D&D Smackdown

[cellio]

Tuesday night we had "D&D smackdown". I had a lot of fun. I don't know how much we learned, but it was fun. :-) Ralph wrote about the session, but I'm going to add some notes of my own.

For the evening we boosted the characters who were close up to the next level, so this could be a predictor of things going forward. We had Larissa (7th-level sorceror), Prolix (7th-level wizard), Liandra (7th-level druid), Turok ("4th-level" half-dragon fighter; functionally 6th, through a mechanism I don't understand), and Kyle (6th-level mostly rogue (1 level of ranger, I think)). Larissa has an owl familiar and Liandra has a wolf animal companion, but neither figured into the fighting much. We ran three fights against this party.

Trolls

The first fight was against five trolls, approaching from all around us. Their strategy was to each head for a PC. Kyle was killed in a single blow (a critical hit) early in the fight. Trolls are large and have reach compared to us, so they could swat at us from out of range. This is potent, it turns out. (We saw the same thing with ogres later.)

We never got multiple trolls close enough together to use fireball effectively. Larissa used a flame sphere to so-so effect, and once we knocked a troll unconscious she parked a sphere on top of it to keep it from getting back up. This would have eventually killed the troll, I think, but it would have taken a while. Some combination of Turok and Liandra killed one troll and knocked another unconscious, and Prolix used a Rainbow Pattern to distract two. (This is a 4th-level illusion spell, new to all of us.)

If the trolls had come from fewer directions and if we had not been concerned about Kyle's body, we probably could have run away from this fight.

Water elemental

The second fight was against a water elemental (out in the open, not near water). The only attacks we had that were effective were one +2 weapon, one "ice" spell (it's from a Druid expansion pack and I don't know its name; it does 6d6 damage over 3 rounds), and magic missiles. Water elementals are immune to fire, sleep, paralysis, poison, and I'm not sure what else. Oh, maybe the acid did some damage; I've lost track. This fight ended in a draw; the elemental was entranced by an illusion (Rainbow Pattern again), but we didn't have enough ammo to kill it. We would have walked away if this were in a campaign.

Spellcaster

We really wanted to fight a spellcaster, because we haven't done much of that and we don't know how we'd fare. Generating a spellcaster is kind of a pain, though, so what we ended up doing was running a copy of Larissa, dubbed "Evil Larissa" (we postulated the skin-tight black leather and sneer), with four ogre bodyguards. (We started with two, decided that would be too easy, and boosted to four, which was too hard.) Evil Larissa had warning that something was coming, so she cast Shield on herself and Endure Elements on herself and two ogres. (Ok, we monkeyed with the spell list a bit; real Larissa doesn't have the latter spell.)

We granted our party one round of prep. Larissa cast Shield on herself (which I might have forgotten once), Liandra cast Flame Blade, and Prolix cast Improved Invisibility on the party, and then Turok burst open the door. Evil Larissa lobbed a fireball into the corridor, hitting everyone. (In retrospect, she should have led off with Web.)

Turok, Kyle, and Liandra ended up in the room and fighting ogres pretty quickly. Evil Larissa got herself out of sight from the door, heading for a side wall. She cast magic missiles at party members and, somewhere in there, got off a second fireball at much of the party. Prolix cast Ennorvate, which temporarily lowers a target's level, but only managed to lower Evil Larissa by one level, which wasn't a big difference. (Two levels would have cost her the fireballs.) Oops. Meanwhile, Larissa caught two ogres in a web (one stayed there for the rest of the fight, surprisingly), lobbed one or two fireballs at the other side, and I think used at least one Flame Sphere. We were trying to decide whether it would have been in character for her to pre-emptively cast Dispel Magic on Evil Larissa "just in case". (This spell is new to me.) We decided she wouldn't, but I think I may change that behavior in the future. (Shield is not visible, so it wasn't obvious without Detect Magic that Evil Larissa was enchanted.)

As with the trolls, the ogres turned out to be deadly. Their minimum damage is high, so injured or lower-HP characters can end up unconscious or dead in a couple swats (or one critical). Kyle was killed by an ogre, Turok by magic missiles, and Liandra, Prolix, and Larissa by one final fireball.

I learned that running two spellcasters, even near-clones, is challenging; I was having some trouble keeping track of state even though I was writing everything down. This would have been impossible with role-playing thrown in. I also think I made tactical mistakes on both sides.

I also learned that Larissa has major damage potential, so long as ignition is ok. :-)

Comments

[blackpaladin.livejournal.com]

> through a mechanism I don't understand

Ahh, the wonder of the "effective character level." :) This was a very bizarre invention of DnD3e that equates a race's inherent advantages to an approximate character level. In the case of half-dragons, that level is 2. In other words, a half-dragon with n character levels has approximately the same ability
to deal with conflict as a human (or elf, or other "normal" character race) with n+2 character levels.

Personally, I see no great rhyme or reason to the assignment of ECL (with the obvious exception that more powerful races have a higher ECL, duh), but it seems to all work out.

I guess the basic question is, did Turok have a significantly more difficult time dealing with the enemies than the other characters?

[cellio]

Thanks. So is Turok, 4HD + 2ECL, a 6th-level fighte? Or 4th? Is he 6th level in all things except hit dice? (I had the impression that it's more complicated than that.)

I guess the basic question is, did Turok have a significantly more difficult time dealing with the enemies than the other characters?

Nope. So ECL works in this case; he was on par with the rest of us.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

He's a 4th-level fighter. The ECL only affects what challenges I consider suitable for throwing at him, and how many experience points it takes to advance.

Except for the experience point detail, you can think of him as a 4th-level fighter who has enough cool powers to hold his own with 6th-level characters.

[cellio]

Thanks!

His powers are definitely cool. :-)

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

The experience point detail, btw, is a game-balance tweak to keep him growing at the same rate as everyone else.

If he's currently a 4th-level fighter on par with 6th-level humans, after enough experience to take a 6th-level human to 8th level, he should be at 6th level to be on par with 8th-level humans.