How to invoke Mario in 4E?

[Tegu8788]

So I'm getting ready to run a live game, and the world I want to play in will heavily invoke Mario. "Your princess is in another castle..." type tropes. It's an iconic game, and I have a fun twist on it.

I've never actually played a Mario game, except on my TI84+...


So, my query, is if you were going to be playing some heroic characters, what classic Mario enemies would you want to fight, and what is iconic that I can translate to 4E?


Crunchy info, I'm looking for 3-4 races, each with a warlord that rules the monsters as a boss. Low to mid level heroic likely, party composition currently unknown.


Edit: More info I've put together about the world.

My players will not know they are in a Mario style world until they finish the first castle. But the gist being this is a fantasy world after an apocalypse. Demons have come, but been defeated, and the world started to heal. However, monster races breed faster, and after being pushed back to an island chain from the mainland. There as been major wars, and the PC races have been pushed back to the farthest island, each previous one having been a refuge for a different race, and currently occupied by a different monster race (so different castle layouts with different monsters hold up in them).

I'm also overlaying some Norse mythology onto this, for an extra set of twists and red heirings. But the basic plot will be the two co-Kings assemble a task force (players) to rescue one of their daughters from a monster raid. Go fight their way through the first castle, beat the big boss (ideally someone important) only to discover she isn't there. Go back, scry again, find she is in the second castle, rinse, repeat. Strike team, not invasion force, so while they kill warlords, the monster army is largely untouched.

Twist will happen when Bowser analogue comes in, unites all the monster races, and lead an attack against the PC island. So while I don't need super warlord analogues, I'm gonna need something.

[Gilphon]

Well- Goombas and Koopas are definitely the most iconic enemies. So Myconids and... something turtle like. There's bound to something like that somewhere. Flying versions of both should exist, but those lose the flight once they're bloodied.

And, of course, we're going to have to have a boss fight against Bowser. So think a Dragon without flight, but hard to damage- and with whatever special abilities you give Koopas, to make that connection clear. But there's some lava nearby that the PCs will be able to force him into- for maximum nostalgia, have him standing on a bridge over lava with an axe conspicuously placed on the other side, but the PCs should find it tricky to get over there.

Less essential, but still recognizable enemies:

Hammer Bros: Toss hammers from a distance, sometimes jumping to make targeting them harder.
Piranha Plant: lurk in pipes, pop out to bite the PCs if they approach carelessly, and then dart back down to avoid damage.
Thwomp: Giant slab on stone that drop on you when you get to close. Hurts a lot; probably easier to model as a trap.

Aside from Bowser, there aren't really any iconic bosses- one generally just expects souped up versions of the normal enemies.

[Dacia Brabant]

Oh man, this is the kind of game where a successful Acrobatics check could actually be used to do some damage. Remember Mario's First Rule: jump on its-a head.

Other than that, how about Boos that inflict damage if the characters fail Perception checks? Or Bob-ombs that explode in a close burst if not defeated within the first couple of rounds of an encounter?

[Nightgaun7]

Gotta have Thwomps

[Tegu8788]

I can see some traps setting themselves up. And if mini bosses are regularly just elite versions of minions, that's fine.

[OracleofWuffing]

Goombas are definitely minions, if your players are familiar with Paper Mario, go ahead and start putting a spike on their heads partway in the game so they deal some tiny amount of damage when hit by a Melee attack.

In terms of trap-like-enemies, Chain Chomps. Depending on who you ask, they could get angry and break their leashes when bloodied. Pokeys are also a popular trap-like enemy.

Piranha Plants, as mentioned, would pop in and out of pipes, but there's also a few of the fire-breathing variety, which would make a good deal of basic artillery. As far as a "Warlord" goes, it's hard to top the visual theme of Navel Piranha from Yoshi's Island, though how you'd play its weak point mechanic in D&D is a tossup. Petey Piranha is also a notable oversized Piranha Plant that has made several appearances, but the presentation pales in comparison.

There's a large chunk of enemies of the fire variety, so something like a Blargg (Either the giant doofy dragon as it appears in Super Mario World or the big gaping sentient lava pool in the Yoshi's Island games) or Fry Guy (who may as well just be named "Fire Elemental") can oversee all that. Similarly, Big Bertha's probably the boss of Cheep-Cheeps, Porcu-Puffers, Rip Van Fish, Bloopers, Urchins, and what-have-you. Not in the "Royal leader" or "Elected official" sense, but in the sense of, "That thing is the top of the food chain."

At least one- and possibly only one- encounter should involve allowing the player's access to an oversized shoe, which is comparable to a giant mecha. There might also be only one skill challenge which involves playing tennis with one of the big bads.

Should the party opt to assist the locals as some optional thing, they should be rewarded by being presented with three treasure chests, of which they get the contents of only one. Another local "Help the natives" encounter should involve stopping a herd of less than intelligent green, yellow, blue, and red horses (that inexplicably hatch from eggs) from jumping into bottomless pits.

[Kurald Galain]

You need spinning rods of fire, basically patches of damaging terrain around a wall that rotate 90 degrees each turn.

Instead of potions, hand out mushrooms and flowers that can be eaten for temporary boosts.

There need to be lots of pits in the floor (and mook enemies will walk straight into them without considering tactics), but everyone can breathe water indefinitely.

[ThePurple]

Oh man, this is the kind of game where a successful Acrobatics check could actually be used to do some damage. Remember Mario's First Rule: jump on its-a head.

Rather than including a new mechanic entirely, I would just say that Mario would most definitely be a monk within this game's context. A lot of Full Discipline powers involve making jump checks for huge movement and then attacking the target in some way, which works perfectly for refluffing into "jump on its-a head". They also use ki foci (can you say "fire flower" or "star"?) which works very well with Mario's general reluctance to use practical weapons (hammer notwithstanding; even then, it could still be considered a ki focus since it's not a weapon so much as a tool).

For your players, I think it's important to figure out which type of Mario character archetype the players want to use in the game and then figuring out their class/classes from there rather than trying to create entirely new mechanics for the players to use so that they can play any class and still attempt to evoke the feel of Mario. Hybrids would work well since Mario and Luigi are basically monk/fire elementalist sorcerer hybrids (jump on their heads or shoot fire at them), Peach would probably be a lazylord and/or cleric (she doesn't really attack so much as tell others to attack and tends to use prayer type attack magic when she does), etc.

Of course, this is all assuming that your players will know going into it that it's going to be an inspired-by-Mario campaign. If they don't, you're probably going to have to come up with house rules for the various Mario combat tactics in order to really get the feeling across.

As for monsters, I would probably go with...

Goombas: standard goombas as minions that die in a single hit and flying goombas as standard monsters that lose their flying ability when they get bloodied

Koopa Troopas: this is where you're gonna see most of your monsters.

Red and green koopa troopas; red are probably higher level though both should be standard soldier enemies; possibly make it so that, when bloodied or hit by a jumping attack, they lose their shells, which can then be used as thrown weapons;

hammer brothers, which are probably elite artillery

Magikoopas, which are teleporting standard artillery

Dry Bones, which would be undead brute koopas that stand back up after dying if killed by a non-magical attack

Lakitu, which would be flying elite koopas that summon minions without actually attacking themselves

Shy Guys: a large number of different standard monsters using various weapons; could probably just refluff any number of human monster entries; ranged variants would be Snifits

I would be reluctant to use Boos since Mario and company don't really fight them so much as attempt to avoid them (not to mention that there also aren't a huge variety of them so it would likely just be a standard monster boo and an elite king boo), though you could use "Boo Zone" as a trap that deals damage to players if they fail a Perception check. If you do use them as monsters, they would be lurker ghosts.

As to figuring out "warlords" that govern the other monsters, there aren't really good examples of them, aside from King Boo to the Boos, because the goombas, koopa troopas, and shy guys are all just types of troops governed by Bowser (who is himself a koopa). If you really want a warlord-style leader of each, the most thematically appropriate iteration would be to have one of Bowser's kids act as a warlord (which is how Super Mario Brothers 3 and Super Mario World handled things) before having Bowser himself as the final warlord.

[Tegu8788]

My players will not know they are in a Mario style world until they finish the first castle. I'll edit in more info, that I've since figured out, into my first post. But the gist being this is a fantasy world after an apocalypse. Demons have come, but been defeated, and the world started to heal. However, monster races breed faster, and push the allied PC races back from the mainland and to an island chain. There as been major wars, and the PC races have been pushed back to the farthest island, each previous one having been a refuge for a different race, and currently occupied by a different monster race (so different castle layouts with different monsters hold up in them).

I'm also overlaying some Norse mythology onto this, for an extra set of twists and red heirings. But the basic plot will be the two co-Kings assemble a task force (players) to rescue one of their daughters from a monster raid. Go fight their way through the first castle, beat the big boss (ideally someone important) only to discover she isn't there. Go back, scry again, find she is in the second castle, rinse, repeat. Strike team, not invasion force, so while they kill warlords, the monster army is largely untouched.

Twist will happen when Bowser analogue comes in, unites all the monster races, and lead an attack against the PC island. So while I don't need super warlord analogues, I'm gonna need something.

[tcrudisi]

I was about to joke, "Hey - I'll be down there to join in on this game. Just let me know when!"

And then I saw you are in Charlotte. I'm actually not that far away; I'm in Greensboro myself.

But seriously - if you go to MACE this coming November, let me know. I would love to get you to run this game there so that my wife and I could participate!

[Tegu8788]

And that's the tipping point. I'll do what I can to make it.