Thank You Origins 2014

I also want to say think you to all the PCI folks and other volunteers who made our experience this year a lot of fun. Again. Matt F, Tony N and Josh all did fantastic jobs running the new events for our crew so thanks a lot for that!

I liked the plot of the BI, enjoyed the various encounters/missions, and thought the pacing was good even if things did run longer than planned (but I am a bit of a masochist so I was good with it, aside from the early morning flight home the next morn).

Special recognition to Josh during the BI, who took evil advantage of a well-time Enemy of My Enemy cast on one of his NPCs (a nasty Malfellan elorrii Deathwarden) who decided her best attack on her ally would be a Shared Sacrifice that covered 5 of 6 PCs, which then set of a chain reaction of Eye For An Eye responses. We figured that a minimum of 430 points of stamina damage was dealt to both sides over the course of that one tick. Awesome. Looked like Kill Bill vol.1 (the Crazy 88s scene).

Thanks to the staff for an overall great Origins – look forward to what’s coming up next.

PS – Shared Sacrifice indeed – that was one hell of a tick of punishment…

Our table experienced the same thing, we had some encounters where we just barely succeeded or just missed by about 6 ticks and some we were just not able to do. I expect some variation amongst the different battles, maps, and party makeups and I don’t expect every table will succeed every fight.

Looking back our group, while not ‘optimized’ for combat, had sound tactics and didn’t have a lot of ‘wasted ticks’. However, the last 4-5 maps we weren’t able to complete the objective.

Some rundowns (and I have to thank Tony for a great GMing job!)

1) Scouting Mission: This one went well. We rescued the sacrifices and were getting everyone off the board when time was called. This one was odd in that the objectives were not clear at the beginning, but this was quickly remedied.
2) Wall Climbing: We did this alright. We had no ‘skyward’ but we had some skilled climbers, 2 demons, and lots of rope. We had some AE’ers to keep the Harpies busy and Dome of Shadows helped
3) Tunnels: There were just too many shield wall legionnaire dwarves with pikes and it was a slog fest. We could temporarily break their ranks for 1 attack but they quickly moved to reinforce. This one felt the most ‘tedious’
4) Defend the Pass: We were built for this, as we were able to set up 2 summoned demons, a 20′ deeper shadows dome and just pick things off as they appeared/approached. we got hit with the exploding dwarves a few times but managed to kill most of them far away.
5) Bridges: We were doing well on this but just seemed to run out of time. We used Galeforce Winds to knock some giants off the ramps and knew to take out crossbowmen soon! We just didn’t make it quite all the way across (Another 6-10 ticks and we would have)
6) Spirit Gem Fight: Incorporeal monsters that healed was tough. We just didn’t have the output to deal with all of them without them healing. We didn’t come close to completing this one.
7) Malfelan Fight: We had sound tactics, but enemies just had a lot of HPs and we spent a lot of time trying to protect our one main divine caster from getting pounded on. We killed about half the enemies I think.
8) Giant/Devil Hounds: This one wasn’t bad and we were set up for it. We killed almost everything and would have finished given another 10 Ticks or so.
9) Mind’s Eye: We had sound tactics (focus fire, deal wounds to vanquished enemies) but just couldn’t deal with all the bad guys in the time allotted. We probably could have finished with another 10 minutes or so or a real heavy hitting single target character.

John

Something needs to be done for single Adversaries to make them a threat. No matter how awesome they are the action economy means they are going once every 5-6 player turns. Perhaps a way to give certain creatures 2 initiative tracks? One for martial maneuvers and one for magic? Or something like that? Otherwise you just need to give the creature huge AR or stamina.

John

@john, look up the stats from the HPs there is one that should stand out for you…..

its not that there needs to be one adversary, but fewer adversaries, you know the kinds that aren’t minions or weenies with 30Hps, more guys like the Death Warden, or the Fire Giant King, less guys like the minion harpies or the lava hounds, those guys are just speedbumps to the real fights.

I think Adversaries are fine, but they do their best work with Commons or Elites backing them up rather than Minions. Minions just drop too fast to really be support for the REALLY big guys.

The packs of dwarven crossbow minions were deadly!

They certainly were. We had more people go down on the bridges mission than any other one and some people were taking wounds from the crossbowmen pretty regularly. We had far more trouble from the crossbowmen minions than from the ogre-type guys.

We had issues with the crossbowmen as well, but fortuneately we had a couple of divine casters (including me) who could cast area affect castigate to get rid of the minions. I had the extra range adaptation which helped a lot as well. Without that we would have been pincushions.