In this installment of Critical Hit – A Major Spoilers Dungeons and Dragons Podcast: These books are hard to defeat!
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14 Comments
Why did it take so long for the “Hit the books” pun?
We’ve been a bit preoccupied…
They had to study the situation…
It was bound to happen, but it would have been too hard to cover their vulnerable spines if they had stopped reading the situation to make the pun.
They were reading the enemy…
I really did not like this fight. I commend the players for not arguing with the GM on his house rule but making Adriana only roll once for her Daily was just wrong. So for a single bad roll, she took all that damage from their auras and didn’t get to use her Flurry of Blows. All that House rule does is slow the game down since in the end the monsters last longer and get more actions. Plus there is the fact that every combat you guys fight you face creatures 3+ levels higher than you. Something like that is fantastic when it’s the epic endgame fight. But to do it every single time just makes it tedious for me. You guys shouldn’t feel like you need to use up all your dailies every single fight and that’s exactly what happens. Rodrigo, I think you are a great story teller but your GMing actions are going to make me stop listening. For a podcast that is supposed to educate the listener, you don’t do enough to help your players make good decisions. It’s no wonder that Torq never remembers to use Mark when the bad guys never ever trigger his free attack. Your skill challenge house rules are cool, except the difficulties are not geared to your player’s stats. If they are constantly needing to roll a 12 or higher on their best skills that just ridiculous. It’s way too easy to get 3 failures on any set of rolls of 6 more. It’s really not entertaining to listen to them fail and miss over and over and win battles using the Miss portions of their powers.
I don’t think the combats are too challenging given that the party gets to go into most combats fully rested – but the party misses a lot of things that could make them easier.
1 No knowledge checks in the early rounds to get info on the creatures.
2 Often poor use of action points – they are often spent as if the player is venting because of a miss – rather than early in the combat to get momentum – or when the player/creatures are optimally positioned. Because they are often spent re-actively (e.g. on a miss) they are almost always at the end of the player round – even if their prestige class action point bonus would impact the rest of the round
3 Poor order of execution – e.g. Mother Mantis attacked 5 creatures – took 25 points of damage – and then used the power that gave her damage reduction 6 until the end of her next turn – if she’d done that first she’d have taken none of the 25 points – I’m also pretty sure she forgot to apply it after her turn ended until the end of her next turn.
Re #2: I was just thinking the other day that I don’t think I can remember a single instance of someone using an action point for any other reason besides, “I just missed/hit, and want to take another action RIGHT NOW.” I can’t remember action points ever being used to recharge powers or to strategically proc the prestige bonus (except maybe the shift power granted by Rob, though I feel like he had that before he picked his paragon path anyway). Not that wanting to act again RIGHT NOW isn’t a valid reason to spend an action point, but the paragon perks, which can be incredibly powerful, always seem like an afterthought, if they get remembered at all.
I’ve made a similar observation to you in a previous post, the one where they fight against the giant un-killable statues the first time. And I think you’re exactly correct, but I think that’s just a fact of life with this group of players. The CH crew is overwhelmingly RP oriented, not power gamer/strategy oriented. Not that 4e combat isn’t mechanically complicated, but it’s clear that, especially with the animal friends, the party has not sat down to really figure out the mechanical synergies and nuances (or, even, it would seem, read all of the power cards) of their characters for combat purposes. And I think, largely, that’s because the players don’t find that degree of power gaming to be enjoyable. It’s still occasionally frustrating when, five years into this campaign, we’re still explaining basic mechanics (e.g. what “slowed” or “dazed” means, what kind of action second wind is, how you can convert between standard, minor, and move actions, etc.), or when it’s clear that someone is trying to figure out what their powers do for the first time ever during their turn, but I don’t really think that’s going to change any time soon.
You know, your comments always make a stunning amount of assumptions both about the show and about people’s personal preferences and abilities. And I’m always surprised by the conclusions you come to after listening to or reading something. I don’t know how else to say this, but in cases where I personally know what has and hasn’t happened, I’ve literally never seen you be correct in what you think is going on in the player’s/GM’s heads, what you think was happening behind the scenes, why X decision was made, etc.
So maybe slow down a little because a lot of the things you say seem to be built on other things you’ve determined to be fact or even strongly implied to be true. While fascinating to read, you’re making determinations on things you cannot possibly know and sometimes these things are disturbingly personal in their basis (and just as disturbingly wrong).
Fair enough. I will admit to projecting my assumptions in these comment sections based on my perceptions of what and why the players and GM are doing. I will try to dial that back. After listening to the party for 300 some odd hours at this point, I guess I feel like there are certain aspects of the group and its dynamics that I’m not making huge logical leaps in describing, but, as you indicate, there’s far more I don’t see or hear than I do.
That said, I don’t really get what or why you think anything I’ve said is disturbing. I will certainly admit to being at times critical or frank, but I don’t think I’ve done so with malice or in a way that was intended to personally attack you or anyone else in the group. As a quick jaunt through tumblr has, I’m sure, on many occasions shown you, people are passionate about this show. I feel I have been equally complimentary about things that I’ve enjoyed and found awesome about the show as I have been frustrated or critical about aspects that don’t make sense to me or that I don’t enjoy. I have made judgments about how the cast plays 4e based on listening to the cast play 4e, some of which certainly may not be completely accurate if I knew any of you in person/were actually playing with you.
Even so, to whatever degree my posts reacting to those moments of frustration or criticism have offended you or the rest of the cast, I apologize, and I will try to post more judiciously in the future. And, to whatever degree you’d be willing to dispel my misconceptions, I would appreciate it.
I have a lot of trouble getting into the animals but I love how Stephen plays Plague Jackal and Adrianna’s “Oh no…. bunny” type exclamations. Guess bottom line is there are episodes that I frankly just don’t like but overall I like the series. I have binged listened a couple times as I work on my new house and it’s been a gateway pod-drug to Zach on Film and the Major Spoilers podcast as I really do like the people on the site. So this week I’ll say I’m glad the fight is over too and I bought some crap on amazon via the link and since I just moved hopefully I can use the link a few more times as I really do appreciate the effort all of you put into this site.
I just finished re-listening to Season 3, and in the post mortem episode Rodrigo discusses how the other third characters ended up being very big parts of the story to the point that they actively distracted from the main characters (not necessarily to anyone’s detriment, but just that they played a major role in the course of the season).
I feel like in season 4, Rodrigo went out of his way to not have an “other fourth” set of characters specifically because he wanted the focus to stay on the five main PCs. Between their surprise, context-less introduction, the fact that they’ve appeared almost entirely in combat episodes, and the fact that they’ve been in maybe 5 total episodes out of a 100 episode season, I think it’s overall been a little tough to get invested in the animals in the same way we could get behind the other third characters, for example. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, just the way things played out.
Definitely looking forward to see what’s next when this week’s episode drops.
Please put a spoiler warning if you are disclosing anything that happens beyond the episode to which you are posting a comment! I have not read your post, as I managed to stop myself after “… and in the post mortem episode Rodrigo discusses” in the first sentence. So maybe there are no spoilers, but I can’t take the chance!
Thank you.
I really like this podcast and everyone on it. But again, I find it unbelievable how much Matthew Crits. pretty sure he did it back to back in this fight. It wouldn’t bother me so much if someone with the show would actully address the obvious.