How can I make the goal of my Foundry mission to simply survive for 20 minutes?

lexthegreat

I am trying to bring a campaign of mine into NWO and am having the toughest time figuring out how to do a few things.

1 - Upon starting the foundry mission, I want the player to receive an item that will teleport them to an ancient keep, where an epic battle ensues. The player double clicks said item and is whisked away - how do I do this? Only way to start a mission I have seen so far is through a map transition. This is pretty crucial to the story since the item is given to the player by a future version of themselves.

2 - The good guys lose, and after spending 5 minutes defending each point of the keep, the player is overwhelmed and has to retreat. After 4 points are lost, the player must escape through a portal that opens, all the while more and more creatures keep showing up. If the player does not escape, they are simply killed by a spell that wipes out the rest of the keep and its remaining guards.

Now I have managed to create the keep and NPC's that will help the player fight, but can't figure out how to make a defend point for x minutes objective, as well as tell the game to spawn more and more creatures after X minutes have passed.

I also can't figure out how to outright kill all the friendly NPC's and player after 21 minutes have passed (if the player still did not escape), or how to place a countdown escape timer after the initial 20 minutes are up.

Are these things even possible with the current foundry?

Thanks!

auricklemt

1) Don't give the item directly to the player. Instead, have your NPC "place" it for them to pick up. On a table or whatever. That item is your "door" object for the transition. I'm not totally sure this will work as it may only be possible for transitions to use actual doors or portals. But in that case you could use a portal that is triggered by the future version of themselves. There are plenty of ways a little creative writing can get around Foundry restrictions while still staying true to the spirit of what you're trying to do.

2) There's no way you can create such an objective. The objectives that are possible are all right there in your Storyboard and nothing has a timer capability. You could write your quest in such a way that each point spawns progressively harder groups but you can't force the players to retreat. There are several reasons why this is problematic. For one thing, what will wreck a GWF's day will be a walk in the park for a good cleric or guardian. Not all classes handle encounters equally well, and you have to design for all of them. Second, encounter difficulty scales faster than character capability. What a character can easily mob the floor with at level 10 could well return the favor at level 60. Finally, players won't always be soloing your content. As you've described things, your story will fall apart if the player actually manages to survive those earlier stages. That means you have to build it so that he can't. But what if it's a group? So you have to build it in a way that even a group can't win -- but then you've made it zero fun for someone to try and solo.

So in short, the stuff you want to do with your adventure isn't possible with the current Foundry. And even if it was possible, it would be ill advised to try. This advice, by the way, is coming from someone with an adventure where one of the encounters is supposed to make the players run away from it. I learned that hard way that while some players will do what you want, some will do the opposite -- either to be funny or to test themselves. I had to get very creative to make it work, and even then there is a scenario where it will fall apart on me. But that encounter isn't integral to the story, so I'm okay with the off chance that someone now and then will break how that one was designed to go. The rest of the adventure makes up for it. Unfortunately for you, your idea doesn't have that latitude.

endaline91

auricklemt wrote: »

2) There's no way you can create such an objective. The objectives that are possible are all right there in your Storyboard and nothing has a timer capability. You could write your quest in such a way that each point spawns progressively harder groups but you can't force the players to retreat. There are several reasons why this is problematic. For one thing, what will wreck a GWF's day will be a walk in the park for a good cleric or guardian. Not all classes handle encounters equally well, and you have to design for all of them. Second, encounter difficulty scales faster than character capability. What a character can easily mob the floor with at level 10 could well return the favor at level 60. Finally, players won't always be soloing your content. As you've described things, your story will fall apart if the player actually manages to survive those earlier stages. That means you have to build it so that he can't. But what if it's a group? So you have to build it in a way that even a group can't win -- but then you've made it zero fun for someone to try and solo.

I'm by no means an expert in the Foundry but wouldn't it be possible to simulate a 'timer' through different triggers like having the player fight a bunch of mobs and then eventually the player has to talk to someone there that tells them that they have been overrun and to retreat?

Obviously it's not going to be exactly the same, but it is a possible workaround unless I am completely mistaken on the limitations of the Foundry.

lexthegreat

auricklemt wrote: »

1) Don't give the item directly to the player. Instead, have your NPC "place" it for them to pick up. On a table or whatever. That item is your "door" object for the transition. I'm not totally sure this will work as it may only be possible for transitions to use actual doors or portals. But in that case you could use a portal that is triggered by the future version of themselves. There are plenty of ways a little creative writing can get around Foundry restrictions while still staying true to the spirit of what you're trying to do.

2) There's no way you can create such an objective. The objectives that are possible are all right there in your Storyboard and nothing has a timer capability. You could write your quest in such a way that each point spawns progressively harder groups but you can't force the players to retreat. There are several reasons why this is problematic. For one thing, what will wreck a GWF's day will be a walk in the park for a good cleric or guardian. Not all classes handle encounters equally well, and you have to design for all of them. Second, encounter difficulty scales faster than character capability. What a character can easily mob the floor with at level 10 could well return the favor at level 60. Finally, players won't always be soloing your content. As you've described things, your story will fall apart if the player actually manages to survive those earlier stages. That means you have to build it so that he can't. But what if it's a group? So you have to build it in a way that even a group can't win -- but then you've made it zero fun for someone to try and solo.

So in short, the stuff you want to do with your adventure isn't possible with the current Foundry. And even if it was possible, it would be ill advised to try. This advice, by the way, is coming from someone with an adventure where one of the encounters is supposed to make the players run away from it. I learned that hard way that while some players will do what you want, some will do the opposite -- either to be funny or to test themselves. I had to get very creative to make it work, and even then there is a scenario where it will fall apart on me. But that encounter isn't integral to the story, so I'm okay with the off chance that someone now and then will break how that one was designed to go. The rest of the adventure makes up for it. Unfortunately for you, your idea doesn't have that latitude.

Well the guards helping the players would sacrifice themselves and tell the players to run, and if someone can't follow directions and wants to test themselves, all the power to them.

Hmm. Too bad. As a DM for almost 20 years this was one of my players favorite adventures when I hosted it at local game shops on D&D nights, and everyone there was able to follow directions... But I digress. I have plenty more campaigns I can try to import.

tilt42

The biggest issue people are missing here, beyond the mere technicalities of how to handle timers and waves, is that as long as the player is stuck in combat (which will happen in this situation), he will never be able to leave the map. He must be out of combat to even interact with the exit. This is why, during the large escape scene in The Lanaar Legacy, I had to manually set every single encounter in that level (all 45 or so of them) to despawn when the player got close to the exit. Otherwise it would have turned into a slaughter.

It's possible to make something that will at least feel thematically close to what you're trying to achieve, but you need to be aware of the limitations and build your quest around them. Don't be discouraged that the exact method you wanted to use doesn't work. Find a different one that does. Your quest might even be stronger for it.

lexthegreat

Thanks tilt!

nokturnel

tilt42 wrote: »

The biggest issue people are missing here, beyond the mere technicalities of how to handle timers and waves, is that as long as the player is stuck in combat (which will happen in this situation), he will never be able to leave the map. He must be out of combat to even interact with the exit. This is why, during the large escape scene in The Lanaar Legacy, I had to manually set every single encounter in that level (all 45 or so of them) to despawn when the player got close to the exit. Otherwise it would have turned into a slaughter.

It's possible to make something that will at least feel thematically close to what you're trying to achieve, but you need to be aware of the limitations and build your quest around them. Don't be discouraged that the exact method you wanted to use doesn't work. Find a different one that does. Your quest might even be stronger for it.

Yea my advice would be tilts advice. You don't need a timer, just give the player a quest to retreat to a certain location, you can have more mobs continue to spawn depending on which objective is met and then have them despawn when the player reaches the exit. The player will have the choice to continue fighting but if you set it up right, they'll be overwhelmed if they try and be forced to retreat (and despawn the mobs when they get to the exit)

If you want the player to survive for a certain amount of time give them encounters to kill in order, spawning a new encounter each time the previous one is defeated. That way no matter what class tackles the content, they'll all be given enough time to kill whichever encounters you want them to kill.