It's not one ghast every minute, it's one every five seconds.
    Huh. I assumed the term "turn" was longer than a "round" (some games use those terms interchangeably, some dont, and usually with a "turn" being some number of "rounds"). I made this assumption because one per actual melee round is insanely, impossibly, fast. Unless the ghasts are basically minion level foes the party can buzzsaw through at 2-3/round, they will be overwhelmed. You have to assume a round or two figuring out what's going on and positioning yourselves properly, then several rounds killing the first set of ghasts, and then actually making progress (meaning killing them enough faster than they appear that you can make headway). If these ghasts aren't basically one-hit kills, I can totally see the party coming to the conclusion that they can't win and just fleeing.

    I assumed a rate somewhere in the 1 per 5 melee rounds range. That rate would work for foes that maybe take a hit or three to take down, but by positioning yourselves well, and combining your attacks, you can clear them faster than they appear, have time to get back into the room, and then have time to figure out how to seal off the sinkhole while managing the occasional new opponent that makes it out while you are doing that.

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    If they'd been clearing them faster than they spawned their first attempt would have had a few hairy turns but then they would have been clear but having taken more damage than they would if they played optimally. They need to be able to kill two ghasts a turn indefinitely in order to beat the spawn rate and it sounds like they're not.
    Yeah. Not being clear on what that spawn rate actually is relative to likely kill rate, makes it hard to assess. From the description though, it sounded like it wasn't the respawn rate that was the problem, but that they just couldn't manage the initial group of ghasts, because they didn't position themselves well to deal with being "outnumbered" initially. But yeah, it could be the other thing too.

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    But because they didn't do it exactly right the first time they now can't even attempt the right solutions, because the main hall is now held against them and they can't ever get back to a defensive position much better than the one they failed with first time.
    Well. Again, I don't know enough about the game system to know how manageable incomming vs outgoing damage rates really are. Even with a high respawn rate, as long as the entire group can kill ghasts faster than that, then they should be able to position themeslves so the whole party is whalloping on just the front ghast or two, while only taking one attack per round. It's totally up to odds of taking damage, damage done over time, heal/protection capabilities of the party, etc, but technically if you have a chokepoint like this, you should be able to defeat *any* number of opponents, as long as you have the resources to manage the "one attacks us collectively a round" damage potential.

    This is also where AE attacks (spells?) come in really handy. Clear out a whole room or hallway in one go, then advance to the next chokepoint, continue fighting, then clear another, etc. Yeah. They've made it harder on themselves though.


    I did once actually put something like this in a scenario. They had worked their way through a tomb, and made it to the main treasure room (well, it was where the actual sarcaphagus was and their quest required they obtain at least one piece of the entombed hero's equipment to succeed). There were some basic greed traps. There were two bone pits in the room, full of bones, and of undeterminate depth (er, the ancient hero entombed there worshiped a god of death, so it was actually connected to hell, so "all the way down"). The longer they were in the room, the more the bones would start moving, and (after a few rounds) disgorging 1d3 skeletons per round. If they started looting some specific (really large and "pretty") gems, each sitting at the foot of a short statue (you see what's coming, right?) the statue/golem would activate and attack. And if they continued trying to take the gems, at some point the actual (quite dead, but that's not stopping him) hero would awaken and start doing "bad things" to them (like calling his gear to him, and hucking death magic around willy nilly, so "really bad"). The whole point to this was it was a "grab what you can and skedaddle" situation. It was obvious this was what it was. The players knew that's all they were here for, and they completed the mission. And they actually managed to get pretty much all the gear, and grab a few sparklies while heading out towards the door (the undead couldn't actually leave the chamber).

    I guess the point here is don't put an "unending spawn of enemies" situation in any location that isn't a "do what you came for and then leave" situation. And make it obvious what that situation is to the players (ie: They are there for a reason, are told not to linger or "bad things" will happen). If I just stumbled into a room like this, I'd likely just lock the door and go another direction as well. Doubly so if I have no information about what it is, why it is there, it's not part of my "quest" to deal with it, etc. If your intention as a GM is to actually have the party deal with this, and seal off the hole/portal/whatever, then you have to provide them with instructions. Perhaps these kobolds tell them of an ancient treasure guarded by ghasts from the underworld, but no one can get there because they just keep coming. But if someone where powerful enough, and clever enough, maybe they could find a way to seal off the portal to <wherever> stop the ghasts from coming and claim the treasure. But yeah. You need to provide the players with a reason to go there, some idea of what is there, and enough information to know what they need to do.

    Random room? Not so great. Again though, the situation could be salvaged, if somewhere else they run across folks in the megadungeon who know about the ghasts and perhaps know something about where the sinkhole goes to, how it might be sealed, etc (and again, with some actual reason to bother in the first place, like... treasure).

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    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Huh. I assumed the term "turn" was longer than a "round" (some games use those terms interchangeably, some dont, and usually with a "turn" being some number of "rounds"). I made this assumption because one per actual melee round is insanely, impossibly, fast. Unless the ghasts are basically minion level foes the party can buzzsaw through at 2-3/round, they will be overwhelmed. You have to assume a round or two figuring out what's going on and positioning yourselves properly, then several rounds killing the first set of ghasts, and then actually making progress (meaning killing them enough faster than they appear that you can make headway). If these ghasts aren't basically one-hit kills, I can totally see the party coming to the conclusion that they can't win and just fleeing.

    I assumed a rate somewhere in the 1 per 5 melee rounds range. That rate would work for foes that maybe take a hit or three to take down, but by positioning yourselves well, and combining your attacks, you can clear them faster than they appear, have time to get back into the room, and then have time to figure out how to seal off the sinkhole while managing the occasional new opponent that makes it out while you are doing that.
    It was one per round.
    They were minion level opponents.
    Average dice rolls and no AOE, the party kills than about half again as fast as they spawn (IE 3 kills every 2 turns).

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Well. Again, I don't know enough about the game system to know how manageable incomming vs outgoing damage rates really are. Even with a high respawn rate, as long as the entire group can kill ghasts faster than that, then they should be able to position themeslves so the whole party is whalloping on just the front ghast or two, while only taking one attack per round. It's totally up to odds of taking damage, damage done over time, heal/protection capabilities of the party, etc, but technically if you have a chokepoint like this, you should be able to defeat *any* number of opponents, as long as you have the resources to manage the "one attacks us collectively a round" damage potential.

    This is also where AE attacks (spells?) come in really handy. Clear out a whole room or hallway in one go, then advance to the next chokepoint, continue fighting, then clear another, etc. Yeah. They've made it harder on themselves though.
    This is correct.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    I guess the point here is don't put an "unending spawn of enemies" situation in any location that isn't a "do what you came for and then leave" situation. And make it obvious what that situation is to the players (ie: They are there for a reason, are told not to linger or "bad things" will happen). If I just stumbled into a room like this, I'd likely just lock the door and go another direction as well. Doubly so if I have no information about what it is, why it is there, it's not part of my "quest" to deal with it, etc. If your intention as a GM is to actually have the party deal with this, and seal off the hole/portal/whatever, then you have to provide them with instructions. Perhaps these kobolds tell them of an ancient treasure guarded by ghasts from the underworld, but no one can get there because they just keep coming. But if someone where powerful enough, and clever enough, maybe they could find a way to seal off the portal to <wherever> stop the ghasts from coming and claim the treasure. But yeah. You need to provide the players with a reason to go there, some idea of what is there, and enough information to know what they need to do.

    Random room? Not so great. Again though, the situation could be salvaged, if somewhere else they run across folks in the megadungeon who know about the ghasts and perhaps know something about where the sinkhole goes to, how it might be sealed, etc (and again, with some actual reason to bother in the first place, like... treasure).
    This room was more or less a "trap". No incentive or objective; just a bad place to be. The players could have learned about it beforehand, but they are allergic to information gathering.

    Wandering into it blind, its not really any different than any other random encounter / trap; its just that my players love the "turtle up" strategy which always hurts them when they fight enemies with AOE, ranged kiters, or reinforcements, but campaign after campaign they refuse to take more proactive tactics than huddle in their death ball and let the enemies come to them.

    The floor below is home to a large army of the undead which are, more or less, forgotten and abandoned. This room was just here as a bit of flavor and foreshadowing of what is to come.
    Last edited by Talakeal; 2023-03-23 at 03:20 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    This room was more or less a "trap". No incentive or objective; just a bad place to be. The players could have learned about it beforehand, but they are allergic to information gathering.
    And I think this is their number one problem right there. From what you've described, they seem to assume that any information they do gather is a "trick" to hurt them, so they don't bother.

    Does the game system have any sort of remote information gathering spells? Like clairvoyance, or wizard eye, or similar? it just seems like they're literally playiing a game of munchkin here (kick in the door!), and just randomly wandering into stuff all the time. And again, at least some of this could be derived from some sort of assumption that "the GM can't hit us with more stuff per day than is allowed" kind of thinking.

    These players would wipe constantly in my game. And I'm considered a super softie GM by my players.

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    This room was more or less a "trap". No incentive or objective; just a bad place to be. The players could have learned about it beforehand, but they are allergic to information gathering.

    Wandering into it blind, its not really any different than any other random encounter / trap; its just that my players love the "turtle up" strategy which always hurts them when they fight enemies with AOE, ranged kiters, or reinforcements, but campaign after campaign they refuse to take more proactive tactics than huddle in their death ball and let the enemies come to them.

    The floor below is home to a large army of the undead which are, more or less, forgotten and abandoned. This room was just here as a bit of flavor and foreshadowing of what is to come.
    Do you find they rely on "Turtle up until everything is dead" in scenarios where they are given some explicit objective that does not follow from turtling up?

    Like, in the case of the Endless Ghast Room, the goal is "Escape the room having spent as few resources as possible". It's a trap, just one that uses combat mechanics instead of trap mechanics. Their fault was probably in assuming that eventually the room would Run Out Of Ghasts and they'd get some Reward for "Winning" the encounter, that running away was "Losing" the encounter and not getting it's reward.

    It might be a case of bad assumptions on their part, or a case of them not engaging with the encounter in terms besides "Keep swinging until everything is dead".

    was it clear that there was an effectively endless number of ghasts? They could see the undead hoard through the narrow crack in the wall, struggling to push through.

    Was it clear that leaving the room would solve the problem vs putting an army of ghasts between them and the exit?

    is this a case of them not reading situations well, or a case of them refusing to take hints?
    Last edited by BRC; 2023-03-23 at 04:14 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by BRC View Post
    was it clear that there was an effectively endless number of ghasts? They could see the undead hoard through the narrow crack in the wall, struggling to push through.
    Yes, at least it was when the wizard, who was halfway up the wall due to some spiderman powers, saw down the hole they were coming out of. She tried to collapse the ceiling on it to try and plug it but a bad roll caused her to do whiff the aim dropping rocks on the party instead at which point they bailed.

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    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    Yes, at least it was when the wizard, who was halfway up the wall due to some spiderman powers, saw down the hole they were coming out of. She tried to collapse the ceiling on it to try and plug it but a bad roll caused her to do whiff the aim dropping rocks on the party instead at which point they bailed.
    I suppose we don't know for sure what they would have done with that information had she not dropped rocks on the party, if they would have read the situation and fled or if they would have kept fighting.


    In my experience, "Hit things until they're all gone" isn't a terrible assumption in TTRPGs, enemies you flee from mean losing out on rewards, or having to deal with those same enemies later when you're more exausted, or those same enemies ambushing you from behind when you're fighting something else.


    Which is to say that if you're fond of turtling up as a way to survive a deathmatch, I can't really blame the PC's for going to that as a first response (Although turtling up at the chokepoint was probably a better move).

    The question is if they had a good way of knowing that this was an "Escape the room" fight rather than the alternative.
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    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    And I think this is their number one problem right there. From what you've described, they seem to assume that any information they do gather is a "trick" to hurt them, so they don't bother.

    Does the game system have any sort of remote information gathering spells? Like clairvoyance, or wizard eye, or similar? it just seems like they're literally playiing a game of munchkin here (kick in the door!), and just randomly wandering into stuff all the time. And again, at least some of this could be derived from some sort of assumption that "the GM can't hit us with more stuff per day than is allowed" kind of thinking.

    These players would wipe constantly in my game. And I'm considered a super softie GM by my players.
    Those all do exist.

    The players kind of disdain their use though; they don't like the idea of turning tangible power (in this case spell slots) into "useless" lore and information.

    And yes, they do tend to be suspicious of GM trickery and take everything said with far too many grains of salt. They have a bad habit of lawyering themselves out of useful information much like Roy at the Oracle.

    Quote Originally Posted by BRC View Post
    Do you find they rely on "Turtle up until everything is dead" in scenarios where they are given some explicit objective that does not follow from turtling up?

    Like, in the case of the Endless Ghast Room, the goal is "Escape the room having spent as few resources as possible". It's a trap, just one that uses combat mechanics instead of trap mechanics. Their fault was probably in assuming that eventually the room would Run Out Of Ghasts and they'd get some Reward for "Winning" the encounter, that running away was "Losing" the encounter and not getting it's reward.

    It might be a case of bad assumptions on their part, or a case of them not engaging with the encounter in terms besides "Keep swinging until everything is dead".

    was it clear that there was an effectively endless number of ghasts? They could see the undead hoard through the narrow crack in the wall, struggling to push through.

    Was it clear that leaving the room would solve the problem vs putting an army of ghasts between them and the exit?

    is this a case of them not reading situations well, or a case of them refusing to take hints?
    In this case I tried to make it as clear as I could that there were *a lot* of ghasts buried in the floor and digging themselves out narratively, and I was putting a new model on the board on top of the sinkhole at the start of each turn.

    My party's tactics are kind of stuck at the level of "Greek Phalanx;" which works well enough in most melee scrums, but they have a lot of trouble and tend to get frustrated and give up when more proactive or offensive tactics are required. Particularly city raids that require them to get in and get out before the enemy can mobilize; if you want to read more check out my previous campaign journal and the disastrous rescue operation from centipede city.
    Last edited by Talakeal; 2023-03-23 at 05:28 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by BRC View Post
    I suppose we don't know for sure what they would have done with that information had she not dropped rocks on the party, if they would have read the situation and fled or if they would have kept fighting.


    In my experience, "Hit things until they're all gone" isn't a terrible assumption in TTRPGs, enemies you flee from mean losing out on rewards, or having to deal with those same enemies later when you're more exausted, or those same enemies ambushing you from behind when you're fighting something else.


    Which is to say that if you're fond of turtling up as a way to survive a deathmatch, I can't really blame the PC's for going to that as a first response (Although turtling up at the chokepoint was probably a better move).

    The question is if they had a good way of knowing that this was an "Escape the room" fight rather than the alternative.
    TBH from the description it sounds like the only improvement they could have made was "do the same thing one step backwards and roll the dice better". Their only mistake was fighting one step too far forwards so they could be attacked by multiple opponents.

    "Turtle up whilst the big blasters do something about the source" sounds like the only way to interact with this encounter that isn't "sneak past and loot the treasure then lock the doors behind you when you leave".

    The reinforcements were so frequent that the problem was that their strategy wasn't turtle enough.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    First, what is this objective definition of poorly you have? Could you please share it?
    The subjective one.

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Mathematically, the game is balanced around 4-6 encounters per adventuring day. The players have had seven adventuring days, and have cleared 35 encounters. By any objective standard, that seems exactly where they should be.

    Likewise, they haven't actually suffered any casualties yet aside from one player literally committing suicide for completely metagame reasons (see the audacious cheating thread for more info).
    And during those X sessions, they've had what, in a simple war game, would have been how many TPKs? I think I can count 4 in as many sessions - am I close? That's not what success looks like.

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Out of curiosity, do you really find being surrounded by kobolds and entering into an alliance with them whereby you split treasure to avoid deaths on both sides to be a "travesty of failure"? Because that is pretty standard in my understanding of both fiction and RPGs; every other campaign journal I read has moments like that all the time. I recently reread Kaveman's awesome journals in preperation for this game, and stuff like that happens more or less on a daily occurrence.
    Doesn't matter if I mind it, they do. Also, if I entered into that alliance at sword-point, having been Tucker's'd? Then yeah, that'd be a failure.

    If I walked in wanting to ally with those monsters, that'd be a different story. But this feels too much like "The GM likes stories where...", rather than "the PCs' stories".

    Which might be another things to focus on in the "everyone runs a 1-shot" series: have each GM tell the type of story they want told. Learn what everyone else likes, so you can learn to craft that.

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Second, have you actually read Conan? IIRC most of his adventures start with him on the run and in hiding or making a plea deal with his captors, and usually ends up with him broke and his friends all dead. Even the movie had him in captivity repeatedly, to the point where he was executed on a cross, and even though he wins in the end he undergoes extreme setbacks and his party has a lot of casualties.

    I very much like Conan, in no large part because he struggles but never gives up, but he is in no way the flawless Mary Sue who always wins that Bob would enjoy.
    I don't like Conan myself, but, sure, Indiana Jones opened his first movie losing his first treasure to being outmaneuvered and betrayed. However, he immediately removes the "and killed" outcome through his own efforts. Making the best lemonade he can out of those lemons. And softening the bite of those lemons twice over.

    But, if your players can't do that, then you have to not serve them lemons. I... don't think I can teach someone how to teach normal people how to make lemonade, let alone teach you how to teach Bizarro World how to make lemonade.

    That said, you seem to know how to make lemonade out of lemons, so it sounds like you're in the best position to fix things twice over.

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Out of curiosity, what is "right"?
    Um... clearing out a section, like God and Talakeal intended, rather than kicking the entire hornet's nest?

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    The dungeon starts with five paths for them to take; how is one of them objectively better than any of the others?

    It just so happened that one player proposed always taking the leftmost turn which would have, coincidentally, taken them to the strongest monster on the level by the most direct path.

    Whether or not this is "bad luck" or "good luck" is another question that I don't have an answer to. Its certainly the "high-risk high-reward" path, but without foreknowledge of how the fight would have gone I can't say whether or not it would have been good or bad luck.
    That's fine. It's the part you left out - the "oh, but if they go that way first, as 1st level scrubs lacking the XP and Loot from the rest of the 1st level, it's probably a TPK" bit that makes that terrible design.

    "I designed this dungeon to kill you if you poke but don't clear out a section... except this one, where if you try to clear it out first, it's too tough, and it kills you." - can you honestly say that's how you'd like your GM to design your dungeons?

    And I don't even want to think about what happens when the 1st session party pokes the floor boss then retreats, just what that hornet's nest might look like.

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Taking high strength and dexterity over high endurance and agility. Using two handed weapons over shields. Taking offensive over defensive combat techniques. Spending money on good weapons over good armor.
    Gotcha. "Two melee with lousy stats for melee, and prioritizing defensive equipment/upgrades/choices over offensive ones" says more than "two melee".

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    As for the back rank, both of them depend on rolls to hit for their builds, which is not optimal in tight spaces, especially when you have a giant oaf like Feurlina in the front lines, as they are taking hefty penalties for line of sight and friendly fire. In addition, Jesse didn't even bother taking proficiency in her weapon, as she figured her "lucky" dice rolls would simply always deliver the nat twenty and thus didn't need it.
    Only in Bizarro World.

    But, um... how would a back-line character contribute to DPS other than with, you know, a ranged weapon that apparently gets penalized for tight spaces and LoS/FriendlyFire? I only had 2 even remotely possible answers to that question, and one of them ("a weapon that ignores Friendly Fire") quickly led to "Oh, yeah, just summon incorporeal creatures to fight for you... wait a minute...".

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    My players love combat and hate investigation.

    How on Earth do you think a forensic dungeon would be tailored to their tastes?

    They are also thicker than mud, there is no way I could actually convey lore to them through clues and dungeon dressing and implications.
    "Thicker than mud." Thanks for the laugh!

    I mean, I'm pretty well past all hope of anything ever working in Bizarro World, but, for the folks at home who have more *normal* gaming groups, I would give the same information multiple times, multiple different ways, to (in effect) teach your players how you present information.

    Like, if I had you as a new player, and wanted to teach you how I "hint" at things... hmmm... the Kobalds have a legend... but they are all dead now, so they won't get that without Speak with Dead tech. So instead you get Kobald cave paintings, one broken side with a fire and sad kobalds, the other with happy kobalds hugging themselves (yes, I'd be a ****, and members of the party who failed the spot check might misinterpret it as smiling armless women vs sad men by a fire). Then elsewhere there'd be the aforementioned spikes made of giant lizard bones. Some of the monsters would have references to coming up from below. The Kobalds would have... ancient items made of some mineral or something that only comes from deep underground. Maybe one piece of dungeon loot would be an ancient magical set of scaily armor. Maybe a picture book would show various creatures together. Blah blah blah. But... there's no lizards on level 1 of the dungeon. Because I'm hinting that there's lizards down below.

    Of course, that would be intermixed with lots of hints of lots of other things, like how the spikes were set to defend against foes charging on the floor, walls, and ceiling... or how the Goblins all know / wrote in pigeon Giant, how another piece of loot is a magical earring depicting a winged snake in a cage, how water kept in one of the safe rooms goes stale within a day (and there's a safe room just like it on each floor), how one of the bits of magic (or just "masterwork") loot is exactly what someone in the party wanted, how one of the rooms has a stalactite that glows producing "day" and "night" cycles that don't match actual day and night cycles... but, with your group, I might have to give evidence of the things that cause each of these half a dozen different ways and see when they connect that certain things are related...

    Added to the fact that multiple of the sentient NPC monsters might actually know something about some of that, and might volunteer the information or be willing to talk about these things if asked.

    So, you know, saying the same thing over and over, as many different ways as you can think to do so, multiple times, to see what sticks.

    And building the dungeon such that it doesn't really matter if your players don't actually catch any of it. They just get to feel smart if they do, not dumb or TPK or stuck at a dead-end unable to proceed if they don't.

    That's my advice for good dungeon design in Bizarro World.

    EDIT:
    Quote Originally Posted by BRC View Post
    In my experience, "Hit things until they're all gone" isn't a terrible assumption in TTRPGs, enemies you flee from mean losing out on rewards, or having to deal with those same enemies later when you're more exausted, or those same enemies ambushing you from behind when you're fighting something else.
    Yeah, given their previous experience with being Tucker's'd (twice) after leaving enemies behind, it would only make sense that they'd be incentivized to clear this room. I mean, why wouldn't they?
    Last edited by Quertus; 2023-03-23 at 06:52 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by BRC View Post
    In my experience, "Hit things until they're all gone" isn't a terrible assumption in TTRPGs, enemies you flee from mean losing out on rewards, or having to deal with those same enemies later when you're more exausted, or those same enemies ambushing you from behind when you're fighting something else.
    Nope. Not terrible at all. But the party has to make a decision as to what they are actually going to do, and then take actions to make that happen. Offensive strategies are incredibly important in situations where the defenders are, well, defending, but are not aware of the party yet. By attacking quickly and decisively, you can advance though the defenders position before they can fully react and position themselves, and thus hold the "high ground". Hesitating when that is the correct course of action will cost you.


    Quote Originally Posted by BRC View Post
    Which is to say that if you're fond of turtling up as a way to survive a deathmatch, I can't really blame the PC's for going to that as a first response (Although turtling up at the chokepoint was probably a better move).
    Turtling has its place, but only if the opponents actually have a reason to come over and attack you. Otherwise you're just advertising your presence and loosing all advantage of surprise and inititatve. In the case of non-intelligent opponents (like minor undead), probably a great idea. But, as you pointed out, with a group this small, it's not terribly effective if you don't also have terrain to help out. Four people can't actually protect anyone from attack if they don't use terrain. Every single one of them is on the "outside" of the formation if the enemy can surround them.

    Quote Originally Posted by BRC View Post
    The question is if they had a good way of knowing that this was an "Escape the room" fight rather than the alternative.
    To be honest, it sounded like it could have been either. They could have "taken the initiative" and pushed forward, engaged the ghasts while they were still gathering, put themselves into position, wiped them out, then continued to push forward until they were down to basically one ghast in the room at a time. Then it's a matter of figuring out how to close the sinkhole.

    What they did instead was kind of halfway one and halfway the other. They tried something to close the sinkhole right off the bat, while still in the middle of engaging the ghasts, that went "poorly", and then they fled and then picked a poor "turtle" spot, and got overrun. I mean, if the initial attempt to close it had worked, it would have worked great. But this is really "all eggs in one basket" kind of adventuring. One failure and the whole thing unravels. A more tactical measured approach isn't so dependent on not getting a single bad roll to succeed and doesn't fall apart so epically.

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Those all do exist.

    The players kind of disdain their use though; they don't like the idea of turning tangible power (in this case spell slots) into "useless" lore and information.
    Huh. And yet, they are exploring a vast undergound dungeon setting where such spells would allow them to actually use the *exact* tactics they seem to prefer (see what's there, then rest and come back and deal with it later). Do they not see that what they are doing right now is the same "scouting and/or gathering intelligence" except that they are both taking damage *and* alerting the enemies to their presence? I'm not sure how spell selection is done in your game (is it like D&D where you have a number of spells available, but pick X number per day? or something else?). But it seems like "spend one rest period using information gathering spells to learn about what's in the area of the dungeon we're planning on going into", followed by "spend the next period physically going through that area now that we have an idea what is there" would seem to be an excellent approach.

    It seems doubly odd that they don't want to use this stuff, given that they don't seem to want to trust any information that comes from the GM/NPCs. They could actually do their own scouting and find out for themselves ahead of time, instead of constantly blundering into things. What a concept!

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    My party's tactics are kind of stuck at the level of "Greek Phalanx;" which works well enough in most melee scrums, but they have a lot of trouble and tend to get frustrated and give up when more proactive or offensive tactics are required. Particularly city raids that require them to get in and get out before the enemy can mobilize; if you want to read more check out my previous campaign journal and the disastrous rescue operation from centipede city.
    Er. Yeah. That sort of tactic doesn't work at all when actually attacking.

    Actually missed this in your earlier post, so putting it here:

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Taking high strength and dexterity over high endurance and agility. Using two handed weapons over shields. Taking offensive over defensive combat techniques. Spending money on good weapons over good armor.

    As for the back rank, both of them depend on rolls to hit for their builds, which is not optimal in tight spaces, especially when you have a giant oaf like Feurlina in the front lines, as they are taking hefty penalties for line of sight and friendly fire. In addition, Jesse didn't even bother taking proficiency in her weapon, as she figured her "lucky" dice rolls would simply always deliver the nat twenty and thus didn't need it.
    Um... Why on earth are they using turtle tactics if they've built their characters completely wrong for that tactic? If you're going to turtle (or even just "fall back to a chokepoint") you want tough high armor defensive fighters in front, and effective missile/spell folks in back.

    They've literally built their characters for offensive "charge forward quickly" style combat, but instead "fall back and defend". That makes no... sense.



    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    My players love combat and hate investigation.
    Well. I'd say that your players love to "win combats". The problem is that the lack of investigation and frankly terrible on the ground tactics means that they will lose a lot of the time, which isn't what they love at all.

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    Default Re: Pacing a megadungeon

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    And during those X sessions, they've had what, in a simple war game, would have been how many TPKs? I think I can count 4 in as many sessions - am I close? That's not what success looks like.
    Zero.

    They would have had some casualties if they had fought the kobolds to the death the one time, but not a TPK.

    I suppose the manticore could have TPKed the party if it had been so inclined; but what sort of "war game" has a monster show up after the battle is already over and threaten the victors?

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Um... clearing out a section, like God and Talakeal intended, rather than kicking the entire hornet's nest?
    There's not really a "wrong" way to explore the dungeon, nor did I really have anything intended.

    They are just going about it in an unexpected way where they keep turning around right before getting to the big treasures / lore dumps.

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    That's fine. It's the part you left out - the "oh, but if they go that way first, as 1st level scrubs lacking the XP and Loot from the rest of the 1st level, it's probably a TPK" bit that makes that terrible design.

    "I designed this dungeon to kill you if you poke but don't clear out a section... except this one, where if you try to clear it out first, it's too tough, and it kills you." - can you honestly say that's how you'd like your GM to design your dungeons?

    And I don't even want to think about what happens when the 1st session party pokes the floor boss then retreats, just what that hornet's nest might look like.
    Its a deadly encounter, but not an impossible one. And it has good rewards. It is fully possible for them to take it out at first level, and in doing so get a lot of XP and treasure, as I said above, its the "high risk - high reward" path.

    Also, it's an unintelligent creature that is too big to chase the PCs all the way back out of the dungeon. Its specifically designed so that they can retreat from it if they get in over their heads.

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Gotcha. "Two melee with lousy stats for melee, and prioritizing defensive equipment/upgrades/choices over offensive ones" says more than "two melee".
    Sorry, I had said that upthread. Didn't realize you were responding to a comment by Gbaj / BRC rather than me directly.

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    But, um... how would a back-line character contribute to DPS other than with, you know, a ranged weapon that apparently gets penalized for tight spaces and LoS/FriendlyFire? I only had 2 even remotely possible answers to that question, and one of them ("a weapon that ignores Friendly Fire") quickly led to "Oh, yeah, just summon incorporeal creatures to fight for you... wait a minute...".
    Polearms. Lobbed grenade like weapons. Spells that don't require a roll to hit.

    Certain magic items and feats also reduce or negate friendly fire penalties; and tanks without the huge size trait like Feurlina tend not to black as much of the dungeon.

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Yeah, given their previous experience with being Tucker's'd (twice) after leaving enemies behind, it would only make sense that they'd be incentivized to clear this room. I mean, why wouldn't they?
    Only once. Not twice.

    I would point out that that was against intelligent enemies, not mindless undead... but actually... the players DIDN'T clear the room, that's the whole problem, they fell back without doing anything to block off the ghasts and so the ghasts kind of now roam around freely throughout that section of the dungeon.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    What they did instead was kind of halfway one and halfway the other. They tried something to close the sinkhole right off the bat, while still in the middle of engaging the ghasts, that went "poorly", and then they fled and then picked a poor "turtle" spot, and got overrun. I mean, if the initial attempt to close it had worked, it would have worked great. But this is really "all eggs in one basket" kind of adventuring. One failure and the whole thing unravels. A more tactical measured approach isn't so dependent on not getting a single bad roll to succeed and doesn't fall apart so epically.
    Correct.

    The first fight went fine, at least until the spell mishap, it was not doing anything to block the door or seal up the hole that really screwed them over as now the ghasts are freely roaming that section of the dungeon.

    It was the second fight where they just choose to turtle in the middle of a large room and get surrounded with no attempt to use terrain or stem the tide that they really got beaten up.


    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Actually missed this in your earlier post, so putting it here:

    Um... Why on earth are they using turtle tactics if they've built their characters completely wrong for that tactic? If you're going to turtle (or even just "fall back to a chokepoint") you want tough high armor defensive fighters in front, and effective missile/spell folks in back.

    They've literally built their characters for offensive "charge forward quickly" style combat, but instead "fall back and defend". That makes no... sense.
    You may be reading me backwards. Both Kumiko and Feurlina are built as defensive melee with very little offense. Both Jesse and Flossie are built as ranged combat with all offense; but don't have any means of effectively shooting over the front two.

    So, basically, they have ok defense (as long as they can avoid getting surrounded) but very little in the way of offense, especially in a dungeon environment.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Huh. And yet, they are exploring a vast undergound dungeon setting where such spells would allow them to actually use the *exact* tactics they seem to prefer (see what's there, then rest and come back and deal with it later). Do they not see that what they are doing right now is the same "scouting and/or gathering intelligence" except that they are both taking damage *and* alerting the enemies to their presence? I'm not sure how spell selection is done in your game (is it like D&D where you have a number of spells available, but pick X number per day? or something else?). But it seems like "spend one rest period using information gathering spells to learn about what's in the area of the dungeon we're planning on going into", followed by "spend the next period physically going through that area now that we have an idea what is there" would seem to be an excellent approach.

    It seems doubly odd that they don't want to use this stuff, given that they don't seem to want to trust any information that comes from the GM/NPCs. They could actually do their own scouting and find out for themselves ahead of time, instead of constantly blundering into things. What a concept!
    So, how it works, in brief:

    Spells are tied to the phase of the moon. In my system it is normally "spells per month" but in this particular game I am handwaving it to "spells per expedition".

    Between expeditions, I basically roll random encounters to see if the dungeon restocks, and these tables get slowly nastier over time. This was the "pacing mechanism" I decided on.

    Flossie has 15 spell slots per expedition. She casts like a D&D sorcerer, casting any spell she knows freely without needed to prepare in advance.

    She is a wild mage, which means she has a small pool of innate spells (mostly involving manipulating fate and probability and summoning ectoplasm constructs) and also has the ability to fire entropy bolts at will similar to a warlock's eldritch blast. However, her biggest power is that she can cast ANY spell in the game, but said spells have to roll on a wild surge chart and something unexpected will always happen.

    In this setup I wouldn't really spend an entire session casting information gathering spells, but I would probably cast a few.

    But again, Bob tends to find knowledge and exploration boring and pointless, only winning combats through overwhelming power interests him, and he is also the one who, 90% of the time, calls dibs on playing the wizard.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

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    Default Re: Pacing a megadungeon

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Polearms. Lobbed grenade like weapons. Spells that don't require a roll to hit.

    Certain magic items and feats also reduce or negate friendly fire penalties; and tanks without the huge size trait like Feurlina tend not to black as much of the dungeon.
    "Polearms" was, indeed, my other thought.

    You built the system - why would lobbed grenade weapons be better than point-and-shoot projectiles? I wouldn't want me at my back with either in tight spaces, personally.

    Anyway, sounds like you built a dungeon that was tuned for competent adventurers, and got your group instead. Consider changing one or the other until they match. Still curious how things change when you're a player.

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