[3.5]RHoD-Help Wyrmlord Koth Defend his prize against pesky good doers!

[Rising Phoenix]

Background:

After being forced to abandon Vrath Keep and failing to prevent the collapse of Skull Gorge Bridge. Wyrmolord Koth is desperate to prove his worth to the Red Horde and Tiamat. Thus he and some minions set off to slay a female Gold Dragon. They are successful and manage to take one of her brood alive, this one they intend to sacrifice to Tiamat at her fane.

Unfortunately Brindol scouts spot them and rush back to town to inform the PCs.

The PCs:
Currently the party consists:
6th lv Half Orc Cleric with Travel and Healing domains (lv up soon)
6th lv Human Paladin focusing on mounted combat (lv up soon)
6th lv Half-Elf ranger focusing on archery
7th lv halfling Dragonfire Adept
2nd lv Rogue/ 3rd lv Halfling Scout (this a modified reincarnated Jorr)

They are NOT optimised, but got very good stat and hp rolls.

When and why I plan to use this encounter:

After the Ghostlord, but before the Siege of Brindol provided the PCs have done poorly (they are doing averagely right now but they have failed to kill Wyrmlord Koth and the Green Dragon; and it is very possible that they fail to slay Saavrith (sp?) and Regiarix) and if there's time.
This will basically allow them to despose of Koth (he won't flee again) and gain a wyrmling Gold Dragon as an ally. Am thinking of a 1 VP award if they succeed.
Am expecting the PCs to be roughly lv 9-10 by then so am after a challenging ecnounter (EL 10-11).

Other things you should know:

The PCs are likely to have at their beck and call some NPC help (5 member party consisting 6th lv characters: Bard, Scout, Paladin, Wizard, Barbarian). This can be scrapped.


Ideas for the encounter so far:

Koth: Give him another lv so that his a sorcerer 7 now. Alternatively give him a lv of warweaver (total ECL 8). Suits the fluff and if defeated he will fireball himself to death with as many PCs as possible

2) Blackspawn Raiders ECL 6

5) Bugbear warriors ECL 1 (?)

1) Ogre to push the cage along, CR 3

The gold dragon will be heavily battered and unconcious.

This, I think, should roughly give an ECL of 10, but isn't it a bit on the weak side? Any ideas on improving this/ make it more interesting? I have access to pretty much any WotC book and a few Sword and Sorcery items.

Thanks in advance for your help and time,

R.P.

[Pain~less]

Use the green dragon if he survived, gives the PCs another chance to earn VPs.
also, the spawn of Tiamat have some other variants in MM4 I think. The only Bugbears I know of in Rhod are the Blood Ghost Berserkers, which are CR4.

Do you want to set the battle near or even inside the fane ? Seems not very intuitive for the PCs to travel in this direction after the ghostlord.

Suggestion: Set it in the ruins of Drelin's Ferry, or somewhere along the way to Brindol.

[AslanCross]

The EL 10 encounter is kind of easy; the individual monsters, being weak, don't really do much.

Koth: I'd go with the level of War Weaver. This will make him a lot more useful to his minions, even though he'd sooner commit suicide.

Ogre: Replace the ogre with a Skullcrusher Ogre (CR 5, Monster Manual 3). It's tougher, smarter, and is mostly more effective than what is essentially an 8-foot tall caveman in a loincloth.

Throw in another caster. A Kulkor Zhul War Adept can supply more artillery fire. A mindbender might be able to provide more support casting and control. You could even add a warpriest, sent by Azarr Kul to keep tabs on Koth.

My party did a lot better with Koth. In fact, they knocked him out, tortured him, and had Jorr execute him. >_o Ozzy got smashed pretty badly too. He was about to turn tail, but the crusader got lucky and split his head open. Had to beef up Regiarix and Saarvith because of that.

[kjones]

You certainly want to level Koth a few times. I don't think you'd be remiss in bringing him up to 8th or 9th level. Give him some ranks in Concentration. The ability to cast defensively may save his life. And rework his spell selection entirely - at the very least, swap out lightning bolt.

At this point in the campaign, your players will probably be 9th level or so. The bugbear guards will be little more than speedbumps, as will the ogre. (Skullcrusher Ogres are a good replacement in general - their rock-throwing makes them nasty at range.) Give him some other higher-level minions as well - another caster is a good idea, as is more dragonspawn.

Try not to let NPCs get involved, unless you really want to, or unless they fulfill an explicitly support role. (Trellara Nightshadow, the bard, is a good example of the latter.)

In general, remember that an encounter of EL equal to party level will not be very challenging on its own - such an encounter is expected to use up 20% of the party's daily resources. It seems that in the scenario you envision, this would probably be the only major encounter for the party that day, so you want to give it an EL of 2 to 3 levels higher than party level. 4 levels higher is not unreasonable, but risky. Use the Encounter Calculator on d20SRD to figure the numbers.

[Rising Phoenix]

First of all thanks for all your advise. :-)

@Pain~less:

"Suggestion: Set it in the ruins of Drelin's Ferry, or somewhere along the way to Brindol."

Yup, that's what I am planning to do. :-)

@AslanCross:

My party entered the shed which promtly collapased warning everyone of their presence... XD They then proceeded to slay everything in front of Koth giving him a good hint that he should get the hell out of there... which he did

In order to give the party another chance I placed him at the bridge. They tried to kill him again but he got away again (I think on 1 hp or something) and Ozzy got engaged with the flying Half-Orc (grappled him and had both fall in the river below, both survived the fall...). Ozzy tried to kill the Half-Orc shortly afterwards but he used the Staff of Healing on himself...it was awesome on par of the player but the battered dragon knew better and fled...

(Told the player afterwards that it would have been more useful if he had cast fly on the Paladins mount...)

BTW what happened to your journal? Haven't seen it updated in ages, it was a great read and promted me to buff up Saavrith (though I may tone him down a little, he's very scary vs his favoured enemies atm and the party has 2 of those)

@kjones:
"It seems that in the scenario you envision, this would probably be the only major encounter for the party that day, so you want to give it an EL of 2 to 3 levels higher than party level."

Correct. So an EL 13-14 is reasonable? Cool, I'll beef it up then and yes the Bugbear warriors are meant to be speed bumps.


Plan now:

-Give Koth 3 lvs of Warweaver, fix his horrid skill and spell set.
-Ozzy going to be there as will a warpriest sent by Azzar Kul to keep tabs on the 'useless' wyrmlord'. I like the idea that the hobgoblins don't trust Koth that much anymore
-Ogre is now a Skull Crusher Ogre
-4 Blackspawn Raiders instead of 2 (Check MM 4 to see if there's anything more interesting, fire belcher to pull cage along? hmmm)
-10ish Bugbear warriors

-Have the NPCs be busy at the time of the encounter or only have 1-2 be present.

Does that sound better now?

Cheers and thanks!

R.P.

[Coidzor]

Try to think about what would be necessarily to kill Momma dragon, too. Hell, play out the scenario, even, if you'd be into that kinda thing to see how their tactics stand up against their quarry and if what remains would be a credible threat.

...Did anyone else get the mental image of Koth getting shaved for his failures and then being left with only a Snidely Whiplash mustache? And then cackling about his evil plans?

Because that thread title seriously is making me amused by this mental image...

...Bugbear Rogue/Ninjas which are spread out scouting further along the path which show up in the second, third, and fourth rounds from hiding to try to sneak attack the party, since such an expedition is going to need its amount of sneakery/intelligence gathering to find out where/when to attack the Big Mama(or the baby-sitter, whatevskies).

[AslanCross]

First of all thanks for all your advise. :-)

BTW what happened to your journal? Haven't seen it updated in ages, it was a great read and promted me to buff up Saavrith (though I may tone him down a little, he's very scary vs his favoured enemies atm and the party has 2 of those)


It's dropped off the first few pages since we haven't had sessions lately; college starting for my players did that. The next session is this coming Saturday, so stay posted for that. Don't worry, I've got it bookmarked and make sure there's activity every other week so at the very least it doesn't reach the one month necromancy limit.

[Olo Demonsbane]

My party was unorthodox...and very powerfull.

They didnt let anything escape or make much noise (5d6+24 damage at level 3 geshalt is SCARY!), but Koth was ready for them...it took them a couple turns to kill him, but they eventually got him with a SoS.

Then at Skull Gorge, they used a combination of Magic, Truenaming, Sheer Dumb Luck, Aid Another Epic Rules, 2 Characters having Diplomacy, and everyone having decent Charisma to Diplomance Ozzymandarion. Their arguements were good enough that I let them do it :smallannoyed:

Anyway, I suggest against giving him 10 bugbears. They needlessly slow down the combat, and dont pose a credible thread; the party will be whipping out AoE spells anyway, and glitterdust or fireball even should take them all out at once while still targeting the others.

[AslanCross]

Yeah, I suggest against lots of low-level grunts. Having 4 Blood Ghost berserkers is going to be much more effective, since they can actually hit and take hits.

I suggest using the Legion of Geeks encounter calculator (http://legionofgeeks.com/encounter_calc.php) so you can gauge the EL more accurately.

I'd go until about EL 11 or 12. Honestly. Koth is the least competent Wyrmlord and shouldn't have EL 13 or higher. The Kharn fight should be far more memorable.

[Coidzor]

Yeah, I suggest against lots of low-level grunts. Having 4 Blood Ghost berserkers is going to be much more effective, since they can actually hit and take hits.

I suggest using the Legion of Geeks encounter calculator (http://legionofgeeks.com/encounter_calc.php) so you can gauge the EL more accurately.

I'd go until about EL 11 or 12. Honestly. Koth is the least competent Wyrmlord and shouldn't have EL 13 or higher. The Kharn fight should be far more memorable.

Y'know, thanks to your campaign, I'm now imagining a Snidely Whiplash Bugbear lashing someone to the lightning rail's conductor stones and cackling. :smallbiggrin:

Maybe have Koth's dragon-capturing expedition split into separate encounters/waves by encountering a vanguard that's making sure of the way for the main group which has to travel more slowly due to the heavy wagon they're guarding and they had to eat the mule/ox/whatevskies team due to Koth just being such a pathetic character that he and his unit fail at foraging just from having him be around... That way it'd be fairly memorable but it wouldn't be an epic fight like with Kharn(sp?).

And they wouldn't be able to just nova all the way through it due to the fact that there'd be at least two formations and with some time lapse...

[Rising Phoenix]

Stupid, stupid internet. Had posted a bigger reply but it got lost...XD

Anyhows here's the short version:

I like the idea of a two part encounter:

1)Vanguard ECL 8: 6 Bugbears each ECL4. (3 Ninj. 3 Brb) As soon as they realise that they are in a pickle one of the Ninjas flees to warn Koth. (Thanks for the Ninja idea Coidzor)

2)Cage Guard ECL 10.6:
Koth ECL 8.
Ozzy
Skull Crusher Ogre
3) Blackspawn.


My original plan was to have a big ECL 12.5 fight:

Koth (Sorc 6/ Warweaver 3) ECL 10
Ozzy CR 5 (He was gonna be the scout)
Skull Crusher Ogre CR 5
Warpriest CR 8.-> Cleric lv 5.
(Random low lv mooks ECL 1ish- to be scrapped)

Edit: Reducing the WP to a normal lv 5 cleric makes the encounter a nice, round ECL 12.0. Think I'll go with that but I will still create a two part encounter just to see which one would be best...:smallamused:


I let you know what I settle for...

Thanks for all your tips and advise!

R.P.

Edit: I do not wish to res this thread as you guys have provided me with enough solutions, but yeah Kjones; I'll let you know how it went :-)

[kjones]

Splitting up the encounter is a good idea, and giving Koth a few rounds to prepare could make a big difference, especially because he's a War Weaver.

Sounds good. Let us know how it goes.