DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Hall of Fame - Latest Top 10 completed games HHE: The Haunted Helm OOC: Drizzle

Hiya. You get the Chaotic Benefit in the first round, I guess to make not attacking a touch more exciting for the player. Lightning Fork can be recharged after battle on a roll of natural 16+, so it's expended for now. It missed, yes, but scarily it still did 14 damage on a miss.

In 13th Age, sorcerers are definitely the 'glass cannons'. I don't think even barbarians can match their burst damage. Btw, good thinking about the Scorching Ray. White dragons are vulnerable to fire-based attacks, which widens the crit range of attacks from 20 to 18-20. Pretty good!

Well, that was a rocky round, with good rolls and bad rolls spread around.

The dragon benefited from its Crippled Escalator ability, that allows it to use the Escalation Dice when it's even. Normally dragons use the Escalation Dice all the time, making them just as dangerous as a PC. This is unique to dragons.

The dragon will be Far Away in the next round, so only Jex and Tindarien will have a chance to hit (at -2) with their Chaos Bolts. Weston could conceivably get off a shot with his longbow.

The halfling is providing an opportunity to Flee. This is an automatic end of battle, so it would also end your ongoing damage from the blizzard breath. But it causes a campaign setback or some sort.

You're only 2 damage away from driving off the dragon, but it's higher in the initiative order. It can use its breath weapon from Far Away and potentially hit another three PCs.

I'd describe this as a knife edge.

Ummmm ... I am wondering how the unconscious Weston will be firing his bow <g>

And did Jex actually drop first? Did his song end? What about the end-of-song boon? A little confused.

He would end the song (benefiting Tindarien) and take his shot with the chaos bolt and hopefully that allows him to use his "Pull it together" battle cry to help his fallen comrade, Weston.

Good questions all.

Weston would have to be healed by +1 hp to regain consciousness. So for example, Jex or Zoltan could use their turn to run over to Weston, grab his potion of healing and feed it to him. He'd use a recovery and be back on his feet.

Jex's Song of Heroes was stopped by him being knocked unconscious, so preventing him from reeling off the final verse. He wasn't unconscious for very long, as Nestaron fed him his own healing potion in the same round (see Weston example above). And what a healing potion, it gave him a humumgous 20 hp, bringing him back up to 17/24 hp. It was only the ongoing damage from Blizzard Breath that dropped him back down to 12/24 hp. I'll edit the GM post to better describe this, because it was a pretty dramatic series of events.

Seyja was also knocked unconscious, but Exeter cleverly cashed in his player chit to give Seyja a free recovery that can be used at anytime. Thus she was back on her feet, and could Rally as normal to get herself out of the hit point 'danger zone', as it were.

Quite a tricky round to resolve, since the dragon disengaging changed the entire tactical situation, firmly in its favour. It probably should have disengaged a round earlier, but I guess we can blame the lure of the Aurenaur for that.

Whatever the Aurenaur is.... I'm sure it's all very wholesome and innocent, nothing to worry about, or anything to do with Tindarien's heritage.

Don't forget Zoltan also has a longbow. As he didn't get to act last round he should be able to get a ranged shot for last round plus another one for this upcoming round.

Excellent excellent, this is looking good! So, can anyone posit a plan that would guarantees the dragon gets driven off (requires 2 hp damage) and heals Weston (requires 1 hp healing), by the end of Round 3.

There is one way that I can see, but consider this a fun little test to acquaint you with 13th Age some more. (Note that it's pretty straightforward. Also note, you'll need to refer to the hidden combat log for Round 3.)

Obviously, we wouldn't loiter at this dramatic moment if we were sat around the gaming table, we'd plough on. But in a message game we can, and given the purpose of HHE as an intro to 13th Age, we probably should.

Pandemonium. D might notice the similarity in appearance of the halfling man who's sneaked up on them, and the halfling woman in his near death vision from the Battle of Heilbutt's Hallow.

Halflings in 13th Age are known to be agrarian folk, certainly those inhabiting the plains between the Queen's Wood (infested with elves!) and Amity Bay. These mohawked halflings look like they're from that same region, but are of a tribe D doesn't recognise.

Here's a stab at it:

Zoltan fires his bow for last round and this round, Jex uses his chaos bolt and Tindarien uses a spell. Nestaron heals Weston and D and Almador talk to the halfling, or follow him and leave signs for the rest.

Hopefully between the four attacks we can do the few points needed, and if Zoltan hits on his first one it should happen before the dragon goes.

Nice one, Zeim! You're most of the way there.

Zoltan can still ready and fire his bow in Round 3 (requiring a quick, move and standard action), and Jex can still cast his Chaos Bolt (requiring a move and standard action). The only other party member with a turn left is Almador, but he doesn't know about healing or healing potions.

Can anyone think of way to get him to heal Weston? (It's a bit of a trick question.)

You got it, Exeter. 13th Age is still a role-playing game, and talking in-char is a free action, so you can simply tell Almador to feed Weston his own healing potion.

This will give you Zoltan's longbow attack (guaranteed 1 damage from a miss), Jex's Chaos Bolt (guaranteed 1 damage from a miss), for your 2 hp of damage. And Almador using the healing potion on Weston for a guaranteed 5 hp of healing.

"But surely a character couldn't do all that in one round?" You might say, but 13th Age isn't very rigid on actions.

If it seems like the character would be struggling/disadvantaged, you can give them a -2 to hit, for example.

For a manoeuvre that would be a challenge, like using your move action to jump on a chandelier and cross to another balcony to engage the Black Knight, 13th Age describes these as "dicey", so you would use a skill check.

The most important thing is that play doesn't grind to halt while you search for a specific rule or rules, or adding/subtracting a sleugh of modifiers.

Excellent. That was a really interesting encounter, from a mechanics standpoint, and role-playing. I'm very fortunate to have such fine players and writers, so thank you for making GMing worthwhile!

So what have we learnt?

It's quite easy to balance monster encounters in 13th Age, and very easy to reskin monsters. Because even 1st-level characters have over 20 hp, you can ensure monsters won't one-hit kill PCs, yet still dish out damage equal or greater than the PCs, so they don't feel like lame ducks.

Since 13th Age doesn't like defense-focused monsters (they slow the game down), the ACs are generally lower than in other D&D games, and you have the Escalation Dice to buff hit rolls.

You also have the Flee option, which allows the PCs to escape danger if a TPK is looming, incurring a campaign setback, i.e., more dramatic story developments.

The maimed white dragon was a reskin of the crippled blue dragon in the rule book's beginners adventure. I kept the stats, changed the special effects. In the beginners adventure (Blood & Lightning), it gives two versions of the crippled blue dragon, one for 1st level PCs, one for 2nd level PCs. As with the Battle of Heilbutt's Hallow (where I put you up against a 1st then 2nd level encounter back-to-back), here I used the 2nd level version of the crippled blue dragon.

You handled it, no problem, I thought. This is understandable. As a modern, non-Gygaxian adventure writer, you want your encounters to be balanced for all gaming groups. Those who are savvy and those who aren't. So published encounters are likely to be a tad easy for seasoned vets like you lot.

You've earned another Incremental Advance anyway. You might remember the Incremental Advance you earned after the previous battle.

What about the story and characters, what have we learnt?

• We've learned Weston's ivory ring is called the Aurenaur, an Elvish name which can mean halo, corona, ring of fire or light, or as Tinderien translates it, "sunfire".
• Elven necromancers forged the Aurenaur from the tip of the White's horn after it was slain by the Wizard King, over 3000 years ago. It has been lost for a long time.
• It might exert some power over the dead, but has no obvious magic (+-) effects when worn.
• The ring was given to Weston's true mother by the Grandmaster of the Order of Averness, to be deliver to someone else, in a distant land.
• The Beast of the Titan's Elbow is an ancient white wyrm, one of the Primevals, known as the Master of Winter. White dragons are associated with cold, winter, the Moon, undead, ghosts.
• The Beast had already sustained terrible wounds when you first encountered it. You added some of your own.
• It called D, "broken shadow" and said he wouldn't find any of his lost farthings under its wings. A farthing is a quarter, thus "lost quarters".
• It found something strangely repugnant about Jex, saying he smelled "foul".

Anything else you can think of? And what is the meaning of it all!?

Well, my only ... correction ... would be to the 'You handled it, no problem' statement. While we =did= handle it, the bad guy got away and some of us got the crap kicked out of us, so there =was= a problem or two <wink>

Great wrap-up, though. Thanks for that. Helps keep thing from getting lost <g>

You did very well. If the result of the dragon losing its albiet truncated hit points was death, you would have killed it. But in 13th Age, some archvillains aren't meant to be slain by sword and spells, only defeated.

So it's a victory. It kicked the crap out of you, yes, but I remember when I ran Blood & Lightning for Gypsy and co, ftf, the crippled blue dragon killed a character before it was defeated. And I didn't stack the odds against them nearly as much as I have with you guys.

Having said that, in an ftf game you don't have the luxury of pondering your next move for 24 hours, say. So maybe sticking to the scripted encounters was wise in that respect.

Thought it went well, though I am more used to a different kind of "encounter adjustment". In D&D and such the way you adjust an encounter is to make the monsters less powerful. With dragons that means making them younger. Younger dragons have fewer hps and do less damage. It would be unthinkable in a D&D game, for example, for a 1-2 level party to defeat an ancient dragon, no matter how wounded it was. One breath would kill everyone in the party 5x over.

So, need to drop some preconceptions at the door I suppose.

I enjoyed the encounter and the wrap-up. Makes for an interesting - not necessarily better, but interesting - difference from D&D encounters.

I find 13th age more cinematic and story driven. I loved the explanation of much of the stuff. Makes it actually seem like a good choice for a message game.

Panda hit it, I think. It seems much more amenable to message gaming ... where the 'group story telling' is more important than I think it is for most D&D players.

Good question in the game thread.

Absolutely. The answer should be interesting!

Meanwhile, could a 1st level party win against a white dragon hatchling? Well, it's listed as a 1st level encounter, so yes I expect so. A huge white dragon is listed as 5th level.

The HHE white dragon was a subtype listed in the 13th Age Bestiary, called a blizzard dragon, listed as a 6th level encounter.

The crippled blue dragon in the official Blood & Lightning beginners adventure -- on which the maimed white dragon in HHE was based -- was listed as a 4th level encounter. What's termed an 'unfair encounter' in the rules.

All these levels seem quite low until you realise there are only 10 character levels in 13th Age.

Not 20, not 60, 10 levels. Comparing d20 systems, a 10th level 13th Age character has about as much oomph as a 20th level D&D 3rd Ed character. (And as we've witnessed here, 1st level 13th Age characters are considerably more durable than a 1st level D&D 3rd Ed character.)

13th Age is very concerned about making the most of the story. Most adventures are only played once by a gaming group, there are no dress rehersals, you pull out all the stops.

So my thinking was: The published HHE adventure (TSR, 1987) features a white dragon. Don't just use a white dragon, use a blizzard dragon, don't just make it any blizzard dragon, make it a legendary evil that can reveal more about the PCs themselves.

But I have to admit, dragon encounters always give me pause. I mean, how exactly do you fight a dragon with a sword?? It's like dragon riders, what exactly does the rider do, except burden the dragon?

Well ... as far as dragon riders go ... the dragons are raised by the riders and so they are getting 'free room and board' from them in exchange for the occasional 'joy ride' by one of the riders <weg>

Yeah, Dragon riders never really made sense to me either. After all Dragons (as portrayed in most fiction and RPGs) are supposed to be practically immortal (or at least with lifespans of millennia) and of genius intelligence. Why would an immortal genius consent to being bridled?

Look at it logically as well. Let's even assume the dragon is only of normal intelligence as a hatchling and becomes a genius later. A human rider would need to train it as a hatchling, which means when the human was old and dead the dragon would still be a hatchling, or a bit older.

For an old or ancient dragon to have a rider means it's rider encountered it when it was already ancient and a genius. Why would it allow itself to be saddled? Best I can think of is the dragon considers the human to be sort of like a favored lapdog it carries around in a "purse" to pet from time to time.

I had always thought that the dragons being ridden were either very young (the parents wanting to get the kids out of the cave so they could have a bit of peace and quiet) ... OR ... they were a different 'species' that was smaller and dumber ... kind of like centaurs and horses <shrug>

Aye. I guess it's the difference between the Fell Beasts in The Lord of the Rings, and Smaug in The Hobbit.

Having a rider on a Fell Beast was highly effective, but even if Smaug did consent to a rider, that rider couldn't contribute to Smaug's offensive capability in any way. A Larry Elmore-style dragonlance would only get in the way, and do nothing that Smaug's claws, teeth and fiery breath couldn't do much better. Firing a single bow from the back of a dragon in flight? Well, maybe Legolas could make it work.

I suppose in D&D, sticking a cleric on the back of a dragon could be pretty damn useful. Midair healing! Or even a socerer or wizard. If they could turn in their seat, they could act as tailgunner, if the dragon was being chased.

Zeim, I love your idea of riders being like a dragon's equivalent of a Pomeranian!

Hmmmm maybe the dragons kept them as part entertainment, but also to help with 'parasite' removal ... like the pilot fish that swim with sharks. A dragon with enough patience could train those stupid humans to get to those hard to reach places where parasites tend to congregate and get rid of the pests <chuckle>

Well, an update on December's play. My holiday plans for this year were cancelled, so I'll have plenty of time for posting in HHE.

My thumb sprain is much improved and not troubling my typing. I can still feel it tweaking when my exercising though, and it always amazes me how long sprains take to repair. I remember years ago, spraining my rotator cuff--- it took about half a year!

But either way, December should be good gaming in HHE, and I predict we'll reach the end of the adventure sometime by April 2016, giving us roughly a 12 month running time.

Not mega-short for a completed message game, Pandemonium here and KenSeg have run games that completed in 4-5 months. But I think by the end HHE will feel 'bigger' than it actually was, due to the sheer volume of encounters we'll have squeezed in.

If we compare to TVS, the D&D 3rd Ed message game I ran, that took 5 years and I count 8 encounters (over one and a half a year). If HHE runs as planned, it will have taken a year and contain 5 encounters!!