I'll be running Sword Lake this weekend. I remember reading in another thread about how larger parties have dispatched the giant without any challenge. I expect to have have 5 or 6 PKs for this session - should I beef up the encounters? What changes would you recommend?

Having run Sword lake twice last week at Continuum, once previously with my group, I am more than a little familiar with this one.

My home group (4 PK) and both Continuum groups (6PK's) managed to kill the giant with Crits. A hamstring being the favourite way to topple him.

The giant is as stupid or as clever as you want him to be. Since he doesn't have a shield splitting attacks is useless to him for defense.

If you split his attacks, it will be difficult for you to hit successfully as you'l need the PK to fail or fumble. Of all my PK soome with the lower damage of 4D6 and 3D6 were unly just able to scratch the giant (armour 15). They slowly chipped away. Once someone gets a crit, (I was allowing a +5 for flanking) the giant went down easy.

Depending on your PK's you might want to target a specific one or keep it ramdom. A couple of my players have taken the full 9D6 from the giant and in a low roll, they can survive without chirugery. Also remember that Merlin is at hand to heal any PKs that get the worst of it if you want.

Overall, although dangerous, both the giant and nuckalevee will go down much too qiickly. I'd up the armour on the nuckaleve by 5 points to 10pt to give it more of a chance.

Saying that, these are not the serious fighting encounters they appear to be but help the PK's get lots of easy glory.

If the PK's are unlucky it can go bad for them, but they have the Merlin safety net.

Be ruthless. Then use Merlin if they behaved valiantly.

Oh. Forgot to mention. The giant will get a +5/-5 reflexive modifier on any PK not on a horse. I ruled that the ground was rough and unsuitable for charging unless a horsemanship roll was made for each maneouvre.

The giant alone is a worthy adversary against 1,2 maybe 3 Knights. For larger groups, the challenge is much reduced.

He is fearsome and capable of knocking out a knight with one blow. Make your players realise that.

One last thing. The giant grants a prudent modifier of +5.

Depending on how your knights behave, allow them to complete the statements of intent. THEN roll prudent / reckless in whichever way you think will work best for your group.

This may result in half of the attackers holding back to see what happens while the few reckless souls get the Giants undivided attention.

I never used this to its full potential, but its one way to challenge the players.

I would like to add, that in one of Damon's games I feel we were saved somewhat by my character choosing to fight defensively for two if not three rounds as Damon had us declare after the Giant had declared due to his slowness (due to experienced GM knowledge that defense was my best tactic with a sword skill of 15) and I then managed to critical every round, otherwise I would have been strawberry jam.

And once one knight goes down, then the rot often sets in and its a strawberry jam smear....

Giants are not to be underestimated in my humble opinion....

Chris

Yes a tactic savy group will do well. However anyone trying to do Uncontrolled attacks (aka Crazy aka Berserk attack ) better watch out.

Bear in mind that the giants regular hit is the equivalent of a PK's critical.

Thanks for the tips. The adventure went pretty well. I used the giant as written, and increased the nukalavee's armor to 10. The giant wasn't too much trouble, fumbling his first two attacks and landing only 1 solid blow (1 pt short of a major wound). The nukalavee hit several times but all were minor wounds. After last week's massacre everyone was suitably frightened and fought tactically.

One thing that I realized over the course of the session however is that with a large group, there will often be one or more knights who won't be able to attack simply because there isn't room for that many to engage a single foe. In the future I'll have to think about adding additional foes so someone doesn't end up standing around in reserve (which isn't much fun for that player).

One thing that I realized over the course of the session however is that with a large group, there will often be one or more knights who won't be able to attack simply because there isn't room for that many to engage a single foe. In the future I'll have to think about adding additional foes so someone doesn't end up standing around in reserve (which isn't much fun for that player).


THat probably won7t be much of a problem. Most of the fights in the GPC aren't against a single foe. Most of the adventures are written so that the numbers of foes is based on the number of knights (one saxon per knight, 2 or 3 bandits per knight, and so on).

For the big nasties, like giants and dragons, you might relax the resitction on how many combatants can attack them. A SIZ 50 Wrym is probably big enough for all the knights to be able to attack it. IMO it is better to beeef up one monster a little and let mutiple PCs attack it than it is to add in a "second giant". Muliple nasties geatyl increases the chances of the monster getting a lucky crt9ical and slaughting a PC

One thing that I realized over the course of the session however is that with a large group, there will often be one or more knights who won't be able to attack simply because there isn't room for that many to engage a single foe. In the future I'll have to think about adding additional foes so someone doesn't end up standing around in reserve (which isn't much fun for that player).


I often have 4 or 5 players, and strictly enforce the maximum 3 knights per foe, even if they are gigantic. It may not be entirely realistic, but there's always scope for justifying it in-game, with handy terrain features to limit movement, etc. Monsters are often fought in forests or mountains, for instance. Or, I make the monsters mobile, and rule that only the 4 best dex or horsemanship rolls get to fight.

Having a couple of players who can't get into the fray creates an interesting dynamic: players who are worried their characters will die might find excuses to hang back, and when someone is knocked down, there is often someone ready and willing to leap in and stand over him, taking his place and thus saving the fallen knight from being hit when down.

Having an extra opponent or two is a good way to keep those extra knights occupied if you need to. Or give them some other task to do, like, say, having a knight be needed to do something like unearth a body and perform a rite over it to lay a curse to rest, while the other knights hold off the monster.

remember too that between fighting the giant and the nuckalevee Merlin asks then to leave their horses with the squires.

When I ran this part I gave the nuckalevee +5/-5 mounted bonus as it is described as being the size of a man on horse.