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Emirikol - keeping it challenging
Jan. 21st, 2009 08:15 amSo last Saturday we had another session fo Emirikol, my swashbuckling D&D game, where the main plot involved the PCs finding and investigating a wizard's manor house that had sunk into the swamp. The players and PCs knew this was coming, and I made sure to remind them of it before play started, so they knew that Swimming was in their future and bought Potions of Swimming as a result.
In prep for the session I had worked out a rough map of the parts of the manor that were now full of water, and the path they'd have to take to get from the upper floor where they entered to the air filled crypts that they needed to get to, and wrote out all the rules for swimming and drowning, as well as the DCs for spotting the correct path and a possible short cut, and for squeezing through . The basic 3E rules for swimming are that it's a DC 10 swim check to cover half your move for the round (1/4 if you're trying to do something else), with the DC ratcheting up 1 point per round you're fully submerged. PCs can hold their breath for twice their constitution in rounds before they have to start making increasingly difficult rolls to keep from drowning.
I figured the map so it would take 12 successful swim rolls to get where they were going - having to search for the next stairway, doubling back in the house and so on - and figured they'd miss about half of those, to more or less match the 4E skill challenge guidelines. Only one of the PCs had any points in swim beforehand, and there were the negative penalties for weight, so the PCs had to strip themselves down to aminimum of gear (making the restof the adventure harder) and ended up with everyone having a +10 to +11 Swim with the potions. The sequence went flawlessly - the prepetually ratcheting difficulty worked wonders, where at the end of the swim the PCs were all spending time pulling their fellows along as everyone got increasingly disoriented. The PCs found one of the short cuts, but then made an ill considered move that slowed them down (Dietrick blew out the rotted circular stair with his ring of the ram, not realizing how much the disturbed silt would slow them down). People screamed in surprised when things went awry or cast spells, which I ad-hoced as costing them 2d6 rounds of air per incident. At the end they broke to the surface 15 rounds after they'd started, with swim DCs of 25, and two of the PCs a round or two away from risking drowning. Bec told me it was one of the most legitimately tense sessions she'd ever played in, as it was all to easy picturing one or more of them dying in the water.
It was nice to be able to use the existing, hard coded target numbers to scale an encounter for them. It just hit the perfect sweet spot between simulation (this swim will be just as difficulty, or perhaps easier, next time, regardless of their level) and gamist enjoyment. Worked much better for our sensibilities than the 4E scaling chart....
In prep for the session I had worked out a rough map of the parts of the manor that were now full of water, and the path they'd have to take to get from the upper floor where they entered to the air filled crypts that they needed to get to, and wrote out all the rules for swimming and drowning, as well as the DCs for spotting the correct path and a possible short cut, and for squeezing through . The basic 3E rules for swimming are that it's a DC 10 swim check to cover half your move for the round (1/4 if you're trying to do something else), with the DC ratcheting up 1 point per round you're fully submerged. PCs can hold their breath for twice their constitution in rounds before they have to start making increasingly difficult rolls to keep from drowning.
I figured the map so it would take 12 successful swim rolls to get where they were going - having to search for the next stairway, doubling back in the house and so on - and figured they'd miss about half of those, to more or less match the 4E skill challenge guidelines. Only one of the PCs had any points in swim beforehand, and there were the negative penalties for weight, so the PCs had to strip themselves down to aminimum of gear (making the restof the adventure harder) and ended up with everyone having a +10 to +11 Swim with the potions. The sequence went flawlessly - the prepetually ratcheting difficulty worked wonders, where at the end of the swim the PCs were all spending time pulling their fellows along as everyone got increasingly disoriented. The PCs found one of the short cuts, but then made an ill considered move that slowed them down (Dietrick blew out the rotted circular stair with his ring of the ram, not realizing how much the disturbed silt would slow them down). People screamed in surprised when things went awry or cast spells, which I ad-hoced as costing them 2d6 rounds of air per incident. At the end they broke to the surface 15 rounds after they'd started, with swim DCs of 25, and two of the PCs a round or two away from risking drowning. Bec told me it was one of the most legitimately tense sessions she'd ever played in, as it was all to easy picturing one or more of them dying in the water.
It was nice to be able to use the existing, hard coded target numbers to scale an encounter for them. It just hit the perfect sweet spot between simulation (this swim will be just as difficulty, or perhaps easier, next time, regardless of their level) and gamist enjoyment. Worked much better for our sensibilities than the 4E scaling chart....
