I’m not a very original person. Creative, possibly, but not original. I took to heart what my 12th grade English teacher Virginia Olga Wortinski told me all those years ago, “Little ones, there are no new ideas. Everything’s already been thought of by people smarter and better than you.” Vow, as she asked we called her, used this as her introduction to the conflicts; man vs himself, man vs machine, man vs the world, mankind vs me, etc.
These basic tropes have served me well in my brief DMing career, both in engaging the player characters themselves and in setting up fun encounters for the players around the table to enjoy as well. Knowing how to distill from any story the basic conflict and then build on it has allowed me to deconstruct other things; pull from it what makes it exciting then port the distilled essence of the thing elsewhere. Like in designing 4e encounters. (Something that has been previously mentioned here on RPGMusings.)
Because I’ll watch something on TV, or hear a song, or play a video game, and come up with an interesting encounter, I have a lot of these ideas floating around in my head, more than I’ll ever be able to use in my campaigns. So my loss is your gain, with these Recycle Bin articles.
Now that the awkward introduction is out of the way, let’s get to the fun part.
The Old: Final Fantasy 13
Okay, get the ‘how can it be final if it’s the 13th one’ joke out of the way right now. -pauses a moment- We all good? Great, moving on.
There are plenty of things to cull from the Final Fantasy series for use in a 4e game. Both have a plucky band of heroes going on a world spanning quest to slay the ultimate root of evil. Both have a unique cast of characters that share similar traits. Both tend to have emo male characters with a large sword. (Come on, we’ve all been in a D&D group with one of these characters at least once…)
One thing the Final Fantasy series of games does is change up most of the game mechanics between iterations. The Materia magic system of FF7 is nothing like the Guardian Force magic system of FF8 is nothing like the Sphere system of FF10 is nothing like the Grid system of FF12, all of which alter the combat and game play to one degree or another. All of these, I’m sure, can have some place in a 4e campaign one way or another. (And maybe when I’m dry on ideas I’ll prune once again from the very lush Final Fantasy tree) Today, however, we’re going to recycle the Stagger system from Final Fantasy 13.
Enemies in FF13 all had a stagger gauge, which would slowly build up as your characters attacked them. This gauge served two purposes. The first was to add a multiplier to damage done against the creature. As the gauge got higher, it would indicate a higher percent value that every attack would be multiplied by. The second was when the gauge was full. This put a creature in a state called ‘staggered’, where attack patterns, vulns, and resistances would differ from an unstaggered state. And since the gauge was at its highest, it also meant it was time to really put a hurt on the creature.
How this gauge was increased depended on the role of the character attacking. Certain characters would increase the gauge slowly, but doing so would also lower the speed at which the gage decreased. Other attacks would increase the gauge faster, making how your party delivered its damage just as important as the damage being dealt. This idea is something that can easily be converted to the role system in 4e.
The New: Shell Creatures
A shell creature is a conjuration or summon whose only purpose is to be bulwark for the conjurer. In game purposes, an npc can take a minor action to summon or create a shell creature. When created, all damage, direct, environmental, or ongoing, that would be dealt to the summoner is instead dealt to the the shell creature. The summoner can still act normally when a shell creature is in play, and may gain additional attacks when it has a shell creature out.
While strong, a shell creature can only take so much punishment before it dissipates. This leaves the summoner in an exposed condition until it can call forth another shell creature. In game terms, a shell creature is a creature of the same level of its summoner that has initiative the same as its summoner, has the number of hit points equal to a like level soldier, armor values equal to its summoner, and takes no standard actions. It can occupy any square on the field when called forth, even one already occupied with an ally. Most often this space is the same as the summoner.
As a shell creature is attacked, its resilience is lessened, making it easier for it to be damaged. Sometimes, the shell creature can recover from this, other times it cannot. This loss of resilience is demonstrated via a variable vulnerability to all damage. This vuln is constantly in flux, and how it changes varies for the various PC roles and the shell creature itself (vulnerability values denoted by tier, heroic/paragon/epic):
- At the beginning of its turn, unless otherwise prevented, a shell creature reduces its vulnerability by 5/10/15.
- Striker – on a hit, the shell creature cannot lower its vuln at the beginning of its next turn, and its vuln is increased by 2/4/6
- Controller – on a hit, the shell creature’s vuln is increased by 5/10/15
- Leader – on a hit, the shell creature’s vuln is increased by 2/4/6. When a leader uses its class ‘word’ power (healing word, majestic word, inspiring word, healing spirit, etc), the creature’s vuln is increased by 5/10/15, and the creature cannot lower its vuln the next turn.
- Defender – on a hit, the shell creature’s vuln is increased by 2/4/6. When the protected creature makes an attack that doesn’t include the creature that has marked it, the creature’s vuln is increased by 5/10/15.
- For mixed roles on a PC using the hybrid rules, determine effect by what power hit the creature.
The Why: Why add this complication into my game?
Wizards of the Coast have placed a great pacing mechanism in 4e D&D, the bloodied state. When a creature gets bloodied, the battle, literally, is half over. It allows a simple way to make the battlefield dynamic by having an easy way to tell when powers and behaviors change.
The downside is that it is binary; you only get two states, bloodied, and not bloodied. This works fine for a lot of battles, but sometimes you really want to have a sense of flow to a fight. The bad guy has the upper hand, but then the heroes burst through his shield, raging for vengeance, but ah ha, it was all a trick to tire the heroes now, and the villain has them right where he wants them, etc etc.
Shell creatures allow the GM to break the combat up into more then two pieces. While there are still only two states, you can swing between the states multiple times. And if the summoner has different powers based on if its shell creature is out or not, it adds another tool for a GM to create a dynamic and flavorful battle field, one with a lot of give and take.
Next time I’ll post a few examples of shell creatures and how to create an entire encounter around them, as well as how to spend your xp budget on them.
Mike Hasko .-._. psychopez
That’s an interesting mechanic. I get the premise behind it, but I’m unsure if I’d use it myself. Not because it’s a bad mechanic, actually it sounds pretty cool, but it adds another level of bookkeeping for me behind the screen. How do you manage it?
Piece of scratch paper with the shell creature’s name. I record damage taken, not hit points left, because adding is easier to do in the head than subtraction.
So instead of tracking just hit points for a character, I have two numbers, hit points and vuln, hp on top and vuln on the bottom. When ever a shell monster takes damage, I just add the number the player told me to the most recent vuln number, then increase the vuln value as needed.
And yes, it adds another layer of bookkeeping, but since the shell creature itself doesn’t act, there’s no powers to use, auras to track, or rolls for recharge. The bookkeeping is context shifted, but if you’re not used to the shift it probably will seem out of place.
Well thought out. I’m not one to really complicate things too much more than they already are (my attention span is atrocious), but I can see how this can be used, and used well. I guess I’ll wait until you’ve shown me a few of these before I make my final judgement.
BTW, thanks for the linkage!
great break down on what a shell creature is….does any one else miss the Necromancer from Diablo 2 now?