Plynck

January 16, 2010

Rule Changes:

1.  Having a higher-level group like this, and fudging for its being bigger than the four-person groups that the books are designed around, I’ve found that the general run of monsters provided by the books mostly are designed to be challenging by directly negating the various advances your characters have made by going up levels.  More and more, the available monsters are undead, constructs, golems, elementals – creatures that are immune to sneak attack bonuses, criticals, etc.  Or else the monsters have very high Spell Resistances. 

It seems to me that the designers have determined that balance is the keyword, but have opted for making the characters weaker, rather than the monsters stronger, to obtain that balance.  I think this is an indication of laziness on their part. 

 Also, I think balance is important, but only in support of the true keyword: fun.

 Since it is frustrating to have your characters gain abilities, and then have the monsters negate them, I am now trying out something new.  Rather than just use the monsters as written up, I will be taking the writeups as a guideline, but making modifications to them for what I hope and intend to be more enjoyable encounters.  I am considering, once the group ends up back in parts of Plynck more heavily populated by undead, making a drastic world-wide change to all undead to remove their immunity to criticals (but if I do this then they will get stronger in other ways to compensate).

 Meanwhile, there are some ramifications to this approach I’m taking.  1) If you’re familiar with a monster from reading one of the manuals, and the group encounters one which doesn’t act like you think it should, it almost certainly has been changed.  2) I’m going to provide the possibility of Knowledge rolls to pass on the accurate information.  3) This is an on-the-job-training exercise: please bear with me as I’m sure I’ll guess wrong sometimes, and need to modify a monster on the fly during an encounter to compensate.

 

2.  Rule change.  Any area affect spell cast on people in melee will affect everyone in that melee, even if they’re slightly outside the area.  If you need a rationalization, the spell is conducted throughout the entire body of the targeted creature, and then also along the melee-fighting contacts between the various foes.  The exception to this is if the spell’s cross-section, in the appropriate dimension, is smaller than the creature being targeted.  For example, if a 10’ wide lightning bolt is targeted at a  creature with 10’x10’ facing, it will spill over onto other melee combatants; however, if a 5’ wide lightning bolt is targeted at the same creature, there would be no spillover.  Of course, anyone actually in line with the lightning bolt is still affected.

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