My third encounter for my Spirits of Eden campaign had me really pumped. It was the climax of the adventure, with the players having reached the grove of Cybele, the mistress of the forest, and ready to confront her for the curative flowers that would help save the small child back in the village the PC’s set out from. There was some nice roleplaying at the outset, but quickly the fight degenerated into a string of misses.
Cybele’s defenses weren’t unreachable – the PCs just kept rolling so low they wouldn’t have been able even to hit level 1 minions. The alarming amount of bad luck in the climactic fight made me invoke dormant house rules to give them a fighting chance. This string of bad luck wasn’t really what I wanted out of the fight – I wanted the PCs to enjoy and clearly they weren’t and they were frustrated with this random dice wraith haunting them.
I invested a good bit in this fight and didn’t want it going belly up and being “that” moment in the campaign that players will hate forever. Thankfully after that, everything went pretty smoothly, and Cybele went down well enough as an NPC that even the unfortunate battle didn’t taint the moment.
Before the stats, lessons learned from the encounter:
1) I have to stop trying to live up to some contrived ideal of the “perfect DM” who never fudges, never invokes narrative power, always uses player input on everything, follows the RAW to the letter and always creates just the right challenge, and is afraid what people might think if he ceases to be perfect. I’m not that guy, and I won’t be. What matters is that players are enjoying the game, however the hell I manage it.
2) I need to make smaller maps. My players don’t seem to be a mobile bunch, and I like map elements that encourage people to go to them and do stuff with them (as you’ll see). Either that, or I need to have Spirits teleport and fly around more to make players move.
3) I really want the time to play with Maptool more. God damn you college education. I love making maps!
Now for the stuff. First off we have the map, my very first Maptools map. It’s not print quality, but I love it.
Sorry about the marked-up map, I use it in a Play-By-Post, so I put it through photoshop and mark it up for tracking encounter movements. If people are interested in my little maps, I’ll be sure to save the originals from now on.
Anyway, the three “plant surrounded by water” areas are terrain powers. Basically, players could move to them, gather up some, and use them. Each plant had a once per encounter power, expended by the first player to use it:
Rimefire Berry
A half-frosted, half-warm berry the size of one’s largest toe; if many are shaken and thrown together, they can become a deadly, far-reaching projectile.
Encounter @ Fire, Cold; Standard Action, Area Burst 1 Within 10 Squares, Each creature in burst; +10 vs Reflex; 2d8 + 5 cold and fire damage. Miss Half damage.White Bifolia
A soft, sweet-smelling white flower. It has incredible medicinal properties.
Encounter @ Healing; Minor Action, Personal or Melee touch, One creature; The target spends a healing surge and makes a saving throw.Lecher’s Lilly
These peapod-like legumes, if separated from their parent plant during infancy, then shaken and thrown, quickly wrap in large vines, tightly around whatever object they strike before withering away.
Encounter; Standard Action, Ranged 5, One creature; +8 vs Fortitude; 1d10 damage and the target is restrained until the end of your next turn.
Cybele’s stats reflect her borrowed purview. As a Spirit, her powers are actually aligned with the sky, and speed, as she is a Bird spirit. However, her interest in plants gave her plant powers that she prefers to use. Spirits in Eden aren’t entirely constrained by their nature at birth. They can “borrow” purviews, so Cybele is a spirit of Plants and Birds because she took an interest in, and “borrowed” plants.
Coincidentally, Cybele is also an example of a non-evil Villain in Eden. She has a low view of mortals and refused to help the players with the medicine they needed, instead opting to toy with them, challenging them to a mock duel. However, during the duel, the fight reminds Cybele of a person she loved very much, a woman who became a cleric, but was killed by the villagers she and Cybele protected, when they raided Cybele’s grove for medicine to survive a disease. The woman became Cybele’s cleric when she challenged Cybele to a duel and fought her to a standstill.
The players also find out that the woman was resurrected, but without her old memories, as Reimi, the spirit from the last encounter. Overall, my summary of this storyline sucks, but I thought I did pretty good with it, and the players enjoyed it. Without further ado:
Cybele, The Legendary Fish of the Green Sea Level 7 Solo Controller
Medium Natural Humanoid (Spirit) XP
Initiative +9; Perception +11; Darkvision
HP: 248; Bloodied 124
AC: 21, Fortitude 18, Reflex 20, Will 23
Saving Throws +5
Speed 6, Fly 7 (Hover)
Action Points 2
[MB] Wingblades (Standard; AW)
+12 vs AC; 1d8+7 damage
[R] Black Lotus Influence (Standard; AW)
Ranged 10; +10 vs Reflex; 1d6+7 damage and Cybele slides the target 2 squares.
[C] Gilded Lotus Spark (Standard; 5-6)
Close Blast 5; Each creature; +10 vs Reflex; 3d8+7 damage.
Miss: Half damage
[C] Silver Lotus Field (Standard; 6) @ Poison
Close Burst 4; Each creature; +8 vs Fortitude; 1d6+7 poison damage and the target is dazed until the end of Cybele’s next turn.
Effect: The burst creates a zone of debilitating poison spores until the end of Cybele’s next turn. Creatures in the zone at the start of each of their turns take 5 poison damage and are dazed during that turn.
Sustain Minor: The zone persists.
[C] Bloody Lotus Crisis (Immediate Reaction First Bloodied; Encounter) @ Fire
Close Burst 10; Each creature; +10 vs Reflex; 1d10 + 7 fire damage and the target is pushed 5 squares.
Miss: Half damage and the target is pushed 3 squares.
Unaligned; Common, Supernal, Elven
Skills: Perception +11, Insight +11, Religion +13, Nature +13, Diplomacy +15
Str 13 (+4) Dex 22 (+9) Wis 17 (+6)
Con 15 (+5) Int 20 (+8) Cha 25 (+10)
The players were accompanied by Aseem in this battle, the giant crow from the last encounter. Aseem was the past ruler of the Green Sea, but ceded his title to and also became servant of Cybele, the new ruler. However, here Aseem fought in his humanoid form. He had a grudge with Cybele due to her treatment of Reimi – she was pained by interacting with someone who looked like, but wasn’t, the cleric that she lost, and was distant with Reimi. Cybele’s treatment of mortals, as well, bothered Aseem. Though he knows he stands no chance at her, due to old age slowing him down, and the fact that she has defeated him in single combat before (twice), he helps the PCs anyway.
Aseem, The Past King Of The Green Sea Level 9 Companion
Medium Fey Beast (Spirit) XP400
Initiative +9; Perception +10; Darkvision
HP: 50; Bloodied 25
AC 17; Fortitude 17, Reflex 20, Will 20
Speed 6
[MB] Longsword (Standard; AW) @ Weapon
+11 vs AC; 1d8+6 damage
[M] Strong Slash (Standard; Encounter)
+11 vs AC; 2d8+6 damage
Miss: Half damage
[M] Extremespeed (Standard; Encounter) @ Weapon
+11 vs Reflex; 2d8+6 damage and the target is marked until the end of Aseem’s next turn. If it violates the mark Aseem teleports to a square adjacent to it and it falls prone and becomes slowed until the end of Aseem’s next turn.
[S] Pains of Old Age
Aseem’s initiative result is always 11.
Unaligned; All languages
Skills: History +12, Religion +12, Nature +15, Arcana +12, Diplomacy +14, Perception +15, Insight +15, Heal +15
Str 10 (+4) Dex 17 (+7) Wis 22 (+10)
Con 08 (+3) Int 17 (+7) Cha 20 (+9)
The ending to this saga has Cybele slowly beginning to open up to mortals, and putting behind her grief, and accepting and taking Reimi under her wing as she should have from the beginning. The PCs got the medicine they needed, saved the child in the village, and so far, everything seems to be going well for them…
“I have to stop trying to live up to some contrived ideal of the ‘perfect DM’ who never fudges, never invokes narrative power, always uses player input on everything, follows the RAW to the letter and always creates just the right challenge, and is afraid what people might think if he ceases to be perfect.”
You know, if there is a perfect DM, he or she wouldn’t look anything like the above. Always fudge when you need to. Share narrative power with the players until you need to do otherwise. And throw out the RAW when you have to.
If a fight’s going poorly like the above, I think you did the right thing. End it as quickly as possible, fudging however you have to fudge to end it. Story and plot are irrelevant when nobody wants to play, and they’re ultimately illusory anyway: no matter how much I storyboard or plan out, the plot of my game is the protagonists’ actions and my reactions to their actions.
So don’t beat yourself up about it. The perfect DM is the DM who remains focused on running a fun game and who can improv on their feet and say “yes” to their players’ contributions to the game world (which is also illusory in actual play regardless of how much DM effort is spent coming up with stuff, since the world will be an emergent property from the players’ actions at the table).
Everything else is just trivium.
Despite the failures, I still found it to be an incredibly enjoyable, and memorable, encounter. And what you did with the hit coupons was an excellent idea