Natael
2009-11-23, 12:50 PM
I've recently started running Red Hand, currently have six players for it. Branched the adventure from the old 3.0 Forge of Fury.
The Cast (currently level 5):
Miller - A human Paladin of Bahamut using a popular paladin variant I found on the wizards board, link later. Much more of a let them surrender and leave than fire and brimstone paladin. Not super effective in his own right, but his warhorse demolishes things and they are tough to damage.
Rachel - Elven Druid using PHB2 variant. Tends to stay in bear form. Likes to scout, not very vocal, but partly because she's a bear most of the time.
Chris - Raptoran Fighter, taking racial levels and a heavy bow focus, which is working out well sof far.
Alphonse - Human Crusader of Kord with a polearm and tripping. Rather durable, often fights apart from group. Quiet and reserved, kills quick, but follows Miller's lead on forgiveness thus far.
Joseph - Human Rogue. Retired adventurer coming back to the field looking for an old friend. Roped in to the adventure hoping he can find something in the secluded valley and is a good guy at heart.
John - Human Cleric of Farlaghn. Follows where the road takes him, was tracking goblinoids when he ran into the party and decided to help for the safety of the roads. Spontaneously casts inflict spells.
Brief background:
The group sans Cleric and Crusader traversed the stone tooth mountains, liberating Gurdedden's forge from the Durugar. After chasing the Durugar off, they found a large work order for some high quality weapons to be delivered to Vraath Keep. Going by some knowledge of a now dead bard and some local maps, they found it to be somewhere close to a town called Drellen's Ferry.
Between a strange divine inspiration to the Paladin and a curiosity of just who the dark dwarve were working for, the party departs for the week long trip to Drellen's Ferry.
Red Hand Thus Far(Through liberation of Vraath):
The party (lacking Alphonse and John thus far) reaches a curve in the road, hearing battle just around the bend. They arrive seeing a heavily armoured man fighting a large band of hobgoblins and fire breathing dogs. The battle is fairly minimal as the mooks are well dispatched by the fighter and Rogue's arrows, with the Paladin and Crusader quickly disabling the Blade Barer (Warblade levels now). The cleric popped invisibility and took off before being killed. Rescuing Alphonse from the ambush, the party discovers that his church had sent him east to provide some support to some small goblin raids at Drellin's Ferry, as they owed the church of Pelor there some favors.
The dead merchants were discovered, their minimal gold looted, but bodies left.
The next order of business was chasing down the few hobgoblins that got away with Rachel tracking them to the mountains leading to the fane. Between the foreboding nature of the fane, the scents of all form of creature (including something smelling faintly of dragon), the party took a vote and left for Drellen's Ferry.
At DF the group was polite to the guards, and with Alphonse's letter of petition from the local church of Pelor, they were welcomed in and, after hearing of the hobgoblin ambush, thanked for helping. Alphonse went to visit the church while the rest of the party got rooms and were quickly interviewed by Sorana and Wiston. Very little convincing was needed, as Miller quickly assured them that his group was there to help out, no payment was even discussed, much to Wiston's relief. However, Jorr was mentioned as a guide, of which the party obliged.
On the way to Jorr's cabin the group ran into a random shambling mound that grabbed Joseph very quickly, nearly killing him if not for Alphonse's revitalizing strike (which spurred many jokes OOC as a player's bard had been eaten by an animated rug before, nearly starting a precident of party members being killed by female genitalia. Ironically enough, both times the only female in the group struck the killing blow both times).
Jorr very gruffly greeted the party upon hearing the barking of his dogs. A need for a forrest guide was the first thing mentioned, and a price agreed upon before specifics about goblins were mentioned, which made Jorr more exuberant.
John, the cleric, had been taking one of those epic follower of Farlaghn walks when he noticed the slaughtered bunch of hobgoblins the party didn't clean up from the ambush. Correctly infering that the roads were very much not safe due to the hell hound corpses, he decided to track down the goblins, which he tracked to Vraath Keep, following a group south, he saw the goblins get eaten by a hydra. Just as a group of mostly humans start riding up the path...
John flies up out of the trees, over the creek, and to the party, much to their surprise (who were previously halted by Joseph and Rachel due to seeing a crocodile in the creek) and bows were trained on him. He alerts them to the hydra and plan on just making a mad dash over the bridge. About half the party makes it across, with Jorr and Miller halted on the bridge and Chris' horse halted too. Arrows were marginally effective, but when the hydra took a round to eat up a summoned hippogriff and shark, the party booked it, succeeding on all their balance checks this time, and simply ran for a mile before the hydra's slow butt gave up the chase.
Arriving at Vraath, Chris and Rachel took some aireal views of the place, finding nothing except a silly looking fake ghost. Splitting up and coming in from different entrances thanks to the giants and their boulder, the party gets mostly organized in the middle of the court yard. Just before this both Chris and Joseph had popped into the Manticore's room, surring him to let out an upset yell about stupid new recruits. Which alerted Koth to check things out. By the time he left his room, there was a bear and a guy on a huge horse attacking his troops. John popped and invisibility potion and followed Koth into his war room while the rest of the group was mostly focused on killing the vets and minotaur, while the manticire watched and Alphonse single handedly fought the goblins fairly successfully.
Koth: Bugbear/sorc2/dragon heart mage 5
Koth ran into the invisible cleric while trying to leave the room, then launched a lightning bolt, dropping the cleric and one of the vets. Koth got mage armor, shild, and displacement on, started throwing some glitter dust around, blinding the paladin, druid, and rogue. They dispatch everyone else except Koth and the Manticore (who is quickly chased off by some crits from the preblinded rogue). Koth wound up having to run with 17 hp left. Chris and Rachel flew after him, but Chris got dropped by lightning and Rachel stopped to heal him (both low on HP). They found the vault, have a large interest in the map Koth was rolling up, and know Koth was flying north.
The Cast (currently level 5):
Miller - A human Paladin of Bahamut using a popular paladin variant I found on the wizards board, link later. Much more of a let them surrender and leave than fire and brimstone paladin. Not super effective in his own right, but his warhorse demolishes things and they are tough to damage.
Rachel - Elven Druid using PHB2 variant. Tends to stay in bear form. Likes to scout, not very vocal, but partly because she's a bear most of the time.
Chris - Raptoran Fighter, taking racial levels and a heavy bow focus, which is working out well sof far.
Alphonse - Human Crusader of Kord with a polearm and tripping. Rather durable, often fights apart from group. Quiet and reserved, kills quick, but follows Miller's lead on forgiveness thus far.
Joseph - Human Rogue. Retired adventurer coming back to the field looking for an old friend. Roped in to the adventure hoping he can find something in the secluded valley and is a good guy at heart.
John - Human Cleric of Farlaghn. Follows where the road takes him, was tracking goblinoids when he ran into the party and decided to help for the safety of the roads. Spontaneously casts inflict spells.
Brief background:
The group sans Cleric and Crusader traversed the stone tooth mountains, liberating Gurdedden's forge from the Durugar. After chasing the Durugar off, they found a large work order for some high quality weapons to be delivered to Vraath Keep. Going by some knowledge of a now dead bard and some local maps, they found it to be somewhere close to a town called Drellen's Ferry.
Between a strange divine inspiration to the Paladin and a curiosity of just who the dark dwarve were working for, the party departs for the week long trip to Drellen's Ferry.
Red Hand Thus Far(Through liberation of Vraath):
The party (lacking Alphonse and John thus far) reaches a curve in the road, hearing battle just around the bend. They arrive seeing a heavily armoured man fighting a large band of hobgoblins and fire breathing dogs. The battle is fairly minimal as the mooks are well dispatched by the fighter and Rogue's arrows, with the Paladin and Crusader quickly disabling the Blade Barer (Warblade levels now). The cleric popped invisibility and took off before being killed. Rescuing Alphonse from the ambush, the party discovers that his church had sent him east to provide some support to some small goblin raids at Drellin's Ferry, as they owed the church of Pelor there some favors.
The dead merchants were discovered, their minimal gold looted, but bodies left.
The next order of business was chasing down the few hobgoblins that got away with Rachel tracking them to the mountains leading to the fane. Between the foreboding nature of the fane, the scents of all form of creature (including something smelling faintly of dragon), the party took a vote and left for Drellen's Ferry.
At DF the group was polite to the guards, and with Alphonse's letter of petition from the local church of Pelor, they were welcomed in and, after hearing of the hobgoblin ambush, thanked for helping. Alphonse went to visit the church while the rest of the party got rooms and were quickly interviewed by Sorana and Wiston. Very little convincing was needed, as Miller quickly assured them that his group was there to help out, no payment was even discussed, much to Wiston's relief. However, Jorr was mentioned as a guide, of which the party obliged.
On the way to Jorr's cabin the group ran into a random shambling mound that grabbed Joseph very quickly, nearly killing him if not for Alphonse's revitalizing strike (which spurred many jokes OOC as a player's bard had been eaten by an animated rug before, nearly starting a precident of party members being killed by female genitalia. Ironically enough, both times the only female in the group struck the killing blow both times).
Jorr very gruffly greeted the party upon hearing the barking of his dogs. A need for a forrest guide was the first thing mentioned, and a price agreed upon before specifics about goblins were mentioned, which made Jorr more exuberant.
John, the cleric, had been taking one of those epic follower of Farlaghn walks when he noticed the slaughtered bunch of hobgoblins the party didn't clean up from the ambush. Correctly infering that the roads were very much not safe due to the hell hound corpses, he decided to track down the goblins, which he tracked to Vraath Keep, following a group south, he saw the goblins get eaten by a hydra. Just as a group of mostly humans start riding up the path...
John flies up out of the trees, over the creek, and to the party, much to their surprise (who were previously halted by Joseph and Rachel due to seeing a crocodile in the creek) and bows were trained on him. He alerts them to the hydra and plan on just making a mad dash over the bridge. About half the party makes it across, with Jorr and Miller halted on the bridge and Chris' horse halted too. Arrows were marginally effective, but when the hydra took a round to eat up a summoned hippogriff and shark, the party booked it, succeeding on all their balance checks this time, and simply ran for a mile before the hydra's slow butt gave up the chase.
Arriving at Vraath, Chris and Rachel took some aireal views of the place, finding nothing except a silly looking fake ghost. Splitting up and coming in from different entrances thanks to the giants and their boulder, the party gets mostly organized in the middle of the court yard. Just before this both Chris and Joseph had popped into the Manticore's room, surring him to let out an upset yell about stupid new recruits. Which alerted Koth to check things out. By the time he left his room, there was a bear and a guy on a huge horse attacking his troops. John popped and invisibility potion and followed Koth into his war room while the rest of the group was mostly focused on killing the vets and minotaur, while the manticire watched and Alphonse single handedly fought the goblins fairly successfully.
Koth: Bugbear/sorc2/dragon heart mage 5
Koth ran into the invisible cleric while trying to leave the room, then launched a lightning bolt, dropping the cleric and one of the vets. Koth got mage armor, shild, and displacement on, started throwing some glitter dust around, blinding the paladin, druid, and rogue. They dispatch everyone else except Koth and the Manticore (who is quickly chased off by some crits from the preblinded rogue). Koth wound up having to run with 17 hp left. Chris and Rachel flew after him, but Chris got dropped by lightning and Rachel stopped to heal him (both low on HP). They found the vault, have a large interest in the map Koth was rolling up, and know Koth was flying north.