Monday, November 10, 2008

D15 (Research Room)

At this point, unless the party has made stellar efforts to remain unnoticed throughout their assault on Thistletop, both Orik and Lyrie have decided to fortify this room. Play this encounter with a careful eye for the characters involved. Lyrie is described as hot-tempered and pessimistic. Orik has a good deal of resolve and a sound sense of self-preservation, but also harbors unrequieted feelings for Lyrie. Both of them will opt to surrender if things turn out badly.

Keep Lyrie at range and have Orik occupy the party in melee. Have Orik lock down strikers when able. Make sure Lyrie saves her Cunning Manipulation for when it can best be used - a multi-target daily spell, for instance. I suggest the following encounter for a party of five adventurers:

Total: 950 xp (Level 5 Encounter)

Treasure parcels 7, 8 and 9 from level 3, as well as treasure parcel 3 from level 4 are found in this room, whether as part of Orik's or Lyrie's equipment, or research materials scattered throughout the room.

Stat blocks:

5 comments:

Robert H. Nichols said...

Could you explain a little more about Lyrie's "Cunning Manipulation?" I can't get my brain to wrap around what it says....

Scott said...

Sure. When an arcane-powered character (any character whose powers are called spells) casts a spell and starts picking targets for that spell, Lyrie can immediately make an attack against the spellcaster's Will defense. If she is successful, Lyrie selects the targets for the spell instead of the original spellcaster. She also absorbs a small portion of the other spellcaster's power, gaining a +2 bonus to attack until the end of her next turn.

The idea is that Lyrie will use Cunning Manipulation to turn one of the party's most powerful spells back on them.

I did just notice a couple small fixes I need to make to her statblock, though. Thanks!

Scott said...

Lyrie's stat block has had a couple of minor corrections made to it.

Antiquated Tory said...

Map would be most appreciated!

Scott said...

I'm trying to figure out a decent way to churn out encounter maps. The whole photograph-my-battle-mat thing is alright, but isn't very pretty and doesn't contain a lot of visual information.

You'll be fine using whatever map you come up with, honestly. The one thing I can suggest is making the rooms larger. Increase dimensions and try to figure out where potential choke points might be. Minimize those. They can be tactically interesting, but no one likes long, narrow corridors.