Shattered Kingdoms

There are multiple ways to make that and other items work for multiple people to accomplish what you're saying. You will just need to put two and two together in some cases where you already have all the information. In other cases, you may not have all the information yet.



Some of what you're talking about already exists but remains unused. It wouldn't be hard to introduce some other mechanisms for this.



I can't really give a legitimate answer to this. It would just be speculation either way.



The whole zone is a lot less buggy than it used to be, and I think the challenges there, in general, aren't as over-the-top as they were. There's also a lot more loot in the place. Way more. That area probably saw the largest loot upgrade of any. I will concede it isn't just a cakewalk to navigate the zone, though. It takes time.



It's probably never going to get that fine-tuned. I could see something along the lines of the frequency of encounters (and multiple encounters) going up in more of a logarithmic fashion than in what appears to be a linear fashion now. So, the difference between having a 3-person group and a 9-person group wouldn't be so big. I think the larger group should face more adversity, but not by a ludicrous amount.



The game can only do so much. It cannot really come at you with the full array of hundreds of different spells and hundreds of different unique monster abilities. Within those confines, you have to balance encounters as best you can. Many of these different bricks do at least have different Achilles heels.



Yes, only trial and error and experience can really tell you. My thinking is two-fold on this. One, locate object is already powerful enough, so if there are some items it misses, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. Two, new loot you cannot locate is better than no new loot. Besides those two major points, it can also be fun to find something nice you weren't expecting.



These are things I discovered as a player. I also wasn't interested in trying to level up on Fytrysks in the middle of nowhere. That sounds a little on the dangerous side for leveling. There are absolutely some places this tactic works, though, and it can make for an interesting change of pace to the standard leveling progression.



Frozen Wastes is a blend of the two. Some sections have lots of monsters. Some sections are barren wastes where there are only random monsters. In those latter sections, having static resets of monsters would just have people avoiding them. Or it would have me flooding the zone with hundreds of them if there were any hope of making it remotely challenging to walk around.

It seems from what has been said in this thread that the Dreamscape has the highest nuisance factor. I did add some static encounters out there that you can spot by looking in various directions, and I added some loot to the random encounters, but I didn't tweak the random encounters all that much except to add the loot. I'll see if I can find ways to reduce the annoyance and retain the challenge. I also don't think any random encounters like that should be the barbucklers that OA mentioned, so I'll make sure that's not the case anywhere. If you spot a random encounter barbuckler, PM me about it.

I think a third possible suggestion I am taking away from this is that random encounters should not have exceptional spawns. Save the elites and barbucklers and uber races for static encounters.

I'm probably not going to post much more in this thread because reasons. But I did want to touch on this, as I did a little in my first post.

The reason it was never complained about before was because the intensity of the encounters was not scaled as it is now. There were static encounters, some you even had to move into that had a chance of spawning extra RE NPCs to go with it, but the RE NPCs that were spawned were manageable. They had maybe one immunity (golems in plane of fire) and one low-tier special attack (fire/ice/lightning blast on single targets), and they weren't powerful races.

Nowadays, you get powerful races (almost) exclusively in end-game content, which puts all the pressure on melee classes to do damage AND survive huge amounts of damage, and many of them have extraordinary abilities like the barbuckler class, or AoE gas blasts, or reach and the AI to retarget to squishier targets who get rescued (I'm looking at you, Sea Dragon in Wastelands.) RE's should be mild additions to challenge, not the be-all-and-end-all of the challenge of an area.

Yes, they should provide the feel of having to wade through monsters to reach a choke point, or gate, or portal, or key, or whatever, but there is no GM that designs encounters for a tabletop setting that fills the ranks of the boss's mooks with other boss NPCs. REs are, essentially, the mooks of the overland SK world, and they should be scaled as such. The threat they represent should be attrition through number of encounters, not HP/ME/PE wiping encounters at every step. Often, the REs that seem to have been created recently don't take that into account. I was out in the plane of air recently and ran into the new red c'thonians out there. We nearly TPK'd more than once, and couldn't even move somewhere relatively safe to rest because we were terrified of getting spam gas blasted if we took a single step.

Dulrik's got the right idea, I think, and it dovetails nicely with my above statement. Save the beast NPCs for the static encounters, design areas so that if you want to impede progress beyond a certain point create a choke point with an uber static encounter. The RE NPCs should be mooks (albeit GM mooks with maybe one immunity or one single-target special ability), so keep them scaled to mook-tier encounters.

Also, if I can make a somewhat related but also somewhat aside request, can we please stop creating/change existing REs that *require* light aura PCs to kill light aura NPCs to progress through areas? That'd be really nice because it's super awkward RP or else light aura's just can't go to DS and get through to the nightmare temple, etc.

Like I said before, random encounters generally should not be barbucklers. If you encounter one that is, let me know. There are some oddball cases where the random encounter monster IS the end boss, but those are in places you go to not through. Regarding the nowadays, the gas blasters on the desert island are some of the oldest random encounters around. It's not a new phenomenon to have those types of things on random encounters, but the Dreamscape may have taken it to an over-the-top level.



It sort of gets that way when you're in "epic level" territory, which is essentially what GM adventuring on SK is. I do agree the random encounters should not be like a bunch of Ephialtises or something. They should definitely be lower grade than endgame bosses by a wide margin. I don't think something like a white Fytrysk in the ice plane is out of line, even though it can cause major damage to a party that isn't paying attention.



There is no red c'thonian in the plane of air, and there isn't anything in the entire area that gas blasts It's possible I have missed something, so please send me a log if I'm wrong about that. Regarding the random encounter gas blasters that were mentioned in the Infernal Dominion, I can think, off the top of my head, of about eight ways to avoid them and still reach most destinations in the area, including the Iron Citadel. Most of those methods do not require being in possession of any special item, either. In effect, those creatures represent an environmental hazard that you can either circumvent through cleverness or game knowledge, or that you can dare to challenge head-on. That said, as per what I said in a previous post, I made some tweaks that should make them more manageable, so it shouldn't be nearly as risky navigating the region where you find them.



Things like that shouldn't exist. I don't believe I have created any, certainly not intentionally. Send me a PM with any you encounter and I can fix them.

Would any of the following be an interesting improvement to this situation?

- Sneaking PCs trigger encounters with a reduced frequency;
- A scout with pathfinding leading the party reduces the frequency of encounters for the whole party;
- A sneaking scout or sneaking rogue doesn't trigger encounters at all.

Maybe it wasn't the plane of air, but the plane of ice. I'm almost positive it was the mountains on the southwest of the plane of air, though. And yes, the c'thonians on spire island have been around forever...and every player I've ever seen has gone out of their way to completely bypass them because otherwise you wipe just trying to get to the spire. In fact, a named NPC was put as a gate target at the spire entrance specifically to deal with the fact that those RE NPCs are way over the top. A major part of adventuring in the tangle is specifically avoiding the c'thonians. They are just not a suitable race for REs.

Anyways, we hit the mountains and several times had two and three of the c'thonians hit our group at once. It was harrowing and I regretted including as many people in the journey as I did.

Pretty sure the spoon REs in the dreamscape are barbucklers. I'm pretty sure a few of the REs out there are.

GM in SK really isn't comparable to epic territory DnD. Epic territory is "a god has to make an Artifact specifically designed to kill you." GM in SK is closer to level 20 DnD, where you are about as powerful as you're going to get, but still very much mortal and game balance is not impossible. Epic is just ludicrous speed on a DnD table and the characters are basically immortal. That really isn't the case in SK. Also, if your character dies in DnD, you roll another one and get starting gold and gear and magic items out the wazoo. In SK, you spend the next week or two RL just trying to get back to functional, depending on race and standards of competitiveness (which are extremely high to face end game content as it exists now.)

You mention the white fytrysk in the plane of ice, and I think that's a great example of what the top end of RE NPCs in SK should look like. At least before powerful races became a thing. It had a few immunities, a single special attack feature (reach), and an attack that mildly bypasses some kinds of defense (acidic bite). They also don't spawn in the 3-5 amounts that I can remember seeing. They'll mess people up who aren't paying attention, or who happen to end up hitting quite a few of them between entrance and objective (see: attrition comment above), but individually they are mooks. That's great. That's what REs should look like. They're the mooks you fight on the way to Z'shar, who is scaled like a boss NPC vs the lesser schlubs who populate the area.

I didn't really want to get into a protracted argument about this. I get that there are some people who like the extra threat of wiping on some random spawn before you even get in sight of the apex of the area. I think, currently and in the long-term, they are in the minority vs players who would prefer to be able to craft a strategy and execute it and presuming nothing goes wrong and no one makes any drastic mistakes, reliably accomplish objectives. I do not think that that is possible currently (before any tweaks you may have made because I have no idea what those are beyond "tweaks" as of now), and I think what is being said in this thread is that people would prefer it was.

I think these would be improvements, I don't necessarily think they are the kind of improvements people are interested in seeing long-term. Also taking into account the fact that a large percentage of areas require or are at least partially only navigable via flight, and you can't sneak and fly, they don't go anywhere near far enough.

The c'thonians that are there are as rare as it gets. I think they were in the game for months before they even got noticed. They aren't gas blasters, though. Hitting two at once would be very unlucky, and you can basically avoid them altogether for most trips to that zone.



They are not. But if something there is, let me know and I can fix it.



There have likely been some encounters set up where the parameters weren't executed carefully enough. If the white Fytrysk is acceptable, but the spoon on legs is not, it may be that the spoon (and other things like the spoon) just requires a few tweaks to get it into line with the Fytrysk. I'll take some time to go over the DS encounters to see where things could use some adjustments.

The plane of air has colossal c'thonians.

Id like to focus your attention on the point brought up by TR. Random encounters lets leave end bosses and long term encounter design to another thread they are connected but loosely.
These ideas Thuban has given would help but the issue main issue is the rate at which they spawn vs large groups. If sneak works to reduce threat then elves deep elves and halflings will get a huge buff so Id be careful on that.
The main issue I see is the support classes you should want to take with you on this bigger trips are actually liabilities until you get to the final fight. Rogues, bards, scouts and swashbucklers all have low HP. Which means if you have more than one gas blast spawn your group is probably going to lose those if they are in the group. Necromancers sorcerors and warlocks all are better off traveling solo most of the time because of this mechanic. The best tactic I have seen for dealing with this design is to move into a group one at a time to avoid spawning multiple NPCs. Which kind of defeats the idea of a group formation in the first place. There are areas in the game where this happens that are No magic as well which compounds the issue now your priest shaman are liabilities as well.

A relatively simple switch to make travel more interesting would simply be random encounters dont happen if there is a NPC in the room. Then the NPC can attack whom it will making the fight more interesting (at least until taunt/rescues/tumble go off). You will only get one random spawn per room making the design of random spawns more interesting and you can leave them as powerful creatures (or even in rare instances make it 2 creatures that work together). Bringing a larger group can spawn more random encounters on a trip but will not just auto wipe a group by getting 2+ spawns at once.
A more complicated switch would be to adjust random encounters for level and class type. Merc/priest/shaman high. Paladins/hellions medium. Rogues scouts bards swashbuckler low. Sorceror necromancers warlock depending on the group size high when solo medium in 3-4 man group low in a 6+ group. This however would still likely create a group size and class economy which seems is detrimental to the group.

On Thubans note of leveling of spawning foes. The people who do this are normally vets and they normally travel in small groups or solo while doing it. If you spawn more than one NPC while leveling your using a word of recall potion. This is why it is rarely used.

As far as "There are ways to short cut but no one knows them." This is a BS excuse for poor design. It let vets have an advantage, information to make am area playable should be relatively easy to find once an area is completed (Think griffon island quest and knocking the griffon tells you the solution you dont have to guess some secret word or be playing a class that can use it).
Lets look at two items The ROTP (shortened to protect IC information) and the 2 gnomish rings. The first item is not usable by a multiple races/classes because of reasons. The gnomish rings you need to know about then roll a gnome to use. Both of these items encourage multiplaying(transfer of information) to use yourself by design. I know of other shortcut items out there but most all the ones I have heard of encourage a small group (or solo) for the random encounters so they can speed though them then using item to shortcut everyone else. This keeps information in the hands of the few as people can explore areas and have no idea how to get there.

My final note interesting design and good design can be two different goals. You should always look at what the design encourages a player to do and how they interact with it. An example of this in the real world a twisting turning path in a park and then the area of grass that people walk over worn down to dirt. The design is to make the walk more interesting. The users see it as extra effort for no gain.