So let's talk about sources that are suggested for Legend4ry. In many ways this is really simple as we are going the simple, Essentialized route. Here's what I'm thinking:
- Heroes of the Fallen Lands - for obvious reasons, and for both players and DMs.
- Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms - also for obvious reasons, but really only useful once the Expert Rules are released in the foreseeable future. (If you are confused about what the Expert Rules will entail, please refer to my previous post!)
- Heroes of Shadow
Now the above books are for both the players and DMs in a Legend4ry campaign. Below you will find some DM exclusive suggested sources:
- Adventurer's Vault 1 and 2 - for treasure, among other things
- Mordenkeinen's Magnificent Emporium
- Fourthcore: Armory
- Fourthcore: Dungeon Alphabet
Now, I should note here that there are wonderful potential magic items (and rituals, which will be discussed next post) to be awarded for successful delves to be found in all of the PHBs and both DMGs (as well as a few other official supplements.)
This leads directly into lists of available items from the outset, that would, lets's say, be available at a general store. This list will include your standard fare of adventuring gear. I will post next time a revised list in addition to what you'd typically find in either of the Heroes of... books.
Let's talk Monster Design...
Combat needs to be three things to be fun: fast, quick, and dynamic. One thing that would speed up combat tremendously would be more damage being dealt. From the perspective of the PCs in comparison to monster HP, it's close to the scale we want, but needs to be tweaked.
Now monsters don't do enough damage. I want the fear of being one-shot by a monster to exist, I want a goblin to be terrifying to a Level-1 character, as they should be. As it stands now this is not the case, they do piddly damage in comparison to the party's HP.
So what should we do about this? The solution seems simple to keep combat fun.
- First, we need to increase monster damage. Sure this will make combat more swingy, but it will also be over in a couple of rounds (wait, wait, don't kill me, hear me out, especially with the next point!) So here is what I'm thinking:
- Double monster damage entirely. By this I mean double the weapon dice and modifier. For example, a regular, bland, vanilla monster would do 1d8+1 damage. For Legend4ry, let's have him do 2d8+2 damage. Minions, who do static damage already would just do double their regular damage. This seems more on the line we are looking for, especially with deadlier and scarier combats.
- OR, should we just double the damage modifiers to the regular weapon dice. Using the above example, would 1d8+2 be better? I am struggling with this because on one hand the mobs could do too much damage, on the other, it's not much of an improvement over how it currently is.
So let's go with the first method suggested above: Double monster damage entirely and minion's static damage is doubled.
Now, how do we offset this so that the PCs are not just walking into a slaughter house and stand a chance? This leads us to:
- Secondly, how do we offset the tremendous damage done by monsters now? Easily, we tackle their HP. This keeps things fast and furious on both sides of combat. So which should we do:
- With Option A we can just straight up cut the monster HP in half. They can't take as many hits but the increase in damage should lead to some fast and furious combats.
- Option B we still decrease the monster HP, but only by 1/3. Combats are still sped up and the monsters can take another hit or two.
This is a toughy and will probably require some play testing to actually hammer out (so there may be a future ret-con post) but for now I really like the sound of Option A: Monster HP is halved and minion's HP remains the same.
Monster defenses will remain untouched as that math still remains relevant and good, so why attempt to fix something that for our purposes, especially being solely in the Heroic Tier, isn't broke.
Let's dabble with minions for a little bit. This is something I've done (whether my players realize it or not) in my home games for some time. I've dubbed them "Elite Minions," and this seems fitting for our use in Legend4ry. Elite Minions can take two hits, regardless of damage, and do not suffer from on-going damage (or else they'd be dead as their turn began.) Elite Minion's static damage is also increased by 1 (or 2 in our case since we are doubling monster damage.)
Also a little fun I like to have with minions, in order to keep the players from initially recognizing them as minions from the get-go (aside from not pointing out what monster is a minion, I just describe what they see,) is to roll dice for their static damage. Yes the minions still do their static damage but I like to mess with their heads. Typically I'll roll a d6 or something to that regard and act like I'm totally up their damage. While this can slow down combat a little, it's great fun.
Another, and final, idea for monster design doesn't really deal with monster design itself, more along the lines of encounter design. For Legend4ry's campaign, (*spoilers*) there are going to be encounters of varying levels on any given level of the dungeon. What I mean is let's say it's the first level and filled with goblins. Most of the dungeon's encounters will be of levels 1 and 2 as far as the XP budget goes. But maybe the PCs head too far north into Hobgoblin territory and find that all of the encounters in that section of the dungeon are of levels 3 and 4. For a first level party this can be quite deadly (especially with doubled monster damage!) This just feels more organic to me and might create sections of the world/dungeons that might need to be revisited later at higher levels.
Let's talk Resting...
Our resting hack should be pretty simple and this should help off-set the party being able to heal constantly. One of the issues with short resting is that most players won't enter the next combat any health down. There should be some carry-over to the next combat to emulate the fatigue of battle as the party carries through the dungeon from one fight to the next. (If you want to think of something cinematic to represent this, think of the scene from The Fellowship of the Ring in the Mines of Moria as the Fellowship holes up in a room only to be attacked by goblins and an ogre before fleeing from their hordes while being constantly shot at from all sides before encountering the giant Balrog... Yeah, awesome right? Sure they may have regained some ability to fight, but they didn't heal up entirely!)
So let's talk about Short Rests first:
Let's dabble with minions for a little bit. This is something I've done (whether my players realize it or not) in my home games for some time. I've dubbed them "Elite Minions," and this seems fitting for our use in Legend4ry. Elite Minions can take two hits, regardless of damage, and do not suffer from on-going damage (or else they'd be dead as their turn began.) Elite Minion's static damage is also increased by 1 (or 2 in our case since we are doubling monster damage.)
Also a little fun I like to have with minions, in order to keep the players from initially recognizing them as minions from the get-go (aside from not pointing out what monster is a minion, I just describe what they see,) is to roll dice for their static damage. Yes the minions still do their static damage but I like to mess with their heads. Typically I'll roll a d6 or something to that regard and act like I'm totally up their damage. While this can slow down combat a little, it's great fun.
Another, and final, idea for monster design doesn't really deal with monster design itself, more along the lines of encounter design. For Legend4ry's campaign, (*spoilers*) there are going to be encounters of varying levels on any given level of the dungeon. What I mean is let's say it's the first level and filled with goblins. Most of the dungeon's encounters will be of levels 1 and 2 as far as the XP budget goes. But maybe the PCs head too far north into Hobgoblin territory and find that all of the encounters in that section of the dungeon are of levels 3 and 4. For a first level party this can be quite deadly (especially with doubled monster damage!) This just feels more organic to me and might create sections of the world/dungeons that might need to be revisited later at higher levels.
Let's talk Resting...
Our resting hack should be pretty simple and this should help off-set the party being able to heal constantly. One of the issues with short resting is that most players won't enter the next combat any health down. There should be some carry-over to the next combat to emulate the fatigue of battle as the party carries through the dungeon from one fight to the next. (If you want to think of something cinematic to represent this, think of the scene from The Fellowship of the Ring in the Mines of Moria as the Fellowship holes up in a room only to be attacked by goblins and an ogre before fleeing from their hordes while being constantly shot at from all sides before encountering the giant Balrog... Yeah, awesome right? Sure they may have regained some ability to fight, but they didn't heal up entirely!)
So let's talk about Short Rests first:
- First off, let's split short rests into two segments:
- Healing
- Reclaiming Encounter powers: or, "The Ritual"
- During a short rest, if it's safe to have down time for a five minute stretch (this is key!), each player will choose what their character does for the first part of the rest.
- If they choose to heal first, they can spend a maximum of two (2) Healing Surges
- If they choose to reclaim their Encounter powers first, they must do something to reclaim them. For example a Knight or Thief would polish their blades, a War Priest would pray, a Mage would review their spellbook. Basically, it should make sense: what are they doing in-game, not mechanically, to reclaim these spent powers?
- The reason for splitting the short rests into two segments are as follows: What if the party thinks it's safe to rest but it isn't? If it isn't safe their rest will be interrupted, for our purposes and simplicity sake, half way through the rest. This means mechanically that they only received one of the two benefits of the rest, ie. the first benefit chosen.
- This doesn't mean that every short rest will be interrupted, but let's keep them paranoid. This leads to some interesting resource management, which is more important: powers or healing? Players also must not make the assumption of gaining a Short Rest after every battle. It first must appear safe for them to do so!
- Now if a rest isn't interrupted, they gain both of the benefits in order. For example they healed then prayed.
Now, what about Extended Rests?
This one is pretty simple and goes by the book as is typical. The players must be safe to rest, must rest their allotted/required amount, etc. BUT, here is the exception: with each Extended Rest, instead of regaining all of their lost healing surges, each party member will only regain two.
The reason for this is to emulate healing resources ala prior editions. Just because you rested didn't mean you went to full health. In this case we will emulate this through surges. For example, June the Mage, prior to resting, had 2 remaining surges, her maximum number of surges per day is 6. She rests for an extended period of time and only regains 2 healing surges (as per our rules) and has a total of 4 for that day. June could choose, along with the rest of the party to rest for another day and have her maximum of 6 the following day, but at what cost? The party has lost two days of adventuring and maybe they had a time limit in which to accomplish something.
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As always, if anyone has any suggestions either comment below or email me about it! I welcome any and all criticism! Thanks again for reading.
Coming next post: a cover for the Basic Rules, gear, skills and DCs, and action points.
Until next time,
-blob
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