Post by Paul on Jan 13, 2010 14:31:36 GMT -6
Well Bob asked.
I knew what you were trying to do, so it didn't bother me it would have annoyed some veteran players.
You knew we were going to face a female necro so having her stats done would be helpful. But since we are just about to face here you get a mulligan on that one.
I know the players are on the forums so if they read this don’t take this personally. I got the feeling that some of you guys were bored. That actually falls on Bob to make sure people always have things to do. The biggest thing you need to change is your attack descriptions. We don’t need to know that we spun the skeletons head around or that it shrugged off the attack. You need to do this more sparingly because all it is doing now is slowing down combat and making the players bored. Combat needs to be fast and exciting. You hit, you missed, you hit, you missed it may sound boring but the speed keeps people interested.
Allow us reactions to things as well. Try this next time: “Eric Graves is pulled towards the fire by the hands of doom reaching from below. Anyone close enough may try and save him with a reflex saving throw to see if they are able to stop him from getting roasted.” If the reflex saving throw is successful then they need an opposed strength check. This does a few things. First it gives other people things to do other then combat. Instead of flooding the rooms with skeletons have the one big bad ass and that is it. Leave the group to decide if they are going to fight the baddy or save Eric. Make it so that the group needs a few people to help Eric and some to kill the baddy. “Neil jumps over in the nick of time to stop Eric from being pulled into the fire. Neil’s feet start getting dragged towards the fire as his strength is only enough to slow Eric down.” Now we have three options with the chest you told us about. Help Neil save Eric, kill the baddy, or loot? With the added element of the walls closing in that gives us four. Leaving Eric helpless makes things a lot more interesting.
This isn’t meant to be an insult but the group is primed for a classic dungeon crawl.
I'm tempted to write one up for you.
I knew what you were trying to do, so it didn't bother me it would have annoyed some veteran players.
You knew we were going to face a female necro so having her stats done would be helpful. But since we are just about to face here you get a mulligan on that one.
I know the players are on the forums so if they read this don’t take this personally. I got the feeling that some of you guys were bored. That actually falls on Bob to make sure people always have things to do. The biggest thing you need to change is your attack descriptions. We don’t need to know that we spun the skeletons head around or that it shrugged off the attack. You need to do this more sparingly because all it is doing now is slowing down combat and making the players bored. Combat needs to be fast and exciting. You hit, you missed, you hit, you missed it may sound boring but the speed keeps people interested.
Allow us reactions to things as well. Try this next time: “Eric Graves is pulled towards the fire by the hands of doom reaching from below. Anyone close enough may try and save him with a reflex saving throw to see if they are able to stop him from getting roasted.” If the reflex saving throw is successful then they need an opposed strength check. This does a few things. First it gives other people things to do other then combat. Instead of flooding the rooms with skeletons have the one big bad ass and that is it. Leave the group to decide if they are going to fight the baddy or save Eric. Make it so that the group needs a few people to help Eric and some to kill the baddy. “Neil jumps over in the nick of time to stop Eric from being pulled into the fire. Neil’s feet start getting dragged towards the fire as his strength is only enough to slow Eric down.” Now we have three options with the chest you told us about. Help Neil save Eric, kill the baddy, or loot? With the added element of the walls closing in that gives us four. Leaving Eric helpless makes things a lot more interesting.
This isn’t meant to be an insult but the group is primed for a classic dungeon crawl.
I'm tempted to write one up for you.
