Fate of the Norns

We've been playing for the last month or so. My particular group doesn't have a lot of time to play (4 hours or so, every 2 weeks if we are lucky), so we are always looking for ways to speed things up. I make everyone have their powers on their sheets so they can reference them quickly.

One thing we noticed with our druid and our seithkona is that the summoned skeleton/aberration/hrokkvir are not only laborious to create on the fly, but also functionally a new character added to the combat. So, if they come out, and we have a full table, we have functionally 8 players, not including the norn (myself). This presents a rough issue for total time to do combat.

Additionally, our druid uses ley lines, so Focus comes up a lot. Calculating this level increase on the fly is difficult to be timely about do to the fluidity of the bonus.

Another thing we noticed is that we needed a mat for the summoned critters, and one of my players started doing an imaginary mat on his critter character sheet. I liked the idea so I ran with it.

To help alleviate the time and construction issue, and to speed up creation I've started making extremely simplified monsters to help out. generally I precalculate everything, pick powers that do not have a lot of complexity, avoid ones with Maintains/echo/combo, avoid heals, etc. For example, the black skeleton originally got Death Charge, but now he gets power attack.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ ... sp=sharing is the template that I've made up for this.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ ... sp=sharing black skeleton example

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ ... sp=sharing hrokkvir example

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ ... sp=sharing seith aberration example

Amplifying i'm playing by ear right now, but generally they'll get a bonus to DF, spells or otherwise to represent passives acquired (and making heavy use of keen aptitude here), 2 essence and 2 destiny, and I'll be working on new sheets for ever 6 levels as my players can call them up. Notably, I avoid fangs and unencumbered dodger because keen aptitude makes them extremely powerful.

Gate and Summon have always had design time in mind. Normally players level up at the end of a game session, so theoretically there should be plenty of time to design their new gate/summons. Usually for gate, players create a rolodex of utility gates with various Amplify cut-off lines and run whatever they need. So no theory, no building on the fly.

Is there a reason you players are creating on the fly?

I was contemplating adding a Gate/Summon simplification section to LotA ever since we had the Denizens of the North pre-gens.

If would go something like this: Pick 1 Active power, all runes are bound to that. Then pick 3 Passive powers and for every 3 Essence you get 1 of them (in rotation so stacking isn't an issue). For a Gate I'd probably allow a bigger stack (pick 1 Passive Power) since it's a burst effect in most cases.

In your template, is the Focus scaling by level?

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because they are super duper lazy truthfully, they don't want to invest the time into making a level 6, a level 7, a level 8, a level 9, a level 10, etc and then do it for every variation (or even one). Me, I would do them all up by hand probably because I'm kind of obsessed, but I can't expect that out of my group.



It scales the level, yes, and post amplification. Essentially, I do something similar to what you are proposing actually - I pick 3 passives, but hide the details largely. So far, I've left it at "you get +1 DF to spells" and +1 DF to melee attacks" sort of things. one per level up to Focus +5. At Focus +6, the idea is that you pick the next iteration of creature (Level +6, Level +12, etc).

I might move to what you are proposing. "Skeletal Soldier" for all runes bound to power attack, "Skeletal Seithkona" for all runes bound to bone snapper, etc