TOPIC: True Grind Feedback

I didn't find an existing topic, so here we go.

First of all, this year was outstanding for True Grind. My sincere compliments to the design and DM's running it this year. I enjoyed the theme, and the selection of creatures was excellent.

The fear effects fit in with the theme and proved useful, without being totally lop sided. Being able to save on subsequent rounds helps out. It also doesn't target any one character, so no one feels like they have a target on them.

The mind swap was inspired. Not everyone liked it, but I found it original and added a good element of fun. The hunger affliction was interesting also. It literally bit us on one round.

The collection of 10 cultists and 10 blink dogs was a great idea. You can do massive damage and it still only kills one. I know there is more bookkeeping here, but I really like this idea.

Keeping the boards in sync must have been difficult, but the DM's did an amazing job keeping them close enough that it all flowed really well. Lots going on in the room, but it all ran amazingly well.

We all survived, except the wizard who died with the last creature. I think he was stepped on, but I'm not sure. Most took damage, and we used almost all our healing, so the balance worked out well.

A huge thank you to: Eric, Raven, Brad and Kirk! Excellent job!

Cranston wrote: I didn't find an existing topic, so here we go.

First of all, this year was outstanding for True Grind. My sincere compliments to the design and DM's running it this year. I enjoyed the theme, and the selection of creatures was excellent.

The fear effects fit in with the theme and proved useful, without being totally lop sided. Being able to save on subsequent rounds helps out. It also doesn't target any one character, so no one feels like they have a target on them.

The mind swap was inspired. Not everyone liked it, but I found it original and added a good element of fun. The hunger affliction was interesting also. It literally bit us on one round.

The collection of 10 cultists and 10 blink dogs was a great idea. You can do massive damage and it still only kills one. I know there is more bookkeeping here, but I really like this idea.

Keeping the boards in sync must have been difficult, but the DM's did an amazing job keeping them close enough that it all flowed really well. Lots going on in the room, but it all ran amazingly well.

We all survived, except the wizard who died with the last creature. I think he was stepped on, but I'm not sure. Most took damage, and we used almost all our healing, so the balance worked out well.

A huge thank you to: Eric, Raven, Brad and Kirk! Excellent job!

Completely agree... I had an amazing time this year, even if my elf Wizard got his mind switched with the monk (I actually loved this).

Cranston wrote: The fear effects fit in with the theme and proved useful, without being totally lop sided. Being able to save on subsequent rounds helps out. It also doesn't target any one character, so no one feels like they have a target on them.

I also implemented the "Take 5/10/20/30" damage rule so that players with low Will saves wouldn't get completely locked out.

Also bear in mind that the Bard could Inspire two times to remove all Fear from the party. And the Cleric had two uses of Prayer which provided Fear immunity for the whole room.

A LOT of Clerics (including veteran Clerics) apparently didn't look at the new Cleric cards so they never cast Prayer, even when it would have helped a lot.

The mind swap was inspired. Not everyone liked it, but I found it original and added a good element of fun. The hunger affliction was interesting also. It literally bit us on one round.

There was actually a way to cure/remove the brain swap but I don't believe anyone found or tried it. However, we will keep that solution a secret for now....

There was also a way around the hunger issue. Only 2 or 3 groups found that (or even bothered to try). Other groups were just going through their stacks of food and drink tokens.

The collection of 10 cultists and 10 blink dogs was a great idea. You can do massive damage and it still only kills one. I know there is more bookkeeping here, but I really like this idea.

Actually, it was 10 Cultists and 10 Deep Ones (Kuo-Toa / Sahuagin boards). There was only 1 Hound of Tindalos (Blink Dog), though there were ways to end up with more than one Hound.

A huge thank you to: Eric, Raven, Brad and Kirk! Excellent job!

And Shelly too! For the morning and afternoon runs, Brad and I ran the Grind on one hour centers while Shelly did the Player Coaching. (In the evening it was just Raven and Kirk but they were able to manage it with 1.5 hour centers).

We had a blast also! Of course our Mind Controlled Fighter decided to call the aid of the dreaded Hestur early on in Room 1 which slowly dwindled us down to a TPK but everyone had a great fun watching his decent into madness (never rolling above a 10) and eventually being rejected by the deity and eaten. We will be back for revenge next year!

This is was the most fun I have had playing grind and I didn't even get mind swapped. I think I was on a group in which we finally got the right difficulty level, which I always find really hard to do in grind with a pug or partial pug group. Either we choose something too easy or too difficult. This year it felt just right, even though we had some really powerful characters and some not so much so. I also really like the 10 Cultist and Deep Ones. It was odd to be left along fighting the Deep Ones while everyone attacked whatever was on the other board (I never saw it as I was swarmed by Deep Ones).

The AoW was an interesting mechanic but my sliding was so awful that I always missed timed when to use it. I think it helped a lot one fight but most of the time I was just missing. I was expecting it to be used in some other way that I must have missed.

Really enjoyed the Lovecraft characters and I'm not just saying that because I make retro-style toys of them. Our party did reverse the brain swap. It took 3 or 4 tokens but I wasn't involved so I don't know which ones. This happened on Thursday night.

jedibcg wrote: I also really like the 10 Cultist and Deep Ones. It was odd to be left along fighting the Deep Ones while everyone attacked whatever was on the other board (I never saw it as I was swarmed by Deep Ones).

Some parties had a lot of difficulty due to non-ideal battle tactics.

Some groups completely or largely ignored the hordes of Cultists and Deep Ones, even though there were a lot of them that were attacking everyone!

Also, some groups had problems if they focused too much on the first board and triggered the Wendigo (Air Elemental board) too early, which could cause a lot of cold damage.

The AoW was an interesting mechanic but my sliding was so awful that I always missed timed when to use it. I think it helped a lot one fight but most of the time I was just missing. I was expecting it to be used in some other way that I must have missed.

There were also some subtler AoW effect benefits, which mainly involved the Hound.

I really liked the 10x cultists.

I've been thinking of an idea like that for a while in the main dungeon as an alternative to scaling up difficulty for hardcore / nightmare.

I think scaling single monsters up through HC/Nighmare presents a big challenge, and makes player effects that require a monster save annoying/useless at higher difficulty levels.

I think the idea of having lots of "minions" and scaling the number of minions is a great way to scale difficulty. Each minion can have the same stats, and it's the added numbers that increase the challenge (maybe they get some bonus to hit based on number of surviving minions so they can touch players when there are swarms of them).

I'd be excited to see that idea carry over to them main dungeon.

Also... was there a point in grind where we were fighting a Spider and a Cyberdemon?!?

We found it easiest to just get the spider to fight for us!

Matthew Hayward wrote: I really liked the 10x cultists.

I've been thinking of an idea like that for a while in the main dungeon as an alternative to scaling up difficulty for hardcore / nightmare.

I think scaling single monsters up through HC/Nighmare presents a big challenge, and makes player effects that require a monster save annoying/useless at higher difficulty levels.

I think the idea of having lots of "minions" and scaling the number of minions is a great way to scale difficulty. Each minion can have the same stats, and it's the added numbers that increase the challenge (maybe they get some bonus to hit based on number of surviving minions so they can touch players when there are swarms of them).

I'd be excited to see that idea carry over to them main dungeon.

FYI: The original 2010 Grind (the first one I designed) had multiple Orcish Archers, Stirges, and Orcish Warriors (one for each player).

And this year's WYC Grind also had multiple Drow and Orcs (one for each player).

Matthew Hayward wrote: Also... was there a point in grind where we were fighting a Spider and a Cyberdemon?!?

There was an enormous purple spider, that was bloated but moved with fluid grace. However, that was a Leng Spider.

Snakeeyes0217 wrote: Really enjoyed the Lovecraft characters and I'm not just saying that because I make retro-style toys of them. Our party did reverse the brain swap. It took 3 or 4 tokens but I wasn't involved so I don't know which ones. This happened on Thursday night.

I didn't hear what was involved in the brain swap again I was swarmed by frogmen, but I would have thought that there is one token that would have taken care of the issue. I will pm eric to see if I am off base, but I will keep it a secret if he wants me to.