That's why I think it's important to spend some time on converting them properly. As I see it, I need to study two particular areas:
A) Finding the best conversion path for the duergar in the module, and
B) Learning to use duergar properly in a tactical sense.
B is the much larger of the two, I think. Very little is required for A but some intelligent decision-making and number-crunching. But tactically using the duergar effectively is important. Just their racial abilities of invisibility and enlarge person open up a number of ways to manipulate things like reach, threatened spaces, and the ability to hit with surprise and then run. Fighting duergar should be annoying and exhausting!
The Theater/Narborg Roster
Let's start with A), above. Running down through the rosters of levels 10, 11 and 12, duergar NPCs can be broken into three categories: Specialists, Muscle, and Leaders. Leaders could be considered specialists, I suppose, but in all forms of D&D Leaders typically worth as both Specialists and Muscle.
Most of the top level NPCs of Narborg seem to represent the end-goal of a particular path. Thus the career path that starts with the duergar bouncers in the Bleak Theater seems to naturally end in with the Underdeep Veterans in Narborg. The Guards and Experts seem to be all of the same type across a pretty narrow band of class levels, so there isn't much of a progression there. Thus a rebuild of the basic fighters seems in order. I'll probably use the Defender of the Weak build from Rogue Eidolon's excellent Fighter Guide as a template. (note:The original version seems to have disappeared, so I'm linking Zenith Games for the content. Thanks to RE and to Zenith Games!) Also of interest, the Stalwart Defender prestige class, with build guidance here.
The rest of the duergar, the Leaders, need to be redone. A LOT has changed for these classes overtime, especially for Unchained classes. The Impresario, the Thane and his family, the commanders, almost all of them need some work. I will probably adopt some linear Unchained rules for the rogues and monk - I don't need them to be complex, I just need them to be workable when I'm juggling a combat with multiple monsters.
The casters from the above list really need to be redone. I find that most of the ancillary abilities of specialist wizards - not to mention the domain abilities of clerics - get lost in the shuffle. I've never had an NPC caster survive long enough to fall back on their X/day Elemental Ray attacks for a d6-plus-change, so why worry about it? Time to re-build!
I won't dive too deep into the rebuild itself but suffice it to say that it should allow for some interesting tactics during gameplay. The Defender build linked above should make it very hard for players to simply move past the front line of defense and force them to use their resources more intelligently.
Most of the top level NPCs of Narborg seem to represent the end-goal of a particular path. Thus the career path that starts with the duergar bouncers in the Bleak Theater seems to naturally end in with the Underdeep Veterans in Narborg. The Guards and Experts seem to be all of the same type across a pretty narrow band of class levels, so there isn't much of a progression there. Thus a rebuild of the basic fighters seems in order. I'll probably use the Defender of the Weak build from Rogue Eidolon's excellent Fighter Guide as a template. (note:The original version seems to have disappeared, so I'm linking Zenith Games for the content. Thanks to RE and to Zenith Games!) Also of interest, the Stalwart Defender prestige class, with build guidance here.
The rest of the duergar, the Leaders, need to be redone. A LOT has changed for these classes overtime, especially for Unchained classes. The Impresario, the Thane and his family, the commanders, almost all of them need some work. I will probably adopt some linear Unchained rules for the rogues and monk - I don't need them to be complex, I just need them to be workable when I'm juggling a combat with multiple monsters.
The casters from the above list really need to be redone. I find that most of the ancillary abilities of specialist wizards - not to mention the domain abilities of clerics - get lost in the shuffle. I've never had an NPC caster survive long enough to fall back on their X/day Elemental Ray attacks for a d6-plus-change, so why worry about it? Time to re-build!
I won't dive too deep into the rebuild itself but suffice it to say that it should allow for some interesting tactics during gameplay. The Defender build linked above should make it very hard for players to simply move past the front line of defense and force them to use their resources more intelligently.
No comments:
Post a Comment