[DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

[Spoilers ahead]

Hey folks,

So I took a look at "You All Meet at an Inn" from Pyramid 98.

I noticed one thing:

This is an adventure meant for beginning adventurers, as the time they meet for the first time.

The encounter that interests me is when the party makes it down the well and into the dungeon. There's a Flame Lord and torches that spawn Toxifiers every 10 seconds.

Presumably the party will drop a rope down the well and climb down, then get into the entrance where these monsters spring forth. It takes a minute to climb down the rope, so unless there's more than one character on the rope at a time (which seems unlikely, because the weight might break the rope, or a falling character take out the one below them), then the first character down will be on their own for 60 rounds. That's enough time for 7 Toxifiers to spawn, unless that character is smart enough to douse the torches that spawn them (and isn't otherwise too overwhelmed by monsters to do so).

The Flame Lord I can understand. Even though it has Unkillable, a good warrior can presumably take it out.

What concerns me are the Toxifiers. They require magic weapons to bypass their Unkillable. I'm assuming that most beginning characters won't have access to magic weapons. Meaning that they'll have to make due with doing 2 points of damage maximum (they're Diffuse). So they'd need to deal each Toxifier 110 damage to reduce them to -10HP. This would take 55 turns minimum for a single character, doing AoA(Double) each turn. Meanwhile, other Toxifiers are spawning every 10 seconds and each dealing 1d tox damage every turn.

By the time the second character makes it down the rope, the first will have been slaughtered and they're now facing around 7 Toxifiers. Unless a caster with air spells gets there in time, I can't imagine the party winning.

Since escape from the scenario is basically impossible (the Inn is surrounded by zombies), this seems to result in a TPK.

Now, I realize that, if I were to run the adventure, I could substitute a different monster or remove the Toxifiers' Unkillable (saying that they were more vulnerable than usual for some reason). But, as written, the adventure seems neigh impossible for beginning characters.

What am I missing???

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

It isn't necessarily meant for beginning adventurers, as the number of zombies scales up with how many points each character is. However, there are plenty of ways to win that scenario. I have a few questions for you to think through though before I just start listing win scenarios.

First, what makes you think that only one person can fit in the well at a time? The map clearly indicates it spans multiple hexes, so several adventurers could be descending at the same time.

Second, what is stopping the adventurer from waiting for the next person down? The Flame Lord doesn't spawn until they go in the room. If the first character down is impulsive, that could be a bad thing but killing off a character is part of a bunch of games.

Here are a few ways I can see easily winning this battle:

1. The party has a Cleric/Holy Warrior with a blessed item. Toxifiers can't get close.
2. The party has someone that can deal area-effect, cone, or explosion damage. Diffuse what?
3. Party has a mage with Control Elemental. Let the Flame Lord fight the Toxifiers for you.

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

Yeah, it is.
The entire point of the whole adventure is to give a reason to the party becoming a cohesive whole. The entire intro text explains that, as well as the name of the adventure.

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

Not having True Faith and Exorcism can be lethal in DF.

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

That doesn't mean the individual adventurers are beginning level at [250] points. Go read the text again. Sheesh. Why so confrontational? The blue box labeled with a big N mentions experienced groups.

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

Okay, interesting point about the possibility of multiple characters heading down the well at once (assuming they have enough rope...). A few considerations, though: while the map of the dungeon level does seem to indicate that there's enough room for multiple characters (there are ~3 partial hexes -- I suppose it depends on how merciful the GM is feeling), however on the map of the ground level the well is even smaller (only one hex in size). Regardless, that's a reasonable point, as Basic Set states that up to 4 SM=0 characters can fit into a single hex if they're friendly. On the other hand, that's for standing and, having done a little climbing in real life, I suspect that climbing should be a "full hex activity."

Regarding your other point, I'm not sure that characters can rally at the bottom of the well and wait for the party to congregate. The entrance to the dungeon is not at the bottom of the well, so characters have to either literally "hang out" at the end of their rope, swing into the dungeon, or splash down into the water and then hope they can get back up to the dungeon once the party is ready. No, I think it's most practical for the party to enter the dungeon as they arrive at the entrance.

Okay, so most parties will have a cleric with a holy symbol, so that's a fair point. Even so, this doesn't destroy the Toxifiers, right? They're just going to follow the party around and harass any character that gets more than 5 yards away from the cleric. Also, until they get the door open, the Toxifier(s) can barely be more than 5 yards from the centre of the room, and their attack is passive so it will still emanate 2 yards around them. If the adventurers want to douse the torches to keep more Toxifiers from showing up, they'll either need to expose themselves to the attack, or carefully stay within 5 yards of the cleric while the cleric moves methodically from one torch to the next (meanwhile several more Toxifiers are likely to spawn, which can then harass the party.

Anyone with air magic can do double damage to the Toxifiers. Area effect spells are also effective. But they're still unkillable without magic weapons, meaning beating them down to -10HP, taking 1d toxic damage each turn (while dealing with the Flame Lord, no less), directly after a choke point in the form of the well. Even a cleric Banishing or Exorcising them would run into trouble against a Will of 16 (and Exorcism would take a long time!)

This doesn't seem like an easy scenario to me!

In any event, so it seems like the best bet to take on the Toxifier(s) is to send down a caster first (either cleric or elementalist or demonologist). Since most parties are going to send a fighter and/or thief down a dark hole and keep their squishy casters in the back until a beachhead has been established, I'm thinking that the non-casters are going to get thoroughly toxified before the casters get there.

Yes, the adventure is designed to scale with overall party power. And some GM's may start at point values other than 250 (I like 300, personally). However, this adventure is explicitly written to be a party's first adventure together. Quite possibly for players who are new to the system and/or new to role playing. Meaning that, at the very least, in my opinion, it should be relatively straightforward to win, and shouldn't rely on super clever tactics or even tactics contrary to best practice like sending your casters first down a dark hole.

The other scenarios and monsters all make sense to me. They're challenging but winnable. (The phase serpents can also be quite lethal, I expect, particularly if the party doesn't figure out how to drain the water, but it's winnable). But having a monster that all but requires a magic weapon to defeat and having a potentially infinite number of them spawn every 10 seconds... Especially when there's no running away from the adventure due to the infinite zombies outside... That hardly seems fitting for a first adventure.

I mean, imagine the first person down is a warrior. They're non-too-bright. Maybe they take out the Flame Lord and meanwhile a second Toxifier spawns. Now they try to hack the things apart while waiting the 50 seconds for their backup to arrive. They don't have Hidden Lore (Demons), so they likely have no idea how to handle this monster. It might even take them a while to realize that their blows are having little effect. And, likely having an IQ of 10 or less, they may not put together the fact that they need to douse the torches to stop the spawning (maybe I just need to kill one Toxifier per torch then they're done... it would take seven Toxifiers to disprove this theory). Anyway, imagine that a few too many Toxifiers end up spawning and the warrior decides to retreat. Now the party is in a tough spot!!! They can't run away through the infinite zombies, and there's now a crowd of angry Toxofiers milling about in the dungeon entrance (an unmerciful GM will have them keep spawning, even when no adventurers are in sight).

I'm thinking that I'd either make these Toxifiers easier (remove unkillable), substitute an easier monster, or remove them entirely.

I wonder how the play-testers handled it???

Anyone else have other ideas on how to handle this scenario?

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

We did the adventure and while some of our party roped down, some climbed down, and the barbarian just kinda fell down. We didn't run into a fight with the flame lord, we managed to make a bit of a diplomatic arrangement, although I think we made a bigger problem for ourselves later.
So we had to fight the toxifiers.

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

GURPS doesn't always mesh with real life perfectly. Besides, the point of the game is to have fun and bogging down the game with tons of little details other than some basic Climbing rolls seems counter Dungeon Fantasy.

Depends on the GM. Some may say touching the ledge at the bottom counts as entering the room, but I would think you would actually need to go almost the full way to the brazier to have it count. Just looking inside shouldn't summon the Flame Lord.

Dread means they have to move as far away as possible if they can't actually reach their 5 yards. I think being 2 yards away from them will be easily managed in that room. Dousing the torches is not going to take all that long. Smashing them off the wall and throwing them in the well would probably be a two-turn endeavor.

Magic weapons like a wizard staff? That is fairly cheap. They could also just use the magic weapon found later in the dungeon. Reach 2 weapons should be able to hit them without exposing the attacker much, if at all.

Easy isn't fun! DF characters are not meant to be Level 1 beginners. They are meant to be quite competent. If the players are brand new to role-playing, then the GM might have to be nice and give some hints along the way.

I think most GM's are going to assume everyone can go in together. I think a Mystic Knight/Archer would also make the situation really easy.

So change it if you think it is too hard. I think there are plenty of ways to deal with the toxifiers as is, especially if you have a standard party dynamic like knight-thief-wizard-cleric.

So kill off the one person who jumps in. Don't play with a GM that would refuse to reset it because one person went off on their own. This seems more like you are trying to deal with every possible negative situation a GM could come up with, but the goal is for the GM to make the situation fun even if it is challenging.

There is nothing stopping you from changing it how you see fit. However, I think that if you were running this as the GM then you would be surprised at how creative players can get. Now, that assumes this isn't the players' first RPG rodeo. If it is, then there are definitely easier games out there to get their teeth wet.

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

A wizard's Staff isn't a magic weapon.

Remember in DF, Losing Is !!FUN!!

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

genin,

I don't have the Pyramid in question, but I enjoyed reading your critique.

I can't comment on the encounter, but it is important to me that adventures and scenarios are plausible and have been thought through. So I like these kinds of discussions.

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

Sorry if I came off as overly confrontational.

However, the pyramid issue is welcome to DF. The article is specifically about how to get a team together & trusting each other. While it is tre that it does not have to be a 250 pt team, it seems counterproductive to write the intro adventure of the intro pyramid magazine issue for a line that has the default setting of character pts at 250, & set the encounters at a level where 250 pt starting characters characters won't survive.

The response of well, they don't have to be starting (they could have magic weapons) or they don't have to only be 250 pts, seems to defeat the purpose of intro adventure to the band new DF RPG line.

I'm about to start a new DF campaign in the next few weeks. I was planning on using this for my 1st adventure, but I need a way for my players to survive. I think there's no problem with the party gathering down at the bottom b4 going in to the room with the toxifiers, but I don't really see a way for them to survive the encounter.

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

True Faith? Air Jet? Flaming Weapon?

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

Which no one might have.

Seriously. I've yet to see a Cleric in any game I've been in or run take True Faith. Air Jet I've seen on a few Wizards... but only once have seen Flaming Weapon, on a pregen Cleric for DFRPG (to be fair, she might also have true Faith, I have no idea what the sheet looks like).

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

If you make a party with no defense against incoporeal or diffuse foes, you probably shouldn't be surprised if you do poorly against them. This is a thing I try to point out when I see it. At least hire a guy with True Faith and Affect Spirits.

There probably are at least a dozen spells and abilities that work well against Toxicifers, all you need is one of them.

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

A rather important thing to remember about Unkillable: it does not include immunity to consciousness checks, and a Toxifer has HT 10 (and probably is classed as a Worthy, not a Boss). Do 10 damage to it and it's going down. It has a Dodge of 10, so half of attacks miss, but there's no reason not to all-out attack against them (their attack doesn't allow an active defense anyway) so any starting character should be hitting an average of at least once per round for 2 damage. Or you can use an area spell that will ignore diffuse.

However, 'get rid of the monster generator' and 'figure out how to not send characters one at a time into a woodchipper' are pretty basic DF skills.

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

That sounds like a whole new thread on if enchanted items used as a weapon would be considered magic weapons.

Hopefully if the GM was running this adventure for a group new to DF entirely, there would be some check to make sure at least one player had a way to deal with these enemies. Still, these are hardly rare enemy abilities to encounter and should be planned for.

That is interesting to note about worthy monsters. Assuming the GM is using those rules, how would Unkillable and Worthy interact?

Those basic skills you mention tend to be more "break anything that looks suspicious" and "never split up the party" in the games I play in, but the point remains the same. :D

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

Hmm, is that an actual rule; does a weapon have to have a weapon enchantment to be considered a magic weapon?

As I see it, if it's a weapon (a staff is) and it has an enchantment (Staff is one) then it's an enchanted (magic) weapon. In almost 30 years of gurpsing, it never ocurred to me that a Staff was not a magic weapon.

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

They don't. Worthy monsters aren't dead at 0 HP, they're out of the fight. It doesn't terribly matter, though, if you don't use those rules it means on average they get one additional attack after being reduced to 0 HP.

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

Huh. In 30 years of GURPS I've never know a GM who considered a Wizard Staff a "magic weapon" for 'magic weapon' purposes.

I've never thought about it because I've never had creatures that required or were susceptible to 'magic weapons'. I always thought it was a terrible concept in D&D and refused to 'port it over'.

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

A little more about our group and how they handled it.

I am a long-experienced player, both of GURPS and dungeon crawling in general in various systems; being a general "ringer", my job was to mostly provide a warm body, while helping the GM gently introduce new mechanics or ideas.

The rest of the group were people who had played MMOs, and one referred to attacks of opportunity so they'd obviously played some recent D&D.

The GM clearly decided that the toxifiers come out if you poke the door, not just 'whenever', I'm not sure what the intent was with the flame lord because the barbarian was amusing. The barb was first at the bottom of the well due to gravity, and went straight in to kick the brazier. The rest of us were most of the way down the well by the time the barb fell down, so this didn't actually separate the party much.

I'll note that the rest of the party, including the definitely-never-played-tabletop players, had already caught on to Never Split The Party and were yelling at the barbarian to STAY. STAY. GOOD BOY. Didn't work.

The flame lord came out, and I don't know if it was just "walked in the room" or "kicked the brazier" that did it, but the Barbarian's first reaction was to say "Hello!" to it. The druid, making their Hidden Lore check, immediately backed the Barb up with a "Hello oh great one" kind of intervention, and the rest of the party caught on that Flame Lords have an ego problem and also groveled and simpered.

The GM rolled a random reaction, and got good enough that the Flame Lord was willing to suspend the BURN EVERYTHING to get more bowing and scraping. We then negotiated with it, eventually bargaining to release it in exchange for some information about the dungeon and a promise to go straight back where it came from without setting anything or anyone on fire until it got there (that was the best deal we could manage).

It didn't warn us about the toxifiers specifically, but it did warn us that the door was "trapped" and that there were demons and definitely other monsters. We couldn't find "the trap on the door" and in the grand tradition of delvers everywhere, got the barbarian to open it because he had the most HP (even after falling down the well, he didn't fall all the way from the top).

Then the toxifiers came out, and nobody needed it suggested that we need to break the torches. MMOs are excellent training for the idea of monster spawners. We had a druid and a wizard and between the two of them the toxifiers were dispatched rapidly while the rest of us smashed torches before too many appeared. Even if we hadn't had the magic, we only ended up with two, and that's managable.

I honestly think players who have played video games in the general fantasy-combaty-dungeony genre won't need that part explained.

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

MMOers should all be familiar enough with Leroy Jenkins that they understand, "Never Split the Party", or at least "Follow The Group Leader's Orders".

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

Thank you so much, everyone, for your thoughts on this thread.

Especially, thanks to Bruno for recounting her experience with this adventure!

I agree that the adventure should make the assumption that no one starts with a magic weapon. This is a separate issue, that might deserve its own thread, but I've never seen why anyone would start with an enchanted weapon (aside from Staff, obviously). By the time I've paid for the Wealth to afford the enchantment, I could have purchased many extra levels of weapon skill or ST for damage or whatever other ability I wanted to have, and it would work with *any* weapon I happen to be wielding rather than only the one magic weapon (which is likely to be lost/broken/stolen unless I purchase Signature Gear for it too).

I think my main concern with the scenario under discussion is with the bottleneck of descending the well. The text seems to indicate that the monsters appear as soon as characters emerge from the well shaft: "Near the bottom of the well shaft, a rough opening leads to.... The room is initially empty, but if anyone enters [a Flame Lord and the first Toxifier spawn]." There doesn't seem to be any option for the party to gather in the room before the monsters spawn.

If the party could all gather in the room before the enemies spawn, then that seems more winnable (though perhaps still challenging, at least for folks new to DF). There should be a caster present by that point, so they'd have a chance. But how to get them all down there at once? I get that DF isn't exactly about realism, but it strains credulity, for me, to have multiple SM=0 characters climbing down a well with a < 1 yard diameter entrance at the same time. Perhaps if they threw down multiple ropes and climbed down slightly staggered, that could work. Or if some casters know Levitation.

Maybe I could just modify the adventure so that the monsters spawn once someone touches the far door, as it sounds like Bruno's GM did.

So let's see, for defeating the Toxifiers, what did we come up with?

- If using the optional rule for worthy foes, they'll drop at 0HP
- They'll likely drop unconscious fairly quickly, due to HT10, even without the rule above, once reduced below 0HP
- Holy symbols to keep them at bay until you can douse the torches (and maybe force them into the well???)
- True Faith (though the Toxifiers only need to be 1 yard away, so they can still hit you with their attack...)
- Area of effect or cone spells to bypass Diffuse
- Air spells that produce wind to deal double damage (not that there are a lot of those)
- Banish spell (though the spell costs a *lot*, no? I haven't added up the point total of a Toxifier, but the spell costs 1 energy per 10 points of the target)

Some of these require the delvers to know what they're fighting. So Hidden Lore (Demons) would be helpful.

Anything else I'm missing or not understanding?

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

A few months of necromancy here but this is under discussion again, and reviewing this thread brings up a few points.

First though: Why would you ever spend money on a magic weapon at character creation? Why, so you can kill monsters that can only be killed by magic weapons. *shrug*

A few other notes:

Diffuse creatures can be damaged by area of effect damage of any origin, not "spells" specifically - alchemical fire certainly suits that, and I recommend having at least a little around. You can make do with just one I suppose, if you can get creative about pushing them into the flaming hex, but I'd recommend a party start with at least two.

Affect Spirits would work IMO to allow a weapon to do full damage, although it's not a quick and easy cast.

"Magic weapon" is not formally defined, and is an interesting question. I definitely count weapons that are under the effect of a Flaming Weapon or Flaming Missiles spell (and Lightning Weapon and so forth) - it's not a permanent effect, but regular old enchantments don't have to be permanent either.
Those are some straightforward "weapon-y" effects so the questionable part is that it's not formally enchanted (I fall on the side of the spell counting as this means parties can plan for them a little better).
I count an Affect Spirits weapon as sufficient to kill them dead like the flaming weapon. It's a weapon targeting spell and it's specifically for killing spirits so I feel very solid on that one.

Is a weapon with any random magical effect on it a "magic weapon"? That's a more interesting question and I'm going to go start a thread about it.

Asked the question over in the DFRPG forum

Re: [DF] Question about "You All Meet at an Inn" [Pyramid 98]
 

Newly formed party =/ new adventurers.

Linear thinking will get you killed.

Iirc there’s one rope provided in the well. Doesn’t mean only one rope can go IN the well if the party provides their own additional ropes.

Why would the first character down go off on their own? Tactics work in RPGs... pathfinder holds what he has and waits for backup.

Saw a debate on a DND forum a long time ago regarding whether casting Light or some other innocuous spell on a weapon made it a magic weapon for some purpose or other.

The consensus was, not for overcoming damage resistance which explicitly requires +1, +2, etc... but for other purposes it could be.