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Lord

Registered: 08-2011
Posts: 102
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Skabnoze's Spells - Nerfed?


So I'll be wrapping up Death Below Karak Azgal in the next couple weeks and then starting the chain of events that will lead the warriors into Lair of the Orc Lord. Preparing the materials ahead of time, I noticed that the "new spells" Skabnoze learns for Lair of the Orc Lord actually seem to be a lot weaker than the default Orc Magic spells he uses when the warriors fight him (twice!) in "Death Below".

The original spells actually tend to deal damage, whereas the "Lair" spells seem mostly focused on giving his allies some small buffs. Maybe I should playtest it to see if it really does nerf his character, but the way I'm looking at it now it seems as though the new spells are a major downgrade from the generic ones.

Thoughts?
29/Nov/2011, 2:09 am Link to this post Send Email to Nachie   Send PM to Nachie Blog
 
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Hero

Registered: 08-2011
Posts: 45
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Re: Skabnoze's Spells - Nerfed?


My opinion of his spells from Lair of the Orc Lord is that they've been designed for 1st & 2nd level characters. So they would not be as powerful or as deadly as standard orcish magic.


Not sure what his spells are like in Death Below Karak Azgal. I thought it was just standard Orc Magic...
29/Nov/2011, 5:32 am Link to this post Send Email to lord mavik   Send PM to lord mavik Blog
 
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Lord

Registered: 08-2011
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Re: Skabnoze's Spells - Nerfed?


Yep, they're just Orc Magic 1, which is plenty deadly to the BL 1 heroes and he has been a formidable foe in Death Below.

I think it makes sense to give him the watered down set of spells if he's just going to be an event card in the expansion, but if he's a recurring villain in the full Roleplay game then it's pretty silly for the warriors to finally get to fight him to the death at BL 2 and find that he's actually much less of a threat than he was at BL 1!

I think that, depending on how the warriors are doing, I might give him the ability to both cast Orc Magic 1 AND one of his special Lair of the Orc Lord spells to help his allies each turn. Should make for a nail-biting combat.

Was just wondering if anyone else had noticed this discrepancy or come up with other ways around it. At the moment he's the biggest villain in the campaign, but since he's going to die relatively early (BL 2) I'd like for him to bloody the warriors up a bit before he goes.

Lair of the Orc Lord also gives him less than half the wounds he had as a generic Orc Shaman, which is ridiculous.
29/Nov/2011, 7:21 am Link to this post Send Email to Nachie   Send PM to Nachie Blog
 
lord mavik Profile
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Hero

Registered: 08-2011
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Re: Skabnoze's Spells - Nerfed?


In Lair of the Orc Lord, isn't Skabnoze a recurring villain?

As in he either escapes from the players or plays dead?

Also, doesn't he get some type of bonus when encountered in his lair/room?


29/Nov/2011, 7:43 am Link to this post Send Email to lord mavik   Send PM to lord mavik Blog
 
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Lord

Registered: 08-2011
Posts: 102
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Re: Skabnoze's Spells - Nerfed?


Well Skabnoze as an event card in the basic game has an invisibility ring and once "killed" can escape and potentially keep returning to hound the warriors by having his card reshuffled into the event deck on a D6 roll of 1.

But as I'm sure you know, in the advanced game Skabnoze is introduced in Death Below Karak Azgal from the Roleplay book, and the warriors fight him on Deep 1 and Deep 2 of that adventure. It's left up to the GM to decide if he dies after the second encounter, but the reason he keeps getting away is that he has that ring of invisibility, so the option is left open to let him escape and become a recurring villain (which I did).

So then he's re-introduced in Lair of the Orc Lord, and in the adventure in the back of that book, "The Doom of Grishnak", the warriors fight him on all 3 deeps until finally he is killed for real because the warboss Gorgut has thrown his magic ring into the fire pit in his throne room.

Because of this, Skabnoze in the final encounter is really scared and sometimes his spellcasting suffers as a result. One of the low results on the table he has to roll on for his anxiety is actually that he just casts a normal Orc Magic spell! This makes no sense to me since those spells are so much more powerful than his new ones.

There are no bonuses to Skabnoze for being in the shaman's den, just a potential modifier to the power roll for the warriors.

I suppose I'll just have to playtest it. A lot of Skabnoze's new spells have to do with granting bonuses to other Orcs in the vicinity, so maybe taken together they actually make for deadlier spells?

I've seen it mentioned before by someone else, but The Doom of Grishnak really does seem like a total cakewalk as compared to Death Below Karak Azgal. We'll see!
29/Nov/2011, 2:19 pm Link to this post Send Email to Nachie   Send PM to Nachie Blog
 


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