Tome game results

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virgil
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Tome game results

Post by virgil »

I ran a game for my friends, level 11, all githzerai, the adventure goal being that of forming a rrakkma and assassinating illithids.

We had an assassin, jester, knight, fire mage, & a monk. I erred on the side of running EL 11 & 12 fights. The knight's mount was a half-red dragon six-headed cryrohydra (which does a sickening amount of damage if you're not very resistant to cold). For the knight, I allowed him to have double his racial bonuses and to have aberration bane on all of his weapon attacks (to represent his level in Champion of Zerthimon).

Their encounters...
* Life Slaad - Modification of the Death Slaad, had heal once a day, major image, fabricate, animate objects at will. I gave it a feat that allowed it to make a feint once per round as a free action.
* 2 Gauth & 8 Will-o-wisps
* Half a dozen phasms: Each used their shapeshifting power to turn into half-white dragon balors (AC 29 or so).
* 2 mind flayers, 4 grimlocks with 6 levels of barbarian: All equipped with basic magic items for what they'll be doing
* 5 mind flayers, 1 roper: Mind flayers remained equipped with basic magic items

The party solidly won each time, though the last fight with the extra mind flayers ended up with the monk & fire mage dominated and thus the jester was killed.

Ultimately, the assassin ended up the least useful because of the delay in his attacks. The fact he had a total of ~52hp (statistical average) didn't help matters, as the first combat where he wasn't hiding when it started almost resulted in his death. He didn't take advantage of his Animate Dead spell either, which was a mistake, but he didn't want to go through the hassle of finding a good monster to animate.

The jester had such a large volume of multiple effects, especially when he layered them on his items, it ended up with the annoying situation of him taking up more face-time in combat than the others by sheer volume of dice rolled and saves forced.
Last edited by virgil on Wed Nov 18, 2009 9:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Tome game results

Post by JonSetanta »

Githzerai jester... for some reason the mental image just can't form for me.
It's like depicting Donald Rumsfeld in a clown suit. Just... not...

Interesting playtest, though. Thanks for sharing!
I had doubted the assassin's special attack for the reason you specified, by the way. Hiding or not, battles don't go well for assassin unless they have opportunity to sneak up and study a stationary target for, well, too long.

What was their equipment? Shouldn't they have stocked up on anti-mind effect stuff for hunting... you know.. monstrosities that blast your mind?
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Re: Tome game results

Post by cthulhu »

You need to be good at D&D tactics to make the assassin good, and I'm still not sold its good - but that aside there are a few ways to death attack in one round.

Basically you take the feat that gives you a free fient, and the one that gives you a free Ao0 on opponents without a dex bonus.

Then Free feint, Death Attack Study, Free AoO is a legit attack

Also, there is one that makes the terrain they are standing on difficult terrain, which as frank wrote the rules is meant to deny them their dex bonus. Then you can legitimately go

Make terrain Difficult, Death attack study, Death Attack, Attack feint, Attack.

I would say assassin is the most difficult class to play.

Edit: How did the beat the balors? Didn't they just AoE daze?
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Re: Tome game results

Post by virgil »

Those weren't actual balors, but phasms taking the form of balors, which only gave them the natural armor and str/dex.

For gear, they had all of the basic items from the Book of Gears (eight items with a bonus to something), and one special item each. The jester used a Belt of Magnificence (+4 to all stats), the fire mage chose a ghost touch musket of distance that can shoot his fire bolts rather than actual bullets, the monk chose a set of hand wraps that made his slam have withering, and the assassin used something that I can't remember (probably some weapon).
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Re: Tome game results

Post by Username17 »

The Assassin is actually the one we were most worried about being overpowered. While it is difficult to use, its damage output is potentially that of a Rogue. And it has spells.

As a solo player it can be extremely devastating, and usually shines in "face the awesome boss monster" scenarios. So while I'm not surprised he underperformed in this instance, I'm not convinced that he isn't overpowered positting "perfect play" (which may well be impossible to achieve and therefore not matter).

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Re: Tome game results

Post by virgil »

virgileso at [unixtime wrote:1199607570[/unixtime]]Those weren't actual balors, but phasms taking the form of balors, which only gave them the natural armor and str/dex.

For gear, they had all of the basic items from the Book of Gears (eight items with a bonus to something), and one special item each. The jester used a Belt of Magnificence (+4 to all stats), the fire mage chose a ghost touch musket of distance that can shoot his fire bolts rather than actual bullets, the monk chose a set of hand wraps that made his slam have withering, and the assassin used something that I can't remember (probably some weapon).



hmm, not bemoaning my lack of an extra item here, but as the jester, I had assumed that the uber-item (in this case: belt of magnificence) was one of the 8-set. oh well.

~~

Post forthcoming on own thoughts of session/setting. will just keep it in same topic as this.
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Re: Tome game results

Post by Cynic »

virgileso at [unixtime wrote:1199642589[/unixtime]]
virgileso at [unixtime wrote:1199607570[/unixtime]]Those weren't actual balors, but phasms taking the form of balors, which only gave them the natural armor and str/dex.

For gear, they had all of the basic items from the Book of Gears (eight items with a bonus to something), and one special item each. The jester used a Belt of Magnificence (+4 to all stats), the fire mage chose a ghost touch musket of distance that can shoot his fire bolts rather than actual bullets, the monk chose a set of hand wraps that made his slam have withering, and the assassin used something that I can't remember (probably some weapon).



hmm, not bemoaning my lack of an extra item here, but as the jester, I had assumed that the uber-item (in this case: belt of magnificence) was one of the 8-set. oh well.

~~

Post forthcoming on own thoughts of session/setting. will just keep it in same topic as this.


F'n hell. Didn't think Virg had logged on my computer. sorry. The above post was done by me and not him.
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Re: Tome game results (The Jester's view on things)

Post by Cynic »

Thoughts on Tome game

character creation
During character creation and the brainstorming process that usually either precedes this or continues to happen during the early stages of char creation, I was actually surprised that I was keen on playing most of the characters. In almost every system played, I have often picked either picked the role of party face, battlefield control caster, or just plain caster.

Most of the time, my role would be a mash-up of two or sometimes all three of the above. Here, in the Tome game, I was actually interested in playing a straight fighter or barbarian.

I toyed with the samurai and the elementalist as well but then eventually ended up picking the old role of face/battlefield control with a poison-bomb-throwing jester.
The thought process for this was mainly flavor and also to err on the safe side and go with an idea that I was sure I would be an equivalent to terra firma for me.

I imagined my character as a mix between Yakko Warner from Animaniacs and the Comedian from Watchmen.

With the idea set, the character was designed around the background exploit martial as formerly being a jester in one of the ysgard courts. Given the semi-non-hierarchical githzerai world, this was the best solution available for playing a jester in this setting. the martial came in to play as of the idea that due to it being a ysgardian court, there was also an obligation (flavor text here) to take part in battle.

I decided to arm myself with a dispelling maul as the weapon of choice, taking advantage of the ability to wield anything as a weapon. The maul, as it turned out, was only used once in the entire session.

~

The belt of magnificence came into play because I wanted to be able to also handle the role of skill monkey as well as face of the party with some combat capability. I could have gotten far worse items to hold onto as my special item as It didn't offer much but it allowed some fun. The jester's large list of skills definitely allowed the maximizing of many charisma/int/dex skills.

~~~

Thoughts about the other characters and miscellany

Assassin: Arguably very powerful if given the chance to shine. That said, most of the battles ended within 3-4 rounds and with his low health and his own reluctance to get into melee. Granted the first two fights, he was incapacitated and unable to do much for most of it.


Monk: Very nice actually. I was a bit reluctant to play one in the beginning but halfway through the game, I had to pick up another player's character and play it as well. So the monk's damage output and his versatility definitely was a plus.

Fire Mage -- As the assassin remarked, "I'm a fire mage and I hold a plain wooden stick onto a fire elemental and since the stick burns and as I am a fire mage wielding a burning stick onto a fire elemental, the fire elemental takes damage." Silly but an effective description. Powerful and deadly just like the assassin or the monk and unlike the other two, his power was more easily showcased.

Jester -- I admit it was cumbersome for the DM to probably have to make numerous saving throws or watch me roll dice several times in a round. This could have been mitigated with proper planning on my part. But, in all honesty, the jester's output which came through layering fire trap upon poison upon strengthened alchemist fire (with an occasional additional spell) is pretty close to the damage done by a high level wiz/sorc/cleric at the time. The jester's strength was that he was able to do this in advance and the layered spell/special effects in the end match the output a single spell by a cleric/druid/wizard could probably do. In fact, it was less damage more often than the fire mage who did 11d6 an attack. Granted, it was only one specific damaging effect on his end, the jester sacrificed damage for more debuffing.

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Re: Tome game results (The Jester's view on things)

Post by JonSetanta »

A_Cynic at [unixtime wrote:1199649699[/unixtime]]
Fire Mage -- As the assassin remarked, "I'm a fire mage and I hold a plain wooden stick onto a fire elemental and since the stick burns and as I am a fire mage wielding a burning stick onto a fire elemental, the fire elemental takes damage." Silly but an effective description. Powerful and deadly just like the assassin or the monk and unlike the other two, his power was more easily showcased.


Interesting.
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Re: Tome game results

Post by Bigode »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1199619994[/unixtime]]The Assassin is actually the one we were most worried about being overpowered. While it is difficult to use, its damage output is potentially that of a Rogue. And it has spells.

As a solo player it can be extremely devastating, and usually shines in "face the awesome boss monster" scenarios. So while I'm not surprised he underperformed in this instance, I'm not convinced that he isn't overpowered positting "perfect play" (which may well be impossible to achieve and therefore not matter).

-Username17
Doesn't the same apply to the jester (incidentally, those 2 have always been the ones I found best, along with the samurai)? And, if you still have this doubt, wasn't (or isn't) there a way to release a similar product that didn't suffer from it?
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Re: Tome game results

Post by Cynic »

Bigode at [unixtime wrote:1199970479[/unixtime]]
FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1199619994[/unixtime]]The Assassin is actually the one we were most worried about being overpowered. While it is difficult to use, its damage output is potentially that of a Rogue. And it has spells.

As a solo player it can be extremely devastating, and usually shines in "face the awesome boss monster" scenarios. So while I'm not surprised he underperformed in this instance, I'm not convinced that he isn't overpowered positting "perfect play" (which may well be impossible to achieve and therefore not matter).

-Username17
Doesn't the same apply to the jester (incidentally, those 2 have always been the ones I found best, along with the samurai)? And, if you still have this doubt, wasn't (or isn't) there a way to release a similar product that didn't suffer from it?


I can concur with you on the Samurai but i don't think the Jester would be an effective soloist.

The jester is essential the team-player.

Yes, poison use can cause the jester to be an insanely powerful character and that coupled as his feint attack can cause some serious repercussions but this is a multiple round effect. takign the craziest 2d6 con poison (no books, so just going off the top of my head), it still only debilitates and still takes a couple of rounds to do damage.

the assasin with one round prep can probably one-shot someone.

the samurai can also do the same. the jester can come close to one-shotting someone.

I find the jester as a good team-player but not as a soloist, personally.
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Re: Tome game results

Post by Bigode »

The jester can essentially one-shot someone the same (many) ways a rogue could, and some extra from spells.
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Re: Tome game results

Post by Cynic »

Bigode at [unixtime wrote:1200144071[/unixtime]]The jester can essentially one-shot someone the same (many) ways a rogue could, and some extra from spells.


I can see the jester doing more damage than the rogue based on teh below but I still can't see him one-shotting, give me a write-up. I'm probably wrong but I just need to see it done.

We'll use the lv 11 used for the game as the measuring factor + the maul used by my jester as the weapon

Rogue - 6d6 sneak attack + 1d10+0(w.finesse but bab isn't high enough for dex bonus and no str) + 1d10 (2nd attack)

so on average 21+5.5+5.5 = 33 points of damage.

Jester would have 4d6SA+d10+d10 + feint-poison of 2d6 con (17 dc) {can't remember poison stats, so we'll use this one} which equals - 14+5.5+5.5 + (if poison affects - avg of 7 pts con damage or 3 hp per hd dmg) = 25 damage + 3X (x=hd) dmg. if the opponent has 11 hd (making everything even) obviously that's 33 points of hp loss.

so yeah, he has an advantage over the rogue.

I"m not going to calculate teh effects of layering a fire trap on top of that somehow.

but I don't think the jester still has the same effect as an assasin with a crossbow at range at the same level

which would equal 1d8+13d6+2d6 con-poison (17 dc) -- which is in essence -- 4.5+44.5+33 pts-poison (through con loss) -- -- 82 dmg.

One shotting is a lot easier.
~

Again, I might be just talking out of my ass, if so do show me that I am wrong.
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Re: Tome game results

Post by Bigode »

Why aren't you comparing two-weapon full attacks, and considering an UMD-ed greater invisibility?
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Re: Tome game results

Post by Cynic »

SA on each attack then. Ok, you've got me. I just needed to be shown the way.
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Re: Tome game results

Post by SunTzuWarmaster »

First of all: Drow poison sniping if you are going for the one-shot/solo.

Second: if you are only fighting 1 target, the only reason you would use Greater Invisibility is for the guaranteed availability (at higher cost) versus Glitterdust/Tashas Laughter (as level 1 spells on your list).
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