TOPIC: Teradach's review/feedback

Another Gencon came and gone...... and it was as great as ever!!!!

We did 4 true dungeons and two grinds. Our core group ran Nightmare Combat for both adventures. A couple of us ran Normal Puzzle for both adventures with a lot of new/first time folks.


Thank you to the staff and Jeff, you guys make our world better!

All of the Coaches/Trainers/Judges/GMs/NPCs were wonderful. Especially room one in moongate . Special shout outs to Eric, Raven, and Kirk in the true grind room! The two girls doing the final room in moongate were a treat too, very well in character. Holly was fun!

I loved true grind and the whole 'choose your own adventure' play. We did it twice and the outcomes were TOTALLY different both times.

Of the rooms:

My favorite had to be the final room in moongate, well thought out puzzle with need for team cooperation. The npcs were brilliant in their nonchalant helping by being flighty and 'messing us up' while helping.

My least favorite room was the 'magical darkness' room. Our group was successful, but giving only one light so only one person can look at things is wrong. I told the judge that I would by the exit waiting for the push damage cause I wasn't going to strain my eyes to try to see in the dark. Luckily the one or two people able to see were able to solve the puzzle for us. I know I'll be wearing Drow Assassin Armor from now on.

I was very skeptical on the 'scent' room. I was thinking to myself..... how on earth are we supposed to figure out all of those scents..... BUT..... I have a pretty good nose, and several others in the group did as well. We were getting close on time, but we were successful. Not sure if I liked this puzzle or not yet... but it was different.

Combat:

Having alternate ways to deal with combat situations was fun.

Having an enemy that auto deals 50 (10x5) damage a turn with no way of killing more than 1 a turn is totally unfair. So assuming we were perfect... and killed 1 a round, that's 150 damage auto dealt. We all spend a lot of money and time working on our equipment, and to make something that can just bypass all our equipment sucks. My cleric gear is 'decent' reds/purples an orange. I was healing at +9 with lenses of divine sight. So with spell slots I could heal 80 with my cure minors, and need two of my cure lights to negate that damage. That leaves me 1 light, 2 mods and a serious to finish the dungeon with. Then you toss 3 more of those 'auto damage' guys in the last room...... Not happy with that at all.

Continuation of previous gripe, kinda. So now that I'm low on healing, I'm tossing scrolls of cure mod all over the place (which is throwing real life money away) trying to keep guys above 30hp. We get to the final room.... and the group before us took 2 minutes longer (1:55) to finish and get out of the room.... so we had 2 minutes less to fight, I think we were close, but we all died. So real life money spent on tokens, on tickets, and extra tokens for scrolls.... and we lose due to bad mechanics and not getting all our time in the room.

My rule of thumb is, I rather be challenged than successful, but it wasn't a challenge, it was being gibbed.


-Teradach (C. J.)


Oh and fighting the same monster in 3? rooms.... bleh.

C. J. wrote: Having an enemy that auto deals 50 (10x5) damage a turn with no way of killing more than 1 a turn is totally unfair. So assuming we were perfect... and killed 1 a round, that's 150 damage auto dealt. We all spend a lot of money and time working on our equipment, and to make something that can just bypass all our equipment sucks. My cleric gear is 'decent' reds/purples an orange. I was healing at +9 with lenses of divine sight. So with spell slots I could heal 80 with my cure minors, and need two of my cure lights to negate that damage. That leaves me 1 light, 2 mods and a serious to finish the dungeon with. Then you toss 3 more of those 'auto damage' guys in the last room...... Not happy with that at all.

That's not that much damage - fail a puzzle attempt on normal and take 30, 10x3 with no way to avoid it other than Ray's Ring.


Why do you think you couldn't kill more than 1 a round? That may be how the module was written, I'm just not sure?

Matthew Hayward wrote:

C. J. wrote: Having an enemy that auto deals 50 (10x5) damage a turn with no way of killing more than 1 a turn is totally unfair. So assuming we were perfect... and killed 1 a round, that's 150 damage auto dealt. We all spend a lot of money and time working on our equipment, and to make something that can just bypass all our equipment sucks. My cleric gear is 'decent' reds/purples an orange. I was healing at +9 with lenses of divine sight. So with spell slots I could heal 80 with my cure minors, and need two of my cure lights to negate that damage. That leaves me 1 light, 2 mods and a serious to finish the dungeon with. Then you toss 3 more of those 'auto damage' guys in the last room...... Not happy with that at all.

That's not that much damage - fail a puzzle attempt on normal and take 30, 10x3 with no way to avoid it other than Ray's Ring.


Why do you think you couldn't kill more than 1 a round? That may be how the module was written, I'm just not sure?

Failing a puzzle and taking damage because of a failing is understandable, we deserve that.... lol. And 30 (or 60) maybe is a lot less than 150 guaranteed.

There was only one schrael (spelling) on the board with only one small 20 on it. So if our first guy slid and hit, we had to stop, let them do their damage, then try again.

C. J. wrote: There was only one schrael (spelling) on the board with only one small 20 on it. So if our first guy slid and hit, we had to stop, let them do their damage, then try again.

Depending on your to-hit bonuses, it was possible to damage the scrael without landing on the 20. And the DMs that I had definitely allowed the party to damage different scrael within the same round.

Or at least, that seemed to be how it worked when I went through. On Nightmare though, you definitely needed some good bonuses to hit when not on the 20.

C. J. wrote: .... We get to the final room.... and the group before us took 2 minutes longer (1:55) to finish and get out of the room.... so we had 2 minutes less to fight, I think we were close, but we all died. So real life money spent on tokens, on tickets, and extra tokens for scrolls.... and we lose due to bad mechanics and not getting all our time in the room.

...

Groups need to be moved out of the room and not given extra time to finish. Had similar issue on one run which resulted in running out of time by the same amount that were shorted (combat in which we needed 1 or 2 rounds to finish).

C. J. wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

C. J. wrote: Having an enemy that auto deals 50 (10x5) damage a turn with no way of killing more than 1 a turn is totally unfair. So assuming we were perfect... and killed 1 a round, that's 150 damage auto dealt. We all spend a lot of money and time working on our equipment, and to make something that can just bypass all our equipment sucks. My cleric gear is 'decent' reds/purples an orange. I was healing at +9 with lenses of divine sight. So with spell slots I could heal 80 with my cure minors, and need two of my cure lights to negate that damage. That leaves me 1 light, 2 mods and a serious to finish the dungeon with. Then you toss 3 more of those 'auto damage' guys in the last room...... Not happy with that at all.

That's not that much damage - fail a puzzle attempt on normal and take 30, 10x3 with no way to avoid it other than Ray's Ring.


Why do you think you couldn't kill more than 1 a round? That may be how the module was written, I'm just not sure?

The scrael was on a checkerboard of numbers, which also could be hits, depending on your bonuses.

I'm pretty sure our party scored hits on the scrael body itself when not on the 20.

I am sure we killed more than 1 in a round.

But - it may have been very hard - our party was pretty geared up and we played that side Hardcore.

Failing a puzzle and taking damage because of a failing is understandable, we deserve that.... lol. And 30 (or 60) maybe is a lot less than 150 guaranteed.

There was only one schrael (spelling) on the board with only one small 20 on it. So if our first guy slid and hit, we had to stop, let them do their damage, then try again.[/quote]

So, you were able to target which scrael you wanted to hit when sliding. At least our combat DM allowed us to do so.

Casters could also target (provided they didn't have a scrael on them).

I didn't really think about it, but fighting scrael 3 times was a little repetitive. The scrael queen was great, particularly how it was in melee for one round so everyone burned their free action potions, then it went to ranged to make leaping attach a much bigger deal.

Like Wade, it didn't feel (to me) like fighting the same monster 3 times, because they all operated a little differently... but I can definitely see how others experienced it that way... especially if they had a Scrael on their back more than once.

Our group focused fire to get the Scrael off our Wizard, and had a *much* easier time afterwards. We were also allowed to target different Scrael in the same round, but (mostly) chose not to.

With regards to losing time because the group ahead of you was slow... yeah... that royally sucks. We followed a group through the Dungeon on Sat evening which was 2-3 mins behind every time. Once I could even hear the DMs explaining to the group that they *needed* *to* *get* *out* so I know it wasn't slow DMs... it was just a party which felt no remorse about making others wait for them. (Luckily we were an experienced group on our 4th/5th run, so we did okay despite lack of time)

But man does it ever suck to be stuck behind a slow group.

Raven wrote: Like Wade, it didn't feel (to me) like fighting the same monster 3 times, because they all operated a little differently... but I can definitely see how others experienced it that way... especially if they had a Scrael on their back more than once.

For me it wasn't that it was 3 of the same monster, but rather 3 of a type of creature that consistently blocked a number of mechanics. No sneak attack, Crits, Taunts, retribution damage, etc. That is where I got frustrated

MetaphoricDragon wrote:

Raven wrote: Like Wade, it didn't feel (to me) like fighting the same monster 3 times, because they all operated a little differently... but I can definitely see how others experienced it that way... especially if they had a Scrael on their back more than once.

For me it wasn't that it was 3 of the same monster, but rather 3 of a type of creature that consistently blocked a number of mechanics. No sneak attack, Crits, Taunts, retribution damage, etc. That is where I got frustrated

There was an uncommon token printed this year that removed two of those immunities.

But I do understand and agree with the frustrations. And maybe if you are going to have multiple Scrael fights in one dungeon, you don't include more constructs in the other dungeon too.

We made the mistake of switching our wizard to dwarf warrior to try to get some more damage out, which shot ourselves in the foot a little bit.

I think what bothered me the most was the auto damage. Give me 5 opponents that deal 15 damage a round, but we have the opportunity to save or they have to hit our AC. A gaze attack (or distraction) that we can save against to prevent being taken out of the fight, etc.

I appreciate a good challenge, but that wasn't fun to me.

The queen room was gorgeous..... however.... when I saw more of the 'spiders' .... LOL