Bloodstone, an epic 4e campaign (rules and story)

[James McMurray]

Sorry for posting it as a link, but I'm putting the rules stuff side-by-side with the story it affects, and bbcode can't do columns.

Index page

Background material

Last Friday's game. It's kinda long because I went into a lot of detail on the fights, but I broke it up into sections to make it a little easier to digest.

Our 5th player is ready to jump in, and his Star Pact Warlock has some rather strange items from the Far Realms. Check 'em out.

H1 - 3 had a lot of mass combat using the Battlesystem rules. In 3.x I converted those over to 3rd edition rules, but it was a lot of work so I decided to simplify for 4e and made a few mass combat templates. You still need higher level opponents to challenge epic characters, but instead of fighting 100 Abyssal Ghoul Hungerers they can fight an angry mob of them, which would work like a single solo creature.

Here's what I've got so far.

I think it might need to have a power added or swapped out that allows for half damage on a miss. That way any level of army can be at least a minor threat to any level of opponent. Maybe add a threshold. For instance, "if they miss by 10 or less, the attack deals half damage."

[Moniker]

http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/MassCombatTemplates.html

Move a discussion over to Meta about this. I have been looking for good, homebrewed rules for mobs and squads and this fits the ticket!

[James McMurray]

This week.

There's a new item (a book the party found).

One new house rule.

A new character in the introduction. We're up to five players (our usual group), but this time the artificer's player didn't make it, so we still only had 4 characters this week.

[Nomadic]

In response to your first post the BBCode here actually can do that.

http://www.thecbg.org/settings/30/TagTutorial.html

Take a look at the table area (second section on that page). Thecbg forums can do alot of things most forums can't thanks to some custom coding (brainface is to thank for that wonderful fact). Tables are one of the things it can do and which can effectively allow you to put your data side by side.

[James McMurray]

In response to your first post the BBCode here actually can do that.

http://www.thecbg.org/settings/30/TagTutorial.html

Take a look at the table area (second section on that page). Thecbg forums can do alot of things most forums can't thanks to some custom coding (brainface is to thank for that wonderful fact). Tables are one of the things it can do and which can effectively allow you to put your data side by side.

Thanks. I noticed that while posting my mass combat rules over in meta, but I'll stick with posting links. There are people at rpg.net, enworld, and therpgsite also reading this campaign log (via links on those sites) and I'm way too lazy to maintain it in multiple formats.

[James McMurray]

Added another house rule to make minions more useful. Without some sort of change they're too likely to die before they get to do anything, and thereby be free XP. Instead, they can now take one hit per tier (more info in the link).

[James McMurray]

Last Friday's session is up. They visit a couple of pools, have a multi-planar skill challenge, and have their first encounter with other Pool Seekers.

There's also a new ritual for creating teleportation circles, and a new house rule.

It'll be a couple of weeks at least before we play again. The GM of our paragon campaign he the rest of Castle Ravenloft converted, so we'll be playing that. When we come back, some PCs will be pretty different. FRPG and AV will be used, and some want to trade gear and/or classes. The wizard will probably become a swordmage. The warlock's player doesn't want the group to be without a wizard, so he'll probably convert to a wizard / warlock. He'll keep the same Far Realms flavor, repurposing a paragon path and picking a better fitting destiny. The fighter's player will definitely pour through the books to find the biggest damage and highest survivability he can.

The other two players will make changes as well, but they're not usually the type to min-max to the extreme like the fighter and warlock players do.

I'm curious to see what the new wish lists look like now that AV is here and overflowing with tasty goodness.

[LordVreeg]

ok,
I love this.  I have similar limitations that allow more control of higher level magic.
comforts of home, basic recall
comforts of home, recall
Comforts of home, Beacon
Comforts of Home, Temporay beacon
I don't favor games that allow teleportation as a free hop and skip all over the place.  I like the rituals of buiding temporary teleports areas through ritual.  

[James McMurray]

I don't recognize the system, but the spells' effects look cool.

We had unlimited teleport in the 3.5 D&D precursor to this campaign, and it was crazy. Buffing, Scrying, and Teleporting was somewhat common as a means to ambush people. It didn't happen every fight, but mostly because we restrained ourselves and not because of anything the rules allowed.

I much prefer the way fourth edition handles it. Any teleportation that's easy is very short range (100' at most). Long range teleportation requires a teleportation circle on the other end unless you're 28th level, at which point it still takes 50,000gp and 10 minutes to cast.

[James McMurray]

I forgot to mention that there's also three new monsters in the update.

[James McMurray]

This stuff was done over email. Another GM was running this week, and it was my son's birthday, so we didn't have a session at the table. Three of the PCs are held captive and interrogated, while the other two are trying to find what happened and regroup.

[James McMurray]

I gave the players the option of a couple of different minor reboots if they want. We may continue from where we're at, have the whole capture scenario be a vision from the group's divine oracle, or ignore it entirely and press forward with the pool of secrets.

The problem is that I went into the scenario with a goal in mind and a set of expectations. The goal was "capture the PCs," which is a fine one for the NPCs to have, but I went out of my way to make sure it happened at least half the time. I've advised other GMs in the past to talk to the players before taking them prisoner, because when you're waylaid, thrown in a cage, and bullied by NPCs it sucks pretty hard, especially if you don't have any buy in and were looking forward to killing some stuff and taking its loot. Despite that, I ran forward with it when I got the idea that running a simultaneous rescue and escape adventure would be cool. Given the responses in the emails over the week (one PC losing a hand and another prepared to die before he answers any more questions) it's plain that I screwed up.

Another problem was my expectations. I assumed from the start that the captured PCs would cooperate when threatened, and then get together once they're all back in their cells and plan their escape. This meant that once they were strapped into the chair and had the sword dangling over them, they either had to do what I wanted them to do or get screwed over. I work a lot better when I've got a good idea of what the NPCs want and what they'l do to get it coupled with a prepped environment for conflict if/when it occurs. Then I use that to bounce off of the players' actions and commentary. This time I threw that out the window and let the author in me take over.

So far only one response to the offer, and that was from the guy who wasn't all that bad off because he told them what they wanted to know right away, with a little verbal sparring thrown in. He just made jokes about Cheney and Guantanimo.

[James McMurray]

I uploaded a list of all the pools the PCs either know about or will know about soon. It includes the locations, tests, granted powers, and what the aura looks like when seen by someone who has been through the Pool of Secrets.

[James McMurray]

This week's session had the party in two pieces for most of it. The captives broke out of their cells while one free PC and an NPC broke into the fortress. It's also our first sight of the sword mage, as the wizard's player remade his character to account for the release of the FRPG.

Check it out.

[James McMurray]

I'm a week behind. In the session before last they escaped their captors and braved several pools. Here it is.

I should have the last session up some time this week. It involves a trek into the World of Darkness.