TOPIC: The negative effects of running 10 CoA's

Let me start of by saying that while I do not have 10 CoA's yet, I do have access to 10 CoA's. I was able to use these with some of my PUG's. I feel like some DM's looked at the party card and seen that there were 10 CoA's and may have assumed that the group was experienced and decided to make things a little harder. This is also the only common element with each instance.


In an early combat room on normal with a PUG everyone was really good at sliding and seemed to hit. The DM did not mark down any damage on the board. Now I don't have a problem with this. If you want to keep track of it in your head that's fine. However, the DM never looked at the party card to check any hit or damage bonuses. Simply a bit of a description as to what the damage did to the monster and passed all the sliders back. This happened the following round as well which should have finished off the monster but did not.


On another run I had the volunteer in the epilogue room handing out treasure tell the group that they should not give me any of the treasure because they didn't feel it was right despite any arrangement made in the coaching room. A volunteer should not take it upon themselves to that to the group. If they have a problem with it they should call for an AC.


So I had a run with my regular group of 4 and 6 friends of each of ours who had not done the dungeon. Among them my cousin who has been coming to Gencon for 14 years but has never play TD and his 2 friends who play a lot of board games and flew in from Norway for Gencon. They did not pay for there tickets, I did. I wanted them to see why I come to Gencon. Those of us who had done the puzzles before did not give the group the answers we let the rest of the party try and figure it out for themselves. This run was also on normal where we did not run our usual gear. So we get to the room with the pulleys where you spell twist knob, pull lever, the group starts to figure things out and go over to the console and does the corresponding action. Not once does the DM tell the party that they hear a click to let the group know they are on the right track. I get it, it's the end of the night, you've had a long volunteer shift but don't assume because there is 10 CoA's the the group automatically knows the answer. In room 7 with the beholder, one of it's attacks dealt 50 damage. Someone commented to the DM that we were on normal and they said yes, you take 50 damage. Later that combat another player rolled an 18 and failed a reflex save. It was asked if that was correct for rolling an 18 and they were told it was. I got to see how these rooms were supposed to be played with other groups but for my cousin and his friends from Norway they thought it was ok, but they wouldn't play again even if I paid for their tickets. Good job to you certain DM's for ruining the experience for new players.


This next comment does not have to do with CoA's but I'm going to tie it all in together. I was waiting in line for bag check, there was no one in front of me but the bag check person wasn't there at that moment. Not a problem, I can wait. A volunteer comes up behind me who needs their bag from the bag check. They ask other volunteers if they are able to get their bag for them and each says no, you have to wait for the person overseeing the bag check to return. While waiting they tell me that they are in a rush so they should go next. I tell that person that they are impatient. They answer with that they know they are impatient, but they are also a volunteer and don't feel they should wait. The bag check person returns and they even try to cut ahead of me.


To all the volunteers and most of you are great. Being a volunteer is a privilege not an entitlement. I feel like in some way running with 10 CoA's has brought the inner jerk out of some DM's

Honestly I doubt most dm look at the treasure column there is so much else to do.

There is a question on the tests that coaches and combat GMs have to take in order to be certified that addresses this. (and soon the puzzle DMs too). The DMs are to provide CONSISTENCY in all of the runs through their room. If you feel that the DM is not adhering to this, bring it up with an adventure coordinator immediately so that it can be addressed before too many more parties go through that room.

As for the volunteer, there is no excuse for rudeness. If they needed to get their bag to do their volunteer job, then they should have explained that. If they needed their bag because they were late for their TD run and needed their tokens, then that is on them and they should have planned better. If the reason they were late was because they had to stay later than the end of their volunteer shift to help one or more players, then they should have explained that too. But above all, they should have been polite. It only adds a few more seconds to be polite, but the memory lasts a long time.

Re: entitlement

I've noticed a few comments this year about treasure sharing and "renting" out CoAs. Some people think that CoAs should be loaned out freely, without regard to the fact that someone who owns ten CoAs has over $10k tied up in tokens. That's a lot of money, I don't care who you are.

Asking for some treasure, even half, in return for lending them out seems perfectly reasonable to me. Nobody's entitled to profit from your investment without giving you something in return.

"But the owner gets two more chips!" Big deal. You'd get that by lending out CoGFs instead at a fraction of the investment, and the borrower would get a fraction of the treasure.

So I agree, the volunteer had no right to say anything to your other party members who benefited from the CoAs.

Borrowing CoAs, or any token for that matter, to take on a run is a little iffier. As long as they travelled through the dungeon with you so that there was zero chance that multiple parties were benefiting simultaneously, I think that's not a violation of any rules as I understand them. I assume that's what happened in your group, but there are a lot of newbies joining the forum, as is usual this time of year, and we don't want them getting wrong ideas.

Id be curious as to TPTB's opinions about loaning out treasure enhancers. I know there wad a point in the last where they had asked for people not to do it. Was that ever officially recinded?

I am sorry to hear about your unfair experience Ryan. I was one of the DM's in the Beholder room, I am pretty sure that the Beholder cannot do 50 damage. They could however swallow you whole. I do NOT think that DM's scale up the damage for 10 CoA groups. I DM'd Smackdown's group when they waded through the 7th room doing 500+ damage in one round. Crazy, they killed it in one round... When it is the players time to win, it is what DM's do, we let them win.

I did however see the adverse side of the CoA argument. I had given my run up for one of my noob friends to run with my other friend. Both of them had a AoTF, as I did not want to lend out my CoA. This gave each of them 7 pulls each... Someone with 10 CoAs), asked my friends to use their CoA's (Giving them 16 pulls) in exchange for using the CoA, handing over 10 tokens each to the CoA owners, thereby leaving my friends with less pulls (6) ONE LESS than they would have had if they used the AoTF.... I do know that the TWO in question disregarded the fact that my friends had their own tokens. As my friends did not understand the difference between pulls, they thought they were getting a deal. It was wrongly explained to them that they would get double the tokens. This of course was not the case. When we talked later, they were completely dumbfounded that senior players would do that to noobs.

Simple math 16 - 10 = 6 (not the 7 that they would have had on their own)

Jerk move, and simply Greedy. The person in question should be happy that I did not tell them to just walk away with the pulls.

If that was me with my two friends. It is because you were giving them less treasure than they would have had if they had used their own tokens (AoTF). In the defense of my friends they only kept seven pulls, the original seven and handed over nine. It is this sort of practice, feeding on new players that COULD give TD a bad name.

Needless to say I was very disappointed.

I was taken advantage of my first year with a trade, that only benefitted the other player. If they would have explained ALL aspects of the trade, it would have not left a bitter taste in my mouth. Luckily, there are other players like Raven and Laz who offered to step up to make the situation better. Even though they did NOT have to.

Let me rephrase -

A random person who doesn't know the details shouldn't judge. (like me earlier.)

But someone in LotR's situation certainly has a right to defend his friends.

As the AC for the Beholder Side, let me clear up some misconceptions:
1. No the Beholder doesn't do 50 points of damage (even on Nightmare) on Normal it should be 10
2. The room 4 puzzle with the sliding words, was NOT supposed to click when you completed each step, so the previous trip, you were given extra help (still an issue from the standpoint of consistency)
3. The DM should be referencing the Party card even if they are tallying notes in their head. it's possible they had that all straight in their head... but unlikely.

All of these problems, and the other ones you listed could have been sorted out at the time, if you had simply requested an AC.

I'm sorry you had a poor experience, but there's little I can do about it after the event.

I agree that with so much going on I doubt DMs would pay much attention to the treasure chip boxes.

It's possible the DM in the first room used a shortcut like this:

1. What is the minimum and maximum hit bonus on the sheet?

2. Any puck that would hit with the minimum bonus deals damage.

3. Any puck that would miss with the maximum bonus wiffs.

It's possible then for a set of slides to be resolved by the DM only remembering 2 numbers (if all slides are higher than the minimum hit number, or less than the maximum miss number).

I can't imagine how the DM would correctly calculate damage without looking at the card, unless they have some unusual memory gifts.

I'll just say everyone on my runs pulls 14 treasure tokens (AOTH+RoR+CoGF), and I've never felt I was getting attitude from the DMs about it. I wouldn't connect the things.

The volunteer in the epilogue room second guessing your arrangement is really bad - because it will leave the impression with 10 new players that you were trying to cheat them, and they will go post on Reddit about how "big buyers" "rip off new players." That's the last thing we need.

Lordoftherealm wrote: ... This gave each of them 7 pulls each... Someone with 10 CoAs), asked my friends to use their CoA's (Giving them 16 pulls) in exchange for using the CoA, handing over 10 tokens each to the CoA owners, thereby leaving my friends with less pulls (6) ONE LESS than they would have had if they used the CoA.... I do know that the TWO in question disregarded the fact that my friends had their own tokens. As my friends did not understand the difference between pulls, they thought they were getting a deal. It was wrongly explained to them that they would get double the tokens. This of course was not the case. When we talked later, they were completely dumbfounded that senior players would do that to noobs.

Simple math 16 - 10 = 6 (not the 7 that they would have had on their own)

Jerk move, and simply Greedy. The person in question should be happy that I did not tell them to just walk away with the pulls.

I think you're finding malice where simple ignorance would suffice.

I've certainly told randos in my pick up groups: "If you leave a charm and a neck slot open I can loan you tokens that will get you extra treasure."

I don't really look at their builds. Maybe they have their own CoA or HoP and my loaners don't help them...

I think anyone running the dungeon with URTEs can be expected to understand the dynamics in play - I'm sure this player wasn't trying to cheat your friends, but just assumed they had no URTEs.


That being said - I'm in the "don't extract payment for loaned tokens" camp. I think it puts new players in an uncomfortable situation and forces them to evaluate their TD experience through the lens of economic transaction.

New players going into the coaching room, where they are confronted by "Mr. Suitcase" who is clearly an experienced player and who asks them to fiddle with their builds, because he'll loan them stuff, but only if they agree to give him things at the end just seems like a recipe for negative experiences.

If experienced players want to set up runs like this before hand, I think that's fine.

I don't really like people springing that on new players they don't know in the coaching room.

I really don't think people should be loaning URTEs out on runs they are not going on, and/or somehow doubling up by showing them only in the coaching room more frequently than if they went on the run.

I loan my URTEs with no request or expectation of payback.

I went on a PUG run and decided to restrict myself to a greedy sealed format. There was a mix in experience in the other players, but one guy was lending tokens to the newer players so I loaned him my lenses so he got an extra draw for being helpful to the new players.

He bought me some pulled-pork nachos at the Ram afterward!