# Post your Lair Assault Results Here (Spoilers)



## KarinsDad (Sep 2, 2011)

Our group will be running Lair Assault tomorrow. I'm the DM and when I first read the adventure, I thought that our group would experience a TPK. However, now that the players have finished their PCs and having seen the firepower of the PCs, I'm thinking that even on nightmare mode, the PCs are going to win this thing hands down unless their dice are cold or some such.

I'll be posting the results of our session here tomorrow night, but I wanted to see how well other groups did too and if there are any sort of group makeup type patterns that worked really well. Please post the class/race makeup of your group along with a synopsis of how it went.

Thanks.


----------



## Dice4Hire (Sep 2, 2011)

Is there anywhere online to get the adventure?


----------



## Dannager (Sep 2, 2011)

Dice4Hire said:


> Is there anywhere online to get the adventure?




Not in any legal capacity. This is a program designed solely for in-store play, as a way of encouraging gamers to give those stores their business. Releasing it online would do harm to that goal.


----------



## corwyn77 (Sep 2, 2011)

If you have $80 or so burning a hole in your pocket you can pick it up on Ebay. Is that considered 'legal'. 

Wizards doesn't seem too concerned with stopping stores from ordering in-store events and selling them off on ebay for obscene prices, sealed and unused. Which is really annoying seeing as how LA is no longer available from wotc, according to an email my flgs received last week.


----------



## Dannager (Sep 3, 2011)

corwyn77 said:


> If you have $80 or so burning a hole in your pocket you can pick it up on Ebay. Is that considered 'legal'.




It's closer to legal than to not-legal.



> Wizards doesn't seem too concerned with stopping stores from ordering in-store events and selling them off on ebay for obscene prices, sealed and unused.




Wizards can't do anything about it, except perhaps to try and figure out which gaming stores are putting these things up on eBay and exclude those stores from future programs. If you come across an eBay listing that tells you which store the packet comes from, the responsible thing to do (if this is a practice that you dislike, and it appears that it is) would be to contact WotC with this information so that they can act on it.

Have you done this?



> Which is really annoying seeing as how LA is no longer available from wotc, according to an email my flgs received last week.




It strikes me as _weird_ that you are apparently upset with WotC over Lair Assault being resold by less-than-scrupulous stores. This doesn't seem like misdirected anger, to you?


----------



## Dice4Hire (Sep 3, 2011)

I do not want to play that much, and I'm even sure I don't want to give that kind of person that much money. 

Selling the adventure unused is just slimy. Once it is used and enjoyed, I could understand selling it, and would see no problem with it. 

A lot of WOTC stuff does seem to end up on Ebay like this.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 4, 2011)

Ok, here is what happened in our game. As DM, I was underwhelmed. The players said that they enjoyed themselves, but then again, they kicked butt so hard that it wasn't even funny. We should have played on nightmare, but it wouldn't have changed too much except possibly extending the encounter a few rounds.

We had 6 PCs and 1 companion:

Halfling Ranger
Halfling Ranger|Bard Hybrid
Human Bard
Human Swordmage
Half Orc Scout
Mul Druid Sentinel
Bear Animal Companion

So, 2.5 Leaders, 2.5 Strikers, and 1 Defender (and a companion).

I won't go into a lot of detail, but needless to say, when the Ranger|Bard used Bridge of Roots in the mud pit room, that more or less ended any significant challenge.

It did take 15 rounds for the PCs to finish the adventure, but the BBEG was killed in round 14.

The Ranger Bard only took the fire damage from the initial entire room fire blast. He never took any other damage.

About half of the PCs were bloodied walking into the mud room, mostly because they had to open the door a second time and I had a Fire Bat shift from the doorway through half of the group and hit with every attack, but that didn't last long. None of the PCs ended up in mud or lava.

At the end of the encounter, the Swordmage was in single digit hit points (having taken over 130 points of damage after resistances and temp hit points in the encounter and being healed 5 times out of the 9 party heals, they loaded up on heals), but none of the other PCs were even bloodied at the end. Not a single PC used a Second Wind or a Potion of Healing. With Second Winds and potions, they had about 160 more possible points of healing (without Dailies) left over at the end. So I would have had to do at least 400 more points of damage to manage a TPK. Nightmare mode would not have been able to accomplish that, but might have slowed them up so that they didn't win within 20 rounds. Probably not though.

The companion did fall once, but was immediately replaced.

It was pretty anti-climatic. It was hardly a challenge at all and I threw every thing I could manage at the PCs. I also rolled real well on NPC initiatives with only one roll in single digits. But, it didn't help much. The PCs just had too many daily powers, immediate interrupts, ways to heal and hand out temp hit points. In fact, the Scout player totally forgot to use his two Power Strikes and still had them at the end of the encounter. 

My conclusion is that optimized PCs are just too potent for this encounter. Even a fewer number of PCs wouldn't have broken a sweat too much.

WotC should go back to the drawing board if they really want to challenge players with well optimized PCs.


----------



## Mengu (Sep 4, 2011)

Sad to hear. One question, I thought the challenge was for 5 PC's, does it scale for 4-6?


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 4, 2011)

Mengu said:


> Sad to hear. One question, I thought the challenge was for 5 PC's, does it scale for 4-6?




Yes. It scales for 4 to 6.


----------



## Dice4Hire (Sep 4, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> My conclusion is that optimized PCs are just too potent for this encounter. Even a fewer number of PCs wouldn't have broken a sweat too much.
> 
> WotC should go back to the drawing board if they really want to challenge players with well optimized PCs.




Stuff like this worries me. I really do think 4E is getting too easy for the PCS with myriad powers and new stuff coming out all the time. 

Also WOTC seems to really really hate seeing character death, and it shows. 

I guess I am just not a fan of the playstyle they are pushing.


----------



## Dannager (Sep 4, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> So I would have had to do at least 400 more points of damage to manage a TPK.




I don't think this is really accurate. Like, at all.

in order to TPK your party, all you need to do is kill them all. You don't need to burn through all of their potential healing. That's a sucker's game. You take every single one of your monsters, and you nuke the guy who can fire off the most healing. Once he's unconscious - and this part is important - *you kill him outright*. You don't leave him bleeding out on the ground. You chop his head off. You don't allow for the possibility of him standing back up. Now it doesn't matter how much healing he had left. He can't use any of it, because he is a corpse. Rinse and repeat for the next five party members.

tl;dr - Don't give your party the chance to heal. Kill them all outright.


----------



## Tuft (Sep 4, 2011)

Dannager said:


> I don't think this is really accurate. Like, at all.
> 
> in order to TPK your party, all you need to do is kill them all. You don't need to burn through all of their potential healing. That's a sucker's game. You take every single one of your monsters, and you nuke the guy who can fire off the most healing. Once he's unconscious - and this part is important - *you kill him outright*. You don't leave him bleeding out on the ground. You chop his head off. You don't allow for the possibility of him standing back up. Now it doesn't matter how much healing he had left. He can't use any of it, because he is a corpse. Rinse and repeat for the next five party members.
> 
> tl;dr - Don't give your party the chance to heal. Kill them all outright.




This. Combat outcome in RPGs depends heavily on GM tactics - whether you concentrate your fire or spread it, how your monsters handle marks, whether they risk opportunity attacks, if they take time to coup de grâce, etc. Makes comparing outcomes kind of pointless.


----------



## jodyjohnson (Sep 4, 2011)

We had nearly an entire table (4 of 6) of Encounters players so only 2 had played beyond level 2-3.

We ended up tank heavy and healing light.  Out of main heals in round two.

My dwarf knight dropped towards the beginning of round 2, was up briefly with a Crit on the death save, dropped again on round 3 after I stood up and moved out of ongoing damage.

After that we started losing characters faster than they could Heal potion and ended with the Bard (only 2 heals) and Paladin (no heals!) went Leroy Jenkins and just tried to get to the last room.

Party compoistion: Elf Pet Ranger, Warlock, Dwarf Knight, Vryloka Swordmage, Half-orc Paladin, Bard.

We rolled low for initiative and pretty much got area nuked to half-dead in our starting squares.  After the Encounter Bard blew a Encounter heal on her friend who was down 7 I knew we were going nowhere.

I do think a party optimized for the dungeon would do much better.  

Certain characters ended up useless (abilities completely negated by the scenario rules).

KDs party looks similar to what I'd put together AFTER playing the module so it doesn't surprise me that they beat it easily.  But they still haven't completed all the glory awards.

The earlier you beat the scenario, the longer you have to wait for the next Lair Assault (December).    I have a feeling we'll slowly improve and within 4-6 weeks we may have some Encounters players with more 5th level experience.

At least no one cried.


----------



## jodyjohnson (Sep 4, 2011)

I think the scenario would be completely different if it was 3 separate encounters over 20 rnds instead of one mega encounter - the dailies, and encounter long effects have too much weight.

Or instead at the end of Turn 5, 10, 15 a temporal distortion rips through ending and reset all encounter powers.  No damage just changing the meta.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 4, 2011)

Dannager said:


> I don't think this is really accurate. Like, at all.
> 
> in order to TPK your party, all you need to do is kill them all. You don't need to burn through all of their potential healing. That's a sucker's game. You take every single one of your monsters, and you nuke the guy who can fire off the most healing. Once he's unconscious - and this part is important - *you kill him outright*. You don't leave him bleeding out on the ground. You chop his head off. You don't allow for the possibility of him standing back up. Now it doesn't matter how much healing he had left. He can't use any of it, because he is a corpse. Rinse and repeat for the next five party members.
> 
> tl;dr - Don't give your party the chance to heal. Kill them all outright.




What you say sounds good on the surface, but you forget (or didn't know) the fact that the PCs outnumber the NPCs in every encounter here. In fact, I "broke" the rules a bit and had 5 foes in the last encounter, but it didn't matter. The PCs win the action economy part of the game before the encounter even starts (a major mistake on the part of WotC when setting up this challenge, higher level monsters do not make up for number of actions per round).

In order to do as you suggest, NPCs have to at least down a foe (which I tried with NPC focused fire, but it didn't help).

Every PC had around 40 hit points remaining except the Swordmage who finished the fight with 6 hit points. The Companion was full up at 26.

The reason the Swordmage was at 6 hit points (after taking 130+ after reductions, probably close to 155 or so before reductions) was because the Swordmage and the Companion were the only two PCs that most of the NPCs could target in the last encounter. Two of the five last NPCs were Soldiers with melee only attacks, so they were totally unable to get to the PCs in the back.

I was attempting to focus fire on the leaders, but they were hanging back in the corridor behind the portcullis where they could get a cover bonus (sometimes behind other PCs) and the NPCs couldn't get to them. The BBEG did manage to recharge his area attack once and blast multiple PCs twice back there (ha ha, no cover bonus), but he also often had two melee PCs on him so that it was tough for him to get away to do that.

The Bard had used Stirring Shout on the BBEG, so every time a PC hit him, that PC got back 4 hit points. Some PCs actually had more hit points at the end of this fight from this power alone than they had walking into this fight.

The Swordmage had the Rose King's Shield feat, so she was gaining 5 temp hit points (and sometime 10 temp hit points) at least every other round. She was a defending Swordmage and saved her Encounter powers for the last fight, so she had at least one foe marked every round, sometimes as many as 3 NPCs, and if some of the NPCs would have tried to range attack a Leader, she would have stopped 7 of the damage of the attack.

The PCs had 7 healing potions remaining (2 on the swordmage, 1 on everyone else). It only takes 2 minor actions to drink one and gain 10 hit points. I was surprised that the Swordmage didn't use hers, but she said that the Leaders were healing her a lot, so she didn't see the need. Even though she went down to single digit hit points a few times, she felt confident that the Leaders would keep her alive (maybe a poor assumption on her part, but she did take more attacks than anyone else, so maybe it was a good strategy after all, she'd still have 2 healing potions remaining after all of the rest of the party healing was gone).

Using up healing surges was irrelevant. Players were going to suck down every bit of healing that they had before they would allow any PC to go or stay unconscious.

In order to kill a single PC outright in the last encounter, the NPCs would have had to go through 40+ (not including reductions) + 26 (bloodied, 32 in the case of the swordmage). Even if every NPC hit a PC enough to make him or her go unconscious, there's no way that the Leaders would have let that PC stay on the ground long enough for another NPC to do a Coup De Grace. The NPCs just didn't do enough damage and have enough turns per round to manage that. Action Economy just didn't give the NPCs enough of a chance to do that.

So yes, my players are very smart and have been playing 4E since it came out. They used cover, distance, specific powers, and other good tactics to prevent the very tactic that you suggest. They optimize their healing so that every ounce of healing they possess will be used before a single PC can be killed. They prevented the lower defense PCs from even being in the fight and forced 3 out of the 5 NPCs to focus on the defender and the companion due to terrain.

Your suggestion sounds good in theory, but there's no way that it would work that way in practice. My group would never make that rookie mistake and allow it.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 4, 2011)

jodyjohnson said:


> But they still haven't completed all the glory awards.




True.

It sounds like your group had fun though and that's the important thing.

My players really don't care about the glory awards too much. They actually managed to acquire quite a few of them. They didn't get the "kill all the monsters in the dungeon" one, but that's because we stopped the encounter after the vault room was finished. They could have gone into the final room and killed the last 2 NPCs with the 5 remaining rounds, but that was anti-climatic at that point. They actually managed between them 9 of the awards and probably could get some more if we played again, but none of us are interested in playing again.

Going back and seeing if one of them will fall into a pit, or kill a fellow PC, or create less effective PCs so that we can have a TPK to just acquire glory awards just isn't fun for our group, so we are going back to our normal campaign until the next Lair Assault comes out.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 4, 2011)

jodyjohnson said:


> I think the scenario would be completely different if it was 3 separate encounters over 20 rnds instead of one mega encounter - the dailies, and encounter long effects have too much weight.




I totally agree with this. I don't understand how WotC didn't figure this out when playtesting.

Some of the players playing this encounter a second time could take Blade Initiate and viola, instant +3 to AC for them for the entire encounter for a single feat and an Int of 13. Duh!


----------



## Matt James (Sep 4, 2011)

I had all of the NPCs stay back and use similar tactics to the PCs. It forced the PCs in and I was able to slaughter them. 

KarinsDad, I hope the PCs had fun. It took a bit of adjusting for me to realize it was me vs. them, and not me presenting a world and story. Lair Assault should be no-holds barred. I hope you guys stick around for the others when they come out. I designed the third in the series and I hope you find it to your liking.


----------



## jodyjohnson (Sep 4, 2011)

I think that group would be challenged to complete the Speed Demon glory award.  

Or maybe they should keep trying with less optimised characters or less players each time.  

If it was just about winning the encounter there's little reason to have it last 13 weeks.

In the end though it was a challenge - but the challenge all happened during character building so that the actual play itself was a challengeless grind.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 4, 2011)

Matt James said:


> I had all of the NPCs stay back and use similar tactics to the PCs. It forced the PCs in and I was able to slaughter them.
> 
> KarinsDad, I hope the PCs had fun. It took a bit of adjusting for me to realize it was me vs. them, and not me presenting a world and story. Lair Assault should be no-holds barred. I hope you guys stick around for the others when they come out. I designed the third in the series and I hope you find it to your liking.




The PCs did not have fun.

The players had a blast. 

The DM was a little bit bored. "Ha ha, I hit the Bard with a mega attack" Ranger immediate interrupt "Err, no, the foe is dead or the attack misses".

It was actually fun for me as well, but I pulled out every stop I could think of and it didn't help. The players had too many options, there were not enough foes, until the end of the encounter Dailies were too potent, the foes did too little damage, and the terrain damage which was the major set of damage in the encounter was easily avoided by the players.

Even the cover of the module telegraphed the kind of elemental resistance that the players should bring to the fight. Don't let the cover give the players clues if you want to challenge them.

I had even planned on having the Warlocks when they were nearly dead do a shift over the mud and then teleport switch places with a PC so that the PC ended up in the mud and the Warlock would end up in the midst of the party (DM stretching the rules a bit), but both times it could have occurred (each Warlock), none of the PCs were taking ongoing damage anymore and the Warlock could not use the transposition power.

PS. A running encounter like this makes "until end of encounter" dailies too powerful. Have the PCs do rests, make them run out of healing surges and Dailies. Always have more foes per room than PCs so that Action Economy is in the favor of the NPCs. That's the way to challenge them. This encounter was a poor first attempt by WotC. I hope the next two are much better.


----------



## jodyjohnson (Sep 4, 2011)

First off, I think KDs issue highlight one of the problems I have with optimized play.  If the goal is to win, then the obvious solution is to stack things in your favor: more healing, prevent damage, make sure you hit, make sure the enemy doesn't hit, control the enemy playbook, while running your own plays.

And the end result is a 40-7 blowout.  Fun to play a few times, rarely fun to watch.  If the goal is to make sure nothing bad happens, then it's not surprising to find that nothing interesting happens.

I'm more of a "let's see what happens", and "let the dice decide what happens" player/DM.  I think Lair Assault was great for that.  Disjointed party of strangers, random characters, only moderately experienced DM, low level where dice make more impact.  And we TPK'd.  I could play it 4-6 more times and it would play out differently each time (I mean we'd TPK in a different order).


When I first heard about Lair Assault I assumed it would be more of a build a team and then play a new scenario every week and see how you did through the season (ala "we went 5/12 for success with this group of characters").

Instead it's more of a play as many times as you can stomach and see what happens - the characters then get more finely tuned each week and the DM shifts things around.

I see it as turning Encounters noobs and role-players into KD-grade tacticians.  It's also fuel for developing more tactical DMs.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 4, 2011)

jodyjohnson said:


> I think that group would be challenged to complete the Speed Demon glory award.
> 
> Or maybe they should keep trying with less optimised characters or less players each time.
> 
> ...




I agree with what you say, but I think playing the same encounter over and over again is pointless. Just because WotC wants us to do that does not mean that my group wants us to do that.

The encounter doesn't have enough ways to change it so that there are totally new surprises for the players. Just switching around the monsters isn't good enough. Room features have to change. Terrain has to change. Tons of different types of traps should be added. Swallowing a fish has to poison a PC sometimes. In order to keep the players coming back and being interested, glory awards are not enough.

My players play to win, not to win glory awards.

With a good DM, I don't think any group can get the Speed Demon glory award. Even invisible PCs would take too many rounds to run to the room and take out the BBEG. Is there a low level scrying power that would allow the group to teleport into that room on round two??? I don't know of any low level group teleports or powers that give x-ray vision for a round.

With the shortest possible route (and using an action point to keep the door open in round one) and a super lucky strength check to break down the fake door (possibly with a strength boosting power and Aid Another), the PCs could get to the BBEG sometime in early third round (possibly late second round for a speedster, but someone strong needs to get to the fake door early on). Course, they would have 1 to 3 rooms worth of bad guys attacking them in the process more or less unopposed (PCs cannot both run and do attacks and make up that amount of distance).

If the goal of my players was just to get that award and they set up their PCs to do that, I wouldn't just let them get it automatically. I'd set up the dungeon to make it tough for them to accomplish that. It's hard to break down the second door if there are two NPCs preventing the PCs from getting next to it.


----------



## jester_gl (Sep 4, 2011)

I DM lair assault twice yesterday for a group of, let's say, less optimized character.

First try, only one character got to actually enter the mud room, everyone else died in the first room.  TPK round 7.  They were only 4 but the pair of monster I was to remove were not even in the first few room, so they lacked fire power and healing.

Second try they did a little better.  This time there was a party of 5 and they had a plan going on, but they split the party...bad idea.  By the end of round 4, 2 were on the ledge on the other side of the mud room, 1 was at the bottom of that room (pushed), the paladin seeing he couldn't get there in time managed to get to the sealed door (and learned that it was at that moment) and a slayer was left with all the monster in the first room.

Turn 5, concentrated fire on the cleric took him out, and he couldn't sustain moment of glory.  The paladin rolled 19 and opened the door to the boss, while alone.  The lone slayer in the first room got destroyed by all the combined attack and the guys on the ledge were pushed back by a warlock.  Turn 7 everyone was dead except for the warden who survived 5 more round by rolling 20 on his death save and font of life completely negating the fire elemental on every single round.  He eventually got stabbed to death by a blazing skeleton.

-Never split the party: this hold true everytime.
-Know your character: the paladin never did anything other than MBA and a lone lay on hand.
-Try some less obvious thing: Let's just say that glory were not that high.
-Have fun: had one player who was getting frustated near the end of his second tpk, had to remind him that it is a game.
-Happy birthday to me: got to do 2 tpk on my birthday, something I never get to do with regular game because I want them to continue.


----------



## Matt James (Sep 4, 2011)

jodyjohnson said:


> First off, I think KDs issue highlight one of the problems I have with Optimized play.  If the goal is to win, then the obvious solution is to stack things in your favor: more healing, prevent damage, make sure you hit, make sure the enemy doesn't hit, control the enemy playbook, while running your own plays.




You're confusing the two. Organized Play represents several different types of events that people can participate in at their FLGS. Lair Assault is one designed for exactly the reasons you gave. The goal is to win. 

I never expected it to be all things to all people, but some will love it where others will hate it. Sucks that your players were bored. But now you know Lair Assault may not be for them?

That being said, maybe submit some feedback over on the WotC forums? It will only help to improve future products, yes?


----------



## Saracenus (Sep 4, 2011)

Some tips I have learned from running Ultimate Dungeon Delve and Battle Interactives for Living Campaigns.

1.) Roll initiatives and then assign the highest number to the monster with highest init mod, next highest to the next monster with the 2nd highest init mod, etc. This won't prevent a series of bad init rolls but it will give faster monsters an opportunity to go before the PCs.

2.) Have one of the players track init. This means you can concentrate on killing the players. I also give another player my condition markers and they get to put them on the PCs and Monsters.

3.) Put pressure on the players to make decisions quickly. I will tell someone if they do not make a choice within 10 sec, they are delaying. Make sure folks know their turns are coming up so they can start thinking. Letting people think too long bogs the game down and you want players to feel pressure to perform.

4.) Know your team (monster) backwards and forwards. Look for synergy and terrain you can take advantage of. Can't damage them enough, can you slow them down instead?

5.) Be evil. Use every trick you have in your book. A fully optimized group that plays well together are going to stomp you most of the time, especially if they win initiative. That doesn't mean you have to take it lying down. If you can't kill them all, kill one or two.

For Lair Assault (LA) Season 1:

PRO TIP: Use the map card to plan out two different setups for each of the maps. That way if a party is going to walk through one map you can choose to use the other one without missing a beat.

PRO TIP 2: Monster Placement is going to be key. Look at the terrain and natural choke points and try to maximize your foes ability to use it against the PCs while protecting themselves.

How tough LA is  for a party is heavily dependent on the DM being both ruthless, efficient, and prepared. Your players are going to put a lot of thought into it, so should you.

My two coppers,


----------



## Matt James (Sep 4, 2011)

Saracenus said:


> snip




Can't give XP. Great tips.


----------



## Bold or Stupid (Sep 5, 2011)

Matt James said:


> Can't give XP. Great tips.




Covered for you.


----------



## jodyjohnson (Sep 5, 2011)

Matt James said:


> You're confusing the two. Organized Play represents several different types of events that people can participate in at their FLGS. Lair Assault is one designed for exactly the reasons you gave. The goal is to win.
> 
> I never expected it to be all things to all people, but some will love it where others will hate it. Sucks that your players were bored. But now you know Lair Assault may not be for them?




Optimized play, also known as power-gaming.  We enjoyed the Organized Play.  I was a player in the non-optimized group.


----------



## Knowledge Checks (Sep 5, 2011)

Played in Lair Assault at my FLGS today. End result: TPK by Round 14 or so.

Dwarf Fighter (Rageblood Vigor) (me!)
Human Knight
Half-Orc Hunter
Kalashtar Cleric (some kind of uber healer)
Human Warlord
Halfling Rogue

We wasted too much time in the first room, buffing ourselves and taking out the elemental and fire hound instead of just running. We opened all the doors and decided to go down the left hallway, ensuring everyone in the party got the fire vulnerability. The rogue couldn't hit anything, and when he did he never had combat advantage, so no sneak attack. I don't think he did sneak attack damage a single time. I recommended that he play an Essentials Thief next time.

No one died until we got to the boss room, and I was the first casualty. With my temp HP and a sustained resist 5 all from the cleric, I hadn't taken a single point of actual damage in getting to the boss room, but immediately after I stepped inside the boss nova'd me and I dropped to -27. Before the healer could bring me up I took some ongoing fire damage and was Uncle Ben Dead.

After that things just went downhill. The party was stuck in that left entrance for 3 or 4 rounds, as the warlocks from the mud room had come down to the forge to fight. So we had the 2 skeletons, 2 warlocks, 2 dragonborn, and the boss. There just wasn't enough space to get our people out of fireball formation and the rest of the party started dropping like flies. The last one alive was the Knight, but he got dropped in the lava and burned.

Overall, I enjoyed it and am looking forward to next week. About half of our table was heavy optimiziers, while the other players were at least experienced with 4e dnd, including some Epic tier play. We're going to tweak our builds and next week just run straight for the forge 

---

Also, having the fight as a single encounter does open up a lot of wonky options, like the Master's weapon enchantment. Both the Knight and I myself had that and we were both running with two stances. Also, certain potions and other magic items that last till the end of the encounter are more powerful, like the Gloves of Piercing (ignore resist of 10 or under) and the potion that lets you ignore difficult terrain while shifting.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 5, 2011)

Knowledge Checks said:


> After that things just went downhill. The party was stuck in that left entrance for 3 or 4 rounds, as the warlocks from the mud room had come down to the forge to fight. So we had the 2 skeletons, 2 warlocks, 2 dragonborn, and the boss. There just wasn't enough space to get our people out of fireball formation and the rest of the party started dropping like flies. The last one alive was the Knight, but he got dropped in the lava and burned.




It sounds like your DM might have taken some liberties here.

The warlocks from the mud room are not supposed to come after the PCs unless the door to the mud room had been opened previously. And with their two area effect attacks, that's a lot of extra damage that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Course, if you had opened the door to the mud room, then you were fair game.


----------



## Knowledge Checks (Sep 5, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> It sounds like your DM might have taken some liberties here.
> 
> The warlocks from the mud room are not supposed to come after the PCs unless the door to the mud room had been opened previously. And with their two area effect attacks, that's a lot of extra damage that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Course, if you had opened the door to the mud room, then you were fair game.




We did open the mud room door, so it was a legit move on his part. We took one look inside and decided that the hallway was our better option.


----------



## Erudite Frog (Sep 5, 2011)

jodyjohnson said:


> Optimized play.  We enjoyed the Organized Play.  I was a player in the non-optimized group.




There are several of them. LA is one and lfr is another. Encounters is one too. You read the description and thought it was something else?????


----------



## jelmore (Sep 5, 2011)

I'm getting ready to run Forge of the Dawn Titan for my FLGS in the next two weeks; I was supposed to run it last night but Labor Day Weekend killed any interest.

Anyway, I'm rolling up some different groups of beasties, in case we want to try it more than once in a given session. I was looking at the Nightmare mode, which says to add one creature of each level group; so here's a silly question — does that include the Fire Elemental? It's called "Nightmare mode", so I assume so...


----------



## jester_gl (Sep 5, 2011)

The reason the monster don't open door before they see the PC is because they are not aware that something is happening.  But after round 4 all door are open and they are all very aware of something happening, with the dungeon exploding and all.

Technically speaking, shouldn't all the monster in the dungeon be able to converge on the PC now that they don't need to open any doors to do so?


----------



## Zuche (Sep 5, 2011)

jester_gl said:


> The reason the monster don't open door before they see the PC is because they are not aware that something is happening.  But after round 4 all door are open and they are all very aware of something happening, with the dungeon exploding and all.
> 
> Technically speaking, shouldn't all the monster in the dungeon be able to converge on the PC now that they don't need to open any doors to do so?




I hadn't interpreted it that way, but I wouldn't object to that interpretation. One thing to keep in mind is that there are few safe paths for many of the monsters in the lair to reach one another after that event occurs. That said, I'm surprised KarinsDad didn't have one of the two temple champions open the back door to their room when everyone bunched up at the portcullis. Losing one round to bring in two more fresh allies seemed like a given.

Likewise, I'm surprised that neither of the warlocks in the mudroom managed to open the door behind them to shout an alarm to their master. That would have let his team complicate things nicely.

As for the complaint about the box telegraphing the importance of fire resistance, that strikes me as entirely appropriate. I mean, wasn't "Forge of the Dawn Titan" a dead giveaway what to expect? If parties prepared in advance for fire damage, good! The metagame is justified quite well within game: wouldn't Lord Neverember have hired people well equipped to tackle fire-based opposition here?

I was surprised that only two of the eight players I ran in simultaneous sessions on Saturday opted for fire resistance--but not as surprised as they were with how that option turned out. (Useful, but not anywhere as useful as they'd thought it would be.) One group got bogged down at the front entrance and refused to move until they'd killed off everything in the room...and while one had exceptional counterattacking ability (doing at least 17 hp of damage to anything that made a melee attack against him), that turned out quite poorly for them. They eventually made it through the sealed door (on their first attempt, as a 20 was rolled on top of an attempt to aid another), and the last man standing managed to survive for another six rounds by virtue of an amusing string of bad rolls (nothing over 3) on my part.

The other group, however, managed to get through those doors and swarm all over the boss by round three. It was looking good for them, with action points sprayed everywhere and a prone and dazed target before them. And then their luck ran dry, leaving them unable to tag him at all as the other monsters came in behind them...the cleric got knocked unconscious and was dumped into the lava with fatal results, the rest of the team found itself immobilized long enough for the enemy to regroup, and they were completely slaughtered within the next two rounds.

I'm already working on alternate trap and monster placement, with a few nasty ideas for the alternate monsters in place. (The Elect can do a surprising amount of harm if they get a chance and you think beyond what they can do with an attack roll.) I would certainly like to see alternate trap and terrain options in further assaults. Easier means of revealing the map a room at a time would also be nice (laminated pages I could fit together instead of a poster of the full map, for example). As an introduction, however, I am quite happy with it, as were at least six of my eight players.


----------



## Ratinyourwalls (Sep 6, 2011)

Three lazy Warlords, Two Essentials rogues.

We slaughtered ALL THE THINGS. Everything the Warlords did gave the Rogues an extra basic attack...which because we were essentials rogues did ginormous amounts of damage. We just slashed our way across the battlefield. Nothing could stay in melee range of us without dying almost instantly. There was blood. Lots of it and it was epic and we had a blast.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 6, 2011)

Zuche said:


> I hadn't interpreted it that way, but I wouldn't object to that interpretation. One thing to keep in mind is that there are few safe paths for many of the monsters in the lair to reach one another after that event occurs. That said, I'm surprised KarinsDad didn't have one of the two temple champions open the back door to their room when everyone bunched up at the portcullis. Losing one round to bring in two more fresh allies seemed like a given.




As far as I remember, the module didn't say that the doors opened, it just stated that they didn't auto-close.

And yeah, bringing in the last two foes didn't occur to me because of that whole "monsters won't open the doors thing". Something to remember if we ever run it again. The champions moved up right away to protect the BBEG.

I had put in two blazing skeletons in the last room, but they were just there to supply more firepower and they went down pretty quickly when the PCs finally got around to focusing fire on them.



Zuche said:


> Likewise, I'm surprised that neither of the warlocks in the mudroom managed to open the door behind them to shout an alarm to their master. That would have let his team complicate things nicely.




I didn't bother with that. The entire adventure pre-supposed that he knew that they were there, so I just ran it that way. It ended up with the PCs strung along in the back hallway anyway because of the cloaks, so although the one Champion did not get up into the fight right away, neither did half of the PCs.


----------



## Zuche (Sep 7, 2011)

Yeah, when I read that bit about monsters not opening doors, I decided that while it was okay that the defenders would wait for intruders to come to them, failing to make use of the door across from the player's point of entry to their room would not be a smart tactical decision.

As for shouting out a warning to Vell, I took the view that it let him know what path the adventurers were taking toward him and what resources they might find before they got to him. Besides, I figured, what else were they going to do with a minor action?

I agree with you on the doors staying closed until opened, even after round four. I'm less clear on the portcullis, though: once raised, shouldn't it stay raised? After round five, shouldn't the damage it's taken make it harder to lower it again? Okay, someone could teleport across the bars and leave them closed, but someone could get hurt doing that, and you have to keep Vell from taking cover from people hiding in the hallway behind the portcullis. With time on his side, it may be necessary to stick out a few more necks to get him.

I've got a few nasty plans involving resource "theft" and the corridor of runes, but I'm going to wait until the players need the extra bit of challenge. Vell knows the resources available to him, and he should be fully prepared to exploit that at any time.


----------



## Saracenus (Sep 11, 2011)

Played Lair Assault today, it was a DM slot-0 run by the coordinator of the program at our store (yay Guardian Games in PDX!).

Davena was our DM, and she has a rep being tough and she pulled out all the stops. Unfortunately for her, we brought the cheese with an extra helping of cheese.

Party:

Teos - Elf Hunter Ranger
Me - Revenant Storm Sorcerer
Melissa (my lovely wife) - Eladrin Thief
Alex - Water Genesi Taclord
John - Half-Orc Slayer (DEX based charger)
David - Dwarf Fighter (Axe and Board)

We rocked the adventure completely mid 14th round. We killed the boss in round 12.

No fatalities, though our dwarven fighter was unconscious during the boss fight for a round.

Things that were just bad, wrong fun:

Teos and I both had  Armor of Sudden Recovery +1:
Level 3 Uncommon
Price: 680 gp
Armor: Cloth, Leather
Enhancement: +1 AC
Property: You gain a +1 item bonus to saving throws against ongoing damage.

Power (Daily * Healing): Minor Action. You can use this power when you’re taking ongoing damage. The ongoing damage ends, and *you gain regeneration equal to the amount of the ongoing damage until the end of the encounter*.

I didn't use a single healing surge for healing. I did burn one to power up a potion of clarity. Yeah, a Revenant with regen is just wrong.

TacLord was in melee basic heaven with the Slayer and Thief. My Sorcerer had a strong melee basic (but it wasn't needed).

The DEX based Slayer could swap between Maul and Bow and was nasty with both.

The rogue has +1 Distance dagger for ranged.

It was glorious.


----------



## Dice4Hire (Sep 11, 2011)

Anyone else getting the feeling that for power, it is best to just ignore controllers and defenders?


----------



## Saracenus (Sep 11, 2011)

Our controller was instrumental in our flawless (well nearly flawless victory).

My Sorcerer was not a big damage dealer (in comparison to the rogue and striker) but added some control at key moments. I would say that Leader, Striker, and Controller are key, Defender is really the one that is iffy.

I would say that speed, alternate movement, team synergy and surge-less healing is the key to success.

For instance the team Thief had Acrobat's Trick which allowed her to climb at movement - 2, which in turn allowed her to move around enemies, avoid terrain effects, and +2 damage.

I took Sorcerous Sirocco which allowed me and another party member that had fair but sketchy Acrobatics mods get past a major terrain hazard.

The TacLord was built to take advantage of the sick basic attack damage that both the Slayer and the Thief were dishing out.

Our Hunter Ranger moved, knocked prone and otherwise messed up the opposition.

The fighter took the heat off us glass canons and absorbed a ton of damage (well over a 150 damage over the course of 14 rounds). He also dished some good damage and was able to nova one round.

The fact that both the Hunter and my Sorcerer were regenerating each round took pressure off the TacLord who kept the Defender and the Thief up and running.

Being bad ass individually is not enough. If your team doesn't work well together you will fail.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 11, 2011)

Dice4Hire said:


> Anyone else getting the feeling that for power, it is best to just ignore controllers and defenders?




It's not so much ignoring controllers and defenders as it is making sure that you have multiple strikers and multiple ways to heal.

A warlord does both healing and can give attacks to a striker. It's like having both a healer and a striker in the same PC.

Defenders and controllers still have their function, but I wouldn't have more than one each in the party if I wanted to win this. For example, a controller locking down the BBEG for 2 rounds could really help give the team time to wipe out his followers before concentrating firepower on the BBEG himself.


----------



## Zuche (Sep 11, 2011)

Yes, the challenge favours strikers with leader support, but some argue that the system favours that combination anyway. You'll still get decent mileage out of a controller, but playing the defender effectively may be more of a challenge here. Your enemies can play a nasty game of hit and run if you let them, and there's just enough cooperation between powers to let them do that.

I was wondering when someone else would notice the armor of sudden recovery. Did your group figure out how to maximize its potential for this place yet?

Three groups defeated in my city now, though I think they'll do better when they leave character design to one of the guys that showed up on Thursday night. He'd designed two party options, and he'd designed them well. Thus far, they've been designing their characters independently, with non-helpful levels of overlap. 

I gave them the benefit of the doubt on jump checks (counting the same running start for two jump checks in one round, rather than resetting it from one jump to the next) and an attempt to seal an iron door with rope (using the break check for the door instead of the rope, where normally I'd have required a Thievery check to get the full benefit from the door). Sure, pushing mercilessly is the goal, but after how much they'd struggled just to get to the second room, it felt more important to help them move things along instead of getting bogged down in the mud room.

One thing people may be overlooking about this program is how useful it can be as a DM training tool. Without the normal balance limits in place and free reign to experiment with monster and trap placement (and monster selection), there's lots of room to find out what works best against certain groups and what allows certain character types to shine better. 

My goal is to make better use of the available resources each time I run this. I've noted a few things that worked quite well, a few that didn't, and times I completely botched my handling of a given option. The insights it's given into some of the players has also been handy. I now have a better feel for how to best trip up some of them, and which ones bear more watching. (One of them may not have been cheating, but he displayed a consistent trend toward... favourable inaccuracies.)

It was also interesting to see how few players paid attention to the promotional material for this game before they played. Only two of the first twelve opted to bring fire protection. Only one thought to test the merits of cold damage. I'm not sure how many of them realized that the packaging was intended to provide them with knowledge their characters were likely to have had in advance. 

I'd like to see future Lair Assaults make better use of this "forewarned" feature. For example,  if a player attempts and succeeds on a History check before the encounter, the party is given some additional benefit to assist them in the challenge ahead: a pertinent item, for example, or a means to safely bypass certain defenses. Knowledge checks could always use more love.


----------



## Rechan (Sep 11, 2011)

Anyone notice that a lot of these groups are throwing Essentials characters in? 

I can't tell if that's to just take advantage of the Warlord extra-MBA exploit, because they don't have to worry about E/D powers, or because the Essentials are just more popular.


----------



## Dice4Hire (Sep 11, 2011)

Rechan said:


> Anyone notice that a lot of these groups are throwing Essentials characters in?
> 
> I can't tell if that's to just take advantage of the Warlord extra-MBA exploit, because they don't have to worry about E/D powers, or because the Essentials are just more popular.




Well, warlords with Essentials strikers, is a bit cheesy, in my opinion. 

But I am wondering why also. The older classes have more dailies and such with till end of encounter effects. I think I would tend to go with one of the older classes. Being a barbarian with a nice rage would be pretty nice. Other classes can also get some really nice encounter effects. 

It is intersting to see what people choose.


----------



## Saracenus (Sep 12, 2011)

My wife built her Thief in less than 2 hours (most of that was magic item selection).

I think the reason essentials PCs are so popular is they are pretty damn good out of the box and with the right non-essentials feats can be completely bad-ass.

My wife's Thief with CA was pumping out consistently 4d8+11 on a charge and 3d8+11 when not charging. This does not include +1d6 for Backstab twice an encounter. She has a duelist weapon so she did an additional +1d6 and +1d8 with a crit.

So:
Not Charging: 14-35 damage/35+1d8+1d6 damage on a crit.
Charging: 15-41 damage/41+1d8+1d6 damage on a crit.

Now she could up that with Backstab for an additional +1d6 and +2 if she uses the Acrobat's Trick.

To get this, 2 feats and one magic weapon.

Had she taken Vanguard weapon it would have been 5d8+11 on a charge.

Why bother with something that requires so much more work?


----------



## Mengu (Sep 12, 2011)

Yeah the thief is great in both mobility and in striking, out of the box, requires very little additional optimization.

I wouldn't throw out defenders or AEDU classes though. The warden I came up with for an all dwarf party was dealing little over 30 damage a hit, plus another 4 at the start of the enemy's turn. After the cleric's party buffs, and his little cloud of permanent concealment, had 26 AC and resist all 5. With saves at the start of his turn, minor action second wind, etc, he is a pretty durable melee machine.


----------



## Taed (Sep 12, 2011)

We only had about 2.5 hours to play (the person with the module was an hour late and then left it at home so someone then brought it, very frustrating), and I feel that we only did so-so.

We were heavy on melee.  I was a Warforged Storm Warden, and there was a Minotaur Earth Warden and a Minotaur Barbarian.  To round it out, we had a Human Shaman and a Revenant Vampire.

The only control we had was the Storm Warden's slides (largely just 1 square) due to powers and Mark of Storms.  The only healing we had was the Shaman, though the Storm Warden had Inspiring Fortitude for one-time temporary HPs.  We were also short on ranged attacks.  So, it wasn't looking too good going into it.

I felt we got kicked around more than we should have in the first room (fire elemental thing and 4 human blow-up-y things), but while two of us were bloodied at the end of that (Storm Warden took the brunt of the damage), we healed up well enough.  Shaman healed who he could and Storm Warden then used Inspiring Fortitude to give everyone 14 temporary hit points, so we were looking good at the end of the third round.

We went straight and found the lava floor and a fireball-shooting statue 15 feet away.  There was something going on with the doors (not sure if it was in the module or DM's choice) such that we couldn't knock them down or remove the pins.  If we could have, it would have been a 20 foot jump to the far end of the room, do-able for 3 of us.  As it was, the door blocked a clear jump.  I then jumped and wanted to grab the statue, get in back of it, and knock it over by pushing between it and the wall.  I jumped and the DM said that the statue was some combination of super-slippery or magically repellent (again, don't know if the module has that or just the DM being difficult) such that I couldn't get a grab on it and I fell in the lava.  And then the round 4 stuff happened and it turned to all lava.  I didn't die, but got pulled out with a longspear with lots of damage.

At that point (about 2 hours in), the players of the two Minotaurs had to leave, so we were down to 3 players.

We then gave up on that room and moved to the mud room.  We took care of two bat-things, which took 2 rounds with just the 3 of us.  I did a test jump to the first hanging platform (+13 Athletics), and that went OK, but the other two characters would be hard-pressed to get across each 15 foot jump as they were both low on Athletics.  There were also two deformed humanoid things on the far ledge which hadn't attacked us yet, so we would have to deal with them to get to the ledge.  I can only hope that if one of us got across, we could either find a switch to raise the other platforms, or use rope to pull the platforms close enough to jump between each.

At that point we stopped, and intend to try it again in 2 weeks, though some of us will probably choose different characters.

So, while we didn't die, we were only part-way through and I don't feel that we did so well.

We spent too much time on melee, and it seems that the right approach would be to control the field, keep moving, and use ranged attacks.


----------



## Saracenus (Sep 13, 2011)

Mengu,

I wasn't giving up on defenders or AEDU clases. Our party composition was half essentials and half AEDU. 

We had 1 Defender who to his credit soaked up a metric ton of damage.

I was merely pointing out that Essentials PCs are popular because they don't require a level of character ops mastery that say PH1-3 class requires. If I only have to max my feats, theme, background and magic items it takes a tremendous burden off building a PC.

Also lets face it, the Essentials Thief can find CA like a pig snuffling for truffles. The AEDU version of the rogue requires way more teamwork and build precision to get that.

Dice4Hire,

The whole point of Lair Assault is bring the cheese. If you don't you are either doing it wrong or trying to get a specific Glory Award. Just sayin'.

It will be interesting to see how Lair Assault plays with CharOps assumptions about build strategies. Most are going for DPR, but ignore synergy between PCs.


----------



## Taed (Sep 13, 2011)

Mengu said:


> The warden I came up with for an all dwarf party was dealing little over 30 damage a hit, plus another 4 at the start of the enemy's turn. After the cleric's party buffs, and his little cloud of permanent concealment, had 26 AC and resist all 5. With saves at the start of his turn, minor action second wind, etc, he is a pretty durable melee machine.




Can you describe how you did that?  My warden was nowhere near as good.  While it sounds like we both used Boiling Cloud (which explains your "little cloud of permanent concealment" and "4 at the start of the enemy's turn"), my damage was only 1d8+6 (~10) with a +1 long sword (Storm Biter Warblade) for the at-wills, and an AC 22 (23 after Form of Mountain's Thunder) with +1 hide (Bloodcut).  To round it out, since he was warforged, he had a Disk of Energy Resistance.


----------



## On Puget Sound (Sep 13, 2011)

Form of Mountain's Thunder deals STR damage to all marked creatures when you hit.  Maw of the Guardian weapon adds CON damage when in guardian form.  Crushing Guardian feat adds +2 damage with a hammer when in guardian form.  So a 1(w) attack deals:

1d10+4Str+3Con+2feat+4Str (again, because the thing you hit is marked, right?) +1 weapon = 1d10+14 without really optimizing for damage - leaving the other 2 feats for defense, mobility or stickiness.  So yeah, I could see mid-20s for a striker-y warden's at-wills.


----------



## Taed (Sep 13, 2011)

On Puget Sound said:


> +4Str (again, because the thing you hit is marked, right?)




I totally missed the +STR against marked enemies when in Form of Mountain's Thunder.  I've only used that character a few times and had never used that daily before.  "Know your character."

Although I'm still interested in how they got up into the 30s.  The Maw of Guardian is limited to mace/hammer, so no greataxe, but to get the AC that was mentioned, I'd certainly assume that they're using a heavy shield and a one-handed weapon.


----------



## Mengu (Sep 13, 2011)

[sblock=Dwarf Warden 5]====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Warvin, level 5
Dwarf, Warden
Build: Earth Warden
Guardian Might Option: Earthstrength
Auspicious Birth (Auspicious Birth Benefit)
Theme: Noble

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
STR 20, CON 18, DEX 10, INT 10, WIS 13, CHA 8

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
STR 17, CON 15, DEX 10, INT 10, WIS 13, CHA 8


AC: 23 Fort: 19 Ref: 15 Will: 15
HP: 65 Surges: 13 Surge Value: 16

TRAINED SKILLS
Athletics +10, Dungeoneering +10, Endurance +10, Nature +8

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics –1, Arcana +2, Bluff +1, Diplomacy +1, Heal +3, History +2, Insight +3, Intimidate +1, Perception +3, Religion +2, Stealth –1, Streetwise +1, Thievery –1

POWERS
Basic Attack: Melee Basic Attack
Basic Attack: Ranged Basic Attack
Noble Utility: Noble Presence
Dwarf Racial Power: Dwarven Resilience
Warden Feature: Warden's Fury
Warden Feature: Warden's Grasp
Warden Attack 1: Weight of Earth
Warden Attack 1: Thorn Strike
Warden Attack 1: Thunder Ram Assault
Warden Attack 1: Form of Mountain's Thunder
Endurance Utility 2: Endure Pain
Warden Attack 3: Earthgrasp Strike
Warden Attack 5: Boiling Cloud

FEATS
Level 1: Dwarven Weapon Training
Level 2: Crippling Crush
Level 4: Bludgeon Expertise

ITEMS
Maw of the Guardian Craghammer +1 x1
Iron Armbands of Power (heroic tier) x1
Gauntlets of Ogre Power (heroic tier) x1
Heavy Shield x1
Magic Hide Armor +2 x1
Collar of Recovery +1 x1
====== End ======
[/sblock]

Here are the bonuses to Weight of Earth:

1d10(b2) Craghammer
+5 Str
+2 feat (DWT)
+2 item (IAoP)
+4 Con (Crippling Crush)
+4 Con (Maw of the Guardian)
+5 Str (Form of Mountain's Thunder)
+2 power (Gauntlets)

1d10(b2)+24, average is 30.5.

If I didn't feel expertise was so essential, I would have gone with barbarian MC for another +2.


----------



## On Puget Sound (Sep 13, 2011)

How cheesy is too cheesy?  I'm working on a LA party and I came across this Sorcerer Daily 5:


> Deep Freeze
> 
> Driving your blade home, you hiss a word of power , and white bone-chililng mist begins to seep from your foe's body.
> 
> ...




So, given the "creature" rather than "enemy", and the "effect" tag, I want to hit attack the barbarian with it at the start of the assault.  Obviously I'm going to put away my dagger and hit unarmed, and warn the barbarian to go into full defense.  I'm wondering whether closing my eyes before attacking to give him total concealment would take it over the edge from clever cheese to enrage-the-GM cheese.  

(I'm also wondering whether it's worth giving up a damaging Sorc5 power and the first round's actions from at least the sorc and possibly the barb.  Probably not, but it would sure be funny!)


----------



## Mengu (Sep 13, 2011)

Saracenus said:


> Also lets face it, the Essentials Thief can find CA like a pig snuffling for truffles. The AEDU version of the rogue requires way more teamwork and build precision to get that.




This is very true, though Pack Outcast is pretty sick in that regard, for a human melee rogue.



Saracenus said:


> It will be interesting to see how Lair Assault plays with CharOps assumptions about build strategies. Most are going for DPR, but ignore synergy between PCs.




Charop is a three edged sword. Have nova potential, have round to round good DPR, and be survivable. I think the weight shifts slightly away from nova and early encounter damage via immediate and minor action attacks, toward a bit more survivability for this exercise. But otherwise, I imagine most principles remain the same. Charop doesn't really ignore synergy between PC's. Warlord + Essentials striker is the chicken that lays golden eggs or something. Relying on another PC for round to round actions is tough but not out of the realm of possibility. It is however difficult to find such synergies at level 5, though with some investment, radiant damage could be exploited a bit I suppose. Most cool party tricks that I like come from encounter powers, and in a 15 round encounter, those are going to be pretty sparse.


----------



## Knowledge Checks (Sep 14, 2011)

We had our second crack at the dungeon this past Sunday. Instead of dying in the 14th round (1st try), we killed the boss during the 7th round. 

Party Line Up

Revenant (human) Rageblood Vigor Barbarian (me)
Half-Elf Bard (super heals...had around 9 or 10 heals)
Genasi Warden (our only defender, only one we needed)
Human Blackguard (died in round 6)
Human Thief (charging spec)
Human Bladesinger

We decided to just rush to the forge room this time instead of messing around with the glyph hallway. The DM anticipated this and stacked up the enemies in the first two rooms. We stuck to our plan and just ran while the defender cleaned up the minions.

On round 3 we were in the small room to the left of the forge room, stacked up to the door. It got opened and the bosses readied action went off, immobilizing 4 of us until EONT...which was the end of Round 4. So at the start of Round 5 the floor drops and the bard goes into the lava. The Warden and I are still stuck in the entry room on the wrong side of the lava while the rest of the party surges into the forge room.

Thanks to my +12 athletics check, I run while climbing and make it to the forge room, spending my AP to attack the boss on round 5. The warden spider walks through the lava room and then teleports (armor magic item) through the door.

Round 6 was us beating up on the boss. There was 1 firebat left in the room with him, but it died quickly and in the middle of round 7 we finished off the boss. I actually used my Fey Strike Maul to pull him right next to me and the defender on Round 6, and we surrounded him.

---

The difference between this week and the first run was that we knew the layout and knew ahead of time where we were going. The first run we wasted a lot of rounds just exploring. Also, we knew what to expect and built our characters for the dungeon. My revenant had the belt of sonnli-something (resist all 10 when at 0 or under) and I had boosted my death saving throw to +9, so I never went unconscious when I dropped below zero. The stance power of the Wolfstone Heritage feat gave my Resist all 5 when I was bloodied.

If you're going to run an all 1 race group, use Revenant (humans). The Wolfstone Heritage feat is awesome. With the stance power you reduce forced movement by 2, which is great for not getting pushed or slid into lava. The resist 5 when bloodied and immune to prone when bloodied is also solid.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 14, 2011)

Mengu said:


> [sblock=Dwarf Warden 5]====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
> Warvin, level 5
> Dwarf, Warden
> Build: Earth Warden
> ...




Funny how everyone and his brother is a noble these days. Fricking WotC and their #*#&#^#%#&# unbalanced themes.


----------



## Mengu (Sep 14, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> Funny how everyone and his brother is a noble these days. Fricking WotC and their #*#&#^#%#&# unbalanced themes.




Eventhough this character doesn't make the optimal use for it, in the LA format, it's a no brainer (either that or Wizard's Apprentice). Otherwise, I'd say Guardian and Pack Outcast are the most powerful themes. Pack Outcast level 5 feature is just horribly wrong.

For home games and even LFR, it's not difficult to ignore the power play options, I have characters ranging from Ordained Priest, to Wizard's Apprentice, to Harper, to Mercenary, though for one of my characters, Guardian was too perfect to pass up.


----------



## Alphastream (Sep 15, 2011)

I'll be honest and say that I was negative about this program. I really like story, RP, and seeing interesting builds. I'm not a fan of delves and optimization for its own sake. When I look at the landscape I think there are people who want a pregen, people that want to spend minimal time making a PC, people that want to work on strong builds for a PC, and then some that really live to optimize. I just couldn't see the program drawing enough people. 

And then I played it. I was part of Saracenus' table. I played an efficient elven huntress (she missed once) with a smart choice in armor and some straight-forward (nothing insane) build choices. I basically took my dwarven huntress from LFR and just tweaked for the description of the Lair Assault. We did extremely well, despite not being the cheesiest people out there. Most importantly, we all had an absolute blast.

It would be smart of WotC if this initial adventure was a bit easier than those to come later. Regardless, I'm really impressed with how many people are interested in this program and having fun with it once they play. The number of people posting that they have tried more than once is high. The adventure itself is a very good delve written by a very good author. The materials are excellent with fun bits for the DM. I'm impressed and glad to be proven wrong.


----------



## Zuche (Sep 18, 2011)

We've lost six parties now in Calgary, though the last group (three dwarves and a genasi) came within 3 hp of victory. A few misjudgments cost them a faster win, but they get points for these stunts:

1) After drawing the attention of a second room full of temple elect, the party went into the room with the weak floor, only for the genasi warlock to get cut off from the group by them. He then triggered a fire power and went Brave Little Tailor on them and managed to avoid taking any damage at all. His allies in the doorway took a few hits. Yes, a fire power. Even managed to lay a respectable amount of hurt on the one non-minion in the room with that.

2) After the dwarf ranger/barbarian knocked Vell down, the dwarf knight leapt over him (drawing and avoiding the resulting opportunity attack) to cut off his escape route. He was then able to push him out from behind his defensive position, whereupon the group managed to surround and daze him.

3) After Vell knocked the knight back and dropped the barbarian/ranger, I opted to spend his action point on making sure the barbarian stayed down. I rolled a 1. The cleric then restored the barbarian, and that character managed to stay in the fight for another four rounds, most of them with no more than 6 hp (real and temporary combined).

Once again, it was an educational experience. There were several mistakes I have to avoid next time, and I know the group spotted a few of their own that might have turned the tide.

The best death this week went to another DM at the same location. The team opted to beeline for the forge, ignoring the first room's guardians to break down the sealed door at the end of round three. Round four came, the party advanced on Vell to a promising start...and then one of the warlocks that had been pursuing us struck the cleric with his fire blast, letting the other finish the round by using a teleportation power to switch places with him and then drop concussive burst on the rest of us.

Then the floor collapsed and the cleric left play in classic Wile E. Coyote style. No one else lasted beyond the seventh round.


----------



## Nullzone (Sep 18, 2011)

As a Swordmage I want to kick this module's author in the shins. If you're going to screw entire class builds out of their distinctive features, you'd better damn well have given those builds plenty of warning about it so they can make an informed choice, or at least penalize the monsters to some extent as well, instead of allowing them to abuse that aspect with self-impunity.

Our group still won, but my character was flat out useless after round 4. It sucked.


----------



## Saagael (Sep 18, 2011)

Nullzone said:


> As a Swordmage I want to kick this module's author in the shins. If you're going to screw entire class builds out of their distinctive features, you'd better damn well have given those builds plenty of warning about it so they can make an informed choice, or at least penalize the monsters to some extent as well, instead of allowing them to abuse that aspect with self-impunity.
> 
> Our group still won, but my character was flat out useless after round 4. It sucked.




I'm not quite sure how this adventure invalidated the swordmage class. Why were you rendered useless?


----------



## Nullzone (Sep 19, 2011)

Saagael said:


> I'm not quite sure how this adventure invalidated the swordmage class. Why were you rendered useless?




Because teleporting after round 4 was penalized by unresistable 10 fire damage to every creature in a burst 3 of the origin square (which most of the monsters resisted anyway so I couldn't even use it as a nuke). I couldn't enforce my mark or use most of my good attacks without nuking the party in the process.


----------



## Saracenus (Sep 19, 2011)

I think your DM was off script. There is no effect making you blast your teammates when teleporting (I am prepping to run this next Sunday).

Now there may have been a monster that that I haven't gone over that will penalize you, but I sincerely doubt it.

And certainly when my wife's Eladrin Rogue bamfed after round 4 she didn't have this happen.

Don't blame the author...

My two fire blasted copper,


----------



## Nullzone (Sep 19, 2011)

That's disappointing if that's the case, I wouldn't expect that from the guy who ran it for us. I'll have to see if I can get a look at the material (I don't really think it's possible to cheat since the DM has so much control over the game anyway, and once you've seen it once you know how the rounds are going to progress plus the general terrain features)...


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 19, 2011)

Saracenus said:


> I think your DM was off script. There is no effect making you blast your teammates when teleporting (I am prepping to run this next Sunday).
> 
> Now there may have been a monster that that I haven't gone over that will penalize you, but I sincerely doubt it.
> 
> ...




You're mistaken.

Anyone teleporting and anyone within 3 squares of the teleporter takes 10 fire damage.

And, it occurs in round 1. You do not have to wait for round 4.

The offensive Swordmages are screwed. It is a screwup by WotC.


----------



## Taed (Sep 19, 2011)

Our second time through was basically a win.  We ran out of real-world time because the store was closing, but we were down to just the main baddie and all but one of us was at full HPs (and some temp HPs) with a zone of regeneration and 5 rounds left.  So, we were probably going to win (though the DM was probably only 60% sure), though we don't know yet how tough the main baddie is, so that's just my feel.

The big difference the second time through was that we were all more focused on having regeneration and healing abilities.  Two of us (Warden and Swordmage) had the Armor of Sudden Recovery, which gave us Regeneration 10 after being hit by the fire elemental.  A third character also had it, but the DM had the elemental be smart about it and not fall into that trap.

We were also able to get a character with a rope and climbing kit across the lava room before the "walls came crashing down", so we set up a system to climb along the walls which went much better than jumping (especially since I was the only character with decent Athletics).  Knocking down that wall was difficult as I was the only strong character and it was felt that there was only enough room for 1 character to aid me, so that took us about 6 rounds, but that also gave us extra time to use our regeneration and other healing.

Our goal is to finish it for real on our third attempt, and then try it on nightmare mode.

I also have to say that I just started using Fortune Cards with Lair Assault, and they've been an additional bit of fun and I used them twice today (a +2 move, allowing me to do a double-move to catch up to the party, and a free move, allowing me to get to the baddie across the room without doing a charge).


----------



## Taed (Sep 19, 2011)

Saracenus said:


> I think your DM was off script. There is no effect making you blast your teammates when teleporting (I am prepping to run this next Sunday).




I haven't read the module, but both DMs that I ran it with also had damage at the origin of a teleport, and I think it was also a burst 3 for 10 fire damage.  So given that, I think that it must be written in there somewhere.

We actually used it against the baddies a bit, though we were also getting hurt ourselves, so I suspect those players will avoid it next time.


----------



## Rerednaw (Sep 19, 2011)

Mengu said:


> [sblock=Dwarf Warden 5]====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
> Warvin, level 5
> Dwarf, Warden
> Build: Earth Warden
> ...




Nice build!
Just have a few questions:
Crippling Crush is when you slow/immob a target on a hit. How do you get this for each attack per round?
Iron Armbands are L6, 
+2 Armor is L6.
Don't have DM's kit, not sure what the level/price of a rare is (Gauntlets) so how are they obtained? 
I thought the starting gear was L6, L5, L4, 840 gp, max 2 consumables of L5.
Neverwinter Noble has a race pre-req of human with possible half-elf/orc.

Still a pretty good starting point.


----------



## Zuche (Sep 19, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> The offensive Swordmages are screwed. It is a screwup by WotC.




That was not a screwup. I'm not going to feel bad because someone made an unfortunate build choice here. I'll commiserate with them on the basis of a bad roll, and I'll be glad to applaud them on a clever or lucky moment, but an unfortunate choice of build? In a campaign, sure, but here?

Live and learn, princess. As one of my players said, "If you can't stand repeat failures, grad school is not for you."

Sometimes, life's just not fair. Thank goodness this is only a game, where you can go back and try the whole thing again with a character that doesn't have that limitation. If you're feeling really bold, you could even decide to go back in with a party of five eladrin to earn bragging rights for winning despite having each party member teleport once within the burst radius of every other PC.

Seriously, KD, first you complained that modestly observant players could clue into the fact that fire protection was not a bad idea for this challenge, then you complain because there's a feature that can catch them completely offguard, maybe even kill them outright?  Meanwhile, I thought the former was a nice treat for the forward thinking player, and the latter the sort of potential rude shock that made the original Tomb of Horrors a classic.


----------



## corwyn77 (Sep 19, 2011)

Rerednaw said:


> Nice build!
> Just have a few questions:
> Crippling Crush is when you slow/immob a target on a hit. How do you get this for each attack per round?
> Iron Armbands are L6,
> ...




Weight of Earth is an at-will that slows.


----------



## corwyn77 (Sep 19, 2011)

So do people think it's against the spirit of LA for the DM to see characters before hand, given they're vetted through Character Builder? One of my players casually joked about this but then I got to thinking...

But then, I'm still the DM.


----------



## Nullzone (Sep 19, 2011)

DM shouldn't be seeing anything the players come up with until he's already committed his monster/trap layout to the map.

 @Zuche : There is a HUGE difference between a paradigm shift during the game due to an unexpected complication and a complete neutering of a class. I shouldn't be punished walking into a challenge, no matter how hard it is, simply due to the choice I made as the core tenet of my character for the duration. Do you understand how un-fun it is to sit there for three hours and feel completely helpless?

Good complication: The fire elemental that 'flares' for damage every time it gets hit. Forces some tactics changes on the party.

Bad complication: LEAVING AN ENTIRE CLASS TO SIT ON ITS THUMBS AND DO NOTHING BUT AT WILL ATTACKS.


----------



## Mengu (Sep 19, 2011)

Rerednaw said:


> Nice build!
> Just have a few questions:
> Crippling Crush is when you slow/immob a target on a hit. How do you get this for each attack per round?
> Iron Armbands are L6,
> ...




Weight of Earth Slows at-will

Noble is a generic theme from Dragon 399 with no race restrictions, that gives me a free common level 6 item, and that's where the +2 armor is coming from.

Gauntlets are level 5. Acquisition rules don't differentiate between common, uncommon and rare, the only restriction is you can have only one rare per tier. So I get the gauntlets as the level 5 item, and it just happens to be rare.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 19, 2011)

Zuche said:


> That was not a screwup. I'm not going to feel bad because someone made an unfortunate build choice here. I'll commiserate with them on the basis of a bad roll, and I'll be glad to applaud them on a clever or lucky moment, but an unfortunate choice of build? In a campaign, sure, but here?




Horse hockey. They totally shut down two types of somewhat common builds. Not just a little, but completely.

Maybe next time, they'll say "If you are using an Axe, then every time you hit with it, your PC and every PC within 3 squares takes 10 cold damage.". You got lucky and didn't take an axe, good for you.

Or maybe it'll be that every time the group healer heals, then every PC within 3 squares takes 10 acid damage.

Where does one draw the line between good encounter design and crappy encounter design? Personally, I wasn't impressed by virtually any of this design. I considered the entire encounter (from not being flexible for future encounters, to handing out a map, to telegraphing players to take fire resistance, to screwing over some classes) to be a pretty subpar design. C- at best.



Zuche said:


> Sometimes, life's just not fair. Thank goodness this is only a game, where you can go back and try the whole thing again with a character that doesn't have that limitation.




Not in my group. We only played it once. It was too boring with too few ways to modify it to play a second time, especially when a party wipes through it the first time.

Sometimes, life's not fair. But there is a difference between your PC heading into this direction and falling into a trap and the encounter designers saying "Bwa ha ha ha ha ha", those offensive Swordmages (as opposed to any other class) are going to be totally screwed here. The former trap catches any player, the latter trap is designed to screw over one type of player.

One is a matter of bad luck during the encounter, the other is a matter of bad luck picking a class that the designers totally screwed over for this encounter. That poster is totally within his rights to be hacked off at WotC because that part of the design is just plain terrible.



Zuche said:


> Seriously, KD, first you complained that modestly observant players could clue into the fact that fire protection was not a bad idea for this challenge, then you complain because there's a feature that can catch them completely offguard, maybe even kill them outright? Meanwhile, I thought the former was a nice treat for the forward thinking player, and the latter the sort of potential rude shock that made the original Tomb of Horrors a classic.




A treat for a forward looking player? You mean like those reading up on it on the Internet? Snort. 

PS. I doubt you'll find a lot of people who agree with your POV here. Screwing a specific class over is just wrong. I assume the designers just thought they were going to throw in a feature to catch Eladrin off guard and just plain forgot about offensive Swordmages. Either that, or they're pretty darn poor designers.


----------



## Scribble (Sep 19, 2011)

You can argue that killing off teleporting classes is a dick move, but I think you can also argue that it's just another factor that you need to think about when building your "team."

It's not a non powergamer session- for instance you wouldn't pick a feat because it enhances the flavor elements of your character... You'd pick it because it gives you a bonus.

You don't choose classes because you want to play that class, you choose it because that's what you need to get the job done, and gets you the "achievement."


Personally I think it's not a "bad design" but it does feel kind of "cheap."


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 19, 2011)

Scribble said:


> You can argue that killing off teleporting classes is a dick move, but I think you can also argue that it's just another factor that you need to think about when building your "team."




And if they would have advertised that ahead of time to limit teleports, it would have been ok. People would have known that teleporting is a really bad thing and don't design your PC that way. Finding out after a player spent hours designing his PC and then running the PC is a dick move.

It would have also been somewhat ok to not allow the teleports. They just don't work. The Swordmages would not have gotten in their extra attacks, but it also wouldn't do 10 points of damage to everyone in 3 squares. Still a bit of a dick move, but not as bad as what happened.

I really have to ask the question, what if it had been that every time someone used a healing power to heal someone else, everyone in three squares takes 10 fire damage, would there have been a real outrage to the encounter from everyone? I don't see much of a difference. Dicking over one class or dicking over some others.


----------



## Saracenus (Sep 19, 2011)

My bad on the teleport. My DM missed it too. Both my wife's and my own PC should have had that come into play. Whoops.

On the other hand that teleport can now be used as an offensive weapon if played properly.

Good luck in the future guys.


----------



## mudbunny (Sep 19, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> And if they would have advertised that ahead of time to limit teleports, it would have been ok. People would have known that teleporting is a really bad thing and don't design your PC that way. Finding out after a player spent hours designing his PC and then running the PC is a dick move.




But that is kinda the whole purpose/goal behind Lair Assault IMO. Go in and, using various iterations of character *and* team building, determine the optimal setup to beat the encounter.


----------



## Saracenus (Sep 19, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> And if they would have advertised that ahead of time to limit teleports, it would have been ok. People would have known that teleporting is a really bad thing and don't design your PC that way. Finding out after a player spent hours designing his PC and then running the PC is a dick move.




I am really sorry (sort of) that you feel that way, but Lair Assault is supposed to be one Big Dick Move.

If you want to be comfortable and have things "balanced" there is D&D Encounters, Living Forgotten Realms, Ashes of Athas, etc. You got choices out there.

WotC was upfront about trying to wreck you and your PC, so consider that the only warning you get.

Cheers,


----------



## Nullzone (Sep 19, 2011)

Answer me honestly: Would you be okay with being dazed for a turn every time you use a ranged attack?

Brutal content or not, I'm pretty sure most people would say no; especially when the melee characters are sitting there hammering away without a care in the world. This is the crux of the problem: your choices without foreknowledge should not fundamentally alter and punish your functionality for the duration of the game.


Now, compare that to something like, say, you get dazed if you attack from more than one square away. Better, no? You have a choice: dazed for a turn or risk an opportunity attack.


_Brutally challenging doesn't (or at least, shouldn't) mean the game is out to screw you._ If you can't figure that out I daresay you've missed the point even going back as far as Tomb of Horrors.


----------



## Scribble (Sep 19, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> And if they would have advertised that ahead of time to limit teleports, it would have been ok. People would have known that teleporting is a really bad thing and don't design your PC that way. Finding out after a player spent hours designing his PC and then running the PC is a dick move.




I don't know if I agree... As I said before I find it kind of cheap, because I think they could have done it better, but I don't nessesarily agree it's bad design.

The reason I say this is because this seems to be designed for the people who will play video game levels and missions over and over and over again with different combos and minute differences trying to unlock various awards.

That type of person is going to work through a million combos anyway looking for the one that works perfectly.



> I really have to ask the question, what if it had been that every time someone used a healing power to heal someone else, everyone in three squares takes 10 fire damage, would there have been a real outrage to the encounter from everyone? I don't see much of a difference. Dicking over one class or dicking over some others.




I'd say the same thing I've been saying actually.

It's just not designed in the same way a "traditional campaign" adventure would/should be.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 19, 2011)

Scribble said:


> I'd say the same thing I've been saying actually.
> 
> It's just not designed in the same way a "traditional campaign" adventure would/should be.




While I understand that, I also understand that a real live breathing human is spending hours on working on his PC. It's not that his PC is killed or not even just inconvenienced. It's that his PC is neutered. He's spending 2 or 3 hours playing an encounter that is boring him to tears because he cannot use the schtick of his PC.

The Cleric or Wizard or Warden? Not neutered.

I think claiming that the purpose of Lair Assault is to dick PCs anyway, so overly dicking this one PC class is ok, is disingenous. This nerf was only put in there to add a penalty for using a quick convenient way to get past the mud room or the lava pit and I'm positive that the designers never even thought about Swordmages at all.

I think this was an accidental side effect because of poor design, no different when Battlerage Vigor first came out and it quickly became apparent that Battlerage Vigor totally negated the minion rules. Opps. I just think WotC unintentionally screwed up here and there are people that sat around being bored because of it. Lair Assault was supposed to be challenging and exciting. This error made running a Swordmage about as exciting as watching grass grow.


----------



## Dice4Hire (Sep 19, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> I really have to ask the question, what if it had been that every time someone used a healing power to heal someone else, everyone in three squares takes 10 fire damage, would there have been a real outrage to the encounter from everyone? I don't see much of a difference. Dicking over one class or dicking over some others.




There is a world of difference between teleporting and healing.

You cannot compare them.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 20, 2011)

Dice4Hire said:


> There is a world of difference between teleporting and healing.
> 
> You cannot compare them.




Why?

Because teleporting is merely desirable for a Swordmage class, whereas healing is required for a healing class?

I don't know. If I spent 2 hours creating my PC explicitly for this encounter and then finding out that his major schtick was gone (or at least he cannot use it without seriously damaging the party), it wouldn't matter too much to me what that schtick might be.

What if the rule was that all PCs took half of the damage that they hand out? Every Striker out there would be seriously dicked over if their schtick ended up damaging themselves.

Or better yet, since the encounter is supposed to dick over PCs, why not just prevent any of their magic items from working at all? That'll dick over a bunch of them at the same time.


----------



## Zuche (Sep 20, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> Horse hockey. They totally shut down two types of somewhat common builds. Not just a little, but completely.



Nullzone's swordmage survived to the end with a triumphant team. The evidence does not support your conclusion.


KarinsDad said:


> Maybe next time, they'll say "If you are using an Axe, then every time you hit with it, your PC and every PC within 3 squares takes 10 cold damage.". You got lucky and didn't take an axe, good for you.



You forgot to mention that several of your enemies will also wield axes, and that most of them have resist 10 cold. I'd be interested to see how that effect could be justified in the same way that the consequences of teleportation were, but that's actually less of an obstacle. I mean, if you were adaptable, you'd start looking around for other weapons. Sure, it sucks to lose out on your Expertise feat and the weapon's enhancement bonus and other properties, but you do what everyone that ever got a raw deal in real life does: you adapt to the situtation, or you die. 

I'd also be interested to see what would cause everyone to take 10 acid damage every time someone attempted to use a healing surge. Figuring out how to game that to advantage would be a pretty sweet challenge.


KarinsDad said:


> Where does one draw the line between good encounter design and crappy encounter design? Personally, I wasn't impressed by virtually any of this design. I considered the entire encounter (from not being flexible for future encounters, to handing out a map, to telegraphing players to take fire resistance, to screwing over some classes) to be a pretty subpar design. C- at best.



Yes, I've read your assessment both here and on the WotC forums. It tells me more about your limitations than the systems. 

I've run this thing four times now, and seen it run twice by other DMs, and never once have I seen it play out the same. The last group to run through it spent the last hour on their feet with excitement, and most of them were on their second or third attempt at the place. I've already got the option to rearrange the traps to my heart's content, and mix and match for monsters gives me sixteen different combinations for monsters before I place any of them in the lair, and that's not even taking nightmare mode into consideration. 

Thus far, I've seen four different strategies attempted for breaking down that sealed door, all of which managed it within two rounds, even though three of those four attempts relied heavily on luck. That's backfired terribly twice, as neither party made sure the route behind them was probably secured. (The last group had it down to a science. Unfortunately, the one enemy they'd left behind had to take the long way around, justifying reinforcements from the creatures I'd placed along that route during setup.)

I've only met one guy that didn't enjoy the experience, and even he admitted that it was because he preferred a different playing style. Good for him, knowing what he wants from the system, and I hope he finds it soon.



KarinsDad said:


> Not in my group. We only played it once. It was too boring with too few ways to modify it to play a second time, especially when a party wipes through it the first time.



Earlier, you claimed you'd done everything you could to challenge your players. That's bunk. You couldn't beat a group that hid most of its membership behind the portcullis? Really? There was very little they could have done to strike Vell if he and his entourage moved down to the bottom left corner. but that idea was just too advanced? Hey, most of their attacks wouldn't have been able to get around the forge from that angle either. Did you even give any thought to having Vell, the guy with time on his side, retreating toward the rune-filled corridor? How many ranged 20 attacks did the rest of the party have?

I know I've made mistakes with this thing (lots of mistakes, most of them in the player's favour), and yet we've run about twenty different players through it, with only two PCs surviving (but unsuccessful) to the 20th round. You attempted it once, with one group, and you're done? 

What you describe as boredom, I see as the frustration of someone that doesn't understand (or perhaps just doesn't care to understand) how to use the tools effectively. Maybe that's an unfair assessment, but I find that's usually what's behind such claims.

Your first post reviewing your only attempt at this adventure discussed how much your players enjoyed themselves. Then you turned around and called the program a failure. There seems to be a disconnect here.


KarinsDad said:


> Sometimes, life's not fair. But there is a difference between your PC heading into this direction and falling into a trap and the encounter designers saying "Bwa ha ha ha ha ha", those offensive Swordmages (as opposed to any other class) are going to be totally screwed here. The former trap catches any player, the latter trap is designed to screw over one type of player.



You see one player screwed over. I see a team-building exercise. You see teleportation as impossible. I see resources that can still be exploited by anyone that can properly weigh the risk against the reward. The Aegis of Assault works just fine if the party puts a bit more thought into their formations and have the swordmage work harder to stay adjacent to his target. (It's not like you have to teleport and attack when you're already adjacent to the creature you marked. If you can do both as an immediate reaction, the option to do either also exists.) Turtling may not be the favoured defender strategy, and most people don't like using their standard action for full defense or to aid another's attack, but it's something every defender should be prepared to do. 


KarinsDad said:


> One is a matter of bad luck during the encounter, the other is a matter of bad luck picking a class that the designers totally screwed over for this encounter. That poster is totally within his rights to be hacked off at WotC because that part of the design is just plain terrible.



Well, sure, Nullzone has the right to complain, and the right to be wrong, and the right to walk away as I attempt to play this subatomic violin. Meanwhile, if I've got four teammates in the game counting on me, I have more important things to do during the next three hours than to whine about how useless I am. Seriously, how badly screwed over can you have been if your "helpless" character comes through alive and victorious? I'll admit that Nullzone earned some bragging rights there...only to lose them by griping about how unfair this was.


KarinsDad said:


> A treat for a forward looking player? You mean like those reading up on it on the Internet? Snort.



Nah, there's paying attention to what's presented in the advertising (in case the adventure's title wasn't clue enough), and then there are people who think cheating makes them better players. All they're doing is robbing themselves. 


KarinsDad said:


> PS. I doubt you'll find a lot of people who agree with your POV here.



The appeal to majority fallacy? Really? 


KarinsDad said:


> Screwing a specific class over is just wrong.



No, screwing over a specific player is just wrong--and no, they're not the same thing. If your character can't do what he does best, you figure out what you can do. If that bores you, try to find something else that could work. Maybe even try playing the character a bit?

Hey, Nullzone, was your entire table bored for the whole three hours, or was it just you? Because if it was just you, you might want to show more interest in what the other players are doing.


KarinsDad said:


> I assume the designers just thought they were going to throw in a feature to catch Eladrin off guard and just plain forgot about offensive Swordmages. Either that, or they're pretty darn poor designers.



Or...they thought it was an interesting feature, realized that any consequences it might have were no more than a bonus obstacle for certain groups, and decided to include it without regard to the First World Problems it would cause some people.

I'm pretty sure the problem wasn't with the design team here.


----------



## erleni (Sep 20, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> While I understand that, I also understand that a real live breathing human is spending hours on working on his PC. It's not that his PC is killed or not even just inconvenienced. It's that his PC is neutered. He's spending 2 or 3 hours playing an encounter that is boring him to tears because he cannot use the schtick of his PC.
> 
> The Cleric or Wizard or Warden? Not neutered.
> 
> ...




You were lucky. I went in with an O-assassin. Not being able to use the at-will ability the whole class is built around (Shadow Step) was a real nightmare.


----------



## Dice4Hire (Sep 20, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> Why?
> 
> Because teleporting is merely desirable for a Swordmage class, whereas healing is required for a healing class?
> 
> ...




Frankly, you are going off the deep end here. 

If you cannot see how comparing losing a couple of race's racial powers, and two of three builds of one class and an entire role (Leaders) is the same kind of problem in adventure design, I don't know what to say.

So the Forge made teleporting hard. Not impossible, just hard.

And then you suggest penalizing all healing

Or taking away all magic items?

But if you are enjoying your hyperbole, who am I to stand in your way?


----------



## Nullzone (Sep 20, 2011)

@Zuche : Hell's bells, you make some serious logical leaps about me and my scenario in that post.

First off, I didn't survive. I said *my team won*. I got killed off because the DM found my -2 mark plinking a nuisance, so he focused me down. I elected not to take any heals after the first attempt (which I survived thanks to a lucky 1) in favor of letting the rest of the party succeed without me. I second winded, handed off my healing potion, and did a solid 9 damage on my last turn (rolled two 1s on a Swordburst, what can ya do?) thanks to my AP before the champions ground me into a fine paste with some of my E/D powers still unspent.

Secondly, the DM ruled that enforcing Aegis meant the teleport was compulsory; it's part of the power and what makes it special/capable of messing with the creature (Ensnarement in this case, just so we're clear). So no, I flat out couldn't enforce my mark, even standing adjacent to the creature. With that in mind, I elected specifically to stay away from the monster I had marked so I could be sure that he wouldn't be including me in burst/blast attacks to negate the -2 penalty (at which point he realized that the only way to get around it was to kill me).

Don't come preaching to me about adapting to the problem. I did the best with what I had, and my team performed awesomely despite my restraints. The point remains that I, singularly out of the entire group, felt singled out. And I wouldn't have if I picked a different class. This is a systemic failure in design for an Organized Play campaign.

One last thing: To those of you who take issue with my displeasure of the design, take it somewhere else. Your experience does not invalidate mine. They exist independently of each other, and since you somehow feel like my opinion disrupts your enjoyment of it you can take comfort knowing I'm that much less likely to participate in future editions.

Edit: I was perfectly happy to just discuss the design philosophy and don't appreciate the finger pointing, either. I've cleaned up my post to be a little less confrontational, I'd appreciate it if you all did the same.


----------



## Scribble (Sep 20, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> While I understand that, I also understand that a real live breathing human is spending hours on working on his PC. It's not that his PC is killed or not even just inconvenienced. It's that his PC is neutered. He's spending 2 or 3 hours playing an encounter that is boring him to tears because he cannot use the schtick of his PC.




And ordinarily I would agree with you completely. In a normal game where you want everyone to have a place in the game and something to do, this would be a completely dick design move (especially in 4e where the goal was to give everyone equal opportunity.) This is different though. 

The fact that you say "spending hours working on a PC" leads me to believe you're not really the type this is designed for. (And I'm not knocking that, I'm not really either.)

I have a friend who this game is perfect for. He doesn't spend hours on his PCs- he spends days. He has binders full of characters because he never stops- they come out with a new item or feat he reworks them all over and over again. It's just what he does- making characters is not a chore. (It makes my head spin.)

For someone like him, sitting down at the first session and realizing a swordmage was the wrong choice wouldn't be a problem, it would just be step one in determining what the best configuration of his PC and the rest of the team would be.

He's the guy who can sit for hours and hours and hours killing low level auto spawn monsters so he can slowly acrue enough gold to get X item that puts him at the power level he "needs" to be at to be "perfect."

He's the guy who will play this over and over and over again trying to unlock every reward possible and trying to "master" it.

As for taking away healing or axes or magic weapons, I'm guessing that's all in store for future games. Especially when you get special "achievements" for doing things like playing all elves, or no healing, or standing on your head, etc...


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 20, 2011)

Zuche said:


> I've run this thing four times now, and seen it run twice by other DMs, and never once have I seen it play out the same.
> 
> ...
> 
> Thus far, I've seen four different strategies attempted for breaking down that sealed door, all of which managed it within two rounds, even though three of those four attempts relied heavily on luck.




I'm glad you're having fun.

Me, I wouldn't want to try to solve the same problem of getting through the same door over and over again. I'd want to try the other routes. To me, going through the same door over and over again IS running the encounter the same way over and over again. The minor details on individual tactics and results would be different, but the idea is the same, hence, it's not very interesting.

If the encounter allowed the DM to switch up the floor plan, to have the floor runes do good things some times, bad things other times, and random things some times, that would be enjoyable. If the mud room pillars raised up and down in one encounter, but forced the PCs to always go down in another encounter, or different sets of pillars were up and/or down each time with potential places to attach ropes, but also ways for those ropes to break, that would be interesting. If the cloaks helped some times, but set off a trap other times, that would be fun.

If the encounter allowed the DM to do fire damage some times, acid damage another time, blinds some times, weakens another, stuns another (note: these PC debilitating type effects that should be rare in a normal game should be common in a DM killer dungeon encounter), and a wide variety of effect, that would be cool. 

I guess I just appreciate more imaginative encounter design then what was supplied. I appreciate a design that also makes the game new and different for the DM each time beyond which monster and trap he puts in which room.

Every time in the dungeon would be totally different for the players, not just a little different, and hence, a lot more interesting than going the same route, kicking down the same door, and facing the same BBEG with slightly different monsters in the way each time. The floor plan and the obstacles are too static and predictable, and there are too few monsters per room, for this to be a real challenge more than once. The entire encounter is focused on damage and except for the BBEG's immobilization, there is little in the way of riders. To me, that's a bit boring and not much of a challenge cause damage can be negated and healed easily.

And some of the awards are kind of lame too. I really could care less about creating a party where everyone is the same race. That doesn't really make the encounter more challenging. It makes designing the PCs more challenging. Eating the fish once means that any PC with a high Nature roll allows the PCs to eat the fish every time. That's not a challenge, that's a gimme in future runs through it. Different stroke for different folks.

I'm glad that it works for your groups. It doesn't work for me.


----------



## Umbran (Sep 20, 2011)

Zuche said:


> What you describe as boredom, I see as the frustration of someone that doesn't understand (or perhaps just doesn't care to understand) how to use the tools effectively. Maybe that's an unfair assessment, but I find that's usually what's behind such claims.





And what I see is someone trying to make the discussion personal.  

Please don't do that.  Make your point without trying to tear down other people.  Aside from _ad hominem_ being notoriously weak logic, it is generally insulting to the person you're addressing.  And Rule #1 of EN World is "Keep it civil", so being insulting should be right out.

Thanks.  If you've any questions about this, please take it to e-mail or Private Message with one of the moderators.


----------



## chitzk0i (Sep 22, 2011)

We played this with a party of 4 Genasi Wizard|Artificers.  Round 1 looked like this: each party member cast Icebound Sigil on their Staff of Missile Mastery, activated their +2 whetstone, and started the Wizard's Fury.  Rounds 2 through 9 consisted of pew pew pew.  15 damage twice a round without rolling isn't bad.


----------



## Taed (Sep 22, 2011)

chitzk0i said:


> activated their +2 whetstone




Note that the Augmenting Whetstone (+2) is a Level 6 Consumable, and thus not valid for Lair Assault.

However, a case could certainly be made for taking it instead of one of the 3 magic items (specifically the Level 6 one).  In fact, I was thinking of doing that along with a +1 weapon (with a property I want) to convert it to a +2 weapon (enhancements from Whetstones do not stack), and that leaves me with just 1 magic item slot for armor (Leather Armor of Sudden Recovery).  If you did that, you could take 2 other Consumables, but they have to be Level 5 or lower.


----------



## chitzk0i (Sep 22, 2011)

Taed said:


> Note that the Augmenting Whetstone (+2) is a Level 6 Consumable, and thus not valid for Lair Assault.
> 
> However, a case could certainly be made for taking it instead of one of the 3 magic items (specifically the Level 6 one).  In fact, I was thinking of doing that along with a +1 weapon (with a property I want) to convert it to a +2 weapon (enhancements from Whetstones do not stack), and that leaves me with just 1 magic item slot for armor (Leather Armor of Sudden Recovery).  If you did that, you could take 2 other Consumables, but they have to be Level 5 or lower.




Yep, that's what we did, right down to the Sudden Recovery armor.


----------



## On Puget Sound (Sep 22, 2011)

my version of this one uses the master's wand of mm, which can't use the whetstone since it's not a weapon.  So i only get 2+5 int+4 cold con+ 1 enhancement = 12 - but I do get push 1 with each shot.  I'm looking at some other magic missile hybrids to make a team of them:

MC ranger with spitting cobra stance for a 3rd shot whenever an enemy moves closer (also brings in the Bridge of Roots and some Thievery training) - this one might also be a revenant for Reaper's Touch.

MC Shaman with Spirit's Prey and bloodthirsty spirit feat.  Would still use its own wizard's fury minor shot, but trigger shots at +2 damage from allies for its standard. If a pure shaman rather than a MC, give it Elemental Priest theme for four Minor RBA triggers.


----------



## Zuche (Sep 24, 2011)

Nullzone, I am sorry to learn your character didn't make it through the encounter. I'm sorrier still your DM opted to stiff you like that. It was bad enough that forced movement had to be clarified to prevent these sorts of shenanigans. ("I can't use my best encounter attack here because I have to pull the targets 3 squares first, and they're already adjacent to me.") That ruling was completely unfair to you, the person.

I've got a somewhat related example: the guy running the show on Tuesday decided it would be "fun" to place four traps and three monsters (elemental, warlock, and temple champion) in the first room. We saw atrocious luck on the party's initiative rolls, with the highest coming out to around 14 against nothing lower than a 20. Focused fire on the invoker scored six hits and surprisingly high damage rolls every time, resulting in one dead PC before anyone else got to act. (Lesson learned: more free action healing/damage reduction/damage negation is in order.)

While we sitting there, a bit stunned, one of the other players asked, "Can he play my horse?" For some reason, this guy had purchased a mount with his starting gold, intending to move it around as a minor meat shield. (That said, he does have a mounted party plan I will be curious to see.) Now the DM could have ruled that the horse's actions were limited as usual for such companions, but he didn't. The result was like a cross between Silver and the Littlest Hobo, ignored for better targets until it turned out he was the only one scoring critical hits, then bailing the fallen barbarian/ranger out of the first room at great personal risk, only to fall in the mud room when round four ended.

At that point, the DM could have gone with the default ruling, and declared that the horse was dead. Maybe that would have been easier on the group, since they decided to go back and use healing resources to restore Konan. (Named for a friend's horse that died earlier this week.) The one dissenting voice offered to both build a memorial ("And maybe a small one for that other guy...whoever he was...") and pay the resurrection costs, to no avail. The party knew it was doomed, but damned if they were going to leave the hero of the first four rounds, the only one to score a critical hit up to that point (two, in fact) behind.

The group resigned in round twelve, having lost both horse and barbarian in round ten and facing a heavily reinforced final room through a closed portcullis used to divide the remaining two members of the group, one of them a cleric with no appreciable offensive options. (It didn't help that the DM only failed one in ten saving throws against forced movement into hazardous terrain, much to the warden's frustration.) Nevertheless, Konan is a bit of a legend now in that store.

I know that doesn't help your swordmage. Here's hoping it might teach something to your DM. 

KarinsDad, while I agree with you with regard to your wish list for future seasons, there's still a lot of variation available with what was provided. 
I'll write more on that subject later; this entry has already run long as it is.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 24, 2011)

Zuche said:


> Nullzone, I am sorry to learn your character didn't make it through the encounter. I'm sorrier still your DM opted to stiff you like that. It was bad enough that forced movement had to be clarified to prevent these sorts of shenanigans. ("I can't use my best encounter attack here because I have to pull the targets 3 squares first, and they're already adjacent to me.") That ruling was completely unfair to you, the person.




There is a difference between his example and your example. In his example, the Aegis clearly states that the teleport is at the option of the player and the DM either broke the rules, or didn't know the rules and screwed up the adjudication.

In your example, the DM changed the rules because he played it like a normal session of D&D where his goal is to (subconsciously or consciously) help the players out in order to continue the storyline and the campaign.

In Lair Assault, that is not supposed to be the DM's goal.



Zuche said:


> I've got a somewhat related example: the guy running the show on Tuesday decided it would be "fun" to place four traps and three monsters (elemental, warlock, and temple champion) in the first room. We saw atrocious luck on the party's initiative rolls, with the highest coming out to around 14 against nothing lower than a 20. Focused fire on the invoker scored six hits and surprisingly high damage rolls every time, resulting in one dead PC before anyone else got to act. (Lesson learned: more free action healing/damage reduction/damage negation is in order.)
> 
> While we sitting there, a bit stunned, one of the other players asked, "Can he play my horse?" For some reason, this guy had purchased a mount with his starting gold, intending to move it around as a minor meat shield. (That said, he does have a mounted party plan I will be curious to see.) Now the DM could have ruled that the horse's actions were limited as usual for such companions, but he didn't. The result was like a cross between Silver and the Littlest Hobo, ignored for better targets until it turned out he was the only one scoring critical hits, then bailing the fallen barbarian/ranger out of the first room at great personal risk, only to fall in the mud room when round four ended.
> 
> ...




Teach the DM something? The player just needs to show that DM the actual Aegis rule.


The point of Lair Assault is to wipe out the party and challenge the players.

So, you are thinking that a DM who goes out to do that by changing the rules in the player's favor is accomplishing the goals of the adventure?

His DM should have played by the rules, but so should have your DM. At least if the goal of the DM is to strut his stuff and kill the PCs (which your DM did a great job of, but he then handed the player a second PC), and the goal of the players is to overcome the DM doing that.

So if in your group, these are not the goals, then that might explain why you find this adventure interesting and cool, and I find it pedestrian and even subpar.



Zuche said:


> KarinsDad, while I agree with you with regard to your wish list for future seasons, there's still a lot of variation available with what was provided.
> I'll write more on that subject later; this entry has already run long as it is.




There's not a lot of variation of player expectations. They expect the same pits, the same fish, the same cloaks, the same traps, the same portcullis, the same lava, the same BBEG, the same door, the same runes, the same type of damage, often the same route, etc.

They even expect similar subsets of the same monsters.


----------



## Zuche (Sep 24, 2011)

Wiping out the party doesn't take precedent over keeping the encounter fun, KarinsDad. Who'd enjoy sitting through the entire scenario as a witness after coming out to play. There was an option available that wasn't going to help the remaining participants much more than it would do if run by the person that brought Konan, so why sideline a player, especially one that showed up as a favour to the DM and was dependent on him for the ride home? Maybe if quick TPK was assured, but once the rest of the team had resist 5 all damage, we were in for the long game. 

The program encourages merciless handling, but you should still do what you can to enable players. "Say yes," is still a guiding principle, especially with regard to a rule that exists to give players a break -- death for NPCs at 0 hp is a guideline when it does not serve that purpose.

Oddly, only four players (two in one session) have grabbed fish to date, and two of those forgot to use them. This benefit was discovered at the first table run and one player even pointed out a method for storing the fish for later use, since they're sardines packed in oil. Only one out of eight players in the two most successful sessions went for the fish; most of the players preferred to spend their actions on other pursuits. Players have gone for the sealed door twice since they first learned of the pretty princess award, and two groups since then have completely negated the major benefit it offers a group. Two groups have had players attempt to reach the forge via the rune-filled corridor, and one even managed to cross it without suffering its effects. 

That door still continues to be the preferred option and it's cost them every time. On two occasions, it's killed their main leader within a round, one by Roadrunner Gambit, the other by virtue of being missed by an attack that still pushed the party two squares. It's the preferred path for people seeking the speed run, though someone has found an even faster path.

A lot has been discussed, especially with regard to Vell's strategies and the dangers posed by those warlocks. Certain strategies have demanded rethinking use of the temple elect, the servants, and one of the great lessons in poor creature design, the fire elemental. Forced movement is also getting a lot of attention, especially with regard to the saving throw mechanic.

We definitely come at this from different backgrounds. I'm used to playing chess, where the starting setup is always exactly the same, and post mortem analysis can take days. Lair Assault isn't chess, let alone the Kobiyashi Maru scenario, but it's still a tactical training scenario for both the DM and the players. It's designed as a playtester's scenario, encouraging various objectives beyond the main one. While different monsters and traps might be more suitable to the challenge, it's best to hold off on such changes until you've tested several more subtle variations on the original idea.

While you see static floor plan and limited trap/monster placement as poor design, I believe adhering to the KISS principle was a good design choice. Varying energy damage doesn't matter if the entire party has resistance to all damage for the rest of the encounter, so why not stick to a theme? Multiple trap types can wait for another scenario, while this one provides insight into when traps are more likely to be ignored or tackled.

As for the challenges, sure, one Nature check can make the first one automatic for anyone that decides to spend actions on it, while the second is as easy as taking the right route. The third (please keep this secret, even here) will be more difficult for most groups to find, though there's one very good way to stumble across it by accident. Some of the others are consolations prizes, though a local player has failed to achieve the TPK award on two separate occasions by having the only PC standing at the end of the 20th round. One guy came close to winning the scenario by earning himself the award for dying by lava. The stage may be the same every night, but little awards like this encourage people to deliver diverse performances every night.

You also get a very different game out of this if you try out roles, races, and classes you typically don't play, even if you're still seeking to optimize them. Maybe this could get a bit repetitive for the DM, but I've enjoyed it as a training workshop of sorts.

There are things I'd like to see in future scenarios, such as randomly placed secret passages and maps that don't get displayed all at once. That's one advantage of laminated cards over fold-out maps. Another would allow for rooms to be changed at different times, rather than all at the end of the fourth round, as was the case here. I'd like a scenario that forced the party to have to consider splitting up at critical moments. I'd love to see every skill put to good use somewhere, preferably in ways where prior knowledge of the adventure did not negate the need for knowledge based skill checks. 

I just wouldn't want all of these things at once--not yet, anyway. Maybe when such complications can be run more quickly.


----------



## corwyn77 (Sep 25, 2011)

A bit more more spoiler-heavy than others so be warned.










So I finally ran my first LA. First, the PCs:

 Hybrid Cleric/Ranger
 Hybrid Cleric/Fighter (BRV)
 Hybrid Cleric/Ardent
 Warden
 Avenger

 So high AC, all 3 clerics with Battle Cleric Lore, resist all 5, enemies  next to Ardent weakened, something granting Vulnerability 5 to enemies,  ignore difficult terrain.

 Blew through the first room, ignored the platform room, went straight  for the runes and easily dealt with the lone monster I left there for  bait. 

 Things were going fine up until that point. A total of four area attacks  from bat and hound started the pain and at least one was barely  bloodied entering the forge. He died from a statue tossing him into  lava.

 After that it went seriously pear-shaped. Two breath weapons on  consecutive turns kept them from focus-firing too much or hurting Vell  at all. The weakened didn't help much since half the damage was from  Vulnerability.

 It kind of confirmed my fears: one route leads to death, without much  hope. I suppose if everyone had Sudden Recovery armor it would be a  different story, but I'm not sure if it would be enough once I could  focus fire in the forge.

 OTOH, my feeling is still that the other main route looks pretty (well,  relatively) easy. Resist all 5 in the forge would make it quite doable.  For people who have gone that route, am I wrong?

We'll see soon I guess. They're going  for the 'one race' glory (likely Dwarves to avoid being trashed by  statues+lava) and we'll test the platform route.

 Has anyone seen a group of semi-optimizers die going the 'safer' route?


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 25, 2011)

Zuche said:


> Wiping out the party doesn't take precedent over keeping the encounter fun, KarinsDad.




You must be thinking of a different adventure. The players are supposed to be told with Lair Assault that this is the idea behind it.

It depends on what your players are mature enough to handle. Just tonight, we had a new player who never played 4E before (he played 3E). In one encounter, his defender PC was knocked unconscious round after round after round starting in round one (heal, KO, heal, KO, heal, KO), and he only got 1 attack in during the entire encounter. He was totally cool with it because his PC was doing his job of having foes attack him instead of someone else. As DM, I was watching him closely for signs of frustration and there were none.

I know of some players where this would not have been the case. It was cool that he wasn't wrapped all up in the "I lost my turn" stuff and I think we are getting a really good new player. 

I played a scenario 2 months ago where I was running 2 PCs (mine, and a PC that had to be there, but the player couldn't make it last minute). A Beholder attacked the party and in 8 rounds, each PC got one round's worth of actions in. 2 rounds of actions out of 16. I didn't sit and pout about that. I laughed and had fun with the other players as they slowly took the Beholder out.

If players are able to do this in normal adventures, why would a DM want to hold their hand in a killer adventure?

Now, if you want to play the adventure with a normal goal of some level of fairness to all of the players, that's fine. But that's not the intent of the adventure, nor should it be.



Zuche said:


> Who'd enjoy sitting through the entire scenario as a witness after coming out to play.




Anyone who knew up front going in that this was a possibility? I know that I'd be ok with that. Maybe you should post a poll on it.

Are you saying that the game can only be fun (given the upfront premise) if players are given second chances?

The point is, sure, the DM can do this. But, he's throwing part of the challenge (what other players might be there for) out the window. With the background given, you are assuming that other players are there to be challenged, but only if the DM doesn't get lucky in round one? Huh? Maybe the other players wanted to still succeed, even though it started off so rough. But, they were not given that chance. The DM fudged (which the module states the DM shouldn't do).



Zuche said:


> We definitely come at this from different backgrounds. I'm used to playing chess, where the starting setup is always exactly the same, and post mortem analysis can take days. Lair Assault isn't chess, let alone the Kobiyashi Maru scenario, but it's still a tactical training scenario for both the DM and the players.




I played chess for decades. I was even the editor of the state newsletter. 

If your opponent hangs his Queen, do you give him a take back?

I can definitely understand Lair Assault being used as a tactical training scenario. The thing is though, I'd rather be playing real D&D with fresh new and surprising encounters every session than playing in order to hone my player tactical skills a little. The former is exciting, the latter, not so much. But, I am glad that you are enjoying your sessions. I probably wouldn't after the first time or two. Different strokes.



Zuche said:


> There are things I'd like to see in future scenarios, such as randomly placed secret passages and maps that don't get displayed all at once. That's one advantage of laminated cards over fold-out maps. Another would allow for rooms to be changed at different times, rather than all at the end of the fourth round, as was the case here. I'd like a scenario that forced the party to have to consider splitting up at critical moments. I'd love to see every skill put to good use somewhere, preferably in ways where prior knowledge of the adventure did not negate the need for knowledge based skill checks.




Agreed.


----------



## On Puget Sound (Sep 25, 2011)

I finally got to play in a Lair Assault tonight.  I built all the characters, and brought 8 to the table of which these 5 were chosen:
Thri-kreen charge-focused slayer
Elf archer ranger
Deva laser cleric
Genasi wizard/artificer magic missile machine
Bugbear knight

Of the 5 players, only two were experienced 4e players; a 3rd was a long-time 3.5/ pathfinder player who does not like 4e, and the remaining two were pretty new to the game.  We didn't use some of our abilities as well as we could (or at all, in some cases) due to unfamiliarity with the characters and/or game, but for the circumstances I think we did pretty well.  We made it to round 16 with Vell bloodied and alone in his forge room before the last of us fell.

Room 1 took 3 rounds to clear but sapped our hit points pretty well; the one character with sudden recovery armor used it too late and got only regen 5 instead of the 10 she could have had.  No one spared an action to look at the fish, though the thri-kreen did disable the statue eventually.  

We opened the door to the mud room just in time to watch the floor fall away in front of us.  We were ready for that with Bridge of Roots, which we used to get across to engage the warlocks (the burning skelly died to missile fire right away).  The knight almost one-shotted a warlock before being dumped in the lava by their attacks (we play that if you are already prone, you can't save vs forced movement and go even proner).  An active Moment of Glory saved him, with resist 5 all to each of the attacks, the falling damage, and the mud damage saving 20 points that round!

As the others chased the warlocks into the next room and killed them, someone dropped a rope to the knight, which proved crucial as mud geysers and statues kept us from exiting the room easily and dropped the thr-kreen into the mud as well.

Clearing the third room left us all bloodied and out of all healing except a few potions - second winds used up as well.  The critical loss was when the cleric went unconscious, failing to sustain Moment of Glory.  We had started with 3 heals from the cleric (one from his holy healer's mace) and 1 from the wiz-art; not enough by a long shot.

We arrived at the porcullis ready to give one last push, and push we did.  We killed one dragonborn, but the second breath weapon put the knight and slayer out for good.  The archer's dice chose that moment to act like d6s instead of d20s, as with action point and elven accuracy he still failed to finish off the dragonborn blocking the entrance, leaving that to the 1 hit point cleric.  The 3 squishies made it into the room and did a passable nova round, bloodying Vell before dying.  Vell then completed his scepter and conquered the universe.


----------



## Zuche (Sep 25, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> You must be thinking of a different adventure. The players are supposed to be told with Lair Assault that this is the idea behind it.




No, I know which adventure this was. If there had been no alternate for the new guy to run, that would have been it. Letting a player run Konan meant the party wasn't forced to choose between leaving the barbarian behind in round three or the warden using one standard action to direct his mount to grab the character, but that was the only advantage gained and they paid for it in the time it took to rescue the horse, letting the enemies they'd left behind reach the forge first and thereby setting themselves up to run into a wall of readied actions.

Everyone knew that the outcome was decided the moment the first PC died. The decision only changed how the fourth player could continue to participate through a resource another player had acquired.



KarinsDad said:


> It depends on what your players are mature enough to handle.




Acceptance of misfortune is a mature response, but it does not end there. If the resources exist to accomodate people, use them. Maturity acknowledges that a party's failure here is not a DM's success. If there were no horses or henchmen or familiars, a host should still keep all players engaged, even if just to roll dice for the opposition.



KarinsDad said:


> Just tonight, we had a new player who never played 4E before (he played 3E). In one encounter, his defender PC was knocked unconscious round after round after round starting in round one (heal, KO, heal, KO, heal, KO), and he only got 1 attack in during the entire encounter. He was totally cool with it because his PC was doing his job of having foes attack him instead of someone else. As DM, I was watching him closely for signs of frustration and there were none.
> 
> I know of some players where this would not have been the case.




I had to recommend that one of the DMs from Encounters should avoid Lair Assault from either side of the table. He won't be running next season, and I'm glad he had the self-awareness to make that choice on his own. Nevertheless, he deserved the chance. It wasn't easy on him, or on the players that had to work through his triggers. Thankfully, they understand his limitations, and running things from the sidelines this season leaves me free to step in whenever there's a concern or dispute without disrupting another table.

Maturity means we find ways to accomodate other people, regardless of whether they themselves can handle adversity in a mature fashion. Please don't assume that the guy running Konan sat and pouted over his initial misfortune, because that wasn't the case. Whether or not he accepted it has nothing to do with his host's obligations to him.



KarinsDad said:


> If players are able to do this in normal adventures, why would a DM want to hold their hand in a killer adventure?




This isn't about hand-holding. It's about leadership. If the resource exists to keep a player in the game and the players request it, agree to the request.

A killer dungeon requires more fairness than usual. In Lair Assault, the DM is required to strive to shut players down as hard and fast as players do their opposition, an option that isn't always open to us, depending on the monsters involved.

Konan was no more effective than a horse normally would be. The only attacks it got were opportunities (which the warden did not share) because the DM underestimated what the animal could do on a critical hit--much less than any of the PCs could have done, admittedly, but enough to force him to reconsider after the second hit.



KarinsDad said:


> Are you saying that the game can only be fun (given the upfront premise) if players are given second chances?




How much fun is a roller coaster if you take your seat, the ride starts... and your car is left behind at the starting gate? That's what happened here. There is no challenge in dying before you can act. What can you do about it? Sure, sometimes that's just luck of the draw and you have to accept it. 

However, if you were running two characters when the one run by another player died, wouldn't you hand over one of your characters for that person to play? Would you, as DM, ever consider giving the player of a dead character control over an NPC travelling with the group? As a mature individual in a social, cooperative game, the answer to both of those questions should be yes. 

Knowing that, where exactly did this DM go wrong in allowing the PC-unencumbered player to play as the horse some other player had purchased with his starting gold? This was not fudging. Nothing new was introduced to the scenario. 



KarinsDad said:


> If your opponent hangs his Queen, do you give him a take back?




In tournament play, I cannot. In casual play, I will do so if I'm enjoying the position enough that I don't want to see it spoiled by such a blunder. That said, a hung queen only removes the queen from play. If my opponent wishes to play on and still has rooks, I would expect to see them used. 



KarinsDad said:


> The thing is though, I'd rather be playing real D&D with fresh new and surprising encounters every session than playing in order to hone my player tactical skills a little.




"Real D&D" is a loaded declaration, so I'll leave it alone. On the subject of new and surprising, you've surely read a short story twice and picked up on something new the second time? 

A single run-through of this challenge does not give a person full appreciation for everything they (or it) can do, even if they ignore the glory awards. I doubt your party is facing entirely new opponents all the time, just as I doubt that an encounter with a repeated monster always plays out exactly the same way. Assuming it gets to act, there are times all players will see is its melee basic attack, and others when they'll be struggling to avoid offering it optimal use of an encounter or recharge power. Maybe that can't be avoided in some cases. Maybe this doesn't feel fresh and new to you, but then a lot of people take the same view of this hobby, seeing everything you present as nothing more than an exercise in dice rolling and pawn pushing. 

Me, I'll take the view presented in R.A. MacAvoy's _Tea with the Black Dragon_: "Every time is the first time." There are just too many ways the same thing can be different for me to limit myself to, "Been there, done that."

Lair Assault wasn't going to be to all tastes. I'm not sure why you thought it would be to yours, since repeat play was established as part of the premise. It's not repeat play if everything changes. Still, here's hoping future installments may be of more interest to you.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 26, 2011)

Zuche said:


> Lair Assault wasn't going to be to all tastes. I'm not sure why you thought it would be to yours, since repeat play was established as part of the premise. It's not repeat play if everything changes. Still, here's hoping future installments may be of more interest to you.




I thought it would be to my taste before I read the character sheets of my players. Go back and reread my original post here. I was really psyched about it. Repeat play is fine as long as the DM has major control over challenging the PCs. He doesn't with this module.

The DM only has control over repeat monsters and repeat traps. I have players that wiped this thing the first time. 5 PCs out of 6 were not even bloodied at the end. They didn't even use their second winds.

Regardless of your opinion, there is no way I could have challenged them in a second encounter with the knowledge they gained after the first time and the major limitations the adventure has in changing things up.

If the rooms could change locations and if the PCs did not have a map, and/or if it wasn't a single encounter so that Daily powers did not become super effective, and/or if I could change what the oil and fish and cloaks and runes and pillars do, or when the 4th round damage occurs, then sure, I could throw up a decent encounter each time because I could surprise the players.

But, I cannot really surprise them.

This is a mostly damage challenge encounter against a group of players who came in with 9 heal spells, a few other healing Dailies, 7 healing potions, and a few ways to get temp hit points and resistance and a companion to suck up damage. If I could daze them or stun them or blind them, or even heaven forbid, outnumber them, then yeah, I might figure something else. But seriously, you have no clue here. My players would wipe this most if not all of the time no matter who the DM was as long as the DM is handcuffed with the module as written. As I mentioned earlier, I still had 400 points of damage that I had to yet do to TPK the party with the healing options that they had remaining. I did make a minor mistake or two and probably could have managed another 30 or 50 points of damage. Or, my dice could have been hotter. But the final outcome would have been similar. The players just came in with too many good options and next time would be even better for them.

The concept of Lair Assault was fine. A super challenge for players. The implementation, at least for the types of knowledgeable players I play with, was weak, even lame.

I'm glad that you enjoy it and find it fun. Sorry, but I find it to be a bit of a joke. Not because it cannot be played again, but because it doesn't have enough DM options to make playing it again really challenging (or even worthwhile) for my group. Just because your experience disagrees with mine does not invalidate my experience (or opinion) of this module.

As a DM, I can do two things. I can take total control of my game and throw brand new things that are hopefully interesting at my players every single week. Or, I can run them through an encounter multiple times where they won't really be surprised, but they will probably do better each time. Kind of like playing the same computer game from start to finish over and over again. I chose the former.


----------



## Rerednaw (Sep 26, 2011)

We tried it for the first time last weekend.  First group was a PUG and made of a melee druid, a melee rogue, my human hunter, and a warlord.  The group was not very experienced and we got bogged down trying to break down the wall and ran out of time due to bad luck (rounds 9-20 were spent trying to break the wall down.)

Second group played a pre-made group I had created the other week.  I went with all-humans because I didn't want to fuss with trying to remember all the various race quirks.  I kept it simple: hunter, 2 ranged thieves (superior xbows for the hunter, sbows for the thieves), shaman (elemental), and a warden (earthstrength).  The warden and hunter had at-will slows and the ranged rogues had vicious advantage.  That plus the shaman buffed the party with resist all 5 and granted extra attacks to the rogues.  My hunter scored a kill by proning a flying bat and killing it with falling damage.  One of the thieves scored a crit with his ranged basic for 49 points. 

By the end of the encounter everyone except the warden got the glory award for not spending a healing surge.  Other than the warden the next most wounded character was down 3 hp from max.  

Key elements that made the session go easier:
Armor of Sudden Recovery-the DM (who watched me play a character with the same armor in the first session ran the second) did not have the elemental attack us, guess Asmodeus told the monsters about our special armor 
Hunter L2 - Bridge of Roots.
Shaman Daily Protective Roots (con 20 = resist all 5, until end of encounter.)
Half the party had effective ranged attacks. 15(thieves with short bows) 20(hunter with superior xbow).
Shaman Spirit of Vigor feat (free temps when spirit summoned).

I think we killed the boss on round 12 or so...we were going to then try to get the rest of the doors/monsters for the glory points but we didn't know the game ended with the boss being dropped.

If we had not had the armor, the majority of the party would have been bloodied.  But considering that between our shaman, healing pots, and other items we have about 12 surges worth of healing we still would have made it.  

Bridge of roots also helped, but half the party already had a climb speed with an at-will so it ended up almost being redundant.  

We don't know what the secret glory awards are so we're going to try a few other runs, but overall I did not find it to be that bad a run provided you have a organized group.


----------



## Alphastream (Sep 26, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> I thought it would be to my taste before I read the character sheets of my players.




If the players are amazing and their characters insane, then they should win. The alternative is that the most perfect party would still have the luck of the dice, meaning the non-perfect would be doomed to fail. That isn't the kind of Lair Assault I want to see because it means tons of players would be disillusioned - they would know that most of them could never win and that even the ones that could have a random chance.

Simple things like Armor of Recovery combined with Moment of Glory plus some stance should make this encounter much easier. The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design had a free excerpt (I also own it, great read!) where a designer points out that we often play games to feel smart. Character generation can be an exercise in this, where each option we choose provides us with self-gratification that we have done well. Lair Assault can thus either crush that feeling or reinforce it. The DM's job is to be impartial while being sympathetic. You don't have a side, so you can destroy a PC while sympathizing or have your monster eliminated while you congratulate the player. 

If the table is so good they will always win, then they have earned that distinction. It is ok to say "Guys, I have nothing more for you. I'm confident you will beat it again." Like a Kung Fu master, it is okay to admit that today the teacher has nothing for the student. However, this is the first Lair Assault. Would it surprise us if it is deliberately a bit easier? It might be. And, what works in one might not work in another.

I hate to hear about a good person like Nullzone having his build shut down... and that O-Assassin... ouch! I do think that is valid design space in Lair Assault (though I don't like it in other organized play). Yes, it will be detested by a few. And yes, it should be done carefully. But, I don't think designers should proof their adventures against having excessively hurt any type of PC. That's something that can just happen. As DMs, however, this is were we should really be sympathetic. Nullzone seems to have done a pretty awesome job, because even with this aspect of his PC shut down, he continued to draw the focus/ire of the DM. It was unfortunate that this was adversarial; had the DM been congratulatory and encouraging the experience might have been different. Nullzone clearly kept being effective and both sides should have been able to celebrate that. 

This is the early stage of the program. Both players and DMs have much to learn over the next few months. Some of that learning is around improvement and hopefully most DMs (and players) will make the adjustments so the program is more fun each time.


----------



## Taed (Sep 26, 2011)

Our third attempt was yesterday and we did quite well, but the DM wasn't being "evil".  We had basically the same characters and took the same lava room route as the second attempt, but avoided some of the problems we had last time.  At the end, only the two defenders were bloodied, and while we had some cleanup to do when we stopped (due to real-world time limit), that wouldn't have been an issue (although the defenders had a chance of unconciousness).

We'll give it another try with an evil DM (such as not having the fire elemental and Armor of Sudden Recovery interact) and on Nightmare mode.  I anticipate not making it out of the first room...

One scenario showed up that seemingly wasn't quite covered by the rules.  My warden knocked one of the Dragonborn prone and THEN was able to slide it into the lava.  Since it was already prone, I suggested that it should not get a fall-or-prone saving throw.  The DM reasonably decided that it should get a saving throw in that it could still try to grab onto something, which makes sense.  Does anyone know if that scenario is covered by the rules for the future?


----------



## Saagael (Sep 26, 2011)

Taed said:


> One scenario showed up that seemingly wasn't quite covered by the rules.  My warden knocked one of the Dragonborn prone and THEN was able to slide it into the lava.  Since it was already prone, I suggested that it should not get a fall-or-prone saving throw.  The DM reasonably decided that it should get a saving throw in that it could still try to grab onto something, which makes sense.  Does anyone know if that scenario is covered by the rules for the future?




As far as I remember, you still get the saving throw even if you're prone. Falling prone is an result of making your save.

Realistically, it works. I don't care if someone is pushing me or rolling me off a cliff, I'm still going to try and grab hold of something.


----------



## hemera (Sep 26, 2011)

We had a teleport heavy group that was pretty unhappy they couldn't use their chosen method of movement. Plus the DM ruled the swordmages had to teleport if they marked. So they stopped marking, and the rest of the party got shredded fast. We weren't optimized or anything, as were just told it was a quick encounter and no big deal. It was pretty funny though.

Assault Swordmage
Assault Swordmage / Warlock Hybrid
Assassin (Original)
Telepathic Psion (Teleport Utility Power)
Cunning Bard (assassin multiclass to get the shadow walk feat)
Stone Fist Monk


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 27, 2011)

Alphastream said:


> If the players are amazing and their characters insane, then they should win. The alternative is that the most perfect party would still have the luck of the dice, meaning the non-perfect would be doomed to fail. That isn't the kind of Lair Assault I want to see because it means tons of players would be disillusioned - they would know that most of them could never win and that even the ones that could have a random chance.




Unless the alternative was that the DM could actually boost the adventure based on how many times his group has gone through it.  It could be a somewhat challenging adventure for most people, but still get harder and harder for the well designed and played PCs. Add one monster to the entire adventure per unsuccessful time through and two monsters per successful time through. That, and have a lot of other DM options for adventure variability.


----------



## Alphastream (Sep 28, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> Unless the alternative was that the DM could actually boost the adventure based on how many times his group has gone through it.  It could be a somewhat challenging adventure for most people, but still get harder and harder for the well designed and played PCs. Add one monster to the entire adventure per unsuccessful time through and two monsters per successful time through. That, and have a lot of other DM options for adventure variability.




I see what you mean. I think the program is trying to be less "for the DM" and more "for the players" in that the DM is making a few changes within given options and the players are trying to best the set level of challenge. It isn't "DM, make your own challenge... are you the best encounter maker out there?"

Does that make sense? For example, the card players get is not something they can get every time. If they want bragging rights, they try again to get more boxes checked off. They also don't have to succeed each try to make some progress on checking boxes. The program seems to be really for the players to try to get these achievements (which is why DMs don't get a card). 

I like your idea that the program could in theory have a scaling option beyond Nightmare mode for players. My question would be how often it would be employed. Most A-Team tables I know want to win and destroy. Oh, they want a challenge, but they want sweet victory. If the challenge is at level x and they best it, and they want to get more boxes checked, they want to again win rather than see it ratchet upwards in challenge. Not everyone will feel that way, of course, but I suspect most optimized teams aren't looking to play until they lose. The addition of nightmare x2, nightmare x3, and so on as check boxes may not be desired by a great number of players. 

But, I'm curious. If you asked the optimized players that bested your challenge, would they want to play the same scenario again on nightmare x 4 mode? (Maybe add everyone takes 5 fire damage per round that ignores resistances, the place earthquakes every 3 rounds instead of on round 4, monsters have +2 AC and you get 3 times as many monsters...). You could always offer it informally, explaining the players don't get additional rewards. It could be an interesting experiment.


----------



## KarinsDad (Sep 28, 2011)

Alphastream said:


> I see what you mean. I think the program is trying to be less "for the DM" and more "for the players" in that the DM is making a few changes within given options and the players are trying to best the set level of challenge. It isn't "DM, make your own challenge... are you the best encounter maker out there?"




No, but Lair Assault should be configurable.

For example, the adventure is slightly configurable now. If you have 4 PCs, the difficulty is lowered. If you have 6 PCs, the difficulty is raised. But except for Nightmare mode which is a single option, there is no way for the DM to take into account the capabilities of the PCs and to really challenge the players.

My real issue here is that as a DM, I cannot fulfill WotC's advertising on this adventure without changing the adventure as written:

"You'll pit your wits against some of the most difficult encounters you've ever played."

My players don't consider the first Lair Assault encounter to be even close to one of the most difficult encounters they've ever played. I ran them (5 of them at first level) through part of Shards of Selune last weekend and they took on the final encounter first (it wasn't actually the first encounter of the day, but it's the first one where they got to a shard) and that 800 XP encounter (N+3) was magnitudes more challenging than Lair Assault for them (3 different PCs went unconscious a total of 6 times where at one point, 3 PCs were unconscious all at the same time).

That was a nail biter compared to Lair Assault for my group.

Granted, Lair Assault would be a killer dungeon if the players had brought in normal PCs straight out of a normal game. But giving the players the run of the books (plus fortune cards) made it a lot less of a challenge than many normal N+3 or N+4 encounters versus normal PCs in normal games.

Most PCs in most games do not have Armor of Sudden Recovery (our group playing Lair Assault didn't either), but I'll bet money that some future groups going into future Lair Assaults will have it. There are just too many great options and synergistic combinations when the game opens up all of the books and the players get to auto-pick the items without any DM control.


----------



## Taed (Oct 3, 2011)

We assaulted the lair a fourth time, this time on Nightmare mode and with [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] acting as an "evil" GM.  We were trying for a speed run with characters all the same race.  Summary:  Two out of five of us were down before even acting, and the others by the end of the third round.

We played 5 Void Genasi that one of the players put together (so 4 of us were unfamiliar with our characters).  The thinking was that we'd make a run for the lava room (hopefully triggering an OE from the elemental to trigger our Armor of Sudden Recovery) and pop out of existence (I forget the power) and appear on the other side in the final room at the start of the second round.  Only then would we start fighting.

Unfortunately, the first room did not have the fire elemental and hellhound as we had previously faced.  Instead it had a hellhound, a handler, and 8 minion acolytes who were surrounding us in a semicircle when we entered the room.

Here's a simplified version of what transpired...

First round:  We had one PC with a high initiative and he was able to run past them, triggering 3 OEs, but surviving, doing a double run (with a +4 speed on first round feat) to the far end of the lava room and popped out of existence -- a good start to our strategy.  Next the hellhound went, fire breath, lit two pools on fire, lit up all 8 acolytes, who then rushed us and blew themselves up (around 17 fire damage close burst 1 each), resulting in 2 characters unconscious and the other 2 with single-digit hit points.  But at least all the minions were dead!  The two conscious PCs then ran for it, following our plan.  The hellhound and handler then did a Coup de Grace the next round.  Two dead characters who died without ever taking an action.

Next two rounds:  Three PCs were in the final room and focused on the Tiefling, but didn't have enough firepower, but did bloody him at least.

In retrospect, we did not expect all the minions as had hadn't seen them previously.  We needed a way to control them, such as a Wizard with Beguiling Strands.  If we hadn't been working on Nightmare mode, I think our plan would have worked out well enough to at least get us all into the final room.


----------



## Alphastream (Oct 3, 2011)

Ouch! This makes me really wonder what would have happened had my Hunter not gone first. I was able to kill all four minions that started in the first room, taking them out before they acted. I even used my elven re-roll on one. 

She isn't incredibly optimized, but that accuracy and high initiative really helps.


----------



## KarinsDad (Oct 3, 2011)

Taed said:


> First round:  We had one PC with a high initiative and he was able to run past them, triggering 3 OEs, but surviving, doing a double run (with a +4 speed on first round feat) to the far end of the lava room and popped out of existence -- a good start to our strategy.  Next the hellhound went, fire breath, lit two pools on fire, lit up all 8 acolytes, who then rushed us and blew themselves up (around 17 fire damage close burst 1 each), resulting in 2 characters unconscious and the other 2 with single-digit hit points.  But at least all the minions were dead!  The two conscious PCs then ran for it, following our plan.  The hellhound and handler then did a Coup de Grace the next round.  Two dead characters who died without ever taking an action.




Because the other players were playing for a goal which did not include keeping their allies alive by killing foes. A speed run shouldn't mean movement only. That's a seriously major player mistake, even if the DM isn't pulling out all of the stops. It's one thing to get past the door, it's another to not fight doing it.

And if the DM has the foes arranged in a semi-circle in the oil around the PCs where the hellhound can light them up, sure. The adventure does allow for the suicide bomber technique. Although an interesting technique, it is a bit lame for the DM to figure out a way to do a "hundreds of points of damage" one shot in round one.

If the DM is going to do that, he might has well have a 100 foot pit trap at the entrance and average 55 points of damage for anyone still standing there. Pull a lever and most PCs are dead.


----------



## Taed (Oct 3, 2011)

Alphastream said:


> Ouch! This makes me really wonder what would have happened had my Hunter not gone first. I was able to kill all four minions that started in the first room, taking them out before they acted. I even used my elven re-roll on one.




As I understood the minions, when they're reduced to 0 HPs, they get a "suicide bomb run" of move 5 and then explode.  So, unless the minions were far from you, they should have been able to attack you in that way when you killed them.

For us, the upon-death was activated when the hellhound blasted, lighting the oil pools on fire, which killed the minions standing in the pools, so they all got their death attack on the hellhound's initiative.  It was excellent monster placement by the DM.

There was a minor debate about whether we should get a chance for opportunity attack against them when they did the suicide bomb run.  Logically yes, but since they were already at 0 HPs, it wasn't like we could kill them more.  We all had daggers and staves, so it's not like we could have cut them in half as they ran by (which would have been a good argument for allowing OAs if we had some martial characters).  It was an upon-death power for them, so perhaps there was some verbage about opportunity attacks.  As it was, we had an open square to the middle of the party, so they all ran and exploded in that square, hurting all of us.  One PC who survived was just lucky, and the other was a Wizard who got up their Shield (with the +4 allowing them to miss enough to survive).


----------



## Saracenus (Oct 3, 2011)

Alphastream's Hunter did kill them all at range so they were neutralized rather quickly. We did get hit by the second set over two rounds in the cloak room. But by that point we had our Regeneration 5 up and the party was spread out so it was impossible to destroy us in a mass suicide run.

Just as an FYI, normal mode caps the number of monsters per room at 3 and nightmare mode has a max of 4. So, the speed run on nightmare would have been the same on nightmare because there were only three monsters in the room.

I applaud the evil genius of the DM who came up with the suicide run. I used a similar tactic (minus the minions) and damaged the party badly from the get go. I killed 3 out 5 at the end and timing out at round 20 was the only thing that saved the rest of the party from a TPK.

I think that the cat and mouse game between players and DMs is an interesting development. Players bring X Grossness, DMs respond with B grossness in return. Circle of Unlife is completed.

Karinsdad, I have to say this event is not for you. You want this to be fair and balanced and that is not what this program is about. You have complained about LA being too easy and now you are complaining that its unfair. Well, welcome to Lair Assault. There is always growing pains with a new program. 

When we started D&D Encounters (DDE) there were judges that ran it on hard mode like they were running a table of LFR with a bunch of organized play vets. Once people figured out that it was casual play with lots inexperience players the DMs settled into a rhythm and play experience has been much better for it. Also,  there are plenty of other programs that are "fair" and "balanced" out there (LFR, Ashes of Athas, DDE, etc.). Lair Assault cannot be all things to all people, just as the other campaigns are not everyone's cup of tea.

I think that DMs are going to improve as they run this over and over. They will become more adept at using the abilities of the monsters (our DM made a few mistakes with the monsters and I know we made a few goofs with our PCs). The real interesting thing will be the evolution of Monster synergy that DMs will discover as they experiment with different combos.

I have said it earlier in the thread figuring out monster and terrain synergy will make or break the deadliness of this adventure. There is no one best way to run the opposition vs. the PCs as the strategic and tactical choices of the players will always be different.

My two coppers,


----------



## Saracenus (Oct 3, 2011)

Damn, frippin' double post. My first one ever. Do I get and achievement or something?


----------



## KarinsDad (Oct 3, 2011)

Saracenus said:


> Karinsdad, I have to say this event is not for you. You want this to be fair and balanced and that is not what this program is about. You have complained about LA being too easy and now you are complaining that its unfair. Well, welcome to Lair Assault. There is always growing pains with a new program.




I don't want it to be fair and balanced. But, I do want it to be semi-reasonable and not super ridiculous.

When one looks at the minions in the oil, one understands that it is a lose lose proposition for any group of PCs.

The DM did not have to have the Hell Hound hit the minions. The first PC that hits a minion will have that minion run in, do a close burst fire, which will light the oil, which will kill the rest of the minions, which will have them move in and blow up.

So, initiative doesn't matter. The DM was throwing hundreds of points of damage at the PCs regardless of who attacked a minion first. I like the concept of Lair Assault challenging the players beyond what they were ever challenged, but seriously. Think about it. The only reason the one PC didn't get caught up in this tactic was because he was moving away and taking 3 OAs to do it. The DM set up a scenario where it was likely to have 2 or 3 PCs unconscious and 2 or 3 only barely conscious in round one, almost regardless of what the players did. In fact, I was suprised that the DM had to do Coup de Grace in round two because two close burst ones (out of 8) on unconscious PCs (nearly autohit) should have killed them.

Any other group who were not trying to auto-teleport through the doors in round one would have gotten all 5 PCs creamed in round one. This group actually lucked out in that one PC got out of the room. This makes save or die look like a walk in the park because at least there, the players have a chance to save.

It's one thing to seriously challenge the players. It's another to cream the PCs regardless of initiative in round one. I don't see the point of playing the adventure if the DM is going to go to these extremes. In fact, even without nightmare mode, this tactic of 8 minions in the oil plus a single trap could have easily killed a few PCs in nearly any party. Put 3 NPCs behind the first door and and the finish the adventure in 5 rounds scenario is practically undoable.


----------



## Taed (Oct 3, 2011)

Saracenus said:


> Just as an FYI, normal mode caps the number of monsters per room at 3 and nightmare mode has a max of 4. So, the speed run on nightmare would have been the same on nightmare because there were only three monsters in the room.




I asked our DM why he didn't just put all of the monsters in the final room and he mentioned that there were limitations, but he did not think that there was a limitation of 4 monsters (or maybe minions don't count?) in the first room.

In the first room, he had 1 hellhound, 1 dog handler (don't know what that was, but he described it as someone holding the hellhound's leash), and 8 minions that blew up.  The two statues were not traps or active in any way, so maybe that allowed more monsters?

Also, which room is being referred to as the "cloak room"?  We've been calling them the first room, which them opens to the mud room, the lava room, and the arcane room.  The final room is the final room.  We actually haven't gotten to the final room in any way other than the lava room wall, so we don't know what's really after the mud room and arcane room.


----------



## Saracenus (Oct 3, 2011)

Taed,

4 minions count as one monster for the purposes of monsters per room counting purposes, just like a normal encounter at low heroic.

So, your room had 3 monsters and no traps. He could have put as many traps in the room as there are places to put them (there are limitations on where the traps can be placed in the room). So, you could have been facing a lot worse.

Since you were on nightmare mode he could have had another monster in there too.

LA is a series of trade offs. Do I put the minions in, or do I use the brute instead? There are sets of monsters at each level and a DM has to chose one or the other.

The hell-hound handler is pure descriptive fluff. It's awesome your DM made one of the creatures he chose the hell-hound handler.

Thanks,


----------



## Taed (Oct 4, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> I don't want it to be fair and balanced. But, I do want it to be semi-reasonable and not super ridiculous.  When one looks at the minions in the oil, one understands that it is a lose lose proposition for any group of PCs.




Our group found it clever of the DM and a challenge for us and completely in the spirit of Lair Assault.  We now have to think about how to defeat that strategy for next week (such as through initiative bonuses).



KarinsDad said:


> IThe DM did not have to have the Hell Hound hit the minions. The first PC that hits a minion will have that minion run in, do a close burst fire, which will light the oil, which will kill the rest of the minions, which will have them move in and blow up.
> So, initiative doesn't matter. The DM was throwing hundreds of points of damage at the PCs regardless of who attacked a minion first.




We knew what the minions were (some of us encountered some of them in the first week) and we had no intention of hitting them.  Our strategy was to not get involved in any combat in the first room.  If we needed a path through the row of minions, we would have done a Charge / Bull Rush.

That said, the hellhound was necessary and initiative mattered since only the hellhound and handler ended up with higher initiative than the PCs.  Without the hellhound, we would all have gone before the minions and run past the minions with a double-run, take the OAs, and make it into the final room at the end of the first round (giving us 4 more rounds in the final room for the attempt at speed run glory).

Also, if we decided not to run, any decent defender (of which we had none) could have taken the attacks from the minions without getting bloodied due to the high AC (or were those reflex attacks? I forget) and high hit points.  So, it's hardly a certain loss.

A good part of our problem was when the first character ran, we were left in a U-shaped pattern (as he happened to be the front row middle position), and all the minions piled into the hole.  Without that hole, only 2 or 3 PCs (not all 4) could have been hit by each minion's close blast.  Thus, we would have all survived that minion onslaught, though all would still have been bloodied.

I don't know the rules for monster placement, but if the DM were allowed to place 16 of those minions in the first room in a semi-circle around the entrance so that it was largely two deep, that would be quite difficult.  Although with initiative, Thunderwave or Beguiling Strands could still make a path, so you might end up sacrificing one PC.  Or if you all had some way of doing a fly or spider walk, that's another way out.

Just for clarity, this was the layout after the first PC ran away, where P=PCs, m=Minions, H=Hellhound, and .=walking path.  As you can see, the DM did leave us space to run the gauntlet, so he wasn't totally evil.  If I were doing that, I wouldn't have left those spaces, forcing a Bull Rush.

m H m
m . m
mP.Pm
mP.Pm


----------



## KarinsDad (Oct 4, 2011)

Taed said:


> Our group found it clever of the DM and a challenge for us and completely in the spirit of Lair Assault.  We now have to think about how to defeat that strategy for next week (such as through initiative bonuses).




Actually, you made it sound a lot worse than it probably was.

The minions only do 5 fire damage when they blow up, not 17.

So sure, PCs can survive that. I'm not even quite sure how the Hellhound and minions took out even a single PC that way in a single round (our PCs had a range of 50 to 60+ hit points when we played). The Hellhound does 17 max or 12 average damage and each minion burst does 5 (for an average of 52 and a max of 57). Sure, that's enough to drop a PC if every single one of them hits a PC, but they have to roll to hit. Are you sure the DM didn't mess this up? He hit all 4 PCs with 7 to 9 hits out of 9? I'm not quite sure who the hellhound handler was and how much damage it could do (and granted, the minions themselves could damage the PCs, but you stated that the minions had a low init).

So yeah, this wasn't quite the super threat that you implied once one looks at the NPCs. It was just a cool (or hot in this case) DM threat. Course, I'm not sure how the DM managed rolling that well to do that much damage.

Did the PC who made it through the lava room use an action point to activate the Void power? Cause he had to run to the door (move), minor to open, run to the second door (move) and was out of actions to activate it.


Btw, the easiest way to stop the 5 round win is to put 2 or more monsters in the lava room, preferably side by side to minimize movement past them. I'm surprised your DM didn't do that. I assume he knew what your goal was. Even your void PCs would have had to fight the monsters in both rooms for a few rounds.

That would have been funny if the DM put 2 monsters on the other side of that first door. That first PC runs up, minors to open the door, and has two monsters next to him. Then even if he tries to attack, he's at -5 to hit and the monsters are +2 to hit him because of the run action. Oops.


----------



## Taed (Oct 4, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> Actually, you made it sound a lot worse than it probably was.
> The minions only do 5 fire damage when they blow up, not 17.




The drenched-in-oil minions we faced definitely did somewhere in the 15-19 range, but I don't recall the exact number.  I had 50 HPs, resist 3 fire (originally resist 6 fire), and got hit by about half of the 9 attacks (hellhound + 8 minions), and ended up at -10 or so when the attacks were finished.  (I don't recall if I was hit by the hellhound or not, but remember that doing about the same damage as the minions blowing up.)  That's 60 HPs of damage total.  From 4 hits, that would be 15+3 = 18 fire damage each.  From 5 hits, that would be 12+3 = 15 fire damage each.

If they were only doing 5 fire damage, I would have only taken 2 HPs each (due to resist 3 fire), so with 5 minion hits, we would only be about 10 HPs down each (although others only had resist 2 fire), certainly not at all what happened.

I can't speak to the minions as written, as I haven't seen the module.  However, we faced two minions the first week as well with a different DM and remember the explosion being surprisingly large (and I had resist 3 all with the character I was playing at the time), so it seems that both DMs were working from the same script.


----------



## Taed (Oct 4, 2011)

Taed said:


> The drenched-in-oil minions we faced definitely did somewhere in the 15-19 range, but I don't recall the exact number...




One of my fellow players says:
As a note about the minions, it was actually 10 damage each, and the handler had gone before the hell-hound and given all the minions a buff, which is why they had 10 instead of their normal damage.

In that case, after fire resistance, they were doing 7 damage each to my character (and 8 to the others) and we must have been hit more than I thought.  Assuming the hellhound's breath blast hit for 20-25 damage, that leaves another 35-40 that was done by the minions, which was about 5 or 6 hits out of 8 minions.

And so that DM tactic only worked because both the dog handler and hellhound had higher initiative than us.  Had either had lower initiative, we all should have made it out of the first room.


----------



## KarinsDad (Oct 4, 2011)

Taed said:


> One of my fellow players says:
> As a note about the minions, it was actually 10 damage each, and the handler had gone before the hell-hound and given all the minions a buff, which is why they had 10 instead of their normal damage.
> 
> In that case, after fire resistance, they were doing 7 damage each to my character (and 8 to the others) and we must have been hit more than I thought.  Assuming the hellhound's breath blast hit for 20-25 damage, that leaves another 35-40 that was done by the minions, which was about 5 or 6 hits out of 8 minions.




Well, I don't know what the handler was (I'll look again tonight now that I know that he has a damage buff), but the Hellhound does 2d6+5 damage. Nowhere near 20-25 unless the handler buffed him 5 as well and he rolled real high on the damage.

This seems excessively high, but sometimes the dice are hot. 

And finding a way to do double damage is just nasty cause it blows the damage out of the park.


----------



## misalo1 (Oct 9, 2011)

DMed Lair Today... 

TPK on round 7

4 Characters... 2 died in the 1st room.... 1 in the 'Runes' room and 1 in the hallway that connects to the 'Forge' room.

I played it as written... so they faces the elemental, 2 hounds and 2 traps...

Everybody had a blast...

2 are making new PCs & 1 is retooling his 1st attempt (the 4th doesn't know if he'll be back - due to life, job, etc.) 3 encounter players are going to join us next time...

So until next time - BRING ON THE PAIN


----------



## sigfile (Oct 11, 2011)

Taed said:


> One of my fellow players says:
> As a note about the minions, it was actually 10 damage each, and the handler had gone before the hell-hound and given all the minions a buff, which is why they had 10 instead of their normal damage.



That was a screw-up.  The buff you mention only adds damage to melee attacks, not burst attacks.

Personal accounts: I've run through the Lair twice, now.  For the first run our group had Breaching Armor; the intent was to pop through the false door straight in to the final fight.  Two nasty surprises later and we were thankful we had Plan B - a character optimized to smash down the false door.   We lost two characters in the final fight, but Mordai Vell fell in round 8.

For the second attempt, we had a group primarily consisting of tieflings with final fire resistances between 7 and 9.  We ignored the creatures in the first room (traps, devil, skeleton, and the fire elemental), running straight through to the cracked-floor room.  In round three we started breaching through to the final chamber.  

In the last action of round five, we dropped Mordai Vell.  No PC was dead.

Fire resistance and regen (so, Diabolic Soul tieflings) were just sick, here.  Some creatures just couldn't hurt us.  Auras and ongoing damage weren't problems.  Teleportation became an option again.  Running in to the lava wasn't suicide.  Additional equipment rendered the traps and Mordai Vell's rechargeable power largely ineffective.

While the theme was appreciated, I will look forward to future Lairs where optimizing around a single resistance type (even at half value) isn't the obvious choice.

Now that we've completed the challenge and earned Speed Demon, we're a bit excited to take our time and find some alternate goals.  Nightmare Mode might be next, Commando might be interesting... In a perfect world, I'd like to run against a different DM just to see how different the experience becomes.  Our regular DM has started optimizing around our group, so unless we (players) mix it up, we're likely to keep running in to "more of the same."


----------



## garich (Oct 16, 2011)

*did Lair by myself essentially*

*spoilers*
did lair assault today, and i didnt make it. But there were only 2 of us.
the other person was a Deva healer; she used every single heal on herself. and she died, leaving me with a lot left.
first “encounter” was about 9 minions. none did fire damage, so my force and fire resist didnt mean squat, and i had no burst/area attacks, and neither did the cleric. she ended up using a daily, making a zone of 1d6+cha damage; they were gone soon after.
after was the jumping over platforms (oh i netted a fish and gave it to her). i drew a card that let me get a Stroke of Luck on a failed saving throw; even after about 10 ongoing damage saving throws, and 3 saving throws to avoid falling off a platform (literally about 13 saving throws), i unfortunately continued to save every time (even though i had 12 fire resist meaning 6 fire resist, meaning ongoing 5 fire did nothing). there was a fire bat and a warlock in the platform room.
i suggested we focus on one enemey- the bat- so i could intimidate when bloodied. when it finally was i rolled a ONE on the intimidate, so it just laughed at me. the cleric died after falling and getting singled out (as the DM felt like doing) for attacks. i left the room, leaving the warlock alive, went in the next hallway, and grabbed the jewels from the statue.
the jewels granted 5 REAL fire resist (didnt need) and +5 vs ongoing fire dmg; i dropped it, continuing to try and fail a save for the stroke of luck card. Oh wait both were alive- the bat and warlock followed me. i went into the third little room, put on the robe, but dropped it because it was the same as the jewels. i killed the bat, then went further down the hallway, and used the dark Sun at-will power to see what was in the main room.
there was the elemental (lv10), the boss (lv8 elite), a dragonborn, and 2 trapped statues. this was about round 14, and you have 20 to stop the boss. i went to the portcullis, rolled to lift it, failed, and rolled again using my standard and got it. the boss ran like a bitch and the elemental and the dragonborn came at me. the warlock used his power to teleport us and switch places, sending me back further in the hallway. the dragonborn and elemental blocked the 2-square wide hallway.
i moved to the dragonborn then rolled to bullrush him. i failed, but by this time i finally got the Stroke of Luck and rerolled, pushing him one square and entering the space he left. then i used my action point to move past him, the elemental, and the warlock, going 2 squares past the portcullis- Opp attacks were worth it, cant remember if they hit (my guy had regen 5, temp hp, and resist fire so i didnt care).
i charged the boss and did my Black Wrath of Hell, Takedown strike, and Bull Charge on him. earlier i used my Corona of Floating Force, levitating me and avoiding hazardous terrain and any terrain hazard, aka the lava. the dragonborn came at me, the elemental, and the traps were firing. the boss used his powers like crazy, the dumb dragonborn took 10 damage/round cuz he was in the lava but had just resist fire 10.
they ended up eventually dropping me to -3, then unleashed hell on me (including a coup de grace), but only got me to -25. my bloody value is 27, so i didnt die. then i regened 5 at the start of my turn (from armor of sudden recovery from the ongoing 5 damage from turn 4), bringing my hp to 5, and then it was turn 20 and too late.
i had hurt the boss like hell but didnt bloody him (he has over 180 hit points i think). if i could have bloodied him i could have intimidated with a +22 to the check; i would have had to roll about a 10.
but thats what happened- just me. all the cleric did was heal herself twice and lay a zone for the minions. the fish she ate gave resist 10 fire vs 1 attack, but didnt save her. just remember that having a tiefling is essential, and being a hybrid battlemind/battlerager worked well.
my 2 consumables were 2 potions of clarity (reroll encounter/daily attack, tho rerolling at-wills would have helped tremendously; my last 3 attacks vs the boss were 1, 2, and 2).


----------



## sigfile (Oct 20, 2011)

That's an impressive run for two people!



garich said:


> they ended up eventually dropping me to -3, then unleashed hell on me (including a coup de grace), but only got me to -25. my bloody value is 27, so i didnt die. then i regened 5 at the start of my turn (from armor of sudden recovery from the ongoing 5 damage from turn 4), bringing my hp to 5, and then it was turn 20 and too late.




You did luck out, here; regen shouldn't work once you're below zero hp.  From the Compendium's glossary definition of regeneration: "Heal Each Turn: If you have regeneration and at least 1 hit point, you regain a specified number of hit points at the start of your turn. If your current hit point total is 0 or lower, you do not regain hit points through regeneration."


----------



## garich (Oct 20, 2011)

*sorry should have known regen worked like that*

So yeah I would have died soon after being unconscious, not regenned to 5.

I was a tiefling battlerager/battlemind (main attributes 18str, 16con, 16 cha). Had an intimidate focus (+19, +22 if I used a powerpoint).

Even tho the elemental was in the final room I should have saved my armor of sudden recovery for him; will next time. 

After seeing an uber-awesome feat for swordmages (rose king's shield) I'm considering a battlerager/swordmage; 16 con means hitting with booming blade means 13 temps if I move 2 squares, but at least 8 temps if I don't move. 

I did love the battleminds corona of floating force stance tho so I dunno.

I'm considering soulfangs of resistance (i'd lose 6hp/ round having 57hp) but i'd strictly wait until at the boss to gain resist psychic 10 since some of his attacks have that keyword. Don't know if it'll be worth it)

(Btw brooch of shieldings resist 10 force helped on several occasions)

Good luck! I'm probably going to play this wednesday; it's looking like we'll have 2 wizards who'll both have double magic missile (meaning 24 and 26 auto damage). They'll bloody, I'll take aggro, then I'll intimidate.  A few times ago when I played I was pure battlemind with Aspect of Unspeakable Horror; had +29 intimidate (using a power point); rolled a 40 vs the boss, he didn't surrender like he should have, DM just gave more time to kill him


----------



## Neonchameleon (Oct 21, 2011)

I'm with everyone else saying that there should be a warning not to use Oassasins, Assault Swordmages, or other people who rely on teleports.

And did it on the first run after seriously twinking out some hybrid characters (Battle Cleric's Lore FTW).  The runes were unpleasant and we avoided that way after one person wandered in.  And that false door is nasty.

I wonder.  Is there a way through the rune corridor using Bracers of Brachiation or the like so you never actually step on the runes?  (And avoid the portcullis - which was our biggest delay).


----------

