WAR! - DM Comments - Training Mission 4 May

Welcome back Ben...

For reference, here are my comments. In general, we had; 1 Fighter w high defenses and a number of area effects (that would have been helpful if the Fighter had stayed awake), four Strikers (one archer Ranger, one Gnome Warlock, a Sprite, and an Avenger). Typically, these types of parties either die really fast, or kill the monsters really fast.

Enc 1 - EL 5, a little ambush, warm up encounter. The main street was actually the best choice (Brad got lucky). On the main street, the enemy appears in front, behind, but not on rooftops or inside building windows. This made the battle much easier for the party. If the party approached by sea, the archers would have been shooting at the ship from the roof of the warehouse. If the team used the side streets, the archers would have been in front and behind (behind wheeled barricades) but mostly shooting down from rooftops. A nice little warm up encounter...

Enc 2 - EL 7, the elite was a solo. Thought the move up on top of the crates was a good move by Hayden. No surprises here, just wanted Ben to see how a solo was different than minions with leaders. Included the poison so Ben could see some condition effects.

Enc 3 - EL 8, Orcus Priest w Zombies (2 huge zombie Hulk Brutes and 8+ zombie minions) yeah, there was nothing really to be gained here, good move avoiding this fight.

Enc 4 - Skill Challenge on the doors - typical skill check.

Enc 5 - EL 8 - The finale - The team got really spread out here. Came close to killing off half the party. Didn't help much that Hayden was 0/6+ on his saves vs. Daze and about 0/10 on his rolls to hit (against enemies that weren't really that hard. Good play by Ben for his first game in 25+ years. Not too much concentration of fire by the party. The four Archers of Pelor were all up and the priest, for nearly the entire battle. At one point, two archers were lightly wounded, one was almost bloodied, one was still unwounded and the priest was moderately wounded (fr Ross). This battle was longer than it needed to be, but a real nail biter.

Comments, banter, random jabs?

A few comments...

My PC was a Defender (Battlemind, a psionic defender), though I was only really able to defend in the solo encounter.

I was expecting more of a training session than an actual adventure. It looked like Ben was having a good time and picking up on things so that all that matters.


I think your ELs are off by quite a bit. The archers with "twin strike" and what seemed like AtWill area "daze save ends" are high paragon/epic in power. Dazed really messes up a lot of heroic level characters as they don't have bonuses to saves or ways to get out of it. Heroic level monstes with daze effects are usually single target encounter or a Daily area.

In the first encounter I think I spent 2-3 rounds just doing a move action. Hayden spent most of the last encounter dazed and pretty much a non-factor. Though he wasn't able to do much when not dazed either...

Ah, you were a Defender?? Played a lot like a Striker. I actually "nerfed" the archers as out of the book they Stun, not Daze. I reduced the ability to Daze and increased their normal "Twin Strike" damage by 2 points per hit and made it Fire damage (for flavor).

Well, Hayden could at least draw fire away from other PC's even though he wasn't able to inflict any damage at all.

Area Stun? I didn't think there were any monsters that had stun in Heroic, except maybe a dragon.

My PC only does high damage when charging.
Normal damage was 2d6+6
Charge damage was 5d6+6

Brad's extra +2 to hit and 2d8 damage for a whole encounter really helped a lot, so I guess Hayden did do something.

Oh, and the archers Daze effect was originally a recharge power, but I made it an encounter power so I don't have to roll for recharge each round.

Dwarmaj wrote:Area Stun? I didn't think there were any monsters that had stun in Heroic, except maybe a dragon.

When looking for keyword stun in the compendium the Grell is the only heroic monster with a stun.
You might want to check your reference Stu. Maybe it was errated.

Ross wrote:

Dwarmaj wrote:Area Stun? I didn't think there were any monsters that had stun in Heroic, except maybe a dragon.

When looking for keyword stun in the compendium the Grell is the only heroic monster with a stun.
You might want to check your reference Stu. Maybe it was errated.

For the Grell, it's single target and the target must already be grabbed.

Ross,
If you search for "stunned" you get a lot more hits.


I didn't see any area stun/dazed save ends in heroic, but I haven't gone through all the monsters yet...