Golem Hall - a breakdown of the fight

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beowuuf
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Golem Hall - a breakdown of the fight

Post by beowuuf »

Here's my stream of consciousness typed out over the break. Sorry it's maybe not as coherent as it should be.


Golem hall - narrative reasoning:

For reasons that might come up, the Grey Lord didn't free the dead. Instead, he placed mechanisms to stop them spreading should something rouse them (basically those loyal to the High Lords, since they suffered under Chaos).

The RA doors have a normal locking mechanism, one broken by Seeroc's use of a ZOKATHRA. However, the dead breaking the wall overrides the normal lock, and reactivates the magic no matter the state of the door until the threat is gone.

The golems were tasked with then defending their 'area' from the dead and nothing more (hence they tensed when Aurek and Westian entered their awareness, but did not stop the two from going onwards. Oops Grey Lord!). The corridor golems activate when the wall is breached, to quickly form a defensive line to ensure the dead cannot flee back that way. They would not normally move to attack. The RA door at that end also activates.

The two golems in the room should then slowly sweep the room to smash the dead. Only once the dead were stuck back in the wall permenantly, would the two golems go back to their position and allow the door to revert back to its previous state,and the corridor golems go back to their alcoves and reset that door too.

Obviously, there are many holes in the logic of the room's mechanism, but I like that they are intentional oversights because the dead should not be roused in the first place, and because of who should actually be roaming free through the room, and why.


Golem hall - gameplay reasoning

I wanted a set of 'combats' (one for each path the party might take) where it was actually a disguised puzzle. The idea would be that, unless the party was clever or lucky, brute force alone would somehow make the situation worse (although it could buy time for the solution to be enacted). One such combat puzzle was the golem hall.

In this case for the golem hall, I also liked the idea of a flood of weak undead to let the whole group use their cool powers to take out some mooks - turning, great cleave and fireball. Plus give a reason to use some of the cool protective powers like shield and YA potions. There were also a couple of items dotted around in previous areas (none found)like a FUL bomb that could have been fun to use on a weak mass.

I deliberately made the first lot underpowered to the extreme, relying on weight of numbers to provide some threat, as I knew that an exponential increase in power could very soon make the undead too powerful. I also made their decision making and actions slow to start off with, gradually increasign the threat there. So the initial undead needed three rounds to work out there was anyone there, and a round to just pull themselves free, the next level needed the weight of numbers to escape but knew where people were, and still needed a round to get themselves free, then the next level only had a round of 'summoning sickness' but could pull themselves free of the wall when there was a majority dead, and then the next level could just put themselves back together in the hall, and after that the dead would simply reform the moment you killed the second half of the next one up!

Note a set of bad initiative rolls seemed to save you guys from some of the later ones just going right for you... even though the creatures' initiative bonuses slowly climbed up too.

The attack pattern was simple too, to start with they would mindlessly travel their distance (it was always going to be 6) to the closest religeous target, try to claw at them first, and then the try to grapple them as they got closer. And simply flowing around anything in the way. Then the next ones were a little cannier, not creating a crush unless necessary, and going straight for the grapple to pin their opponents down. The third iteration was still focused on the religeous, but was now tatcical. No grapple unless they would have at least two of them (one to draw the AoO), in which case they would have. Also note they were acting tactically in relation to targets - one drew a golem down to the other side of the hall to great a gap for the rest to run through, one engaged Haynuus to keep him busy, and the most powerful one stayed back lookign for a gap to attack Westian through. Also note that the 'kind' act of the four creatures attackign the golems was very tactical - they were blockign the golems so the fifth could have tried for WEstian, and more importantly the double attack of each golem would have meant two more powerful undead would have formed to attack the party. Only Falkor's good idea and roll that properly sealed the door actually saved you guys from a nasty retreating fight. Those were 8HD critters by then!

The power level of the undead was such that their base attack bonus and armour class was increasing exponentially and were in line with their 'level' (making them tougher than normal undead), their strength and intiative was increasing by one step each time, their damage die was increasing by one type each time from 4HD onwards, and their hit die were exponentially increasing in number aswell as incraseing in type each time (to a limit of 1d12 in line with undead). Also note the secondary effect of their claws was increasing by a die type each time, and the DC was increasing by a step each time.

I didn't do 32 enemy in the end (even though you might notice there were 32 free wall squares) because I thought that was too 'cute', so I made the steps as follows:

28off 1HD critters (+2melee, [+1strength, +1BAB], 1d3+1 dam, AC11 (+1 nat AC), +1 all saves (not using the standard progression), init +0, 1d4 hit points (again non-standard). Note none of you could really roll less that 4 damage so they were effectvely one hit kills, hence I never bothered with identifiers)

14off 2HD critters (+4melee, [+2strength, +2BAB], 1d3+2 dam, AC12 (+2 nat AC), +2 all saves, init +1, 2d6+1 hit points.

7off 4HD critters (+7melee [+3 strength, +4BAB], 1d4+4dam (two handed 'slam'attack), AC14 (+4 natural AC), +4 all saves, init +2, 4d8+2 hit points

- Note that this step, the last you fought directly, were getting to be your equivalents. I think some lucky damage rolls and hit point combinations saw them taken out a little faster than they could have been.

4off 7HD critters (+12melee [+5 strength because there were now large, +8BAB so ability to attack twice as fullround], 1d6+5 (back to one handed attacks), AC18 (+8 natural AC), +6 all saves, init +3, 7d10+3 hit points

- I could not believe that one golem lucked a high damage roll at the same time that I rolled so poorly for the first formed one of these guys! 7 d10s, and all 1s, 2s and 3s! Note these guys were still 6 square movement, so the heavily armoured guys could no longer outrun them...well, except Aurek, but that's cause he has the run feat.


2off 14HD critters (+20 melee [+6 strength, +14BAB], 1d8+6 dam, AC24 (+14 natural AC, note decided the conjoined nature of the creatures meant no AC penalty for being large), +8 all saves, init +4, 14d12+4 hit points.

- note that damage aside, these guys were on a par with the golems. And hey, what's more fun than a disarm attempt and using a stolen stone club, right? Oh, this thing would have had a reach of 10' aswell.

Also note that with one of the 7HD critters down, only one more was needed to form this fun little thing...


1off 28HD (+35melee (+28BAB, +7strength), 1d10+7 dam, AC31 (+28 natural AC but decided a -8AC 'penalty' for being large, and also because a natural armour bonus of that high was getting insane, so 'only' +21AC), saves +10, init +5, hit points 28d12+5

15' occupying 15' reach thing of terror! Definitely the sort to laugh while grabbing a golem's club, or a player by the toe to use as a weapon. Ok, maybe not that bad, it was more bulky that strong (only strength of +7). Final form, defeating this would have calmed the spirits enough to escape. But really, if you all got as far as to face this golem killer, you would have probably needed me to pull a few punches. Still, at 15 foot size it couldn't have escaped out the door!


So that was the progression (mostly just made up rather than follow a monster template) to create a slowly increasing threat.

The golems of course looked like allies, could be used as allies by me if needed (although for this fight, they were actually just acting normally and I don't think ever bailed you out) but were actually designed to be mobile difficult terrain and potential threats. And infact a 'countdown mechanism for the fight.

For one thing, since the idea of the combat was to try and get out and not make the critters too powerful too soon, the golems were a sneaky way of ramping up the tension. To start with, they were helpful crowd control (slow that affected alot of them and smashing them) but of course as the creatures got more powerful, the golems could still take them out in a few blows (or one, as it happened!), hastening them getting more powerful even as the party might want that to stop.

Also, when the party occupied the same square as a critter (grapple or swarming) the golem would have had a chance to hit you instead. Never came up, you guys were too good at killing them fast.

As spotted, the golems were not going to stop for you. It was so funny that both times the distances were such that I had to use the bullrush mechanics to push you guys aside, instead fo the overrun where you had a choice to move out of the way (narratively, I decided you guys were just too in the way to be moved around easily). And with both those rolls, the unlikely event of you stopping a golem happened. I gave Haynuus a humourous pass on it, but after Farel stopped one too, I sorta decided that narratively they must have some form of mechanic to stop them just walking over people and stomping them. Time would have told if that meant they started swinging at anyone in their way with a non-lethal blow :D

Also, as Westin and Farel almost found out, the golems slow was a mini-area affect, so if critters were close and you guys got in the way, you were getting targetted too.

Anyway, the way it turned out the golems were silent allies never a threat or hinderance...wish it had panned out where you had to start taking them on to stop them producing over-powered monsters! Or, you know, you guys had gotten int othe line of fire more. Or, you know, one of you guys had decided to do more than throw a pebble at them! :D

The door would actually open if the RA key was used and the lock unbroken. As seen, using the RA key on the lock allowed an easier way to interact with the lock and also access the magic inside. The fact the lock was broken would still allow such access anyway, but at a high DC and at higher risk of damage.

The pads were, as Brighteyes conjectured, designed to activate on the weight of something closer to a golem's weight. A full party in the square might have triggered one, but being mechanical small pads, I would have allowed some form of attacking or jamming of the mechanism instead to artificially activate it.

Anyway, that's the thoughts from my side, will put actual replies to youir comments and lessons learned in the OOC thread! Feel free to comment on the mechanics as a concept here, perhaps your actually feeling on them as they affected you game in the OOC perhaps...
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ian_scho
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Re: Golem Hall - a breakdown of the fight

Post by ian_scho »

lol - so Both Haynuus and Farel stopped a charging Stone giant then.

I like this little scenario.
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beowuuf
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Re: Golem Hall - a breakdown of the fight

Post by beowuuf »

Yeah, the rolls were insane. Hang on, don't usually do this, but let's show them:
This is Haynuus versus the golem: http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2411497/
I think it was so close to call I had to do the calculations like twice just to make sure I hadn't missed something but Haynuus beat the check by one point!
And then Farel's was just insane: http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2412748/
Hence why there wasn't even a tug of war, the golem literally just stopped dead :)

Like I said, narratively, after luck like that, I would just rule the golems are programmed not to stomp over things that don't attack it and not bother again. :)

Funny, if Aurek is notable for increased natural 20s, Haynuus is noteable for rolling bloody low opposed numbers AND YET HAVING HIS OPPONENT ROLL LOW TOO!. There have been about three-four opposed rolls (all intimidate I think) where you've rolled low for Haynuus, I roll the opponent anyway (cause you never know), and stare a 1 - 3 in the face :)


And glad you liked the senario. I liked it too, funny it ended how it did. Still, I think it's perception, I keep going on about how lucky you guys are with lots of encounters (even though you guys manufacture alot of luck by keeping with ideas and good RP beforehand), but there is also a crapton of thigns that have happened I guess that are bad, or missed opportunities, also thanks to your luck and actions. Like Falkor completely missign the FUL rune on the magic torch until I actually pointed it out, Westian missing the fact Deephold had marked his passage into the dungeon so missing the opportunities of that, the set of events that split Ameena from the party (I think Haynuus not giving Helm the flank in the firts round of the teleporter room attack lead to Helm bolting which lead to Helm wantign to leave which meant Ameena had a companion instead of being forced to work it through with you guys, so many little things), this whole thing with Seeroc being avoidable and the soldiers being avoidable in the first place, etc :)
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