[Storming the Wizard's Tower] They come from the land of the ice and snow

[Jay Loomis]

list][li]Monster creation, while clever and fun, is badly unbalanced and unstructured as it stands. The monster abilities are all worth a single experience point for their base effect, but they are not equal. Then, adding efficacy to an ability costs an experience point, but that addition is rarely on the same scale as a new power. Further, some abilities are deadly when combined. As a GM, I should have confidence that monsters of a given experience value are roughly equally effective. As it stands, I am not. There should also be some guidance as to how many experience points an encounter should have to pose a given level of threat to heores given their number and experience level. This kind of math goes part and parcel with a game that is tactical and about slaying monsters, and it is largely hand-waved at this point.[/li]

Some character abilities are wide open to abuse. Yes, the GM can always say no, but in a system as encouraging to thinking creatively as this, some care must be taken. One of my players has a Guiding Spirit (map) that he's defined as a hunting spirit that helps him on the hunt. A Guiding Spirit enables a player to roll Command and add any hits to his Perception roll. He also got the "Wild Instincts" power which enables him to roll Perception in setup and add any hits to his red or blue die total for that round. When combined, these two make a very potent, unbalanced situation. Maybe that's OK, but I haven't done the math to see how out of whack it is.

[li]Monster creation, while clever and fun, is badly unbalanced and unstructured as it stands. The monster abilities are all worth a single experience point for their base effect, but they are not equal. Then, adding efficacy to an ability costs an experience point, but that addition is rarely on the same scale as a new power. Further, some abilities are deadly when combined. As a GM, I should have confidence that monsters of a given experience value are roughly equally effective. As it stands, I am not. There should also be some guidance as to how many experience points an encounter should have to pose a given level of threat to heores given their number and experience level. This kind of math goes part and parcel with a game that is tactical and about slaying monsters, and it is largely hand-waved at this point.[/li][li]Some character abilities are wide open to abuse. Yes, the GM can always say no, but in a system as encouraging to thinking creatively as this, some care must be taken. One of my players has a Guiding Spirit (map) that he's defined as a hunting spirit that helps him on the hunt. A Guiding Spirit enables a player to roll Command and add any hits to his Perception roll. He also got the "Wild Instincts" power which enables him to roll Perception in setup and add any hits to his red or blue die total for that round. When combined, these two make a very potent, unbalanced situation. Maybe that's OK, but I haven't done the math to see how out of whack it is. [/li][/list]

[lumpley]

Thanks, Jay!

I propose that once you're creating all your monsters well, with only effective combinations of abilities and solid coordination between the monsters in a given encounter, the XP scale works fine. What you're doing now is giving XP away for free sometimes, because you're still learning how to make and play the monsters well.

In other words, not every 5-XP monster is equal. The rules don't prevent you from creating weak high-XP monsters, by giving a monster an ineffective assortment of abilities. However, all the optimized 5-XP encounters are equal, or close enough to it. Learning how to optimize an encounter is part of learning how to GM the game, and it's perfectly fine if it takes you a few sessions to do it. So the players get some easy XP? Perfectly fine in the early sessions, when they're learning how to play too.

As far as killer player combos go, I'm comfy with them too. A ranger with a familiar spirit and wild instincts should roll serious dice.

I play with a couple of logistical load-lightening rules (they'll be in the book, eventually). First: supporting rolls only 1 deep. Rolling a familiar spirit to support your wild instincts = cool; rolling empathy to support your familiar spirit to support your wild instincts = too much. Second: for supporting rolls in combat, pretend you rolled half hits (rounding up). So in combat, don't roll command for the familiar spirit, just add 2 or 3 dice to the perception roll for wild instincts.

Notice that adding 2 or 3 dice to the perception roll will, on average, add 1 or 2 dice to the combat roll, which will, on average, add 0 or 1 hit to the outcome. All of the killer combos are about the same: good for about one hit.

-Vincent

[Jay Loomis]

That all makes sense. I think that, provided the final rulebook is filled with good examples (I'd like to see some contrasting well-designed monster and poorly-designed monster examples for instance) that should all work out. I'll give you another update after tonight's game.

It's hard to gauge whether my group is digging it (of course, they did have a total party wipe last week) but I'm having lots of fun!

[lumpley]

I'd like to see some contrasting well-designed monster and poorly-designed monster examples for instance

Great idea.

Do tell about tonight's game!

-Vincent

[Jay Loomis]

Last night's game went off reasonably well.

This was another straightforward (and slightly weak, plot-wise) adventure. Three new heroes were given the task of finding out what happened to the four that had gone off to get the load of firewood a couple of weeks earlier.

The color part of the game was not as full as the previous adventure, because the heroes were following in the footsteps of the previous party and all the players knew the landscape already.

The players have started to remember their resources. They used a Guiding Shadow spell to lead them to their comrades, which was a total cinch. They found that the fallen heroes were in the care of the forest people, who had dispatched the final spirit once they felt the strong spirit wane. The other heroes were all in a magically induced sleep while they recovered, but in the mean time, the forest people had a boon to ask of the new three. The sacred resting place of the forest people had become infested with angry spirits. The forest people themselves were reluctant to go and exterminate the maddened spirits of their ancestors, and they asked that the outsiders do the deed.

The monsters looked like this:
Maddened Spirits of Forest People (madness/wood) 4 HP base
Attack (Anguished Scream) - 2 Red, nerby
Drain (perception) - 2 Green, linked to attack
Dazzle - Perception vs. 4 to engage (+1 XP)
+1 White (+1 XP)
4 HP; 6 White; 2 Red; 0 Blue; 2 Green (drain); 3 XP

This is a little bit of cheating. First, in that I picked a material from the Scary monsters list and combined it with one from the regular monster list. I figured this was OK. More cheaty was that I made up an attack type. As I make more monsters I crave the ability to be more creative with attacks than the monster lists allow.

We really learned the ugly power of monster abilities that take away your setup. Luckily one of the players had his ranger take the "Quickness" power, so he got to engage and do a regular setup action. We also had a Command-based scholar who was our tank. He wasn't so lucky and spent a few unproductive rounds getting his white dice taken away with the double whammy Perception drain and mandatory Perception roll combo.

We had some discussion about how to get around this. I came up with two alternatives that I thought sounded reasonable and within the spirit of the game (both were intended to help him protect the mage, which was the primary goal):

• I told him that if he wanted to protect the mage without fighting he could interpose himself by taking an "other" action and using his Skill for Green dice.
• I decided that if he was fighting but not actively trying to hit the spirit, he could take his setup roll to issue to rally the mage, but that since he would be swinging at his attacker without really focusing on it, the monster would get +2 Blue against him.

This situation seemed pretty important. Setup is where the tactics really take place in the game, so taking it away every round not only seems mean, but it makes the game less fun. We used my second option (because his Skill was crappy) and it worked out OK.

The mage, meanwhile, was having pretty good luck rolling for attack spells. He managed to take down 3 out of the 4 monsters (with some help on one of them). The no-miscast rules had their desired effect as he weighed the gamble each time and made a choice.

The ranger was the only hero to go down, due to 2 unlucky rolls. My attack against him was a really high roll and his Endurance roll to stay up was really low. Those are the breaks.

Before combat started, the heroes were examining the sacred place from a distance. A giant, manicured tree that had been grown with deliberately radial branches forming distinct levels--each large branch providing an anchor for hanging mummified forest people all along its length. They were trying to figure out why the spirits were rampaging. They got so far that they were starting to talk about how they might avoid the conflict. Even though that become obviously not an option, I was happy that they had started thinking outside only killing monsters.

Another good note: I used the non-combat rolls more like they are intended. A tracking roll gave the ranger a number of details equal to his hits, for example. This system is really cool. As a GM working off the cuff, it's great to have it plainly stated, "tell me 4 details about this thing." It works like a charm.

Next week, the players will have their first chance to pick which character to play (well, two of them anyway). I'm interested to see how this dynamic works out.