Dastardly Encounters: Ratling, Swarms, and more.

What is a dastardly encounter?

A dastardly encounter is a riddle that presents like normal combat.  At first, the players will think we are trying to smite their ruin upon the tactical map.  We're actually trying to breed smarter players, but they won't know that until they've hit their third is dastardly encounter.  This is where the player goes from "dammit" to "what am I missing, there is always a way."

Becoming the dastardly developer

It's a two-step process. First, build a nearly impossible encounter.  It's important not to use homebrew or custom rules that are specific to this encounter.  What I'm saying is don't make up an impossible monster  for this encounter and throw it at your party.  It's important that the players and their characters clearly understand how everything fits together.  Otherwise, they won't be able to solve the riddle.

 Not evil per se

The second part, to make sure the party has the means to defeat the encounter, is more important than the actual design.  I could devote a whole article to this topic, but suffice to say, killing players is easy.  From the utterance "Rocks fall, you die" to throwing an Ancient red dragon at them, killing a party is literally the easiest thing in the world.  You are the game master and hold nearly all the cards. If you want to be entertaining and your players to have fun you won't murder them just because you can.

Building a dastardly encounter

To design a challenging encounter we must first remove our game mastering hat and put on our power gaming hat.  The first step in crafting any challenging encounter is, well, making that encounter metal as all hell.

This encounter is built in Pathfinder, but really, all of the advice is applicable to other game systems, more or less.  Sure the specifics change, but the process is almost universal.  So with our power gaming hat on we look for abilities in the game which aren't normal.  They don't scale normally, or they use different rules.

There's a reason it was a plague

We want a mechanic that breaks the rules. A rule that breaks rules, rules inception if you will.  We want to build this around a nasty creature and a swarm comes to mind.  What a swarm is, is a seething pile of discontent and hate.   These bad boys deal damage automatically at the end of the round, can stop a player from acting, and can be immune to weapon damage. A frigging nightmare for any fresh group.  A couple swarms won't do, we  should need a Cosco membership to buy this many swarms. These are seasoned adventurers we're designing this encounter for after all.  So what we do is have some other NPC cast summon swarm.  Now we have all the swarms we want.

If I want to cast a bunch of spells, then sorcerer is the right choice.  We can even layer in grade A invisibility so that they're hard to find.  As for the race, it'd be swell if they were good at avoiding ranged spells.  We don't want the players just side stepping this barrier, do we?  It'd also be great if they had alternate forms of movement so they could be in hard to reach spaces.

Not your typical bad guy

The rockstar race for this encounter?  Ratlings.  Ratlings have dark vision, evasion, climb, burrow, and swim speeds. aww yeah.  Don't skimp on stealth, even when visible they are hard to find.

Dungeon and Dragons Tactics

The players have to get from here to there, and they have to pass through these Ratlings home sweet home.  A cave system attached to a sewer would be an epic Ratling abode.  the Ratlings, for their part, want all the sweet sweet loot carried on the adventurers, and will do anything they can to cut off the group's escape. A scroll of wall of stone or even just natural terrain might just pee in the players cornflakes.

The face they'll be making

They first cast invisibility, then cast summon swarm.  If you want to turn it up a notch then just have them cast a new spell every round.  The swarms will still stay around for another two, stack swarms. The ratlings could be hiding behind stalactites for a bigger challenge, or hiding behind stalagmites on the floor for an easier one. This places several barriers to harming the main components of this encounter.  none of them are impossible to beat, but players have to think, not just use massive damage per round to destroy everything in sight.

Thankfully Ratlings are scardy-cats, so we have a reason to have the rest run away when they start being defeated.  Even so, we may want to sprinkle these guys into the encounter.  This might be too much for our players.  If you remove creatures from an encounter without a good reason players will know and it'll ruin their suspension of disbelief.  Even worse, you rob them of a sense of accomplishment.  It's hard to celebrate when you know the GM saved your butt from the fire.

Why this could be murder in the first degree

Attempted murder

I'm building an encounter that will kill the party right now.  I can stack them the swarms one on top of the other and deal 16d6 per round.  If I'm burning through spells(by casting every round instead of concentrating) then I can deal 32d6 per round.  No save.  That's before I look any of the summoning feats, or extend spell.  Extend spell could raise the amount of damage to 64d6 per round.  The swarm entry specifically says they can occupy the same square as any creature, and even if we house rule that this doesn't make sense at this extreme, size rules say 100 diminutive creates (spider swarms) can occupy the same space.  It's basically a middle finger to the group.

Remember, first we're sour, then we're sweet.  Like sour patch kids.

Can the players beat this bum wrap?

The issue here is that the players won't be able to beat the ratlings if the party doesn't have access to spells like dispel magic, glitter dust, and see invisibility.  So you have to go over to their character sheets.  Do they have access to these spells on the day they are traveling through the cave? If not do they have magic items that will help them?  If they can prepare these spells, but don't have them prepared, there should be some story warning. maybe they have to deal with a small pack of these guys, or maybe they've heard rumors of the invisible casters. Better yet have them run into some other unrelated invisible donkey clowns.

If the ratlings drop all these swarms on the caster, he may never get to act or get off his spells.  so don't do that.  The goal here is to make the characters work smarter and allocate their resources.  we have to make it feel real, so there should be a couple swarms over the caster(s) but it isn't necessary to drop them all on top of them.

This is the end goal

you have all the tools you need to run a good dastardly encounter.  I suggest you sprinkle these bad boys in for best effect.  After a couple, players tend to go from "this is impossible" to "what are we missing?"  which is exactly what I'm going for.

As always keep those games rolling
The Game Mechanic

When it hits the fan: Unplanned encounters

When your plan backfires and spirals out of control there's always a way to salvage it.  As part of an ongoing series I'm going to be addressing campaign issues and how I'd fix them.

Didn't expect that...

It's been a rough couple of weeks at the gaming table. Mostly because the table has been empty. Lisa broke her leg, John had to work overtime, and Mark couldn't make it because of something he called the “death plague.” When you last left your intrepid adventurers they had just met and were about to fight the avatar of greed who guards the ancient lost city of Deler'aq.

You look up at your eager players and begin combing through your notes. You're mentally preparing for the session, and with a mild heart attack, you find the avatar of greed's character sheet is missing. You remember all the cool things. How he can vomit small semi-precious gems, and the bonus he gets for attacking anyone who has an item made of gold. For the life of you, however, you can't remember any of the hard statistics.

That's ok. You can make a monster on the fly.

No matter how it comes about, sooner or later you're going to find yourself less prepared than you like. How it happens doesn't matter.  It could be like the scenario above, or maybe a player attacked a creature that was meant to be just a dressing or any number or scenarios.  You could call off the session, but you really like game mastering. Your friends like playing. To call off tonight's session would be a waste.

Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy to make a monster on the fly. The only thing you'll need is a piece of paper, something to write with, and a chart that's probably nestled away in a source book.

But wait, you said...

This sounds a lot like you're ignoring the rules.

I guess you could call it that. But I'll ask you, why do we have rules? Again, rules serve as a social contract between players and game masters so that the players understand how the world works. We're not upsetting that concept. The players still can interact with this creature in a meaningful way, and as far as they are concerned he's fully statted out. We are following the spirit of the rules. Maybe if we had the time it'd be better to fully stat him out, but that isn't an option right now. So we do the next best thing. If everyone is entertained, isn't that a win for us?

The concept

You should have an engaging concept for the monster you're creating. This should be easy, after all, we love telling tales. How big is it? How does it move? What's it look like? What special abilities does it have? In this example , we're creating the avatar of greed. When I think about greed, I think gold, corpulence, and bejeweled equipment. He's an avatar, so he should probably tower over the players. They are mere mortals, and he represents an ideal. So maybe the avatar of greed is a twelve-foot tall corpulent behemoth who wields a golden greatsword and wears bejeweled armor. 

Should he have a flaming sword, I think he needs a flaming sword.

Special abilities and attacks

what makes him special? What things can he do that separate him from other opponents? In this case, I decide he can vomit semi-precious stones that dissipate after a few rounds. While they are on the ground anyone who walks on top of them or is caught in the area or effect, must make a saving throw or fall down. When he attacks anyone with a decent amount of money or gold items he gets a bonus to hit and damage. He uses a giant gold greatsword and can swing it wildly to hit everyone in melee range.

So we have the concept and special abilities. That only took moments, and we're halfway there. The next step sounds daunting, but it is relatively easy. You have to come up with a stat block for him. The information you need is probably readily available in a chart.  It will be found in the section about creating new monsters, and it contains the average important statistics by level.  In each system, this will be found in different place, and I highly recommend that you print it off and affix it to your GM screen, have it in your notes, or just generally have it readily available. It's found in the DMG for D&D 5^th edition (pg. 274) and the appendices of the bestiaries for pathfinder. I'm not sure where it is for other systems, and it may not even exist, but if it doesn't I suggest you make one up and keep it somewhere handy.

It looks something like this

source

Deciding statistics, determining primary and secondary stats

For the purposes of this article, we're going to divide statistics into two classes, primary (scores players directly interact with) and secondary (scores players indirectly interact with). For the most part you only really need to decide primary scores, and some examples of primary statistics are AC and ability save DC.  These are numbers the players can figure out in short order.

Primary

You need to set the primaries, and you shouldn't change them once set. The exception to this is if you give a good story clue. For example, maybe halfway through the fight, you realize your monster is too hard to hit. Maybe his armor has been damaged so badly that it falls off exposing him to the parties attacks. Maybe he needs more armor, and loose gold and gems fly towards and sticking to him making his AC go up.

I'm going to walk through the above example as if I was playing Pathfinder, but the general process is applicable to any role playing system.  First, we figure out the CR.  This really isn't a stat at all, but it informs the rest of the abilities and saves, so you have to decide this first.  I know my party is APL 5, and I want the encounter to be challenging so I add two to that number, giving me a CR of 7. Using the chart I set the AC at 20. I figure the gem vomit ability should be a 15-foot cone, and that it should have a reflex save of 19, and should last only a round and be available for use every 1d4+1 rounds.

Secondary

Delicious hp

The secondary stats are more mutable. Things like his saves or hit points. You can change these on the fly and no one should notice. For best effect, sometimes, it better to never set them at all. Hp is a great example of this. You can, instead, watch your players and wait for a good reason for him to die. Maybe the barbarian just landed a massive critical, or maybe it's when the players start to lose their engagement for this encounter. Whatever the reason, the mob dies or tries to escape when he needs to best entertain the group and tell the story.

I decide that I really don't need to flesh out most of the rest of this.  I'm going to play the HP by ear, but the bonus for someone having a significant amount of gold for them should be +4, and his attack bonus is +13/+8 dealing 2d8+8 damage.  His saves should be fort:10 ref:6 will: 6. Now we can effectively play this creature.

You may wonder where I got some of my numbers, and in this case, it's all informed by the chart and my opinions.  If you made up the same exact monster for the same exact group it might very widely.  

What if a player attacks an unknown?

A great example of this is what if a player attacks his strength?  We didn't set his strength, so this might be concerning at first.  Really, there're only two things we care about when his strength is attacked.  Is his strength reduced to zero, and how much strength damage has he taken.  So we'll decide he has a strength of 26.  For every two points of strength damage he takes his attack and damage will go down by 1, and when his strength hits zero he'll die.  The important thing to remember is that we only fleshed out this stat because a player attacked it.  Had it never been attacked, we would have never defined it.

New abilities and clues

For the sake of fair play, if you create a new situational ability, like say a bonus to hit and damage, there should be some accompanying clue. In this case, we used the gold becoming hot when he hits you. It's not direct, but it's a small clue to make the players realize, maybe I should ditch this gold so he won't murder me so fast.

It's important

Remember to write it down! 

It's important throughout this to keep good notes. How much hp did he end up having, what stats did he end up with, what worked and what didn't. You want to be able to reproduce this villain if need be. Maybe you'll never use him again for this campaign or this group, but it never hurts to have extra engaging villains around to use.  

For some of you, this won't be useful at all.  For some this concept isn't supported by your game system, or it isn't needed.  Some magnificent bastards don't ever spend time preparing and can run an engaging story by the seat of their pants. But for the rest of us, this can help fill gaps when the unexpected happens.  I hope this helps, and as always:

keep those games rolling 

The game mechanic

Why being a dick was the right choice

Everyone has done it.  You’re pursuing your favorite forum, and some cretin has posted or linked the worst pile of snot you’ve ever seen.  Your blood pressure dials up to 11 as your fingers fly across the keys, and you prepare a cutting counter.  You send that bad boy, lean back in your office chair and let a small smug smile grace your face.  Surely he’s been taught a lesson.  Maybe not.

You see being inflammatory is a tool that is available to an author.  It can be very effective if used in a manner that is true to his writing style.  Whether or not it’s appropriate depends on the subject matter, the audience, and their goals. It’s very subjective, and it's always a gamble to use. I think I used it to great effect over here.

 

Why did I choose to be aggressive?

 

1).  The flip side of my argument was well established.

this looks... "easy"

I was facing an uphill battle.  I heard over and over that "flavor trumps rules".  Every RPG echo chamber reverberated with these words.  I knew I was never going to convince a large number of people anyways.  So what did I have to lose?

2).  I wanted to create a large amount of commentary.

This is where I knew this tone would really shine. I knew our community loves to debate, and loves to prove each other wrong.  That the people who agree with me would really agree with me, and the people who disagree would really disagree.  They would be passionate.  There would be the folks that you wouldn’t be able to sway regardless of the circumstance. It wouldn’t matter if their favorite deity (Odin, Bahamut, or Eros) handed them a stone tablet etched with a divine counter argument.

 Apparently god didn't cite his sources

They understood my argument and there was no swaying them.   There will always be passionate folks who misread what I wrote.  More on dealing with them later.  Finally, there is the periphery, the folks who don’t post much at all but read everything.  They are the target audience.  They might be swayed, or at least they might partially agree.

3.)  I was super passionate about my topic.

I knew that I had to be precise in how I went about this because there was a huge pitfall.  If I let my emotions run out of check, and compromise my points.  I had seen this play out so many times I couldn't help but write about it.  I had stewed on this topic for years.  I remember every railroad justified by "story trumps rules."  I remember every time a player had to play a class he didn't like because the story demanded it.  I also remember the good GM's where this didn't happen. How they cleverly worked around limitations so everyone got what they wanted.  They taught me rules and flavor weren't zero sum.  That you could have both.  I needed to talk about that.

4.) I wasn't actually trying to convince a large group of people to side with me.

This is the response I expected

I wasn't looking for my echo chamber, I knew it didn't exist. Generally people like agreeing with people they like, and  Boy, oh boy, were they going to hate me.  The first people who spoke up are those who disagreed with me.  They were offended because being a dick in the article made it feel personal.  The people reading their responses tended to agree with them because I slighted them.  It was important that this happened.  Without that emotional push people who "knew better" wouldn't speak up.

It was time for the fun part.  I got to write the article. I had to be aggressive without calling any one person out.  That meant I didn’t use anyone's name or demean anything beyond the subject matter.  When you demean an individual you become a bully and you lose a lot of credibility.  It’s a point of professionalism.  I'm a writer who is using a tool, namely the tone, to achieve a goal.  Not some goon trying to browbeat people into agreeing with me.  People will assume that you I am, and they’re going to be offended anyway.  That’s ok.  I know the difference and that’s the important bit.  It’s also important to note that I felt I had no obligation to present the flip side to your argument.  Everyone knows the counter argument.  To present it would both take away from my argument and be redundant.

what being offended looks like

I think I succeeded in what I set out to do.  At the time of writing I’ve gotten just shy of 1500 blog views, the facebook post reached almost 5,000 viewers and over 500 people engaged.  I feel like I generated the conversation I wanted to.  I do have only 16 followers on my channel, so maybe it’s not the best way to build a long-lasting fan base. 46 likes, 3 loves, 1 haha, 5 angry, 108 comments, 18 shares (of which I was the main perpetrator).  "Ed the bard," wrote an article about it, which can be found here.

heereesssssss Ed!

Some folks told me I was a bad  writer, I needed writing classes, or it was the worst one sided article ever written.  I also had a lot of people deconstruct my argument and post their own views with a lot of banter. The only thing I regret about it was using so much profanity.  It felt right at the time but, in retrospect, it limits makes my argument exclude some people.  It really hit home when Ed felt like he had to attach a warning to my link.  I intend to go back and edit out most of the profanity.

Despite all this, there were some unintentional consequences that presented as misconceptions

1.) I want to tell you how to run your game.

I don’t care what you play or how.  I’m offering my opinion.  To be truthful I think it’s correct, but I’m not going to fight with a stranger to enhance(in my estimation) his experience.  Besides if you and yours are happy with you are doing, then you’re doing it right.

2.) I hate flavor.

I hate bad GMs and poor flavor choices that impact fun.

3.) I don’t know how to game master, I hate the game, or I should play lighter fare.

Normally I wouldn’t touch these ad hominem arguments, but I will say I have won local, small scene RPG contests.  It’s how I went to Totalcon this year.  That doesn't prove I’m any good, only that some people think I am, and that’s really the point.  I enjoy table top roleplaying games.

I hope I cleared the air a little, and always folks, keep those games rolling.

The game mechanic

5 Ways “Flavor” Is Ruining Tabletop RPGs

edit: after much thought I've removed much of the profanity. Profanity has a way of enhancing the inflammatory tone of this argument, so I loath to remove it. However, in retrospect I realized it limited my target audience.

We've all been there. You start a game, and the game master wants a backstory to rival the Iliad. Every time, these folks insist that it's integral to the game, and every time they are dead wrong.  

Good flavor can make a game playable. After all, if all you loved was numbers you'd be a mathlete. Bad flavor ruins games and the internet is full of echo chambers for cock-knockers who make bad games with their crappy home-brew campaigns.

1. Backstories suck, and they're ruining tabletop games. 

Have you ever gone to a convention? There's always a few people that insist on telling you about their epic character, and all their awesome shenanigans. They think you should be enthralled by their masterful command of the game, but instead, it feels like a visit to Mrs. Pain, and you for forgot your safe-word. 

Did you catch the safe word? neither did I...

No one will appreciate your backstory because no one has experienced it. Your story is just a telling of how your character should be. But often players assign these great back stories to less than great characters, and, well, the result is a character who “this never happens to.” 

The fix: Characters should start with minimal backstories. Absolutely nothing epic, until the campaign begins. The story hasn't started yet, and because of this, no character is the focus of attention. Players should work with each other to establish storylines that they enjoy, that intertwine, and that everyone experiences. 

2. Game Masters restrict character creation, because of their crappy preferences. 

No one cares that you want an authentic dark ages campaign setting. Absolutely no one. I don't care if it “enhances” your story, the fact is players are only limited by your “vision” because you lack the imagination to deal with anyone who steps outside of the box... of a fantasy game. Where fantasy happens. Why are you limiting my character creation options? 

Guess I'm playing a 14th century European monk

I’ve been in a bunch of games with bad, or flawed game masters. I can smell the hacks a mile away. It always starts with strictly enforced creation rules. Someone has to play a healer. You can’t have two of that class. Can’t choose this option, or have this item. 

The fix: Reskin, or modify my options, so that we both can do what we want. If your setting is strictly human, and I want to play an orc, let me play the most orc-like human ever. Call him a human, you can probably even ding me some racial abilities, and I won't care. If your story needs a healer or a certain class, then you should have an NPC ready to fill that role. If an option is broken, give me another similar option that isn’t.

Mostly good players don’t care about the specifics but they want to play a certain way. Removing options drastically reshapes the game in unpredictable ways. Limiting magic often affects mobility later. Teleport, Fly, and alternate forms of travel are all pesky to deal with tactically, but if you limit them you might find your players have to deal with the monotony of movement. I’m a level 20 warrior who has slain dragons, or Wizard who can bend reality to my will, do you think managing my movement over the mountain range will entertain me? By limiting my character choices, you're making the game less enjoyable, for virtually no reason. 

3. By insisting on stupid flavor rules, you create a new breed of min/maxers. 

This guy thinks he's being clever. He's always looking for that story short-cut, and you indulge him, because you're a bad game master, and because “it just makes sense.” Then this asshole buys a case of vodka, and next thing you know, he's tossing Molotov's around like candy at a parade. Firey candy. 

eat flame candy, you little shits

You rule that all of the summoners summoned creatures are incarnations of the same creature. Cool right? Until he sends a summon to go scout, and when it dies he summons another to get the information from it. Ring of feather fall only prevents falling damage to the player wearing it. Not the poor sops he lands on. Next thing you know, you’ve got a party of maniacs leaping off tall buildings to squish their enemies. All of this could be cool, or it could rail road the game. More often than not everything goes off the track because the weak part of your brain that said it was ok once is too weak to confront your players and change the rules. 

The fix: So indulge these guys a couple of times, for each idea, but only if it's entertaining. Let them know it only works because you’re allowing it this time. Engage the party. Ask do your other players enjoy the idea, or are they tired of these end run-arounds? 

4. By changing rules you don't understand you're breaking the game. 

I once played in a game in which, on the tactical movement map, one square cost 5 feet of movement diagonally or orthogonality. As some of you may know, the rule is orthogonal movement costs 5, and diagonal cost 5 and 10 every other square. This is because, due to math magic you may not understand, the diagonal distance traversed is actually 1.41 ish squares. If we round this bad boy up, we get 1.5, or 3 squares every 2 squares of diagonal movement. By changing the rule, he made characters faster along the diagonals and created weird optimizations of movement. 

just stop

The fix: If you don't understand it, don't change it. Take time to think about why you're changing it, and if it enhances the game. 

5. Story trumps rules, every time... If you can't GM. 

First, if you ever had to utter this sentence in defense of what you are doing, you already screwed up. This is the mantra of every hack who ever mastered a game or dungeon. What has happened is that a player tossed you a curveball you didn't expect, and you're dumb ass couldn't think of a way out. So you veto the action, so you can tell your sub-par story. 

NOOOoooo...

Become familiar with what happens with a game without rules. Ever play make-believe as a kid? I did, and there was this kid George, who was always indestructible. Don’t be like George. The rules exist as a negotiation between the players and the Game Master on how things should behave. When violate that social construct you disenfranchise your players. Why would they be part of a story when they have no input, and how will you run a game without players? 

The fix: Know what is going on. If a player beats you, have an out prepared. As a game master you should always think about what could happen and how you deal with it. Work around their willful rejection of your plan. If you muck it up, let the player win, and think up a way out. You have until next game session, and even you should be able to think your way out by then.

You need to make your game playable and fun for all of those at the table, and as such some customization and flavor is in order.  Just don't change things you don't appreciate, like game mechanics, just because you don't understand them.

Keep those games rolling 
The Game Mechanic