Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Roadtoad May 27, 2009 18:38:29	I'm prepping for the Siege of Bordrin's Watch adventure and as I'm going through the monastery rooms, I found the geometry failures in the Hall of Heroes encounter fairly disturbing. Point one: "All along either side of the room are stairs that climb 30 feet up to a landing" (These staircases take up one square each) Point two: "The ceiling is 20 squares overhead." (That's 100 feet) Point three: "A spiral staircase at the southern end of the room leads up to room 1–2" Point four: "Braziers in each of the four corners shed light in a 10-square radius." Let's deal with the little staircases first. They go up 30 feet within the space of 1 square (5 feet). That's a 6-to-1 ratio. That's a fairly normal ladder angle, and it goes up 30 feet. Climb checks to get up there? It'll take a double move to cover that. They make nice sniper points for the ranger and casters, but It feels like they'd be more effective if they were just 5 or 10 feet up, so I may do that. But it's probably not important, because: Before we get there, we've got the party opening up the hatch from above and finding themselves emerging from the ceiling a hundred feet over the heads of some orcs. The ceiling of this room is in total darkness (20 squares away from the 10-square-radius lightsources) and the floor is illuminated. Seems like the ranger and wizard can just pick people off from the top of the stairs for quite some time. It'll take the closest Drudge 4 or 5 turns to get to the stairs and then double-move up the 19 squares of difficult terrain in that tight little spiral (assuming a reasonable 45-degree angle to the stairs). I guess he'd have total concealment once he's on the stairs, so that'll be some interesting tension.. until he gets to the top and dies. :/ And, to top it all off, the orcs have no ranged weapons. The encounter tells me to have the party make stealth checks as they descend the stairs, but I'm having difficulty figuring out why they would until all the orcs they can see are dead and the others have fled in terror.
#2 mike_conno May 28, 2009 5:24:46	I'm prepping for the Siege of Bordrin's Watch adventure and as I'm going through the monastery rooms, I found the geometry failures in the Hall of Heroes encounter fairly disturbing. Point one: "All along either side of the room are stairs that climb 30 feet up to a landing" (These staircases take up one square each) Point two: "The ceiling is 20 squares overhead." (That's 100 feet) Point three: "A spiral staircase at the southern end of the room leads up to room 1–2" Point four: "Braziers in each of the four corners shed light in a 10-square radius." Let's deal with the little staircases first. They go up 30 feet within the space of 1 square (5 feet). That's a 6-to-1 ratio. That's a fairly normal ladder angle, and it goes up 30 feet. Climb checks to get up there? It'll take a double move to cover that. They make nice sniper points for the ranger and casters, but It feels like they'd be more effective if they were just 5 or 10 feet up, so I may do that. But it's probably not important, because: Before we get there, we've got the party opening up the hatch from above and finding themselves emerging from the ceiling a hundred feet over the heads of some orcs. The ceiling of this room is in total darkness (20 squares away from the 10-square-radius lightsources) and the floor is illuminated. Seems like the ranger and wizard can just pick people off from the top of the stairs for quite some time. It'll take the closest Drudge 4 or 5 turns to get to the stairs and then double-move up the 19 squares of difficult terrain in that tight little spiral (assuming a reasonable 45-degree angle to the stairs). I guess he'd have total concealment once he's on the stairs, so that'll be some interesting tension.. until he gets to the top and dies. :/ And, to top it all off, the orcs have no ranged weapons. The encounter tells me to have the party make stealth checks as they descend the stairs, but I'm having difficulty figuring out why they would until all the orcs they can see are dead and the others have fled in terror. It all depends on how you imagine the spiral staircase. Do you imagine it made out of metal with open sides? Then Yes, your characters can snipe the orcs from them. Looking at the map, they seem to be made like that. Personally, I imagine them being made out of stone, with enclosed walls all around, just like a stone shaft with the spiral staircase down the middle.
#3 ah_graht_dup May 31, 2009 20:40:02	Yep, it was pretty much an gimme encounter for my players for the reasons you stated, but I think they should have those every once in a while and the rest of that part of the adventure, especially the final room where they rescue Kalad, were pretty hard for them so it all balanced out for me.
#4 carahue Jun 22, 2009 7:27:16	It all depends on how you imagine the spiral staircase. Do you imagine it made out of metal with open sides? Then Yes, your characters can snipe the orcs from them. Looking at the map, they seem to be made like that. Personally, I imagine them being made out of stone, with enclosed walls all around, just like a stone shaft with the spiral staircase down the middle. This is also how I imagined it myself, with the spiral staircase enclosed as it leads down the mountain from the Hall of Moradin to the Hall of Heroes. Otherwise the encounter isn't challenging enough, and the note about rolling for Stealth doesn't make much sense.
#5 carahue Jun 22, 2009 7:28:42	Somehow I've managed to double post this.