Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Talyma 12-16-03, 10:34 PM	Well, in a rather unwise decision, I sent a pair of Lullaby Panpipes to the party Bard. These pipes have the ability to put a monster to sleep after making a perform check. But when the Bard managed to knock out a dragon with a mediocre roll and has now realized he can put just about *any* creature to sleep with no trouble... Well. It's obvious that I made the weapon a *tad* overpowered. He's only used the pipes twice: once when testing out the item which put his entire party to sleep and when he knocked out that dragon. Is there anyway I can rectify this situation in character, preferably by weakening the Pipes without removing them? Or by making the Dragon incident a fluke? Scrying: is it just me, or is it way too easy? Even spying on someone on the other end of the world that you've never heard of and never met is only a DC 20. And it gets even easier from there! One of my players is interested in Scrying, but I'm wary of how simple it is. The eight artifacts that they're searching for are immune to Scrying, which covers one of my bases, but otherwise, they have pretty much free reign. I'm thinking about adding in some rules of my own, but was wondering if there were any other suggestions or a better way to Scry somewhere else online. The players have been *loudly* complaining about one incident in particular. Here's the situation: The party needs to collect a series of eight powerful masks. They currently have four, another is in the hands of an ally, one is in the hands of Shar's Marauders, and the other two are unaccounted for. Now, Shar's Marauders are a rival, Neutral-leaning-Evil party with unknown loyalties. They are occasionally helpful to the party (they won't let them die needlessly) but they also manipulate and use the PC party for their own ends. Recently, the party and Shar's Marauders met again. Both parties want the masks, so Artimus, the leader of the PC party, suggests that they have a duel. One-on-one, and each party has five minutes to prepare. Shar, having no other choice at the moment, agrees, on the condition that her party gets to prepare, "Behind that hut over there." Well, what happens next is rather predictable. Five minutes later, the PCs have buffed up, gotten ready, are in the mood for battle. They look behind the hut... And see that Shar's Marauders have taken off to the woods at full retreat speed. Unfortunately, the session had to end there, leaving the game on a rather low note. The party was rather disappointed both IC and OOC, but I don't see any other way to have handled the situation. Shar's Marauders simply wouldn't have fought a battle where they had the chance of losing, instead preferring to set things on their own terms. Was I wrong? Should I rectify the situation somehow? And finally, the party is traveling to their hometown of Laribus. There are a few subquests going on there, and I could use a bit of help on a couple parts. How should I handle a large-scale assault on a walled, port city? Do you have any hints on how to handle a murder mystery? Is there any information or hints on using Dragon Slayers against the party? They have a half-dragon sorceress in their party who made some unwise decisions on who she would reveal her heritage too. Thanks in advance for any answers!
Malben 12-16-03, 11:08 PM	Originally posted by Talyma Well, in a rather unwise decision, I sent a pair of Lullaby Panpipes to the party Bard. These pipes have the ability to put a monster to sleep after making a perform check. But when the Bard managed to knock out a dragon with a mediocre roll and has now realized he can put just about *any* creature to sleep with no trouble... Well. It's obvious that I made the weapon a *tad* overpowered. You also didn't read the entry on dragons in the Monster Manual. They're immunte to sleep. He's only used the pipes twice: once when testing out the item which put his entire party to sleep and when he knocked out that dragon. Is there anyway I can rectify this situation in character, preferably by weakening the Pipes without removing them? Or by making the Dragon incident a fluke? Um. If these panpipes duplicate the PHB 3.5 spell lullaby, once again you have a problem -- the spell doesn't even put things to sleep. It makes them sleepy, so that they take a -2 penalty to saves vs. sleep effects. If you're using 3.0, it'd help all of us who're reading your post if you actually told us precisely what these pipes do. Do they work something like, "When a bard plays these pipes, those listening must make a Will save versus a DC equal to his Perform check result, or fall asleep"? If so -- YES, this item is overpowered. I suggest making it simply reproduce the sleep spell at caster level 3 every time someone plays it and wins a DC 15 Perform (winds) check. Market Price would be approximately 8600 gp, for an unlimited-use command-word activated unslotted item that uses a level 1 spell at caster level 3 and which requires some ranks in a skill to employ it. Cost to create would be approximately 4300 gp and 344 XP. Scrying: is it just me, or is it way too easy? Even spying on someone on the other end of the world that you've never heard of and never met is only a DC 20. And it gets even easier from there! One of my players is interested in Scrying, but I'm wary of how simple it is. The eight artifacts that they're searching for are immune to Scrying, which covers one of my bases, but otherwise, they have pretty much free reign. I'm thinking about adding in some rules of my own, but was wondering if there were any other suggestions or a better way to Scry somewhere else online. It's not just you, but it's not an enormous problem, either. Add about a +5-+10 modifier to the DC, and it's a lot more attractive to keep adding ranks in the Scry skill up into level 20. I'm assuming from this complaint that you are, in fact, using 3.0 rules. In 3.5, scrying offers the target a Will save to negate it. The DC is 16 minimum, since it's a level 4 spell and requires a casting ability score of 14, minimum. More likely the DC will be higher, but it scales pretty well with levels, so that your average level 8 wizard will cast it with a DC of 17, and the average level 20 wizard will cast it with a DC closer to 21. In any case, in 3.5 rules the spell is at best a 50-50 shot to catch most classes with a strong Will save, and hence is most useful versus rogues, fighters, and other such characters. Useful, but not terribly powerful. The players have been *loudly* complaining about one incident in particular. Here's the situation: The party needs to collect a series of eight powerful masks. They currently have four, another is in the hands of an ally, one is in the hands of Shar's Marauders, and the other two are unaccounted for. Now, Shar's Marauders are a rival, Neutral-leaning-Evil party with unknown loyalties. They are occasionally helpful to the party (they won't let them die needlessly) but they also manipulate and use the PC party for their own ends. Recently, the party and Shar's Marauders met again. Both parties want the masks, so Artimus, the leader of the PC party, suggests that they have a duel. One-on-one, and each party has five minutes to prepare. Shar, having no other choice at the moment, agrees, on the condition that her party gets to prepare, "Behind that hut over there." Well, what happens next is rather predictable. Five minutes later, the PCs have buffed up, gotten ready, are in the mood for battle. They look behind the hut... And see that Shar's Marauders have taken off to the woods at full retreat speed. Unfortunately, the session had to end there, leaving the game on a rather low note. The party was rather disappointed both IC and OOC, but I don't see any other way to have handled the situation. Shar's Marauders simply wouldn't have fought a battle where they had the chance of losing, instead preferring to set things on their own terms. Was I wrong? Should I rectify the situation somehow? The PCs were silly enough to try to be honorable, and have a duel, but were not sharp enough to recognize that their enemy was about to engage in trickery. They deserved what they got, just for being gullible. And finally, the party is traveling to their hometown of Laribus. There are a few subquests going on there, and I could use a bit of help on a couple parts. How should I handle a large-scale assault on a walled, port city? Do you have any hints on how to handle a murder mystery? Is there any information or hints on using Dragon Slayers against the party? They have a half-dragon sorceress in their party who made some unwise decisions on who she would reveal her heritage too. Thanks in advance for any answers! Large-scale assaults are tricky. First, decide how you'll deal with two distinct possiblities: 1. The PCs will try to fight in a pitched battle, giving you, as the DM many headaches. 2. The PCs act as special ops, which is the more desirable option if you don't want to go to Malhavoc Press and use their Cry Havoc event book to run mass combat. If you DO like the idea, go ahead and go with option 1. But from some of the stuff you've posted above, you sound as if your command of the written rules is less than perfect. I'm not at all trying to be derogatory, here. There's nothing wrong with not knowing the rules letter-perfect. But mass combat is a pain even if you do, and can be a disaster if you make a mistake and don't catch yourself. If your PCs are the sort to complain about anything they perceive as mistakes/unfairness/DM shortcomings, as you have indicated above, option 2 is a lot easier. The murder mystery is a bit easier. First, determine a place and time for the murder to happen which allows several suspects, all with good motives, good capability, and good opportunity to commit the killing. This is essential. The motives do not have to be complicated ones. They also do not have to be obvious ones. But they need to be believable if the PCs learn about them. Likewise, the suspects (and of course the murderer) should have been ABLE to commit the murder, whether through poison, stabbing, bludgeoning, magic, or whatever. If you want to get fancy, you could go for a scenario in which the killer commits the murder one way, and then makes it look like it was done another way -- like a poisoner who then stabs the corpse with another suspect's stolen dagger, and then leaves it carelessly hidden near the scene of the crime. For us to advise you as to whether it's good to use Dragon Slayers against the party, you'll need to tell us what those are. They sound campaign-specific. Are they members of a prestige class? Are they a bunch of drunken commoners who run around with pitchforks and torches, insisting that they're heroes who're going to butcher a dragon? I have no clue based on what you've written about them.
Talyma 12-16-03, 11:51 PM	Ouch. Yeah, I guess I missed something important about Dragons and sleep... ^_^; I was inspired in something I read in a book for that particular event and didn't research it well enough. And your suggestion for how the item should work is very good, and the player shouldn't have any problems with the change. Thanks! Yes, I do use 3.0 and don't plan to upgrade to 3.5, but I have to agree with the idea of using a Will save against Scrying. I'll do that: should help solve all the problems there. As for the assault, I may just have to wing it. A special-ops mission could work well, but the party may be simply too busy or uninterested in it. The battle is an important plot event, but it may not be especially intriguing to the players. Maybe I'll just skip over it? If the party shows interest, I'll go with the Ops route. Otherwise, I'm more concerned with how the battle will affect the rest of the quests. In this instance, I'm thinking of Dragon Slayers as a prestige class I suppose. A type of Paladin whose purpose is the eradication of Dragonkind: the kind they always write about in the myths.
Malben 12-17-03, 12:40 AM	Actually, in my own campaign (I'm running one in 3.0, and haven't bothered to switch to 3.5 because I have an enormous lot of high-level specialist wizard NPCs, which are an utter pain in the behind to change over) I took the +10 DC route to fix Scry. If you want to switch the spell over to a Will save negates configuration, that's really your call, but if you do you should also rip out the Scry skill and let any of your players who have the skill use the points they dumped into it for something else. Otherwise, you've removed the only thing that makes the skill useful, but have been enormously unfair by preventing them from compensating. On the topic of dragon slayers: For what it's worth, most of the dragon-slayers I'm aware of are distinctly unpaladinlike. There's Sigfried, but . . . well, he's . . . how to be delicate about this . . . the product of brother-sister incest, and a rapist. There's Beowulf. I guess that he would actually be somewhat paladinlike if you could get round the idea that a Germanic hero is much more concerned with being famous/honored than with being good. There's always Saint George, I guess. I don't actually know much about him other than that he was a saint and he killed a dragon. And there's Apollo. According to one of the myths about him, he killed his wife in a fit of rage because she cuckolded him with some fellow, and he also did other evil deeds, including cursing a woman because she wouldn't sleep with him. But tossing that aside, are you playing in a world that includes good-aligned dragons? It's not precisely an acceptable action for a paladin to be involved in a campaign of genocide against an overwhelmingly good-aligned race, like the golds. It's questionable for a paladin to engage in genocide, period. In any case, if the half-dragon in question is half (insert good dragon species here), it might make a difference Anyway, if what you're saying is that these Dragon Slayers are a group of paladins who specialize in killing dragons, you might want to make them paladin/ranger multiclasses or something like that in order to reflect their specialization in killing a particular sort of creature. It'd also help if you tried setting them up with flying mounts, or even as members of prestige classes that include a specialization in combat on flying mounts -- dragons don't fight on the ground where a paladin can make a standard mounted charge, ordinarily. For that matter, you might look at Draconomicon 3.5 -- I've heard rumors that it's got information about prestige classes that might even let you mount a paladin on the back of a LG gold dragon, for extra cool points.
Wayward Son 12-17-03, 09:18 AM	As a quick note on Scrying, I like a mix of the two systems. Allow the WIll save, but keep the Scry skill. The person Scrying makes a skill check, which becomes the target DC for the save. The modifiers remain. This way, an old, powerful, 20th level wizard's scrying will be much harder to shake off than a young 7th level wizard with his very first scrying mirror. At the same time, older, more experienced chacters will be harder to scry upon, because they have developed the strength of will to shake off the magic. Account is taken for relative experience on both sides. Alternately, if you don't want to mess with the Scry skill (which allows differing levels of ability between even same-leveled opponents), set the DC of the WIll save with a caster level check. Again, the modifier table applies. Again, this accounts for the relative level of both sides. Just a thought.
Morka 12-17-03, 10:35 AM	For the mass battle, there was a thread about it a few weeks ago, I'm not sure if it is in this board or another one. What was suggested was to have each player control their characters, plus perhaps 4 other NPCs. So in a party of 4, you quickly get a warband of 20 characters or more. And add some major NPC ally, to handle some other front of the battle. What will be the invasion? Undeads from the necropolis, kobolds from the sewers, orcs from the forest, sahuagins from the sea? Have them be more numerous than the PC side, but lower level. Facing an invasion of 50 orcs with 3 lieutenants and 1 warchief is more impressive and fearful for a city than 20 orcs with unkown character levels.
Kalidor 12-17-03, 11:55 AM	I don' t understand people who complain about Scrying. Scrying has got to be the number one most useful tool for DMs to provide cutscene information to the players. How about, instead of asking what you can do to nerf your player abilites, you ask yourself what you can do to be creative in how they are used? DM 1: I do not like Scrying! Players can use it to learn valuable information! This is dumb. I want it really hard to use or really useless. DM 2: Scying is great! Anytime the PCs want to scry on an NPC, I have a list of things he's likely to be doing. Also, sometimes players will NEED to scry just to know what to do next as the BBEG unfolds his plans! Scrying is not a hinderence, its a tool. DMs should HOPE their players use it to gain information about the adventure. Which DM would you rather play with?
Talyma 12-17-03, 08:22 PM	Oh, I have no problem with Scrying: otherwise, I wouldn't let my players have it. (I've banned certain feats and spells before.) My only problem is with the lack of limitations the spell has. "Alright, I'm going to use my scry spell on any creature that may be on the other side of this door. The DC is 20." It'll ruin any possible element of surprise in the game. It'll still be useful for them: without scrying, they wouldn't have known the location of the next object of power they're seeking, nor would they know that their hometown is in danger of an attack. That's why I'm questing for a fix, which I think I have thanks to the help I've gotten here :D As for the battle, this is just one battle in a long-running war between two countries, Luthan (The PC's country) and Peerla. Peerla has recently won a battle on the Southern front due to the help of a mysterious necromancer. (This necromancer is a former PC, but she became an NPC when the player left. She was a Rogue when she was with the party, but one of the Masks of Power corrupted her.) Now, happy with their success in the South, the Peerlan army is planning an attack on the Northern city of Laribus. This particular battle will be about 1200 Peerlan troops vs. 900 Luthan troops and another 300 conscripted Luthan Citizens. This particular branch of the army does *not* have the help of the Necromancer: it's just normal troops. One of my favorite parts of this upcoming battle is that it will force the PCs to work with their enemies. Kyshandril and Baron Xanth are both high-ranking nobles who despise the PCs, but since they're all Luthan citizens and stuck in the same city, they'll have to cooperate. And on to the Dragon Slayers, yes, this world does have good aligned dragons. However, all dragons are reclusive and few in number, unwilling to interfere in human affairs. Therefore, it isn't common knowledge that metal = good and chromatic = bad. Yuki, the half-dragon sorceress, is half silver. You're right though: making them paladins may be a bad idea. I'll just go with the Ranger type for now.
Kalidor 12-17-03, 08:51 PM	Well, I forget how 3.0 works, but in 3.5 the subject gets a will save. So lets say a guy you've never met before is someone you want to scry on... now.. you have to have SOME connection to the guy you have no knowledge of, which means you have to posses something he owns. So he gets a base +10 to his will save. Likeness or picture Possession or garment Body part, lock of hair, bit of nail, etc. So lets say you have a scarf. Well, that is -4, so now his bonus to save is +6. Assume the caster has an 18 INT. The DC then is 10+4(spell level)+3(stat bonus)=17 So he has to make a will save of 17. He gets +6 just because, you gotta figure that on average, he probably has at least some decent saves being that his CR would be appropraite for characters who can cast 4th level spells. We'll give him a +3. So he gets a +9 to save, which means all he needs is to roll an 8 or higher. And that's with a crappy will save bonus. Casting time is one hour, and if he makes his save, you can't try again for 24 hours. So its not like they can just make up people and try to scry on them like you are making it sound. I mean, if they want to know about the creature on the otherside of the door, I'm sure they'll find out soon enough if they are sitting out there with their giant scrying mirror chanting for an hour. I mean, if you don't want them to know anything, they can scry on the BBEG taking a crap and reading the local Town Cryer Tymes. Just because an NPC fails a save doesn't mean its at a crucial time where the most relevant info will be developed. It will be like in Star Trek: Generations when the Duras sisters were spying on Geordi, watching him walk around the decks, talking to people and such. "He must be the only Engineer in Starfleet who doesn't go to Engineering!"