TOPIC: True Grind Post-Mortem (2015 Who's Yer Con)

persolo wrote: I am curious on the answer to this question..and Incognito will likely have it somewhere.

How did most groups solve the Blink Dog appearing at the end?

Our group? After searching for Turkey Legs and other such to keep it not interested in us...the Barbarian ended up pointing to the bodies strewn about the room...well, without being able to speak Blink Dog...the dog then went over and ate the corpses of our Ranger and Druid.

oops.

Oh, that was more of a "joke ending" that I put in for the final few runs.

There was never originally intended to be a Blink Dog, but until the final room we needed something to cover up the third combat board and it just happened to be a Blink Dog. (Well we had several options and we chose the Blink Dog, partly to "fake out" players who remembered them from last year).

However, during the earlier rounds, a lot of players seemed to expect a Blink Dog since they were looking at the board so I thought I'd have a little fun with it. Plus, it was something to do in case a group finished early!

I guess that was also probably why some groups sent their heavy hitters to my side - they were probably expecting two monsters at a time, which didn't happen until the very end.

So it wasn't a "real" encounter!

Incognito wrote:

persolo wrote: I am curious on the answer to this question..and Incognito will likely have it somewhere.

How did most groups solve the Blink Dog appearing at the end?

Our group? After searching for Turkey Legs and other such to keep it not interested in us...the Barbarian ended up pointing to the bodies strewn about the room...well, without being able to speak Blink Dog...the dog then went over and ate the corpses of our Ranger and Druid.

oops.

Oh, that was more of a "joke ending" that I put in for the final few runs.

There was never originally intended to be a Blink Dog, but until the final room we needed something to cover up the third combat board and it just happened to be a Blink Dog. (Well we had several options and we chose the Blink Dog, partly to "fake out" players who remembered them from last year).

However, during the earlier rounds, a lot of players seemed to expect a Blink Dog since they were looking at the board so I thought I'd have a little fun with it. Plus, it was something to do in case a group finished early!

I guess that was also probably why some groups sent their heavy hitters to my side - they were probably expecting two monsters at a time, which didn't happen until the very end.

So it wasn't a "real" encounter!

Joke ending or not it was great to see the Blink Dog again... Thanks for that.

Ya know...I wasn't sure if it was a joke or not...either way, it had that Indiana Jones "Oh hell, what do we do NOW", after fighting the big bad...the flavor text of "really hungry" added to that.

Still glad we came up with a fun solution for it.

also, as an aside...the snake swallowed our Druid...the cleric was on the other side of the lava, so Druid was the only one who could quickly and easily heal us. We followed her into the belly of the beast, upon which, after Incognito asked "Are you sure?", the Barbarian was incinerated.

joshua baessler wrote: 3pm Friday run with the lone arrow of True Flight to slay the snake from across the room

That was mine, right? If so, my best use of ammo ever

I had a great time, thanks Eric and Raven for all the fun and carnage

Yes, it was my first True Grind and had a blast of a time. Thanks Eric/Raven for the great DMing and thanks Kirk for inviting me.

Ed

My second ever grind, and the hardest and most interesting yet. I will confirm that the Fri 3pm run you got me as the rogue twice, I had used 1 PoDD and 1 mushroom.

Lesson learned, if you crit a marilith, it'll strangle you with all 6 hands... twice

Eric, one small bit of feedback...

I really liked how at GenCon last year, you had a flip chart that let everyone know which room we were in (and it was pretty obvious when we switched rooms since we could see you flip to the next sheet). I would like to see that make a return if possible. I know that you and Raven did your best to say when we switched to a new room at WYC, but it is easy to miss the audible cues, so having the visual cues helps (at least for me)


That said, Grind was awesome as always.

Fiddy wrote: Eric, one small bit of feedback...

I really liked how at GenCon last year, you had a flip chart that let everyone know which room we were in (and it was pretty obvious when we switched rooms since we could see you flip to the next sheet). I would like to see that make a return if possible. I know that you and Raven did your best to say when we switched to a new room at WYC, but it is easy to miss the audible cues, so having the visual cues helps (at least for me)

Agree I really liked the flipboard it was a nice touch. And I would like to see it back.

That said, Grind was awesome as always.

Yes it was, had a great time!

Raven's Post-WYC Grind Notes

Several things stuck in my mind this year, from humorous moments, to observations in the coaching room. I want to write them down before I forget under the press of real life.

Saves and AC's

While coaching, I saw a lot of people who min-maxed their damage output, at the cost of their saves & AC. Also some people who were going into Grind with excellent to-hit and AC, but their saves looked like regular dungeon-run saves (ie, maybe 2 or 3 pts higher than normal stats).

As many people (probably) learned in Grind... low saves means you will be hit by any number of unpleasant effects. Low (or even standard) AC means the monster is likely to target you.

(I know some people complain about monsters singling out the squishy targets, but I figure that most monsters (especially the kind which Eric stats up for the Nightmare & Epic levels) are not dumb. After chipping a tooth on the Paladin's armour, a smart Naga will go after the tasty Monk with a mere 20AC. And if they manage to land a hit on you once, they will hit you again & again.)

Figurine: Scarab

Saw a lot of these used on my side of the dungeon, especially against the Medusa's petrification. At least 3 people avoided becoming statues thanks to those +3 points.

Petrification

Most parties were prepared for something like this. They had high Fort saves, brought Steel Mirrors, Stone-to-Flesh scrolls, etc.
But some didn't.

I felt kinda bad about turning 2 players to stone at the half-way point in the dungeon because their party had no mirrors or Stone-to-flesh scrolls with them. Sorry guys :/
You made fairly congenial statuary, though!

--> In my defense, this was on Nightmare Mode, and Nightmare does assume players have access to a full range of common & uncommon tokens. (That's actually one of the reasons Grind supplies a table in the room: for players to put their backpacks & token binders on.)

Muting the Medusa

Smart parties recognized the Medusa as a spell-caster, and had the Bard cast mute on her. One party even cast a mute before she revealed herself, because she used a Mirage - a copy of the recently slain Spirit Naga - which had also cast spells, and they didn't want the defensive spells up again. Then they did over 200pts of damage before she could drop the illusion.

I think half the parties tried to mute the Medusa, and 3 of those succeeded. One valiant Bard tried 5 times to mute her (all 4 casting slots, plus a Carter's Tome were used) and she made her saving throw every time. Sometimes Lady Luck is a bitch.

If the Medusa was not muted, she used a Death Scream power at the point of her demise. It did sonic damage, shattered unprotected potions, and caused stalactites to fall from above. (No one was equipped with the Earcuff of Abjuration which would have avoided the falling rock damage).

Luckily(?) some people avoided the falling rock damage by virtue of already being a statue, or being inside the Fire Snake's belly.


Projectile Players

One of my favorite attacks from this Grind was the Giant Fire Snake's "Grab" attack, which did no damage directly, but let it pick up a player and then hurl them across the chasm, for ~12 pts of falling damage on the other side. But better than that - the Snake could use the player as a projectile weapon, and aim at players across the chasm, and try to injure 2 players at once. The players would have 20 pts of damage to split between them.. their choice on how to split it... and I kept having visions of, say, the Rogue thinking "That incoming Fighter is gonna squish me dead! Unless I sidestep like this, and let him fall on his face and take all the damage himself!

At one point, when the snake found himself going mano-a-mano with the Fighter?/Paladin? but couldn't wrap his tail around the high AC, he started picking up the petrified statues, and hurling them at soft targets on the other side of the room.

At another point, the tail of the snake was throwing the ?Rogue? to Incognito's side of the dungeon and decided to attack the Cleric. But Eric had the Head attack the Cleric and throw them to my side. The characters collided in mid-air, and fell back to their respective side.


Typed Damage

Our monsters were very Fire-heavy, and several of them took extra cold damage from properly-equipped players. Most of the time I caught the party-card notes and applied it properly, but thank you very much to the couple of players who reminded me politely that they had cold damage, and asked if it was hurting the Fire Snake / Magma elemental.

On the opposite side of that, Once I forgot that the Fire Snake was immune to Fire, and let a Wizard's Fireball hit it with full force, instead of laughing it off and mocking the castor.

Contrast that with a Wizard who used the Crown of Elemental Command to hit the monster with a giant Frost-ball (or was it Frost Strike?), and watched with glee as his party members finished it off in short order

What's Cooking in the Kitchen?

Another favorite monster tactic of mine was the Magma Elemental's ability to raise the temperature in the room.

At first, the characters taking 1-3 pts of heat damage from holding a metal sword, and/or wearing metal armour, just laughed as their Eldritch set soaked the damage.
After 4 or 5 rounds, those same individuals were taking 20+ points of damage, and many were switching to (wooden) ranged weapons, or asking for the Druid or Monk to come over from the other side, to save them from being slow-roasted in their armour.

(As a note, we would have allowed anyone who wanted to take of their metal armour to do so as a Free Action. Sadly, no one did. I say "Sadly", because the Magma Elemental really wanted to hit people who were in a nice easy AC range.)

The best response to the Magma Elemental, though, was the Druid (I believe this was Cat, Kent/Reznor's wife?) who transformed herself into a Dire Bear, and kept sliding 20's, right into the Elemental's face, doing extra Cold damage every time.
He couldn't bake her. He could barely hit her. She could barely miss on him.
And so, while the heavily armoured fighters dropped their weapons in the corner and tried not to smell too much like pot-roast, the Druid ate the Magma Elemental's face.


Oh, and Laz? He smelled deliciously like Roast Fish in that room. Just sayin'

I particularly enjoyed our bard being tossed by the snakes tail and then swallowed by the snakes head. The bard probably did not find it so amusing, but what an image!

persolo wrote:
also, as an aside...the snake swallowed our Druid...the cleric was on the other side of the lava, so Druid was the only one who could quickly and easily heal us. We followed her into the belly of the beast, upon which, after Incognito asked "Are you sure?", the Barbarian was incinerated.

I was on the other side of the grind wall tearing down the dungeon and overheard you crawling into the snake. If you heard laughter coming from beyond the cavern walls, that was me.

bloody tossers...