@LvB I think "You may have it..." counts as an action, rather than activating it. It asks me if I want to trigger it or not. While, Archie has to phase out and in because he has phasing and that requires 2 mana to allow he stay phased in.
As you reach for the Wand, or "The Ping Thing" you can hear it making very silent sounds that sound like "ping ... ping ... ping ..." while you hold it in your hand. Beside of that you can feel nothing bad so far. As you wave it around it suddenly shoots a glittering, glistening, sparkling and shining magical shot into the wall of the room.
New Quest for Raulus/kaoz: Create "The Ping Thing", a magical wand with the ability to tap the equipped character -which must be untapped before tapping- to shoot one damage at any target. That damage increases by one every time the item is used. But that effect resets itself back to one damage at the beginning of your turn.
Example: You tap the equipped character and deal one damage to a goblin. Then you somehow untap the equipped character, tap it again and shoot two damage at another goblin. Then you somehow untap the equip character, tap it and shoot three damage at an orc. Then, its the enemies turn and when its your turn again, the damage you do by tapping the equipped character resets back to one.
Now as you reach for the Helmet of the Snail and move towards sick and sleeping Eldric, you feel incredible smart to first try it out on Eldric. As you force the helmet onto Eldrics head, the Helmet seems to readjust itself suddenly, changes its size a bit, for the perfect fit, and then as it sits on Eldrics head, you see how Eldrics Skin becomes a mixture of yellow and brown. His eyes slowly move out of his head and are now on the top of antennas. His arms and legs melt with his body and out of his chin another pair of antennas grow and within moments where once the young boy Eldric was, there is now a sleeping giant snail with a helmet on its head.
New Quest for everyone: Create Squire Snaildric.
Create the Snail Version of Eldric.
New Quest for everyone: Create the Helmet of the snail.
It is a semi-cursed item with "Equip helpless or unsuspecting creature (A helpless creature must be tapped and have a stun counter on it. Unsuspecting creature are creatures not aware of the adventurers.): Equipped creature loses all abilities, gets -3/+3 and becomes a snail. And the helmet of the snail can be used to equip enemy creatures. And since the equipped creature has no arms, it cant take off the helmet by itself, but other characters can use an action to unequip the helmet.
And last, if you dont like the item you got, feel free to trade it with other characters who might have more use for it. (Rarghs cursed Ring cant be traded).
Waiting for smax/Rargh to create the cursed ring and for everyone who wants to, to create the semi-cursed helmet of the snail.
Meanwhile Demonica puts the other items back into the chest and tells her rogues where they should deliver the chest.
Then she comes to you and sleeping Snaildric, which causes a light smile as she sees the sleeping snail with the helmet. "Time to say goodbye, my friends. But im sure we will meet again. Until then, i wish you only the best. Oh, and while Squire Snaildric is kinda cute - she giggles - i suggest you remove that helmet from him while he's still sleeping. And now, farewell, my friends."
And then she leaves you and squire Snaildric alone for now.
Snail helmet: (Was trying to use LvB's original art, but failed and forgot to recredit artist.)
@LvB Raulus carefully takes the Snail helmet off Eldric's head and then wakes him up with a bucket of cold water. He then collects all metal in sight that isn't more than 300 feet away from the house and stuffs it into the basement. He then starts practicing making and crafting things with old furniture so he can get ready to make battle golems and machinery to fight the elves if they betray the party.
As you take the helmet away, Snaildric changes back into the young squire he was before. And as he is hit with the bucket full of water - which is probably not the best way to treat sleeping and sick teenagers - his sleepiness is instantly gone. But he doesnt look that healthy, though. Confused he looks around.
"Ugh, i had the strangest dream, ever. There was a sewermonster and i was dying but then Demonica gave me back some life. And then i was a snail. And now you are all here. And why is there water everywhere?!?"
You all laugh and explain to him that he was sick, but everything will be alright and that he shouldnt worry about strange dreams.
And at that point i would like to make a break for some feedback.
First theres some things i observed. Combat can get out of control very fast and become very unbalanced. The consequence is then, to keep it more or less even and to not make it boring, that the enemies become very powerful too or that there have to be masses of enemies to make sure some are left after the adventurers turn.
Countering spells or abilities take away a lot of fun. It is so strong, that we must find a solution that works for everyone. Maybe something mana-based so that countering a spell is always more expensive than the countered spell.
Next thing, the dwarfen fortress that was a multi-room-dungeon, i think it was a bit too long. Or what do you think? Do you prefer single encounters? Or short dungeons with maybe 3-5 rooms with enemies? Or do you want a really big stronghold with a lot of rooms and enemies?
Next thing, the paths you can choose - mind, body, versatility - i think they should have more impact, therefore i planned some changes. For example assigning some passive abilities to some paths. For example first strike and double strike are only available if you have chosen way of the body. Hexproof or mana abilities are only available for way of the mind. etc.
Then, some of the created spells are so powerful that they have to be reworked. Players have a tendency to try to create the best and strongest spells possible, but the problem with such spells is that they make the adventurers very fast very overpowered and allow them to beat almost anything.
Next thing, i would like to know if there is things you want more or less. For example more story / less story? More combat / less combat? More card creation / Less card creation ?
And what do you think about more players/adventurers? Depending on how fast they react to stuff in the forum, i think we could have up to six players. It might make combat difficult though. So combat would have to be simplified which could be achieved by making it less interactive.
And i'll be happy about anything else that helps to improve this RPG. So pls give me all the feedback you can.
@LvB Countering spell/ability itself is fine and it's balanced accordingly to its mana cost and color. This way makes blue players most hated as they prefer to control the battlefield.
I reworked Archie to make him less powerful than Wenkman because lore says that Wenkman himself can bend the reality at will. Hence, Arche is an illusion mage with some knowledge of potions usages. He can create a soda that gives energy and rarely uses a poison that weakens enemy, or melts artifact/enchantment. Archie's Special Acid is ineffective against artifacts and enchantments with destructible, because they can't cause it to lose the abilites.
Maybe try enemy casting an enchantment that says "Spells you cast can't be countered, unless an opponent pays {2}." Or "For each turn, whenever an opponent would cast a spell. If it's noncreature, that opponent exiles it instead." You have many ways to make it complicated and painful for wizards to counter stuff - it could make it more fun!
@LvB Look, nobody even used counter magic. I have a bunch, but I've never used it. The dwarf fortress did seem quite tedious once we had to start massacring golems & dwarves. Also, body gives way too little mana, so taking away first strike from two warrior characters who probably didn't choose body because a) it doesn't fit their characters and b) it gives too little mana, so snagging first strike from half the party for the reasons mentioned above doesn't seem fair. On the other hand, mind seems too OP, as it keeps giving waaaaayyy more mana than other paths every level. Maybe change it to levelx2+2?
I'd like to begin by pointing you toward this post on the Iridrion campaign, as it's more than applicable to this campaign.
Looking at the concerns noted above roughly in turn:
Combat will naturally become more difficult and more interesting when the GM diversifies "threats" beyond DPS checks. Virtually every battle in this campaign can be boiled down to "the PCs must deal N damage to given targets before a certain amount of time passes or they die, and they aren't allowed to do XYZ toward that end," with the value of N and the breadth of XYZ increasing as the campaign progresses and the time limit generally equating to 1 turn. This lack of encounter variance is also the root of a majority of the concerns noted above.
See the post linked above regarding thoughts on countermagic. Aside from what's mentioned there, if the GM is concerned about the players abusing countermagic, there need only be incentives to not use it. For example, various kinds of casters can gain access to countermagic in many TTRPGs, but their other spells tend to be more useful because countermagic only answers one specific kind of threat. That type of threat currently makes up a disproportionately large part of enemy tactics, so it looks stronger than it really is.
The length of a dungeon is largely irrelevant if the GM can keep the PCs motivated during their time interacting with it. The fortress came across poorly due to a combination of the sudden arbitrary resource restriction, lack of encounter variety, lack of PC motivation, and a plethora of other factors. The stealth segment wasn't actually such, and there was no other opportunity for stealth to be relevant despite the GM's explicit requirement for the creation of a stealth effect during the level up immediately prior to the fortress exploration. There was the germ of an interesting mechanic in the language translation, but the initial puzzle provided ultimately meaningless information and the concept was never expanded upon. Most encounters were self-contained until the GM forced the entire affair to an overdramatic close, and there was never more than one "solution" to each encounter, if there was one to begin with. The GM forced the PCs to explore a sizable portion of the fortress against their will, and the PCs wouldn't have been able to clear nearly as much as they had to begin with if one of them couldn't both sidestep the resource restriction and support the other PCs. The GM denied players' attempts to be clever or thoughtful in their approach at almost every turn. Enemy strengths and abilities were inconsistent and poorly written, as were the game rules; the GM even tried to mess with game rules during encounters. Anything that looked even vaguely like an accomplishment during the final encounter was summarily erased during the final five seconds out of nowhere with nothing the PCs could do about it because the GM explicitly forbade it from the beginning.
Way of the Mind is plenty impactful currently, as is Way of Versatility. Way of the Mind's double spell passive and extra mana has constantly kept the party alive. It is likely that neither PC on the Way of Versatility seems to have any desire to utilize its benefits because they don't have access to sufficiently versatile abilities to want to use them over their spells. Way of the Body is far and away the loser among the three because absorb 1 + extra attack isn't worth sacrificing ≈50% of one's mana, especially when attacking is net negative in most encounters and mana is far too important of a resource. If the GM truly wants the Ways to be more impactful, there are two things that would best facilitate that: the structure of combat encounters changing drastically, and spell/ability progression becoming tied to a PCs chosen Way. At the moment, each PC has the same spell/ability structure, but shouldn't what each PC has access to reflect the path they chose? That said, if the intention is to begin restricting options to particular paths, there should be a strong reason for a PC to want to choose each of them. (It's no good if one or more Paths are reduced to "must play as this to get access to such-and-such keyword or such-and-such ability.")
The lion's share of the problem with PC spell design is the lack of encounter diversity, which currently makes it rather pointless to design a spell that doesn't either contribute to clearing enemies as quickly and effectively as possible or prevent the PCs from dying in the process, especially since enemy design has only been escalated in a single direction rather than diversified. Another issue is the apparent lack of unified design standards, as it seems only at most two of the five current participants have even vaguely similar ideas of what makes a reasonable card for this campaign, the GM has failed to provide reasonable support for the rejection of a number of past designs, and the GM's rulings in this regard are inconsistent.
One rather aggravating feature of this campaign is the utter lack of player agency, particularly the plethora of non-decisions. The PCs rarely encounter situations that require so much as a modicum of thought or input, let alone strategy. There have been many "what do you want to do" or "do something else" prompts where the PCs have no real alternative to "advance the plot?" because the GM has made little to no effort to offer or develop such alternatives. (The GM has even actively suppressed the players' attempts at exploring or gathering information on multiple occasions, which could have instead been taken as opportunities to drop hooks toward additional threads of interest.) Even when the players do make a proper decision, it has no meaningful consequences that aren't negative. Additionally, there is no framework for how the universe works. Virtually everything in this campaign has been justified by the GM effectively going "because I said so." This is especially frustrating when the GM randomly stonewalls or punishes the PCs with no recourse, or when the GM creates an unrealistic scenario and justifies it however they like after the fact.
Making gameplay, especially combat, less interactive would only further minimize player agency, which is to be avoided. Four players is plenty, and there's little value in recruiting more at the moment.
There's plenty of examples and/or more specific suggestions that can be delved into, but for lack of space I'll leave it at this for the moment.
Since combat seems to be the largest concern here, allow me to offer a sample subset of foes a party might encounter throughout an area, say a necromancer's hideout:
Consider the following set of encounters:
The party encounters two Spiteful Wraiths shortly after entering, introducing them to the theme of the area.
The next time the party encounters Spiteful Wraiths, let there be a Ward of Bones in the room, but don't tell the players about it immediately. Instead, note that something feels off while the party battles the Spiteful Wraiths, noting the reduced damage and the random -1/-1 counters. There are a few ways the GM can point the PCs at the Ward of Bones. They can either prompt one of the more observant characters to investigate the area where the Ward of Bones is located during the battle or after the Spiteful Wraiths are dealt with, the GM can note the Ward of Bones crumbling away after the Spiteful Wraiths are dealt with (notably not triggering the Necrotic Backlash ability at this time), etc. This introduces one of the main "mechanics" of the area.
Suppose the party is later engaged with a puzzle or some unknown loot found after completing a puzzle or evading a trap. Have two or three Skeletal Reavers ambush the party, each attacking different PCs. It is important to minimize the number of PCs downed in the ambush. Any PC that is reasonably alert during the ambush should be given the opportunity to react appropriately, but consider allowing any Skeletal Reavers that are slain and revived via persist before landing their initial attack to attack again. (This bending of the rules should only occur during this particular type of scene and only if it will not result in a downed PC, and does not apply to Skeletal Reavers in other encounters.)
It is important to note that none of these enemies have any "spells" in their arsenal; their challenge comes solely from their design and the way they are meant to interact with both other foes found in the area and the tactics available to PCs. Spiteful Wraiths are designed to be annoying for casters in the party, while not immediately threatening to the frontliners that will need to dedicate a few rounds to dealing with them. On the other hand, Skeletal Reavers prompt casters to protect the frontliners from heavy damage, and force them to be cautious of further ambushes and/or an enemy necromancer potentially summoning one or two of them. The Ward of Bones is the most important piece of this sample, as not only does the Necrotic Backlash ability disincentivize casters from immediately blasting them with artifact removal, but the Ward of Bones also provides the greatest variety of interesting options to the GM. For example, suppose the party encounters a group of enemies in a large space with one or more smaller side areas. The GM can hide one or more Ward of Bones among said side areas, prompting one or more PCs to temporarily leave the battle to deal with it and make things easier for the party. (Important note: make sure any such encounter is balanced under the absence of such party members! It will only induce frustration if the party can't decide who should go because they're all needed to deal with the base encounter.)
Another important factor with these sample enemies is the ability to create "elite" versions of them. For example, the party could encounter an Elite Spiteful Wraith that has the ability "creatures dealt damage by Elite Spiteful Wraith since your last upkeep can't have their toughness increased." (This does not apply to having toughness revert from the expiry of a temporary effect like a Disfigure.) As another example, the GM can introduce variations on Ward of Bones with different effects, which can be particularly interesting when combined with the aforementioned hiding. For example, consider a trio of Ward of Bones with different effects scattered among side areas during a boss encounter: one which heals and reduces damage to all non-Ward of Bones enemies in the encounter, another that directly afflicts the party with -1/-1 counters or other debuffs, and the third which punishes targeting any non-Ward of Bones enemies in similar fashion to the Spiteful Wraith's Necrotic Rebound ability. However, if the GM is going to place more than one Ward of Bones outside of the initial encounter space, their presence should be visible or otherwise obvious to the PCs from the outset, especially for any variants. (Making them visible is to be preferred, as it both gives any PCs that leave to deal with the Ward of Bones a status update on the other party members, and also provides them the ability to interact with the main battle if their allies appear to be struggling.)
A few other general things to note:
The GM should avoid introducing multiple new mechanics and/or enemies at once.
The GM should refrain from overusing ambush tactics, lest the expedition be reduced to an overcautious slog.
Rather than hurl waves of new and increasingly powerful enemies at the PCs, the GM should instead seek to manipulate the environment to challenge the PCs in interesting ways.
Rarity is a useful way to signal the strength and/or prevalence of an enemy to the players.
After you rest for a day, you feel refreshed after the struggle in the sewers and in the dwarfen fortress. So far, nothing special has happened since yesterday, so the elves seem to be true to their word about not telling the dwarfs anything. The dwarves, however, are busy as never before and a lot of them are patroulling the streets, apparently searching for something or someone. And they are in a bad mood it seems, cause from time to time, you can hear screams that sound like citizens are being beaten up in the streets by the dwarfs.
While at the moment, you dont have anything to do, maybe now is a good time to focus on yourself.
"Should we help citizens? They are being harmed by dwarves!" Archie looks worried as he is already ready to get out hide place to attempt save some citizens.
"I wouldn't advise that. Even if you do manage to save some random stranger, it will merely escalate the situation, and I somehow doubt you have the ability to take down the dwarves by yourself."
Meanwhile, Duucxejial will do some maintenance on his drum. The dwarves' fondness of excessive heat did a number on it. ??
So, while Raulus is busy creating a furniture golem in the basement and Duucxejial is polishing and tuning his drum, Archie worries about the citizens and thinks about new Soda recipes while Rargh just hangs around dreaming of fire, the adventurers activities have some effects.
As it seems, everything here has at least a trace of magic in it, almost everything can be used to craft something. And items that are exposed to magic seem to absorb it and become more powerful over time.
There may be a wording discrepancy regarding the second ability for a little while after posting this since I made it more concise; click to see updated wording.
@smax765 , you can do the optional quest later if you want.
While working on these items, it suddenly knocks on the houses door. As you open the door, there is a small boy standing outside. A bit hesitant he looks at you:
"Umm, i bring a message from Woodlord Igar. He,eh, wants to see you, he says. And that you must hurry."
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Comments
I think "You may have it..." counts as an action, rather than activating it. It asks me if I want to trigger it or not. While, Archie has to phase out and in because he has phasing and that requires 2 mana to allow he stay phased in.
But... I reworked this card.
Will upload the art soon.
(Was trying to use LvB's original art, but failed and forgot to recredit artist.)
@LvB
Raulus carefully takes the Snail helmet off Eldric's head and then wakes him up with a bucket of cold water. He then collects all metal in sight that isn't more than 300 feet away from the house and stuffs it into the basement. He then starts practicing making and crafting things with old furniture so he can get ready to make battle golems and machinery to fight the elves if they betray the party.
Does this picture looks good for Snaildric?
Credit: Mr--Jack
But it's realistic. Realistic snailman are the best. It could be a weresnail.
Sorry it's so giant.
@FireOfGolden
Oof. Big, creepy snail that looks like a man-hunter. I suppose it's fine, but it looks more suitable for an 3v1l shapeshifter.
Countering spell/ability itself is fine and it's balanced accordingly to its mana cost and color. This way makes blue players most hated as they prefer to control the battlefield.
I reworked Archie to make him less powerful than Wenkman because lore says that Wenkman himself can bend the reality at will. Hence, Arche is an illusion mage with some knowledge of potions usages. He can create a soda that gives energy and rarely uses a poison that weakens enemy, or melts artifact/enchantment. Archie's Special Acid is ineffective against artifacts and enchantments with destructible, because they can't cause it to lose the abilites.
Maybe try enemy casting an enchantment that says "Spells you cast can't be countered, unless an opponent pays {2}." Or "For each turn, whenever an opponent would cast a spell. If it's noncreature, that opponent exiles it instead." You have many ways to make it complicated and painful for wizards to counter stuff - it could make it more fun!
Otherwise, the gameplay looks fine here.
Look, nobody even used counter magic. I have a bunch, but I've never used it. The dwarf fortress did seem quite tedious once we had to start massacring golems & dwarves. Also, body gives way too little mana, so taking away first strike from two warrior characters who probably didn't choose body because a) it doesn't fit their characters and b) it gives too little mana, so snagging first strike from half the party for the reasons mentioned above doesn't seem fair. On the other hand, mind seems too OP, as it keeps giving waaaaayyy more mana than other paths every level. Maybe change it to levelx2+2?
Looking at the concerns noted above roughly in turn:
- Combat will naturally become more difficult and more interesting when the GM diversifies "threats" beyond DPS checks. Virtually every battle in this campaign can be boiled down to "the PCs must deal N damage to given targets before a certain amount of time passes or they die, and they aren't allowed to do XYZ toward that end," with the value of N and the breadth of XYZ increasing as the campaign progresses and the time limit generally equating to 1 turn. This lack of encounter variance is also the root of a majority of the concerns noted above.
- See the post linked above regarding thoughts on countermagic. Aside from what's mentioned there, if the GM is concerned about the players abusing countermagic, there need only be incentives to not use it. For example, various kinds of casters can gain access to countermagic in many TTRPGs, but their other spells tend to be more useful because countermagic only answers one specific kind of threat. That type of threat currently makes up a disproportionately large part of enemy tactics, so it looks stronger than it really is.
- The length of a dungeon is largely irrelevant if the GM can keep the PCs motivated during their time interacting with it. The fortress came across poorly due to a combination of the sudden arbitrary resource restriction, lack of encounter variety, lack of PC motivation, and a plethora of other factors. The stealth segment wasn't actually such, and there was no other opportunity for stealth to be relevant despite the GM's explicit requirement for the creation of a stealth effect during the level up immediately prior to the fortress exploration. There was the germ of an interesting mechanic in the language translation, but the initial puzzle provided ultimately meaningless information and the concept was never expanded upon. Most encounters were self-contained until the GM forced the entire affair to an overdramatic close, and there was never more than one "solution" to each encounter, if there was one to begin with. The GM forced the PCs to explore a sizable portion of the fortress against their will, and the PCs wouldn't have been able to clear nearly as much as they had to begin with if one of them couldn't both sidestep the resource restriction and support the other PCs. The GM denied players' attempts to be clever or thoughtful in their approach at almost every turn. Enemy strengths and abilities were inconsistent and poorly written, as were the game rules; the GM even tried to mess with game rules during encounters. Anything that looked even vaguely like an accomplishment during the final encounter was summarily erased during the final five seconds out of nowhere with nothing the PCs could do about it because the GM explicitly forbade it from the beginning.
- Way of the Mind is plenty impactful currently, as is Way of Versatility. Way of the Mind's double spell passive and extra mana has constantly kept the party alive. It is likely that neither PC on the Way of Versatility seems to have any desire to utilize its benefits because they don't have access to sufficiently versatile abilities to want to use them over their spells. Way of the Body is far and away the loser among the three because absorb 1 + extra attack isn't worth sacrificing ≈50% of one's mana, especially when attacking is net negative in most encounters and mana is far too important of a resource. If the GM truly wants the Ways to be more impactful, there are two things that would best facilitate that: the structure of combat encounters changing drastically, and spell/ability progression becoming tied to a PCs chosen Way. At the moment, each PC has the same spell/ability structure, but shouldn't what each PC has access to reflect the path they chose? That said, if the intention is to begin restricting options to particular paths, there should be a strong reason for a PC to want to choose each of them. (It's no good if one or more Paths are reduced to "must play as this to get access to such-and-such keyword or such-and-such ability.")
- The lion's share of the problem with PC spell design is the lack of encounter diversity, which currently makes it rather pointless to design a spell that doesn't either contribute to clearing enemies as quickly and effectively as possible or prevent the PCs from dying in the process, especially since enemy design has only been escalated in a single direction rather than diversified. Another issue is the apparent lack of unified design standards, as it seems only at most two of the five current participants have even vaguely similar ideas of what makes a reasonable card for this campaign, the GM has failed to provide reasonable support for the rejection of a number of past designs, and the GM's rulings in this regard are inconsistent.
- One rather aggravating feature of this campaign is the utter lack of player agency, particularly the plethora of non-decisions. The PCs rarely encounter situations that require so much as a modicum of thought or input, let alone strategy. There have been many "what do you want to do" or "do something else" prompts where the PCs have no real alternative to "advance the plot?" because the GM has made little to no effort to offer or develop such alternatives. (The GM has even actively suppressed the players' attempts at exploring or gathering information on multiple occasions, which could have instead been taken as opportunities to drop hooks toward additional threads of interest.) Even when the players do make a proper decision, it has no meaningful consequences that aren't negative. Additionally, there is no framework for how the universe works. Virtually everything in this campaign has been justified by the GM effectively going "because I said so." This is especially frustrating when the GM randomly stonewalls or punishes the PCs with no recourse, or when the GM creates an unrealistic scenario and justifies it however they like after the fact.
- Making gameplay, especially combat, less interactive would only further minimize player agency, which is to be avoided. Four players is plenty, and there's little value in recruiting more at the moment.
There's plenty of examples and/or more specific suggestions that can be delved into, but for lack of space I'll leave it at this for the moment.Consider the following set of encounters:
- The party encounters two Spiteful Wraiths shortly after entering, introducing them to the theme of the area.
- The next time the party encounters Spiteful Wraiths, let there be a Ward of Bones in the room, but don't tell the players about it immediately. Instead, note that something feels off while the party battles the Spiteful Wraiths, noting the reduced damage and the random -1/-1 counters. There are a few ways the GM can point the PCs at the Ward of Bones. They can either prompt one of the more observant characters to investigate the area where the Ward of Bones is located during the battle or after the Spiteful Wraiths are dealt with, the GM can note the Ward of Bones crumbling away after the Spiteful Wraiths are dealt with (notably not triggering the Necrotic Backlash ability at this time), etc. This introduces one of the main "mechanics" of the area.
- Suppose the party is later engaged with a puzzle or some unknown loot found after completing a puzzle or evading a trap. Have two or three Skeletal Reavers ambush the party, each attacking different PCs. It is important to minimize the number of PCs downed in the ambush. Any PC that is reasonably alert during the ambush should be given the opportunity to react appropriately, but consider allowing any Skeletal Reavers that are slain and revived via persist before landing their initial attack to attack again. (This bending of the rules should only occur during this particular type of scene and only if it will not result in a downed PC, and does not apply to Skeletal Reavers in other encounters.)
It is important to note that none of these enemies have any "spells" in their arsenal; their challenge comes solely from their design and the way they are meant to interact with both other foes found in the area and the tactics available to PCs. Spiteful Wraiths are designed to be annoying for casters in the party, while not immediately threatening to the frontliners that will need to dedicate a few rounds to dealing with them. On the other hand, Skeletal Reavers prompt casters to protect the frontliners from heavy damage, and force them to be cautious of further ambushes and/or an enemy necromancer potentially summoning one or two of them. The Ward of Bones is the most important piece of this sample, as not only does the Necrotic Backlash ability disincentivize casters from immediately blasting them with artifact removal, but the Ward of Bones also provides the greatest variety of interesting options to the GM. For example, suppose the party encounters a group of enemies in a large space with one or more smaller side areas. The GM can hide one or more Ward of Bones among said side areas, prompting one or more PCs to temporarily leave the battle to deal with it and make things easier for the party. (Important note: make sure any such encounter is balanced under the absence of such party members! It will only induce frustration if the party can't decide who should go because they're all needed to deal with the base encounter.)Another important factor with these sample enemies is the ability to create "elite" versions of them. For example, the party could encounter an Elite Spiteful Wraith that has the ability "creatures dealt damage by Elite Spiteful Wraith since your last upkeep can't have their toughness increased." (This does not apply to having toughness revert from the expiry of a temporary effect like a Disfigure.) As another example, the GM can introduce variations on Ward of Bones with different effects, which can be particularly interesting when combined with the aforementioned hiding. For example, consider a trio of Ward of Bones with different effects scattered among side areas during a boss encounter: one which heals and reduces damage to all non-Ward of Bones enemies in the encounter, another that directly afflicts the party with -1/-1 counters or other debuffs, and the third which punishes targeting any non-Ward of Bones enemies in similar fashion to the Spiteful Wraith's Necrotic Rebound ability. However, if the GM is going to place more than one Ward of Bones outside of the initial encounter space, their presence should be visible or otherwise obvious to the PCs from the outset, especially for any variants. (Making them visible is to be preferred, as it both gives any PCs that leave to deal with the Ward of Bones a status update on the other party members, and also provides them the ability to interact with the main battle if their allies appear to be struggling.)
A few other general things to note:
Meanwhile, Duucxejial will do some maintenance on his drum. The dwarves' fondness of excessive heat did a number on it. ??
Couldn't find better art.
Saw this art and I had to do it.
There may be a wording discrepancy regarding the second ability for a little while after posting this since I made it more concise; click to see updated wording.
And I will vote for A.
@smax765 that doesn’t look like a common…