After you all drove away on Sunday night, I made myself a cup of
tea and considered why the three of you had so struggled to overcome my (should-have-been-merely-difficult) encounters?
In our conversations from the previous day, I’d already realised my mistake with the ‘challenge ratings’
assuming a party of four.
Mostly though, I couldn’t work out why you hadn’t leveled up
during the adventure.
OK, you’d (understandably) ignored the Orc bandits’ treasure and willfully avoided
the town encounters but I thought I’d accounted for that.
So, I re-examined the encounters, one at a time.
You’d actually made more experience for your successes due
to dividing the experience by three rather than four.
But then I saw my error.
You hadn't found it so hard because your characters were flawed.
Sorry Assif.
Or cowardly.
Sorry David.
In my excitement, I’d simply failed to award you the
experience earned through the non-combat encounters.
You should have got a chunk of experience for getting over
the ‘Broken bridge/stairway’, more for the ‘Portal’ traps and avoiding its
guardian and even more for overcoming… Undercoming? the ‘Water luge’ under the
sea!
Ultimately you should all have broken 4th level by
the time you'd nakedly faced the first Lizardmen defenders in that steamy subterranean chamber.
So rather than feel
like I’d ‘Taken pity on you’, please understand that any and all ‘difficulties’ you
faced were horribly exacerbated by my swindling you out of a level’s worth of HPs and
class abilities.
So sorry!
If it helps in any way, despite the accidental (but serious) handicap I gave you, you won the last encounter against Gov-El and his royal guards entirely due to your clever tactics and cooperation.
You doubly deserved that victory!
Interesting that we might have had a little more HP/ability by the time we met the Lizard Folk - that might well have made a difference.
ReplyDeleteBut in the end, there were mistakes made by us (swimming naked for example, or not taking henchmen) and a combination of bad rolling and not enough fire-power that really caused us the problems.
As you say, part of the problem (for me at least) is that I made a deeply flawed character. And, if you are feeling contrite and generous enough, maybe you would let us "tweak" our characters a bit before we play again.
Specifically for me, I might shift my ability scores around a bit. More radically, I could possibly go single classed - not sure which though. Or maybe choose a pair of classes which are better matched?
I'm not sure, but I'll start thinking about it if you allow us some flexibility.
I demand a recount!
ReplyDeleteNah, not really. I think any mis-calculations of challenge ratings was only compounded by our lack of tactical ability, and exacerbated further by our inability to roll higher than one.
At the end of the day, we all had a good time, and isn't that what matters the most?
But if we are going to tweak things, I'd potentially switch a couple ability points around too ;-)
hadnt even thought that there wasnt enough xp. We all went up a level at end.
ReplyDeleteer pot black kettle 'cowardly character' but yes I was/am "cautious" actually read a bit about combat since and I failed to exploit tumble skill and some other stuff.
Main thing is I was smiling all of drive home :-}
You're all too kind.
ReplyDeleteWhat I meant was that Volkon wasn't just outnumbered, he was battling above his weight/level and that Nitendae behaved appropriately cautiously.
I was just trying to (unfairly) justify the encounter imbalance.
I'll dole out the final experience soon and of course you can all re-jiggle your characters.
I'm really glad you all had a good time.
:)