DM’s musings after chat session on 22 June, 2001
I was going to append this to the end of the summary, but it turned out rather large, so I’m sending it separately. There are a bunch of things I wanted to talk about that came up after last night’s chat session. The main thing I wanted to talk about was several aspects of the derro and the encounter the party is currently having with them.
The “encounter notes” on this encounter make for interesting reading. I quoted some of it in the chat session. This is supposed to be a NASTY encounter. I got the distinct impression from the module that several of the play-test groups that went through this encounter did not survive it, and had to try several times to eventually beat it. So I wanted this to be a challenge for you guys as well.
Converting derro to 3e was kind of a depressing experience, as I think you could tell from the first half of the chat session. I mean come on, 5 derro in one strike? Not much of a challenge there. At least the 2e derro had a few tricks they could pull (the harpoon bit).
So to make this encounter a challenge I focused in on the most challenging aspect - the nest of spellcasters. There are no guidelines for derro spellcasters in the MM. In 2e, derro spellcasters are definitely not standard mages. They tend to have a low number of spells, but several higher level spells.
In considering how to make a derro savant I hit upon the idea of a modified sorcerer. The derro savants are essentially sorcerers except for two big exceptions - they don’t have as many spell points/levels (something which didn’t come out last night with all the concern about how powerful the derro savants might be), but they are able to essentially use spell points to cast higher-level spells.
My first plan was to take the derro’s highest level spell and use that to gauge their sorcerer level. However, several of the derro were capable of casting Anti-magic shell, a 6th level spell, making them 12th level sorcerers. Many others were capable of casting Wall of Force, a 5th level spell.
In the end I put most of the savants down at 8th level and a few at 10th level - the leaders. As you saw, they are able to do some things with spells and spell levels that you guys can’t do (and won’t be able to - so don’t ask).
So does that make this encounter too hard for the party? I don’t think so. Some concern about the CR rating of a nest of derro savants was raised. I would in turn raise the question of what should the CR of this party be? When I did our “warm up” encounters in Sakar (Ari’s city) I went by the book, and the party ended up with a CR of 9-10. So I sent monsters with equivalent CR ratings against you. You waltzed through.
I’ve put some thought into this, and I would rate the party’s CR at something like 12, perhaps even 13. Two reasons for that. First, you are a large party, giving you lots of different options. Second, the individual characters are at least a level or two better than an equivalent true 3e character. That’s my fault for letting you guys do things like buy feats and get extra points from disadvantages. I do think that should be part of the game, but when it’s not, it tends to imbalance things a bit.
A few thoughts about what happened to Matar. I was fairly amazed when Matar when waltzing alone into the savant lair, although I had kind of hoped that would happen (see the “eggs in a basket” comments below). When he did, I had to think fast on how to react to it. As I considered how the derro would react I tried to think about what these derro would be used to fighting. Their two primary foes would be the rebel derro and adventurers. Both of those groups rely heavily on invisibility. So it made sense to me that these derro would be familiar with how to deal with invisible opponents.
My next step was trying to figure out how they would do that. That’s where I came up with the fog idea to locate their target (more on that later) followed by a targeted dispel magic to flush their opponent out into the open.
I then tried to match my idea on what to do with the capabilities I had built into the derro. I ended up making two big mistakes - using a meta-magic feat as a standard action vs a full round action, and also maximizing dispel magic. During chat I felt it reasonable (the “DM isn’t omniscient so he gets some breaks when playing very intelligent monsters” theory) to fudge on one of those mistakes. But when Paul pointed out the restriction on dispel magic with maximize in e-mail, I figured that would be pushing it too far, so I back-tracked. The summary reflects that in the fact that Matar still has several of his spells running.
Enough about the derro. I hope you understand a little better where I am coming from with them and don’t think this situation too unfair.
There was some disgruntlement during the chat session about the fact that the party had planned this assault out in detail, but things had still gone bad. A few general, then a specific comment about that.
First, the first rule of combat is “no plan survives contact with the enemy”. This was painfully obvious during last night’s chat session. Your plan relied a lot on the element of surprise, basically trying to unleash the party’s version of the Tasmanian Devil on a group of unsuspecting and unprepared derro savants. You lost that surprise and the plan went down the tubes with it.
Second, a detailed plan isn’t what’s important. A good plan is what is important. I’m not saying your plan wasn’t a good plan. What I’m saying is simply planning isn’t enough. I’m not going to go easy on you just because you thought about what might happen and wrote down a list of things to do.
With the understanding that I do think you had a fairly good plan going in, there were two flaws I could see in your plan, which you all might now see as well with the benefit of hindsight.
First, you didn’t know about the derro hiding in the side cavern and therefore were going to loose the element of surprise much sooner than you expected. I don’t want to point fingers, or lay the blame on anybody, but there was a clue that something was up. Kat did see several cords running into the wall in the upper ambush area, but didn’t see them where she thought she should when she descended. That’s because they were on the other side of the tunnel wall in the hidden side cavern. Additional investigation of the cords would (might) have revealed something amiss. But then again, a couple divination spells might have let the party know there was something important you were missing as well.
The second problem should have been apparent to anybody who took a look at the battle grid last night. It was the “putting all your eggs in one basket” problem. The party cast a LOT of magic on Matar. When I saw that I must admit to thinking “If I can neutralize him, I’ll have neutralized half the party’s preparations”. As things worked out, that opportunity dropped right into my lap, so I seized it.
Again, I’m not saying that was necessarily a bad plan, just a risky one. If the party had maintained the element of surprise, Matar may very well have been able to hold the savants’ attention long enough for the party to rescue the slaves. I must admit to getting a little nervous when Matar followed up his five in one stroke by dropping the most powerful derro in a hundred miles down under half hit points with one blow.
So, what could the party have done differently? Well, a slightly different plan with a little better intelligence would have been nice, but not required. If I had to point to one thing that went wrong last night it would be Matar rushing forward into the savant lair, alone. I know he had the best of intentions, hoping to still catch the derro savants off guard. Unfortunately he didn’t (well, mostly) and he is now paying the price for his gamble. So was it a bad gamble? <shrug> Personally, after seeing that the party had lost the element of surprise I probably would have stayed back and advanced as/with the group. But I’m conservative. Matar couldn’t have known that the derro would be able to react so quickly ahead of time. Again, hindsight.
Now, with all that “criticism” (which I hope you’ll take in the right tone - as constructive) remember that the situation is far from hopeless. So far the party has only suffered two minor wounds. They have lost a bunch of preparatory spells, and have been temporarily split, but there isn’t anything you guys are fully capable of overcoming. I’m looking forward to seeing how this battle goes. Just don’t expect it to be easy.
On another topic, I wanted to apologize for how slow chat ran last night. Part if it I could have prevented, although most was unavoidable. The part I should have prepared for was rolling all the initiative counts for all the derro. I had figured that I would just roll them once the party moved into their area (in part since you guys had a good plan for isolating those areas). But when you rapidly pressed into the depths of the lair, wanting to observe what the derro were doing, I had to scramble to catch up, making a lot of rolls and putting a lot of new information onto the grid. In the future I’ll prepare ahead of time.
The other delay can’t be avoided. Well, I guess it could be if I just wanted the derro to throw magic missiles around, but I want them to fight intelligently. The savants are as smart as most everybody in the party (smarter than most), they are high-level spell casters with many meta-magic feats, and they all are practically sages when it comes to magical knowledge. I want to play them well. That means I have to spend as much time trying to figure out how each of them individually will react to the situation they find themselves as you guys do for each of your characters. My problem is you guys can think about that while I’m dealing with somebody else, while I have to do it when the derro’s turn comes up. So bear with me and be patient.
One final topic - invisibility. There have been a bunch of arguments about this. Let me summarize a few things.
First, I haven’t been following the 3e rules as closely as I should. For those of you with a DMG, you can follow along on page 78.
There are two mundane ways to detect an invisible creature - a spot check and a listen check.
If an invisible creature is within 30’ of any other creature, that other creature gets a spot chance to “sense” the invisible creature vs a DC of 20. However, at that point they cannot pinpoint the location or target it. There are modifiers to that DC if the invisible creature is holding still, etc. It is possible to pinpoint an invisible creature with a spot check, but the DC rises by 20 to do that.
The second method is a listen check. This is actually much easier as it is an opposed check between the searcher’s Listen check and the invisible person’s Move Silently check. If the searcher wins, they have an idea that an invisible creature is around, but they can’t pinpoint or target it. As above, they have to beat the invisible creature’s move silent score by 20 to pinpoint and target. There also isn’t a range limit on the listen check, although the DC goes up by 1 for every 10’ separating the two creatures.
This brings about an interesting question. Suppose the searcher does manage to either make the DC 40 spot check, or beats the move silent score by 20. They can now pinpoint the invisible creature and target it. The area this gets fuzzy is can the invisible creature be targeted both by melee/missile attacks and magic? The answer is obviously yes on the attack, and maybe on the magic. The maybe part depends on how the spell is delivered. If it is a touch spell (including ranged touches like rays) it can be targeted against an invisible opponent. Otherwise, it cannot be since you have to see a creature to target most spells at it. In general, if you have to make an attack roll as part of the spell casting you can cast it at an invisible target.
And from there we move into the situation that arose last night, when Matar was detected by filling the area around him with fog. The closest thing to this in the DMG deals with a creature in water. There is a key word in that paragraph - displacement. An invisible creature still has mass and area and displaces anything around it. The reason the spell invisibility is normally so effective is that it normal displaces another invisible substance - air. How convenient. But what happens when the substance being displaced is not invisible? In that case the invisible person creates a void in the substance. That void can be seen.
Two examples of that. Have you seen the movie Hollow Man? I haven’t, but I’ve seen the previews and some clips from it. (I was tempted to rent it tonight and capture a couple pictures out of it to try and prove my point.) There is a great scene were some guy exhales a cloud of smoke an a face appears in front of him - the hollow man displacing the smoke. In that case everybody saw the displacement void created by the invisible figure. There were some other scenes where the invisible figure ran through smoke/fog/mist or was in water. In each case the void left by the invisible figure was visible.
There is another and perhaps more realistic example of something totally invisible becoming visible when displacing the substance around it. >You can see air bubbles under water.< The air is still invisible, but because it displaces the water around it you can essentially see the air, or at least know exactly where the air is. An invisible person would essentially look like a human-shaped air bubble under water.
This brings us back to the DMG, which states that the location of an invisible creature is revealed under water. As a result they loose their total concealment. If they are not totally concealed, that must mean they can now be seen. As a result they now only benefit from half concealment, which means the miss chance is only 20%.
I would also argue at this point that since the displacement mass of the character can be seen, they can now be targeted with spells. I know exactly where an air bubble is underwater. I can point to it. If I could cast spells, I could cast a spell at it. Can you target a spell just by seeing something it displaces? Can you target a person hiding under a blanket with a magic missile, or perhaps zap someone totally encased in a metal armor with a lightning bolt? You can’t see the actual person in those situations. They are not visible (essentially invisible) to you. But because of what is around them you know they are there, and are able to target them with spells.
That is what happened last night. The derro surrounded the invisible Matar with a substance that was visible. Matar’s mass displaced that visible material, creating a visible void. The derro savant saw that void (he did have to make a spot check to do so), he therefore knew that Matar was there and was able to target him with a spell.
One more thing invisible creatures need to remember - things can stick to you. Unless you somehow manage to tuck them inside your clothing, they can give your location away. That’s the idea with dust, mud, and flour. Something I should have though of last night was blood. Matar had just swept through 5 derro in one swing. That had to be bloody, which means Matar would have probably been splattered with blood. Substances on you can slowly degrade the effectiveness of your invisibility, both by making spot checks easier and dropping your concealment rating once you are located.
I’m sure a bunch of you will have comments about this. Invisibility has been one of our long-standing disagreements. I’d remind you that invisibility is not a panacea. It is not perfect stealth. It can be beaten, even by simple things used intelligently. Yes, it helps. It helps a lot! You always get +2 to hit, your opponent never gets their dex bonus to AC (big owie with invisible rogues), and you usually can ignore half the attacks against you, even if you are located.
Saif