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Pragmatic monsters that petrify 5e11/21/2023 ![]() This never came up (she didn't gaze anyone that had been poisoned) but it seemed more fair. Two interesting rules things that came up: from behind the screen, when I deleveled the medusa I decided that its poison attacks - which, according to the rules as I could understand them, wouldn't change - did 5 poison instead of 10 and since I was reducing all damage by 2, I took out the -2 to Fort saves. This would not have been a TPK regardless.) (On the other hand, I could easily have seen it swing the other way, especially if the dailies had all missed and the medusa was in a position to gaze several times - and so I was prepared for that as well. The action was intense but everyone seemed to have a good time. As it was, the medusa got off one gaze that missed one and hit two, and between the cleric's item daily power (+5 to saving against 1 effect) and the heal skill (standard action DC 15 to grant a +2 to an ally's next save), they pretty much knocked it out with decent rolls. They also have two strikers and a defender spec'd for single-target damage.) They pretty much never missed, but that was due to some very good rolls and a warlord that boosted action point attacks. They focus-fired on the medusa as soon as they spotted it, mainly using dailies followed by action point-fueled encounters, and they took the thing out in two rounds. ![]() The party was hyper-aware and very focused, and they executed a nice pincer attack on its position (which the rogue scouted) - and in my experience with 4.0 so far, positioning is crucial. But I was ready to fudge some rolls if necessary, and the terrain (cavern with lots of places to hide behind / block line of sight) favored the party.Īs it turned out, I fudged nothing. Give it an at-will stone power and a few low-level minions/brutes to get in the way, and it becomes quite a dangerous situation. In practice, a level + 2 elite -anything- might be a bit much, just because the defenses are high enough that any attack rolls that are less than ~12 miss, and it tends to hit on ~9 vs. I also gave PLENTY of hints that they were about to fight something with stoning power - lots of statues perfectly shaped like people cowering in horror or fighting, etc. I took a level 10 elite medusa and deleveled it to 5 (against a well-balanced party of 6 players), with a very small group of level - 2 minions and level - 1 brutes. As a backup plan, the local temple had a scroll of Remove Affliction on hand that they were willing to cast at a reduced rate. In practice, it worked out great but it was a bit tense. The populace could maybe task the party with curing his petrification, only to unwittingly release a menace into the world.Explanation: I had a "big boss" situation with a level 3 party (of 6) that story-wise would work well if they encountered a creature that could petrify. Each retelling could be like a game of telephone, with minor details changing, until the meaning changed entirely. ![]() Plot Twist! The petrified “hero” was actually an evil dude, and he was petrified by the said hero in the story. Or flip it around, and have it be a petrified hero, who saved the population, and chose to be petrified for all eternity as his dying will. Cue the Quest!Īnother use of this condition would be as a world-building tool to tell a grand story of a statue of a monster and how it was turned to stone to save the population from its menace. Only, they have no way to undo the petrification itself because of X Y or Z. To expand on this, perhaps petrification was used to medically stem the course of a lethal disease or poison until a cure could be developed, and they now have the cure. How Petrification Can Be Used for Storytelling:įor a hook into an adventure, petrification easily lends itself as a way to send your party on a quest to hunt a basilisk for its stomach acid to cure a petrified individual.
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